Always Trust the Ears

First off -- by the time y'all read this, I should have uploaded a few updates to my temporary website, including updates to one story and a whole new story. ;-)

This is pointless, really, but it always amuses me how I can recognize voices, even behind alien makeup and all that -- because when it comes to music, I am pretty much tone deaf. Although I love to sing, I only do so alone 'cause I know I'm no good at it.

Anyhow, Sci-Fi is showing The Clan of the Cave Bear, the movie made of Jean M. Auel's book -- the only one of the series I really enjoyed, though I read the first three.

So, I've seen it a few times, and the voice of the narrator always nagged at me, because I knew it from somewhere.

Then, tonight, it hit me. It's the Female Changeling! Well, at least, to Deep Space Nine fans. :-) It's actually Salome Jens, who has appeared in quite a lot of TV (including much sci-fi) and several movies. Am I good, or what? :-)

Incidentally -- the movie is a good, but not great, adaptation of the book. By necessity, it must leave out much of the Neandertals' biology, customs, psychology, and the other anthropological stuff that made the book so fascination (and which was absent from the sequels).

After suffering through a day and a half of my hot-and-freezing-cold mood swings that I get when I have a fever, I am finally feeling somewhat alive...which is good. Turns out there's something of an epidemic of a weird strain of strep throat that involves some additional weird infection thingie going around the Moorpark/Simi area.

So, it's back to the daily grind I go, while I begin to count down the days until spring break. :-)

Stuff

So, it's been a while. I'm still working on the eloquent thing, and I decided I shouldn't wait until I could come up with something.

This is gonna be very random, so bear with me.

The last couple of weeks have been very hectic. My grandpa and aunt both ended up with pneumonia -- grandpa the day before grandma's internment, and my aunt the day after. She had blue nailbeds by the time she got off the plane. Both are okay now, although grandpa won't go to get rechecked.

I, of course, managed to catch the cold that both of them had before they had pneumonia, thus adding to the Year of Unending Illness that is traditionally your first year of teaching...but when have I ever been traditional, eh?

Meanwhile, I've had another IEP...this one was hurried, 'cause the mom needed ot pick up the girl's sister, but it went okay. It's always nice to say, "Your child met and exceeded all of her goals."

Patrick's IEP was the week of grandma's internment...that Tuesday, I think. Of course, I couldn't ask for a personal day, with what all went on with grandma. Somehow, the OT that did his assessment came to the conclusion that he has limited upper body strength, despite the fact that he can literally pick up his 6-foot-tall cousin. But whatever.

We have Drama going on at school, but that's a whole 'nother thing. People with martyr complexes are very hard to deal with...but fortunately, I have a couple of really good aides that take the pressure off a bit.

My cats are on a canned food kick, which they haven't been for a while. And, of course, being cats, they think that every time I go into the kitchen, it is necessarily for their benefit. :-)

I've been really enjoying Battlestar Galactica, in its reincarnated version. Kara (Starbuck) is a fascinating character; I'd like to see more of what makes Adama tick, but I think the fact that we haven't is deliberate. Meanwhile, my interest in both Stargate and Atlantis has been waning...but when Enterprise (which is finally watchable, of course) goes off the air, it's the only sci-fi on the air that's caught my eye, so I guess I'll have to do.

I've been wanting to go see a movie lately (very odd for me, since they give me headaches that verge on migraines) but there's nothing I really want to see. Later in the year, of course, there will be Star Wars, War of the Worlds, the next Harry Potter and a few others that I've watched trailers for with iTunes, but....

Speaking of -- I think I've won about 8 songs now. Definitely beats last year. :-)

I think there was more, but I have officially lost my train of thought.

Random Musings

I keep having these half-eloquent thoughts about last week...this week...Thursday, etc...but they keep coming and going. I seem to be having trouble hanging on to thoughts, which I assume has something to do with exhaustion and stress. Maybe it'll come to me. Good Monday to everyone.

When It Rains...

Since Thursday morning (see previous post), the following things have also happened:

• my DishNetwork receiver quit working
• my car had a flat tire
• my patched-tire blew out on the 405
• my grandfather ignored everyone telling him he was sick, and he is now at Kaiser, probably with pneumonia

It never rains, but it pours...

1:30 A.M.

From the now-defunct studiesinwords.de.

Shot of Buffy and Tara sitting on the sofa next to each other. They look at each other, then away.

BUFFY: (softly, speaking to the floor) I'm sorry...you have to go through all of this.

TARA: You don't have to worry about me.

BUFFY: Everybody wants to help. (Tara looks at her) I don't even know if I'm...here. (Tara looks away) I don't know what's going on. Never done this. (pauses) That's just an amazingly dumb thing to say. Obviously...I've never done this before.

Beat.

TARA: (softly) I have.

Buffy looks over at her.

TARA: My mother died when I was seventeen.

(cut some stuff)

Buffy looks back up at Tara.

BUFFY: Was it sudden?

TARA: What?

BUFFY: Your mother.

TARA: No. (thinks) And…yes. (pauses) It's always sudden.

Rest in peace, grandma.

Maturity

So, I'm driving Patrick back to the house after visiting grandma last night. My mom stayed there because grandpa was really freaked out (it's looking like it'll be sometime this week), so I took Patrick to dinner. He was really upset, saying he didn't want grandma to "go" -- she had been talking about how she was ready before she went to sleep.

We drove through McDonald's, and as we were turning up towards the house, out of the blue, he says, "Grandma was right."

"About what?" I asked. There's a strange resignation in his tone.

"I don't like seeing her like this. She should go." Now, he's sad and choked up when he says it, but he's utterly serious. He doesn't want her to suffer, and he is ready to let her go so that she doesn't have to.

This is my brother, ladies and gentlemen. Disabilities or not, let no one say he doesn't understand what's really important in life.

I Could Put a Cheesy 80s Song Quote Here

But, then, Leo already did that last week. :-)

So, today went pretty well -- which, if we go by last week's mood-swinginess, means tomorrow will be crazy, crazy, crazy....

Tomorrow, by the way, I have A.'s triennial, which I just finished writing. I always like how I think I have no goals planned, and then I just start writing them and don't stop.

As of a few hours ago, my grandpa was awaiting the arrival of a hospital bed at home, then grandma will be transferred home for hospice care. Supposedly, some doctor says it might be a week or less, but then, I remember several times when it was a matter of a day or two for my great-grandma, so I figure we'll just wait and see.

But (like I haven't said this enough), never, ever smoke.

If you've started, chew five pieces of the gum an hour if you have to, but quit.

Emphysema is not fun.

It's especially not fun if all your other faculties are in order, and you know exactly how miserable you are.

Update

First, let me say...the Cowboy Combo at Applebees is very yummy. Had that for dinner last night.

New developments for the day:

• my aunt is visiting from New Mexico. I hope she came up with a good excuse, or grandma might think things are really, really dire. But my family is not known for its emotional prowess, particularly that branch of it, so I bet they just let it slide.
• my mother got one of her funny heartbeats, so we just hung out at our respective places today.
• there is nothing on TV, and I am left watching The Santa Clause 2 on Starz-Whatever-It-Is.
• I really don't want it to be Monday already, but have little choice in the matter.

You know, I had some other profound thought, but since I have no idea what it was, I'll leave it for some other post.

Happy Sunday.

Statistics

So far, thanks to my mother sacrificing all reason and purchasing a Diet Pepsi because it was the only non-Mountain Dew Pepsi product 7-11 had that had iTunes caps, I have, in fact, won 1 song out of 3 purchases.

I don't expect the trend to continue, based on my winnings last year, but you never know. Oddly enough, I wish the hourly prize was an iPod Shuffle (which I want as much for the thumb-drive-ness as the music player part) rather than an iPod Mini, which I don't really need, seeing as how I've got my nice 40G iPod already....

I suppose I could always ebay it, but since I won't actually win one anyway, this is a moot point. ;-)

Yargh!

I sat here for probably 15 minutes honest-to-goodness thinking it was Friday.

Boo. :-(

Impulsiveness

Ever wanted a textbook definition of what "impulsiveness" (a word common to those who have ADD/ADHD)?

Next time you are at work and just want to scream, and a little voice says, "you'll be fired if you do that." Imagine not having that voice.

Next time you walk past a fire alarm pull and have brief thoughts of testing it, and a little voice says, "are you nuts?" Imagine not having that voice.

Next time you want to run out to your car in your bare feet and a little voice reminds you, "hey, the asphalt will hurt!" Imagine not having that voice.

I'm really, really glad I have that voice...I don't like stupid questions.

Brought to you from randomness central...'cause I've already forgotten what I was going to write anyway.

Same Old, Same Old

Isn't it scary when drama becomes the norm?

We had aides out all over the place, people subbing in classes they didn't know, thus messing up their break/lunch schedules (maybe I was spoiled at CHIME, but...you know...working there -- if there was no one to cover a class, no one would dream of taking a lunch, even if it was scheduled...sometimes kids' needs come first), kids going nutty 'cause of the rain, Patrick making dinner, and going to the hospital.

All of this feels normal.

Or, I think it might be just that I'm past the point of exhaustion and am running on cruise control.

I need a mental health weekend....

I'll be less POK-mobiley tomorrow, I promise....

Columbia

No explorer ever set off into the unknown because it was safe, but it's still sad when people pay the price for expanding our knowledge...

Memorial (words: Misty Lackey, music: "Ballad of Springhill")
When you sing of Columbia or the Eagle
And reach for the stars as your ultimate goal.
Recall who fell along the way,
For the star-road takes a fearful toll,
The star-road takes a fearful toll.

And it might have been Armstrong, Aldrin, Cernan,
Shepard, Carpenter, Cooper, or Glenn.
They all knew well the questor's fee,
And the star-road's paved with the lives of men,
The star-road's paved with the lives of men.

For the price was paid on a winter evening
When "Fire in the spacecraft!" somebody said.
In smoke and flame the shadow passed
And in Capsule Twelve three men were dead,
In Capsule Twelve three men were dead.

Forget not yet who paid the forfeit
To conquer the stars in the Eagle's flight.
"It's worth the price." they said who paid:
Grissom, Chaffee, and Edward White.
Grissom, Chaffee, and Edward White.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To the men of Apollo 1....
January 1967

2 years since Columbia; 17 years since Challenger; 38 since Apollo 1.

But we've also set up a permanently habited space station, landed on asteroids and other planets, and set foot on a surface not tied on the Earth.

And, someday, I'm sure, we'll build other Columbias, and other Challengers. I think it would be fitting if our next-generation shuttle fleet had one of each. And a Grissom ("D'oh!" she says as she realizes where that name came from...), a Chaffee, a White, a McAuliffe, and so on and so forth.

Priorities

I wonder if it's only in California that the Michael Jackson case, complete with commentary from OJ prosecutor Marcia Clarke, made up the 2 top stories on the news, before news about the Iraqi election?

I meant to post about this yesterday, when the weird priorities were even more apparent since it was actually election day, but I forgot.

BTW, though, I can actually say I've driven through Santa Maria, and even been in the mall there, and it's really funny to hear people talk about it as though it's in the middle of rural Arkansas. :-)

What is Adult?

So, while being home with what appears to be a 24-hour stomach flu, I was reading Ron Moore's blog at the Sci-Fi channel's website. Amidst some interesting Q&A, he addresses the question of sexuality on the show.

He makes a good point.

Let me preface this. One of the questions involved is a fan who is upset that they can't watch with their young children because of the sexuality.

Ron Moore's response is that BSG is an adult's show. It's not meant for young kids to watch. He doesn't let his young kids watch.

To be more accurate, it is, at least, TV PG. Like most sci-fi, especially apocalyptic sci-fi, there are battles. Like her male predecessor on the original BSG, Starbuck is...well, of the randy sort.

(Really, in a situation like that, I would expect many people to go a little carnally crazy, so to speak -- certainly, to be overcome with fatalism and chuck society's rules out the window...with the "what does it really matter" point of view intact as well. Really...what chances for survival do they really have? And what would you do if you suspected you wouldn't survive the next year? But that's beside the point -- and, besides, I'm not a sci-fi anthropologist.)

He also makes an even better point.

Why on Earth, except through the weirdness of America's puritanical culture that thinks nothing of showing exploding car bombs on the 4:00 news but fines people for brief wardrobe malfunctions during the SuperBowl halftime show (not known as a bastion of high-class entertainment, anyway), would we be more concerned about Baltar gets it on with the Hot Bad Girl (TM) than about the complete (save 150,000 or so survivors in the caravan) destruction of 12 freaking planets of people?

Full-on, billions-killed genocide.

On TV.

Mushroom clouds, shooting, and "much dying."

And we get bent out of shape 'cause of the sex.

Why?

Or, more to the point, what makes one more inherently bad -- or, inappropriate for younger viewers -- than another?

It's like the people that took their kids to see The Passion of the Christ...many of whom also stridently protested Janet Jackson's...eh...issues.

Why?

Now, don't go getting all religious on me. Understanding Jesus' sacrifice and all that.

Possibly a bad example...though I certainly don't recall learning how horrible, exactly, a death crucifixion was during my first grade religion class. We were taught it was Bad. It hurt A Lot. It wasn't until 6th grade or so that we went into some details...suffocation, and the like. It wasn't until high school, at least, that we learned some of the gory details...so I still don't necessarily buy it that very young children needed to -- or even should have been -- exposed to that.

Not to mention the fact that the whole thing is subtitled, and the poor little guys probably couldn't keep up with half of what was going on.

But I digress....

To get back on topic, and way from religion, here, the same could be said of The Lord of the Rings. Why is it okay to see Boromir riddled with bullets, Frodo's finger bitten off, thousands of people die during both the battles of Helms Deep and Minas Tirith, and so forth?

There were tons of little kids when I saw both The Two Towers and Return of the King in theaters (I didn't see FOTR in the theaters 'cause I didn't think I'd like it)...not so much at the special screenings of the Extended Editions at the Cineramadome, but anyway....

Would the same people have taken their kids if we'd seen Arwen and Aragorn do it? If we'd seen Rosie and Sam go at it? If we'd seen Faramir and Eowyn consummate their marriage?

All of this happened, though not explicitly, in the books. Arwen and Aragorn have children, after all, as do Sam and Rosie. I'm not certain about Faramir and Eowyn, but they do marry, and one would imagine they weren't celibate.

I think it just points out exactly the duality Ron Moore talks about. BSG gets flack for sexuality but not for genocide. In either case, it's not something for little kids. Most sci-fi isn't, really.

That said, I watched sci-fi from the time I was very young...but that was the original Star Trek, which isn't quite the same.

Imzadi, by Peter David, (who has a great blog, by the way) depicts sexual acts (the phrase "impressions that would puzzle future geologists" still makes me giggle), and I read that when it first came out.

I was, probably, about 12.

Did it scar me? Well, no.

Would it scar another kid? Who knows? But that's up to the parents.

It always comes down to that, doesn't it? If you think your kid can handle the sexual images (or, you know, the genocide), go for it. If you don't...record it...TiVo it...whatever...and save it until your sci-fi-ally inclined child is ready for it.

Parental responsibility...what a concept.

I Love Google

Or, more specifically, images.google.com -- without which, I couldn't have had "Mayflower" as a classroom vocabulary word for this week for my 6th graders, who are learning US History. :-)

Didn't get as much done as I wanted to today, and tomorrow starts another week...but maybe I'll at least get to watch "Act of Contrition" tonight before I go to bed...I know it's a cliffhanger, but I kinda know what happens anyway, thanks to tvtome.com, so I'll probably watch it...and then spend all week waiting for Friday, but oh well.

Grandma seemed a bit better today, but they have to keep her slightly sedated to keep her heart pumping at a reasonable level. See, you don't so much die from emphysema, as from complications of emphysema -- rather like diabetes. It's not that it keeps destroying your lung tissue until literally none is left (although, I suppose, that could happen if you never checked into a hospital where they could keep you from smoking) -- it's that your heart has to work so much harder to pump oxygenated blood to your body...or, that your organs start to suffer from lack of oxygen.

In some ways, it's a mixed blessing, but so far, grandma's heart has seemed okay...it's handled upwards of 160 beats a minute without...well, skipping a beat, if you'll pardon the pun. On the sedatives, it's about 110, so...we'll see.

You never know, really...I learned that with my dad and my grandpa. My cousin Jason is getting married in May, though, so hopefully that'll give her something to stick around for.

Ironically, people were wondering if she'd make it to my cousin's bar mitzvah in 2001...and then to my other cousin's bat mitzvah in 2003...so, like I said, who knows, right?

Stuff

Well, it's been quite a week.

Or two.

Don't remember the last time I posted.

A hearty welcome to the exhausting world of teaching to iluvpchem! :-)

Things have been crazy as usual.

