a few updates on recent posts:
1.) the resume
the resume is completed, and i did a bang-up job if i do say so myself. it's been hand delivered to the recruiter by a family friend who has been working there for 20 years, so hopefully i will know something in a week or so.
2.) the dvd
i finally got in touch with the company, who informed me that the item i had ordered had been discontinued in an "oh yeah, i guess we should refund your money" kind of way. makes me wonder if they would have done that had i not been obnoxious. lesson of the day: only order from amazon itself, not other little companies selling things through amazon.
and finally, 3) the recipe-card making
the next day i was at my grandma's house, cutting up a second taste of home and putting the recipes on index cards. my grandma looked at what i was doing, stared at me for a moment, and said, "you know, laura, for $20 you can buy the whole year's worth of recipes in a cookbook".
i wish i thought of these things on my own.
28 January 2007
21 January 2007
happiness is...
brand-new fleece-lined leather house shoes from l.l. bean. totally old man shoes, but i don't care. ridiculously comfortable and they actually keep my feet warm. i may never take them off again.
good news
there is some good news, however.
all but two of my students passed their NC state tests in US history. hooray!!! my principal was thrilled.
those of you who are teachers will understand the full magnitude of this, and why it makes me ecstatic.
all but two of my students passed their NC state tests in US history. hooray!!! my principal was thrilled.
those of you who are teachers will understand the full magnitude of this, and why it makes me ecstatic.
avoiding what i should be doing
you know what is really obnoxious? writing a resume.
i hate doing this. it doesn't matter how many gcc career center seminars on the subject i attended while in college, it does not make the process any easier. i still have to spend three hours staring at my computer screen, valiently attempting to make myself sound much more amazing than i really am while simultaneously mentioning enough action verbs and transferable skills to get me a job.
ugh.
part of the problem is that i don't really know how to write a resume for this stage in my career. i do a fantastic job with the"just-finished-college-have-no-real-work-experience-please-please- please-hire-me-i-promise-i-won't-screw-up" variety. but it's the "one-year-in-the-work-force-i-hate-my-job-must-find-another" kind that i'm not sure on. for example: do they really care about college honors and activities? i don't think so. wouldn't it be better to have a section for research skills with military history emphasis? and do i put my real adult teacher job in a different category from my college internships, even though my college internships are much more relevant to the job for which i am applying?
life in the modern world is entirely too difficult. this is merely one of the things on my to-do list which i am avoiding right now.
you know what else is obnoxious? ordering something online, having them bill your credit card, but never actually getting it in the mail.
two days after christmas i ordered a dvd from amazon. except it wasn't from amazon themselves, it was from some other company and i ordered it through amazon. i still haven't gotten the dumb thing, yet the charge has shown up on my credit card bill. very annoying. so i now have to make some futile stab at a) locating the company, and b) locating my movie. growl. this would be yet another thing i'm avoiding doing right now.
i hate doing this. it doesn't matter how many gcc career center seminars on the subject i attended while in college, it does not make the process any easier. i still have to spend three hours staring at my computer screen, valiently attempting to make myself sound much more amazing than i really am while simultaneously mentioning enough action verbs and transferable skills to get me a job.
ugh.
part of the problem is that i don't really know how to write a resume for this stage in my career. i do a fantastic job with the"just-finished-college-have-no-real-work-experience-please-please- please-hire-me-i-promise-i-won't-screw-up" variety. but it's the "one-year-in-the-work-force-i-hate-my-job-must-find-another" kind that i'm not sure on. for example: do they really care about college honors and activities? i don't think so. wouldn't it be better to have a section for research skills with military history emphasis? and do i put my real adult teacher job in a different category from my college internships, even though my college internships are much more relevant to the job for which i am applying?
life in the modern world is entirely too difficult. this is merely one of the things on my to-do list which i am avoiding right now.
you know what else is obnoxious? ordering something online, having them bill your credit card, but never actually getting it in the mail.
two days after christmas i ordered a dvd from amazon. except it wasn't from amazon themselves, it was from some other company and i ordered it through amazon. i still haven't gotten the dumb thing, yet the charge has shown up on my credit card bill. very annoying. so i now have to make some futile stab at a) locating the company, and b) locating my movie. growl. this would be yet another thing i'm avoiding doing right now.
