fun!

Since everyone seems to be into lists these days and I am also avoiding work I thought I would play along. I got this from one of the Cambodian couple's friends.

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever music player you have on random.
Step 2: Post a line from the first 15 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike out the songs when someone guesses correctly.
Step 5: No cheating (ie: No Googling)


1. I believe in memories, the look so pretty when I sleep.
Yay Rach. Jack Johnson, Better Together

2. Ya the lips on you were plain, the better to a kiss sustain.

3. Bowing down to my addiction, never thought I'd go so willing.
Rach. Moist, Shotgun

4. I believe it's love that's hiding here, in the shadows and in the dark.
an anonymous poster, Granny by DMB (shame on you Rach)

5. Let's keep it moving, come on get funky.

6. Driving in on the highway all these cars end up on the sidewalk.
Marlito got this first via MSN, but Rach commented first. DMB, Ants Marching

7. There was crack on the corner and someone dead and fire coming out of a monkey's head.
Orth, sorta. Gorillaz (got the song wrong so i'll leave it out for now).

8. I'm closing in on closing up.

9. We were old familiar strangers.

10. I find a fatal flaw in the logic of love and go out of my head.
Orth. The Shins, Gone for Good. My nano says this is called A Call to Apathy, but apparently that was a tentative title. I stand corrected.

11. The silence offered warnings that he'd locked up deep inside.

12. Night falling on the city quite something to behold.
Rach on her second try. David Grey, Disappearing World

13. Either work hard or you might as well quit.
Finally, Rach. MC Hammer, Can't touch this. Marlito, I thought you'd have been all over this!

14. I lost the sense of it, the absolution that we never knew.
Rach again. Moist, Leave it alone

15. I'm bound by these choices that are so hard to make.

So I cheated just a little while making this. I figured it would by way too much about Rach if there were over 50% DMB songs on here (I've got the Central Park concert and a couple others on my nano right now...)so I skipped them. As it is it'll prolly be mostly about Rach anyway, she's a little nutty when it comes to song lyrics. So I'll post the answers and who guesses right. Prize for the person with the most correct answers? Why my love of course!!

WAR!

I am having a war with the bank. It's the best kind of war, cause only I know we're having it. My chances of winning are greater this way. There is a slight chance this situation exists for someone at the bank and they have waged a war with me they think I don't know about. If this is true, it will be a mighty long war indeed.

You see, the bank called me one Sunday evening near the end of August. Oh yes, apparently that the is the most convenient time to conduct some kind bank related survey. Being at dinner with my family, and not wanting to talk to the bank in general, I told whoever I had the pleasure of talking with that, no, now was in fact not a good time to complete their survey. They pleasantly informed me they would call back some other time.

"Some other time" turns out, in the land of TD Canada Trust, to be once a day anytime between the hours of 9:30 a.m and 9:00 p.m. For the first week they had a habit of calling during the day while I was at school with my phone turned off. This was enough time for me to commit the number to memory. By the time they branched out to other phoning times, it was too late for them, my defenses were impenetrable.

And still, one month later, the war rages on. I guess I was silly to think that a force such as TD Canada Trust would back down after a couple weeks. I underestimated their tenacity, but they have also underestimated mine. They obviously don't know the sheer joy I get out of not answering their calls. I am curious to see how long this war will rage on. I hope it's the same person that's calling me everyday, hoping to "catch" me not paying attention to my call display. That would make me even happier.

Oh TD, can't you just hold on to my money and be happy with that? You see, there's no way I can back down now.

blog wars!

Barely 24 hours after the debut of his new blog, the boy and I are already fighting over the right to post stuff. Being the bigger person here, I let him win. So go check out this video at Big Red's blog.

I just checked his site for the permalink, and it turns out the boy isn't as clever as he thinks he is - he hasn't actually put the video on his site, just a link. So instead of linking to the link, I'll post it below.

Check it out. I was eating pizza while watching this and it was so good I just sat there with my pizza in midair, on the way to my face for a good minute or so.

But after watching go check out the boy's blog anyway, leave him a comment and say hi. We like friendly wars afterall...

the video

peer pressure

Since all the cool kids are doing it, my boyfriend has decided he needs a blog. Since he went and spent a bunch of money on a camera phone, it's already way cooler than mine. Sigh. Turns out he's also a chatty little fellow when you give him free reign over a small portion of the interweb. You can check it out here.

