What Should I Do With My Hands?
National Book Fest 2009
Sunday night, I learned that we are officially going to D.C. this coming weekend. We are going for many reasons, the main one being The National Book Festival. We went last year, and our only regret was the bad weather. Even with the near-constant rain, it was a good day on the National Mall. Our English teacher selves were in nerd heaven, surrounded by thousands of people who had traveled to celebrate books. Imagine! We wanted to go back for this year’s fest, but were waiting to hear about the weather (it’s supposed to be good) and then decided that we’d forgo the trip in the interest of saving money (because we’re putting out a lot so that I can go to NCTE in November). And then we changed our minds, said ah well, it’s only money, and away we shall go.
One of the other (main) reasons I want to go on this mini-trip is to cleanse my palate. I’m very excited about our upcoming Orlando NCTE Convention trip, but I’m not so sure that Disney World should be our first excursion after the disaster that was The Great Europe Trip. And as D.C. is my third favorite city in the world, I think it is a good choice for a palate-cleansing trip (Vancouver is still #1, but D.C. has moved down to third since I’ve been to Amsterdam, which is now #2. The other places on my favorite destinations list are not cities, so they don’t count in this instance.)
But there’s something that has me a bit puzzled. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my hands during this trip. You see, about three weeks ago, I deleted my Facebook account (well, not deleted–that’s not actually possible. I ‘turned it off’.) So I have nowhere to post photos, which begs the question ‘why spend the whole time taking photos?’ I imagine this is how a long-time smoker feels after quitting–like they have nothing to do, when they used to be quite busy killing themselves. Yes, the more I think about it, the more quitting Facebook is exactly like quitting smoking.
Fortunately, I still have this blog–but the beauty of a blog is that you can write whenever you want–even after you come home or, like this, before you leave. So when I’m on our weekend trip, all I ‘have to’ do is be on said trip. I wonder what that will be like!
Tracy, I hope you are still planning to let us know how the Washington trip went. Also, how are the plans for Disney coming? I hope you and your 8th graders are having a great year (remember, I’m a retired middle school assistant principal- and I taught 8th graders when I was a teacher).
I’ve been meaning to write a book fest post, well, ever since we got back a week and a half ago! I will do that asap. And Disney planning isn’t all that exciting–it’s mostly convention stuff (which is exciting, but only to nerds like me…and, likely, like you, as you understand teacher-y things!). But there will definitely be some post Disney/Convention posts. Post posts? You know what I mean! 🙂