Oh, yeah...

Here's a picture of the hole I made in the tire. Remember? With the huge pothole in Indiana. Yeah.

Miscellany

In my attempt to become more Blake-ish, this year I'm starting my class with a (hopefully) thought-provoking quote. Today's was: "Much less evil would be done on earth if evil could not be done in the name of good" -- Marie Von Ebner Eschenbach. So I asked my students what they thought were some examples of evil done in the name of good. My first class I got some good responses. In my second class, the boys who are trying to convince me not to teach anymore mostly made fun of it. I understand the desire to be cool in front of your friends. I vaguely remember the horrors of high school. The emotional roller coaster, the hormonal disaster that is a teenager. I also remember the class ahead of mine being unduly cruel to their teachers. Their goal being to get Mrs. C to cry every day in class and to get Mr. H to resign. Both of them ended up only teaching for that one year. At the time I thought it was pretty awful of them, but also a little funny. Now I just want to cry for them and a little for me.

My first class generally goes well and the students pay attention and participate. Ideal. Second class, I have one student who continually roams the classroom. Every time he makes a comment he wants to do so from the front of the room. And he wants to make a lot of comments. I have other students who read very slowly on purpose. I'm not sure what the purpose is, other than to frustrate me and maybe get a few laughs(?). Honestly, I don't get it.

In other news, we're already planning our first homeleave. Planning on going to New York and seeing a show, eating Chipotle. (For those of you in Lincoln, you don't know how lucky you are to be in such close proximity to such deliciousness.) There will probably be cheesecake involved. We were thinking about spending the night, but the hostels (not hotels, hostels) start at $62 a night. To get a decent hotel room, with a shared bathroom, you'll pay more than $175 a night. That's a bit steep for us. Manhattan's quite pricy. In any case, I'm excited.

Also, in case you didn't know, the never-ending pasta bowl at Olive Garden started yesterday. Go henceforth and eat lots of pasta.

Also, we're going on Senior Retreat at the end of this week... hoping for good times, hoping there is no hurricane coming through, like last year, and that it's not too hot.

For your viewing pleasure, here is a picture of me in my office, five minutes ago. That's right, my computer takes pictures. Sucka.



Amen.

The things students say... (ripped off title from Carissa)

"Do I have to spell correctly in my journal?"

Since this came from a notoriously sarcastic student, I'm thinking... well, don't go out of your way to spell incorrectly.

(And yes, I'm pretty sure I was a notoriously sarcastic student in my days too...)

Etc.

This is Michael and me at the end-of-summer camp staff party.


Me, my cousin Naomi, Kirk and Christa at Clear Lake, a place my dad visited a lot as a kid in Indiana or Michigan. I'm not sure whether we crossed the border or not.


Me, Kirk and Christa at our Grandpa's funeral.


Christa, me, Mom and Michael at home when they visited in March.


Christa and me when we went to see the Lion King on Broadway.

Randomness from the past year...

This is Shelby. She's not always this calm.



She's usually more like this.



This is the siblings plus spouses last Christmas.



This is during one of the spring break trips to New York. I'll let you guess where we are.



This was a January trip to New York. It was about 17 degrees, plus if you've ever been to New York you know what the wind is like. Oh my word. So I tried to take a shot without the flash. But I was very cold. Hard to keep the camera still. I thought it was cool anyway.

While I was gone...

I got the sweet MacBook that I'm currently typing on. Woohoo! (which also means that my computer is no longer too slow for my camera -- pictures to follow soon.)

School started back. My class begins tomorrow. I have 24 students in one class and 30 (30!!) in the other.

My other grandfather died. He started out with prostate cancer, then it moved to his bones, before it was detected. Then a couple weeks ago it moved to his liver and he died about a week later. It was sad. I didn't get to go to the funeral, which was near Lincoln, which made it sadder that I couldn't go because then I could have seen friends too. Alas, one can only do so many things, and apparently go to so many funerals in one year.

Two days later, my great-grandmother, his mother, died. She was 99. She'd been out of it so long that they didn't even bother to tell her that her son had died, so that wasn't the cause. Maybe it was a coincidence, but I don't know if I believe in those.

Camp ended, I got sick, stayed that was for most of three weeks and we got home safely.

Life is still good. Just tinted a little with sadness right now.