Laura's Experiments with Hypertext!

Ah, friends.

I have a job for a bit. I answer phones and take service orders so that friendly shopkeepers statewide can get help if their deli salad bars and beer caves are running a bit warmer than normal/experiencing condensation/need new door gaskets. I enter purchase order information into the computer and get to input words like "capacitator," which makes me want to don an Einstein-like wig and exclaim, "Great Scot!"

I must admit, the office decor reminds me of things like soprano saxophones, a young Macaulay Culkin, and the color mauve. When I walk into the building, it's like magically appearing in 1991 (am I sensing a theme here?) Read: archaic business equipment whose once-putty-colored plastic exteriors have yellowed considerably. I heard dot-matrix printing on more than one occasion today. The main computer program *technically* operates on Windows, but what's within that window looks and acts suspiciously like DOS...

In other news, I started my class. I could go look at my syllabus to find the exact title, but it goes something like this: "Literacy Strategies for the Primary Grades." Yup. I'm being taught how to teach kids to read. Which isn't bad in and of itself, except that I am the ONLY non-teacher in the classroom, most of the other students are getting their masters in READING and LITERACY, my prof is herself a fourth-grade teacher, and everyone shows off how cutely they can write their names with Crayola markers. (Okay, I admit, the last part is kinda fun.) These people speak a lingo I have no knowledge of. They talk about how they've used icky-sounding things such as "Anticipation Grids" in their classrooms. I have to write haikus about the moon for homework. (EVERY DAY.) It's not all bad, of course, but I'm utterly lost half the time. And the well-rested, tan, "I have free time for three months" people on either side of me are starting to lose patience with me and my questions after only the second day.

I don't know how to NOT participate in a class. It's so frustrating.

Good things have come of it, though. I got to read an AMAZING children's book called Black and White by David Macaulay. If you have kids, or know kids, and you would like them to think outside of the box (or if they already do)...give this to them. Let them flip back and forth through the pages. It's an amazing way to tell a story.

I'm also reminded of books that I loved as a wee bitty one: The Jolly Postman...The Little House...My Little Golden Book About God...A Pocket For Corduroy...and, finally, my first chapter book, The Magic Coin.

So, kids, it's off to look at the moon. Later tonight, Josh will come home from some sort of battle of the bands in some hick town near the state line.