We have a brand new beautiful building which has to be more than twice the size of our old building. The building is free of mold, asbestos, and bad air quality rooms. The best part is my office can actually hold more than three people. It’s funny to talk to the kids about what they think about the new building. Most kids think it is cool, but the common reply from an 8th grader is “it’s huge” said with a big sigh. I can’t decide if they like the hugeness or not. I think we have toppled the typical “rulers of the school” mentality with this new building. The 8th graders look more panic stricken than our 5th or 6th graders. 

Today, as I was thinking about my poor confused 8th graders, I thought back to my time as a junior high camp counselor and how one year we didn’t do something the kids had come to think of as tradition (even though it wasn’t really a tradition). The camp kids almost rebelled because we weren’t doing that activity - even though the new activity was way better. My current students are acting the same - wishing for the old rooms so they can be on top and confidently run through the building. 

It also seems our teachers are almost wishing for the old. The teachers have started to complain that they don’t feel homey in the new place and they don’t know where to congregate in the mornings. We do need art on the walls and we do need some major kinks worked out, but hopefully we will be able to appreciate the new $32 million dollar building soon.

You can’t even see that we have a wooden planter with flowers underneath the flop over of the tomatoes. The edge of the tomatoes is growing all the way out to the curb.  I can’t wait to eat these tomatoes.

The post is titled after my favorite state to drive through. Ohio has it down. Yes, you pay for tolls, but they spend their money wisely on the travel plaza stops. If the Panera, Starbucks, Pizza hut, Burger King did not statisfy me, I could wait until the next stop and get what I wanted there. It was great. Sometimes, I daydream about visiting places that require me to drive through Ohio. That’s a good vacation. 

As for states I like to stop in, I’m still partial to Montana. 

I can’t help but wonder what they do. They seem to literally come from no where and don’t make it very far during the night…so my theory is they come out of somewhere, go across the driveway and return. But what are they searching for? 

Panther loves to snuggle and burrow into your neck after she wakes up from a nap. It’s one of my favorite things about her recently.

But there have been some major flops with the coverage on the gas prices. 

A few weeks ago, just about when Connecticut went over the $4.00 mark, a reporter did some interviews at a gas station in DC. Five or six people were interviewed and every single one of them was lamenting that they were officially paying more at the pump than they ever had before. Really?! That’s what I call front page (speaker?) news…high prices at the pump.

And yet, today as I filled up the car and the price went over $40.00, I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, that’s the first time I have ever paid that much for a single tank of gas with this car…”

I felt like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.