Things that have occurred in the last couple of weeks:
I went to a teaching conference. It was, well, as I expected it to be, only it was actually slightly more useful than I expected. I got a lot of good materials to use in my classroom and a ton of free books, so I'm happy about that. On the downside, I did have to spend four solid days in the exclusive company of other teachers, which, for me, is like Hell on earth. You see, teachers have a tendency to be egregious storytellers, manipulating any situation to get in a story about 1. how great of a teacher they are, 2. the worst/best/most horrifying/etc. of any given situation they've ever experienced (all in an effort to trump someone else's rant), or 3. how dumb their students are. It's not my game, you see, and so my tolerance for such events is limited. One teacher told a very strange story completely out of nowhere about how her school was "famous, but not in a good way" because one of their students murdered his entire family on his graduation day. First off, what the f? Secondly, it's called INFAMOUS, ass. "Famous, but not in a good way." God. This is me rolling my eyes.
Additionally, teachers tend to have really strange quirks. For example, one woman said "right, right, right, riiiiight, oh yeah, riiiiiight" to everything (EVERYTHING) the teacher said, almost as if it was "amen" time in church. To keep myself from going insane, I rooted her on with a tally. On her worst day, she said "riiiight, yeahhh, uh huh, riiiiight" 533 times. 533 times in six hours of tallying. You'd want to kill yourself too. Serenity now, God. If that wasn't bad enough, on the other side of me sat "The Repeater," a woman so enthusiastic about the topic that she attempted to finish everyone's sentences or repeat words or whole phrases to show they were on the same page. I made it my mission to throw her off, peppering in comments like, "I wouldn't be more surprised if I woke up with my head sewn to the carpet."
So anyway, you can see that I'm pretty well set for a year in the company of people like this after ohhhh, three hours. But no...this was thirty hours. One teacher even had the nerve to show up hocking a book she had just written, forcing everyone to pass the book around and accept promotional postcards directing us to go to amazon.com to buy the book. Quiz time: Guess whose postcard went straight into the trash! That's right, mine. Someone asked her how long it took her to write the book, a biography of an Indianapolis Colts player. "Ten years" was her response. TEN YEARS! The book, friends, was 156 pages. You could write a single page a DAY and be done in less than 6 months. Hell, throw in research and I'll maaaaaybe give it a year, but come ONNNNNN. Ten years?! Sometimes I have no words.
Following the teaching conference I went to visit my parents and some friends. It was nice. Got to see my parents and my quasi-brother Michael (don't ask...let the mystery propel your insanity), as well as Julie, Michelle, Laney, and Drew (whose wee daughter I met for the first time too). All around, a productive adventure. Salute to me!
Upon returning home, I resumed my marathon reading and course-planning schedule. (In case you're wondering, it does, in fact, include two hours of The People's Court every day. That Judge Marilyn Milian is one sassy lady, and I like her!)
On Friday we resolved to go see our city's fireworks display. We went out to eat and then hit up our lovely neighborhood casino boat, where we played the slot machines for 5 minutes and managed to win $10.50 between us. You ask, "Did you put that money right back into the machines because you're an idiot?" To that I say, haHA! Yes, yes we did. You know me so well. Although by the end we were still $3 on top. Could be worse. Don't judge me!
So afterward, we moseyed on over to the river and laid down our personal territory. From our spot, we had a perfect view of this guy:
Interesting things about this specimen:1. He almost exclusively entered the car through the driver's side window, despite the fact that the doors clearly worked (as he did actually open them once or twice)
2. He spent the bulk of his time before the show cleaning his windows and rooting around in the hatchback. I can only imagine he was trying to get his homemade subwoofer workin, or something else those cool Camaro kids do with their Subway salaries.
3. When not performing car maintenance in front of thousands of people, he was sitting on the roof of his vehicle....just like this photo illustrates...looking around (sometimes forlornly), waiting for the ladies to flock to him and his cherry red love machine. (Psssst...it did not end well for him.)
Final verdict: delightful.
Then the fireworks came, which, well, were quite nice. We had prime real estate. Here are some photos (taken from my cell phone, because I am an ass and couldn't be bothered with my real camera) to prove we actually stayed amid the crowd for the big show:
So, that's about it for now.Right now Y and I are planning a road trip for a week or so from now. More on all of that later, as well as musings on my parents' recent proclivities for collecting vagrant children.
No comments:
Post a Comment