A REAL VACATION! Part 6: Fun Stuff

Only one more post about our vacation, and then I'll return to normal life. I promise. We have this weird knack for finding the strange, especially while on vacation. (For more strange finds, refer to my previous vacation posts.)

This is a picture of Canada. (I took the picture because I like Canada.)




The estate where our cottage was located has a small guardhouse at the end of driveway. Inside the guardhouse is this weird, giant nutcracker statue.




On our last day, as we were leaving the island, we passed this guy. He had decorated his car for the 4th of July parade later that day.




In the forest on the estate where we stayed, we ran into ferns the size of Buicks. I made Mr. Chandler stand next to one of them so that you could see how large it was.






This is the ferry that was docked at the terminal as our ferry approached Anacortes. Notice the puffs of smoke coming out of the ferry? Yeah, that's because OUR boat was supposed to be docking there at that time and the ferry in the picture had to hustle out of the way for us!




On the ferry ride, this huge yacht, owned by someone richer than me (obviously), sailed in front of our ferry. This doesn't seem particularly safe to me, but then, yacht owners probably have their own set of rules. (Maritime Rule #24: The captain with the highest gross personal income has the right of way.)




Several years ago, when we vacationed on Orcas Island, we spotted this field of port-a-potties from the highway as we were traveling home. Sadly, we did not get a picture at that time (partly because we didn't own a camera -- but only partly). This time, we got the picture! In fact, we were engaged in an intense conversation about something serious when we spotted them, and I derailed the discussion completely by shouting, "Port-a-potties! Port-a-potties!!!" (Horribly geeky, I know... but how often do you see something like this?)




This is a barn we passed several times on our way to and from the island, and it is notable because it sparked a discussion about barn fractions. In fact, after taking this picture of the half-barn, we saw three quarters of a barn down the road. (No picture, though.)




Finally, this last one is quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. Midway between the northern harbor and the ferry terminal to the south, the road that connects the two ends of Anacortes travels past a shipyard full of old boats and partial boats. The boundaries of the shipyard were marked out with logs and docks and one very large old cargo ship. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that the cargo ship was being used as a gigantic planter with trees and shrubs growing out of it. It's seriously the most amazing planter I've ever seen. I'm afraid it's too big for my yard...

A REAL VACATION! Part 5: International Drug Lords

Situated as it was on the northern coastline of Samish Island, our cottage and its grounds looked out over Samish Bay, a quiet part of Puget Sound where very little happens. We discovered on our first night there that a large cargo ship of some kind was anchored out in the bay. It seemed odd to us at that point, but it was to become stranger still as the weekend went on. Why would a huge boat like that be sitting around in a little bay that doesn't go anywhere, doesn't connect to any port or industrial area of the Sound?

You should know that this story is far more interesting if you imagine the craziest explanation possible. (Most things in life are like that.) We chose to believe that the large cargo ship was waiting for some sort of huge drug deal.

Here is the boat on our first day. Notice how suspicious it looks? (Try harder to see the suspicious nature of the boat. Seriously, try harder.)




When we returned to our cottage on the second day, a sailboat had anchored very close to the bank by our cottage. The cargo ship was still there. It seems obvious that the suspicious lingering of the ship had attracted the attention of others besides us. The sailboat had to belong to undercover DEA agents staking out the ship.



Why else would a sailboat stay all night watching the ship?




On the third day, the ship had rotated enough for us to get an excellent picture with further details.




On the fourth day, the ship had rotated again.




By that evening, the sailboat had been joined by a fishing boat and a small speedboat.






Then something happened! A small speedboat came out to visit the other small boats. Then the speedboat went out to the ship, sped around it, and motored back around the corner of the island and out of sight.




Later I did see pictures in a coffee table book showing several of the same cargo ships waiting in various neighboring coves and bays. As it turns out, they wait for up to a week for the nearby oil refinery to be reading for loading or unloading their products. Although I do think that our story about the DEA staking out the drug ship is far more exciting.

