Pages

Sunday, September 23, 2018

good-bye, summer

Happy fall!  I'm not sad to see summer in the rear view mirror, but a little pensive about winter up ahead.  It's been unseasonably hot here lately, we broke a few high temp records.  But it's all relative, as many of us reminded ourselves, "at least it's not a hurricane".

Living in Colorado for most of my life, I have no direct experience with hurricanes.  Sounds awful - not just the storm itself, but all that mess of aftermath and ripple effects on the economy.  My mom grew up in the Philippines and used to tell me that my room "looks like a typhoon hit!".  Sorry, Mom.

We dogsat the grandpooch - Chaco's dog, Ella - for a short time this weekend.  She is just too cute and fun.  We're still working on getting her and the cat to be buddies, but we've made good progress.  I still don't trust the two of them alone together, so there's a bit of pet juggling whenever she's here.

And Wolfgang was home for a bit last weekend.  He has some mountain biking friends who live here, so he graces us with his presence once in a while when he's done with them.  Nice thing is, he also took most of his remaining crap that was still stored at our house.

He reminded me that Inktober 2018 is about to start.  I plan to do 'em all again this year!  That exclamation point was to psyche myself up.  I managed to get it done last year, but not without spilling into November.

I have not been doing much art play, however.  I've noticed that it can sometimes be difficult for me to switch brain hemispheres.  Since much of my tuting is left-brain stuff, that's where I've been mostly hanging out recently.  Inktober will be a good challenge and put some balance back into my brain.  I hope.

Speaking of the tuting, a good chunk of my students come to me for help with college entrance exams:  SAT, ACT, and GRE.  Test prep was how I got into tutoring in the first place.  Sometimes I hear back from students when they get their score reports - hopefully happy news.

In all this time, I've had a handful of kids who've gotten close to perfect scores - a very rare thing - but never the golden 36 ACT or 1600 SAT or 170 GRE.  Earlier this week, I got this message from "Joe Kool":




Never mind that his "I got 36 ACT this time!" is grammatically incomplete.

He gets a pass.



8 comments:

Linda Hensley said...

Congrats to both of you! As for the Pledge of Allegiance, I didn't like it when I was a kid and didn't like it when I was teaching. Even as a kid I felt that it was cult-like in the chanting and obedience -- but I mumbled it with everyone else too.

Margaret (Peggy or Peg too) said...

Abby, I don't wish to say good bye to summer just yet. I just would like summer. It normally is dry and brown around these parts in August / Sept. This year it is lush and green we have had so much rain. I lived in Seatte for 2.5 yrs too long. They didn't get this much rain. Rained all weekend and they don't expect it to stop until Saturday. Whew.

Great job on the 36ACT student. I could use your tutoring. :-)

Abby said...

Linda, I hear ya on the pledge. I suspect most of the kids are mumbling along like we did, not like we really meant it or gave it much thought.

Margaret, I wish you could send us some of your rain. I'll swap you our heat! No stopping the rain until Saturday? That's nearly a week from now, y'know!

Ginny said...

A perfect score! I'd certainly be bragging about that. You must be proud.

Abby said...

Ginny, I'm happy for Joe Kool, he works hard. He's one of those kids that was pretty much a perfect score waiting to happen. I'm glad he let me be a small gear on the train that took him there!

ShadowRun300 said...

Aww! And that confirms why you love to tute. Congrats to Joe Kool and you!
I love the fall season, but I am SO not ready for winter, and fall means winter is near. Sigh.
Looking forward to seeing what your right side of the brain comes up with in Inktober. :)

Abby said...

SR300, it's supposed to get down to the 30s tonight. Did I say I was ready for fall?
But I AM ready to get weird and artsyish. We'll see what happens!

LL Cool Joe said...

British summer time doesn't end until the 28th October, so I'm hanging on to that for as long as I can. Which means Autumn seems very short before we hit winter. If I had no commitments here I'd love to spend winter in AZ.

Well done on getting Joe Kool such a good result, and on the use of exclamation marks!!!!