The Daily Sabs

My house guest had an old man sleepy setback and so instead of a photo with pupsi (oh and Scottel) I present you with a photo of tonka the turtle instead. My little reporter at 826 is writing about animals with prosthetics and she wants you all to know how cuuuuuuuuuute tonka is. He has wheels for legs and you'd have to agree, he's pretty darn cute.

geoloc

This evening my little reporters and I worked on some sweet stories. It's only week three (there are four writing weeks) so imagine my surprise when one of the reporters had hers mostly written and typed up even. High fives all around!

geoloc

This afternoon Erin popped into the office to give Julie and I a special delivery. She had procured several hunger games posters and thought they'd be perfect to decorate our weight-baring posts. After we schoolgirl squealed, we all took the elevator down, bid farewell to Erin, and then hunted down some lunch. I was so starving, I would've taken a tesserae at that point.

Later, after work, I headed to 826 for the bayfarer 38 release party. It was a pretty fun time. I really liked this group of kids, and had a blast seeing them read. Afterwards I met Randall at limon where we drank mojitos and ate delicious ribs. Then we took the 33 home right into the fog.

This evening the 826 kids and I wrote our stories in style. We decided that it would be great to turn our hair into moustaches. It just seemed like the sophisticated thing to do.

I've been wanting to get more involved at 826, and recently I was asked to join the volunteer event committee. We had our first meeting tonight and brainstormed a bunch of ways for volunteers to meet up and hang out more. Essentially they want volunteering to be enriching and fun but now with a few events where we don't have to hang with any of the awesome, if not somewhat ridiculous children. I ended up agreeing to do some brainstorming about the food club and the skill swap craft party. I think we're biting off a lot, but I think it's going to be fun.

Afterwards I walked on home. At first i was upset that I didn't have a coat, but it turned out to be nice enough that I didn't need one. What is up with this weather?!

Sometimes, especially when the tutor to student ratio is all wrong, the kids at the bayfarer (826 Valencia's newspaper) can be a bit much. They get silly, lose their focus power, and want to talk about all sorts of things not related to their articles. Today was one of those days. It started off with a 1:5 ratio but eventually became a more manageable 1:3.

These kids are smart and fun, but they're wild. My particular group all seem to be writing about dogs or mythical creatures. Today we generated some good leads and got a nice start on the articles. One of them, while describing a playground scene, wrote the phrase "wandering thru a sea of balls." when she read it outloud to me she stopped to ask if it sounded "you know, weird... You know like, not a good thing to write, you know like... Weird.". I knew what she, a third grader, meant. And well, you know you do too. We fixed it to be less weird, but man they grow up so fast.

Afterwards I met up with Randall and Julie. We were going to try this Vietnamese popup restaurant, but they were out of food already (despite being advertised as until 10). We ended up heading to heung yuen instead. It was pretty good but the kitchen was closing so we hustled. Gene joined us and helped us finish up. Happy new year style indeed.

Ps. Gene was not wearing a gold star. I just call him gold standard, so adorned him with one.

Pps. Ungrateful children is anneh's term. She used to help and every kid she was paired with was. Mine are usually just weird. Like the one that talks thru her teeth and is writing about cryptozoology and who might as well be named Luna lovegood.

tonight i hustled out of work to head on over to 826. lately, i can't seem to get there on time, but that's okay. neither can the kids. and neither can kimra. she arrived a few minutes after me even (that's right, i've convinced her to join the 826 crew too!).

this evening we helped our buddies flush out their story ideas. mine is writing about justin bieber. if you're asking who that is, you obviously (a) don't have kids who watch tv, (b) are old, (c) are snobby, or (d) don't work at a celebrity media company. the weirdest part is that for some reason i actually googled justin bieber a few weeks ago. this means that i actually knew an awful lot about him, which my reporter is finding awesome.

and in case you're dying to know, here's justin bieber. i'm only including this video because the video i really wanted (the three year old who cries over justin bieber) has the embedding disabled.

ps. this is the first time i've ever heard this song. i can't believe they autotune him and also, he looks 12.