A REAL VACATION! Part 4: His and Hers

Again, let me just say that I am not a serious photographer. (Refer to my previous post "A Real Vacation Part 2" for more examples.) Here are more "his and hers" examples of the photographic styles of Mr. Chandler and myself.

We went to San Juan Island and attempted to get out of the town of Friday Harbor immediately because it was packed with tourists (blech). As we drove the perimeter of the island, we stopped in a couple notable places. One of them was a state park known for its orca-spotting opportunities. We didn't see any whales, but we did see seals.

Here are his pictures of the seals sunning themselves on a rock.






Here's my picture of a log that a bunch of people freaked out about because they thought it was a sea lion (and yes, I took the picture because I knew it was just a log).




We also stopped at the American Camp, which is another beautiful state park with a windswept coastal view.

Here are some of his panoramic pictures of the beach.








And what did I take a picture of? Strangers, of course! These are some bicycle guys that wanted their picture taken in front of the beach. (I took a picture of them on their camera AND on mine.)




On another day during our vacation, we drove the length of Whidbey Island and then crossed the bridge between Whidbey and Anacortes. The bridge is at a point called Deception Pass, and once again our pictures are very telling.

Here's his picture of the pass with the shadow of the bridge. (He really wanted me to point out that shadow.)




Here's my picture of the weird color of the water.




Here's his picture of the lovely vista from the bridge.




Here's my picture of the narrow little sidewalk that we had to walk on to get out to the middle of the bridge to take his picture (including almost getting smashed by a semi-truck, although I didn't manage to get a picture of THAT as I was trying to stay alive).




Between us, we seem to have covered both the scenic and the comic quite nicely.

A REAL VACATION! Part 3: Vacation Menagerie

Here is the attendance roster for all of the creatures we saw while on vacation in the San Juan Islands last weekend:

- one coyote
- a bald eagle couple (male and female -- we think they were nesting in one of the towering fir trees above our bench)
- several hawks (mostly red-tailed)
- nesting cormorants who don't seem bothered at all by the noise at the ferry terminal (Yes, I had to look them up to find out what they were called. I'm not an ornithologist.)
Here's one gathering materials for a nest.




Here are several in their nests next to the ferry dock.




- a great blue heron in the wetlands (what a wingspan!)
- lots of fearless robins who appeared to be stalking us at dusk (creepy stalker robins)
Here's a ninja robin inching closer to us under cover of darkness.




- lots of cows
- some really shaggy steer in a forest
- lots of horses
- three donkeys
- two different alpaca farms
- two llamas
- a rabbit
- five and a half deer, including a fawn (the half)
- one frog who spent the better part of a day relaxing on our front porch
Here he is being neighborly.




- one camel at a farm on the road to Friday Harbor
(No joke -- we would have taken a picture, but there were several children who had stopped to visit the camel, and, frankly, one of the reasons I needed a vacation was that I spend my entire year surrounded by them -- children, not camels.)

I'll leave you with this thought: San Juan Island is accessible only by boat, ferry or plane. Now try to picture a camel traveling on the ferry...

A REAL VACATION! Part 2: Pictures with Personality

In my last post, I blogged about the lovely vacation cottage I'm staying in for a few days, and I posted pictures -- a rare occurrence for me. They were even taken with an actual camera! That's right, blog peeps: For the first time since middle school, I actually own a camera. Well, Mr. Chandler and I own it. And, as he is from a camera-psycho (photographically psychotic?) family, he tends to hog it. In fact, he took all the pictures I posted last time. You can tell because they're pretty and normal. He took this charming picture of the Mukilteo lighthouse from the outside deck of the ferry after we left the dock. (I am in love with this picture.)




He also took this very serious "artistic" picture of a flower. (He's a seriously serious photographer, people. Please take him seriously.) Just kidding. This one is really pretty as well.




And this lovely and carefully composed photo of the bench at the end of the garden, from which you can see out into Samish Bay, is also Mr. Chandler's.




