Delicious, Delectable... Heavenly

Walking into Aureole's in the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas it's difficult to miss the wine tower. Wrapped in a stair case, the 4 story wine tower boasts a spectacular wine collection. Resting in lucite bins, wines are accessible only by carabiner-clad Wine Angels who "fly" the tower to retrieve your order. Orders well organized by region, varietal, vinyard and more on tablet PCs presented to guests to peruse table side. Incredible, right? But I wasn't most impressed with the wine tower or the technologized wine menu. I was most impressed by the service and oh... the food!

We spent a long weekend in Vegas with Tom and Amy, long time friends from before any of us were married even! The weekend marked Amy's 40th celebraion! Chef Tim, who works with Tom at the Boardwalk Hotel set up our dinner reservations with his friend, Kevin Dimon, General Manager of Aureole's.

Our eight course celebration started with champagne and canapes beautifully presented in tic tac toe fashion on a sparkling, sea-green glass plate. My favorite? The chicken satay glazed with savory peanut sauce. Tuna canneloni followed: delicate ahi tuna prepared tartare, wrapped in a spiderweb crisp of pastry and seated in a red pepper coulis. Delish! But what followed was even better!

Sea scallops (with lobster for everyone else) seved with baby carrots and fingerling potatoes in a compound butter sauce topped with chive foam. At this point in the meal , I started taking pictures...




Somehow I missed shooting everyone's entree and all of the delectable side dishes. Yes, they brought us one of each listed on the menu: amazing. Dessert was warm bittersweet chocolate cake with pistachio olive oil ice cream, as well as scoop platters of all of their ice cream flavors and fruit sorbets. AND a gorgeous rasberry cream filled torte/cake for Amy's birthday. The meal ended with chocolate gift bags for everyone which featured hand crafted chocolates and sweet wafers...delicious.

Diaries & Journals

School's Out! Collin is going to be a 3rd grader! We enjoyed wearing his book covers on our heads on the way home from school the other day--I think we had Meme in stitches. Collin told me on our ride that he has summer homework: reading, logging his reading and journaling. I told him that sounded more like summer "fun-work" to me.

He brought home a journal that he'd been given to decorate--it looks cool and I sure wanted to write in it! I showed him a teacher friend's Artifact Journals as we talked about what he'd write in his. He said he's supposed to write what he does over the summer. That led to us talking about diaries versus journals. Of course, Collin sees diaries as very girlie, something he wants to avoid at all costs. I chuckled, but in my mind I thought about the ways I could nudge him toward writing beyond "what I did today."

* * *

I've officially finished my first week of summer vacation with Collin. It feels like Christmas getting to spend so much time together, well an unusually global warming type of Christmas if you were to go by the temperature outside. I've been trying to make writing a part of our day. We spend a little time after breakfast writing in our journals. I have started my own artifact journal and Collin is writing and drawing pictures. It is not his favorite thing to do, so I am trying very hard just to sink into my own writing and model for him instead of slipping into teacher-director mode. The other day I wrote a piece about summer fruits and a watermelon he and I'd brought home. When I finished my piece, I read it to him aloud thinking he'd like the story. He did and right then he decided to write about the watermelon too. I've noticed that his writing is very linear, strictly sequential. It will be interesting to see how it changes over time. If you want to dip into our journals, click on the images. They should open in a new window, full-size.

Big Brother Moment

Ever have the suspicion that someone is watching you? Virtually? I'm not talking about your Twitter followers or Facebook friends, but something even more stealthy. Something I don't quite understand myself. Enter the Smart Bot friend finder. This morning while writing for next week's Newslinks column, I started getting follower alert emails from Twitter. I've not been inudated with such emails, so I still manage to click through to the new followers profile. I read over their latest tweets and sometimes click their blog links to see if I'd like to follow them back. Generally I follow artists, educators or friends. This morning brought several new followers; the best being Scott McLeod and another LeeAnn literacy diva.

When I clicked through the remaining new follower links I was surprised to find a tweeter devoted, it seems, to coffee and coffee makers. What could I possibly have in common with "ocmfilter"? Otherwise known as Joyce Teo, how did ocmfilter find me to follow? Is she a teacher? an educator? an artist? It doesn't seem so. She'd from Singapore and enjoys coffee shops and movies. All perfectly pleasant I'm sure. Her tweets are coffee central.

