“It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.”
- Agatha Christie
- Agatha Christie
Welcome to February everyone! I like February because I am a sap and I love Valentine's Day. Also, I like to color coordinate everything and February is the month of Pink for obvious reasons. Pink is my favorite color. P!nk also happens to be one of my favorite pop artists. So, it will be a month filled with Pink and P!nk because my crazy reaches that far. Yay Pink!
So, this last week has been pretty normal. I worked, stayed late, got frustrated, loved my job, the copy machine broke down, it got fixed again. Normal stuff. I'm pretty excited because I finally got to start planning a new unit. I've been on a unit revolving around a very short novel for a couple of months so I've been pretty giddy. Now I'm starting this new writing curriculum with the kids, Step up To Writing! Jessica Lancaster, if you haven't investigated this, it will make your life BETTER! The lessons aren't exactly exciting but that's where teacher creativity comes in, still, it's got a lot of scaffolding and building up skills that are pretty important for students who can't put a sentence together (many of mine). Also, I'm excited about a writing lab unit I put together this weekend about perspective. We're studying fairytales and looking at them through a different perspective using that The True Story of the Three Little Pigs book. You know, the one told from the wolf's perspective. Our kids are normal pre-teens. They really struggle seeing another person's side of a story, for example, a teacher's side of why someone might have received a detention. So, hopefully this will give us some vocabulary we can use when solving 6th grade problems.
So, Daniel and I have been making an effort, call it a New Year's Resolution if you will, to make sure we get out and do something at least once a week. Call it a date night. Whether this is a hike, going to Universal on our mandated monthly visits, or exploring new things, we have to make it out of the house on the weekend. We've been successful approximately 50% of the time since we've made it back from Utah. I blame the brand new 55" television and the Apple TV. So, yeah, we've been bad with the getting out thing. However! We did make it out this weekend and we FINALLY made it to Downtown Los Angeles. You might be thinking, "You've lived in L.A. for 9 months now and you haven't gone downtown yet?" Yes, this is a true statement. To be fair, there is a lot of stuff to do in this city and a lot of it lives in the valley. Still, it is a sad statement. But we did it yesterday! So, let me tell you all about it because I had quite a bit of fun.
The Downtown City Library
Daniel pointed out yesterday that we have explored together four different metropolitan city libraries: Boston, New York City, Salt Lake City (if you can count it), and yesterday we explored the L.A. City Library. We enjoy libraries. By far my favorite is the Boston City Library. They have the most interesting book on display and it is HUGE. We didn't get to explore the New York library too much because we had two grumpy teens/pre-teens with us and they weren't that excited about a library.
The point of our journey yesterday was to go to the library. While not my favorite, I really did like the garden areas of this library. All the stairs and fountains had literary quotes and symbols. It was pretty awesome and I liked it. Hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures up for you soon.
The Last Bookstore - http://lastbookstorela.com
Another stop on our journey downtown yesterday was a used book store called The Last Bookstore. I'm not sure how Daniel heard about it but he suggested we go because they had a part in the store called "The Labyrinth" where any book there was only $1. Well, used bookstore, I am there. Of course, most of the $1 books weren't really worth much, I found some YA and 6th grade level books that I grabbed but all of my type of reading books were not in the labyrinth. I did find another English Literature anthology. So, I walked away a happy Brandy. I didn't get a picture unfortunately. I dunno, I guess I was too excited. Still, go to the url above. It's a pretty neat place and anyone who is going to come visiting me anytime soon will be taking a trip to there. :D
Bringing Back Broadway http://www.bringingbackbroadway.com/index.htm
So, after our jaunt through The Last Bookstore we decided to wander around the city. It was after dark and the big buildings were pretty cool to look at. We found a farmer's market that is kind of like the Grove's and as we were wandering we stumbled upon a closed down street that just happened to be Broadway. We just happened to go downtown on a day that the entire city was celebrating in order to gain awareness for the closing down theaters in the area. So, they shut down the whole street and set up dance routines, art exhibits, and music groups inside the gorgeous, yet dilapidated old theater buildings. It was pretty freaking awesome. Neither of us knew this was happening! We were just lucky. Anyway, we ended up staying downtown a lot longer than we thought because we stayed to enjoy the entertainment and explore the old theaters.
More Wandering
After we left Broadway we wandered toward the Metro. All in all, I'm pretty excited to visit Downtown L.A. again soon. Even though I am not much of a city girl, I prefer mountains and streams and lakes and trees, I can't get over how beautiful tall buildings mashed together looks.