Seems like it's also a good time to do a little update on boyfriend's ever changing nickname. Originally I was just calling him Sean-o. Then he seemed to decide he was ok with and maybe even liked DS. Now he tells me he will be reverting back to his original, not given to him by my friends, dj/nick name. Henceforth he shall be knows as Big Red. I put my foot down at adding the DJ in front of that, if it has 3 words it's not exactly a nickname.

coincidence? i think not

About an hour after I posted my previous post, this pops up over at GFY. I think they may have been reading my diary...

And just for the record, I'd love to be his neighbour!

me ADD? never...

So I was contemplating how much I love Sexyback by none other than Mr. JT himself. It’s a lot. If you don’t love it, I’m just going to assume you’re a hater. I like it so much I sing it to myself in my sleep. Lately I’ve been waking up with it in my head 50% of the time. The other 40% I wake up humming Sarah Harmer. That last 10% I don’t really want to talk about cause it’s no good.

While mentally exploring my love for JT, I pondered what ever happened to JC. See, as much as I loved Justin, JC was always my favorite N’Sync member. His solo song from Drumline made me very happy indeed. He should make a comeback. Minus Tara Reid in his video, cause we all know what she looks like these days.

On to the scandalous news of Mr. “look at me I’m publicly gay now” Lance Bass. See, what I think should happen is Lance should find himself a DJ partner and make a comeback. He could totally corner the radio friendly “pop/house” genre. Sure it won’t be amazing (or will it?) but it will get on the radio and in the bars. This is key. Lance Bass could be the catalyst that ends mainstream hip hop culture. Hallelujah! All it would take is a little house/dance music on the radio often for people to realize there’s a whole other world of fantastic music out there to dance to that doesn’t involve wearing your underwear and gyrating as fast as possible. Hopefully he will do this while reining a massive campaign against homosexuality. Think of all the 40 something ladies “Well if Lance is gay it can’t be that bad… I sure did love him when he was in N’Sync. Have you seen his boyfriend? So cute!” Much better than the whole Clay Aiken thing went down.

Think of the consequences here. I could start going to non gay bars again. Not that I don’t love Diva’s, but one other option of a place to go and dance wouldn’t kill anyone. Baggy pants would be in style again! Everyone sees the appeal in pants with a nice fitting bum, lower rise and wide legs right? The death of little thugs. I’m sure adults hated it when my generation was running around in clothes that didn’t fit with crazy coloured hair and huge jewelry, but at least you couldn’t see our underwear and we didn’t think guns were cool. I find myself wanting to run around the school and hug the little emo/indie kids just for not buying into the whole sex culture thing. That and asking them what’s they’re listening to (I’ve been hard up for new music) and asking them not to cut themselves. It’s a complicated kind of love.

So Lance, I know you were hoping this whole “gay member of N’Sync” thing would blow right over, but you have a social responsibility here. Step up!

math-tastic!

Firstly, I finally got my 'math is delicious' shirt. It was worth the 3 month wait, I can't wait to wear it.

Secondly, something is going right in the world of math. Years of hearing what a terrible job elementary teachers were doing in the math department, and then seeing the results in my gr9 classes seems to be no longer fact. The majority of my grade nines are so very well prepared! They've seen almost all of the current content in some form or another, and are able to link previous knowledge to the new stuff. Awesome.

I love the program the public system uses for Math 9. Sure, it's the same curriculum, but the ressource is wonderful. Sometimes too wonderful (seriously, the author is one wordy dude). Here is the problem. My grade 10s are too well prepared. Everything we have done is review. Not the good kind of review where you add some new twist to an already familiar thing and make it slightly more difficult. Nope, the redundant crappy kind of review where they are all super geniuses and are pretty bored. Ack! If I were super teacher, I'm sure I would make wonderful new ressources and challenge them somehow. I'm not. I'm already developping one course from scratch that has a shitty ressource (confusing and no answer key), and changing all my grade 9 stuff to match the new to me program. I don't get enough sleep as is.

What I want to know is how curriculum people think that this is good for students. Now wonder they all think math sucks, I do too right now. I also know we're in for another 2 weeks of review before we get into any new to them material. What to do? Do I make an executive decision to review at top speed and then test them? Teach only what is needed in detail and call it good? Continue to follow curriculum the way it is set up and bore everyone to tears for the next few weeks? The students don't really mind as there's little homework and I'm guessing it makes them feel good about their skills. I have a new and improved text coming my way (someday) and I know it does get better. There's only so much time I can put into this as my gr12 course HAS to take priority since they're writing a departmental. It just feels wrong to coast along in such simplicity. Do I make them teach it to one another for interest? I wish I would have known I was getting such capable students and could have planned a little better for this earlier...

