Dinos + A Long Weekend

Since December, we've been working on dinosaurs at school. It's totally fun, we're reading lots of interesting books about it and studying extinction theories, jobs that go with prehistoric study, and all kinds of cool stuff.


Naturally, I'm doing a lot of research on my own so that I can adequately teach the material.



Also naturally, this is totally awesome.



For example, did you know that there are actual dinosaur mummies where the skin and scales fossilized along with the bones, so we can get a real understand of what their skin was like?



And did you know that if you buy the whole Pangaea theory (the idea that at one point in time the continents were all connected and over time they split apart, and water shifted to finally create the continents and bodies of water we know now) then there's this really interesting theory that dinosaurs carried diseases to one another? The idea concludes that, much like Native Americans were decimated by European diseases, dinosaurs were wiped out by varying germs. Fascinating, right?



Yeah. I'm a nerd. Is anyone still actually surprised by this information?



On another note, I had a lovely, long, three-day weekend this week. We had off for MLK Day today, and we slept late, took Lily to the pet store, and went to the Philly auto show. The only downside is a nagging case of sinus pressure. I'm not surprised--we have so many bugs going through school, viruses that are knocking out veteran teachers, that I was fully expecting to get sick at some point this spring.


That being said, these sinus colds are really getting old. I mean, I know I should be grateful to not have the flu or some such horrible illness where I'm puking my guts out every 45 minutes....but I'm not.



Go figure.



See, these sinus things wear me out and make me so miserable (I get the whole pressure+sneezing+watery eyes+headaches shebang) that it's utter torture to focus on anything, never mind running a class of 19 students (I know, I'm such a trooper, aren't I?). I would almost rather get something legit so I can call out of work and feel justified lying around like a mopey baby.



As it is, I just feel guilty. And sick.



But at least I'm not puking!