Hello followers. You still there? I haven't given you very many tasty morsels to snack on this summer, I'm well aware. I'm just not teaching right now, so there are no stories to tell!

But that is not entirely true.

At the farmer's market last week I saw one of my favorites from this past year, Karinna. She had asked me to take pictures for her and her friends on graduation day and I did, but I never gave her the pictures. She saw me on Tuesday and I felt incredibly guilty and went and burned her a CD right there. And met her and her dad, and her best friend Daniela (plus mom). It was really great to see them, and Daniela gave me a big hug. Those girls make me smile!

And now that all of the GATE kids are no longer at the junior high, I caved and accepted their incessant friend requests on Facebook. Those kids are chatty! But very bright. Here is an excerpt from a book a couple of my OTHER favorite students are writing (and they sent me chapter one in an email):

"The music blasting from Blake’s headphones sounded, to me, like some sort of musical mosquito, hovering on the edges of my hearing. It harmonized with the hidden bugs singing around us. The clouds above me hung as if suspended by fishing line, like something from the set of a elementary school play. Fake, that’s how they looked. Like some soccer mom volunteered to make the set, and then realized what she had just gotten herself into. I could just see her, futilely trying to stick the cotton onto cardboard and ending up with fluff hot-glued to her French-manicured fingers."

Damn! That's good.

Here's a recently taken photo for you: