Open House Nerves

So I just got my first Open House shot of nerves. Those gurglies in my stomach will be around for the rest of the afternoon. My room is clean - dusted, swept, wiped down, and picked up... almost eerily so.

Parents make me nervous. At least these ones are polite and I can talk to them only a little because of their English and my Spanish.

I'll fill you in on the events of the night later...

Glug!

SWOTD - Esperar - which strangely enough means to hope and to wait.

That's what I'm doing. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. For the PGL Site to calm down so I can actually see what's going on without waiting 10 MINUTES for a bleepin' page to load.

Good News: Canterbury Made It.
Bad News: Princess Charming is not on the list.
Strange News: It shows that none of the reviews counted for scoring. Why? I haven't figured that out because I'm waiting for the blinkin' pages to load!

Nachos and Patriotism

Spanish Word of the Day: Nachos

Just got done with serving nachos for three hours at the Cesar Chavez festival at the school. I can still hear the dance music thrum through my window. My hands smell like combination processed cheese and flan.

I have been so irritated lately. I seriously need to destress. It all started when a history teacher told and encouraged students not to stand up during the Pledge of Allegiance. Now technically they have the "right" not to stand... as long as they sit silently, but as teachers, we're used to having students follow directions.

So just because he was told he could, one of my students pushed my buttons and told me "Mr. ___ said I didn't have to stand." I asked to speak with the student outside. The student refused to leave my classroom until I had him threatened to have him bodily removed from class... that was the fifth time I told him.

Once outside he proceeded to argue with me, telling me in no uncertain terms that he didn't have to... his sole reasoning was because the other teacher told him he didn't have to. I told him his laziness was a personal insult to me, my father, and my family. I told him that he was here in the US to get a free public education and the flag is the embodiment of the ideals that support the public schools. The smirk on his face didn't falter when I told him that he could stay in my class if he could follow my directions. If he refused, then he would find himself elsewhere.

So I go back into class and he sits down immediately confabbing with his buddies about the whole thing and I begin to speak. "Despite popular opinion, schools are not democracies. They are monarchies... and I am the Queen of this Classroom. When I say open the window, you open the window. When I say open your notebooks, you open your notebooks. When I say stand, you stand."

"No." Jorge says loudly.

"You don't follow my directions, you receive a referral." So I sent him to ACE... then I went downstairs to the counseling center to talk to the SLO, (Spanish Liason Officer). She agrees with my side of the story and starts looking to see if we can write a truant letter on him and get his mom to sign a "you're a second semester senior and there's no hope that you're going to graduate so go away" slip.

Good News: Student should be gone.
Bad News: I don't have the authority to tell a student to stand up for the pledge.

Okay... thought this was amusing...

There's also a statistics page... most people tend to be Galadriel, followed by Aragorn. Yoda's third. It's got characters from Star Wars, LOTR, Potter, Star Trek, MIB, Babylon 5, Xmen, and my fav - Princess Bride. "Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" and "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father, prepare to die."

Here are the Top Ten:

Galadriel 44,590
Aragorn 32,717
Yoda 25,734
James T. Kirk 22,340
Princess Leia 22,220
Wesley Crusher 21,650
Elrond 20,477
John Sheridan 19,332
Jean-Luc Picard 19,327
Luke Skywalker 15,363

Am I a sci-fi fantasy geek or what?

Big Chickens and Screenplays

SWOTD: pavo real - peacock, but literally it translates into "real turkey"... as if turkey wasn't real enough...

So we're working on an animal and "save the planet" unit this week. I've taken advantage of the many pictures from the picture files to grill them on the names of animals. These pictures are from 1982... so the clothing pics are atrocious... but animals haven't changed much.

So I showed a picture to a group and if they got the name right, they got the card and the group at the end with the most gets ten points. I got to the picture of a peacock and they were quite stumped. They called out "pavo real" in Spanish, but no. They gave up and got quiet. Then Noe, bless his heart, shouted out "Big Chicken!" I almost gave it to him for the correct use of an adjective. It's great fun to watch them try to figure out "seahorse." Caballo del mar in Spanish, they keep saying "horse ocean" and "horse water." Not quite.

Anyway... I've been busy working on my fictitious blog... now I just need someone to read it to tell me if it's entertaining... or just generally crap. I'm having fun with it... especially the drawing of little aliens in paint.

