Cheers

to us... and to five happy years!

(Photo taken by Mrs. Ewald Sr. at Cannon Beach. September 2007)

Fall visits our alley.

Their plumage might not be as flashy, but we think the evergreens are pretty spectacular too.

Random Question #2: The Ascot.

They call them random questions for a reason, I suppose.

One night, while checking the spelling of a word, we started actually seeing the illustrations speckled throughout our paperback dictionary. Where before they had fallen into the visual noise, small drawings of castanets, bongos, peanut plants and the diamondback rattlesnake seemed to leap from the pages. We were happy to have stumbled on to our favorite of all the dictionary illustrations - The Ascot - for a variety of reasons.

And seeing the gleam in the ascotted man's eye made us question - How does a dictionary choose the definitions that should include illustrations? The number of instruments illustrated suggests that there's a method; though the variety throughout the book made us think it was completely random. Perhaps certain words require more than other words to give them meaning.
Could/would you illustrate a verb?

These are the questions that, in their own small way, keep us up at night.

Week One

I recently started teaching for an after-school program at a local elementary school. One of the classes I teach is "Dance Team" for 2nd & 3rd graders.

Last week was the first week of the program, and although I wasn't sure what to expect, I figured as long as I kept them moving everything would be okay. After all, I have over 15 years of dance lessons to fall back on. (It's only been, what, a mere 10 years since I last stepped foot in a dance studio... save for some line dancing at a dorm "mixer" and a well-intentioned Community Ed Tap class.)

Dance Team: Week One.

As I was changing CDs, one of my dancers stood next to me and asked, "Is the next song going to be good or bad?"

I replied, "It depends on what you like."

She paused for a minute, trying to think of a way to rephrase her question because CLEARLY I did not understand what she had asked.

She then said, "Is the next song going to be good or like the last song?"