It’s The Most Wonderful Time . . .

. . . . of the year!

Yes, it’s back to school time. And you know what that means - it means keep me away from the stores! I have a hard time resisting those bright packages of pens and papers, the smell of plastic binders, and stick notes! Let’s not forget the stick notes.

Never mind that I have stacks of folders and binders in my supply cabinet at home. Forget the pile of stick notes (in various sizes and colours) sitting on my book case. Pay no attention to the unopened packages of mechanical pencils from two years ago. You never know when I might run out of something.

Take paper, for instance. You know that lined paper with the holes punched in it so you can use it in binders? Every year when it went on sale I’d scoop some up. My daughter can attest to the fact that I had such a stock pile when she started high school that she never had to buy paper - not through 4 years of highschool nor most of her 7 years of university.

I don’t know what it is about the back to school sales and me. But you should know, I also have to be watched carefully in Staples and the dollar store as well. Those stores have back to school the whole year round!

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Any astronomy buffs out there? Did you know that Aphelion, the point in Earth’s elliptical orbit when it is farthest from the sun, fell on July 4th this year? Just thought I’d throw that out there for you.

But speaking of the stars, I came across something really cool over the weekend. The Dunhuang Star Atlas. This ancient Chinese document is the oldest complete star atlas known, it dates to the years 649 to 684 and was discovered in 1907. The star positions in the hand drawn atlas were found to be accurate to within a few degrees.





Pretty amazing, eh?

You can find out more about it HERE.

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The air conditioning in our classroom wasn’t working today so they let us go early. Not the whole school, just our classroom. It was like a sauna in there. Even the ones usually complaining about how cold it is were stripping down as low as they dared go. Trust me, it wasn’t pretty.

Now, excuse me while I go hunt up some bleach for my eyes. :-)