Why my job rocks, part #47

Every winter at the end of January, beginning of February, this whole area celebrates winter in a Winter Carnival...Saranac Lake Celebrates as a town (this year is their 111th Winter Carnival) and the Lake Placid School system celebrates in what is the longest continuously running Winter Carnival held by any school in the country (and likely the universe!)...we took off Thursday and Friday from the drudgery of book-learning to enjoy the outdoors and excessive cold of the North Country with our student...it was super!


Thursday we had the opening ceremonies (speakers, Carnival royalty, the school band, etc.) and then we headed out into the cold for an afternoon of skating and sliding...Mirror lake (the lake on which most of the town of Lake Placid is around) is plowed off to allow people to skate on one part of it, and the rest of us climb the toboggan tower and slide on wooden sled down an icy track onto, and across the lake...it is awesome and noisy and bumpy and scary and fun and really cold...


The people running the toboggan tower cram 3-4 people in each sled and throw them down the tracks...you are going screaming fast by the time you are halfway down the incline and once you hit the ice on the lake are going just incredibly fast (they have a warning for people with heart conditions, back conditions, mental instability, over-developed sense of safety, etc.) and once you are out on the ice you inevitably start to spin in slow circles while the still shooting across the lake...


The runway across the ice is plowed smooth for about 300 yards, and if you have enough mass in your sled (as mine somehow always does...) you can end up overshooting it, which yields a dramatic slow-down in a cloud of powdery snow and a bumpy grinding to a halt of the sled...followed by a long walk back across the lake...


Here you can see my sled (of course I have a student carry it) on the way up to the top...it was a beautiful day, although just ridiculously cold...it stayed below zero all day, and got windy in the afternoon, yielding windchill temperatures in the 20s to 30s below zeros...




This is my sled team at the end of our first run...if you click on the picture to enlarge it you can barely make out in the extreme distance the toboggan tower...it is an incredible ride...howling down the track, a blur of faces to one side as you listen to a high-pitched scream that may be yours or may be your sled-mates, and then BOOM!, you're out on the ice and begin to rotate in the circle, seeing all of the mountains and bright blue sky growing up and away from you in every direction as you continue to rocket across the lake...


The kids kept warm by running back to cram in as many rides as they could in the afternoon...we were all stiff with cold and happy at the end of the day!



On Friday, we all go over to Whiteface for a day of free skiing...the mountain gives all of us lift-tickets and rentals and lessons for the day, and we run wild on the hill...we teachers spend the first little while helping kids get outfitted and buckled (I chose blades this year, really short skis with both ends tilted up so that I can actually ski backwards), but may try out a snowboard next year...


Once everyone is set, we head out and up onto the mountain...lots of the kids take lessons, and then disappear all over the huge mountain...


This year we seemed to have the mountain almost to ourselves, which was really nice...Lake Placid kids skiing everywhere, having fun and enjoying the company of their classmates and teachers during a perfect day outside of the classroom...a great way to break up the winter doldrums...


, and the day was much warmer than Thursday had been...up into the 20s and sunny, with a blue sky all day long (after a little snow in the early morning)...it was awesome!...


Here is a reachout picture of me and one of my students on the chairlift zooming up the mountain after lessons were done...the kids of Lake Placid seem to be fearless, and I spent lots of the day playing the "cautious old man" card, and keeping the kids that I skied with from too dramatically over-reaching their skill levels...the great news was that everyone had a great time, and none of our students got hurt...


Here is a picture of one of my students and a fellow Grade 6 teacher, George Bailey, up at the top of the mountain, after barely convincing the enthusiastic student not to try his luck with Bear, a black diamond trail...just yet...


We had much better luck skiing on one of the easier, wide open and almost empty, trails that would bring us back down to the lift for another run (and another, and another, and another...sigh...fun day)...You may not have noticed in the previous picture, but George was wearing cross-country skis and spent his day making graceful telemark turns while our students (including the one pictured above) generally zoomed down the mountain in straight lines to maximize their speed and chance of early death...I took advantage of the day and my blades to spend the day zooming and turning and sometimes skiing backwards, taking pictures of the kids and teachers that I work with and enjoying the sun and the cold and the freedom and the awesomeness of my job...

To hammer home the point even further, we got back to the building, had a paycheck waiting in our mailboxes, and were released to the weekend early...


On the way home, I took a picture of this year's ice castle (in Saranac Lake) out of my car window...we'll be visiting it today with Ben, and watching fireworks over the frozen lake tonight...

Belated Superbowl Weekend Pics

Sorry for the delay, this time of year either gets busy, or I get less efficient (or both)...


Ben likes "toad in the hole" for breakfast on weekends, so I sometimes make them for him...it's an egg fried inside a piece of toast...Ben even likes the "bread cookies" made by butting out the center hole...


