why must we get so off topic?

jesse: "how many african american regiments were there in the civil war?"
michael: "six and a half."
me: "half?"
michael: "yeah. midget black people."
cody: "one of these days, someone is going to shoot you."

this is what i deal with all day. and i wonder why we never get everything done. i continually get distracted by the r.j./michael/darren/cody/jesse/tyler Sextet of Fun in the front, which allows the Corner of Chaos to erupt, which means that it takes at least five minutes to get everybody to shut up again. by the time that happens, michael has said something else bizarre and the whole cycle starts all over again. it's like a mobius strip. a very frustrating mobius strip.

tomorrow i am becoming the Empress of the Lunch Detentions.

i am so sick of dealing with them. they're not bad kids, really. they just won't. shut. up. i am so tired of telling them to be quiet. so, from now on, i'm just going to start flinging detentions at random. meaning that i'll probably have the entire class sitting in my room after school on friday. but i don't care. maybe it would be easier to just say, "kristy, telecia, and josh may leave. the rest of you just sit back down. you're not going anywhere." i would just keep the whole class from lunch, or after school, but it's really not fair to the three or four kids who are sitting there quietly. i was always one of those kids, and it annoyed the hell out of me when we all got punished for the idiot minority. except in my current case, it's the idiot majority.

speaking of idiots. you know who the most frustrating students are to teach? not the really dumb ones. those i can handle. it's the really smart kids, with the potential to do well, but who don't turn in a single blooming piece of work, and therefore are failing. i've got two boys in particular, who are very smart. they're both auditory learners, so they never take notes, finish classwork, turn in homework, etc, etc, etc. yet they always participate in class, know what's going on, and do pretty well on the tests, considering they haven't studied at all. it's just because they never turn anything else in, they're failing. i want to smack them, because all it would take would be a tiny iota of effort on their part, and they could have an A.

i realize i'm not sounding very positive right now. i'm not feeling very positive right now. if it wasn't for my first period, who i really like, i would want to just quit. but i keep telling myself that it will be easier next semester, when i have a new batch of students and all my lessons will be planned ahead of time. everyone keeps telling me that it will be ok, i'll get used to it, it'll get better. it would have to. otherwise we wouldn't have as many 20-30 year teachers. they would have lost their minds years ago. (although, truth be told, i haven't yet met a high school teacher who isn't at least a little wacky.) so i keep telling myself that this time next year, i'll be having a grand old time.

answer to a pressing question

brian informed me that the man on the california quarter is, in fact, john muir.

many thanks for this exciting addition to the vast collection of useless trivia currently inhabiting my brain and keeping me from finding my car keys.

what?

michael: "Hey, have you seen the new California quarter?"
me: "No."
michael: "It has Abraham Lincoln on it."
me: "Lincoln was never in California."
michael (not listening): "Oh wait! Maybe that's Jeff Gordon."

comments from the other sister

so the youngest sister now has email. i'm sensing much amusement in my future. her comments on my life:

""deep fried snickers"? what the heck? can you say, heart attack on a stick? ( ha.....literally....on a stick....haha.......sorry, i'll stop now) so i'm guessing some extremely fat individual came up with that because if I ate that, i would throw up."

deep fried update

the fair was a cultural experience. i saw some real classy tattoos (pam anderson barbed wire arm band plus a subautomatic machine gun worked through the barbed wire). and, the highlight of the night was a stand which sold all of the following, advertised with these exact phrases:

1) deep fried moon pies
2) deep fried twinkies
3) deep fried oreos
4) deep fried candy bar on a stick
5) frozen cheesecake dipped in chocolate on a stick

i took a picture to prove it.

sunshine

it has been a glorious day. school was great. as of 6:30 this morning, i had not finished the test i was giving today, nor had i planned the unit i was supposed to start today immediately after they finished their test. so i thought to myself, "hmm...it's movie day". so, instead of forcing my students to do yet another worksheet, we watched the first hour of gods and generals. it's a pretty good movie. but more importantly, it kept them entertained on a friday. i love not student teaching anymore and being able to do things like this. although one of my kids did point out a slight problem with the movie.

stonewall jackson's wife: "it says you are to report as soon as possible to take the corps of cadets from vmi to become part of the army of virginia."
stonewall jackson: "come, let us read before i must go."
cody: "yeah, right. he's leaving for war in half an hour, and they're going to go read."

he has a point.

i probably shouldn't have laughed, but i did. i also starting laughing out loud when the bell rang and tyler did the "it's the end of the day on friday before the weekend" song and dance number across my room and out the door. it involved quite a bit of hand flailing and feet kicking into the air.

the weather the past few days has been gorgeous. by the afternoon it is warm enough for short sleeves, the skies are clear, the colors are bright, and the mountains look amazing. i am stunned every day by how beautiful they are. i don't know why i never noticed before, but since i've moved here, it's all i've been able to look at when i'm driving.

tonight i'm going out to eat with some of my friends from work. bulletin: i have friends! i don't need the friends of the friendless to come get me and sing their song. (i loved that episode.) tomorrow we're going to the mountain state fair. should be fun. it's always a great time seeing what kind of odd things they will fry and/or put on a stick. whenever i see the deep fried moon pies, i can feel my arteries hardening. man, i love the south.

single tear

while looking over previous blog posts, i have come to a conclusion:

i miss suite 213.



