When you're a kid, every year you can expect a new professional photo of yourself.  Once school is finished, that's all done. Now that I teach at a school, I once again receive annual portraits.  Two years ago I was happy with my pictures.  Last year they weren't so good.  My pictures this year weren't so bad.  Here they are.

I ran into this sentence today: there is a green car and a motorcycle on harriet street Students are supposed to read it, and then correct it for errors. The correct answer is: There are a green car and a motorcycle on Harriet Street. In prescriptive grammar, this compound subject (two singular nouns linked by "and") requires a third-person plural to-be verb in order to maintain subject-verb agreement.  Most native English speakers would apply the "proximity principle"...

My wife and I went grocery shopping tonight.  Not knowing what to eat for tonight's dinner, we decided to have curry and rice, since we already had some rice cooked.  My wife decided to get a canned curry sauce to put on our rice.  I was a little skeptical, as I couldn't imagine that canned curry would be any good. Surprisingly enough, the curry turned out to be among the best curries that I have ever had.  I fried up a little bacon at home to mix with the sauce, and we po...

I dare you to knock this battery off of my shoulder.

So I was sitting on the couch, watching a baseball game.  My phone rings, and I pick it up. As soon as I answered, some guy with a southern accent starts ranting and raving about me stealing his newspaper.  He claims that he's my next door neighbor.  I told this guy to just come over and get the paper. Just for kicks, I argued with the guy for a few minutes.  I played along with his joke too for a while until it got too repetitive.  Then I let him go. This guy w...

Last night as I was driving home from work, I was thinking about dinner.  I thought about a restaurant that I used to visit in Japan named "Bronco Billy's". Bronco Billy's is a chain of reasonably low-priced steak restaurants in Japan.  At Billy's, one can order a steak with potatoes and a salad bar.  (Just like a Sizzler, a Ponderosa, or a Bonanza in the USA.)  The biggest difference between the steak house there and here is that the quality of the meat and salad is a lot...

In Japan, English words and phrases are used decoratively on clothing, packaging, and other things. Frequently the English that is used it a bit awkward. (I believe that this is intentional.) The use of over-prosaic, colorful, nonsensical, and oftentimes funny English is an underappreciated artform in Japan. The best source of "strange English" is children's clothing. I have read some good nonsense on clothes at the kids' store. Take my son's t-shirt for example: "Beloved: I'm glad ...

The other day I was at a seminar that was sponsored by the publishing company that makes the textbooks that I use at my school.  During the seminar, we had some speakers tell us how to better prepare our students to read and write.  It was a reasonably good seminar. Something struck me as funny as I was sitting through the writing workshop.  The presenter mentioned that we should teach our students how to differentiate their writing voice depending on the type of writing that t...

Well it is March!  The snow will soon melt, the plants will return to life, robins will return, Spring will be here before we know it, and McDonald's now has Shamrock Shakes.  This is our one chance per year to enjoy those yummy mint-flavored shakes. Sometimes a year goes by when I forget about the shakes.  Then in April or May I realize my mistake, and promise myself to "get one next year!" Fortunately, I didn't forget this year.  I went to get a shake on Thursday nigh...

One of my third-graders wrote a really cute closing paragraph to a paper about penguins.  He wrote:   Penguins are birds that can not fly.  They live in Antarctica.  I hope someday I can be one of them. Isn't that cute?

This afternoon at work (I am an elementary school teacher) I went out to the playground to gather a few of my students.  After looking around a bit, I found the kids whom I was looking for. Two of the kids that I found were playing in a rather animated group of first graders.  There were about fifteen kids picking up handfuls of freshly-fallen snow, rubbing it in their hair, and exclaiming: "Look at me!  I'm George Washington!"  (I took a picture of this, and I e-mailed it...

Here in Minnesota it has been quite warm this week.  Today's temperature was around 50 degrees F (~16 C). The kids at the school where I work were nice little angels in the morning, but then after recess they were off the handle.  I can understand.  I watched them out on the playground.  They were having a lot of fun running around in the snow with their coats off.  They didn't want to come inside and study. So I wrote a little song that I had my first graders sing...

So a lot of us out there have anecdotes where a teacher at school melts a bunch of snow in a glass to prove the point that kids shouldn't eat snow.  I think that witnessing this demonstration is a "rite of passage" in one's early primary school years. One of my students was eating a snowball out on the playground today.  I got the snowball from him, and decided to stick it in a baggie to prove the point that he shouldn't be eating the snow. After a half hour the snow wasn't melti...

It seems as if one of the old jokes is dead. I told this one to a group of first-graders at my school: Me: Guess what? Kids: What? Me: That's what. Kids: (Stunned silence.) When I was a first-grader, this joke killed.  It doesn't seem to have the same effect these days.

We use Dish Network for satellite TV at my house.  I am reasonably satisfied with the service.  I see commercials on TV where they're offering four free receivers and a free Tivo-like device for new customers.  I only have one receiver and no Tivo.  I want what's on the ad! We use T-Mobile for cellular service.  My wife and I have camera phones.  We're satisfied with the service, but our phones are a bit antiquated.  I want a camera phone with a flash.&...