Counting tomorrow, there are eight instructional days, one exam period per class, and two staff days left in the year. No matter how you reckon it, we're in the single digits when it comes to herding cats.
(The title of this post comes from when Lady Capulet tells Tybalt he's a "saucy boy." We're watching Romeo and Juliet - Zef's 1968 version, of course - in all classes and the kids always like that line. Especially the saucy boys. Me, I still love this whole movie. It's fashionable in our department to dislike R&J, but even after 22ish years of watching the film, including five times a day broken up over a week for the past three years, I still come home a little starry-eyed over having Whiting "still stand there, to have thee still remember." Oh, give me my sin again, indeed. Meanwhile, all my freshie girls think he looks like that High School Musical lad. Grumble.)
My schedule for next year is still in Drama Mode. In theory, I'll have two AP classes (OMG, vomit, twirl, clap, faint, etc.) with the rest of the day spent with regular freshmen - not Honors, but there's also a possibility that I'll have all regular freshmen all day. And no sick leave left by the end of the year, what with the mental health days and the eventual bullet through my skull. Cross the fingeys for AP. (Drama = they may be holding out for someone to transfer in with AP experience. This is my polite explanation of the situation. Please pass the watercress sandwiches so I may quite savagely gnaw off the crusts while smiling, smiling.)
Cruise Prep continues every day. We're on the fourth disc of Love Boat episodes from NetFlix. I've been taking a multivitamin daily. (Nothing to do with being at sea, just a bout of inspiration to be that much more healthy.)
Um. That's about it. No, wait: I have my new swimsuit - the Seashell Princess Seam Takini in reduced-price teal with the almost-matches-just-ignore-the-red-stripe High-Performance Short, also reduced - from Junonia (the place for fat girl bathers). I've been buying old/used Catalina Island postcards on eBay. I made reservations at Blue Bayou for dinner during the "Anaheim layover" on the way back. I've selected an Indian restaurant ("one of the most extensive buffets in [Orange] County") for the transition from cruise ship to Disney. Ginger pills, ginger gum, and non-drowsy Dramamine are on the shopping list. The critter sitter has been engaged.
My new passport should arrive in the next fortnight. Yes, I ponied up to have it expedited, just in case something kept it from arriving within six weeks. (There's a big rush of applications at the moment, what with passports being required for land/sea travel to Mexico starting June 1st. Our cruise is closed-loop, so supposedly this is the one exception where you still don't need a passport, but there are so many different answers out there that it's just easier to finally renew... just in time for British Airways to start nonstop service to and from Vegas this autumn. Interesting.) As previously tweeted, my passport photo bears a strong resemblance to Hurley from Lost. Must take more vitamins...
The Herman's Hermits show last Saturday was terrific. Once again, Peter Noone was a master showman. Even the same bits from the December show were still funny - like watching the good parts of a favourite movie again. Oh, and it didn't hurt that Peter walked over to Mike while on stage and handed him an autographed CD. (Hop hop hop!) From the devoted fans ("Noonatics") handing out glo-sticks to everyone before the show to the sharp, lively performances of Peter and the band, I still cannot recommend a Herman's Hermits (starring Peter Noone) show enough. I challenge anyone to make it through the audience participation of Henry the Eighth without a sore face from smiling. H! E! N-R-Y!
Alas, not so much praise for Aliante Station's buffet. I thought Aliante was meant to be another Red Rock clone, all posh up there in the "new" North Las Vegas (as opposed to regular North Las Vegas, an area where I try to get an inside lane if we must stop for a red light). The casino itself is nice - open plan, smells okay, same old orange fixtures but cute sputnikky carpet - but the buffet is surely amongst the worst of the Station properties. No pasta station, warm lettuce, and - despite the Saturday traffic - congealed food everywhere. I made a chips-n-salsa plate, that's how bad it was. I did like the banana cream pie, but everything else was pretty flavorless.
Oh, and service was terrible. One drink to last the whole meal. I never expect much from the Station buffets other than solid, homey fare, but this was just poor quality. So glad we won enough on Wild Tiki slots to pay for half. Even Mike agrees, and he's an apologist for Santa Fe Station's buffet. (I'd rank Aliante side-by-side with Santa Fe, perhaps a little lower, with Palace the lowest of all. Palace wasn't bad when it was re-done last year or so, considering the price, but the quality of its few offerings quickly slipped, and the environment - I'm being tactful here - is just too depressing.)
It's too hard to complain about the world, though, when such a fun summer lies ahead. (Knock wood.) All I have to do is make it there. Today we had a lockdown that kept the kids after school for 45 minutes. (Oh, you didn't see it on the news? When do you? And so the public remains ignorant of our working conditions, while teachers see a pay cut for next year along with bigger classes. I usually enjoy Bill Maher, but he needs to stop the generalizations about fatcat tenured teachers holding the system back. We don't even have tenure in Nevada, let alone the right to strike.)
(Not that I want to strike, I just want to teach.... students, not warehoused criminals. Not kids with nothing to do for four years but talk during my class and wait for summer school and easy computerized afterschool credit retrieval programs. Same old complaint. This week Mike changed all of the low Fs in his gradebook to the required 50% minimum grade before the final. I understand about giving struggling kids chances, but what about the ones who do no work - and I do literally mean no work - all year and simply disrupt the class every day? Yes, everyone gets a chance, even if you have 40 absences, what with that extra month your family spent in Mexico, or those extra furloughs to "opportunity school." Until kids can fail middle school, either for academic reasons or for ongoing documented episodes of extreme social immaturity/sociopathic tendencies - what hope is there for a productive learning environment in high school? My ninth graders don't understand library fines, let alone the repercussions of sitting around all day, arguing that X is boring and that they have the right to socialize with friends.)
Erm, I didn't mean to rant. Again. About the same stuff. Stuff that could be so much worse. What was that I said about being unable to complain about the world? I have a job, I have a summer break. (Although I wish non-educators would stop calling it a "summer off" - it's unpaid! And peppered with unpaid-yet-semi-mandatory training! Arrrgh! Okay, done, I swear.) I have a Kindle, I have six dwarf hamsters (poor Koda-the-secret-hamster, will he ever be properly introduced?), I have chocolate in the house (not sure where, but I'm about to find out), and I have a husband who dazzles me more with every passing day. (In the sense of romantic starlight and brilliant thinking, not like a pendulum-flinging hypnotist. Although that could explain so much.)
And I have single digits. Get ready to breathe.
Comments