Hair

One of the nice parts of the last days of school is you get to let your guard down and just be goofy.  One of the 8^th graders, who comes to school with a fauxhawk every day, asked me a couple of weeks ago if he could give me one the last week of school.  Since it’s all done with gel and hairspray, nothing permanent, I figured what the hell and agreed.  Hoping he’d completely forget, but knowing better, I wasn’t surprised when he showed up this morning with his fauxhawk kit in hand.  So there I sat, before school stated, in the front of my classroom with a small audience while he gelled, combed and hair sprayed my head.

The bell for first period rang before he got completely finished, so he had to come back during second period to put the pink tint at the tips.

It was well worth it, got a lot of laughs from other students, teachers, administrators and even a few of the district people who came to the school for our principal’s retirement party at the end of the day.

Yeah, the last week can be fun at times.

Hair

One of the nice parts of the last day of school is you get to let your guard down and just be goofy.  One of the 8^th graders, who comes to school with a fauxhawk every day, asked me a couple of weeks ago if he could give me one the last week of school.  Since it’s all done with gel and hairspray, nothing permanent, I figured what the hell and agreed.  Hoping he’d completely forget, but knowing better, I wasn’t surprised when he showed up this morning with his fauxhawk kit in hand.  So there I sat, in the front of my classroom with a small audience while he gelled, combed and hair sprayed my head.

The bell for first period rang before he got completely finished, so he had to come back during second period to put the pink tint at the tips.

It was well worth it, got a lot of laughs from other students, teachers, administrators and even a few of the district people who came to the school for our principal’s retirement party at the end of the day.
Yeah, the last week can be fun at times.

Well aged.

That’s the theme this week for Thematic Photographic.  Join in or just check out the other pictures, click the banner at the bottom.

We had a couple of days of sun this weekend and I took advantage of them by walking around Sugarhouse with my camera.  This line of old shops sits on the north side of 21^st South, just past 11^th East.  I have no idea how old these buildings are, but they’ve certainly been here longer than I have.

What really caught my eye was the sign above the middle shop.

It doesn’t look like it’s been used in decades, and it’s been poorly repainted at least once.  Click on the picture and you’ll see that it was once some sort of artist’s shop, and then became something that probably elicited a different image back in the 50’s or 60’s than it may today.

Cats and a laser light.

If you haven’t had the chance to play with a cat and a laser light, you’re missing out.  Especially on a hardwood floor.

I bought a laser pen yesterday and introduced the new kittens to it.  They went bonkers.  Here you see pictures of Denny literally climbing the wall to get to the ever elusive red dot.

Getting ready to pounce:

Looks like he’s just hanging there on the wall:

In mid air swatting at it:

On the way back down after missing it:

If you have a cat, try it sometime.  If you don’t have a cat, visit a neighbor who has one.

Here we go again…

The Energizer® Bunny™ has nothing on Harold Camping.  I read in the paper today that he has now re-re-re-calculated his computations and discovered that the rapture will actually happen on October 21, 2011.  Well, the actual physical rapture, because in his defense he claims that May 21 was indeed a date of rapture, but it was spiritual not physical.  Whatever that means.

Anyway, he’s decided that the real physical rapture is now going to be on October 21, 2011.  Now, I like that prediction a lot better.  After all, it would be a real cruel twist of fate for the world to come to an end right before summer vacation starts.  I’d have issues with that.

But I wouldn’t sell everything before October, this guy’s track record sucks.  According to an article I read, and a few others I looked up, he’s been wrong three (3) times before. (Yer’ oooout!)

1. May 21, 1988
2. Sept 7, 1994
3. May 21, 2011

But if you need any more evidence that this guy is a charlatan and a fraud, just ask Richard Meyers of abibleanswer.org.  Back in February of this year, he offered Harry $1 million for his Family Stations network, to take effect on May 22, 2011.  Not surprisingly, Harry didn’t take him up on the offer.  So, Meyer’s has made the offer again, this time to take effect on October 22, 2011.  He figures Harry is getting a good deal, since the network will be worthless after the rapture.

Harry, gonna put your network where your mouth is?

Strange things are afoot.

Other than a few isolated blogs, I haven’t been able to post comments on anyone else’s blogs for the last few days.

Normally, I use Firefox rather than Explorer.  But for some reason, for the last few days, Firefox hasn’t shown that blue Blogger menu bar at the top of the page where I click to sign on.  (See pictures below)

 

 

 

 

 

There was no way for me to directly log into Blogger, so I tried to go the roundabout way, and just went to Blogger.com.  That didn’t work either, for some reason it wouldn’t accept my password.  Sumanabeach. 

Next step was to try Internet Explorer.  That gave me the login in bar, and even let me log in, but when I went to another blog it would forget that I was logged in.  Even if I kept my dashboard open in another tab.  And every time I logged in at individual blogs, it posted me as “Anonymous”.

