Week-End Update: Pulling Things Together

This week...

1
Farmer's Market

Last week, I found myself overwhelmed by all of the choices at the SOWA Market, so this week I came up with a plan and a shopping list.  What a difference it made!  Without having to come up with a meal idea on the spot, I felt free to simply meander through the different stalls looking for the best ingredients.  Since we walked to our neighborhood farmer's market this time, there were fewer stalls to choose from, which also helped.  In no time at all, we were walking home with two kinds of ripe tomatoes, zucchini, blueberries, and hickory smoked bacon.  The blueberries were tart and didn't have any of the papery texture to them that I usually don't like in store-bought blueberries.  We haven't tried the bacon yet, but grilled the zucchini and served it with some of the tomatoes and some creamy mozzarella, and used the rest of the tomatoes on a Margarita and arugula pizza.  I will not wait until the end of summer to buy freshly grown tomatoes again!  They are unlike anything I've ever bought at a grocery store.

2
New school year, new desk, new sense of calm

I've finally turned the corner from "PLEASE do not let Summer be over yet..." to "I'll be ready to go back," when it comes to the new school year.  I went back through my lesson plans from last year (Thank you, Google calendar!) and mapped out the upcoming year, started finalizing a few things that I'd like to do differently, and tried out my new commute (sans the 5am wake-up call) a few times.  On my last visit up to the school, I moved my things to my new desk, which has more space, though the English Dpt's resident mouse has been spotted near it a few times.  Going into my fifth year of teaching, I finally feel like I know what I'm teaching the first day, first week, and even first month of the year.  Here's to my new (school) year's resolution to find a better work-life balance.  We'll see how it goes!

3
2 Years of Photos

I finally went through the two years worth of photos that we had stored on various memory cards.  Pictures of holidays, graduations, vacations, and more.  Here's a look at some of what we've been up to in our first two married years:

In the process, I found a bunch of photographs that I really love.  Photography has been an interest of mine since I was a teenager (and using my APS camera, which was a big investment at the time for an allowance-saver like me), and it just might be one more way that I develop this blog.  Coming up: the occasional post sharing some of my favorite photos.

4

Orchard House

Orchard House

I've been talking about visiting Orchard House in Concord since before I moved to Boston, and my goal has been to take photos of the property from each season.  Well, we finally made the visit, camera in tow, and...  I left all of the memory cards at home (see above).  It was probably for the better, as I felt a bit sheepish.  There was something special about the few minutes I stood in the side garden, trying to process that, over 150 years ago, a family that I'd connected with many times through Little Women lived here.  And by "lived," I mean that they cooked here, tended the garden, celebrated Christmas, fought with one another, joked with one another, looked out of the windows at neighbors and even troops outside.  I'm not sure that I would have enjoyed that moment quite so much with the pressure of trying to capture it with a camera.  I didn't walk away empty handed though, thanks to the invention of the smart phone.  Until next time, Orchard House!       

5

Blogging Progress

I did a lot of research on blogging this week, suddenly (and finally) eager to make something public of this.  I'm playing around with the idea of posting about the things that I learn as I go (Post #1 coming up this week?).  There's a lot to learn and grow with, from how to design your site, to copyright policies (especially with photographs), to writing posts that people want to read.  I did take one major step this week, which was to show Amar what I've been working on.  He knows that I've been building the blog, but I hadn't let him read through it yet.  I'm thinking I should set a date to make the whole thing public and invite some people to read it... At this point, I'm not waiting for anything but my own nerves!