He likes his with catsup, so I made a smiley face...


We went over to our friends house for the Superbowl, which turned out to be a food-fest at which a game of football was also watched...this is the proper emphasis in my book...Gail and Rebecca enjoyed a couple of appropriately wintry drinks while the fun was going on...


The kids, Ben and Ayla and Autumn and Ripple, all played nicely together the whole time, and everyone (myself included) stayed up too late...



Topher enjoying a piglet in a blanket...


Ayla with some pro-Cardinals warpaint and a perfectly balanced Superbowl supper...


Ben and Ayla had almost too much fun playing during our visit...


Everyone loved the 3D glasses and the 3D commercial...as far as I could tell, there was only the one really 3D-tastic effect, but the glasses were fun!


Ripple is a cutie-pie, although since Penny has joined our household, she looks almost too black...she's not though, she's perfect!


Ben produced some lovely poems at school, which I am sharing with you...

In the deep mid-winter

We've had tons of snow and tons of cold in the weeks since we got back from our Christmas holiday...


Ben has been participating in an after-school program of XC-skiing Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the after-party always includes pasta and a bath...Penny loves bathtubs and the water that goes in them...she helps out any chance she can...she likes to bite the water, eat the bubbles, lick the soap off of the boy...


I went out camping on Polliwog Pond with a friend on Friday night after school...it got down to about -16 degrees according to 2 of our 3 thermometers (the 3rd registered -23 degrees, but was probably just bragging)...


The campfire kept us alive, I dug out the firepit a little, put down a layer of logs, and then built a fire on top of them...the fire melted and dried out the firepit by the time that we left...


The morning was cold and windy, but beautiful...lots of hot drinks and oatmeal helped start the day off right...


Polliwog Pond is a really pretty place to camp at any time of the year, but is especially nice in the winter, when nobody else is around...

I got home Saturday afternoon and we helped Ben get ready for his first-ever sleepover at a friend's house...he had a great time...


We picked him up this morning, tired but happy and full of stories of fun and fooling around and running and snowballs...we've kept this afternoon low and slow and been downstairs by the stove playing with lego and watching episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" that I got from Gail and Ben for my birthday...


We all built some fun stuff with a mix of lego pieces and kits, which Ben is really getting into these days, including some interesting puzzle-boxes with treasures inside of them...

We've got another day of this long weekend, and are thinking about going to see the movie, "Hotel for Dogs" tomorrow...

Playing inside during a cold day

It was really cold on Saturday morning, so one thing that we did was play with Ben, which with geeky parents usually gets a bit science-y...



Yellow-colored water and blue-colored water mix to make green-colored water...


Red and blue mixing to make purple, with Penny-terrific in the background, making plans to eat the straw connectors...

Turning 40

I turned 40 on January 5th, but had (as tends to happen with people born at this time of year) been celebrating my birthday for awhile...

The night of the 5th was the night of cake, which is the centerpiece of any civilized culture's celebration of your birth, and we had a fun time leading up to the cake-phase of the supper...with both Gail and Ben showing off the cake to me, but wanting me to keep it a surprise from the other (as well as promising to act surprised at the official unveiling)...birthdays, like funerals, are often as much about the people attending as the person being celebrated in the ritual...


They had gotten me a carrot cake, my favorite, complete with buttery icing and the inevitable carrot decorations (which carrot cakes seem to sport quite often, as if to proclaim the carrot-ness)...


I managed to blow out the 4 candles without assitance...40 candles was deemed a fire-hazard by everyone involved...


Penny thought that I needed help though, or she was worried by the cake and decided to help...once she got close enough, she tried to unhinge her jaws like an anaconda and swallow the cake whole...


It was moist and flavorful and sweet and had a wonderful texture...if Shakespeare has missing sonnets out there, buried by the sands of time, they may well be about cakes like this one...


I opened a present from Muz and was dumbfounded (emphasis on dumb) as to why she would have sent me one fruitbat mitten...in my defense, it had been a long first day back at school, and I was pretty tired from staying up late the night before...


Penny was intrigued by my brief lesson on the various fruitbats of the world, and decided to eat this particular one after a closer examination...


Eventually we figured out that it was not a single mitten, but was a wine cozy (and given that it was from Finland, was more likely a bear than a fruitbat)...once I knew what it actually was, it was impossible to see it as a fruitbat mitten anymore...and also nearly impossible for me to stop laughing at myself everytime I looked at the thing sitting on the table, mocking me...


Gail's new camera is great, and this is the first reach-around picture taken with it...TADA!


Ben has grown up so much in the last few months, he really isn't a little boy anymore...but he was very snuggly and Daddy-lap-centric during my birthday (and I loved it)...


Penny has grown up a lot in the last few months as well, but she still thinks and acts like a tiny puppy...she'll always be a lap dog...