Monday, April 30, 2012

Week 2

Gotta admit, it’s nice getting done with a day of teaching and not have to go to a second job.

Relaxing, despite staying at school working on the lighting for the dance concert until 4:30.

Still I got to go home, eat a good dinner instead of a bunch of crap food at the Chevron and then sit around playing on the internet.  Much better.

Sunday, April 29, 2012

How to get 2600 hits in one day.

  1. Find a small group of popular bloggers involved in a major (to them) controversy.
  2. Write a post that is diametrically opposed to the group’s point of view.  Your argument will have to be both valid and defensible.  You’ll get a lot of ALL CAPS ANGRY COMMENTS, but see-through bogus arguments won’t rankle any haunches.
  3. Be sure your post has links back to their bickering.  If the group doesn’t get wind of your indiscretion, all your work will be for naught.
  4. Sit back and let the Twitter/blogosphere combo do it’s job.

Bonus points are given when you can do this without even intending to.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Stuff

Really liked this sign I saw while dining the other day, but still glad that there’s laws against dining naked.

Sunrise when I got to school the other day.

Nobody likes parking lot dings on their car, but this person is obviously more important than the rest of us.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Hickey-bobin’ - 2012

I was in middle school in the early 70’s.   There was a long road around the old burned out plant nursery that led to the back of the school, where most parents dropped off their students.  The side roads in the suburbs of Boston often got snow-packed in the winter, and despite having a school at the end of it, this was not one of the first ones plowed.  Which made for some good hickey-bobin’.

We’d grab onto the back bumper of a passing car and let it pull us “skiing” on our shoes.  (Remember – bumpers on cars at the time were separate from the body, easy to grab onto.)

Well, the other day I saw the 2012 version of hickey-bobin’;

a guy in a wheel chair, a leash and another guy on a skateboard.

Hicky-bobin’ in the parking lot.  1972 or, 40 years later, in 2012.  Kids’ll find a way.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Adolescent Faith.

I hung out with a very non-religious group in high school, many people viewed us as a being completely faithless.

Yet, I had (and still have) faith that no matter what, my family will be there for me,

that I could talk my way out of just about anything,

that I was so cool no way any picture of me would ever come back to embarrass me in my 50’s,

that I would make it home safe, even if I was driving like a bat outta hell up a snowy, deserted road to nowhere, in a ‘72 Dodge Colt wagon.

We all had faith that the 7-Eleven guy found our antics as funny as we did,

that we could jump off a table wearing a leash, and it wouldn’t snap our neck,

that our science teacher wouldn’t blow us up with his crazy experiments,

that we’d be friends forever,

that we could do anything, and survive,

and that we could express ourselves freely, however we felt like it.

Whoops!

A student came to me right after school to ask me about his citizenship (behavior) grade.  He was a little flustered when he asked me “What can I do about my citizenshit?

After I explained some of the things he could do to improve his grade, another student told me I should have said to him “Quit behaving so crappy.

(Courtesy of Mr. Gearhead)

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The many faces of Max

This is a 2-fer on funny things kids say.

My 7th period is very trying.  Not just because it is the last period of the day, but when other teachers see my class roll, they just shake their heads.

The other day was much like the rest, five or six of them just wouldn’t stop talking and we weren’t getting as much done as I had hoped.  By 7th period I’m also a little tired, and my tolerance level is down a bit.  I got angry.  And talked loud.  Very loud.  The good news is that it’s not so commonplace that the students don’t get a little freaked out when I yell, uh I mean, talk loudly.

They all got real quiet and one of them said, sheepishly, that he get’s a little scared when I yell talk loudly like that.

The kid right next to me looks up at me and says to me “I peed a little.” (He was just kidding.)

Still frustrated with the class, but I couldn’t help myself – I burst out laughing.

That’s when kid #1 says “What’s with the mood swings?

Yeah, I can go from being really ticked off to laughing pretty quick when something funny happens.  Can’t help it.  But in my opinion, mood swings that are caused by external stimuli are not “mood swings”, they’re just letting funny things be funny.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so. (paraphrased from the opening song from “MONK”.)

Monday, April 23, 2012

Too funny to be contained by Facebook.

P.S. – this may not work on your phone, try it on a real computer.

Got up this morning with..

not a wine glass in my hand, but the feeling:

.I don’t have to go to two jobs today!.

This weekend has felt like the beginning of summer, not just because we broke 80° (27°C) both days, but because the end of my second job feels much like the end of the school year – freeing.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Fun with digital editing.

I’ve developed this great talent: see, I can be in several places at once.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

Mayans were right!

Saw this on Facebook and just had to give it my touch.

DickClark

Friday, April 20, 2012

Silhouette of a different color.

the outline of a solid figure as cast by its shadow
from thefreedictionary.com

Sometimes, things are just meant to be.  Carmi picks silhouette as the theme for this week, the week we have the skits for our school’s student body elections.  Two separate skits use the black lights on stage to create moving silhouettes, in two completely different ways.

Yeah, the ideas aren’t original.  My T.A. showed me clips on YouTube the next day.  Still, it gave me the opportunity to take these pictures, of students at my school pulling it off pretty well.

Click on the banner to see some other really cool silhouette pictures.  And post your own if you want.

The drawback of driving a 1972 Ford LTD.

On the way out of class one of my students rattled off two 4-digit numbers and then asked “Those sound familiar to you?

Uh, yes.  One was my house number, the other my street number. (For those of you not familiar with Salt Lake City, and Utah in general, our streets are set up on a coordinate system. Each house and each street has a coordinate number that relates to the number of blocks it is either north, south, east or west of the center of the city or town.)

My first thought was that he had somehow come across that information on the internet.  It’s possible, and a couple other students had claimed they were going to pay the buck or so for the information, but it never came through.

20120419

But instead he had been heading somewhere with his brother and they were behind me when I pulled into my driveway.  He described the house and the station wagon on the side of the house perfectly.

If I were driving a 2004 Toyota Corolla, I bet he would have never noticed.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Freedom’s just another word for…

not having a second job.  Yay!

I showed up to work to find that the manager had spent some time updating the schedule through the month of May.  One of the benefits was that she eliminated the two days I was scheduled to work next week.  I’M DONE!

On one level I’m sad – it was a good place to work.  Overall, the people there were fun to work with and the management was incredibly accommodating when something came up at school.

On the other hand, it’s going to be really nice not to have to, after eight hours of dealing with junior high kids, work another 4 hours.

Free!