Mostly I try to convince Mr. Chandler to take pictures of random things since he's usually the one holding the camera. You probably noticed that he likes to mix in pretty, nature-and-scenery stuff too, but I'm slowly turning him to the dark side. I'm definitely not your average go-on-vacation-and-post-a-bunch-of-pretty-pictures blogger. My pictures (and his pictures taken under my influence) tend to be of incredibly random things -- like this sign, which made me laugh as we were waiting in line for the Mukilteo ferry. It reminds me of 5-year-old day campers.




Mr. Chandler took this one for me. I have no idea what sort of a store it is. (Okay, I know it's probably either an antique store or a second-hand store of some kind. But isn't the speculation part of the fun? What if it really is a store full of stuff that the owners pulled out of dumpsters? Or maybe they're selling top-of-the-line odor-reducing dumpsters. I'm not sure how you would get them out the front door, but it's an interesting thought.)




The Lucky Dumpster is in Edison, Washington, which consists of a school, a couple of cafes, two bakeries, a couple of antique stores, the dumpster store, and this really special liquor store, which appears to be in someone's garage.




I DID manage to take a scenic picture of Mount Baker from the country road leading to Samish Island. It is my greatest photographic achievement to date.



(No, seriously. I actually took that picture. This one was all me.)

A REAL VACATION! Part 1

It's pretty unusual for me to get an actual vacation. I know teachers seem to have the coolest schedules ever -- random holidays off, 2 weeks for winter break, 1 week for spring break, 2 months for summer break... But it's quite rare for me to really get to go anywhere or have time when my schedule is clear. School might be over, but the business of the district goes on (and on and on and on). And Mr. Chandler and I foolishly sign our summers away to run day camps for children, which keeps us Portland-locked the entire time. As school was getting out this year, I kept telling people, "Feel free to call me. I'm the only one who's not going anywhere. I have no life. I'm here all summer..." (*depressed sigh*)

HA HA! I was wrong! We had a rare and glorious 4-day weekend because of the timing of July 4th this year, so we rented ourselves a little cottage on Samish Island in the San Juans of Washington. It's cheap, gorgeous, deserted, and within 30 minutes of several small and medium towns with all the necessary amenities (like espresso). Our cottage is on a 7-acre estate owned by some people with a LOT of gardening time on their hands. They have created a beautiful English estate-style garden/yard/expanse of pretty green right on the edge of the island. We can see the water from our cottage window, and if we walk to the edge of the garden, we can look out Samish Bay.

Here are the peaceful grounds and water view.




This is our little cottage.




This is the main house and part of the gardens.

A Silver Lining

I know this is supposed to be a molehill, but it's a huge, glorious mountain to me.

The Oregon Department of Education has funding issues. So they have cancelled the 7th grade writing test for next year because it's too expensive to process the tests and pay scorers. (Could it be? There's actually a bright side to the recession!) That's right, no test! For the first time in 8 long years, my students and I will not be slaves to the anxiety produced by the highest of high stakes testing. And while we will still administer writing tests to the students -- probably produced and monitored by my ever-conscientious school district -- it will be at a far more appropriate time in the school year, most likely toward the end of the year. This means I can pace my writing instruction in a way that will be SO much easier for my students to understand and master.

I cannot adequately express how happy this makes me. It's like a "Happy Summer" present just for me! (It's okay, you don't have to care. Just be happy for me.)

Shifting Gears Without a Clutch

As hard as it is to believe, the school year is well and truly over, and summer has officially begun. Today was our first day of summer camp, and it really crept up on me! June swept through like a tornado, taking with it everything you see listed below. If you read the list aloud as quickly as you can, you might understand how crazy it's been in my classroom/house/life/calendar.


