March 31, 2007: Spring is coming!

Look what's budding at our house! These crocuses (croci?) are on the south side of the house.



Of course, winter is trying its hardest to hang on . . .

. . . that's the snow still piled on the north side of the neighbor's house, and there are still big patches of it in our yard, even on the south side. But it's definitely starting to melt.

Today, when I was walking to school, a big red-breasted robin flew in front of me and I could hear lots of birds singing. They say it can still snow in April, and I'm still wearing my long coat on days when that March wind (now April wind) is a blowin'. It was 24 degrees this morning when I got up. In Texas that would NOT be spring.

April 1, 2007: visitors

Just for fun, here's a listing of some of the recent visitors to this blog from the gvisit.com folks (it's a little different info than what the site meter folks show). I'm pretty sure I don't know some of these people personally . . . at least not yet.
1) March 31, 2007 10:13 pm: Houston, Texas
2) March 30, 2007 6:15 pm: Dallas, Texas
3) March 30, 2007 12:29 pm: Oregon, Ohio
4) March 27, 2007 9:44 pm: Cincinnati, Ohio
5) March 27, 2007 9:17 pm: Houston, Texas
6) March 27, 2007 8:07 pm: Jamestown, New York
7) March 27, 2007 9:52 am: Boston, Massachusetts
8) March 27, 2007 9:42 am: Link�ping, Ostergotland
9) March 27, 2007 9:40 am: Winnipeg, Manitoba
10) March 26, 2007 6:49 pm: Toronto, Ontario
11) March 26, 2007 2:42 pm: Brooklyn, New York
12) March 26, 2007 2:22 pm: Albuquerque, New Mexico
13) March 26, 2007 1:50 pm: Providence, Rhode Island
14) March 26, 2007 11:31 am: Bangor, Maine
15) March 26, 2007 11:24 am: North Kingstown, Rhode Island
16) March 26, 2007 11:10 am: Saco, Maine
17) March 26, 2007 10:28 am: Orono, Maine

Happy April Fool's Day!

This is my 90th posting in my blog! I can't believe I've made that many entries. I can't believe I've been in Farmington for almost 3 full months! The time has really flown by.

MRM sent the blog URL out to a bunch of her friends since she's talked about so much in here, it saves her having to write them all the tales of her new roommate. ;-) I knew she was going to do that, so I quickly added a "counter" and a map that keep track of visitors to this site. I'm being read in many different states between her friends, my friends, my family, Maggy's friends and family, and who knows who else is passing along this simple URL. I knew from my own experience that unless you've read a blog before, it's not intuitive how it works. Whenever I sent the URL to friends, I always included a little explanation of how to start in January, where the archives were, starting at the bottom of a page to go in chronological order, etc. But now that others were reading it that I wasn't telling, I decided to rearrange the page a little by changing the archives to weekly instead of monthly and adding an explanation of how to read the blog.

In several phone calls and emails from friends there are references to things that I know they would only know if they read the blog or talked to someone who did. How flattering! And of course, I've written in here about students that are reading the blog. In Classroom Management we talk about "being human" to your students (admit mistakes, apologize when you make one, share your passions, etc.) and establishing a professional yet friendly teacher-student relationship. I guess it's a good thing I never do anything I wouldn't want my students to know about 'cuz then there's nothing to worry about when I write. ;-)

This all started as an exercise to a) learn more about blogging so I could use it in my class, and b) save time by not having to write a bazillion emails to keep everyone posted, I could just refer them to the blog to find out what's going on. It has turned into an enjoyable journey into the blogosphere that I hope to continue.

And speaking of April Fool's Day . . . when you are going to pull an April Fool's Day joke on someone (of course in my case and Dr. Mari's that doesn't have to only be on April first . . . you should be doing those kinds of fun practical jokes all day, every day), you best not write about it in your blog or the recipient may read it and either find out about it in advance or figure out who pulled off that anonymous fun. So those who know me, know that there are many things I am not writing about because I can't in addition to all the things I'm not writing about because there isn't enough time.

So have some fun and think of me . . . I'd be having fun with you in person if you were here with me and the Mainiacs. ;-)