We had staff development days Thursday and Friday, but the beginning of the week was very long and very stressful. It was "pick on Jennifer" week for some unknown reason, which is Not Fun ordinarily, but even less fun when my grandma's back in the hospital. Emphysema is not fun.

I have a couple of IEPs coming up this month, but they shouldn't be too bad. I'm not at all sure what goals to write, but I'm usually not until I sit down to actually write it. That is, I'm not consciously aware of what goals I want to write -- but generally, they flow pretty well once I actually get down to the business of it.

I think this weekend's going to be pretty boring. I thought I might have to go into school to work, but I got finished after all, which is nice. We'll see how this week goes. :-)

Working Hard

Whew, what a week!

It feels like I say that a lot this year, but the makeup of my class is something else....

Most teachers are sympathetic, if a little bewildered, when they see us looking shell-shocked and a little bedraggled by the end of the day, but today, for the first time, I got a response I didn't expect.

It was lunch time...and I was talking with the 5th/6th and 4th/5th teachers. The 5/6 teacher has been there many years, and has been very welcoming of having kids in her class, though she's not quite sure of the benefits for kids with more severe disabilities. The other had, apparently, never attended an IEP as the general education representative for any kids other than resource kids before.

So, the latter made some comment about working hard and being tired, and I, jokingly, said that we could switch classes.

And I got a response I've never gotten before.

The response was something to the effect that it would probably be easier, because of the "standards" or something.

This perspective really irks me, and although I've suspected it in others, it was the first time I'd heard it voiced.

Some people think that because I teach basic, functional academics, that it must, by definition, be easier and less work to teach my kiddos.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love each and every one of them (though A. can crawl up my last nerve and R. will make me go gray), but they are a lot of work. We -- and they -- work long and hard to make them understand concepts that her students mastered years before. I have 2 sixth graders who are learning to match colors and to recognize their names by sight. And they struggle with that just as much as her kids struggle with subtracting fractions.

The other thing it could be is the fact that I always have 2 or more aides in the class.

Well, each and every pair of eyes is sorely needed. Even with all those adults in the room, E. has colored on virtually every vertical surface imaginable and pulled out nearly half of our venetian blinds. A. one day called the office 15 times -- and we stopped her 10 to 20 times for each time she got through. R. knocks stuff down and throws his shoes across the room at least 10 times a day, when he's not directly observed by an adult. S., though he very rarely does it anymore, hits himself until he bleeds if he's upset about something. R. and J., if left to their own devices, would rather sit and stare off into space than work. ...and so forth.

The truth of the matter is that even with all these adults -- we have no down time.

Ever.

We can't sit while the kids have silent reading.

We can't correct papers while the kids take a test.

I love every moment of it, but it's a very, very difficult, very draining job.

And, I have to say, I resent a bit the implication that my job is any easier than hers is.

Just had to get that off my chest.

Very Cool

You can listen to sounds from the probe on Titan.

Also, Apple is doing their iTunes giveaway again this year, according to the MacRumors website. According the screenshot, the promotion will not only include Pepsi and Diet Pepsi, as last year, but also Mountain Dew (yay!).

Dang

Well, that's another post that got eaten. Huh.

Anyhow, good, but paradoxically short weekend. I sudenly have no motivation tonight, though, even though I'm typically awake on weeknights until at least 11:30.

I finished Time's Eye, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, incidentally. I tend to disagree with the reviewers who say that its plot was a digression -- after all, a good chunk of 2001 was a digression as HAL went nutty on the ship...it wasn't until the end (like in Time's Eye, which is supposed to be a companion series of odysseys through time instead of space) that they started working again on the mysteries of the Monolith.

I really liked it, to be honest. I'm anxious for the second one to be released, as a matter of fact. All of the Space Odyssey books were published by the time I read them, so having to wait for the second Time Odyssey book is not fun.

Oh -- and I finally read H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, since I enjoyed its sequel The Timeships so much (I talked about it in an earlier post). So, I'm rereading The Timeships now that I know more of what's going on. Granted, Weena and the Morlocks are only an ancillary part of the plot of The Timeships, but it helps to have the backstory.

So, maybe I'll just go to bed.... Happy (almost) Tuesday.

Nitpick

There's no such thing as "another words."

You mean in other words.

As in, "I'm putting this comment into other, different words.

Don't know why that bugs me so much, but it does.

A random comment, though -- I think Gary Graham is finally figuring out how to play a Vulcan. Well, either that, or the Enterprise folks are finally figuring out how to write Vulcans.

Oh, and, see? I knew there was a reason I like Good Eats -- it's officially a nerd show if Wired covers it. :-)

It's Orange

So, Titan has a methane sea complete with mists and islands.

Cool.

How about some methane-breathing fish?

Seriously, I always thought that it was, at best, shortsighted, if not outright arrogant, to assume that life must only exist on earthlike planets. Just because we evolved breathing oxygen doesn't mean another ecology might not have produced organisms that breathe in methane gas and breathe out ethane, or something.

Or, as Jeff Goldblum's character said in Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way."

Battlestar Galactica

I'm not certain the Battlestar Galactica miniseries on Sci Fi was necessarily better than the original, as some reviews said -- after all, it was a different time, and a different focus, with different production values and different aims in telling the story -- but it was quite good.

I don't think you can necessarily compare the two, actually, for just those reasons. They were telling sort of the same story, set in sort of the same universe, but they took those familiar beginnings and went another way with them.

I suppose I should clarify that -- I tend to prefer remakes where they do that. Patrick was really into the remake of The Parent Trap a few years ago, with Lindsay Lohan before she was all famous and, you know, singing, like the rest of the teenyboppers, and that was exactly what I liked about it. It's one thing to take the old script and refilm it...it's entirely another to tell a similar story with the same base premise.

Anyway, I just finished watching the first episode of the actual series, "33," and I have to say -- it was very well done. I especially like the way they film it...I don't know the official term, but it seems raw...kind of gritty. The space battles especially (I noticed this in the miniseries too) are intentionally jerky, as though we're seeing through the lens of a newscamera as they struggle to keep up wtih unpredictable action. I think it adds a lot to the tone of the overall series. Whether they keep up with that, of course, remains to be seen.

However, I must say, I don't think humans can actually reasonably go that long without sleep without starting to hallucinate and do other bad things. 131 hours is something like 6 days or so, right? Yow....

Cool!

Boy, first Spirit and Opportunity live 9 months longer than expected, then a probe lands on Titan. Is this a good year for space nerds or what? :-)

Whew!

Thank goodness for long weekends....

I'm not sure whether it was a delayed reaction to coming back to school after a vacation or what, but it's been a crazy week. I think every kid had at least one meltdown, and one adult had two or three. Eesh.

So, I'm gonna curl up and try to make my stomach ache go away, and go to sleep.

Gasp!

Oh, my goodness....

I knew there was a reason I haven't bought a thumb drive yet....

(And, yes, I have a 40G iPod already, but...this is just cool...and it's not like I don't always have it on random unless I'm listening to an audiobook or a story.)

I'm Back

So, I'm back from CES, which was fun. Driving actually wasn't too bad; there was some fog in the Cajon pass both ways, and a heck of a lot of rain in Pasadena on the way back, but nothing like everyone was saying was going to happen. Apparently, all the rain dumped itself on the valley while I wasn't here.

It took about an hour extra to drive back, but I'm really tired, and it felt like it took 20 hours. Unfortunately, I have an IEP to write tonight (and to hold tomorrow) but then I can zone, watch my TiVo, and go to bed.

I will post more about CES tomorrow, including some of the cool things I saw, but I think my favorite part was the free sample copies of more or less all of the tech magazines in the world.

Oh, and the LV monorail is very useful, especially when it costs $20 to park at the convention center. For $10, I got unlimited rides on it for 24 hours, which got me to the MGM Grand from the Aladdin for lunch, then back to CES, then back to the Aladdin, then back this morning to CES, and then back to the car -- all while the car was parked for free. :-)

First Day Back

Not too bad, all in all. R. had a great morning, in fact, and most of the kids got right down to business...in fact, I think the adults had a harder time than the kids.

Anyhow, this is just the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The only thing I can think of is that maybe they think people are too dumb to know where Anaheim is, so they added the Los Angeles to the name.

Oy.

This, on the other hand, is very, very cool. I remember when the rovers first landed, the talk was that they would only last 50 or so days, I think. It's been a year, and they're still trekkin' on (pun intended).

Which, I guess, means the lesson NASA and JPL have to learn is how to get the darned things onto the planet without crashing into the ground, blowing up along the way, or whatever happened to the 2 Mars probes we lost prior to Spirit and Opportunity landing.

Go rovers!

Oh, and TiVo finally released TiVo to Go today...except that they haven't finished updating Tivo Desktop for Macs yet, so it's essentially useless to me, as my desktop has extremely limited hard drive space, and, you know, being a desktop...not so much with the "to go" part. :-(

I figured they would be waiting until the Consumer Electronics Show this weekend in Vegas, since they didn't get it released prior to the New Year like they'd said, but, hey -- if ya got it, go for it, right?

But, speaking of CES...I get to go walk around the display floor! Yay for nerd heaven. :-) Since my grandpa has an electronics firm, my mom got free passes, so I'll be heading up to Vegas early Saturday and staying until early Sunday at the Aladdin. Happy nerd, here, in case you couldn't tell....

Trivia

While reading an online forum about novel writing, someone said that their pet peeve was archaic (quote: "big, olden day" words) language, such as (and this is a quote: "Where for out though or whatever"). I can only presume they meant "wherefore art thou," from Romeo and Juliet.

Which made me think of something. I wonder how many people know that "wherefore" actually means "why"? Juliet is not asking where Romeo is -- she's asking why Romeo is who he is...that is, why he's a Montague, and therefore supposed to be her mortal enemy.

The actual line is, "Romeo, Romeo -- wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet." (That is my own punctuation -- but I am the person who out-Shakespeare-quoted the Evil Leprechaun. ;-) In other words, you can be fairly certain of the words, if not the commas. :-)

Basically, Juliet says, "Romeo, why are you you? Renounce your family -- but if you won't, just promise you'll love me and I'll renounce my family."

Just a mini-lesson from someone who was (a) horrified that a wannabe writer couldn't at least render the quote somewhat accurately and (b) thinking of all the kids in all the sitcoms that phrase that line as if they're looking for poor-missing-Romeo.

Oh -- and there's going to be a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy move -- which I don't much care about, except that that was the first computer game I ever played, on my dad's 8088, in which game play consisted of typing "walk to the window" and reading the computer's description of what you saw out there. And you always brought your razor, or something, from your shaving kit to the pub, 'cause you'd need it...or something....

Happy New Year

The optimistic, ever-hopeful, probably most realistic version:

Here's to a happy, healthy, peaceful, natural-disaster-free, prosperous New Year!

The fan-girl-nerd uptopian version:

Here's to a

• happy,
• healthy, peaceful,
• natural-disaster-free,
• honest-politician,
• scientifically significant,
• we-launch-a-shuttle-again,
• announcement-of-the-X-Prize-2:-Fly-To-the-Moon,
• we-cure-everything,
• everyone-is-valued-for-who-they-are,
• everyone-has-equal-rights,
• we-truly-respect-and-not-just-tolerate-others

New Year.

The teacher/sister version:

Here's to a New Year where everyone is valued for all their abilities (even if it's the ability to sneak out of the classroom and run really fast! :-)), and where the rights, dignity, and worth of persons with disabilities becomes so commonplace that people don't even understand why it used to be an issue.

The Pit of Despair...

...or, possibly, desperation.

I've taken to reading some online newsgroups again, now that I have an account that actually subscribes to a fair number of them.

So, whilst browsing alt.startrek.creative, having exhausted all the worthwhile conversation on rec.music.filk, I did a...well...a scary thing.

I first found alt.startrek.creative when I ventured online during my freshman year of college, during the Debate About Debating About Debating About Debating About Slash.

This is not what is scary.

What is scary is that I found an Enterprise story.

What's more scary is that I read it.

What's even more scary is that I {tries to hang head and hide at the same time} liked it.

It was cute.

It was a Trip/T'Pol story...and she even sounded halfway Vulcan.

Real Vulcan, I mean -- not the caricatures that they became on Enterprise, though Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens have helped some.

But all that aside, the fact remains that I found, read, and enjoyed an Enterprise story.

To quote from, I think, Babylon 5 fandom of my freshman year of college, as long as I'm being nostalgic...

Ye gods and little fishes....

(Happy New Year, by the way.)

Yeah, I'm Babbly and Random Today

For lack of anything else, I'm watching a history channel biography of Eva Braun -- which would normally be fascinating (I have a probably unhealthy fascination with World War II), except that I've seen it about 10 times, not the least of which was the second half of it earlier tonight.

But I did notice two things -- one part of the score sounded suspiciously like the instrumental part of a Disney song that I don't remember now (I'm sure I'll think of it later); and the second sounded like part of the score from 2001: A Space Odyssey -- in the part with the ape men, but not "Thus Spake Zarathustra."

By the way -- that movie makes a lot more sense if you've read the book first, and I may just pop it in the DVD player now.

Of course, after seeing The Peacekeeper Wars, I will never again view the hotel room in the same way again (that is, without seeing Harvey on the bed :-p).

Tsunami

Whatever you think of amazon.com (the whole independent bookstore vs. you-can-buy-it-all-here thing), this is cool.

When I checked yahoo news a while ago, the death toll was at 117,000. I just looked again and it was 119,000.

One hundred and nineteen thousand people.

I think it registers more when you write it out in words -- when it's numbers, it's more abstract.

If you really don't like amazon, I'm sure the Red Cross will take donations directly -- in fact, I know they do, because I did so after September 11th, and again after hurricane Frances.

Having lived through the Northridge earthquake, a mere 6.7 that knocked out power in the San Fernando Valley for a week, I can't imagine what it's doing to islands without the infrastructure to handle even that, let alone the tsunami that followed....

Of course

Naturally, one would think to look in one's pillowcases for one's cell phone.

Oy.

Oh -- and the call was a wrong number....

Argh

So, my cell phone is buzzing a reminder (probably a voice mail) at me about every two minutes.

The problem is, that while I can hear said vibrating, and while I can feel said vibrating...

...I can't find the flippin' thing anywhere.

And, I don't even know the number, 'cause it's a new cell phone, so I can't call myself to follow the rings to the phone.

Randomness

A totally random comment, utterly unrelated to the more serious post below.

Angel and Cordelia were just totally cute together.

If you don't know who either of those are, you don't care. If you do, and you disagree...sorry. If you do, and you agree...yay!

G'night.

Yahoo! News - Tsunami Death Toll Soars Past 77,000

Yahoo! News - Tsunami Death Toll Soars Past 77,000

I've been watching this progress on the Internet -- haven't been watching the news because Patrick still has an earthquake phobia (as in, he won't even say the word) -- and I felt compelled to comment.

But now that I've started the blog entry -- I'm not sure there are words for this.

I'm not sure anyone can truly conceive of seventy-seven thousand life stories ending. I'm not sure, really, that you can make that number mean anything other than a-freaking-lot-of-people. Except that these were men, women, children...people who had hopes, dreams, memories, good and bad times, plans for the future -- everything you and I have. They might have been different plans for the future; in some cases, they might have been simpler memories....

But there you have it.

They were people -- that I had never met only because of a trick of geography, or of birth, that caused me to be born here and they to be born there.

Meanwhile, I try to conceptualize the sheer number of lives that have been lost this week, and I remember a simple quote: "The spear in the Other's heart is the spear in your own; you are he."

Even that doesn't do the sheer number of lives lost justice, and I really don't think there are words....

Rain Storms

Those of you who know me know that I love driving. One of the hardest things to get used to after injuring my ankle was how hard it was to drive, since I have no vehicles that have functioning cruise controls.

Yesterday, my mom, brother, and I drove up to the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, to have lunch in their coffee shop (my mom and dad used to go there every year for their anniversary, except for the year I inconveniently was born, quite early, 3 days before their anniversary, and until several years after I was born, likely due to my dad opening his alarm business).

In any event, I volunteered to drive part of the way back because I know my way around Santa Barbara better and wanted to stop at the huge Borders there (Merry Christmas to me!). Well, we hit the north end of the storm on the way back; we'd stopped in Santa Maria for gas, and it wasn't until I got off the freeway at Carrillo in SB that I was even able to open the soda I bought -- not because of the rain, but because of the wind...yikes.

In other news -- there's a video of Julia Ecklar's (well, written by Leslie Fish, but sung most famously by Julia Ecklar) "Hope Eyrie!" Written to commemorate the Apollo moon landing, the song is a gorgeous tribute to the feeling of wonder that folks, especially the scientifically inclined, must have felt, knowing that human feet had, for the first time in all of recorded history, set foot on the rock and soil of another planet.

