Michigan, For the First Time

This weekend Trevor visited Michigan for the first time in his entire life. It was monumental.

Well, maybe not monumental, but it sure was a lot of fun.

Greg and Paula got a lake house recently in Michigan and T. and I went up (and over) to spend the weekend with them, Bosco, and the elder Borks. It was a quick drive for a day and a half of gorgeous sun-filled Michigan.

On Saturday the seven of us took a tour to some of the local wineries. Bo was our designated driver since he's more of a whiskey man.

A picture with a cardboard monk

The gorgeous family

Vineyards

But we didn't only tour wineries. We had to get some substance in our bellies, so we went to the Chocolate Garden and had a tasting before buying some real food. Like cayanne pepper and dark chocolate truffles, and drinking chocolate mixes. You know: real food.

Dad Bork, using a refined writing instrument to fill out his chocolate tasting ticket

T., checking out the Michigan he's been missing all these years

After tooling around all afternoon, we all got a little sleepy--some of us more than others.

So we headed back to the lake house to rest up before dinner.

A panoramic shot off the back deck (with T.'s new iPhone!)

Down to the beach

Hi!

And then Greg and Trevor got the grill going for dinner (not chocolate truffles, but it was still good).

T. on the back deck

Greg at the grill

We had a little time to play while dinner was cooking, and Bo showed off his excellent conversation skills for the camera.

He may not say a lot of English words yet (although no, yes, boat, mama, no, sit here, no, help me, watermelon, and no are all in his wheelhouse), but he sure has style!

After dinner we played a lively round of Trivial Pursuit and although the men kind of won by a little bit (or maybe by twice as many pie pieces, but whatever), the ladies were amazing and would have won if it hadn't been so late. That's right. We lost because we were tired.

The girls were pretty tired, too, although they pretended for a while.

We're UP!

And, we're down

And we all slept like exhausted chihuahuas until this morning when Greg woke us up with a delicious egg breakfast.

The weekend was tons of fun and we're looking forward to making many more visits to the lake house over the years (especially to make use of Greg & Paula's new boat and wave runner).

And then we drove home and, after unpacking I promptly fell into a nap. For three hours. And if you think I won't be able to sleep tonight, you'd be sorely mistaken. Sorely.

(this is a picture from last week during T.'s Columbia College Reunion--another post on that will be coming soon)

Goodnight.

VWrite!

During our last post I mentioned that I was going to be a part of a mentoring program through Open Books, a non-profit literacy center here in Chicago. Well, on August 29, I drove down to south side Gage Park High School for a meet-and-greet with the junior class that our group is mentoring. And I got to meet my mentee, a very cool girl named Angelica. There were tons of pictures from that night, so check them out on the Open Books Flickr page.

Angelica (who, I am thrilled to report, is excited about our blog and will be writing an Archipelago guest blogger very soon) is pretty snap-tastic. Here are some of the things I learned about her:

• She's lived in Puerto Rico and Florida as well as in Chicago
• She's in the drama club and might want to study theater in college
• She loves to read manga and watch anime
• She has made many a hair-dying experiment
• Her family owns a restaurant in Humboldt Park

There's so much more, but I'm going to wait for her to talk about herself for herself.

Because of the Chicago Teachers Union strike, CPS has been out of school, so that means that Angelica and her classmates have been a bit at loose ends. She's been hanging out with her friends a lot, but I invited her to come to my school with me last Friday to give her something fun to do (and by something "fun" I mean road tripping out to McHenry County and hanging out in my English class. She was overwhelmed with fun. Seriously. Flabbergasted by Fun.)

Well, we did have a terrific time. The trip out there was great. We ate donuts and listened to Angelica's iPod, which is full of hip young-people-music that she had to constantly explain to me (very patiently, I may add). I now have a very long playlist to investigate. She was, no surprise, also great in my class. She talked to some of my students about the assignment they were turning in, and she got to ask them what they thought of the school. She listened and watched the students do their group MLA documentation presentations (and if that's not raw excitement, I don't know what is), and then while they took a quiz she started to read the book our class is reading, Columbine by Dave Cullen. In fact, she got through more than fifty pages of it in about an hour. She is obviously a bookworm, which is just one of the reasons I like her so much.

After my class was over I took her on a campus tour, but I completely forgot to take any pictures, which really stinks because we went to the green house, the auto lab, the book store, the library, and about ten more places that would have been great photo-ops. So, close your eyes and picture her there.

I did remember, though, to snap a picture of her after we ate some lunch in downtown Crystal Lake. I think she was kind of in awe of what was considered a "down town." And I mean that she thought it was quaint and adorable and she could fit it in her pocket.

Angelica in front of the clock in downtown CL

This week, the Gage Park kids are still out of school (though here's hoping to classes resuming mid-week!), and I'm hoping to talk or e-mail with Angelica soon to make more plans. We've got to schedule a visit to Columbia College in the city and we've got to talk about the book we're reading together, City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. In fact, if we have time this semester, we're going to read all three of the books from Clare's Mortal Instruments series.

But for now, you can look through the Flickr pictures and look forward to a post from guest author, student extraordinaire, and possible future theater producer, Angelica!

Back to School

It's already week three of the Fall 2012 semester (holy cow!) and I'm mostly in the swing of things; although my body is still waffling between a bright, shiny, energetic morning wake-up two minutes before my 5:15 a.m. alarm, and a soggy, sleepy wake-up, where my body resists and acts like a wet sack of flour until 8:30 a.m. when I'm dragging myself off the train to make the last couple of miles trek to campus.

Last week we had a student organization fair and I was there to recruit new members for our creative writing club, Writer's Block. Our wonderful group has been around for about four years, but last May, most of the steady members either transferred to four-year colleges or graduated. So although we're almost starting from scratch, I'm happy to say that we've got an excellent and promising new crew of about eight students. Here are some pictures from the organization fair where I tried to entice them with candy and an adorable stuffed penguin:

Dr. Thomas with some of the Dance Team gals--they remind me of when I was a high school cheerleader, so I had to include them (Photo Courtesy of MCC and the Office of Marketing and Public Relations)

Me and Donna, my former student/current Writer's Block member & club Secretary/OMPR writer (Photo Courtesy of MCC and the Office of Marketing and Public Relations)

Frank, my former student and president of the Drama Club (Photo Courtesy of MCC and the Office of Marketing and Public Relations)

So, that's the start of the year. Currently, all of my students are terrific and they seem to still like me (or at least they are still laughing at my awful jokes [although they haven't gotten any formal grades yet, so their attitudes might still change...]).

I've also started mentoring a terrific high school student through the Open Books VWrite mentorship program, so stay tuned for more on that. And happy September!

There's a New Guy in Town

So, do you remember our last post a couple of weeks ago recounting the baby shower for Julie and Jeremy? Well, four days after that party, Julie had the baby! Talk about perfect timing. Here he is on the day he was born:

Hello!

His name is Max and he's pretty adorable. He was two weeks early but was born a perfect weight and only made his poor mother go through twenty-one hours of labor. That had better be the last misbehaving he does for the rest of his life.

Here he is leaving the hospital:

My legs are so skinny!

Trevor and I went to J & J's place on Monday to visit the new family member, and I must say, he's pretty much the cutest little dude in the city. On our way over we came up with some good nicknames for him, but our favorite is "Maxie Five Cents": he will be a gangster who gives people a piece of his mind before punching them in the noodle with his five-fingered fist. Also, it's "five cents" because his last name is Nickels, and we think puns are hilarious.

I'm gonna give you a piece of my mind, see...

So congratulations to Julie and Jeremy, and welcome to the world, Max!