Reading Time

At the high school where I teach, we have a daily reading time. Research suggests that kids who have the opportunity to read each day will do better in school, on tests, one of those things, I forget. Probably tests, because tests? My life.

I've been reading a book out loud to my students and trying to do voices. I'm not that good at it, but I'm trying. One of them told me the other day that she liked the voices that I did, that it helped her to tell the characters apart.

I got to the end of the book yesterday, the climax of this story, and had only two pages of the book left. So I start reading the two pages, and the lead character has to say goodbye to the people with whom he's lived and the place where he's spent his childhood, and I had a hard time reading the words.

I started to get choked up, and cry a little. My voice would not come out right, no matter how hard I concentrated on not sounding sad. And those kids? Those high school kids that apparently I as a teacher (or so the news says) am failing? Those kids looked at me and didn't laugh. They didn't look uncomfortably away.

They shared with me the names of stories that made them cry, telling me that I wasn't alone. And then they asked me to start reading them another book.

Vampire Diaries

I find that I can't stop watching Vampire Diaries. And not just because he's so pretty.

It's also got more plot in one episode than many shows have in a whole season. People die, new people come on. It's got a revolving door, except for the core cast. Though, at least two people I thought would last for a while didn't. In a 'omigod did that person really just die?' kind of way. This week UPN is playing the first part of this season, and though I have seen them already and plenty to do, I'm watching a lot of it. I'm a TV junkie. But I also bake.

Captain Trips

So, I've got Captain Trips. I may be exaggerating.  I feel like I'm not exaggerating, because I took two *gasp* days off from school. Not consecutive days, mind you, because that would be madness! And I've already used two boxes of tissues. I called my sister to tell her that I'm dying, and her response was NOT "You're not dying, you just can't think of anything good to do." I'm so disappointed in her for not giving the right response. To be fair, she's kind of sick too.

I've been in bed for the last few days and now I'm looking for stuff to do that doesn't involve watching the idiots on the TV news talk about how much I care about the deficit. Honestly, I could give a crap how much money we owe right now if it means that people who don't have jobs won't get either jobs or unemployment. But the boredom led me to my other email accounts.

 I started this blog in June of 2004. That's six and a half years ago. Then I look at the number of posts this year and that's only five. Most of those in January. In the process of looking for something in my email, I went to my stat counter and found that I still get visitors. Most of those visitors go to one of two posts: My Mother was a Selfish Bitch or Teachers Get Paid Too Much. The Teachers post is number two on Bing search. That's where all the traffic originates.

Sometimes I think about deleting it all. That thought passes swiftly. But recently I've been using a site called 750 Words, and it reminds me how I used to write for fun, not because "exams are due and that essay question doesn't capture  the essence of what they should know." If you haven't seen it before, 750 Words is based on the idea of Morning Pages, from the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. At the beginning of your day, you are supposed to write three pages of stream of consciousness. Ms. Cameron specifies long hand, but I don't think that's necessary. The amazing thing about 750 Words is that you get all sorts of data from this, and can even create your own metadata.  I am completely fascinated.

Here's a screenshot from today:

It's too late to join the challenge for December, but I'm trying it, and I wrote for half of the days in November. I've already got four days in a row for December. It's funny, I like the little badges you get for completing things, and I want more of them. If I complete the challenge for December, I plan to donate some money to the site. If it's not PayPal.

Now I just have to remember that this blog exists. But don't get your hopes up.

Possible Book Titles

After not finishing National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November and wondering why none of my stories seem to have a sense of humor, I've decided to write some story titles.  I saw a title for this book yesterday called "Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse" and thought it was great and funny, so I tried to come up with some of my own.

Here are a few:
I Was a Fury - My Life as an Avenging Goddess
Teddy Bear Massacre
The Fates Take a Vacation - How to Survive Having No Destiny
Sibyl Uncensored - Teenage Prophet Tells All
Gingerbread Corpses
Pixie Dusted  - How a Faerie Princess Got Clean
Cyclops Eyeglasses
How to Adopt a Fury

So far Pixie Dusted is my favorite.

Hiding

Maybe if I crawl under the covers.
Maybe if I stay off the computer.
Maybe if I don't answer the phone.
Maybe if I don't make any phone calls.
Maybe if I go to sleep.
Maybe if I concentrate hard enough I can go back in time.
Maybe.

Maybe then I won't have to hear the bad news.  That will mean it didn't happen, that will mean everything's fine, that will mean I can get in my car and go over to my dad's house and he will be there, reading the newspaper.  That will mean he's not in the hospital on a respirator, fighting to stay alive, through pneumonia, through pulmonary emboli, through the cancer.

My Dad is Ill

So you might know my mom died in June of 2007.

It seems my dad is having some problems too. About a month and a half ago he stopped going to the movies with us every Sunday. Then he wouldn't go to lunch either. He showed us his leg, which had swollen to twice its normal size. We tried to get him to the doctor and he said sure, but didn't make an appointment.

Then about two weeks after that I noticed that he seemed yellow. I told him so and he called me crazy. I asked my siblings to look. Brad said he didn't see it, but Jenny went and saw him the day after that and she said she saw it too. We finally convinced him to go to the doctor after he stopped leaving the house to go grocery shopping and was calling us to bring him food.

