topic: another day in boston

I found a park bench along the Charles River by Harvard, the sun was shining, and i closed my eyes and blindly ate my homemade pb&j sandwhich. oh yeah…i do many a thing that would look outright ridiculous to anyone who knew me. i enjoy doing things that just seem unnatural like that, just to see how it feels. the sun felt so good today, i began to flinch when my eyes opened, preferring to see nothing, and just feel the warmth.

i lied down on the bench, listening to the John butler Trio (oh so good), and slept for a bit. when i awoke, the world was still there.

i walked to harvard square, and ate another pb&j sandwhich. a street performer put on a blue concert for all who were patient enough to sit and listen.

read a few pages of a travel book…there’s an amazing travel book store in Harvard. Anyways…it talked about how people write, “and then i wandered for the afternoon…” and how a million things actually took place in just that small sentence. Writing tends to boil life down to extremes, when in reality, it’s comprised of every mundane instant. I watched one of my arm hairs blowing in the wind, almost dancing to the blues.

I’m a man of few words. I’ve realized that at times, I’m not a great conversationalist. I bet most people would have gone crazy w/ a day like mine, just sitting, not really interested in anything but the feeling of freedom and control that comes w/ a day alone in a new place.

I wandered into a music store, and had a desire to spend. I wanted to check out a Ben Harper DVD, there was also a few Noam Chomsky DVD’s that might’ve been interesting, and then some books in the genre of “the fucked up/crazy/… life,” like “Prozac Nation,” “Catcher in the Rye,” “Perks of Being a Wall Flower,” all the beat writers, books that I enjoy because they are so real, but I wasn’t in the mood to have some writer re-affirm how confusing and awkward life is. I need something a bit more real and upbeat.

Anyways…decided that spending $20 on a DVD would have made me happy up until tonight, but tom., I’d be happier w/ the $20 than the DVD which i wouldn’t watch for ages.

Anyone interested in learning about an interesting progressive school? Look-up the Big Picture Company and the Met School, which is a school w/ internships and projects vs. classes. I got a call today from one of their schools, I gave my book to the founder of the program and he had someone finally get in touch w/ me. Instead of being a teacher, you’re advise students w/ their projects. Only things is…you need to commit to 4 yrs., so you have the same kids through high school. Maybe down the road, but I told them that 4mos. is a big committment for me.

Stopped by the grad. school of education at Harvard, picked up a brochure, and then left. Realized i’m still looking for a way to apply my energy, but, it’s not worth me stabbing at so many different things, I need to work with where I’m at, which means, seeing what I can accomplish at Outward Bound.

Went out for Malaysian food w/ my friend here. Were wondering things like, “do they give fortune cookies?” “do they use soy sauce?” “how funny and ignorant would we be for askings?” I’m not exactly sure what I ordered, but I think it involved a sort of fried yam that was quite yummy.

Watched the end of “Do the Right Thing,” powerful movie.

Tom. I’m China Town bussing it back to NYC. $15…best price in town.

Did some reading about Outward Bound…it actually interests me to read about conflict/disagreement in the organization, such as disagreement in philosophy over how much an instructor should facilitate. Instructors tend to fall between “rock jocks” and “touchy feely” types. The open-nature of the question makes my views feel more legitimate. Some research has concluded that at the end of the day, students report the same positive experiences from all sorts of instruction. This is a good thing for a person like me to remember, since it’s easy to feel overwhelmed about not “covering everything,” when the reality tends to be, that the experience covers itself.

I also read a bit about the financial struggles of the org. and the question of staying true to philosophical roots vs. catering to a market. Ideally…the organization can market its roots, and sell its philosophy. Kurt Hahn, who founded Outward Bound, was very much a social critic, speaking out loudly against Nazi Germany, and had a list of societal ills. I think the PC nature of our society makes it difficult for the organization to tackle such problems. Otherwise…OB would have courses for students w/ obesity problems, drug problems (they market to adjudicated and “at-risk youth”), etc.

