I'm travelling for a bit. I should have something new up here on the second of March.

My very reasonable explanation for the ointment is in the previous post.

It did work really well, for all my whining.

I should probably be a lot more worried about this than I am.

The worst of the radiation hasn't hit Korea yet, that I'm aware of, as the spill is on the far side of Japan, so the islands sheltered us a little. Though the last map I saw of the whole mess was rather old, so it could well be irradiating the beaches as we speak. In any case, the fish should not be trusted.

On vacation--

--and off to Seoul to study Korean for a couple of weeks. I'm taking my watercolor paints along, and will probably stick a couple of sketches of the city up in a few days if that sounds terribly interesting to you. I should have a proper comic up on the 26th.

EDIT: Never mind--between the snow and the Chinese Pollution Death Cloud I'm not going and drawing near as much as I 'd thought.

They're good movies. I just can't watch them with a straight face.

Guys, check this out.

I do complain about my students a lot. I think this is fair, as they certainly complain about me. But on the whole they are fantastic kids, as long as you keep them away from improvised weapons. They're often startling thoughtful, insightful, and smart in all kinds of surprising ways, and I'm constantly delighted that it's actually my job to hang out and talk to them.

And they give me presents all the time. Just little things; things they have to part with. The elementary kids give me pencils, erasers, trading cards and stickers. If they make cookies or soap in a class they come and give me those. Or they run in and break up a candy bar to feed me some of it.

The middle school kids get really creative with this one, though. They're the ones who give me elaborate drawings of robots or origami monsters. The space under my computer monitor at school is currently cluttered with little paper finger puppets a boy gave me because I saw him making them and told him they were cool.

And then a few days back one of my boys decided to draw a picture of me up on the board before class started. It made me smile.