Tour de Cure!!!

Michael and I are riding in the Tour de Cure again! Woo-hoo!

We're quite excited as always to be helping to raise money for the American Diabetes Association. This disease adversely affects the lives of millions of people every year, including members of our own family. We hope that our efforts make an important contribution to finding a cure.

Please support me by going to my Tour de Cure page and making a donation. Every contribution, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated.

I'm also looking forward to raising more money than Michael for the third year in a row!

Sharing Isn't Always Caring

I have long wondered what prompts the teenagers in my life to share everything. You know, food, drinks, utensils, clothing, makeup, chap stick, other icky stuff that I wish I didn't know about...

Then I look around at moms of young children who do nothing but "share" with their kids.

At some point very early on, I think we need to teach our children that sharing personal items is not OK. Sometime after nursing but before preschool. If kids are taught that it's OK to share drinks and food and chap stick with mommy, how will they know it's bad to share the juice box with Johnny at school?

I don't think kids differentiate between family and outsiders until a very mature age. When I object to my teenage students sharing, they say things like "it's OK... we share everything at my house." Then they are surprised when they catch everything from colds to cold sores from their friends.

Teach them early. Some things are just personal.

Happy Valentine's Day

I was busy this morning doing The World's Longest Sudoku Puzzle, so I was a little late getting to school this morning. I was met at the door by an early-bird student, who demanded to know what I "got" for Valentine's Day.

I told her that I wouldn't get anything until this evening. Now I'm not sure what I will tell her.



Michael sent me a case of Bouteille Call, a syrah port from Bonny Doon. When I went to pick up the box (since UPS never delivers when I'm home) I was shocked by its size. I must have asked the poor UPS guy three times if he was sure it was my box, since we usually get wines in twos. When opened, the wine was beautifully individually wrapped in red tissue paper. It's sort of like flowers. They both come in dozens.

The wine isn't dreadful swill, even if it isn't the perfect port. Expect dessert wine if we come to your house. I bought Michael port glasses to go with it, along with a pair of lovely martini glasses he's been admiring.

The dilemma? What to tell my students I got for V-Day... neither the wine nor its name is terribly appropriate classroom conversation. :)

Blog Intervention

Tate staged a blog intervention for me on Saturday. Funny, I thought we had driven all the way to Napa to see our friends. However, I suppose he has inspired me to update.

Micheal and I did go to SF this weekend. I forgot the camera, so no pics this time. On Napa, we saw the Lindens and did a little bit of wine tasting. On Sunday, we went bed shopping. We looked at this captain's bed, which we had considered ordering online. I'm glad we didn't, because it was surprisingly flimsy. We saw other beds, but none had the necessary requirements. It is surprisingly complicated to buy a bed for a TempurPedic mattress that doesn't invalidate the warranty.

On Sunday night, we had dinner with the Rosens at Bob's Steak & Chop House. The steak was great, but I found it a little disturbing that all of our plates looked identical, even though we had ordered different steaks. They all had steak, a carrot, and our potato choice. Not very imaginative. Our meals pretty much looked like the ones on their website.

On Monday, we met the Lindens again for breakfast at Home Plate. The scones are very yummy. We also wandered around the Ferry Terminal, which is now a whole bunch of upscale stores. The cheese store is amazing.

I miss cheese, but I've lost 14 lbs so far. That's almost worth the cheese deprivation.