I posted about the B&G dinner yesterday and forgot one of the best parts.
The B&G dinner was Monday night. Wednesday morning, when I got to work, I realized I didn't have my phone with me. At the time I didn't think anything about it - I knew I hadn't picked it up before I left for work. So when I got home, I looked around for it and couldn't find it. I had Lori call the number, but we didn't hear anything. Well, again, I didn't think too much of it; I figured it must be at work buried under some papers on my desk. So the next day I go in and thoroughly search my office to no avail. Well, now I'm puzzled and I'm trying to remember when was the last time I had it. I knew I had it at the B&G, so maybe, I thought, it's in the car. Again, no luck. I figured it would show up somewhere, so the waiting game began.
This was a bit of a pain, though. I hadn't realized how dependent on my cell phone I was becoming. I do have a phone at my desk at work, but it is not easy to make long distance calls on it, and our cell phones have Maryland numbers, so calling Sweetie is an ordeal. And we don't have a land line at the house.
The next day, Lori gets a call. It's a woman who has my phone, and the last number dialed was Lori's. She's calling from Carson. For those of you unfamiliar with southern California, Carson is not on Catalina. It's about 5 miles up the 110 from the port of LA. Lori takes her name and number and passes the info to me. I give the woman a call and ask where she found it and how it got to Carson. Turns out her family happened to be in Avalon on Monday and attended the Blue & Gold dinner. Her mother has a phone that looks very similar, and her younger sister mistook my phone for the mother's and picked it up. I guess they didn't realize the mistake until they got home. I thanked her for calling and said I'd call her back when I could pick it up.
I'm planning on going over on Monday and one of my many tasks will be to pick up my phone. My well-traveled phone. I don't think it misses me, but I sure miss it.
If anyone has gift suggestions for the good Samaritan woman who called me about my phone, post a comment.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Cub Scouts
We had our Blue and Gold Dinner last week, the annual bash celebrating all that is Cub Scouts. This was Calvin's first as a Cub, and Hobbes is now in Webelos. Ceremonies opened with the Webelos group doing a skit that involved a magic hat, the Cub Scout Promise, a rubber chicken, some underwear, and culminated in the Pledge of Allegiance. Beat that.
The highlights of the evening were the skits, the presentation, and the raffles. The Tigers (my group - I'm Den Leader this year) did a hilarious skit (if I do say, myself) about identifying "bison poop" (actually a brownie sitting on top of a chocolate cookie). The Webelos performed the old classic "Tater Bug", which was also very well received. The Wolves did "invisible bench" and the Bears did "test of the emergency broadcasting system".
The presentation was by me. I spoke on the founding of Boy Scouts, this being the 100th Anniversary of the BSA. I talked about what life was like in 1910, and about three of the men who were integral to the founding of Scouts, Ernest Seton, Robert Baden-Powell and William Boyce. The stability of the ideals that comprise Scouting from 1907 to today is really quite astounding. We ended with all current and past Scouts present reciting the Scout Law.
At some point (shortly before my talk ended, I believe), attention of small minds began to wander and the Cubs started slipping outside to run around. Inside we finished up the raffle drawing and called it a night. A good time was had by all. Having been with the Pack for three years, and participating as a leader this year, I'm feeling much more integrated into the social structure surrounding the Pack now. Calvin and Hobbes have both made friends with at least some of the kids in their Dens, and Sweetie now knows and is known by Pack people. This makes Pack events feel much friendlier.
Coming up we have the Pinewood Derby and a Webelos campout. Pictures to follow!
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Doings
Wow, I'm really not doing well on my keeping up with the blog thing. My apologies to the millions of fans out there.
Well, I guess the biggest excitement recently has all had to do with the school in town. It's been at a bit of a low simmer all year. We got a new teacher this year, and while my initial impression was that she wasn't a great fit for the island (and didn't realize it), she certainly came with great credentials. Despite her frequent protestations that she "wasn't about drama", there were a string of dramas that followed her around: the restraining order drama, the dog drama, the horse drama, the mail key drama, the mail drama, the disappearing materials drama, the fence for her house drama. But in the classroom, she always professional and on-task (as near as I could tell), and the kids seemed both like her and be learning what they needed to know.
All year, she had been going back to the mainland every weekend, which made sense since her husband was there, but after Christmas, she started missing the occasional Monday, or suddenly had to leave Thursday. The frequency of these absences started increasing, and I was wondering if there was something wrong that she wasn't telling us, like a family member was sick or something.
Also around this time, Long Beach Unified School District voted, in light of the serious budget cuts necessitated by the California state fiscal crisis, that they would not fund the Little Red Schoolhouse, at least for the 2010-2011 year. Minor panic ensued in our very small schoolhouse community. For those of you who don't know, the only other school on the island is in Avalon, a 90 minute bus ride over unpaved roads. Most days the bus leaves at 6:30am and gets back at 5:45pm. And we have two kids slotted to start kindergarten in the fall. This had happened before, in 2005, and at that time the Foundation that had started the school in the first place stepped in and paid the operating cost of the school for a year, whereupon LBUSD picked us up again. No one was sure what was going to happen. Would the Foundation step in again? We heard talk that Avalon would run a second bus for the younger kids. We were considering looking into starting a charter school. There were lots of serious conversations. In the end, the Foundation Board met and agreed to fund us next year, so we have a one year stay of execution, but we still have decisions to make.