So, this last week has been pretty normal. I worked, stayed late, got frustrated, loved my job, the copy machine broke down, it got fixed again. Normal stuff. I'm pretty excited because I finally got to start planning a new unit. I've been on a unit revolving around a very short novel for a couple of months so I've been pretty giddy. Now I'm starting this new writing curriculum with the kids, Step up To Writing! Jessica Lancaster, if you haven't investigated this, it will make your life BETTER! The lessons aren't exactly exciting but that's where teacher creativity comes in, still, it's got a lot of scaffolding and building up skills that are pretty important for students who can't put a sentence together (many of mine). Also, I'm excited about a writing lab unit I put together this weekend about perspective. We're studying fairytales and looking at them through a different perspective using that The True Story of the Three Little Pigs book. You know, the one told from the wolf's perspective. Our kids are normal pre-teens. They really struggle seeing another person's side of a story, for example, a teacher's side of why someone might have received a detention. So, hopefully this will give us some vocabulary we can use when solving 6th grade problems.
So, Daniel and I have been making an effort, call it a New Year's Resolution if you will, to make sure we get out and do something at least once a week. Call it a date night. Whether this is a hike, going to Universal on our mandated monthly visits, or exploring new things, we have to make it out of the house on the weekend. We've been successful approximately 50% of the time since we've made it back from Utah. I blame the brand new 55" television and the Apple TV. So, yeah, we've been bad with the getting out thing. However! We did make it out this weekend and we FINALLY made it to Downtown Los Angeles. You might be thinking, "You've lived in L.A. for 9 months now and you haven't gone downtown yet?" Yes, this is a true statement. To be fair, there is a lot of stuff to do in this city and a lot of it lives in the valley. Still, it is a sad statement. But we did it yesterday! So, let me tell you all about it because I had quite a bit of fun.
The Downtown City Library
Daniel pointed out yesterday that we have explored together four different metropolitan city libraries: Boston, New York City, Salt Lake City (if you can count it), and yesterday we explored the L.A. City Library. We enjoy libraries. By far my favorite is the Boston City Library. They have the most interesting book on display and it is HUGE. We didn't get to explore the New York library too much because we had two grumpy teens/pre-teens with us and they weren't that excited about a library.
The point of our journey yesterday was to go to the library. While not my favorite, I really did like the garden areas of this library. All the stairs and fountains had literary quotes and symbols. It was pretty awesome and I liked it. Hopefully I'll be able to get some pictures up for you soon.
The Last Bookstore - http://lastbookstorela.com
Another stop on our journey downtown yesterday was a used book store called The Last Bookstore. I'm not sure how Daniel heard about it but he suggested we go because they had a part in the store called "The Labyrinth" where any book there was only $1. Well, used bookstore, I am there. Of course, most of the $1 books weren't really worth much, I found some YA and 6th grade level books that I grabbed but all of my type of reading books were not in the labyrinth. I did find another English Literature anthology. So, I walked away a happy Brandy. I didn't get a picture unfortunately. I dunno, I guess I was too excited. Still, go to the url above. It's a pretty neat place and anyone who is going to come visiting me anytime soon will be taking a trip to there. :D
Bringing Back Broadway http://www.bringingbackbroadway.com/index.htm
So, after our jaunt through The Last Bookstore we decided to wander around the city. It was after dark and the big buildings were pretty cool to look at. We found a farmer's market that is kind of like the Grove's and as we were wandering we stumbled upon a closed down street that just happened to be Broadway. We just happened to go downtown on a day that the entire city was celebrating in order to gain awareness for the closing down theaters in the area. So, they shut down the whole street and set up dance routines, art exhibits, and music groups inside the gorgeous, yet dilapidated old theater buildings. It was pretty freaking awesome. Neither of us knew this was happening! We were just lucky. Anyway, we ended up staying downtown a lot longer than we thought because we stayed to enjoy the entertainment and explore the old theaters.
After we left Broadway we wandered toward the Metro. All in all, I'm pretty excited to visit Downtown L.A. again soon. Even though I am not much of a city girl, I prefer mountains and streams and lakes and trees, I can't get over how beautiful tall buildings mashed together looks.
Next Week
Well, I'm not sure what this week will bring. I'm finishing up the Seedfolks writing. So, I can start my new unit soon. I'm not sure what our plans are to get out during the weekend. Maybe I can convince Daniel to take me to Vegas to get a baby ferret.... maybe not.
<3/ Brand-0
1 comments:
Sounds like a great outing. I am game for the bookstore you visited - well any bookstore will be great. Miss you guys and love you both.
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