(It's more than thirty years later, and we can't even get a flippin' shuttle off the ground, which is sad....) Not that I don't feel for the families of the crew of Challenger and Columbia, but they're not the first to have died to explore space -- and certainly not the first to have died in the pursuit of exploration.

Wow, that got philosophic...sorry.

Happy Wednesday, everybody!

Mmm...books....

So, I'm about a third of the way through one of my new books, The Timeships by Stephen Baxter. Very, very good. I'm loving it so far.

Also, I preordered the next Harry Potter book. Hopefully, they'll do the same thing and ship it so it arrives the day it gets to bookstores, like they did with The Order of the Phoenix.

I've been having domain name issues, so I used my webspace that comes with my DSL service to put up a bare bones version of my site -- just the stories and wallpapers. I have a new Lord of the Rings one called "The Bravest Thing." It's my favorite graphic I've done so far. Enjoy.

Christmas

Well, we're back from Christmas at my cousins'. It was fun, and the dinner (prime rib!) was very yummy. We made creamed corn using Alton Brown's recipe, and it was really, really good, too. :-)

I got lots of books, and a few DVDs, including Flight of the Navigator, an 80s Disney sci-fi film, The Princess Bride, The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat, and the first season of Punky Brewster.

Patrick really liked his gifts, especially the monorail poster. After we went to my cousins', we went to visit my grandma and grandpa -- grandma was doing pretty well today, though grandpa wasn't in the best of moods.

So, Patrick and I are back at my place for a DVD night, and maybe some after Christmas shopping (we both got money from our grandparents) tomorrow.

Merry Christmas!

The Raven, et. al.

Who would have though that Homer Simpson would work so well as the main character in Poe's "The Raven."

But honestly -- Homer's perfect to play the mood-swinginess of the main character. And only Homer could truly shriek when the poem says:

'Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
'Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'

Personally, my favorite is how he delivers that last line -- "Take thy beak from out my heart, and take the form from off my DOOR!"

By the way -- speaking of popular poems -- Alfred Noyes's "The Highwayman" (Loreena McKennitt does a beautiful-but-missing-three-key-stanzas rendition of it on her album The Book of Secrets) would make a great story....

She also does a great (okay, gorgeous) rendition of Tennyson's "The Lady of Shallott" (summarized brilliantly by a high school English teacher of mine thusly: "This girl was cursed and could never look outside her tower directly. Then she saw Sir Lancelot in her mirror and fell in love with him, and wanted to look at him, even though it would kill her. So she did. When he saw her, he said, "Well, she's pretty. Hope she rests in peace," and goes about his life.")

Now if only she would, you know, release a new CD someday....

Oh -- and more trivia...Anne Shirley reads from and/or performs both poems through the course of the first two Canadian-produced movies Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea.

Finally...I try to avoid being political on this blog, though I have strong political feelings. But if you have 99c, please consider downloading "Lullabye for a Weary World" on Julia Ecklar's CD Divine Intervention. I can't figure out how to make iTunes Music Store links work (okay, I probably could, but it's late, I'm tired, and I'm lazy), but just search "Divine Intervention" and you'll find it. Or, you can buy the CD here.

In an odd way, I view it as a holiday song, particularly in troubled times. In a hopefully less-than-odd way, think of it as a New Year's wish.

She's very protective of her lyrics being posted, but here's a brief excerpt:

"I wonder how my world can live with all the hate she harbors
Sleep, my weary world
. . .
I wish the power to stop it all could rest within my hands
I've seen her people dying for such bold and bloody causes
. . .
While the rising tide of history just ebbs and flows again
Make me a cradle to rock my weary world
Make me a gentle voice to soothe her when she weeps
. . .
I wish that I could soothe away her jagged shards of hatred
. . .
If her fighting will not stop, then I'll hold her that much closer
And sing my lullabye above the noise and pain of war
. . .
Make me a lullabye so sweet and fine
That I can sing my weary world to sleep."

Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, belated Happy Hannukah and Peaceful Ramadan to all, in case I can't post before the 25th.

Writing Blues

So...I really want to write a monologue for a character following an episode of a certain TV show. (I am not saying specifics 'cause (a) most of my friends who read this don't read fan fiction anyway and (b) I'll jinx it, I'm sure.)

The problem is, I can't get the character's voice right. Usually, I can -- but here, it's just not working. I worked out the psychology, what's going on -- and I can't even get the tone of pained bewilderment right....

Aah well....

Return of the King

In case I haven't said it before, Sam is the true hero of the story.

So there. ;-p

Too Much Private School

So, they played this on The West Wing tonight ("Hallelujah").

I had the same problem when it was in Shrek.

Maybe it's too much private school -- or, rather, too many religion classes while in private school -- but I just have to point out that while much of the story fits David (seeing "her" bathing on the roof, etc.), the part about cutting hair was Samson and Delilah.

That shouldn't bug me that much.

But it does.

Go figure.

Happy Nerd

My Return of the King Extended Edition (finally) came today!

I caved and ordered the gift set (complete with Minas Tirith statue) because it included an extra DVD of the Lord of the Rings symphony that Howard Shore arranged with music from all of the movies. :-) My only complaint is that the footage didn't show nearly enough of the movement that includes the Rohan music, my personal favorite part of the score.

Okay, so it's tied with the music from the prologue of Fellowship, especially the bit that plays right as "The Lord of the Rings" comes up on the screen, but still.

Other than that -- yay! :-)

Time Stamps and Stuff

It really was "way late" when I posted the previous, but because I started it at whatever it says, it kept the original time stamp.

Anyway, the funny story for today. About a week and a half ago, my trusty blue fan I've had since my senior year of college broke. The post snapped right clean off at the base. I was able to duct tape it together, mostly, and can coax it upright, mostly, as long as I don't so much as breathe on it.

So I looked around froogle and found a nifty fan that's height-adjustable (one of the drawbacks of trusty ol' blue) and has two sets of blades -- large ones for when it's hot and I need to move air around, and a smaller one to direct air flow, for when I sleep at night ('cause y'all know that I can't sleep without a fan to provide white noise -- that started my freshman year of college when I tried to drown out the what's-her-name's morning hour-long shower, complete with "If It Makes You Happy" on repeat).

It was supposed to show up within 3 days. That was about 10 days ago.

I was willing to cut them some slack because of holiday mail, but I finally emailed their customer service over the weekend.

It was accidentally shipped to the billing address (here) rather than to my mom's, where they could have just left it on the porch. But because I wasn't expecting a package, I haven't gotten my mail every day, so I missed the "you have a package" notice. The poor people in the office....

But the good news is...I have a fan. :-)

Mucho drama

I know, I know...another extended absence. I'm a horrible blogger....

Actually, no -- it's just that I tend to go into hibernate mode when stressed, and the class I've got this year is going to give me gray hair. (Well, just R., mostly, but when you add to that the fact that my grandmother's emphysema is getting way worse, the fact that I've managed to get all the normal first-year-teacher illnesses in this, my second year, the fact that...oh, whatever -- it's not important, and I don't want to go into POK mobile mode.)

A brief summary of where we stand now, though. Grandma has pneumonia (not a good thing with very bad emphysema) but an excellent heart, which is the usual cause of death associated with emphysema -- so the chances are she'll be around but miserable for quite some time. Meanwhile, I have laryngitis and possible walking pneumonia myself, so I'm not allowed within 5 miles of grandma. And other stuff I can't think of right now.

Again, to avoid POK mobile mode...some cool stuff has happened the last few months:

* Thanks to Leo, I found Weak Knees and added a hard drive to my TiVo, which now has 248 hours of storage. I love it.

* I got fed up with Earthlink DSL being down more than it was up, and signed up for DSL Extreme, also thanks to Leo.

* I bought the original Star Wars DVDs, and Harry Potter 3 (neither of which I've watched yet, but that's what Christmas vacation is for).

* I forced myself to make time to read every day, and discovered two new "hard" sci-fi (meaning more science than fantasy, like Arthur C. Clarke -- and, yes, for those of you about to make comments, I know that's a simplistic way to describe it) authors I like a lot: Stephen Baxter and Greg Bear. Greg Bear's book Eon is a lot like Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. Not long after I read it, I was going through an old box of my dad's books -- and what do you think was at the top? His obviously well-read copy of Eon. And then, tonight, I discovered that Greg Bear wrote Corona, the first Star Trek book I ever read, at the ripe old age of 7. Cool, huh?