Now the question was “was it me or blogger?”  I turned to my other computer to (try to) answer the question.  I rarely every use the other computer, other than for hosting my www.srossi.net website.  Because of this, it has a limited number of programs on it, Firefox wasn’t one of them but Explorer was.  I tried explorer on that computer and found the exact same problems as with Explorer on the computer I usually use.  This led me to believe that it was a blogger issue, I ruled out a virus because one computer uses Windows XP and the other Vista.

I ran my virus software on both computers anyway, along with Spybot, just to make sure.  Nothing there.  Now I was sure that it had to be a problem that Blogger was having.

Except, just to make sure, I decided to install Firefox on the other computer and verify that I had the same problem there.

Guess what?   It worked perfect.  So it wasn’t because of the upgrades Blogger is in the midst of.  The next step would be to completely uninstall Firefox on my main computer and the reinstall it.

Which worked.  Phew!  I still have no idea what is wrong with Explorer, but I rarely ever use it so no big deal.

And I’m back in business…

Blue

Thematic Photographic’s theme for this week has been “Got the Blues”, and with the end of the school year jumping out at me, this was good timing.

As some of you may know, I’m going to be changing schools again this year.  I applied for a ½ computers, ½ math position at another junior high and got the position.  A few of you may know that this isn’t all that surprising, this is the fifth time I’ll be changing schools in my career, the fourth in the last 6 years.  That and I had a little inside info from the head counselor there, who I’ve worked with at two other schools, and the principal at the school had already hired me twice before.

You would think with all the leaving I’ve done, and that I’ve had some negative issues at the school I’m at now, that I would be able to just shrug it off without a single tear. 

But the fact is that even in as little as a year, and in this case just 2, I have made some good friends that I will miss seeing every day.  And as I was packing things in my classroom today, and as some of my good friends there were giving me a full ration of crap for moving schools, I realized that there will be people that I will truly miss  (no, not the lunch ladies). 

The end of the school year is always a mixture of sheer jubilation and a case of the blues.  Summer is great, the freedom, the rest, no deadlines, no early morning alarms.  But there is always faculty that is leaving (in this case I’m leaving them behind) and a whole class of students that are moving on to the high school.  Or if you are in high school, moving on to real life. 

The picture is of the first shipment of classroom stuff that I brought home.   This is the signal that I won’t be coming back to that school next year.  And although I am excited for the change, to be teaching more than just math all day long, I also know, like all the schools before, that I’m leaving something behind that I will miss.

If you are interested in adding your own blue picture to the group, or just perusing the other ones submitted, click on the “Thematic Photographic” banner below.

Puss In Boot & A Walk Around The Park.

I was cleaning out the trunk of my car the other day and Alan decided he needed to help me.  Of course I had to go get my camera and get a few pictures of this, which made Denny jealous because he wasn’t getting all the attention. 

So, he decided to climb in and do a little investigating himself.  Well, all this showing off and attention gets a little tiring, so the two of them had to head in for a little nap afterwards.

Today started out rainy, but by noon it warmed up to almost, if not past, 70°F (21°C) so after laundry and kitchen cleaning, I decided to take a walk through the park by my house.   Now Sugarhouse Park, from 1855 to 1951 it was the site of  the Utah State Penitentiary, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, a mere 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the city center.  When they moved the prison 30 miles south to the “Point of the Mountain”, they made it into one of the biggest parks in the city.  Below is a link to a gallery of pictures I took today, all in the park, but mostly of the high water flowing through it and pictures of people enjoying the beautiful day.

View Full Album

Landon

Judgment Day

If you are reading this post, then yet another group of doomsdayers were wrong. 
*NOTE: This post was written a week ago, even before the science teacher told me the story that I mention in my last post A Crock O' (blip!) Now. 

It was the early 70’s, right on the cusp of teen hood, when I remember first experiencing an end of the world fear.  Some long forgotten group was telling me I would never grow old enough to get my driver’s license, and I was worried.  I can’t remember how long I lived with this fear, but I eventually talked to my mother about it.  She assured me that crackpot groups like this had come and gone before, and that this was just another case of someone claiming to know the exact date of something that no one will ever know until, and if, it ever actually happens.  Her calming attitude and lack of fear herself made me feel a lot better, but I still breathed a sigh of relief when I woke up the morning after the world was supposed to end, when I realized my mother was right.  After that, all the other predictions of doom that came and went had no effect on me.

Now, thanks to Harold Camping and his predictions, a whole new group of pre-teens are going to have a few sleepless, worry filled nights.  ‘Cause let’s face it, those of us who can think for ourselves and have been through this before, know two things: 1) Chances are it’s a total load of crap or 2) If this really is the second coming and God is knocking at our doors, there’s nothing we can do about it, and if we’ve lived a good moral life (regardless of our spiritual beliefs) there’s really nothing to be afraid of.

