Placed here on Saturday, 14 January 2012 by SquamLoon

12 of 12 for January 2012

12 steps for a perfect snow day:

1 of 12
Stay in your PJs for as long as you can.

2 of 12
Fill the home with the aroma of pot roast…

3 of 12
…and make meatballs for another day. (Or rather, benefit from the fact that your wife is doing those things.)

4 of 12
Play outside with the children in your life.

5 of 12
Be sure to leave the bobhouse on solid ground if the lake’s not fully frozen yet, even in mid-January. (I’m actually not an ice fisherman—this is their father’s bobhouse.)

6 of 12
If you must, spend some time catching up on work. (But not as much as I spent this 12th.)

7 of 12
Take your 4-wheel drive vehicle on your favorite road…

8 of 12
…to your favorite place…

9 of 12
…and sit in the snow and think awhile.

10 of 12
Return to the pot roast waiting in your cozy home.

11 of 12
Reminisce about the old days…

12 of 12
…and try not to let your addiction to NetFlix’s streaming 24 keep you from going to bed with a good book.

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Placed here on Saturday, 31 December 2011 by SquamLoon

12 of 12 for December 2011

Having processed six months’ of twelfths over the past few days, at last I’m caught up, and contemplating my twelve photos of the twelfth of December.

And, what with it being New Year’s eve and all, I think I’ll turn each picture into a resolution. (Huh. I just remembered that I did the same thing three years ago. Plus ça change…)

Anyway, I hereby resolve:

1 of 12
To continue making our home more homey.

2 of 12
To stick to our strategic planning timeline.

3 of 12
To be student centered.

4 of 12
To keep wearing un-gaudy Christmas ties all December long.

5 of 12
To differentiate my instruction.

6 of 12
To continue to believe in the vision of my boss (see picture #2), who was again a finalist this year for NH Principal of the Year.

7 of 12
To not just go to the gym in the winter.

8 of 12
To relieve my wife of the cooking more often.

9 of 12
To do better with the lighting next year.

10 of 12
To be thankful for what I have.

11 of 12
To honor my late mother-in-law’s memory, and celebrate my parents’ health every day.

12 of 12
To take my eBay hobby back up a notch to offset the price of the furnace that was installed December 12th (see picture #10).

 

Oh, and most relevantly to this space, I hereby resolve to have a good time with the 12 of 12—of 12!

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Placed here on Saturday, 31 December 2011 by SquamLoon

12 of 12 for November 2011

So as I said, I would post my twelve of twelves, and I would post twelve twelve twelves more. But as I also said, they may very well have no why or wherefore.

Case in point: November 2011. The twelfth happened to fall on a Saturday, and I didn’t remember it was 12of12Day until 7:15pm, while I happened to be

1 of 12
playing with my new phone’s camera. Realizing I had no pictures of the day, I snapped a shot of our
 
2 of 12
scallops with butternut squash and pumpkin ravioli and a squash bisque from our local farmstand.

I then did my best to recap a humdrum day in which I’d:

3 of 12
hung my three favorite old Paris pics in the newly painted hallway,

4 of 12
hung an old painting and a shelf for heirloom knick-knacks in the freshly painted guest room,

5 of 12
painted the guest room trim,

6 of 12
and listed a few old books on eBay.

7 of 12
I’d also read a bit. But probably not much, which is why I get through about a pleasure book a month.

8 of 12
I’d had cereal for breakfast,

9 of 12
and a sandwich for lunch. (Don’t judge. I just have to get this done.)

10 of 12
I’d walked the dogs,

11 of 12
and through the activities of pictures 3 through 5, I’d made a mess of the guest room dresser.

12 of 12
At 11:20 I still needed a 12th shot, so I cleaned off the charging station area.

It’s tough to see, but because I know you care, the Word Origin of the day was Dumbledore.

So, as promised, this was a lame 12 of 12, with less of a wherefore than most. If you want excitement, listen to last month’s.

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Placed here on Thursday, 29 December 2011 by SquamLoon

12 of 12 for October 2011

Here, for your listening displeasure, is a musical October 12 of 12, set to the tune of the Proclaimers’ I’m gonna be (500 miles). Click on the player below, and read along. Please note that I purposefully did this in one take so as not to pretend to be someone who can actually sing.

