guess who unpacked her camera cables

So - to catch up.

The Deleted Post was for the most part about this really bizzarre week I had - it got crazy hot and muggy and the air was gritty with smoke from the Chatsworth fires, and true to the ancient teaching wisdom holding that changes in weather make students something something, my kids went completely wacko. I caught my first tagger, helped break up my first fight, busted my sixth period for dropping random items (pens, wads of paper, a bag of chips) through a hole in the floor onto the class below us, subbed a class in which the TA started a fight with a SpEd student which escalated until three representatives from the dean's office were present, and kept narrowly avoiding being run over by a group of my students, athletes all, stealing each others' shoes and tearing around campus (up three flights of stairs, back down again, outside and around the bungalows, over the fountain, etc...) at speeds unsafe for street driving in order to prevent the shoes' return.

FYI - my school is really pretty...as long as you remain outdoors.

Then we drove up to the bay to pack up the last of our worldly possessions, hit up IKEA, eat some good food, and see Aaron's family (including his grandmother, whom I had never met, and his very-pregnant sister, whose baby shower we also attended.) So of course we both got incredibly sick with this thing that my kids all have - they are worse than kindergarteners, I swear - and could not effectively taste, smell, speak, or comprehend. This is probably for the best, because driving through Oakland made me overwhelmingly homesick and I might not have gotten back in the truck had I been able to smell the fresh air or taste Gordo quesadilla instead of merely registering the familiar burn...

We've spent the last week-odd engaged in painting, stocking, and organizing the new place. I realized too late that we'd painted blue and gold - Go Bears! - but that lameness aside, I absolutely love it, and living in LA seems much more managable now that we've got a comfy place to call our own.

Notable local landmarks: Von's Hollywood! (remarkably similar to normal Von's, only with better produce and lacking anti-theft cart protection;) Eat'n High Thai Restaurant, for which, no matter how I try, I can only get one reading; and the tux rental place, which, like much of Hispanic LA, sports mural-style signage, and whose painted bride looks like a pool-hall killer on the lam, caught in a desperate Bugs Bunny-style attempt to avoid going back "inside"...