* I found an ankle brace that enables me to actually walk for more than about an hour at a time. I still have a long way to go to get it back to pre-bad-sprain stage (don't worry, I., I still love you, even if you did trip me). I don't think I'll be able to do Disney World if we really go this summer without renting a scooter every other day or so (it's much more spread out there, with much more walking) but for every day stuff around town I only have problems if I have to stand still for a long time.

* Thanks to Kevin Rose from the old The Screensavers, I discovered BitTorrent, a unique file-sharing thing. Instead of d/ling a file from beginning to end, you grab whatever pieces are available and it puts them back together in order, which makes things much faster. I was able to d/l this season's episodes of Enterprise and thanks to several freeware intermediary steps was able to get them into iMovie and iDVD -- so even though Dish Network no longer gets UPN, I can still see Enterprise, which is finally redeeming itself a little, no doubt thanks in large part to people like Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, who have been writing ST books for a long time and actually know what they're talking about.

So, there's more cool things, but it's way late and even though I have nothing in particular to do tomorrow, I should go to bed. Hasta.

D'oh!

Amazon.com: DVD: Farscape - The Complete Fourth Season (1999)

Murphy's Law strikes again -- why didn't I see this when I was at Best Buy with my mom on Wednesday and in a spending mood?

Oh, wait.

I need black ink for my printer.

Gosh darn it. ;-)

Murphy's Law

I've learned something about myself the last couple of weeks. When I get stressed, nervous, or upset, I hide...withdraw.

(This is a POK-mobile post, so probably no one should read this anyway...)

It's not been a fun few weeks. It all started the weekend Connie was supposed to call me and arrange to meet for dinner -- I totally forgot I was expecting the call, then thought of it that night, and realized I had no earthly idea where my cell phone was. Once I found it, I found that somehow a master password or something, which I never set, got messed up, and I can't get past the locked SIM card.

Meanwhile, my grandmother was told that because of the advanced stage of her emphysema, so much of her lung tissue is damaged that exposure to any respiratory-related illness (colds, flu, etc.) could be fatal. Actually contracting them would almost certainly be fatal.

Oh -- and she's smoking again.

So now, everytime I get the fluttery feeling I had the night my dad died (and my great-aunt, grandmother, and grandfather), I get nervous. Despite watching sci-fi, I'm not really one for the mystical stuff, but this, I believe in. It's happened too many times now...somehow I know when a relative is dying.

Let's see...my class is a disaster. The kids I had last year are doing okay, but none of the others have any clue what to do in a classroom. Most of them are doing a little better, but one kid, R., is driving me bananas, and I can't figure him out. This is very frustrating.

To add to that, one of my students is probably moving, and because she's assigned to P. as one-to-one support, one of my aides in the morning will be gone in the near future. Meanwhile, this person (who has a personality like my grandma's) is obsessing about random things, which I get to hear about for 6 1/2 hours a day.

Then, beginning about a week and a half ago, my jaw started to hurt. The wisdom teeth -- which were supposed to finally hold my teeth in place so my retainer wouldn't be necessary -- I was promised are finally coming in, but there doesn't appear to be room after all. Now, I have a major dentist phobia (not good, 'cause bad gums run in the family, but so far, I've been lucky in the teeth/cavity department), so I haven't yet convinced myself to call a dentist for what will probably be oral surgery to remove at least one impacted wisdom tooth.

And then, after my weekly Monday Carl's Jr. date with Patrick, I woke up so dizzy I felt like I was on a merry go round on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. Yep, folks, I had food poisoning.

One bright spot is the new 1st-3rd special day class teacher, Jenn, who has made it her mission to drag me to a teachers' happy hour gathering on Fridays, and finally succeeded Friday -- though I only had a virgin margarita. She's almost exactly my age, and we get along really well together, so I hope she stays more than one year.

Maybe forcing me to do that is what finally got me to write this. I knew that as soon as I did, I'be be...well, for lack of a better word...interacting with the wide world again. Maybe it's a sign that things are going to turn around.

Or, maybe I'm just a little maudlin tonight 'cause it's 7:30, there's nothing good on TV, I ran out of labels and ink to do anything useful for school, I don't want it to be Monday tomorrow, and my mouth hurts. :-(

I Have Been Pushed Over the Edge

Yeeeaarrrgghh.

It's "would have," people. Would have...could have...should have....

There is no such thing as could of. Or would of. Or should of. Or...had to of.

Would have.

Say it with me. Would have. Should have. Could have. Must have.

(Or, the acceptable slangy Farscape variant: could'a, would'a, should'a. :-)) Note, however, that the contraction includes the "a" from the word "have" -- nary a hint of the word "of."

Must have.

Could have.

Would have.

Should have.

Sigh.

My Little Energizer Bunnies

All I can say is yikes.

The morning went absolutely fantastic -- which should have been my first sign.

But somewhere between lunch and...well, recess after lunch, my calm 11 students (even S. had stopped hitting himself by that point) all went berzerk. The best way I can describe it is that they were like little energizer bunnies on fast forward.

I'm so exhausted I can't sleep. Seriously. I'm absolutely exhausted, and even though I'm trying to drift off, I can't. :-(

Here's to boring TV.

Second Day

Good grief, I'm going to crash and burn on Friday. More later.

Erm? (Puzzled Noise)

Okay, so what looked like a browser hiccup wasn't.

Then, what looked like a blogger hiccup wasn't.

You will find my post about the first day below my posts saying I couldn't post about the first day.

Yeah.

Whatever.

I'm so tired, I don't even care... ;-)

Boo

Either blogger or firefox ate my post.

I will recreate it later. Right now, I am zoning...I don't think I'll get much work done tonight -- but that's okay, I guess, 'cause most of the work I needed to modify is still in the kids' work folders at school. :-(

First Day

Oh, no.

(That was in a Phoebe voice, by the way.)

Blogger ate my post.

I will recreate it later. I'm right now trying to talk myself into doing work, but I think I'll celebrate a day finished and vegetate, then work all night tomorrow (well, not all night...).

First Day

Boy.

I would say it was a crazy day, but I think I just got spoiled by the progress I'd seen in my class last year. When I remember the first day of last year, with I. throwing everything she could get her hands on, G. hiding in the bottom shelf of a bookcase, and the aides looking at me like I was speaking Greek when I wanted the kid to work.

Today, all the kids -- not just mine from last year, but J., R., and the kids from the primary class (which didn't really do all that much academic work last year) were at their desks working for the first hour or so of the day...then they started needing breaks at different times, and it got kind of...hectic.

I can see right away that I've got my work cut out for me -- it's very much a different group of kids this year...different vibes, different challenges -- but I think we'll be okay. We start DARE and science next week, so I'll have some kids in and out for mainstreaming, and I plan to set up a "student exchange program" during silent reading times....

I think the hardest part will be that because of budget cuts, they are changing some aide hours, and I swear I spent 3 hours of today hearing M.E. stress that because they took away 1 hour of M's time, they would "take it" from her and give it to M. Oy.

But I think the best kid-related thing that happened today was one of the following two things:

1. E. not wanting to do math until I found these plastic stretchy lizard toys, and had the lizard count the coins. All of a sudden, she could count to 13 -- almost 15, but she got a little hazy around there. So I bought a few more packs at WalMart tonight...maybe she'll do more math for frogs. ;-)
2. S. didn't come on the bus today. He's the one that hits his head until his head and/or knuckles are bloody. Anyway, they didn't have his bus "harness," a special seatbelt contraption, so they said they'd bring him. Well, 9:30 came around -- no S. 10:00 came around -- no S. So I called his group home...and the response I got was "oh, I saw him downstairs...I was wondering what he was doing here!" Very confidence-inspiring. Then the lady told me he'd been hitting his head, so they let him stay home. Now, this kid hits himself all the time...whether he likes stuff or not...and I'm thinking, Now, there's a great thing to teach the kid -- I hit myself and can stay home. But C.-the-Magic-Behavior-Intervention-Specialist, who had asked me to call her if S. didn't come in, scoffed and said, "I'll call 'em." S. was there 20 minutes later. The cool thing? He did 2 pages of work and didn't hit himself all day! :-)

So, I think we need a couple of days to get everything worked out. We shall see.

Oh -- and to top off the day, A.'s aunt wasn't there when the bus dropped her off, and her mom didn't get there to pick her up for an hour and a half. :-(

Procrastinating

A few days ago, I thought I had most everything ready. Tonight, after making the classroom rules ("We help each other," "work first, then take a break," and "we respect each other") and homework folders, and realizing half the class needs more work modified, I've come to the conclusion that I could have started getting ready during summer school and still wouldn't be.