Now that I've fixed the links... hopefully someone will give me feedback... hint hint hint.

Read more screenplays from Project Greenlight. The top 1000 are announced on Thurs. I will be seriously heartbroken if at least one of my entries doesn't make it... especially after reviewing 16 screenplays... most of them written by utter hacks. I don't mean to be cruel, but I'm either seriously deluding myself, or I'm actually a better writer than at least 75% or 80% percent of them... judging conservatively. So far the worst one I've read was a utterly plotless Kung Fu action flick set in Bombay, and the best, a comedy set in Latvia. The rest are on a spectrum that is heavy on the lower end.

And a Final Thought: Did you know that okapis are the only animal that can clean its ears with its tongue?

Memory Lane

Just decided to take a gander at my old Geocities files... and found some interesting old relics.

Some Pictures of Dave and I in LA our senior year at USC.

Some Pictures of my last week in England.

Some Pictures of Student Teaching Romeo and Juliet

Some Pictures of Mel and other things in a fancy dancy slide show.

And here you can find the most wonderous of all webtoons - The Incredible Misadventures of George Wonderstick... which lasted a whole three frames.

A set of amusements that have kept me up well past my bedtime... so check 'em out and giggle. hee hee.

The Titles Have Arrived!

SWOTD: El Dia del Santo Patricio - if you can't figure that one out... dude.

Okay, so don't laugh... it took me this long to figure out that I could put a title to my entries. Yes, I've been playing around with Blogger today. I even started Blog #2 which is going to be completely fiction. Space Opera, as Mel called it this afternoon. I'm aiming for a cross between Farscape, Bridget Jones, and Thursday Next.

Otherwise, life is continuing as always. David the Director refused to have the sopranies join me on the F# last night in choir. Mom served stuffed pork chops and broccoli for dinner. I educated my ELL's on the traditions of St. Patrick's Day. We completed a crossword puzzle and then made paper Shamrocks. Yes, I celebrated an Irish holiday with Origami!

I went to Big Lots yesterday and bought out their supply of St. Patty's Day stuff, especially since it was half off. My Lit Workshop class wanted to know why I was so excited for St. Patty's Day. They're like bumps on logs. Moan, groan... even if it's the only holiday we're going to have in March! Besides, I think we should all get a celebration day after surviving the Ides of March. Sometimes I just wish I could get them excited about something. They could sit there like slugs the whole period and be happy.

Right. Well, enough ranting. I thought this was just going to be quick entry, but I haven't even mentioned the extended lunch we got today. And pizza for the teachers even. The drama dept. put on a few scenes from their current play about a teacher's first day in a NY public school in the 80's. V. amusing.

Beware the Ides of March!

Spanish Word O' the Day: Marzo - March

The Ides of March has always had a dual significance for me. It's the day of "We May Have To Let You Go" in the teacher world. They have to notify you by March 15 if your position is in jeopardy or they don't plan to rehire you next year. So today, no news is GOOD news. :)

The Ides of March have arrived, but they have not yet gone, so I shall be on my toes.

On Saturday, Lizzie and I were off to see our favorite musical. We were supposed to meet at 1:30 at the theater and ended up meeting at Carl's/ Green Burrito where we both must have decided we couldn't wait to eat until dinner.

I think I was overall impressed with the Azusa production. The voices were excellent, though Percy's mike kept fuzzing. The costumes were quite entertaining, but someone really ought to fire the person in charge of hems. They were the worst I'd ever seen. One must remember to hem the dress AFTER placing the bustle under it. On one dress, the hem literally was five inches wide and had a three inch V in the front. Chau-Chau's costume really needed some help. First of all, they didn't put him in any kind of waist-coat, and secondly, his blacks didn't match.

We went out to dinner after the play and were quite downhearted to discover that our favorite manager was "no longer with the company." Sigh.
And, my chicken was burnt.

On Sunday I watched two excellent movies: Whale Rider, and Adaptation. I bawled through Whale Rider, and Adaptation I enjoyed, though I thought the ending went a little over the edge.

Spanish Phrase of the day: Honest to God, one of my students just asked : "Miss Mathis, te gusta hombres sin ropas?" - "Miss Mathis, do you like guys without clothes. Como Chip'n'Dales?"

