phew

so, yea, i'm a bum, and i wimped out of blogging for a while, but i'm figuring that i'll give it one last shot before the summer is over and i close up the blog to avoid my kids' parents coming up to me and being like "uh, i saw a picture of you slobbering on a big piece of ham and holding a beer on your blog, is this what you're teaching the children?" you know, something like that.

in any case, i'd like to update you with some notable things i've done since my last post:

we threw caroline's hawaiian themed birthday party which featured a double barreled diet coke/mentos volcano, decorated while drinking beers directly before explosion. and yes, there was fire, nothing but the best for my caroline.



i completed my sullivan's reunion tour which was a week where i went back to the old art counter and peddled pencils and paper all day. thankfully the spirit of nostalga negated the day to day monotony that can be sullivan's during the summer (our slowest time of the year).

i secretly learned sweet caroline for my truimphant return to the world of karoke (for pauly's birthday), only to be cock blocked by the dj who played it for someone else. dammit.

caroline's maid of honor and bf stayed with us and they acted mildly amused by my propensity for acting like a cheesy tour guide with out of towners. "did you know that fort reno is the highest geographical spot in all of dc?" we also played horsehoes and drank champagne.

i finally finished reading one hundred years of solitude!! it sufficiently satisfied my need for non-teaching books, now i'm onto teacher man by frank mccourt.

girl talk changed my life.

caroline and i celebrated our -1 anniversary, yes, we're less than one year away. we celebrated by going to a caterer's tasting. mmmm free food in name of wedding, sweet.

i dragged a bunch of the "the boys" up to our wonderful hometown of armonk where we hung out with a bunch of my relatives and watched planet earth on my father's unusually large hd tv. it was good times, a little metrosexual, but good times.

we went to a vegan bastille day party.

i rearranged my living room and set up some speakers connected to my computer down the hall. huzzah for radio shack.

in the garden, our peppers prospered while our cucumber, zuccini, and squash were defeated by a leaf fungus. i generally force visitors to taste a sampling of different flavored leaves from the garden because i find the strong taste of certain leafy plants amazing. my favorites this year have been the citrus flavored geranium and the, now deceased, arugala. rip tiny arugalas, you were so oddly irresistable. also, we got a fig tree.

i talked endlessly about the whole chris benoit thing. what was the deal with that?

caroline and i went on week vaca, three days in kiawah island, south carolina with the in-laws, three days in miami for george and carly's wedding, and two days in mertyl beach for the goehrke family reunion. photographic documentation of our week of beaches can be found here

and of course, i've thought a lot about my the now, rapidly approaching, FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. wow, it's really actually hard to imagine. i have already seen my classroom and i've been taking a course on reading education at the school, but since i don't have keys yet, i'm forced to shove my face against the glass and drool in anticipation every time i pass it. it has a lot of chalk board space, i'm going to need a lot of colored chalk...

so, what else is in store for the rest of my lazy-ass summer? well, alex kargher, of kargher chocolate fame, is coming to the east coast, and aside from a visit i'm planning on biking biking, kayaking kayaking, repeat repeat.
who's up for a labor day cook-out?