So, as I write this one week before the world is supposed to end on May 21^st, 2011 (at exactly 6:00 PM in whatever time zone you are in), I’m not worried.  I’ll still go to work all week, I’ll still pay my bills and although I may not sleep soundly, it will be because of the stress of the weeks before the end of school.

UPDATE: just two days before the end of the world.  I’ve been studying this prediction by Harold Camping and I’ve discovered he’s got it all wrong.  The end of the world is not going to be on May 21^st, 2011.  I predict, confidently so, that it will be on November 12^th, 2050.  Camping forgot to take into account that the original writers of The Old Testament read and wrote from right to left, not left to right like we do.  So, I’ve concluded that the end of the world is not 05/21/11 but in reality 11/12/50.  At least I’ll bet that’s what he says on May 22^nd.

A Crock O’ (blip!) Now

I stole that title from Mad Magazine’s satire of the 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, and on this Rapture’s Eve, I find it quite fitting.

But as I watched the news people making so much fun of this latest end of the world crap, I started to get a little bit angry.  Not at the news people, but at the schmuck that thinks it’s OK to spread this kind of fear.

Now unless you have some serious long-term memory problems, or major gullibility issues, if you are an adult you are bound to remember the umpteen other times in your life the world ended.  Or was supposed to.  And, like the news, you just laugh off this latest absurdity, wishing you could be standing right next to Harold Camping, or any one of his doom and gloom followers (that forgot he “got the date wrong” when he predicted the end of the world back in 1994), laughing your ass off as the sun comes up Sunday morning.

But what if you’re 12? 

I was talking to my favorite science teacher at school about the end of the world, we hugged each other goodbye in the parking lot “just in case there is no Monday”, when she told me that she had a class of 7^th graders that voiced some concern over this prediction.  Now they weren’t freaking out, but since they had never experienced the (not-so-much) end of the world before, a little part of them just wasn’t sure.  Having gone through the same thing when I was just about that age, I understood what she was talking about.  She reassured them that the world wasn’t coming to an end by telling them that if it did, she would pay them each $20.  (Hey, they’re twelve, give ‘em a break).

Anyway, I know that we can’t censor anyone’s religious beliefs, and I would never want to.  I also know that we can’t punish them for their beliefs, even when they are proven wrong (in a short Google search, I found 29 failed end of the world predictions from the 20^th century alone.)  I just wish there was some way to shut them up.

2011 Miss Airport Security Calendar

24 out of 48

Man this hot-cold-dry-rainy weather plays havoc with my head.  Woke up Monday feeling like crap, came home from school and was in bed sleeping by 5:00 PM.  Didn’t wake up until the alarm went off at 5:02 AM.  Tuesday was a replay, so in a 48 hour period I got 24 hours of sleep.  Woke up today feeling like crap still, went to a full day meeting on the new 7th grade math curriculum and would love to just go to bed again, but I have to trek out to school to help get a slide show working for the dance concert tonight.  Yeah!  Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow for the day long meeting on the new 9th grade curriculum (fingers crossed).

Duh-mass in a Grand Cherokee

I’m coming home from the store and turning left at the light.  The light turns green and even though there aren’t any cars coming, I wait.  Why?  Because first a couple pedestrians have to cross the street and then there is a bicyclist coming toward me.  So, I sit there for a minute waiting for all the non-motorized vehicles to clear the way when the guy behind me decides I’m sitting there for no reason at all and cuts around me.  (See picture above.)  I guess he didn’t see the bicyclist, figured I was texting or something asinine like that, and decided rather than honk his horn and wake me up, he’d just pull a total bonehead maneuver and go around.  Except he ended up having to come to a quick stop for the guy on the bicycle, that I was waiting for.  Impatient douche bag.  There.  I feel better now.

Ever have one of those days where you fix one thing, just to have something else break down?  Yeah, I did.  The ignition switch on Old Blue went out on me on Friday.  I could start the car fine, but it wouldn’t stay in the “run” position, so the second I let go of the key the car turned off.  I had to drive all the way home holding the key in the “start” position.  Gave me some bad finger cramps, but I made it.  So yesterday I put in a new one.  I went straight to NAPA, figuring that even they wouldn’t have one for a 1969 Ford, but if anyone did it would be them.  They did have it.  A whopping $25, and it took me just over an hour to switch it out.  Would have taken me even less time if I didn’t have to look up on the internet how to get the key cylinder out of the switch so I could put it in the new one.  Then I’m out driving around today and the signal flasher switch decided to go on holiday (as in “Chicken Run”).  Back to NAPA and another $2.35 and 5 minutes later all is well again.  For now.  Knock on wood.