This is the view from my hotel balcony in San Diego, where I’ve just completed my second AVID Summer Institute of the summer. This one was great. My presenting partner and I have very complementary personalities, the participants were eager and interested and it really all went quite smoothly. I kept setting my alarm for 5:00 AM, to get up and walk or swim and after the first day, I did neither. It was so hard to wake up that I just puttered around in my room until time to go to work at about 7:00.
Each night I’d lay down to sleep with my balcony door open to the breeze. It was nice until the cigarette smoke from the balcony below wafted in. The first time it happened, I called the front desk to ask if I was in the wrong room. They assured me that the smoke was not supposed to be happening, and they called and took care of it. The next time, the desk said that if they were smoking on their balcony they couldn’t do anything about it. That seemed wrong to me, but I didn’t know what else to do apart from confronting the scofflaws (Heaven forbid!), so I closed my door until the middle of the night when the room got too hot and the smokers were sleeping. Then I’d open it again and let in the coolness.
This thing about rights of smokers and non-smokers is a tangle I think. The freedom of one so overlaps with that of the other. And of course, I think my freedom of breathing clean air should surely supercede the freedom of someone else to breathe smoke. And I know the smoke breathers see it the other way. I just wish they’d stop. For their sake as well as mine!
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I’ve always loved these cement benches in downtown Sacramento. I never thought of how many ways you could read the word “heart.” It pleases me every time I see it. Tomorrow the AVID Summer Institute begins. This is my fourth year of leading the High School Administrator strand. I’m a little uneasy because my co-presenter is unable to attend and I don’t yet know who I will be working with. That’s right, I did say that it starts tomorrow. I always like some time to arrange things with the other person before this event begins.
I have another issue. I don’t think I have enough clothes with me to make it five more days. I’ve already been gone for five days, to a wonderful event in Lake Tahoe (More about that in another post.) and I’ve kind of depleted my store of good clothes. I went shopping at Macy’s today and bought a dress and sweater, good for the first days of school as well. They were having this wierd sale, in which they took off $10 for every $50 I spent. Great, I thought. The only catch is that I can’t pick the items up until Wednesday, when the sale officially begins. I went for it. I can make it until Wednesday. Definitely.
My biggest issue is that I’m bone tired and I’m about to begin a very high energy, high pressure week of work. I went out tonight and had a fresh Chinese chicken salad at the Asian diner, small stuff compared to all I’ve been eating in Tahoe for the past week. I feel like a stuffed turkey, ready to truss and roast. Unfortunately, I kind of look like one too. (Possibly more about that in another post, if I can bring myself to talk about it.)
And on that note I guess I’ll go upstairs and do some laundry in the bathtub. Enjoy your day.
UPDATE: It’s over and I’m home. I worked with an awesome guy who was super dynamic as a presenter. I sort of felt like I ran along behind him, which wasn’t exactly a great feeling, but is actually inconsequential. We received good evaluations and it’s done. Now I have a week off before I go do it again in San Diego. This time I’ll be more prepared and less tired going into it than I was in Sac. Bring it on!
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