A brief glimpse of my June:

lots of meetings
5th grade parent night
8th grade recognition
a couple of intense negotiations sessions with the school district
several meetings
multiple yearbooks (and because I'm a language arts teacher, these had to be signed with something more creative than H.A.G.S!)
a delightful retirement party
an anxiously-awaited 8th grade dance
the end of a novel
even more meetings
the massacre of about 40 Pop Tarts (long story, inside joke, and be sure to check the ceiling)
a scary essay test
a craft order for several hundred dollars
a t-shirt order for even more hundreds of dollars
some meetings with our summer boss
some other meetings
a LOT of complicated grades
lots of laundry
one or two last-minute meetings


This morning I woke up on time, along with my trusty alarm clock, and got myself ready for our first day of day camp. We had 23 campers today, and they were really really small. I've spent the last two years with the same group of middle school students, so I've grown accustomed to them as 13-year-olds amid adolescent growth spurts. Thus, the tiny 4-year-olds with tiny voices that showed up today were kind of a shock, albeit a pleasant one. When I arrived home this afternoon, my brain was waffling back and forth between thinking summer camp had already been going for a few weeks and trying to figure out why I didn't have to be at school today. I'll get used to summer within a week or so, I'm sure, but for now... some mental double clutching might be in order.

Because I'm Not Enough of a Freak Already?

My students have urged me to post a blog describing my random and startling fall in class recently... But I don't feel like embarrassing myself further. It is enough to say that when one wears sandals with moderate heels, one should stand still and not attempt to stand on one's toes by balancing on the heels of said sandals. Also, when one takes an unexpected tumble in front of a crowd, a weird, high-pitched "whoop!" is NOT the appropriate sound effect. (I have no idea what the appropriate sound effect in that situation is... obviously.)

My Most Sincere Apologies to Ms. Julie Andrews

For several years now, I've referred to some of the more significant movies starring Julie Andrews as though the characters in the films are the same person. For example, whenever The Princess Diaries comes up in conversation, I point out that Maria from the Sound of Music grew up to be the Queen of Genovia (since both characters are played by Julie Andrews). Mary Poppins works the same way. As new seventh graders, my students are usually confused enough by this to give me that wonderfully amusing look that tells me they're not entirely sure I'm joking. (Is she nuts? Why do they let weirdos like this in the classroom?) This passes quickly, however, and within a few short months, I have revealed myself to be merely a quirky nerd with a bizarre sense of humor. At that point, my Queen of Genovia jokes really aren't amusing to anyone but me, so I abandon them. At some point last year, I found myself shifting into slightly more subtle form of humor at Julie Andrews' expense. When any of her characters or films are mentioned, I comment, "She's a witch." This is far more interesting to my students, and they ask me to explain myself AND listen raptly to my reasoning (instead of the typical rolling of the eyes at my corny jokes). As I've been urged repeatedly by students, friends, and spouse to blog my beliefs about Ms. Andrews' film characters, I will take the opportunity to do so now.

My theory is simple: Mary Poppins is a witch. Anyone who has seen the movie will have to agree that there are copious amounts of wizardry and witchcraft used throughout the movie. The room that cleans itself up? The carpet bag with more storage capacity than a customs warehouse? The laughing fits that lift people to the ceiling? Come on, people! This isn't Willy Wonka's factory, and there is no carbonated burping soda. Face the truth, Disney lovers: She's a witch with the powers of dark magic at her disposal. How else can you explain her flying in via umbrella? Also, I believe that the crazy neighbor who thinks he's still on a ship recognizes the incoming and outgoing nannies as a coven of witches and is merely trying to shoot them out of the sky with his cannon. And we must not ignore the most most damning evidence of all: who but a witch could force children to jump into a sidewalk and spend an afternoon among cartoon people and penguins?

I have no idea how Fraulein Maria fits into this, except to express confusion and suspicion about two small elements in the film -- the puppets and the curtain clothes. But rest assured, the Queen of Genovia has wizardry connections. She must have; there's no other explanation for the worldwide recognition of her monarchy in an imaginary country.

So there you have it -- my suspicious theory regarding a beloved Disney nanny. Next time, perhaps I'll expound on the evils of OnStar...