The children were eventually rescued by, oh, let’s say Moe.

Above is my favourite ending ever to a Simpsons’ episode. Can you tell how I’ve been spending my lingering moments of my holidays? (I haven’t been that bad… I just had a mini season 9 DVD marathon with my Dad.)

Tomorrow I’m taking the train back to Toronto so I can relax for one last weekend before going back to work. Since the weather’s been so incredibly mild, I’ve been feeling more like I’m on March Break as opposed to Christmas holidays. On Wednesday, I drove to Kitchener-Waterloo to spend some time with friends. As I was driving, I had to take off my wool coat and toss it in the back. I wished I had my sunglasses with me. I also had to shout “Yay Spring Break!” (a la Millhouse Van Houten) a couple of times to amuse myself.

I’ve read a lot this past week. I’ve almost read all of my Christmas books that I got as gifts. First was “The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette” by Carolly Erickson. It was okay. My dad seemed to like it more than I did (he always reads my books before giving them to me. He claims he’s “testing” them). I was hoping for more detail on her life when she moved to France; Sophia Coppolla’s movie has a lot about that period, and for some reason, I find it more fascinating than her later life during times of political strife.

My second book was “The Last Days of Dogtown” by Anita Diamant. I really recommend it. It’s about a dying village inhabited by spinsters, whores, and other castoffs, in Massachusetts in the early 1800s. It’s very well done and made me cry in parts. (Books always get points for making me cry – unless I feel that I’ve been manipulated. Then they lose points.)

Third on my list was “Lullabies for Little Criminals” by Heather O’Neill. This book was chosen by John K Samson (of my favourite band on earth – The Weakerthans) for CBC Radio’s 2007 Canada Reads. I really enjoyed it overall, although it was definitely disturbing in parts. The book deals with a 12/13 year old girl who has been raised by her very young heroin-addicted negligent father. She ends up spiraling into drugs and prostitution; it was the prostitution part that was really hard to read about. However, the book was definitely a gripping read. I want to read the rest of the Canada Reads selections so that perhaps I can download the podcasts and be really into the whole thing.

Right now I’m reading my last book, “Teacher Man” by Frank McCourt. It’s his memoirs about his years teaching high school English in New York City. There are some parts I really relate to, and it’s probably good that I left it for last, in that it’s getting me back into the teaching mindframe. When he describes his teaching, he mentions how the students would get him off-track quite a bit by asking him to tell stories about his childhood in Ireland. This reminds me so much of a high school geography teacher that I had (right now all of my high school friends who are reading this are chuckling and remembering about how we called his class “colouring class”). He used to tell these stories about this “crazy” high school in Scarborough that he used to teach at. It turned out that my first practice teaching assignment was at that school, and either he exaggerated a lot, or the school had turned over a new leaf by the time I got there.

Hmmm, when I sat down to write this post, I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about, but it looks like it’s become a book review post. I love when my brain seems to pick a blogging topic on its own, and I feel like I’ve done very little thinking in the process.

Oh, and happy weekend to all!