RAIN, RAIN, GOING AWAY

I talked with my sil in Oregon and read blogs this weekend and everyone has mentioned rain. Well, guess what? It rained here in Los Angeles on May 22! The students had to eat lunch in the CC and play in the gym, which is the rainy day schedule. When I saw it was raining, I put my basil starts out in the courtyard to catch some water so I wouldn't have to water them in the house.

But now, the sun is out and it's beautiful. I love LA after a rain.

As usual, we had a crazy weekend. Deb and Jeff drove down on Saturday and spent the night here. We all met up at our favorite little hole in the wall burrito place La Carreta at Vernon and Compton Aves. Jamie and Laura, two former WIers who taught 3rd and 1st, respectively, at Watts Christian School with me were both in town and they wanted to eat at La Carreta. Mike and Mia came, too. After dinner, we all went back to our place and ate ice cream. John and I looked at Laura's photos of Honduras, where she is currently living and teaching. It was great to see my two good friends who kept me sane during that stressful year at WCS.

Yesterday we had our morning coffee at Starbuck's where the barrista sees me walk in the door and has my drink ready for me before I get to the counter (she's a great barrista!), went to church, then had vegetarian Indian food with Jeff, Dan and Ben. This restaurant is one of Jeff's favorites so he wanted to visit while he was down this weekend. We stopped by Walmart to pick up some Simply Soft yarn (yeah, I know, cheap yarn, but it washes well and doesn't pill and is great for baby sweaters). Then, we went home and gathered up Mia and took her back to school and drove to Whittier to see an old friend who was speaking about the earthquake disaster in Pakistan. Charlie was born in Pakistan, spent twenty years in Venezuela, and is the executive director of TEAM now. TEAM is heading up most of the private aid in Northern Pakistan. If you're interested in knowing more, check out www.teamworld.org and click on Pakistan relief down at the bottom of the page. It was good to see several old friends from TEAM years. On an aside, our nephew Thomas is working in the IT dept at TEAM and when the various people found out he is our nephew, they couldn't stop praising his ability to patiently help them with their computer problems. It made us proud--even though we didn't have much to do with his upbringing, John and our kids share some of the same genes.

My goal for this evening is to lay out and block the swatches I've knitted. While I was waiting for Dan on Wednesday morning*, I worked on a swatch with an elongated stitch. I'm knitting the Seafoam pattern from Vogue Knitting (141) and I'm hoping to finish that as well. If there is time tomorrow between teaching my classes, meeting with the principal and going to the teachers meeting, I'll start on the Woven Stitch in Two Colors pattern that I am using for the slip-stitch swatch. All the knitting is the easy part of the Level 3 certification. The pattern writing and charting and the questions to answer are harder and I always put off doing them. At least this time, I'm keeping better records.

I spent some time this afternoon planning the next four months. There are only a little more than 18 weeks until Mia and Tim's wedding!

*The eye dr said yup your eyes are bad, but you are correctable to 20/20, so the paperwork has been forwarded to the appropriate person for a vision waiver, and so, hopefully, to the chaplain candidate board...