A post of mine escaped containment and now there are a bunch of new folks here who are fans of turtles, snarky alt-text, or both. If you're here for the Diamondback Terrapin, just scroll down the feed a bit, there's plenty of her. (1/x)

Megatron, hunter of minnows, destroyer of food pellets, absolute drama queen, is 144 grams today. 42 days until she is released back to her native waters in the Chesapeake Bay.

I never want to see anyone get shot, and I’m glad no one did, but I’ve been doing “dive under the desk” school shooter training with my students for ~15 years, and maybe having to hide under a table a few times will give these folks some idea of the world the rest of us are living in.

Tea and Leaf would be a used book store and tea shop with properly brewed tea and delicious baked goods.

ALL YOU FASCISTS (Bound to Lose) Bette Midler with Barbara Hershey. 02:30

We did a sensory project today as part of autism awareness and acceptance week. The only reason my classroom is not still covered in glitter and food coloring is that you can bribe middle school students with lollipops. I probably shouldn't be bribing children with candy. I am not going to stop

I drive a Prius. I've never tried to drive it in sand, but I have driven it through muddy fields and up essentially unmaintained mountain roads in West Virginia, and it's been a champ. All of which to say, there's no excuse for a truck to be this bad at truck things.

"Ms. G, how do you memorize all that?" "I don't memorize it. I know it." #edusky #middleschool

Three run homers are my favorite.

Megatron the Diamondback Terrapin weighed 8 grams when she first came to our classroom in October. She weighs 130 grams today. She's seven weeks and one day away from being released back to the Chesapeake Bay.

How long does it take Megatron to catch a fish? Less time than it takes me to get the bag open. (Video shows footage of a Diamondback Terrapin catching and eating a live fish.)

Told my teenager a couple of stores about my day today. His response was "You have to get a different job." I'm case you were wondering how school is going.

One of the most basic of classroom experiments, but it looks cool. Provides an opportunity to talk about the properties of water, the structure of plants, and the water cycle. Would love to do this with white flowers, one per student, but that's $$$

I like statistics, but I'm not great at keeping them in my head. What I love about baseball is the stories. I wrote this eleven years ago. All the faces have changed, but it's still the reason baseball is great. www.camdenchat.com/post/FEPf1Q2...

Good www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

He's not an Everyman who just tells it like it is. He's not rough around the edges with a heart of gold. He's showing us that he's not ready to approach the needs of people different from him with thought or compassion. He shouldn't go to jail, but he shouldn't go to Congress either.

Today Megatron begins training for her return to the Chesapeake Bay by hunting live prey. As you can see she was eager for me to stop taking pictures and dump the fish in the tank. Her first hunt was wildly successful and she'll be getting more fish every Monday.

Somebody tell all those "center right" folks who "didn't vote for this" that you can just punt the crazy men to the curb. www.reuters.com/world/hungar...

Huh, that's weird. Pablo Manríquez, of the tiny news outlet @migrantinsider.bsky.social, published an excellent story naming Nilufar Yasmin, the woman who was killed, with many details on what happened. @pabloreports.bsky.social scooped all of these major outfits!

Any day on a field trip is better than a day in the building, but this field trip is my favorite. We plant wild rice, explore native woods, eat lunch outside and finish up with a visit to the farm to see the heritage breeds. www.accokeek.org

In theory I like incense. But in practice it makes me nauseous and headachy. I walked out of Easter Vigil last night, which was a bummer because I love Vigil. #TEC

A cool find at Bethany Beach Books this evening. Most books about local foodways are collections from community cookbooks. This appears to be a properly researched history with recipes, from the indigenous people of the region, through colonizing and the slave trade up to Latin American immigration.

I have a theory that you could build an entire elementary school curriculum around the question of which cultures are which carbohydrates and why. Study their soils, the botany of the plants, the native food webs, the trade history, the stories: math, reading, science, art, music, social studies.

Jim Palmer's hatred of umpires remains undefeated.

Mr Moon, Mr Moon you're out too soon, the Sun is still in the sky. Go back to your bed and cover up your head and wait till the day goes by.

A good day to watch some baseball. Delmarva Shorebirds vs the Chesapeake Baysox. Both are Orioles affiliates so I'm rooting for everyone to have a good time.

An excellent morning to take the dog to the beach.

We read primary sources in my tenth grade American history class. Parts of them were reprinted in our our textbooks. It's just so basic. Of course this person thinks he invented it. Also, primary sources are famously biased and you still have to understand context.

I am 40 minutes away from Spring Break and I think there's a time distortion in my classroom. Everything is moving at normal speed except for the clock.

It's measuring day! No weight gain this week, but growth on all other measurements so look forward to big gains next time.

Kitty cat timeline cleanse

More than a year ago I told a student she should start carrying her passport with her all of the time. I wondered then if was being a little bit overdramatic. I was not.

I had an agent fuss at me for not having my teenage son step up to the podium with me. So on the return flight I made him come stand next to me and a different agent fussed at me to send him back. "No one is going to kidnap him." I don't really care what the rules are, I just want some consistency.

"In secular society, as in many religions, the willingness to share sustenance freely, even if one has little, is a test. Those who turn others away are in trouble, even if the visitor does not turn out to be a deity in disguise." ~Miss Manners

I sat down and wrote a rough draft. Is it terrible, maudlin, pretentious, boring, or somehow all of those? Probably. But it's written. I'll look at it again tomorrow.

You know you're in a nerdy audience when you have a collective grumble about the unbalanced centrifuge in the science fiction movie.

Sometimes you have to stick a pin in the curriculum and build paper-copters. We were originally supposed to be out today for Eid but we had a lot of snow days to make up. I'm not even supposed to be here today. #edusky #stem #middleschool

Exhibit A: all of the trash left over after I installed the new screen protector on my cell phone, mostly plastic Exhibit B: the label on the box claiming it is eco-friendly packaging and telling me to recycle.

Like many American school children I was trained to sell these for just one dollar. The bars got smaller and smaller over the years, and now the price has increased. Are we blaming tariffs, climate change, inflation, or all of the above?

Tiny Baby Terrapin weigh in day! Megatron weighs 80 grams, ten times her hatchling weight.

Everyone thinks they're Elizabeth Bennett, but I know I'm Mr. Bennett who ". . . though dilatory in undertaking business, he was quick in its execution."

Sometimes I preorder a book and forget I did it until it appears on my doorstep like a present from my past self.

Gen Z men are more regressive than Boomers. That's not great news. www.kcl.ac.uk/news/almost-...

I joke with my students a lot about how old I am. Today, in the midst of that joking, a student asked "if we set you on fire would we get fossil fuels?" I'm not even mad about it.

Tiny Baby Terrapin weigh in day! Megatron grew 3mm longer and gained 9 grams!

Husband bought me a dozen roses the week after Valentine's Day and they've held up surprisingly well. I trimmed the bottoms and refreshed the water over the weekend and two of them ended up on the compost, but it still looks pretty on the table.

Daylight saving time is stupid and I hate it.

Tiny Baby Terrapin weigh in day! 60 grams, up 4 grams from last week, and almost 2mm longer.

If your remote employees aren't doing their jobs, that's management issue, not a remote work issue.

There are fewer wild rice seedlings this morning than when I left on Friday. The building definitely has mice. Odds that the mice are eating them? How to keep the mice out? It's a metal rack open on all sides. #garden #mice #plants