What makes OB an interesting org. to work for, is there’s so many angles to it. Some people are more holistic, some are more technical mountain people, some are educators, some counelors, some are medics. Essentially, an OB instructor must be a blend of all of these, but there are some interesting differences in what motivates people to work for OB.

g’night all, for anyone in nyc, drop me an e-mail, will be around till sun.

topic: some informal thoughts

First…I just found out the John Butler Trio, one of my new favorite bands, is playing tonight on the Late Show w/ David Letterman. for those of you w/ late bedtimes…i’d highly recommend watching!!!

Thanks Cheryl for the books to read. I think you’ve offered me some good advice about providing my students w/ some choices, but to give them freedom to choose, and to let them teach me what they want to learn, or perhaps, just what they want to do.

I also appreciated the comment about starting a travel company focussing on food culture. I’m entering a stage where i’m less about what i want to do, and how i wish the world looked, and more on, “how can i make some cash.” I think my career lies in working for an organization that takes people around so they experience culture.

I went to STA travel today, just to get some travel ideas, and they handed my friend and I travel brochures for guided tours. I said, “I won’t pay for someone to show me around when i can possibly get more out of a place myself, but I’d love to get paid showing others around.” So, yeah, i think moving into the travel profession is in the cards.

I walked around by Harvard all day today w/ my friend who is trying to be a musician/producer. He’s teaching himself lots of Dyland and Beatles, and practices hours a day getting his technique and theory down. Some of his music has been described as “conceptual art,” I kind of get what he’s saying, his music is full of lyrics about art, full of references to old movies and such. I don’t get what he does, but I get that he’s doing it. He’s a great guy to be around because we get along so well and have identical views about life, but have many different interests.

We also had an afternoon beer, 4pm on a Tuesday. I just realized that drinking a beer at 4pm on a Tuesday falls right in line w/ my vision for London Day, a national holiday where everyone drinks a beer on Tues. at 4pm. Cheers!

My friend and I have been discussing travelling this fall. First Hawaii, I liked Central and South America, and today we toyed w/ Europe. Sure…I’ve been to Europe, sure, it’s not the cheapest continent, but there’s still pleanty of reasons for us to go there and explore. We liked the idea of walking slowly through France, see Cinque Terra in Italy. That would be great…since I didn’t get to see that when I was abroad, and I’d hate to feel like Europe was “closed,” just because I’ve already been there. Maybe we’d rent a car, find random jobs or girls to live with!!! Oh…the mind is racing.

Topic: new thoughts

So…I just went for this 30min. run/walk, and really enjoyed the time to be alone and think.  But, as I’ve come to accept, my mind thought and thought in circles, aimless, leading to nothing in particular.  At points, this brought memories and smiles to mind, at other times, the wandering of my mind led me to less than smiles.  The thought that hit me was how my memory often fails me.  After 30min. of thinking and pondering and remembering, I returned to my home, and the intensity of those 30min. simply vanished, and faded away.

The temporariness of so much of life tugs at me.  When old friends and places seem like strangers, life tugs at me.  But that tugging, too, is only temporary.

I am back home on Long Island, and I haven’t felt so happy at home in a while.  After a long day of travelling, driving about 2-3 hrs. to Trenton, NJ., another 80min. train ride to Penn Station, and 40min. to my town on Long Island, my mom was there to pick me up.  If a list existed for everytime my mom picked me up, it would be a long long list.

When I got home, we headed straight for the kitchen.  My mom decided to cook up a storm this past week.  Fresh blueberry muffins, the recipe clipping from the newspaper by its side.  For dinner, meat loaf, baked potatoes, and asparagus cooked on olives oil, with some salt and pepper.  “It’s better than boiling them,” my mom explained.  I then helped my mom make some meatballs for later in the week, adding soy sauce and rice in place of the cornflakes as she normally does.  For the sauce, she heated up a can of cranberry sauce, a bottle of chili sauce, and some brown sugar.  Once that was ready, she put the meatballs in the sauce.  Later, she would pour the sauce into its own container and freeze it.  The fat would then rise to the top and be skimmed off.

