Sunday, November 21, 2004

Again, with the Time Wasting

Last night was really fun. I went to see Mason Jennings in SoHo. The music was interesting, it sounded sort of like Tom Petty singing Jack Johnson songs. Also, he's a sexy mo-fo. Mm. Anyway, it was great to see live music again, and be out and about. Good times.

Dar Williams is playing at the Bowery Ballroom in two weeks. I am hoping to make that show, even though it's kind of a lot of money, $30. I am such a cheapskate!

Before the show started, I sat around in another bar around the corner. At first it was nearly empty; the few patrons just watched the closed-captioned Comedy Central on tv. Then these two people on either side of me started talking and possibly flirting. One was this arrogant guy with gelled-spiky hair and a big silver ring on one hand, drinking beer out of a goblet-type glass, and the other was this mousy, slightly desperate woman drinking Corona with lime. They both went to NYU; he went there for a Master's in Video Archiving or something. She did undergrad there for drama. Can we all say Cliche!!

She started the flirting by asking if he wanted a tarot card reading, or some numerology. He was intrigued by the tarot cards, but never got numerology. He offered a beer in exchange for one of them. She quickly said, "Oh, I'll do both for a beer." Anyway, soon enough she took down his name to decipher the numerology. He went off about how he was going to be called Stanislaus, and how he'd be nicknamed 'Staush' and that just didn't fit him at all. She said it was a good thing he wasn't named that; there were a bunch of "ones" in that name, which meant that he would have been really egotistical. Specifically, "potential asshole" and "Donald Trump's ego."

After the show, I couldn't keep my eyes open on the train ride home and crashed really hard when I got home, around 2.15. Holy crap I was tired.

So getting up at 10.00 was actually difficult. I didn't shower last night or this morning, so that I can get back on a night-shower track. But that means I'm all gross today. Blech.

So I forced myself to get up at 10am in order to watch a cartoon. It was homework. No, seriously; we were supposed to watch Cyberchase on PBS for math class. It's a cartoon that has math concepts in the story. Today's concept was doubling. They doubled things like gold, stairs, lilypads, and grains of rice.

After the show, I watched some more tv and put in homework grades in my gradebooks and then into my grading program on the computer. How I do love that program. So easy and effortless and smart. But then I started messing around with this site and other links and stuff. There are some great bloggers out there; I wish I felt that I could compete with them. I'm sure I could be way more interesting and more witty too; sadly, that kind of thing doesn't come very naturally to me, so you get short or long, rambling posts about weird little things that are dumb.

I have three parent calls to make, for students that are still not making any improvements. The admin has been notified; time for individual conferences. These three are failing academically and are consistently disruptive in class. I just hate making calls. Once I force myself to begin, I can get through it. But working up that teacher energy just sucks on the weekends.

As for the bulletin boards, I can put that off until the week after Thanksgiving. Since they are due the 6th, which is a Monday, we can work on them the whole week of Nov 29-Dec 3. So next week I can put together ideas and check on the requirements. I think I talked about this the other day. Sorry to repeat myself. At least I'm consistent, right?

For next week, the reading workshops will all be procedural lessons. Writing workshops will stay poems for Monday and Tuesday. I'm thinking about having a fun activity for writing workshop on Wednesday. Perhaps Apples to Apples and/or MadLibs. The students would love it and it would be fun for me too. And then if they're too rowdy, I'll stop the game and give them a worksheet to do or something.

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