Help!

things not to tell your gf

Awww, you look like a school marm.

You're not getting out of this "compliment" no matter how much you try to spin looking like a school marm into good thing. Marm is a synonym for ugly spinster. Not an adjective to describe a cute fall skirt - even if it does have small flowers on it. I, the marm, do not care how much you actually like my shirt and skirt now that you have compared me to an 80 year old nun.


(Aside: later the same day one of my students told me I looked like a hippie. Good thing I don't have self confidence issues or that skirt might never make it out of the closet again!)

getting old(er)

I have always wondered where abouts in life one makes that transition from normal to officially old. You know what I mean, do you just wake up one day and decide it's large floral print dresses (with sleeves), vests and elasticised waists from now on? You donate everything from your younger days to goodwill and that's the end of itÉ I have a feeling it's a more gradual transition and such things creep up on you when you're not looking. It starts off by buying something that's "not so bad" and most likely on sale. Then a second item, similar but worse. Not so bad keeps evolving and before you know it you have several pair of elasticised pants and you refuse to wear anything but. They are practical after all...

The thing that always worries me is that people guilty of such things arecompletelyy unaware. They think they look good! Heck yes my maroon vest, cream collared shirt and granny pants go together! I'm looking sharp today! Where is apple shaped gold brooch? It would complete this ensemble perfectly.

This weekend I bought new shoes. New high heeled shoes. They will look super cute with many of my work clothes. I plan on wearing them with pants sometimes, and here lies the problem. I hate shoes with no socks. In the summer I will tolerate it for the sake of looking good. In the winter, forget about it. These shoes require thin socks, very very thin socks. Trouser socks. Ugh. I feel as if by even considering to purchase something called a trouser sock I have aged myself by 5 years. Of course, I'm talking black ones here. Essentially I'm talking "convenient tights." For now my move is to black trouser socks (could someone work on renaming that for the younger generation of working people? we'd pay more.) but how many years until I think the nude ones are ok? 6 months? a year? 3 years? What comes after accepting trouser socks?

And exactly how many years til I pull my dusty rose pants, cream and dusty rose floral print shirt (with matching crocheted vest for when I get cold) and toddle off to get my hair permed?

oops

As per usual I have become the person I hate. As mentioned, I have been house-sitting for my uncle. Yesterday I went home to grab some clean work clothes. Someone had left me a little message. It appears I have forgotten about my alarm clock. My persistent and dedicated alarm clock. It is so concerned about me waking up, that even in my absence it goes off. For two hours. That's an alarm clock that is very serious about its commitment to me and waking. Too bad my neighbours also aren't as impressed with such a display of affection. It would appear they aren't quite as dedicated to waking up from 6:30 to 8:30.

I will spend the next two weeks pretending to be a ninja, entering and exiting with as much stealth as i can muster, hoping to not run into anyone who lives in my complex. Once in my apartment I will be a dead ninja. They make even less noise than live ones if you can imagine.

ACCESS DENIED! kinda

I am trying to wrap my mind around my school computer and with every day that goes by I get more confused. You see, the public school board has some kind of "parental control" over all computers. This makes sense to me for general things. No one wants porn pop ups (accidental or otherwise) while surfing the computers in the library. The more I use the internet though, the more I don't understand what I'm not supposed to be looking at.

MSN webmessenger will not work. I understand, kids should be learning, not chatting with their friends at another school who are also "doing research" in the library. My Gtalk works, on average, 50% of the time. I don't really care as I also don't need to be chatting while working, I just think it's really funny that sometimes it works while others it's blocked. So I send off quick messages to Rach just to prove that I can. Small victories against the man.

Now the not making sense bit. It blocks Penny Arcade, but not Least I Could Do. It blocks the Superficial but not Go Fug Yourself. Now I can see how Go Fug Yourself would be missed - the girls are witty and not vulgar - but Least I Could Do? It's a webcomic essentially about sex. It's logo involves a condom. How exactly is that kosher?

No internet radio. Period. Why is this something that should be blocked? Darn you kids listening to music! Learning will be unpleasant!

I also have no idea how they monitor blogs. None of my regulars are blocked, and very rarely will I try to visit a new blog to have it show up access denied. This is a good thing and a bad thing. Yesterday while floating around in the blogosphere what pops up on my screen? A massive cleavage shot. Large, uplifted, scantily clothed boobs. True the article that accompanied them wasn't racy at all, but not exactly safe for work either.