My lunchtime has been invaded by a horde of girls who like to shout "Hola Miss Mathis quite loudly when they enter my room. They apparently missed me while I was gone.

Just as I was hoping they wouldn't call me in for Jury Duty, I get the call. It said to report by 7:45 and including getting lost time, I was at the door at 7:20. There was a line of people waiting to get into the courthouse. The people in the line told me I needed to start another line for jurors and lawyers. So I became the official start of the line. whoo hoo.

A lawyer dressed in white, who I think had just had plastic surgery or something, cut in front of me. She looked like someone had torn her face off in pieces and then put neat little stitches around the rims of her eyes and her cheekbones. She talked to the guy in the wheelchair cart selling newspapers. He told her the missing fender on his cart was due to running into a street sweeper. "It was my fault," he explained.

"No," she replied. "It's never your fault. Trust me. It's always the other guy's fault."

Took the elevator up to the 5th floor and the escalator up to the sixth then the doors open. The security guard made a big deal of dumping a huge pile of heavy chains into a wooden bookshelf, which he then faced toward the xray machine. It was rather odd.

I got up to the jury room and staked out a table, pausing to scoff at the sign saying we'd receive directions at 8:10. That's the last time I arrive to jury duty on time. I pulled out my papers and began to grade. The lady in charge was actually quite affable without being blatantly perky or obnoxious. We watched the obligatory videos about how wonderful and painless civic duty was, and then waited for them to call out names for the first group (after a half hour coffee break). At 9:45, (15 minutes into Period 4, school time) they called the first group of about forty names. Sometime before lunch I got tired of grading and decided to get Lost in a Good Book... literally. I made a "jury buddy," a lady who could watch my papers and spot at the table while I went to the bathroom, and we giggled about my student who's translator seemed to think that the word for madre in English was breast.

At 11:30 they called the second group of names, and 75% of them went down to a court. Not me. They dismissed the rest of us for lunch. Now I'm not complaining about an hour and forty five minute lunch... but it's no wonder they can't seem to get anything done. I drove down to Open Sesame, my favorite Lebanese place and got a chicken tawook pita since they were out of my favorite, the chicken sharwama.

Back at the courthouse, I lightened my load and only brought my book and a book.

At about 2:40, I made a comment to my jury buddy (whose name had also not been called) that school was going to be out in ten minutes. It was then that the Jury Lady announced that everyone needed to gather for a special announcement. We were excused. Yeah. So I headed home and spent a nice quiet evening recovering, watching Survivor, a new CSI, and a Without a Trace. ER was still preempted by another Princess Di special. Gag-o-rama... "because everything with Rama in it has to be good."

Spanish Word (Phrase) of the Day: Hace Calor! - It's hot! - Only because I don't know how to say "What's with this freakish weather??" (My guess: Que pasa con el tiempo loco?)


So I've got the windows to my classroom open and the light 1/3 on. The door is propped open with a ruler and book combination (The Penguin Book of Rennaisance Verse... in case you were wondering. I tried Herman Melville, but it was too small.) The open door creates a nice crossbreeze that rustles my paper Shamrocks I've got strung up across the whiteboard.

The most exciting thing is at the end of lunch a gaggle of girls came running into my classroom (door being conveniently open) and shouted that two girls and a guy were smoking weed in the girls' bathroom. So I called the office, and went to investigate. The art teacher next door came with me to investigate. We concluded that it probably was just cigarrettes, but still, they'd managed to leave ash and a plastic bag all over the last stall. So the admin sent up a Staff Assistant who carted the five girls downstairs who could give descriptions. Now why would a guy think he could go unnoticed smoking cigarettes in the girls' bathroom???

Life returned to normal. I wrote up my lesson plans for tomorrow just in case I have Jury Duty and then realized that I left my &#@#$^ grade sheets at home... which means if I DO have jury duty tomorrow, I have to come to school to turn in my sheets. Goody.

Spanish Word of the Day - Obligacion de jurado - the nearest translation I can come up with for Jury Duty.

Now I think it would be an interesting experience to be on a jury, but this whole call in the night before thing is really getting annoying. Before I left on Friday I had to make all my lesson plans and leave little notes for the sub just in case I had to go in... but here I am doing the same thing for tomorrow. sigh.

