Have I mentioned lately

that I love Toby Stephens? No? Ok.

You're a mean one. . . Crabbygrinch Snottypants

I'm down to 8 1/2 days left of school before Winter Break. It's a rough time of year as any school teacher knows. I'm getting crabbier as the days go by. The horrible thing is that my kids are getting loonier with each passing day. That makes me crabbier, which makes them loonier and on and on until what might happen is that I won't get any Christmas presents from my students this year. I better be on my best behavior until the weekend, when most parents traditionally shop for teacher gifts. I've become quite fond of teacher gifts now that I teach at a school where you actually recieve them. Of course I mostly get Starbucks gift cards, which don't do me any good, but do make my friend across the hall who recieves them very happy.

Of course, this all makes me sound really mercenary and materialistic, doesn't it? I need to remember the lesson from How the Grinch Stole Christmas "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!" I'll have to think about that one.



I've tried to include a link to creating your own grinch name, but I keep getting a nasty "FORBIDDEN" notice. This is not helping my crabbiness, let me tell you! Anyway, for those of you who can find it, try it out. I loved my own name, included in my title: Crabbygrinch Snottypants!! It's like that generator looked into my soul.

One HOUR late. . .

I woke up at 6:30 this morning. That may seem unremarkable, but let me tell you this little tidbit: my school starts at 7:00 and I have a 15 minute drive. Added to that is the fact that I looked like this:
So, let me tell you that I wasn't singing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" like I usually do when I ran like a mad woman around my apartment getting ready this morning.

Luckily I was raised by my father who thinks that the time for everyone to be ready to go anywhere (but mostly on our family vacations) is when he is ready, never mind what time we had agreed to in committee the night before. I remember more than one vacation beginning by being woken up at some unholy hour and being told that we needed to be ready and out in the car in 15 minutes. (I am NOT lying about this,and my siblings should feel free to chime in!)

So although I woke up an hour late, I was ready to go in 15 minutes, and I was able to tame the wild beast that is my hair. See all of you men out there in cyberspace? I am SUCH a catch! Why do I need a man plan?

Unfortunately, yes, this is me.

Apparently an cartoonist has created a poster documenting 56 types of geeks. Lest you think you won't find yourself there. . . I dare you to look. I found myself on the FIRST ROW!!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottjohnson/sets/72157601200807582/

Oh, and by the way, my students are having a Socratic Seminar today and I'm trying to stay out of it. Hence, the additional posts.

Enjoy!

One reason why you don't need to ask if my next dog will be a corgi. . .

13 days and counting. . .

Well, I have 13 more days of school before Winter Break. Yes, I "get" to work until December 21 this year. I'm actually excited that I have so much time after Christmas and New Years this year. I know I'll get my Christmas stuff done. I love Christmas too much not too, and when I have to go back January 2 or 3 I'm still so tired from travel, etc. that I almost feel like I haven't had a break at all. That being said, to have four weeks between Thanksgiving and Winter Break has to be some kind of cruel and unusual punishment. Seriously, I'm loopy, the kids are loopy. . . it's a bad picture all around. To top that, I get to teach my LEAST favorite work of literature for the year, Antigone, in the two weeks prior to our break. Oh well, let's get it done.

Added to all of this loveliness is the fact that we've had more wackiness going on at my school in the past few weeks than I've ever experienced as a teacher. Right before Thanksgiving, we lost our server and therefore all access to our computers for 2 days. Then, on the day before Thanksgiving, when I was showing a MOVIE, we lost power at 10:00 am because the geniuses who are building next door cut our power by accident. Because I teach at a magnet school and our students come from all over the valley, the district refused to cancel school. What do we learn from this kids? That BUSES and MONEY are more important than our students and teachers. Then, last Friday, We got the announcement mid-day that we did not have any water in the school because the super genius construction workers cracked the pipe delivering water to our school. So, we had NO bathrooms or running water of any kind. I thought, "Surely the district can't refuse to send our kids home now!" Wrong again. Instead, our amazing custodial staff drove to Walmart to get 100 gallons of water so that our kids could use the restroom and pour water down the toilets in order to make them flush. WHAT??? This can NOT be legal.

My question is, where are all of the parents with pitchforks demanding the district send our kids home under these conditions??

Monday morning I arrived at the school to see that one of our classrooms is shut down because a barometer broke causing a mercury spill, and that same afternoon the super brilliant contruction workers next door once again cracked the water pipe causing us to lose water.

Some of us have decided that locusts are next. I guess a little freshman asked one of my department members, "Is it always like this at our school?" No, little one. . . it's not our school. . . IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!

The man who grew roots

Ok, so I went to this site yesterday through another blog I love (passiveaggressivenotes.com) and saw something that I have NOT been able to get out of my mind since. Go there and watch it if you dare. But, I warn you, it's icky and you won't be able to forget it.

http://www.kirchersociety.org/

Watch the video posting from the Telegraph.

Good Day.