Je ne comprends pas. If you are wondering what I'm doing surfing the internet at work, it's called keeping sane while appearing busy at the same time. In a "normal" job, I would get a coffee break. At school, I check my email or read a blog entry. I love my job, but dealing with teenagers can cause brain damage if you're not careful. Seriously, it's science. Still don't believe me? Stop by for grade 9 math someday.

you shall be spoten

I think my 50 year old upstairs neighbour is making noise out of spite. Or maybe her 35 year old deadbeat son is doing it for her, he is the larger of the two. Since I went and introduced myself all they have done is stomped around up there. No more music or tv noise, just stomp stomp stomp stomp.

I was polite! Really, I didn't want to be but I was!

Oh ya, they've also taken to slamming doors.

Jokes on them however, I'll be house-sitting for the next week. By the time I get back they'll have forgotten they're supposed to be making a commotion for my benefit.

Responses

Well by popular (and by popular i mean two...) request, it appears you're interested in what my students have to say.

Period 1
This was actually a less animated discussion than I was expecting it to be. It's a small class and they're very on task, so I don't mind talking about other stuff with them. Of course there was a tangent - they suggested that frustration with homework/school is causing teens to act out. Someone brought up the fact that there's a new statistic circulating out there that the amount of homework students do has increased significantly in the last few years. I countered with the fact that we've been watering down the curriculum - something they also agreed to. I asked what they thought we should do about a "more of less" approach in education, but no one came up with anything. It did make me think about my own homework giving tendencies though.

Period 2
I totally expected these guys to talk through most of the hour and they did. If only to get out of doing math... There was lots of speculation over motive, which of course no one really knows right now. Also some discussion around how violence is becoming a bit of a social disease and different trends in the states. Somehow we wound up talking about violence here at home and got into a very interesting discussion over the whole "east vs west" issues Stoon has going on. I had some help in enlightening some students in how this picture of a "shiny clean east side" and a "gang, crime and violence filled west side" is something supported by the media and east siders looking to feel better about where "they" live.

Period 3
Some maturity issues here - they were more interested in hypothesizing ridiculous scenarios that would require our school to go into lockdown. A pack of cougars? A crazy person with a sword? We covered quite a lot on inequalities...

Period 4
Grade nines. Mostly they were concerned for their own safety and were worried something could happen here. About half had been in a situation in their elementary schools where a lockdown had been necessary (crazy guys with knives apparently). Nothing overly insightful was said.

More exciting was my Human Rights meeting at noon - they are so keen!! Almost all of them want to join my peer support group and suggested (without me telling them that this was the kind of thing a peer support group would do til after) that they'd like to do awareness type stuff for the grade 9s in their ethical living classes! So wonderful.

trivial

I was going to post, but really, nothing seems to important compared to today's news. If you're out of the loop, this went down in Montreal today. Rach has posted about her day. I'm grateful all her day was filled with was inconvenience.

I wonder what was so wrong with this jerk's life that suicide wasn't enough? Even first degree murder serves a more direct point. By being selfish and picking off innocent people to be noticed don't you essentially become one of the very people we'll find out you were striking out against?

We get it. You're depressed, you were bullied, no one understands you, you got lost in "the system" at school, whatever. Your point sucks. Putting kids in the hospital and yourself in the ground doesn't help anyone.

The increasing number of school shootings makes me feel tired. Tired and very sad.

I do look forward to the insightful conversations this will lead to with my students tomorrow, I simply wish our prompt was different.

welcome to the asylum

I have no idea what is up with my last few residences. I live in good areas, in nicely upkept buildings. So why do I keep getting woken up like this? I tried to link that, but it would appear I didn't blog about the previous incident like I thought I did.

3:27am. It's Monday night, so obviously I'm sleeping, soundly, as I like to do. It's normally a gift my sound sleeping, because it means I sleep through everything. On really good nights I sleep through entire conversations that I participate in. 3:28am, I am woken up. Confused. Did I move to a crappy apartment just of 20th? There are people fighting above me, screaming obscenities. If anyone had told me where to go and how to get there like that I sure wouldn't have needed a map. I guess if you get into these kids of fights you're not very smart in the first place. Much more yelling, stomping, throwing? and potentially breaking of things. Finally I am able to get back to sleep so I'm not really sure as to how everything got sorted out.

(After introducing myself to the older, defensive lady who lives above me I found out a)it wasn't her fault?!? and b) resolution happens when the cops come.)