Oh well.

We'll survive. Can't be worse than last year, when I tried to (gasp) read a poem to the class, then assigned a math assessment (to see where everyone was), and had the aides looking at me like I was speaking Greek.

Google Trick

I used to spend lots of time browsing lyrics.ch, a very large lyrics database. Got me through loads of nights of MathLab tutoring, until someone sued for copyright infringement (this was before napster, which I think took the focus off of lyrics and onto the songs themselves).

In any event, it got pulled offline, and though there are lots of sites out there that you can find with google, you can almost always find the lyrics to a song by typing this string into a google search:

lyrics "name of song" artist

Be sure to put the name of the song in quotes so it looks for that particular string. If the artist's name is 2 words (Jann Arden vs. Evanescence) put the whole name in quotes as well. The word "lyrics" seals the deal.

For instance, to look up the lyrics to, say, "Hurt," as sung by Johnny Cash, you'd type:

lyrics "Hurt" "Johnny Cash"

And to search for the lyrics to "My Immortal" by Evanescence (a great song to Farscape's "The Chosen," for any Farscape fans -- particulary John/Aeryn, though that should be obvious by the episode), you would lose the quotes around the name and type:

lyrics "My Immortal" Evanescence

Finally, if you ever know a bit of the words but not the artist, often you can find that by typing:

lyrics "phrase from lyrics" ("name of song" optional)

For instance, at the school, we have a flag ceremony every Thursday morning and often sing "God Bless the USA." (Only the fact that it's Simi Valley, a relatively conservative area, has saved them from someone commenting on this choice, I think.) I searched the lyrics once to send home for the kids to practice but didn't know the artist, so I searched:

lyrics "tomorrow all the things were gone"

Have fun. :-)

Randomness

I have the worst craving for toast, but have no butter. :-(

Took forever, but all the copies I made today are sorted, stapled, and have kids' initials on 'em ('cause not all kids get all work), ready for preparation and modification, where needed, manana.

Don't forget to check out photos of my classroom. The link is below.

Nighty night.

Arranging the Classroom

Room_From_Door
Originally uploaded by spoowriter.

I put up a gallery of my newly-almost-ready classroom here. I was at Sycamore quite a long time today, putting the finishing touches on the room, but what took the longest was the copier, which suddenly decided to be a snail. (Sigh)

But, all I have to do now is make the kids' word books, portfolios, write a "how the classroom works letter" and get some work ready for Tuesday.

It'll be a weird week. Our behavior specialist (who I took a class from that I didn't even need 'cause she's fun to listen to) is gonna be by because one of my new guys, S., has some extremely self-injurious behaviors (he hits himself on the head until his head and knuckles are bloody); the OTs and speech therapists will be by to make a schedule -- ditto with the APE guy. So it won't be a normal week anyway.

I'm far less freaked out than last year, unlike the new primary SDC teacher, Jenn, who has never had a classroom herself, and although she's worked with adults with severe disabilities, her credential is in mild to moderate disabilities.

So, here's to a good year. Hope you enjoy the pictures. I work hard to make the room look as similar as possible to any other classroom. I feel that's very important, because it starts everything off with an...aura, so to speak...of age-appropriateness.

I just lost my train of thought there. More later, maybe.

Banned Books Week

The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–20001

From the American Library Association. Bold means I've read it. Italics means I've heard of it but not read it..

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz -- my 3rd/4th grade teacher read these to us all the time...we loved them.
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck -- didn't like either of these, but had to read them for school.
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson -- another one my 3rd/4th grade teacher read us.
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry -- this is a fabulous book
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Dieby Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel -- well, I've read the first one...the others were too weird for me.
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane -- this is a riveting, fascinating story about living under apartheid that I found in my middle school library.
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley -- I wasn't really fond of the book as a whole, but the beginning part that describes the "decanting" of children and the conditioning process is fascinating.
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl -- another 3rd/4th grade one
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison -- I'm not a huge fan of Toni Morrison, but this was the best of the ones of hers I've read
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford -- if you can count it as reading...
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett -- I think I read this one once
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell -- does reading it Patrick count?
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney -- haven't read this one, but I read a number of hers
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

You know, my elementary school teachers read many of these to me, and others, I found wandering the library at school, which was small enough that I stumbled upon things I wouldn't have found elsewhere.

Do I think 5 year olds should read Cujo? No, of course not. But should a 15 year old read Cujo? Why the heck not? It they wanna have nightmares, let 'em.

Be involved with your kids...know what they're reading -- and you decide something is not appropriate, fine. But don't assume that what is inappropriate for your child is inappropriate for another. It might just be the book that inspires them to write the next "great American novel," to use a fairly cliched phrase.

Testing, Testing

Patrick at the Coke Store
Originally uploaded by spoowriter.

Just testing out the blogging part of flickr, which is a Mac-compatible almost-as-good-as-Picasa-and-Hello. Miscellany is below. Click on the picture to see a bigger version.

Miscellaneous Musings

I think all this classroom-arranging has been bad for my ankle. It really hurts tonight, and my ice pack is still at my mom's house. :-(

On the other hand, all I have to do, really, is the bulletin boards and rearrange the desks, then make photocopies of the first week's work. My goal from now on is to be a week ahead in work -- that is, I'll have week 2's done over this weekend, so I can photocopy it and modify it on our early-out Thursdays.

That'll probably only last a couple of weeks, but it's a nice thought.

On the third hand, I think I'll get along great with the new primary SDC teacher - whose name is also "Jennifer." There are now 4 of us at Sycamore, and 3 of us teach special education, in one form or another. This is her first year teaching, and her credential is mild/moderate, not moderate/severe, so she's kind of freaking out right now.

I spent a lot of time today going through kids' IEPs with her, and showing her how I have my classroom set up. I tried really hard to walk the line of "give useful advice" without the "this is what Dana did" trap. I spent the first 6 weeks or so of last year constantly being told "Kate did this" or "Teacher Peter did that" ("Teacher Peter?" For 5th graders? Really?) or "What's-her-name-who-was-pregnant did that." Drove me nuts.

I told Jenn to tell me if I was doing that too much, but I'm not sure if she really would....

On the...fourth?...hand, the principal was insistent that Lauri (the preschool teacher) and I explain to Christina and Jenn how to get the kids off the bus.

Um, I'm sorry, but if they can't figure out how to get a group of kids off the bus and to the right classroom...we have much bigger problems here, people.

I don't know...Suzanne stresses about weird things, in my opinion. Last year, one of the first things she said after she hired me was, "Make sure you put up bulletin boards and stuff because the parents want their kids' room to look like everyone else's."

First off, after I went all over in my interview about how I worked in inclusive environments, and how important age appropriateness is to me, and how I was going to give homework because that's part of everyone else's school experience...what on earth did she think I was gonna do? Put up bars on the windows and "Warning: Special Education Students Here" on the door??

I'll have to post pictures of my classroom. I think it's a fairly nice compromise between looking very typical and having to respect the needs of my students by providing quiet cool down corners, a couple of individual work places, and a little corner for speech, OT, etc.

See? Toldja it was miscellaneous.

By the way -- thought of the night -- "The spear in the Other's heart is the spear in your own; you are he." -- Diane Duane.

Gmail

If anyone who wants a gmail account hasn't received an invite, check out The Screensavers' Kevin Rose's website.

I'll miss Pat, and I already missed Leo, but I'm looking forward to giving the new Screensavers a try anyway.

By the way...it must be the night for weird grammatical images. I just read something about a character being the one to...ahem..."bare" a baby....

Interesting Image

"Feint" basically means taking mock swing at someone. I believe it's a fencing term, as well.

Either way, it presents interesting images, when you read how it was used here.

However, it's worth noting that if someone feinted at me with a sword, I'd be faint of heart too. :-)

Manual Dexterity

I am the least coordinated person on earth.

And yet, I have tasked myself with creating triangular name labels for the kids' desks, because the ones that can't yet read their names weren't looking at the taped down ones last year anyway. These new ones are triangular and velcroed, to make it easy to move kids around without having to peel off old name tags.

However, this involves making a 1.5" table in word, putting the kid's name in, color-coding it by grade level, printing, cutting, and then (the manual dexterity part) folding along the lines on the table and gluing the extra flap from the top margin to the rest of the triangle in order to fill it with old phone book paper.

This is not easy. Worth it, rather than having to create new name tags every time I want to move kids' seats, but not easy.

