:: p-dog ::

I've been sick again, which is just plain annoying. I feel like I've been sick off-and-on for over a month. Nothing too serious, just incapacitating enough to be annoying. I didn't go to school today. Too bad, because I really want to conserve my sick days for, well, days when I'm not sick. I have some vision (I'll never really do this) of taking a whole week off in April or May, but these inconvenient spells of infection are thwarting my fabulous plans. At least I was semi-productive. I graded some papers, made all the homework for my classes until February break, and did some serious crafts. (I sometimes wonder if I'm going to be the crazy old lady decorating bird houses for fake birds, but I like to think I have a little more taste than that.)

So Bryan's long days at Berkeley end Wednesday. The paper deadline for his conference is midnight on the 26th, so he will no longer have to spend 12 hours/day at work. I'm very excited to see him again. He actually took Saturday night off, so we got to see each other awake. It felt like he'd been away on a trip. As nice as the reunions are, though, I'm looking forward to when I can just take him for granted again.

Bryan's perpetual absence, and my subsequent loneliness, has been good for my social life. Highlights of the last two weeks include: dancing till 2 a.m. at a gay bar in SF last Sunday, getting the Fremont tour from another teacher at my school, movies, window shopping, and trashy celebrity magazines with Peanut, and a Sex and the City marathon with some girls. Good times.

I've got to plug Clare's blog once again for more fantastic Peace Corps tales, plus links to exciting pictures of sheep-slaughter. That done, I'm going to bed.

:: Leslie H - 9:15 PM - ::

I love four day weeks. My internal clock keeps telling me it's Wednesday, but oh-eternal-glorious-surprise it's Thursday! And a short day (end of the quarter we get out early for a couple of days). *And* the midpoint of the year. 90 days down, 90 days left.
I'm concentrating on all this rather than on the fact that I have to work Saturday and I never see Bryan.
Bryan, come into his own as a computer graphics grad student, has a paper deadline next week and is therefore in Berkeley daily until long after my bedtime. Lucky for me, he was just dreadfully ill enough on Tuesday that he had to come home, but that was the first day for a week he did not spend away (including the weekend). I feel sort of like I'm in a fairy tale: I have this enchanted boyfriend who only comes to me when I'm asleep. Semi-conscious midnight cuddles are all the contact we get. After another week of this, I'll be ready for a dramatic daytme reunion. Perhaps even a conversation unmuddled by sleep.

:: Leslie H - 8:08 AM - ::

New newspaper, check.

:: Leslie H - 8:05 AM - ::

Okay, I'm in. The game currently sweeping the blog-waves involves shuffling your entire music collection (in my case, 3400 songs, approx 10 days of music) and listing (confessing?) the first ten songs to come up. While they are never representative of current tastes or the flavor of the whole collection, people invariably feel the need to explain that. I think I'll limit myself to snarky comments about individual songs.

Everything is beautiful - Ray Stevens [This one actually begins with a preschool chorus of "Jesus Loves the Little Children." I don't recall ever having heard it before.]

Homework - The Dust Brothers

Immortality - Pearl Jam [I believe I have Pearl Jam's entire body of work, at least up to 1999 when I first became mp3-happy. It sits like an undigested lump in the esophagus of iTunes.)

Maria - Rage Against the Machine

Kiss the Girl - The Little Mermaid [Fantastic!]

Desperately Wanting - Better than Ezra [Better than Who? I once went on a semi-successful mission to find all the mid-90s radio singles fondly remembered from high school.]

Love for Sale - Talking Heads

Love My Way - The Psychedelic Furs [You think you don't know this song, but you do.]

Bemsha Swing-Lively Up Yourself - Medeski Martin and Wood

No Diggity - Black Street

And then I couldn't stop--I was too curious. So, other highlights from the top 20:
Weigh - Phish
Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Israel Kamakawillhisnameneverend?
Igor's Boogie, Phase One - Frank Zappa

:: Leslie H - 8:16 AM - ::

Two things are striking me as moderately unbelievable today. The first: that it was Christmas Eve two weeks ago--I was happily ensconced on a couch by a roaring fire in Dallas, anticipating sacred holiday traditions like giggle fits in church.
The second: how much easier teaching has become. God knows there are still vast amounts of work, and that I still have problems and frustrations out of all proportion to my pre-teacher life. But I waltzed in this morning, took five minutes to write things on the board, and was basically done with preparations for the day. Trial-and-error lesson plans, exhaustively setting up routines, a developed sense of what works and what doesn't, increasing confidence in my adlib ability: I've internalized so much of the process that used to take so long. Things I used to agonize over became, at some ill-defined point, automatic.
Just taking a moment to appreciate.

:: Leslie H - 8:46 AM - ::

My arithmetic may be wrong, but I think--I think--that today was my 100th to last teaching day. Potentially ever. In the constant up-and-down cycle, today was a down, and thus the count began.

I announced this to Bryan, and he began making me something that involves lots of colored paper. I'll let you know how that works out.

UPDATE: This is it.

A giant paper chain that runs up our stairs, numbered with the remaining teaching days. It's festive! And I get to tear one off every day.

:: Leslie H - 4:09 PM - ::

I read an article about the tsunami with my students today--they were interested and horrified. I love discussing current events with them, but I feel like I need to inject something uplifting. It's all tragedy and despair, and we're about to read Anne Frank. Nothing sunny there.

Anyway, one of my students informed me, on the topic of natural disaster, that there was going to be another ice age, and the world would end in fire. According to the Bible. I did not win the thinking-on-my-feet prize today. Nonplussed, I responded, "Oh. Really? Hmm."

:: Leslie H - 4:46 PM - ::

Here's wishing all the teachers in my life a good first day back. Mine was pretty good--it has the flavor of the beginning of the year, when all the kids step a little carefully, and the comfort of being the last "first day back" I plan to have, from this side of the classroom at least.

PLUS, there was a giant rainbow spanning the highway on the drive home. I took several pictures and endangered myself and others on the wet road.

PLUS, Doug bought Bryan (effectively, us, until the divorce) a beautiful 27" HD TV for Christmas (and his birthday, and several other occasions rolled together). I tell you this to make you feel inadequate about your own gift-giving, as I now feel about mine. But it certainly brightened my day a bit. I may not appreciate its full technological splendor, but it beats our former TV, which would randomly turn itself off or decide a color picture was just too hard.

So thanks Doug, and rain+sun, and children's fear, for my not-too-bad day. See, I don't ask much.

:: Leslie H - 4:02 PM - ::

Oh yes, and Michigan, suck it.

:: Leslie H - 7:19 PM - ::

I feel the need to update just because I can, and so I can put off grading a pile of persuasive essays, arguing that 13-year-olds should be able to throw unsupervised parties. Ha ha.

It's Saturday; Christmas break draws to an end; and I begin to panic about going back to school. Actually, I've talked about panicking a lot more than I genuinely have. Every time I start to, I think about all the months I have gotten through, and how I'm 3/4 of the way done with my teaching career, and I feel better about the whole situation. My resolution for my classroom this spring is to keep taking risks and trying new things, rather than just coasting to June. So much talk over break was of being in Berkeley next year--it felt so close. I wonder if it will be difficult to remain focused on teaching or if I will begin to check out as spring passes. But I suspect I will, as usual, be unable to think clearly about anything but teaching once I am back in the trenches.

While I have not been panicking, I have been procrastinating and have much work to do in the next 28 hours. So I will keep this short. If you're curious about my Christmas break, read about the first week here and the second week here, plus view the pretty pictures here.

:: Leslie H - 4:17 PM - ::