20 January 2007
veering slightly into domesticity
today life took a turn for the surreal:
i thought about cooking.
no, really, i did. i have discovered a wonderful thing about my school library: free used magazines. granted, they are a few years old, but those of you who are familiar with my decoupage obsession know that i don't actually read the articles in the massive amounts of magazines i collect and cut up. i just want images.
so while in the process of taking an entire laundry basket full of used time, new yorker, and our state magazines back to my classroom, i discovered a year's worth of taste of home. i thought, "hmm...maybe i'll look at these." then tonight when i started looking at them, this wave of domesticity washed over me and i realized that at some point i will have to start cooking dishes more complicated than kraft mac'n'cheese. on a regular basis.
and this realization didn't really bother me.
so strange. anyway, i then proceeded to spend two hours cutting interesting recipes out of the magazines and pasting them to index cards. i even pasted pictures of the finished dishes onto the cards next to the recipe so i could see what they would look like if prepared by someone other than me (or apparently rachel and katie, as rachel's post on 1/16 would indicate).
i'm not quite sure what has come over me. i'm assuming it's a phase that will pass fairly quickly, but until then i'm going to enjoy the idea that i would actually go out of my way to cook something difficult. at least going out of my way in a situation that doesn't involve my mom yelling about how i will go in there and cook that turkey, because she doesn't want to feel like she has failed as a mother because i can't cook anything more complicated than tuna casserole.
i thought about cooking.
no, really, i did. i have discovered a wonderful thing about my school library: free used magazines. granted, they are a few years old, but those of you who are familiar with my decoupage obsession know that i don't actually read the articles in the massive amounts of magazines i collect and cut up. i just want images.
so while in the process of taking an entire laundry basket full of used time, new yorker, and our state magazines back to my classroom, i discovered a year's worth of taste of home. i thought, "hmm...maybe i'll look at these." then tonight when i started looking at them, this wave of domesticity washed over me and i realized that at some point i will have to start cooking dishes more complicated than kraft mac'n'cheese. on a regular basis.
and this realization didn't really bother me.
so strange. anyway, i then proceeded to spend two hours cutting interesting recipes out of the magazines and pasting them to index cards. i even pasted pictures of the finished dishes onto the cards next to the recipe so i could see what they would look like if prepared by someone other than me (or apparently rachel and katie, as rachel's post on 1/16 would indicate).
i'm not quite sure what has come over me. i'm assuming it's a phase that will pass fairly quickly, but until then i'm going to enjoy the idea that i would actually go out of my way to cook something difficult. at least going out of my way in a situation that doesn't involve my mom yelling about how i will go in there and cook that turkey, because she doesn't want to feel like she has failed as a mother because i can't cook anything more complicated than tuna casserole.
08 January 2007
last lesson plan
today is my last day of teaching normal lessons for the semester. tomorrow they are taking a test (Richard Nixon - 2000 Election), then we are spending the next six days compulsively reviewing for the state test. and boy do they need it. two weeks ago, one of them asked me who robert e. lee was, and the other day i realized that one of them thought the president who just died was herbert hoover. and she had been to d.c. at christmas and had seen him lying in state! once again, i spend my days battling apathetic ignorance. (on a side note, what was the deal with the migrating funeral party for gerald ford. the man had five funerals. i didn't think he accomplished enough in his presidency to warrant five funerals. by the time they finally buried him, he'd been dead for over a week. get the guy in the ground already.)
i guess maybe i should talk about what i've been doing for the past weeks or so. christmas was nice. on christmas eve i sang in the cantata at church. it was...special. we went out to eat for lunch at this little bar-b-que joint up the mountain with aunt susan, uncle terry, and ashley. i had a great time. we took the scenic route home, which consisted of terry wandering up and down random little roads and susan fussing because he was going to a) get us lost, and b) get her carsick.
i went to virginia to see my parents and sisters on the 27th. it was really good seeing them, although mary took off for the va tech bowl game the next morning. on the saturday after christmas, i had a temporary loss of sanity and spent the day in three northern virginia malls - tyson's, tyson's II, and pentagon city. bad enough any normal time, but even better on official Exchange Your Unwanted Christmas Presents Day. the original purpose was to exchange the shoes josh got me for christmas for a differerent size. a simple process, right? no. they are from coach, meaning that they don't have a huge backlog of various sizes, so i had to go to three stores to find the right size. it worked out ok, though, cause i ended up meeting rachel at pentagon city. it was great seeing her. i think she may be busier now than she was in college, if you can believe that. i also spent a lot of the day with one of my best friends from high school.
i made two major obserations over the course of the day:
1.) it is tacky that you have to pay to park at pentagon city mall. it's not like i'm not already giving them way too much of my money as it is.