Jenny took him to his regular doctor that he's been seeing since his stroke last March. ( I don't remember if I've written about that before. Dad was walking funny and holding his arm weird and told us he'd fallen down in the garage. We thought that maybe he'd cracked a rib. Turns out he'd had a stroke and didn't go to the doctor for almost 10 days after. I spent most of Spring Break taking him to different doctor's appointments.)

Anyway, all the doctor did was give him a diuretic for the swelling in his legs, but nothing about being YELLOW, almost like an Oompa Loompa. When I went to check on him after, he yelled at me for telling him that he needed a second opinion and more tests, but I convinced him to see another doctor. I made an appointment with a geriatric doctor. What I didn't know is that he had stopped moving almost entirely and also wasn't eating. Plus still yellow.

On Friday December 18th, Jenny called me at work to tell me that Dad had called Brad at their house and said, "I think you should take me to the hospital." I got the message during my conference period and called Jenny back, but she didn't have any information. I called Brad, but Jenny answered his cell phone because he'd left it at home. So I called the first hospital I could think of, and they only transferred my call three times before I got someone who could tell me that Yes, my dad had been admitted, but No, they had not done any tests yet.

I stayed at work until the end of the day and left right after and got to the hospital around 3:15. Brad was on his way out to go home and shower, but Jenny and Chloe were in the room with him. The doctors gave him antibiotics and I think some glucose, and said they were going to run some tests. They've done a bunch of tests. He's still in the hospital and they still don't really know what's wrong. Fortunately, they did correct the narrowing in his bile duct that caused the yellow. Unfortunately, they think he has lung cancer, but none of the tests have shown cancer, but they still think that he has cancer. Yay, medicine.

He's down in the rehab wing of the hospital, getting PT and Occupational Therapy too, but he's not eating and he doesn't seem to be interested in much. He won't eat the hospital food because he says it's crap, so we've been buying him things like organic soups and such. He doesn't seem to like that either, but he made some new demands yesterday for chicken, egg and tuna salad sandwiches and fruit. We'll see.

Stay tuned, and tomorrow I'll tell you what happened when Jenny fired Dad's doctor.

Total Dork

Look what I got for Christmas:

And, it came with the doll I mean action figure below:

My brother rocks. I've been wanting to watch the miniseries over again, but I may have to use it as a reward to get some of my work done that I need to finish by Monday.

Happy New Year 2010

I suck at resolutions, and I'm not so good at goal setting.  I've put together goals of all kinds in the last few years, following very few of them to their conclusion, even if I wrote them down.

But.  I have been missing blogging.  I miss the people that I met while blogging.  Unfortunately, every time I start to compose a post, I re-read it and decide that it's crap.  I have no idea where this fear originated, but it's got to go.  Fuck that noise.  So if I have one non-resolution, one non-goal, it's to start blogging again.  I'm not going to make any promises about how often or how long the posts will be, but I'm going to blog again, for me and perhaps my two favorite readers (and honestly better writers than me) because I miss it.

So, Happy 2010 to everyone (both of you), and though posting has been sporadic to say the least, I'm glad that I can say that I've been blogging since 2004 and I don't intend to quit.

Serious Things

A woman in Raleigh wants to play tennis against men, but the men don't want to be beat.  She's suing the city alleging discrimination.

" 'One said he had a jealous wife, and he couldn't play females," Griffin said. "Another said he heard I made people run too much.' "

One of the commenters said, and I'm quoting here:

"Yes, it is a very serious thing to be in the same company as a woman other than your wife, when your wife is not around. Some people choose to avoid that kind of temptation."

There are some scary weird people in the world.

Alas, ComicCon

I won't be going to ComicCon this year.  I'm especially disappointed since I read that one of my favorite authors will be going this year, and he almost never does.

And being in San Diego instead of Texas in July?  It sucks that there're no beaches in North Texas.  The LOW tomorrow will be 83.

Maybe next year.

Google Voice

I signed up for an invite for Google Voice a couple of weeks ago, and they sent it to me on June 26th.  So far I like it a lot.  It's got one number that people can call and that you can make forward to all of your phones.  It's got voice mail transcription, which in the only test so far (of mine) worked great. 


And apparently you can also put a widget on your blog and people can call you!  That should be interesting, to say the least.  I'll post more when I've tested it more.

Anniversary

Mom, 1948.

It's been two years since my mom died, and I still think about her every day. I have a hard time watching shows on TV that show people in hospital beds. It almost always makes me cry. Last week the TNT show The Closer had the main character's cat get sick and die, and that made me cry too. I'm tired of crying already.

Sometimes I almost wish I could believe in heaven. I don't, and I know that when people say that my mom's in a better place that they mean well, but it doesn't make me feel better. I can't convince myself now that she's gone that there is some higher plane. How does that make people feel better? I'm not being snarky, that's a real question.

I've talked to one sister on the phone, and she's at home today so as not to deal with work. I'm trying to call the other one to go see my dad. I want to be there with him, but avoidance is sooo attractive. The bubba's out of town, so I'll try to call him later so as not to get him all sad at work.