It would appear to date I'm the only one to thinks noise that wakes up the whole complex is worthy of reporting to the board, cause when I phoned the lady who takes care of such things it was the first she'd heard of it. Maybe I'm the only one who knows they live in a rental unit? Maybe everyone else takes it for entertainment - better than reality tv!

poorly chosen words are the most effective contraceptive known to man

I'm still sick. I'm pretty unhappy about it. While the pus on my throat appears to be gone, my throat itself is still sore enough that I'm maintaining the 80% ice-cream diet. Tasty, yes. Nutritious? I have a feeling no so much. I'm also having issues with headaches, neckaches, and general tiredness. I know, I'm just so much fun.

So I really haven't been up to much lately that isn't school seeing as it occupies the healthiest 7 hours of my day. I have spent an awful lot of time on the interweb, so I thought I'd fill a blog post with funny links. If you're not already reading this stuff, you should ask yourself what's wrong with you. Then, you should start reading.

I just got back into Diesel Sweeties. It's a webcomic I used to read a long time ago, and then for some reason stopped. Starting up again, I'm wondering why in the world I ever stopped.

Questionable Content is another of my favorite webcomics. My "math is delicious" shirt should have arrived a month ago...

Lastly, everyone needs to read Go Fug Yourself. I think they're on a short break for something mysterious called Fashion Week, but I trust they'll be back soon.

I read a ridiculous amount of other stuff on a daily basis, but I'll save that for the next time all I do is sleep and eat.

Parkstar out.

hey marauders how do you feel?

It was pep rally day today. After teaching elsewhere for 3 years now, it made me happy that pep rallies are still as big of a deal as they used to be. Going into others schools and seeing such boring, abysmal pep rallies made me question if I just went to school during a lucky 4 years. People looked at me like I was crazy when I told "tall tales" of how fun, funny and involved pep rallies were back in my day. Hoorah, the tradition continues. Of course technology has added a few perks and a few glitches, but overall it was well done. It would appear that I'm not a very good tatooer - I failed to notice they had plastic on them...

We also held out first Human Rights/GSA meeting today. I was blown away. 25ish kids showed up with more to come. The girl who runs it is totally amazing. She's more intelligent and well spoken than most of the adults I know, myself included. She ran the meeting like she'd been teaching for years, and was up to date on current issues like no one I know. The rest of the kids were eager and had great ideas. Last year they raised 15K to bring over 2 kids from Congo to reunite them with their siblings who attended our school. 15K? This is totally aside from our school charity. On top of the fundraisers they run, they do awareness activities in the school AND were all eager to pick a local focus (on top of the international one) so they could get out in the community and volunteer. Whoa.

I also got the green light to start up a Youth Action Circle. Whoot. I have a feeling I won't have nearly the troubles I did last year getting kids engaged.

On top of all this I will be getting my very own hole punch and stapler. This may sound silly, but when I asked for them at the office I was once again treated like an alien.

We feel so good, huh! we feel so good, huh!

a family affair

This weekend I went camping in Waskesiu with Sean-o and his family. I was a little apprehensive about going cause his mom scares me, but all was well.

We left town late, got to the lake even later and did not too shabby a job of setting up our tent in the dark. I don't love camping in the Glen, but it was pretty deserted considering it was a long weekend so it wasn't bad at all. We visited for awhile, and then passed out.

I got up early (especially for me, on my long weekend!) and had morning coffee with Madre and Hermana. At around 11 we roused the boys and had some very splendid breakfast. Which of course made the wasps come out to play, but they weren't as bad as in August. I was super impressed with the quality of shower I got to have. Not to mention I didn't fall over while trying to get my pants on without getting them wet. Go me. We went into town with Hermana and her boy to check out the end of season sales. They sucked. Well the sales were great, the merchandise not so much. The sherbet we finally had wasn't on sale, but it was by far the best thing to buy in town. Then, I had a wonderful nap while Sean-o played DS. Our tent was in the most fantastic spot where it was out of the sun, so being in it during the day was possible.

Everyone chatted and did logic/word puzzles while Madre cooked up the most fantastic supper. Well technically she prepared it and then gave it to others to cook. It may well have been the best steak I've had all summer. We feasted on steak and garden veggies, and the later ate cake. The DSs were passed around the fire, conversations were had, drinks were drank.

Sunday we essentially repeated Saturday with a little more sleeping and no shopping. We got home late Sunday afternoon, just in time for me to be re-sick. while more camping would have been good, being sick at home is also good.

Cheers to Sean-o's family for having me out with them this weekend!