I haven’t found many notes this year for some reason. But when I do, they’re almost always amusing.

Found these two today:

Fine I will give you your leo bacfk on Monday. But first what did I say if I was talking about you. And someone. . . I’m not saying who but they told me that K___ said that I said that you were flat. And I don’t talk about you bad. O and by the way I’m not . . . or wasn’t using you. Cause if I was using you I would be nice to your face. So yeah

K____

Hey M____ Hon,

I love your hair, you look good as a brunette! ha ha. Yeah, so I hope I can get MSN. I really want to. Just my mom won’t let me get on our regular comuter so yeah. My Aunt might have a modem. So I can get the internet, so yeah. I feel bad for you, B____ and everyone just needs to leave you alone, you didn’t do anything to her, but just remember, I’ll always be there for you no matter what. I don’t care.

From Webster’s College Dictionary:

double entendre n. a word or expression used so that it can be understood in two ways, esp. when one meaning is risqué.

Book projects/reports are due next week. For most, this is not news. Of course, these four had no idea this was coming. Well, maybe they thought they might have heard something about this, but lets face it, there’s a lot to think about when you’re a thirteen year old boy.

Anyway, with a due date of next Monday looming, and a social calendar similar (I’m sure) to that of a presidential candidate, today they finally launched into action. They assured me they had everything under control. All they really needed to do was finish a, get started on a project choice, finish their, start a book, find a book.

After a quick huddle, the four asked to visit the library. I gave them a hall pass and wished them luck.

Fifteen minutes later they were all back in my room, books in hand.

But . . . something was wrong. They just couldn’t settle down.

I gave them the look.

I shushed them.

I called them by name.

Then I realized my teacher/superhero senses were buzzing like crazy. This wasn’t your normal disruptive student chatter. It was laced with something more. Something not quite right. Those chortles weren’t the innocent results of good clean humor. No this was different.

Pooh was walking round and round in a circle, thinking of something else, and when Piglet called to him, he just went on walking.

“Hallo!” said Piglet, “what are you doing?”

“Hunting,” said Pooh.

“Hunting what?”

“Tracking something,” said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.

“Tracking what?” said Piglet, coming closer.

“That’s just what I ask myself. I ask myself, What?”

“What do you think you’ll answer?”

“I shall have to wait until I catch up with it,” said Winnie-the-Pooh. “Now, look there.” He pointed to the ground in front of him. “What do you see there?”

Let the fun begin.  Any master trackers or puzzle solvers out there? Would anyone like to try to solve the mystery of this very cool (I think) track I took a picture of in my yard last week? Just leave a comment with your educated guesses.

First one to get it right gets a secret email address to an artist blogger who will draw your face if you send him a picture (of your face), and then post it on his blog.

Hint: More clues can be found in at least one of my previous posts.

The picture above is of my family (minus me, I’m taking the picture . . .duh) and Will Steger. It was taken at this year’s St. Paul Winter Carnival in January. The temperature that day was about 5 degrees and the wind was really kicking out of the north, so the wind chill was actually somewhere around -20.

Notice Nora’s (the youngest) facial expression. Priceless.

Anyway, Steger was using the event to kick off his latest adventure–a 1200-mile, four-month-long dogsled expedition across the Canadian Arctic’s Baffin Island. The expedition will be traveling with four Inuit dog teams over traditional hunting paths, up frozen rivers, through steep-sided fjords, over glaciers and ice caps, and across the sea ice to reach some of the most remote Inuit villages of the world.

Each day, the team will use innovative technologies to post video, images, sounds and text to the www.globalwarming101.com website, and communicate with online participants around the world.

I love great movie speeches. Don’t you? Here are maybe my four top movie speeches of all time–as I remember them.

Though you may have to forgive me. The seventh graders down the hall started dissecting things this week. I may be a little foggy on exact wording for a few of these.

I’m wondering if anyone else out there has noticed anything suspicious about the bugs around their house lately. The word “bug” is a scientific term biologists use to combine two species:

The Family of Animals That You Can Kill With A Rolled Up Magazine, and The Family Of Animals That Are Too Quick For That.

I ask because the bugs I’ve seen have definitely become more aggressive in their pursuit to GET INTO MY HOUSE. This makes me nervous. Having just thrown away a Kleenex full of squished box elder bugs, my wife laments because, somehow, she’s missed one.

Then another one.

Then another one.

They just keep appearing.

Sometimes my children react strongly when a box elder bug flies near or lands on them.

Being the man of the house, I feel somewhat responsible to do what I can to help—especially after learning that pointing and saying, “Oh, there’s another one,” or, “Maybe a vacuum would work better,” wasn’t an effective approach.