Happy Halloween!

So it's Halloween, and you know what that means...

Oh - you don't? Well, Halloween is a time for wanton revelry, taking delight in disguising yourself as something you're not (which is something, truth be told and if we're honest about it, a lot of people do EVERY day).

I'm sitting here at my house, waiting for more trick-or-treaters to come by, and just idly blogging, and my thoughts turn to costumes. I think the most creative one I've had tonight was a girl wearing a Survivor: Guatemala buff on her head with a bloody t-shirt - a dead survivor. Very clever.

What else can I do that's clever? Well, a couple of you have essentially requested that I post altered photos of Mark a la what I did a couple of blogs ago. Even Mark himself said that he was surprised I didn't post photos of him. So by popular request, I will play God with Mark's ethnicity.

What I am about to do, I do as a service to you, my loyal prez2012 blog readers. May heaven have mercy on my soul.

Awwwww yeah!

Cool photo from Danny's wedding last month!

Heart of darkness

It sure is dark at 6:30 in the morning. Very, very dark...

But ants, well, they love my bathroom, any time of day.

Parallel universes

Ok, so this is ample evidence that I don't always use my time super wisely. I found this really cool web site that allows you to upload an image of yourself and morph your face in a variety of different ways. I then spent time grabbing the images, saving them as jpegs, and uploading them to my blog for you, my noble readers. Never mind the 80 math tests and 75 writing projects I need to grade.

Here are my favorites:

This is the original, unaltered image. You might recognize it from the world famous Maui photos collection.

Awww, sooo cute! Well, actually, no. In fact, I was a much cuter kid than this photo would suggest. Really.
Old, but still sexy.
Asian.
African-American.
Latino.
Half-chimp.

Do it yourself. Go to:
http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~morph/Transformer

Teachers Are Done at 3:00

My day:

5:30... Woke up to work on a slideshow presentation for the Outdoor Education Parent Information Night.

7:45... Finished burning the slideshow onto CD at 7:45. Walked down the driveway and slid into my super hot silver Mazda RX-8 and cruised in style to school.

7:55... Tracked down the missing CST (California Standards Test) binder at school so I could make copies of all the 4th and 5th grade data to choose students for the supplemental math class I'll be teaching on Saturday mornings for $25 an hour (at least they're paying me to do it this year!).

8:25... The school day begins. Community circle, computer lab (reviewed place value from thousandths to billions, rounding, and adding and subtracting decimals).

10:00... "Recess" begins, which is never recess for me because I'm always stuck in the classroom with kids who didn't do their homework and, thus, have no recess. I scarf down the chicken tamal N.'s mom made me (yum!) and eat one of the cookies that D. brought for me (ok, ok, so there ARE perks!).

10:25... Writers Workshop (taught the difference between editing and revising, revised our immigrant-themed expository paragraphs).

11:15... Lunch. Walked very quickly across the street to get an absolutely horrible pastrami sandwich for $3.99 and a very tasty green tea Sobe for $1.39. Very quickly back to Garfield. Called Mark Nolan, director of Outdoor Ed, to discuss our dire financial situation and got some very good news from him. Scarfed down the horrible sandwich just as the bell rings.

12:00... ELD class (English Language Development)

12:50... POTD (for math, the "Problem of the Day") and computer lab with my other class (we switch before lunch every day)

2:00... Decimal Olympics (very fun and, I think, rather innovative on my part) to review for tomorrow's decimals test

3:00... The official school day is over. Mar and I talked to M. and A. because M. wrote a note to A. for A. because A. likes A. and wanted to know if he'd be sad if she moved.

3:15... Street hockey practice begins.

5:15... Street hockey practice ends.

5:20... Rushed back to my classroom to get my laptop, the slideshow, and assorted a/v equipment for the Outdoor Ed Parent Information Night in the library.

5:30... Arrived at the library to find that the 90 chairs, LCD projector, and extension cord we were assured would be there for our meeting were NOT THERE.

5:30-5:50... Ran around the school with a master key looking for the projector while the other fifth grade teachers scavenged for chairs.

5:50-6:05... Found our OLD projector, plugged it in, and it wouldn't turn on. Found a TV on a cart to connect my laptop to as the next best alternative and frantically set it all up with sweat running down my face as 70 parents looked on, probably thinking to themselves that our 5th grade team is pretty disorganized (totally not true; we followed all the proper procedures for reserving the library and for getting the equipment and chairs we needed - somebody dropped the ball).

6:05-7:30... Facilitated the meeting completely in Spanish along with Mar, my fabulous new teaching partner.