I suppose I can't complain, what with the week or two that mi amiga Melissa has been having. She's a social worker for the elderly. About a week ago, she was making a home visit and the SWAT team closed off the block for two hours and raided a house three down from her. Then she got to witness a takedown of a female armed robbery suspect as she tried to flee the scene. When they finally did allow her to go home, she had to be escorted to her car to make sure noone was hiding in or under it.

Then later in the week, she was on another home visit, talking to the daughter of one of her clients downstairs. They hear a thump from upstairs, and they walk up to find her client on the floor, dead. She tried CPR until the paramedics arrived, but it was rather obvious the lady was gone.

I'm so glad I don't have a job where people die on me. Really. They just leave.

Anyway, my weekend was pretty bland. I went to the area Rainbow Ritual Competition to teach the girls some crochet and lend general support. Then afterwards Mom, Nikki and I went out for Claim Jumper. Yum. Then I went back to Mom's for a date with the washing machine and Turbo Tax. I'm actually getting moolah back from CA this year! I love teacher tax credits!

Sunday was a Vegetable Day. I slept in, watched about 8 episode of Season 1 Alias, and read. It was hot. Really hot, especially when I wasn't ready for it. I didn't open all my windows or turn on my ceiling fan like I usually would have.

Tonight is a Chorale Board Meeting. Two Words - Whoo Hoo. Hoping my sister cleaned up her mess in the living room... because she's not going to like it if I have to clean up.

Spanish Word (or phrase) of the Day: Menos Hablando, Mas Trabajando - not gonna even try writing a gringa pronunciation guide - Less Talking More Working. It Rhymes... and it's my new favorite phrase. I used it like three times today.

Yesterday was like super cool. After school I drove up to LA, and every time it began to sprinkle, people slowed down to a crawl. When the rain stopped, the went fast. Ugh.

I went to the Westside Pavillion and meandered around the mall and the bookstore until Liz found me and we went off to Islands for some dinner. Yaki Tacos... yummmm.

Then we headed back to the bookstore where Liz spread out her cards to dry and she took over my seat. How dare she! (At least she saved it for me whilst I wandered around.) I purchased some books after I realized I didn't have any of my own copies of The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book.

Let me start out by saying that the B&N staff need some announcement lessons. They couldn't seem to even read the script provided for them intelligently. After purchasing books and reclaiming my chair from Liz, we watched the clerk set up the microphone. "Does anyone know how tall Mr. Fforde is?" People from the audience made a few suggestions and they were scarily correct.

The book signing started late, but it was well worth it. Jasper Fforde is a great speaker, and let me tell you, I could listen to a British/Welsh guy speak all day. He was hilarious, telling little stories about how he became an author and where some of his ideas came from. He is definitely a natural story teller. He said he finally figured out the only way to sell his books was to just hand it to someone and say, "Here, read this." It's so true. He has such a unique imagination and story telling humor that summing up his literary world is difficult in the extreme.

At 9:00, the clerk announced that the store had to close at ten, and therefore the book signing should begin. I was right behind Liz, but somehow ended up like ten people behind her in line. He signed our books, stamped them with a cool stamp, and gave us a postcard. I must mail mine to a buddy of mine who lent me her book while on vacation. :)

Liz and I headed out at about 9:30. It was pouring... and I need new windshield wipers. I was slightly panicky about not being able to see the lines on the road. I had to stop for gas, managing to only get slightly damp, then headed off to the freeway. Went the wrong way to get on the 10 so headed back the way I came, all in torrential downpour. I was paying so much attention to the lines on the road that I missed the street I was supposed to turn on. At least I was in an area where I knew what streets would hook me up to the freeway again. Finally spotted a 405 sign and headed onto the freeway, which, once I got into the left lanes, was okay. There was a lot of standing water in right lane and I felt myself begin to hydroplane for a moment.

I am now in love with the little reflectors they put on the lines in the freeway. It was a definite strict 10 and 2 drive, paying attention to the other people who couldn't drive worth beans in the rain either. Some cars were constantly slowing down to 45 mph and others were going 80!

I kept at a nice 55 (average flow of traffic), speeding up a little closer to home as the rain lightened. I hate driving in the rain. Guh!