Miso Soup, Sticky Heat, Millions of PowerPoints

1. I have finally learned how to make miso soup. It is much simpler than expected, and the ingredient list is not terribly daunting. Bonito flakes, though, are a smelly beast.

2. Jesus H. Christ, the weather. It was awesome for a few days -- in the 80s, not sticky, all that happy jazz -- and now we've got almost DC-like humidity and blazing sun. I got sunburned walking across a parking lot. It's not a long walk.

3. Tutoring is going. There's a lot of prep work for the first students, but then kids of similar ability levels are pretty easy to deal with. The problem is the very high and very low level kids -- they require their own, super-crazy-uber customized lessons, which involves a lot of guessing and a lot of playing with slides and examples.

Also, pet peeve: if your kid has a highly detailed IEP (special ed documentation on how to effectively teach the kid), WHY would you not allow the people tutoring your child to see it? Oh, nevermind, it makes sense: the teachers teach your child, while tutors sit there smiling benignly at your child and not doing anything involving the learning process. Hmm. Actually, that's pretty goddamned stupid. Oh well. I get paid whether or not the parent feels like sharing the information that would give me a shot at preparing a lesson their kid could actually benefit from. Still, slowly but surely I'm getting the sinking suspicion that parents do not actually care if their kids get anything out of tutoring, and just want to brag to their friends that they spent money to get "the best I can find for my baby."