8:00-8:30... Drove to Discovery Channel Store to pick up prizes for students who made thoughtful scientific discoveries during our pendulum experiments these last two weeks.

And what I still need to do before I go to bed: make the class lists for the supplemental math class, print out special Friday certificates for students who did something outstanding this week, and make the math test.

Or I could wake up at 5:30 in the morning again to do it.

And I've been sick for a week.

Thus, I reach one, inescapable conclusion: I am, quite clearly, super man.

The 100th blog

Woo hoo! This is my 100th blog.

Now I can cross out "Blogging" from my list of "Things I Haven't Done At Least 100 Times."

Does anyone else think it is kind of strange that President Bush has nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court and she has absolutely NO EXPERIENCE AS A JUDGE???

Didn't Bush learn his lesson from appointing Michael Brown as FEMA director? Brown, as you know, was the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, for god's sake!

As for me, I'd like to have a nominee with some actual judicial experience, who has a real record with real evidence (not just Bush's 10 years of experience with her and his gut feeling that she'll be a good judge) to "judge" whether or not she's qualified to sit on the highest court in the land.

Governor Evans

Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

I'm feeling better by the way, which is good news for my students, my devoted blog readers, and, I suppose, phase 2 of my duplex overhaul plan (the main goal of which is to make my garage capable of holding a car once again). It's bad news, however, for the ants. Death to you all!

Yes, it's true. I don't mind killing ants. But I think you already knew that.

I'm feeling a little bit scattered tonight. There's a lot on my mind, including several things I've wanted to blog about for quite some time. So maybe this will be another blog about a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

"Rent" is coming out in movie form on November 23rd, wide release. I saw it on stage when I was interning in D.C. Have any of you seen it? I was really inspired by it at the time. I have fond memories of that night - the music is super catchy, the characters very compelling, the message endearing. I wonder how many conservatives are bound to see it. Not many, I'd imagine, if they knew what it's about. Which is a shame, really, because for me it humanized, for the first time in my life, homosexual relationships. "Rent" is about several love stories - one between two women, one between two men, and one between a man and a woman. When I saw it I was but a tender 21 year old, only about a year removed from the College Republicans. I had never imagined that a woman and a woman or a man and a man could have the same kind of loving relationship that I'd always associated exclusively with a man and a woman. Seems obvious to me now, but back then it was something of a revelation. I think a lot of people need to have that revelation. Thus, I'm glad to see it has become a movie, which is probably overall a much more accessible medium for the masses than stage musicals.

I've decided to try writing a novel again. No - I shouldn't use the word "try." Only "do" or "do not." There is no "try." Right? Right. So I've been attempting to recruit some other folks into NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which begins November 1st. So far, I've convinced two of my colleagues to join me in the 50,000 word novel writing adventure. If you're interested, go to nanwrimo.org. You may recall my embarrassing attempt last year with the horribly named Eduardito and the strange day when he went up into the sky. I only make reference to it here because it is SO embarrassing that my embarrassment ought to compel me to actually make something worthwhile this year. I SWEAR I'm a better writer than that. I was sick all that month, plus I was taking guitar and Spanish classes and dealing with my two most challenging groups of students ever (and you all know how THAT turned out - quite splendidly, thank you). And, perhaps most debilitating of all, Mark didn't believe in me (cheap jab on my part).

So anyways, I'm going to do it. Starting November 1st, I will be a novel writing machine. 1,600 words a day ain't so tough - after all, I survived K. last year. Obviously, I can do anything. I mean, this blog, for example, is about 750 words, and it has only taken me about 15 minutes. But yes, a novel is a different kind of animal to tame.

Continuing my stream of consciousness, let me simply announce I want to be governor of California. If Arnold can do it, then I sure as hell can. He had no experience, he dodged nearly all the debates during the recall election, and still he wound up being elected.

Do you know what it takes to run for governor as an independent candidate? I didn't either, so I found out. I have to pay a filing fee of $3,500 *or* submit 10,000 signatures by July 27, 2006. Between June 12th and August 11th, also of 2006, I need to get 165,573 signatures, which represents about 1% of California's registered voters, to appear on the ballot. Unfortunately, I don't have the big bucks to pay the signature harvesting companies to harass peope outside of Safeway to sign petitions to make it look as if I have a lot of popular support. So I'll just have to do it another way.

Sick and tired

Sorry about the delays between blogs recently. I've been exhausted, stressed, and overworked, and consequently I got myself sick. I'm feeling a lot better than I did last Friday, so hopefully I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Any attribution of my sickness to the eating of 10 hot dogs is most likely incorrect... most likely.