pictures, please?

This blog is in sore need of some pictures to break up some of the monotony, but I haven't taken many since our trip to Tampa nearly a month ago.  I have a few of the snow yesterday, but they are not among my better pictures.

Yesterday, 49/50 states had snow.  Hawaii was the lone hold-out.  Here, it had rained all night.  I was on my way yesterday morning to 6:30 Mass.  It was raining and dark, but in the headlights, I could see what looked like the occassional weird raindrop/snowflake.  By the time I got to church, I could see that it was, in fact, snowflakes, and there were quite a few of them.  The temperature was around 36, which made this all the more unusual.  Probably goes back to that whole "the Saints won the Super Bowl, so now hell is freezing over" thing.  It snowed until about 9:00 a.m.  The kids were not impressed that school was not cancelled.  I, for my part, have seen more snow in the past two years, than I've seen in the previous 43.  Further proof of global warming, I guess. 

A few of my pictures: 

week in review

It has been a week.

There was the amazing high of the Saints winning the Super Bowl.  I remember when they had their first winning season (after 20 some years as a franchise). That was the year of the "strike" teams.  I remember the fans in the Super Dome chanting "Stay on strike!" because the Replacements were winning!  I remember once - about 20 years ago - being in New Orleans in the French Quarter on a game day - the reason escapes me.  Under the windshield wiper of a car parked on the side of the street were a pair of Saints tickets with a sign that said "Take Me."  No one had.   I remember when they finally made it to a play-off game.  And then when they won a play-off game!  I remember 2005 when all of their home games were played on the road.  I remember the emotion of their real home game after Katrina.  And I watched the Super Bowl this year and watched them win!  They did NOT manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - something they have raised to an art form over the years.  We set off fireworks in the driveway.  On Monday, "Who Dat?" sufficed for a greeting.

On Tuesday, a parade had been planned for the Saints - win or lose.  New Orleans knows a thing or two about parades.  But I don't think they anticipated that this would possibly be the biggest parade the city had ever seen.  Close to a million people - it was said - celebrated Lombardi Gras/Dat Tuesday.  I would have liked to have seen it myself, but there was work....

The low of the week was my sixth grade girl students.  In the past 2 weeks, three of the four have been in a fight.  Seperate fights.  Teachers who have tried to stop the fights have been injured.  It is crazy.  One morning, I left one parent meeting in the office to see one of my students sitting cuffed and shackled.  She didn't want to stop fighting.  And like night follows day, paperwork follows fights -especially "big" ones like this. And so, paperwork must be completed with i's dotted and t's crossed, and more instructional time will be lost when we meet to decide whether this behavior was "related" and where the best "setting" for her is.  Why can't they just do what they are supposed to do??

Today there was snow.  But snow merits its own post!!

snow!

There was a bit of snow here on Friday night. And just the THREAT of snow was enough to cancel all evening plans. The kids had fun in the slush and snow. The fact that we avoided a trip to the ER with all the slipping and sliding and swinging of golf clubs and general frenzied excitement is something of a miracle.

A few pictures from the evening:

And then there's the whole global warming thing...when we've gotten snow 2 years in a row in early December (technically still fall) in south Louisiana...