2.) i can see why people are willing to pay the higher prices to shop at the upscale stores in tyson's II, rather than have to deal with the crowds and obnoxious small children in tyson's I.
the highlight of the day, though, was when i slipped in the crosswalk and completely wiped out (as in, basically did the splits) in the middle of the street, in front of a truck which had stopped to let me cross from the parking garage to the mall. not one of my more stellar moments. (up there with earlier that day when i pulled into a street to turn around only to discover that i was in the driveway of some company's corporate headquarters, which had every gate down and absolutely no way to turn around without driving through the flowerbeds, requiring me to call the security guards to be let out.)
i guess maybe i should talk about what i've been doing for the past weeks or so. christmas was nice. on christmas eve i sang in the cantata at church. it was...special. we went out to eat for lunch at this little bar-b-que joint up the mountain with aunt susan, uncle terry, and ashley. i had a great time. we took the scenic route home, which consisted of terry wandering up and down random little roads and susan fussing because he was going to a) get us lost, and b) get her carsick.
i went to virginia to see my parents and sisters on the 27th. it was really good seeing them, although mary took off for the va tech bowl game the next morning. on the saturday after christmas, i had a temporary loss of sanity and spent the day in three northern virginia malls - tyson's, tyson's II, and pentagon city. bad enough any normal time, but even better on official Exchange Your Unwanted Christmas Presents Day. the original purpose was to exchange the shoes josh got me for christmas for a differerent size. a simple process, right? no. they are from coach, meaning that they don't have a huge backlog of various sizes, so i had to go to three stores to find the right size. it worked out ok, though, cause i ended up meeting rachel at pentagon city. it was great seeing her. i think she may be busier now than she was in college, if you can believe that. i also spent a lot of the day with one of my best friends from high school.
i made two major obserations over the course of the day:
1.) it is tacky that you have to pay to park at pentagon city mall. it's not like i'm not already giving them way too much of my money as it is.
2.) i can see why people are willing to pay the higher prices to shop at the upscale stores in tyson's II, rather than have to deal with the crowds and obnoxious small children in tyson's I.
the highlight of the day, though, was when i slipped in the crosswalk and completely wiped out (as in, basically did the splits) in the middle of the street, in front of a truck which had stopped to let me cross from the parking garage to the mall. not one of my more stellar moments. (up there with earlier that day when i pulled into a street to turn around only to discover that i was in the driveway of some company's corporate headquarters, which had every gate down and absolutely no way to turn around without driving through the flowerbeds, requiring me to call the security guards to be let out.)
02 January 2007
the black death
i have the bubonic plague.
i don't think i'm ever going to feel well. never again will i be able to breathe through my nose. never again will i be able to sleep through the night. never again will my sinuses not pound all day.
sigh...
and the really great thing is that i get to experience all this while attempting to teach 16-year-olds about the social effects of 1970s political movements.
why do i not take a sick day? because i have learned one of the True Facts of Teaching: it is far more pleasant to go to school feeling like you've been hit by a truck than it is to deal with the nuclear fallout that occurs after surrendering your classes to a substitute for an entire day. particularly two weeks before the state tests.
i don't think i'm ever going to feel well. never again will i be able to breathe through my nose. never again will i be able to sleep through the night. never again will my sinuses not pound all day.
sigh...
and the really great thing is that i get to experience all this while attempting to teach 16-year-olds about the social effects of 1970s political movements.
why do i not take a sick day? because i have learned one of the True Facts of Teaching: it is far more pleasant to go to school feeling like you've been hit by a truck than it is to deal with the nuclear fallout that occurs after surrendering your classes to a substitute for an entire day. particularly two weeks before the state tests.
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