Sunday, August 28, 2011

Catching Up

Clearly school is back in session. After a week of meetings and a week of classes, I'm beat. Things are going well though, and I'm feeling very positive about the year. I have one section of AP and three sections of freshmen. We're trying lots of new teaching ideas in both classes including flipping classrooms. It's a pretty cool idea where you do activities in class and send kids home with videos to watch as replacements to lectures. So far, the response from the kids has been great.

On the home front, I didn't see my husband at all this week. I forget what was going on Monday, but he worked late on Tuesday, Wednesday he didn't make it home until midnight after working an auction, Thursday I stayed home with our crazy dogs while he went to an art opening, and Friday I went to a dinner with my mom who is in town while he was at the baseball game. We did go to dinner last night finally, so it was great to hang with him. :)

Speaking of last night's dinner, we tried Sancutaria for the first time. It is located in The Grove. Our table was on the patio, and I'm so glad it was! The space is beautiful and last night's weather was perfect. I have to say that the food was amazing. We had plantains two ways, eggplant, these amazing cheese cigars, and some lovely desserts. It was a little pricey, but not totally insane. We also clearly splurged. It would have been easy to eat for less. All that being said, I don't know that we'd go back unless we knew the weather was good for sitting outside. The service was really pretty bad. It got better as the night went on, but the beginning made us all wonder if we had made a big mistake. Like I said though, if the weather was nice, the food was good enough for me to give them another try.

Our plan for today is to have brunch at Salt and then go to the closing of Urban Wanderers at the SLU Art Museum. I hope I can find time to blog about brunch. I love their dinner menu and have been eagerly waiting to try their brunch.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Book Review

I've been reading a ton this summer, but a friend requested that I review one of my recent reads: Uglies by, Scott Westerfeld.



I didn't realize when I started reading this book that it was part of a trilogy. The story takes place in the future, after there was a huge catastrophe, and every person is forced to go through cosmetic surgery to make them "pretty." The surgery is supposed to take place on a person's 16th birthday. As you can probably guess, something goes wrong with the main character and her surgery. The rest of the book follows Tally as she moves through not being pretty.

It's funny, my friend who is a librarian at school kept recommending the book to me when he found out I liked the Hunger Games trilogy. For some reason, I never took the book though. I'm so glad he took it upon himself to add it to my pile for the summer. Now I have to see if they have the second two books: Pretties and Specials. I would say if you liked the Hunger Games, you would like this book too. I'll be interested to see if the next books are as good as the first.

ETA: Here is the official teaser.
Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. Not for her license -- for turning pretty. In Tally's world, your sixteenth birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent ugly into a stunningly attractive pretty and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is to have a really great time. In just a few weeks Tally will be there.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to be pretty. She'd rather risk life on the outside. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world -- and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally the worst choice she can imagine: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. The choice Tally makes changes her world forever.