don't get me wrong. i am happy being an adult, i am happy being away from school, i am happy getting a paycheck. however, there are moments where i miss being able to walk across the bathroom and have a completely off-the-wall conversation, involving dance moves, with the crazy sicilian. or watching gilmore girls marathons and drinking orange soda with the churro. in fact, let's go farther. i miss running down the hall to suite s/b/c to see what sort of devilish mischief they had cooked up. or down the other hall to the realm of music majors'n'anne, where i could eat my body weight in laffy taffy and read cosmo instead of studying. so, in short, i like my new adult life.

but i miss my girlfriends.

ramblings

i really don't have all that much to write about. i just have over an hour before i have a class in here (hooray for block scheduling), and i don't feel like summarizing the birth of the republican party, the election of 1856, the dred scott decision, lincoln/douglas debates, john brown's raid, the election of 1860, and secession for my overhead notes that i'm using tomorrow. as you can tell, we are quickly galloping our way toward the civil war. i kind of feel bad for my kids, because we are zooming through this information at light-speed. in fact, we've surpassed light-speed. we're now at ludicrous speed. (bonus points for those who can identify that particular pop culture gem.) but, here's the thing. i have 29 chapters to cover in 18 weeks. some stuff is going to get rushed through. and which would they rather skim over: boring stuff in the early 1800s, or the cool stuff that happened in the 20th century? hamilton's financial plan v. wwii? the american system v. the civil rights movement? the rise of the whig party v. the birth of rock'n'roll? yeah, that's what i figured, too.

school is going pretty well. monday was inservice all day - what a drag. i feel like the county's money would have been much better spent had they just let us work in our classrooms all day. then yesterday was a half-day, with inservice all afternoon. inservice consisted of the faculty watching a movie, glory road, which i really liked, i was just confused at the fact that i got paid to watch a movie. which really had nothing to do with education. oh well, i guess i shouldn't complain. some people have to dig ditches for a living. but you know what. i work 15 hour days. i deserve a break every now and then.

i've started making some friends. i talk to ashley, my cousin, a lot. it's really nice being able to hang out with her and get to know her better. she's three weeks older than me, and other than the phase from age 10 - 24 months, where we had an ongoing disagreement about who got the green sippy cup, we've always gotten along. it's just that when we were little i was a complete tomboy and she actually cared about whether her hair was brushed, so we were never that close. didn't exactly share the same interests. she cared about what she looked like in preschool. i wore boys clothes. she did cheerleading in elementary school. i was trying to dig up my backyard. you get the idea. my mom has gotten the biggest kick out us teaching together. she can't get over remembering us as babies. this is what happens when you move out, the middle sister goes to college, and the baby of the family gets her driver's license. mom gets real sentimental.

i've made a few other friends around my age, all people from work. jennifer has the classroom next to me, and kellie teaches computer somewhere in the deep recesses of the vocational department. they're both real sweethearts and have really tried to include me in stuff. we go out to eat a lot. yesterday at lunch, we made a list of all the restaurants in the county, i think with the intention of rotating through all of them. we got over 50. i didn't realize a county this size could eat that much food.

i am loving having the internet again. there's nothing like a 3.5 month deprivation from the internet to make you appreciate it again. i also am liking the satellite t.v. we didn't have anything but broadcast channels from the time i was in kindergarten, and around freshman year of college we lost those too. i'm proud of myself, though. i don't waste all my time watching t.v. just csi every night, project runway (love, love, love that show) on wednesdays, and the occasional law and order episode. i need to figure out what the deal is with gilmore girls.

overall, i'm pretty happy with life right now. my job is hard, but i just keep thinking to myself that i could be pulling all-nighters at college, studying for tests, and researching papers. and it all gets pulled back into perspective.

exciting times

my car got fixed with a minimum amount of money transfered from me to the mechanic!

and the heavens rejoiced

i have internet service at my house now!!!!!

the facebook stalking can continue. i can obsessively read my friends' blogs. i can check my email at home. i can send myself lesson plans over the internet. i can look random things up whenever i feel like it. i can spend hours wasting my life on addictinggames.com.

ahhh. life is beautiful.

but i'm not a redhead

today in 1st period, joey shared this bit of information with me:

"you make me think of daphne from scooby-doo. everything you wear always matches and you're tall and skinny."

i think it was the head scarf.

should it bother me that i'm being compared to a cartoon character or should i just be thankful that it wasn't velma?

i so do not need this right now

my car has decided that starting is no longer on its agenda of things to do. and there's still over a year left on the loan to pay for it.

dammit.

an open letter to my friends

seeing as quite a few of you have tried to communicate with me via facebook, i feel that i should let you know that as of right now, i have no way to access it. i have no internet service at my house, due to either a) my idiot computer or b) the idiot internet service, and facebook is blocked on the school computers. so, if you leave me a message or something, i have no idea what it says.

and, for the record, it's driving me bonkers not knowing what people have posted. i am way too curious for my own good.

where does he come up with this stuff?

official michael quote of the day:

me: "these were smaller barges. i mean, they weren't trying to sail a frigate up the erie canal."
michael: "frigates. aren't those those grass circle things on the golf course?"
me: "what??"
michael: "oh no, that's a fridge."
me: ...*stare*...*blink*
michael: "ohhh, no, no, no, that's a divot."




the thing is, he's not trying to be a smart-ass.

he just really is that spacy.