Today, my mom went to the city to see a show, leaving me to hang out with the pops today.  My dad has been fixing up parts of the house, and today he was working on painting the kitchen and tv room, and left me to sand and re-finish the kitchen table.  He showed me the various sand papers he had, which aren’t actually made of sand anymore “except for the really cheap kinds.”  We took turns scrubbing off the dirt that had soaked into the wood.  To be honest, I thought the wood color was completely natural and couldn’t detect that it was in fact “dirty,” but after sanding, I saw the natural oak color come out.  After vacuuming the table and myself, we added a thin coat of polyurethene, an enamel that will seal in the wood.  Right now, the first layer is drying.  Soon…we’ll sand it, and add a second coat, and perhaps later, a 3rd.  My dad explained how true carpenters would repeat the process as many as 10 times, which he’s done before when finishing the stocks of his rifles (my dad is a target shooter).  All the while, we had some classical music playing.  One song brought back a memory of when I played the french horn in high school.  The horn still sits in the basement…it tugs at me a bit that I played that instrument for so long, and now that part of my life is virtually forgotten, except when I pick out the horn sound from a classical song.

My parents are simple people, and so am I.  Perhaps my experiences over the past 3-weeks of having my days filled from rise till sleep, has made me appreciate their lifestyles.  Cooking, cleaning, reading, taking in a movie on tv (we watched O Brother where art thou? last night).  As I’ve recently fallen into a state of psuedo-happiness, where I’ve been living in the past and thinking of the future, while feeling like the present wan’t 100% right, I realized that the same lifestyle that has at times tormented me, is now a welcoming one.

At Outward Bound, one of the things we teach and pracitce is giving feedback to others.  It’s an uplifting experience to hear others say positive things about you, and to give you constructive feedback as well.  It’s also a strange feeling to really hear what people observe and think about you.

Now that I’ve finished staff training, I’m going to start focussing on personal and professional goals.  I’ve put my personal goals on hold for a while, mostly because I’ve been uncertain about what sort of goals were appropriate.  It turned out, getting back to work was priority #1, and now that I feel like a person again, and now that I’m back within an organization that is aligned w/ my personal mission, I think it’s a good time to start thinking about my goals.

Ultimately…I need to start to figure out what I can do as a career.  This doesn’t mean figuring out what I’m going ot be doing for the rest of my life, and it doesn’t mean giving up on the idea of living abroad, travelling, being adventurous, and having extended periods of personal explorations.  It does mean coming up w/ a plan for how I can bring in a comfortable amount of income, and a plan for finding the type of work that will be most aligned to my unique talents and interests. 

I have two sisters.  One loves to travel.  The other is very into fitness, health, and cooking.  I’d love to blend all our interests and create a company one day…that’d be interesting. 

I’ve become good friends w/ a staff member who is also a ”Dead Head.”  I don’t think I’ve met a person who has more life stories, about hitching, festivals, and some past experiences involving drugs.  One story I love involves him hitching to the Bonaroo music festival in Tn., w/out a ticket.  He arrived, and while cars were in traffic, walked around handing out free watermelon, and holding up his index finger.  “The miracle finger,” he called it, letting me into the Dead Head world of praying for a miracle ticket.  After a while, one car took some watermelon, and said, “We drove from Seattle, and our friend couldn’t make it, but said to give their extra ticket to someone who had the finger up.” 

Another staff member is a pop culture encyclopedia, and introduced me to the term, “post-modernism.”  I’ve come across lots of ideas in books and the internet, but it’s a whole other world when you come across a person one-on-one to share ideas with.  I’ve never used or heard the word post-modern, although I feel as though it’s something I should have learned in college.  Anyways…my friend mostly discussed it in terms of art and thought, and I was struck by two things.  First…how artists actually get together to define what is post-modern art, and will then use that subjective standard in an objective god-like way to scorn and ridicule those who try to pass off their art as post-modern.  The second is how my personal philosopy of all things being relative, being a big part of post-modern thought.  I think that reminded me of why I never heard of post-modernism in college, because it’s mostly a subjective term created by intellectuals/academics, that could be related to me personally, but is mostly withheld for the academic realm. 

Here’s a list of things I hope to learn/gain exposure to:

post-modernism
the art of Salvador Dali (featured at the Philly art museum)
new recipes (to use on the trail)

Time to finish off the table and eat some more blueberry muffins….home is good.