Well, around the time we were hearing that we had been bailed out, the teacher disappeared. She just left one Wednesday afternoon saying she'd be back the next week and then never came back. I guess she just cracked. Everyone was surprised at first (except, I think, the woman who works at the school as lunch monitor/janitor/groundskeeper), but upon reflection, it was less surprising. We were now stuck without a permanent teacher, though, and the local woman who usually substitutes couldn't do it long term because she has another job. So two retired teachers from Avalon very kindly offered to step in and tag-team teach the rest of the year. One of them even taught at the Little Red Schoolhouse years ago, and both of them taught some of the PTA parents in Avalon. So we are very grateful to these wonderful ladies (glory, laud and honor to them for helping us out).
Now I guess if the teacher was unhappy here, then it's good for her to be there and it's good for us that she's not here, and from that standpoint I wish her well. But there are a few things about the way she left that I'm really not happy about. I'm not going to go into details because the point of this entry was to tell a story, not dump her, but I thought it would lend emotional involvement to the reader to let them know that there is anger here. (Ooooh! Drama!)
Oh, and I skipped the bit where there was a rumor in town that I was stalking the teacher. I was mildly amused that I had made it into the rumor mill in this very small town, but wearied by how ludicrous the accusation was.
Well, anyway, I believe the drama is over for now. We still need to decide what to do with the school moving forward, but we have a cushion now. So going into Spring Break new week all is well at the Little Red Schoolhouse.
Well, I guess the biggest excitement recently has all had to do with the school in town. It's been at a bit of a low simmer all year. We got a new teacher this year, and while my initial impression was that she wasn't a great fit for the island (and didn't realize it), she certainly came with great credentials. Despite her frequent protestations that she "wasn't about drama", there were a string of dramas that followed her around: the restraining order drama, the dog drama, the horse drama, the mail key drama, the mail drama, the disappearing materials drama, the fence for her house drama. But in the classroom, she always professional and on-task (as near as I could tell), and the kids seemed both like her and be learning what they needed to know.
All year, she had been going back to the mainland every weekend, which made sense since her husband was there, but after Christmas, she started missing the occasional Monday, or suddenly had to leave Thursday. The frequency of these absences started increasing, and I was wondering if there was something wrong that she wasn't telling us, like a family member was sick or something.
Also around this time, Long Beach Unified School District voted, in light of the serious budget cuts necessitated by the California state fiscal crisis, that they would not fund the Little Red Schoolhouse, at least for the 2010-2011 year. Minor panic ensued in our very small schoolhouse community. For those of you who don't know, the only other school on the island is in Avalon, a 90 minute bus ride over unpaved roads. Most days the bus leaves at 6:30am and gets back at 5:45pm. And we have two kids slotted to start kindergarten in the fall. This had happened before, in 2005, and at that time the Foundation that had started the school in the first place stepped in and paid the operating cost of the school for a year, whereupon LBUSD picked us up again. No one was sure what was going to happen. Would the Foundation step in again? We heard talk that Avalon would run a second bus for the younger kids. We were considering looking into starting a charter school. There were lots of serious conversations. In the end, the Foundation Board met and agreed to fund us next year, so we have a one year stay of execution, but we still have decisions to make.
Well, around the time we were hearing that we had been bailed out, the teacher disappeared. She just left one Wednesday afternoon saying she'd be back the next week and then never came back. I guess she just cracked. Everyone was surprised at first (except, I think, the woman who works at the school as lunch monitor/janitor/groundskeeper), but upon reflection, it was less surprising. We were now stuck without a permanent teacher, though, and the local woman who usually substitutes couldn't do it long term because she has another job. So two retired teachers from Avalon very kindly offered to step in and tag-team teach the rest of the year. One of them even taught at the Little Red Schoolhouse years ago, and both of them taught some of the PTA parents in Avalon. So we are very grateful to these wonderful ladies (glory, laud and honor to them for helping us out).
Now I guess if the teacher was unhappy here, then it's good for her to be there and it's good for us that she's not here, and from that standpoint I wish her well. But there are a few things about the way she left that I'm really not happy about. I'm not going to go into details because the point of this entry was to tell a story, not dump her, but I thought it would lend emotional involvement to the reader to let them know that there is anger here. (Ooooh! Drama!)
Oh, and I skipped the bit where there was a rumor in town that I was stalking the teacher. I was mildly amused that I had made it into the rumor mill in this very small town, but wearied by how ludicrous the accusation was.
Well, anyway, I believe the drama is over for now. We still need to decide what to do with the school moving forward, but we have a cushion now. So going into Spring Break new week all is well at the Little Red Schoolhouse.
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