So, what do I do when I am not traveling or teaching? Ron and I run a charity Bingo game on Tuesday nights at our mobile home park. The Bingo makes money for Guide Dogs of America. Besides our weekly Bingo, twice a year, we put on a Special Bingo Party. We just had out Summer Bingo. We not only have the Bingo games, but we cook lunch and dessert for 110 people. We think about the menu for six months! What will be great to eat and possible to cook. This year, we had Drip Beef Sandwiches (Pioneer Woman recipe) along with potato salad and grapes. Our team of six people prepped all of the food and Ron cooked 10 chuck roasts (5 hours each) all week. The sandwiches were great.


The desserts were from an Ina Garten recipe, Chocolate Mocha Ice Box Cakes, made into individual servings. They looked good and tasted even better… small, but rich. The whole day went very well and everyone had a good time as wel helped a very good cause.

As usual, I get to spend my summer traveling and teaching AP chemistry teachers in week-long summer workshops. I have met a lot of wonderful teachers and get to learn as well as teach. These summer weeks are very rewarding.

I flew into the Vancouver airport and was impressed with the beautiful design and native art. We had to go through customs, but much of the work is done at a kiosk now, so the process was painless. I took a long cab ride to my hotel. I’m in West Vancouver on the North Shore to work with a nice group of AP chemistry teachers at an APSI (Advanced Placement Summer Institute). From my hotel window I have a wonderful view of the water and across the water I can see the “five sails” building where cruise ships are loading up and unloading… probably for the Alaskan cruises. The hotel is close to some shops on the Quay. One shop sells VERY fresh fish. I also had an opportunity to eat Cheese Crunchies, a local snack. They are like cheese curls but with more crunch. Yum.

We are picked up at the hotel by a school bus. I had a great first day at the APSI and came back to the Lonsdale Quay Market where I saw these beautiful rainbow roses and had a delicious fish and chips dinner. After that it was back to the room to work on my UCLA Online course and make this post.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We visited Theatricum Botanicum, an outdoor theater in the hills above Topanga Canyon about 40 minutes from our home, west of Los Angeles. We saw a nice production of the Shakespeare play. This theater was built on land owned by Will Geer, best known as Grandpa on The Waltons.

Day 7 of the AP Chemistry Reading and we are finished! Figuring the number of tests with seven questions on each exam, as a group we scored 1,117,592 questions over the past seven days!!!

The exams are packed and probably on their way back to ETS in New Jersey already. Our fearless leader, Roger Kugel, has finished his four year stint as Chief Reader and will be able to relax a little more. He is holding a silver engraved beer stein as a token of our esteem. Roger is calm, a good listener, and a very hard worker. He made the job of Chief Reader look easy when we all know it is not.

As a Question Leader, I have been here in Salt Lake City for several days before the Reading began (12 days total), so it will be great to get back home with the feeling of a job well done on a task worth doing. Students will never know how hard we work to make sure that they are credited with every point they earned on the Advanced Placement chemistry exams.