3-week staff training has come to an end.
Spent last 3-days hiking parts of the Appalachain Trail.
Spent 2-days hiking the city of philly.
lots of freezing cold evenings and mornings
sleeping people packed together IS a great way to stay warm at night
love the staff i’m working with.
pretty mentally drained…looking forward to a week back in nyc again.
not to long till it’s instruction time again
feeling good overall

gone camping….

Topic: Ready for print

Well…I’ll admit, I haven’t had difficulty writing an article on education in a while.  But…I was trying to tackle a new angle, less personal venting.  A bit more abstract, but still trying to push people in the direction of contemplation, and ultimately, I would hope, action.  Well…here she is:

Lateral Thinking – A Laxative for the Constipated Mind

            I’m staring at the blinking dash on the screen, indicating, “keep typing you son-of-a-bitch.”  Writers block, or rather, writers flood?  Scratch that… “thinkers flood.”  We’re thinkers first; writing is just an extension of the mind.

A friend of mine once commented on how my writing had improved since college.  Strange I thought, considering I hadn’t benefited from any writing classes since college, the workshops, or the red pen.  I don’t believe my knowledge of writing, or my writing “skills” have actually changed since college.  What has changed, however, is my thinking, which is therefore reflected in my writing.

I have discovered (a personal discovery that may not apply to any world outside of my own), that there are no rules to writing.  No rules to thinking.  There’s only tools and strategies with different goals in mind.  For example, we’re taught tools of logic, of emotional persuasion, of structure and organization, and above all, we’re always reminded to consider our audience.  For example, as students, we often insert a student voice to appeal to a professor’s ears.  As academics, we tend to focus on data and technical language, removing our personal lives and experiences from the equation.  In this sense, while college provides us with certain tools, we sacrifice freedom in both our thinking and writing in the process.  We build a bubble in the mind. 

            In my last article, “Washington University: In St. Louis, or an island of its own?” I noted how several national organizations that study higher education have revealed disconnect between what colleges teach, and what students need for their lives.  These organizations affirmed the general feelings amongst students nationwide, that college is often a collection of disjointed classes that tally up to a diploma.  Only on a small scale have they begun to address the missing connection between higher education and its relationship to the community.  While simultaneously preaching the need for higher education because of what students are learning, and the urgent need for reform because of what they’re not, the leaders in higher education fail to make the blunt conclusion, that colleges are bubbles to the real world. 

            It’s this idea of the bubble that we’re after.  But, what does it mean, really?  Perhaps we can better understand the bubble by considering its opposite, “a bubble burst.”  After bursting the college bubble, we’re flooded with concepts like “thinking outside the box,” or “lateral thinking.”  These are the ideas I want to explore. 

            Born in Malta in 1933, Edward de Bono is credited with coining the term lateral thinking.  With a background in psychology and physiology, he has written extensively about deliberate thinking tools that can be used to actively produce creativity in people.  As an applied psychologist, his interests include the numerous human and political problems our societies face, however he is less interested in their causes than our inability, or perhaps our unwillingness, to question the primary assumptions in any given situation, thus freeing ourselves to think our way through problems with lateral thinking. 

            De Bono explains how lateral thinking is necessary to provide something our society has generally lacked – a method for changing ideas.  Articles upon articles have been written addressing various problems regarding the college bubble.  I’ve been responsible for many of them.  Ultimately, the failure of these articles to be more than food for thought, demonstrates another bubble.  The bubble of being a critic.  The essence of being a critic is not in the criticism, but in the desire for the criticism to go away.  For example, I was told a story of a young girl who volunteered one day in a soup kitchen.  She enjoyed the experience very much, and remarked, “I hope there are still soup kitchens to volunteer in when I have kids.”  Obviously this young girl did not mean she wanted there to be a perpetual need for soup kitchens, but this example reflects the need for lateral thinking to address the numerous sicknesses of our modern society.  It’s not enough to change minds, if the writing on the page always looks the same. 

