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Weekend update
Jun. 23rd, 2002 09:39 pmI had a long weekend this week. On Friday morning, I drove down to New York for my younger brother's high school graduation. Mike was graduating from the Scarsdale Alternative School, which is an experimental school-within-a-school[1] at our hometown's public school. He'll graduate from the larger high school sometime this week, but going down for the SAS ceremony was more important to me. I graduated from the Alternative School in '94 and my friends and teachers there were very helpful in getting me through high school in one piece.[2] It was a special place for me, and it means a lot to me that it was a special place for Mike too.
Because the school has a graduating class of only 25 kids, the ceremony is pretty unique. The sophomores and juniors decorate the school building's front porch with flowers and organize the graduation ceremony. Each student receives their diploma from the teacher who serves as their school advisor, who gives a short speech about the student's accomplishments at the school. Mike's advisor (who had also been my advisor when I was in high school) said lots of great stuff about him and gave me even more reasons to be proud of him. It was really a wonderful day. I also ran into an A-school classmate of mine who was there because a kid for whom he used to babysit was graduating, and that was a very pleasant surprise (if somewhat awkward because I never quite know what to say to people I haven't seen in years).
For those who were following the book discussion in a previous entry, I wound up getting Mike the new paperback edition of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, and Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters.[3] My sister Jen looked at the title of the Pratchett book and said "Very appropriate." Mike seemed happy with the books and there wasn't anything he'd read already. He's currently in the middle of Irving Howe's How We Lived: A Documentary History of Immigrant Jews in America, 1880-1930 (it was sitting on the floor of his room when I arrived and I couldn't tell if he was reading it or using it as a doorstop) so this will be a nice change of pace when he finishes that.
On Saturday, I had been planning to head back to Boston ASAP. But my sister Annie plays on a local basketball team and they had a tournament in Connecticut. We determined that the first game, in Fairfield, was in the morning and was really on my way back towards Boston. So I got to see Annie play some basketball (they didn't win, but they played a good game). You might think that watching junior-high basketball wouldn't be the most exciting thing in the world. But one of the best things about being an older sister is being part of the fan club. Annie's spent a lot of time working on her basketball game and she's really improved a lot. I never pass up the chance to see her play when I'm in town.
I got back on Saturday night and was well rested for a long day of softball today. We'd had some games rained out, so we had games at 3 and 6 in Brookline today. We had just barely enough people to play. After the 3:00 game, which we lost but it was close, there was rather a lot of confusion over where games were scheduled and where the ump was supposed to go. As a result, our 6pm game was delayed until 6:15. We were all very tired from the hot weather by the time the second game rolled around and we lost by the slaughter rule (where if one team is up by 10 runs after 4 innings, the game ends). In a totally uncharacteristic move, Kelly volunteered to keep score and wound up being pretty good at it. I accused her of attempting to co-opt my softball team the same way she took over all my friends[4], but I was very grateful that she was willing to help out.
1. It's run as a democracy (as much as possible) and does some very non-traditional stuff like shutting down for the month of January so that students can go out and do internships in various work environments.
2. I was a good student, but I had issues like you wouldn't believe.
3. Not the first Discworld book, but the first one I read and I think it's a pretty good introduction to the series.
4. Not really. It's a long-running joke that started when Alek informed me that my friends liked Kelly better and would be going with her if we broke up.
Because the school has a graduating class of only 25 kids, the ceremony is pretty unique. The sophomores and juniors decorate the school building's front porch with flowers and organize the graduation ceremony. Each student receives their diploma from the teacher who serves as their school advisor, who gives a short speech about the student's accomplishments at the school. Mike's advisor (who had also been my advisor when I was in high school) said lots of great stuff about him and gave me even more reasons to be proud of him. It was really a wonderful day. I also ran into an A-school classmate of mine who was there because a kid for whom he used to babysit was graduating, and that was a very pleasant surprise (if somewhat awkward because I never quite know what to say to people I haven't seen in years).
For those who were following the book discussion in a previous entry, I wound up getting Mike the new paperback edition of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, and Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters.[3] My sister Jen looked at the title of the Pratchett book and said "Very appropriate." Mike seemed happy with the books and there wasn't anything he'd read already. He's currently in the middle of Irving Howe's How We Lived: A Documentary History of Immigrant Jews in America, 1880-1930 (it was sitting on the floor of his room when I arrived and I couldn't tell if he was reading it or using it as a doorstop) so this will be a nice change of pace when he finishes that.
On Saturday, I had been planning to head back to Boston ASAP. But my sister Annie plays on a local basketball team and they had a tournament in Connecticut. We determined that the first game, in Fairfield, was in the morning and was really on my way back towards Boston. So I got to see Annie play some basketball (they didn't win, but they played a good game). You might think that watching junior-high basketball wouldn't be the most exciting thing in the world. But one of the best things about being an older sister is being part of the fan club. Annie's spent a lot of time working on her basketball game and she's really improved a lot. I never pass up the chance to see her play when I'm in town.
I got back on Saturday night and was well rested for a long day of softball today. We'd had some games rained out, so we had games at 3 and 6 in Brookline today. We had just barely enough people to play. After the 3:00 game, which we lost but it was close, there was rather a lot of confusion over where games were scheduled and where the ump was supposed to go. As a result, our 6pm game was delayed until 6:15. We were all very tired from the hot weather by the time the second game rolled around and we lost by the slaughter rule (where if one team is up by 10 runs after 4 innings, the game ends). In a totally uncharacteristic move, Kelly volunteered to keep score and wound up being pretty good at it. I accused her of attempting to co-opt my softball team the same way she took over all my friends[4], but I was very grateful that she was willing to help out.
1. It's run as a democracy (as much as possible) and does some very non-traditional stuff like shutting down for the month of January so that students can go out and do internships in various work environments.
2. I was a good student, but I had issues like you wouldn't believe.
3. Not the first Discworld book, but the first one I read and I think it's a pretty good introduction to the series.
4. Not really. It's a long-running joke that started when Alek informed me that my friends liked Kelly better and would be going with her if we broke up.