ImGonna12of12 by SquamLoon

1 of 12
When I wake up
Yeah I know I’m gonna to be I’m gonna to be the man who wakes up next to these

2 of 12
When I make lunch
Yeah I know I’m gonna to be I’m gonna to be the man who makes his lunch with ease

3 of 12
If grantors come
Yeah I know I’m gonna to be I’m gonna to be the man who gathers the grantees

4 of 12
And if my desk’s neat
Yeah I know I’m gonna to be I’m gonna to be that man whose neat desk’s a reprise

Yes I would post my twelve of twelve
And I would post twelve twelve-twelves more
Just to be that man who posts his twelve of twelves with no why or wherefore

5 of 12
When they’re walking
Yes I know they’re gonna to be they’re gonna be the men who’re walking to their cars

6 of 12
When the color
Comes into the trees we see the leafpeepers peeping buses will come through

7 of 12
When the Ranger
Is available to me I’m gonna be the man who drives it to the dump

8 of 12
And when I come home
Yeah I know I’m gonna be I’m gonna be that man who comes back home to you

But I would post my twelve of twelve
And I would post twelve twelve-twelves more
Just to be that man who posts his twelve of twelves with no why or wherefore
(Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Undela Undela Undela la la la)
(Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Undela Undela Undela la la la)

9 of 12
When my best friend
Is on UPenn’s home webpage he’s gonna be the man whose words are most astute

10 of 12
And when I’m eating
Well I know I’m gonna eat I’m gonna eat pot roast and pureed celery root

11 of 12
When she’s flopping
Yeah you know she’s gonna flop she’s gonna be the dog who’s flopping’s past repute

12 of 12
And when he’s by me
Yeah you know he’s gonna be he’s gonna be the dog who’s always so damned cute.

So I would post my twelve of twelve
And I would post twelve twelve-twelves more
Just to be that man who posts his twelve of twelves with no why or wherefore
(Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Undela Undela Undela la la la)
(Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Da Undela Undela Undela la la la)

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Placed here on Thursday, 29 December 2011 by SquamLoon

12 of 12 for September 2011

Ah, September. The month when everything seems possible, and nothings stands in the way.

1 of 12
Bright and early to work!

2 of 12
An organized hub of dynamic educational transformation!

3 of 12
Hallowed hallways, teeming with intellectual curiosity!

4 of 12
Sharing our culture!

5 of 12
Distributive leadership!

6 of 12
Professional partners in redesign!

7 of 12
Differentiated classrooms!

8 of 12
Pithy, game-changing competencies!

9 of 12
Fresh fruit!

10 of 12
Gorgeous scallops!

11 of 12
Gourmet goodness!

12 of 12
Unstoppable productivity!

Not that any of the above doesn’t still exist (except, perhaps, for the early arrival and the organized desk). But the bloom of a new school year is always pretty darned faded by the time January rolls along.

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Placed here on Wednesday, 28 December 2011 by SquamLoon

12 of 12 for August 2011

In keeping with a self-promise to catch up on 2011′s 12 of 12s, here below are my twelve most fascinating photos of my twelfth of August. Which shows how thoroughly unfascinating a day it was. In fact, this post is probably best read in the voice of Eeyore.

1 of 12
Still summertime, yes, but the living wasn’t always easy. I ended up spending way too many days doing school redesign work. And I never once mowed the lawn.

2 of 12
I suppose I got to see what goes on in the building in the off season. And hang out with incoming Assistant Principal Paul Hoiriis from time to time.

3 of 12
Here my friend Bruce was showing me his 11×17″-capable printer. My colleagues will be thrilled to know that we were working on the infamous Standards-based Plan Book.

4 of 12
Things were a little surreal that day too: On Golden Pond playwright Ernest Thompson was shooting a film in the hallway.

5 of 12
Yep. Everything that I usually care about was rushed, half done and haphazard last August. My poor wife, who hates wires, had to endure this classy setup I had for running the porch TV simultaneously with the indoor digital cable and DVR.

6 of 12
Most summers I try to make dinner a little more often, seeing as it’s her busiest time and my most leisurely. Evidently the best I could do this year was frozen pizza.

7 of 12
How numb was my August? I actually thought the Wake ‘n Bacon on Shark Tank was worthy of the 12 of 12…

8 of 12
…and I resorted to further padding my twelve with what comes easiest: loving pet shots.

9 of 12

10 of 12

11 of 12
Before calling it a night, I arranged this Patrick O’Brian still life…

12 of 12
…and paid homage to my newly arrived signature Purplized Loon card.