               As Edward de Bono once wrote, we can use lateral thinking as a laxative for those who have constipated minds that they wish to free.  We have plenty of meaty ideas to chew on, what we now need is the fiber to loosen those ideas from dogma and rigidity.  Or, to propose a de Bono-esque slogan that expresses the need for lateral thinking:

A lot of ideas doesn’t mean shit.

So, let me offer something new, something lateral.  For the many out there who I know want to discuss this, I believe a solution may lie for us in the internet.  Blogging may be the key to bursting through all sorts of bubbles, and addressing all sorts of problems.  Thanks to the internet and weblogs, we have a whole new way of collectively addressing these issues.  We can quite literally read minds, having conversations with people we’ve never spoken to and tapping into their ideas.  We can build relationships with strangers, post thoughts on a whim, and have an audience that comes and goes as it needs, but keeps a continuous conversation going. 

            to add some fiber to this conversation, visit: www.xanga.com/abetterwashu

Dan Lilienthal

Class of 2003

topic: my constipated mind

I’m working on an article…the upcoming Polical Review paper at Wash U. has the theme “welcome to the bubble” apparently inspired by my last article.  Just when i think…I’ve gotten no feedback, so i’m gonna drop worrying about it, I get the positive feedback, and a 24hr. deadline to write.  so i’m scrambling now, but I’m trying to find a tone, more than a topic.  something inspiring and informative is usually my thing, but i’m not feeling very informative.  here’s what i’ve scratched together.

I’m only about 5-10min. from the Rocky steps of the Philly art museum, gonna wander for the afternoon, find a nice coffee shop or something to doze off in, and come back to finish this tonight:

Lateral Thinking – A Laxative for the Constipated Mind

            I’m staring at the blinking dash on the screen, indicating, “keep typing you son-of-a-bitch.”  Writers block, or rather, writers flood.  Scratch that… “thinkers flood.”  We’re thinkers first, writers second.

            A friend of mine once commented on how my writing had improved since college.  Strange, considering I haven’t taken any writing classes since college, since I haven’t had the benefits of workshops, or the red pen to aid my writing.  My “writing skills” actually have not changed since college.  My thinking has changed, in two important ways.

            The first is I’ve discovered (a personal discovery that may not apply to any world outside of my own), that there are no rules to writing.  No rules to thinking.  There’s only tools and strategies with different goals in mind.  The biggest strategy we’re taught in school is to consider our audience.  Think about this…as a student, how often do we insert a student voice to appeal to a professor’s ears?  With a limited audience, we limit both our thinking and writing.  We build a bubble.

            After truly recognizing the anguish caused when students have been bubblized, I came across its alleviant, known as “lateral thinking,” also referred to as thinking outside the box.  Perhaps “bursting the bubble,” is a more proper metaphor here.  Edward de Bono, who coined the term lateral thinking, has written extensively about the numerous political problems our society faces, however, he is less interested in their causes than our inability to think our way through them.  His work addressed our inability as a society, or perhaps our unwillingness, to re-think some of our basic assumptions and to recognize the need for new solutions to timeless problems. 

            In my last article, I noted how several national organizations that study higher education have revealed a disconnect between what colleges teach, and what students need for their lives.  These organizations acknowledged the general feelings amongst students nationwide that college is merely a collection of disjointed classes that tally up to a diploma.  What they failed to conclude, but is fairly evident, is that colleges do not teach students how to solve real-world problems.       

            What do we mean when we speak of the Wash U bubble?  What is the real value behind this phrase, and its connotation of “not goodness.”  The way I see it, having had nearly two years to reflect on my four inside the bubble, is that the physical and cultural environment of college imposes boundaries on how we think and perceive things.  For example, I’ll share some of my own experience, which does not apply to all, but many indicators reveal mine to be a generalized experience.

            Thanks to the internet and weblogs, we have a whole new way of collectively alleviating our mental constipation.  We also have a new way of addressing the problems the de Bono aptly described as “mental masturbation,” that occurs inside the college bubble.     

Topic: Things I miss about college…damn nostalgia!!!