Just thought I'd whine a bit.

Let there be light

Aha! I have light! Well, in 4 of the 5 bulbs -- since I wasn't sure I had the right bulb, and they came in packs of 4, I decided not to buy 8 bulbs I might not potentially need.

Sci Fi Fandom

I've only ever been to one sci-fi convention, and that was mostly at the behest of my friend Caryn. I've never been overly interested in a celebrity's private life, or even in meeting them in person, because what I'm attracted to is most often the character, especially a well-developed one.

That's one of the cool things about DVD commentaries. You get to hear all of the insights an actor has about a particular episode; you get to hear the interesting vignettes (like Claudia Black, who does just about the best commentaries I've ever heard - funny, thoughtful, and knowledgeable - filming one of the first episodes of Farscape, getting her finger smashed, and sitting in a tree telling herself that she can't cry 'cause Aeryn's a tough chick and wouldn't cry either); you get to hear about the actor's choices and reasons they played a certain scene a certain way, etc.

Those are the questions that, if asked, might draw me to a convention.

But what I saw all those years ago in LA was a lot of people with reality issues. That is, they'd ask the actor questions that should be directed towards the character -- a rather difficult proposition. I don't get the dressing-in-costumes thing, but honestly, that didn't bother me as much as the inane questions.

But there have been a couple of moments over the years that I've read about that I wish I could have seen. The tribute to Kevin Smith (the actor from New Zealand, not the American director) a few years ago, after he died from a head wound, for one. I'd hope there would have been one at some point at some sci-fi convention for Jonathan Brandis, who played Lucas on SeaQuest and committed suicide sometime in this last year.

And this weekend, the entire living cast of the original Star Trek, along with a few other cool people like Neil Armstrong, gathered to pay tribute to James Doohan, attending his last convention because he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Did you know you have to pay to get a star on the Walk of Fame? I read a few years ago that one of James Doohan's sons was leading a campaign on the net to get contributions for one, because James Doohan refused to pay for one, not wanting to "pat himself on the back" as his son says on the website.

He's getting one tomorrow.

And for one of the first times, I wish I'd gone to the convention, and that I was a fangirl nerd enough to head on over to Hollywood tomorrow.

I started watching Star Trek when I was 5. My dad set me in front of "The Trouble with Tribbles," and there you have it. That's a little bitter sweet today, since Scotty played a large part in that particular episode.

I guess this is a little tribute of my own to him. Wish I had some technical journals to read...best I can do is my Macworld and PC World magazines.

The Light Odyssey

Once upon a time, I bought a cheap halogen lamp for my dorm at CLU. At some point, Stacey acquired one too, and then somehow I inherited both of them (maybe the "I don't want to make any more moving trips to Lompoc" phase?), as I was moving home after we graduated.

Those lamps have served well. One burned out a month or two ago, and I kept forgetting to take the bulb to Lowe's to get a new one. Well, I finally did, and it turns out the bulb was fine -- it was the lamp that died.

The second still lights (when you jiggle the switch, which is supposed to turn) but the bottom has been crossthreaded or something, and it won't stand up straight unless I tie it to the bedframe with an ace bandage.

So when the second's bulb finally burned out, I browsed around one night and found this nifty one that was supposedly available at my local WalMart. Well, yesterday, I went to 3, and none had it. Finally found it tonight, assembled it, and found out that the bulbs I bought are the wrong size.

Oh well. One more night with just the laptop and the TV to light the room isn't so bad.

Ad Choices

You know, call me crazy, but I'm not sure the audience that watches the Sci-Fi Channel would be the ideal place to advertise The Passion of the Christ. I know it was a mega-hit and all that...but...the Sci-Fi Channel...really? I'm really not sure that it would be your target audience, but I think I've seen 6 ads just in watching Friday's Atlantis.

Anyway.

But I'll think it's weird until I see a preview for, oh, say, Stargate: Atlantis on...the Game Show Network. ;-)

(Incidentally, about Atlantis. Okay. Can be funny. Last week's was very good. I'm more impressed than I was with SG-1's first season, if only because they haven't renamed anyone important. I don't know why renaming Sha'uri (Daniel's wife's name in the movie) to Sha're bugged me so much, but it did. Anyhow.)

Farscape Miniseries (Spoilers)

Text below is in black to preserve spoilers...not that anyone I know who reads this would care. ;-)

By the way -- in case it's not immediately obvious, use your mouse to select the text and you'll be able to see it.

I'm probably only thinking of this because I've been catching up on the 3rd season on Sci-Fi, but my first thought on seeing the page in iTunes with the trialer was -- "Gosh, this John will have a scar on his temple like twin-Talyn-John."

Okay, spoilers are done. :-)

Gee, I Know More Than Tech Support

Good grief, that was unenlightening.

Keep in mind that everything was cut-and-pasted from tech support web pages on Earthlink, which I already read.

A summary:

• "Try power cycling the modem." (Uh, done that about 500 times; tried a different modem, just to see if it was the modem. It's not.)
• "Is it near any type of interference?" (Um, no, it's not -- and, besides, it was in the exact same place, in the exact same configuration when it was working. But just to be sure -- it's on the floor in the middle of my room, with a new Ethernet cable just to be sure.)
• "Try putting it in bridged mode." (Oh, golly gee, it was, which is what I thought was the problem, so it's not now, but I'll put it back in bridged mode if you would like, and try connecting via the software.)
• "We're sorry, we're experiencing technical difficulties in your area." (Uh, yeah, lady, except that according to Earthlink's website, the schedule downtime isn't until 2 AM tomorrow, and I've been having this problem for weeks.)
• "Is there anything else we can help you with?" (Um...else...doesn't the definition of "else" mean that you have helped me with something? Let's reveiw here. Contacted tech support 'cause I had no DSL connection. I still have no DSL connection. Gee, I'd love for you to help me with something else.)
  

You know, when this happened once before, I spoke with a nice, helpful guy who understood that I do, in fact, know what I'm talking about, escalated the case for me right away, did some magic on his end, and voila.

Maybe he works Saturdays. :-(

Yuck

I have the worst hiccoughs right now. Just thought I'd share.

By the way -- Earthlink will still troubleshoot for you if you have a home network. They just don't support home networks unless you spend $10 more a month, so you have to remove the network component between the CPU and the DSL modem...not that it's doing much good.

We're gonna try again, using my laptop to chat over dialup with them. I don't know why this is bugging me so much all of a sudden...it's been down for a few weeks. I guess I just want my money's worth.

Earthlink

I've just about had it. If they can't fix the bleeping DSL line this time (last time, I got the supremely unhelpful "we don't support home networks that aren't our own, sorry" response, and nothing more even once I removed the DSL modem from the network and hooked it straight up to my desktop) I may just switch providers. My earthlink address is overloaded anyway, since I only get 20 hours free dial-up with my (noncommunicative) DSL account, and therefore can't spend hours pulling the spam off the server.

Except...then I have to figure out what to do with all the graphics I've put my email address on as a signature.

Argh.

Speaking of technical matters, though -- the warranty on my TiVo is almost out, so I'm in the process of taping what I want to save and dumping what I don't want, so I can either work up my courage to mod it myself, or send it somewhere that will add a larger hard drive to it. I've been waiting, since either action (since it opens the case) voids the warranty. But once the warranty runs out, and there's no warranty to void (cue evil laughter here).

Darn it

So, I was being industrious and making the first week's vocabulary work for my class (school starts after Labor Day), and the stupid power strip for my computer conked out just as I was trying to find a diplomatic way of saying "quit saying C. can't do the homework and just have him do something" as though it were aimed at all the kids.

All last year, the folks with whom C. lives kept saying "C. can't do this homework" and I kept sending home worksheets that were exactly the same to prove he could. We even discussed it at his IEP. Oh well. I'm sure I can come up with it again....

Uh...huh.

I just saw a guy riding a motorcycle wearing a Superman costume.

Odd Music Choices

Pray tell me why NBC's Olympic coverage recap (namely, the one after the women's 10m platform diving semifinal) is playing the theme to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in the background?

Are we trying to connect the Olympics to Mel Gibson? Stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Cancelling Christmas? Cutting peoples' hearts out with spoons (because it's dull, and will hurt more, of course)? Using bad English accents, when we remember to use one at all?

;-)

Or, in all seriousness, it could be All-Purpose-Dramatic-Music-Cue-Number-2, a la many movies that have not yet had their scores finalized using the theme from Stargate (the movie, not the TV show) in their previews.

More later.