It was quite a day.

Next up: September Full of Hope.

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Placed here on Tuesday, 27 December 2011 by SquamLoon

12 of 12 for July 2011

As we catch up on our Squamloonland 12 of 12s, let’s take a break from this chilly December day and hark back to the sultry sun of July 12th, 2011.

Summertime.

And the living was easy. It was our one devoted week at Squam, when I’d gone off the grid.

Life is good off the grid. I need to keep doing that on a regular basis.

1 of 12
It began peacefully, with a morning paddle with P, T1, and the SquamDogs.

2 of 12

3 of 12
Things picked up a bit back at the house, as it was the third annual visit from my expatriate college roommate, his lovely wife, and their lovably boisterous boys.

4 of 12
Lucky for my 12 of 12 I was taking pictures that day. I don’t think I realized it was the twelfth until afterward.

5 of 12
We had beautiful weather for the daily Cocktail Cruise®.

6 of 12

7 of 12

8 of 12
Young Adam was very into his binoculars…

9 of 12
…through which he saw the baby eagles…

10 of 12
…the Squam Range…

11 of 12
..and hikers on Rattlesnake.

12 of 12
Ah, summertime. Would that it were here. And would that I had spent more of it like I spent that one week in July.

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Placed here on Tuesday, 27 December 2011 by SquamLoon

0 of 12 for June 2011

So anyway, here’s what happened.

June 12, 2011, was a Sunday. The school year was nearly at an end, and I was exhausted.

Screen Shot 2011-12-26 at 12.43.51 AM

If you’ve made it this far by accident, “12 of 12″ is the practice of taking pictures on the twelfth of the month and posting twelve of them, sometimes around a theme to add to the fun. And as of June 2011, I’d made 41 consecutive 12 of 12s. They’re all right here.

So as un-twelve-of-twelvey as I was feeling, I still felt compelled to make one. And now that I’ve dug up the above FaceBook post, I remember that I actually tried to get pictures corresponding to every one of those suggestions. I had pictures of everything from a sphinx in our garden to a seascape-looking unfocused wet windshield to Summer’s Here to the dock’s being in to making sure that all of the shapes were represented.

Yep. I’m so glad I found the FaceBook post. Because it’s my only record of that almost-summer Sunday.

Seriously—it’s bizarre: none of my email accounts recorded me sending a mail that day, and there are no June 12th bank or credit card transactions. My call logs, text messages, and voicemails, all of which get backed up to the cloud, show nothing from June 12th. Worst of all, though, not only did my phone (and its pictures) choose to fly from my windy-day boating hand to the bottom of Squam Lake, but the hard drive containing my (un-backed-up) pictures crashed, irrecoverably. (I now use SugarSync. And/or DropBox. And you should too.)

So that’s a long-winded way of saying that I’m going to let this SquamLoonland 0 of 12 entry, that of June 12th 2011, serve as a placeholder. It’s the until-now-unwritten post that broke my stride.

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Placed here on Friday, 13 May 2011 by SquamLoon

12 of 12 for May 2011

I thought I’d switch things up this month by posting my 12 of 12 in video form.

(And I confirmed with myself that I should stick to photography from here on in.)

So without further ado (since none was warranted in the first place), here they are:

Twelve
Twelve-second videos
of the
Twelfth of May.

7:18am: Passing Meredith Bay on the morning commute

Read on… »

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Placed here on Tuesday, 3 May 2011 by SquamLoon

Misguided aspirations

While I’m not one to ramble on about my bodily functions on a regular basis, a couple of recent annoying and highly inconvenient incidents have left me perplexed, pondering, and philosophical.

On the evening of January 6th of this year, I was happily devouring my wife’s photo-worthy pork and pomegranate Pork and pomegranatedish below, when, at a particularly lively moment in the conversation, and not having yet swallowed my most recent bite, I believe I laughed.

Or perhaps gasped.

Whatever I did, it involved a deep inhale.

And it was immediately obvious that at least one of those scrumptious morsels had gone down the proverbial wrong way.

 

 

I’ll cut to the (first) chase, and spare the details of the coughing, spluttering, googling, and speculating that ensued that night, save to provide this illustration:

Speculative Googling

Scary googling notwithstanding, I was sleepless and still wheezing 10 hours later when I attempted to ignore my predicament and head off to work, where the school nurse muttered the phrase aspiration pneumonia and told me to go straight to the ER.

Read on… »

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