Fish!

On Thursday last week, I led my AP Biology class on a trip to Shedd Aquarium for the day.  And by lead, I mean I played all day with Rachel and Andrew while one of my students acted as docent for the class.  It was a pretty sweet deal....this student is actual a volunteer at the aquarium, and bugged me all year to plan a trip.  As it turned out, it was the easiest trip ever to plan and execute, because he did all the heavy lifting!

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Andrew loved looking at all the fish tanks - he would point and make random sounds, as Rachel tried to teach him the sign and the word for "fish."  Meanwhile, I would point out the things in the water that were not actually fish - whales, dolphins, jellyfish, etc.  He might as well learn correctly from the beginning, right?

 

In one area, Andrew was able to splash in a little pool filled with barnacle look-alikes.  Thankfully he was not too soaked from that - because when we first arrived he got a little overexcited and peed through his clothes.  So there were no backups if he got wet again!

 He really liked the Caribbean reef tank!  Plus they played music there!

When the exploring was complete, Rachel took the sleepy boy home on a beautiful late-winter afternoon in Chicago.  The second he got snuggly in the carrier, he was out cold most of the way on the el.

In all, a very successful field trip.  If I did not have to beg and plead with other teachers to watch my classes when I was gone, I would plan more trips so I can hang out in Chicago with the family!


Basement update!

Spring is in the air.  Daylight savings is back, and the weather was wonderful today.  All the neighbors were outside this afternoon, so it seems that the winter hibernation is officially over.  I am thinking ahead towards spring break, but honestly, I also have summer in my sights.  While there is no project as large and obtrusive as the kitchen to look forward to, we have been making master plans for what we want to do on the house.  We got a nice refund check from our taxes, so that will definitely be invested back into the local economy when it comes time for building supplies...

Meanwhile, my basement project saw some encouraging progress this weekend.  Because the brick wall was in bad shape, we had to do some repair work before I could install the pegboard.  That corner of the basement saw some damage last spring, because the drainage system from the gutter on the exterior wall was blocked and saturating the foundation.  The water has since been diverted, but repairs were needed.

On Friday, we chiseled and brushed the loose mortar and brick from the wall.  I then added new mortar to fill in various gaps between the brick.  Nothing big, but big enough for some bugs - we found some remains...

Then on Saturday we painted with some heavy-duty waterproof masonry paint.

Today we added a second coat of paint.  Looking sufficiently waterproofed, we hung the pegboard and the structure of the workshop is mostly complete. 

I ordered some fancy pegboard hooks last week, so to get Rachel excited I added a few tools to show what it will be like once all is organized.

With most of the dirty work done, I now need to clean and organize the rest of the tools.  With everything put away, the basement will go a long way towards looking like a respectable storage area.

-alan