I miss that you can make the news for throwing too big a party
I miss that wearing your school sweatshirt gives you a sense of pride (would you ever wear a shirt w/ your company’s name on it?)
I miss the idea of picking a place to call home for 4 years, and knowing that thousands of people exactly your age are doing the same thing, and many will be choosing the same home
I miss the shared experience of drinking at 4pm happy hours on Thursday afternoons
I miss looking through the course catalog for days, because I can’t decide what I want to take, and making a college schedule is both an artform, and the most freedom you’ll ever have in planning your working life
I miss the idea of being in the planning stage of your life
I miss the feeling of “responsibility and adulthood,” that college brings, as well as the feeling of complete childishness and play
I miss Center Court (our dining hall) and their all you can eat meals, especially weekend brunches
I miss sitting in the quad comprising my day
I miss the possibility of romancing w/ a girl on virtually any given weekend
I miss playing raquetball in the AC, basketball on the South 40, and frisbee in the swamp
I miss the identity that comes with “being in college” and “being a Wash U student”
I miss spending all my time with friends who are now scattered across the country

Topic: when poetry hits you

So…we did a 2-day canoe training on the Potamic River in Western Maryland, alongside the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.  The first day was long, awake at 4:45am, loading vans, loading canoes w/ my favorite knot, trucker’s hitches (also known as z-drags), a 2 1/2hr. van ride, practice teaching lessons on canoeing, paddlying 8 miles, having a floating lunch of pita and hummus, setting up camp.

After dinner, as it was then dark and growing cold even while wearing about 5 non-cotton layers on top, 3 on bottom, we had a traditional Outward Bound evening meeting.  This involved debriefing or discussing the day, planning for the next day, and other assorted things.

We were fortunate to have a veteran instructor, named Tom, in our group of 16 other instructors.  Tom is about 72 years old, but when the spotlight is on him, a youthful energy comes out.  On this particular evening, he decided to receite the following poem, (which I just looked up thanks to the internet that i dearly love), from memory:

The Call of the Wild

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on,
    Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
    Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
    Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God’s sake go and do it;
    Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
    The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
    And learned to know the desert’s little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o’er the ranges,
    Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
    Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
    (Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
    Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map’s void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
    Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
    Then hearken to the Wild — it’s wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
    Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
“Done things” just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
    Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
    (You’ll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things –
    Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
    They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching –
    But can’t you hear the Wild? — it’s calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
    Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,
    And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.

Topic: quick hi

One day this week, some of the people I’m working w/ were having a conversation about language.  Palandrome, Onamatapia, Abbreviations…we were talking about all these words that describe other words when, here’s how part of the conversation went 

Me: “Wow…there’s really a lot of words that describe other words,”

Co-worker: “You mean adjectives?”

Me: “Hmmm…that was ironic.”

That might have been a “had to be there” moment, but it was quite hilarious.

Anyways…i haven’t written in a week.  I want to write about all the things i’ve done, thoughts, etc., but right now I just want to say hi.  I feel like when I don’t post…i’m leaving one of my lives behind.  I just got an e-mail to write another article for my school’s political paper…apparently there was some postiive verbal responses to my last one.  It’s tough to not be there, to not have consistent feedback, to begin something, and then set it aside.  You know what…enough mental blubbery:

So…I just arrived at the Outward Bound Philadelphia office, we finished 2 weeks of training now, spent the last 2 days canoeing on the Patomic River, warm days, freezing my nuts off nights and mornings.  Overall…a lot of fun, and good times bonding w/ the other staff.

This week is our last week of training, and it’s our urban training.  I think this will excite me the most, because we’ll be exploring a civilized environment, and are basically free to come up w/ anything to do that might be educational.  Exciting!

Oh…and I finally shared a personal “trick” that I’ve been doing for years I think, w/out really acknowledging or knowing that it was anything at all.  I have an ability to unscramble words and put the letters in the word in alphabetical order in a shockingly quick way. 

ex) I’m going to type radom words and immedicately type the letters unscrambled 

dolphin – dhilnop
leopard – adelopr
donkey – deknoy
wonderful – deflnruw

Kind of a weird autistic thing, I think, I literally unscrameble the letters in my head as fast as I acn epty ehmt.  Deirw!!!