I'm so petty. I've got all these jealousies and mean emotions right now too. People suck. Me included.

Education Shortage

"The arts are not pretty bulletin boards.
They are not turkeys and bunny rabbits.
They are not frivolous entertainment.
The arts are our humanity.
They are the languages of civilization through which we express our fears, our anxieties, our hungers, our struggles, our hopes.
They are systems of meaning that have real and important utility, which is why schools that give students the means and encouragement to explore these realms provide a better education."
Charles Fowler


Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers tells a frightening story. He's right that our educational foundation is being eroded, and it's happening at the high school and elementary level as well. He's concerned about loss of science education, but I'm concerned about losing arts education.

In the school district where I work, one of our Arts administrators was just cut and must now teach full time. That means no advocate for visual arts, no concerted effort to normalize curriculum, and even less funds for advocacy than before. Many of the districts around are in a hiring freeze. If anyone leaves my school, they will not be replaced unless someone within the district can be found.


In the district where I used to teach, they are cutting HALF of the elementary art teachers so that each teacher at elementary level now has to travel between two schools. That means 1200 students instead of 600, and each student would now receive 1 hour of visual art every two weeks instead of 1 hour every week. That district had only recently allotted each school a whole teacher.


One of Mr. Myers commenters, in rightly being concerned about the loss of science classes, advocates putting arts classes on the chopping block instead.

Commenter ZK says: "What does "Liberal Arts" mean? It sounds like something that could do with cutting, rather than geology. . . [universities] persist in "teaching" stupid subjects that only exist so that thick/lazy/disinterested kids can get a degree. . . " and then calls liberal arts, or to be fair parts of it, "meaningless twaddle."

And commenter Justin says: "Liberal arts? Get rid of some absurd department/course like "Women's studies" or "Urban Studies". Any decent social studies program should include thorough coverage of women and urban people, but to make seperate (sic) degrees out of them is simply bizarre."*

I don't see why this should be an either/or situation. NONE of these things should be cut, and education institutions across the country, colleges and public elementary/high schools are experiencing cuts. And Governor (P)Rick Perry has apparently said that he will reject at least some of the stimulus money in unemployment benefits, so who knows who else he'll throw under the bus. I live in a state filled with idiots, and it makes me sad. **



*Unfortunately the conversation gets derailed by someone named Erasmus who ridicules all the liberal arts and can only see merits in "hard sciences" but doesn't apply the same rigorous attention to detail in his own comments and citations as you might expect from a scientist.

**Not least because the Texas Legislature is still debating about whether or not to include creationism in the science curriculum.

Can you say 'creepy'?

This is gross. And, no, it's not funny, and yes, I do think that this is something that I should worry about.

In case you can't read it, it says:
"iGirl - She Obeys" and it gets worse from there.
"Less than the price of a cup of coffee or a beer."

I didn't make it up, it's actually on iTunes.

24

I enjoy Jack Bauer's adventures, and I'm pretty good with suspension of disbelief, but please.

ONE firewall that controls/limits access to ALL of our infrastructure systems?

The clumsiest exposition EVAR.
"Gee, Jack, we both know this information about the current plot, but let me just say it awkwardly for the benefit of the stupid viewer."
"No problem, Chloe.  By the way, did you know that I tortured people and I'M NOT SORRY, even though I've said that twice in every episode so far?"

NANO Success

Turns out not so much success as a good idea and not enough execution. I'll try again next year.

I did get interested in another story from a while ago. It's got a bit more humor than the other, so it might be more fun.

More later.

[]

Test

Test from iPod Touch.

[]

NaNoWriMo Progress

It's the fourth day of NaNoWriMo, and I am on track. I'm just about to sit down and start my fourth day's work, and I have about 5200 words. I'm going to try and pass the minimum for today, but I might not because last night I fell asleep on the couch with my laptop in my lap.

The story progresses well thus far, and though I thought it was going to be more about a god stalking a high school girl, it's actually about a particular pantheon asking the girl for a favor. Don't know what the favor is yet since I didn't outline, but it's going well.

A couple of links for you:
Time's 50 Best Inventions of 2008
and
The Best Tech Tools to Get in Shape.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Some linkage for you:
Awesome/Awful jokes on Making Light,
20 Classic Films in Legos


Sorry it's been more than a month between posts. School's keeping me pretty busy, got four preps this year, which means four different lesson plans to the administrators every Monday, four kinds of grading to do, and four types of assignments to write.

On the plus side, I haven't had many discipline problems except for the Big Bigot and the Little Bigot (more about them later) and I have a student aide who is better at grading than I am. I need to buy that girl lunch or something.

Also, Happy NaNoWriMo! I've decided to try again this year, after my failure of a couple years past. I've actually advertised it people IRL, so that might keep me on task. There's two other teachers at school doing it too, and I'm hoping that we'll be able to support one another. I've never actually had an acquaintance that I could see almost every day do this with me, so I'm pretty excited.

I may or may not post with more frequency in November, though it will probably surpass my October total of 1. See you on the other side!

Large Hadron Collider

Are we blowed up yet?