I do love a good cup of coffee. Indeed, I blogged about our home roaster last March. But, coffee is not even a big word in my blog's latest Wordle. What gives? Is someone other than Amazon.com and iTunes following my purchases? Is a special follower bot picking through my profiles or tweets? Did a worm sneak into my machine and glom onto words that connect me to other people? I started to wonder. Then of course I clicked the next follower alert email and sure enough... a smart friend finder bot. As if such a thing could truly exist! Imagine what you could do with a smart friend finder--does it find smart friends or is it just smart at finding friends? Who knows if that bot is the culprit or another. A bot in my mind (brother correct me if I'm wrong) is short for programed web robot which I define as a scripting sort of program that searches through words, profiles and preferences in order to target consumers. Perhaps that latest bot in my email is the one that pointed "ocmfilter" in my direction or maybe it was another one. Certainly a big brother moment this morning.

Wipe Away Lips

Was it just last week that I gave two surprise parties? A surprise 40th for my friend, Kim and a 70th for my Mom. My Dad really gave the party for Mom, but Jenny (my sister-in-law) and I helped. What with the parties and out of town work scheduled in between, I haven't found much art time lately. I managed to squeeze in a bit last weekend. Jenny and I visited while my niece Charlotte napped. I filled in eyes, lips and hair (lesson five). I'm not too happy with the hair. The brown blob-ish-ness resists dimension. I keep reminding myself that I'm learning! And indeed that is the fun part of this endeavor.

This afternoon I've been working on lesson six: shading with paint crayons! This lesson rather reminds me of one of Collin's favorite picture books, Fortunately, Unfortunately:

Fortunately, I have all of the painting crayon colors I need.
Unfortunately, the color I chose for the lips just wasn't working out.
Fortunately, I can wipe the painting crayons off with a damp paper towel and try again.

I'm on my fifth or sixth set of lips. I've lost count. I'm going with these.

Surprise!

Surprise!
Originally uploaded by spillarke

I think we got her!

Spread the Word

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
~ Anne Frank

Laura Stockman lives Anne Frank's words. Her blog 25 Days to Make a Difference never fails to inspire me to do more for others and our world. Her most recent challenge, a blog carnival on the r-word to promote Spread the Word to End the Word. Blog about the r-word. Tell how it makes you feel and how you will help put an end to it. Leave a comment on her blog with a link to your post and you may win a Flip video camera.

If I were caught up with my reader and feeds I wouldn't have missed this chance with my students, but we are on spring break this week. I can't have them add their voices to my own, but I know how the r-word makes me feel.

Stupid. Idiot. Moron. What are you a re...?

Stop! Don't say it. Language makes a difference. Language can divide or it can unite. Language can lift up a person or it can tear down a person.The r-word, when I hear others say it, makes me feel awful inside. When I was young, stupid was the word my father used when he got frustrated. I hate the word stupid. Every time I hear it, I can hear Dad saying it and I am brought back to some moment where I didn't understand what I was supposed to be doing and I wasn't doing it how he wanted it done. I love my father and we've talked many a time about that s-word. Parents do the best they can and who are we to know what will and will not stick with a child. His intention was to avoid vulgarity, I'm sure. I'm glad he did. Though I know he loves me, loved me even then, and I understand his motivations and all of that now, it sure hurt then.

The r-word does to other people what stupid did to me. It leaves a mark. It tears you down.

Stop using the r-word. Take the pledge today. Share it with your friends. Talk to your kids about it. Don't wait a single minute --do something to make a difference today.

What a Gift

Has it already been two weeks since my friend, Sara Holbrook visited? Can you believe she went to the elementary school where my grandmother taught third grade? Her sister might have even been in Gramma Beckwith's class at Berkley in Detroit. Amazing coincidence, isn't it?

Sara gave me the best gift while she was in town: an afternoon in my classroom working with student poets for this year's Poetry Slam. Just a small group of kids, she and I--an amazing afternoon. She talked about her poetry. She performed. I read one of my poems. Students read theirs. Sara coached, listened, laughed and share. Truly, it felt like a gift from God--just that simple--pure awesome.