No Slurpee for You!

Alas and alack, tomorrow 7-11 is celebrating its "birthday" (get it, tomorrow is July 11, 7/11) by giving away free Slurpees, which are, FYI, THE official beverages of summer according to me. White sangria comes second.

So why is their sorrow in Whoville when such a blessed day is almost upon us?

Because! According to the 7-11 Store Locator map, there are no 7-11s within a gazillion miles of here.

So, I guess while I am sulking tomorrow, I can console myself with Slurpeetainment. Ole.

Just When I could Eat Ice Cream Again, Cloned Proteins from an Eel Like Fish Ruins My Day

So recently I have finally given in and instead of avoiding dairy, have started using Lactaid. Duh. This means I have been able to enjoy all manner of products, including the Chai at Caffe Amadeus (don't be fooled by the Soy Chai- their Chai mix has dried milk in it), parmesan cheese sprinkled on my pasta, and Double Churned ice cream. I don't really like ice cream since I ate way too much of it in high school when I worked at an ice cream shop, but Double Churned, as well as other nonfat varities, have a less creamy feel, which I like.

Until this weekend when, while at a BBQ, Z informed me that Double Churned contains eel protein. Totally grossed out, I grabbed my phone and Googled to find out if this were true. As this NY Times articles explains, Unilever has found that a protein from an "eel like" fish helps create that same creamy feeling as regular old butterfat, and by genetically modifying brewer's yeast, they were able to create that same protein. Which is now in the quart of ice cream I've been eating for the past month. Thanks America for not insisting foods with genetically modified ingredients be labeled as such!

NY Times article, brought to you by yet another Firefox 3 add on

I just received this week's NCTE Inbox, which is always full of great links to news items, NCTE articles, lesson ideas, and other resources. In it was a link to this article from The Paper "Technology Reshapes America's Classrooms."

The article describes a public school that relies almost exclusively on computers/internet in some ways my HS does- students can turn in papers digitally via a drop box- but in some ways that could potentially be an asset- particularly computer adapted lessons that essentially differentiate learning.

As a whole, the article skims way too much on the important details, like how much time do students spend online vs. interacting with the teacher and their classmates, and then goes off into a tangent about the outsourcing of tutoring to India, but it does at least raise some provactive questions.

The other piece to this blog post is I am using a Firefox add on I just installed called ScribeFire. I can now post to any of my blogs directly from my browser, rather than having to actually go to te blog, log in, select new post, publish, etc. It is neato and I highly recommend trying it out!

Session II, Day 2

From "My Neighbor, Totoro"

One of my favorite movies...being in Japantown reminded me I haven't seen it in years.

A "Staycation" in SF

Yesterday morning, Z and I were listening to NPR, and they used the word "staycation" several times in a few minutes.

Even though I was technically on a real vacation, having flown home for the weekend from Pittsburgh (or is Indiana, PA my vacation?), I thought a bit about the staycation idea since we ended up going to both Japantown (via the Fillmore Jazz Festival) and Chinatown, and ate at one of my favorite Thai restaurants for dinner.

In Japantown, we stopped into Paper-Tree, where I found a great notebook with a whale on it that says, "What lovely friends. They will bring happy happy day for you," as well as a pink elephant tape dispenser that comes with Japanese tape and another notebook with a kitten wearing photoshopped detective hat. That notebook says, "Please enjoy studying with this notebook. The story of pleansat animals."

Later on, we went to Chinatown, near Z's office, to Far East Flea Market get a bamboo steamer basket so I can cook vegetables in some other way than stir fry or microwave-in-a-bag. Dodging our way through tourists dressed in matching San Francisco sweaters and actual Chinatown locals out doing their shopping (those ubiquitous pink plastic bags!), we did feel like we had entered another country because of the price index. At FEFM, we also were very disturbed by a giant box full of "Mr. Fume" at the entry door. Lucky for us all, I couldn't find any images online.

I always love being a tourist in my own town and yeserday was no exception. Yay San Francisco!

QOTD

"Demonstrate your sense of moral obligation." From a sign on the electric scooter store around the corner from Z's house.