tales from the crypt

last night i watched tim burton's "corpse bride". it was a little freaky, even though it was animation. but then again, all his movies are very macabre. i realized that i don't necessarily like the plot or characters or things like that in his stop-action animation movies. i just really like looking at his movies. i love seeing his style of animation and how weird, dark, and sinister everything is. i think part of it is how nothing in his movies ever has any texture. i also like how bizarre all the characters look. they are always physical extremes. my favorites are the people who have ridiculously thing limbs.

anyway, i'm at school now. it was a half-day, but because i took last friday off, i'm working a full day to make up for it. it has been one of those days where the kids start to irritate you from the moment they walk through the door and don't stop until they leave. actually, the past two days have been like that. i really lit into my 3rd period. i had given out four lunch detentions for talking and they still would not shut up and i reached my limit. i really let them have it, pulled out all the stops. "are you aware that one-third of this class is failing", "are you trying to have to take this class again", "i'm doing everything i can to help you learn this information but you have to do the work", "you are seventeen years old, you should be capable for sitting for half and hour silently", "i thought this would be a more interesting way to learn the material, but apparently you are not mature enough to handle it", etc, etc, etc. last night were parent conferences. they went pretty well. i had the parents of maybe 20 of my 83 students show up. there were some that were quite irritated at their children, and i can't say that i blame them. "i wanted to know why phillip is making at D?" "he's missing ten assignments" "well, that would explain it".

last weekend i went to d.c. with jennifer and kellie. we had such a good time. on friday we went into the city. neither of them had ever seen the smithsonian museums, but unfortunately the american history museum is closed for two years. so we did the natural history museum instead. it had been so long since i'd been in there, i really enjoyed it, particularly the wing full of stuffed critters. then jen realized that there was virtually no line at the archives, so we went there. saw the constitution, the declaration, and the bill of rights. always a good time. but what i really loved were the other exhibits. i could have stayed in there all day, but kellie's eyes were starting to glaze over. that's what she gets for going to d.c. with two history teachers. we ate lunch in the art gallery, and headed over to arlington. we wandered around the cemetery and saw the guard changing, then toured lee's house. we had to leave then, because the cemetery was closing, but not before they had observed that the park ranger upstairs was very cute. i maintain that it's hard to take anyone seriously wearing a smokey the bear hat. yes, i realize that the hat was around before the bear, but that is entirely beside the point.

that night we saw the monuments all lit up. we got out to see the jefferson memorial and were engulfed by a bunch of half-drunk fraternity alumni and dates who were dressed in 80s clothing and were in d.c. for some homecoming. the guard at the memorial yelled at them and told them to leave. and i finally, finally, finally got to see the world war ii memorial. it was very moving. they did and extremely good job with that memorial. i'd be willing to say that it was worth how long it took to build it because of how good it is. it's just too bad that so many of the veterans died before they got a chance to see it. it looked cool lit up, but the best thing was that if you stood on the steps on the east side of the memorial, you could see mr. lincoln lit up in all his glory. d.c. is a really cool city at night.

overall, it was a great trip. the only downside was not leaving until 6pm on sunday, resulting in a arrival time of 2am. i was a little dead on monday.

this week has been uneventful. teaching, gym, sleeping, eating. not very exciting. tonight is a home football game, so i have to be back at the school at 6. i really can't figure out how i did it all in college. i'm completely exhausted and i do maybe 1/4 the amount i did at gcc. it's pretty crazy.