dog jerky

so i decided to dog-sit Izzy this weekend. Izzy is Professor Proton's non-sexual domestic life partner. they like each other very much and the pictures are what happens when these two creatures get together. lots of romping and tromping and then total exhaustion.

we had a nice day yesterday: took a trip to the dog park, watched "A Bucket of Blood," finished Valley of the Dolls. good day. we all settle in for the evening and i decide it's best to put all of us in the same room (my bedroom) to prevent any whining/crying. BIGGEST FUCKING MISTAKE OF MY LIFE. i was trying to get started on a great new book my sister sent me, but had a bit of a difficult time getting into it due to the beasts frolicking and romping on top of page 2. Proton is also getting super protective/territorial and basically screaming any time Izzy gets close to the bed. so, i decide that turning the lights off and trying to go to sleep would be the best for everyone. that's at 9:30 p.m. for the next three hours i listened to Izzy run back and forth to the window, barking at anybody/anything that might move outside of it. it was like having country dog visiting the city or something. "WOH, WHAT'S THAT. HOLY COW.. IT'S A STREETLIGHT. AND WAIT-- WHAT'S THAT? A PARKING METER? JESUS CHRIST!! HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN THIS?" and then the barking would begin. and izzy is huge. so her moving around sounds like an intruder in my room. so, of course, i need to check every time i hear to moving to make sure it's really still the dog. when she wasn't walking around, she was trying to get Proton to fight with her. at 1:30 a.m. i took her outside to see if all the moving around was due to her having to go to the bathroom or something. nope. not at all. we get back inside and it continues. at this point i mumble out loud "please, all i want to do is sleep." but Izzy's got other things on her mind. i manage to hit dreamland briefly, but am awakened by this heavy weight on my chest. that would be Izzy laying on top of me. i don't know how much Izzy weighs, but it's about 15.5 protons and once Proton realizes what's going on there's a fucking dog battle on top of me. so much dog screaming. at that point i about lost my mind and upped the ante on my verbalization to "i wish i was dead." i guess that sort of was answered cus right now i feel about half-dead. another trip outside at 6:30 a.m. and finally throwing in the towel for reals at 9:00 a.m.

and now they're exhausted. assholes.

explicit... so explicit

this note was hanging in the entryway of my building this morning.

today i had professional development. i'm not sure what i'm exactly supposed to be developing into, but if it's a disgruntled and irritated teacher, job well done. we had to go to a session on "explicit lesson planning." the presentation went something like this:

"so explicit learning and explicit lesson planning is all about being explicit. you need to be very explicit about what the lesson plan is going to be about, and make sure you say it explicitly. ok here, on this next slide you can see what the definition of explicit learning is-- it's about being explicit in your lesson planning. ok... so we're going to do an activity about what explicit learning is. identify those times when the educator is being explicit. then, we'll regroup and talk about the definition of explicit learning."

BULLET IN MY FACE.

and it lasted 90 minutes. bottom line: explicit learning = turning children into robots. pretty gross stuff. i don't know how i can say that any more explicitly, but i think i explicitly think it's a bunch of *explicative.*

just in case you forgot....

how crazy it all was...

today when i was leaving work and walking to my car i noticed a miata parked in the staff lot with a hella bumper stickers on it. 5-6 bumper stickers with all sorts of gross stuff, including the standard "mccain," but there also was a "I LOVE SARAH!" with "PALIN" written underneath it in some gross-ass conservative penmanship. i said "what the fuck?" out loud and then immediately made it my mission to figure out who this creep is because they are 1- teaching, and 2- probably breeding. honestly. you really think they're great enough to have that bullshit all over your miata. you drive a miata. i want to punch you.

caloric mediation

well, i got to break up my first fight this week. maybe not a FULL fight, but the kid that ran the smoke machine got pushed across the room and to the floor by an idiot moron because smoke kid didn't tell him the answer to a problem. idiot. and holy shit did i yell. i don't know if that voice has ever come out of my body before, but i definitely lowered it a few notches and made it BOOMING loud and children scurried out of my room like roaches when the verbal storm started.

when my students weren't being huge freaking babies and throwing each other across the room, they were busy learning about the calorie. such a simple idea. the calorie. who knew that my lessons on the calorie and caloric intake would lead to calorie-eating contests. because apparently in middle school everything can be reduced to a competition. last night nathan g, estimated weight 89 pounds, ate a Big Mac meal and 1/2 an apple pie. total estimated calories taken in over a 24 hour period: 3600. this surpassed the caloric intake of raven, estimated weight 115 pounds and twice as tall as Nathan, even though she ate an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's last night. this evening ned and soren are challenging each other. great. i've voiced my displeasure at this contest because of the probability of one of them pooping in their pants and all over my classroom.

we also had a lab today where my students had to climb a flight of stairs and time themselves to determine work and power. i was discussing the results with a group of students and they mentioned something about the stairs moving. i said "wait... the stairs moved?" they said yes. i then asked them if they were on acid, because that's the only time the stairs should be moving. they looked at me with huge doe-like eyes and didn't say anything. i repeated the question. one student said "not now, but maybe later." i then realized that they had ZERO idea what acid was and i was digging myself into a freaking grave. and yes... i said half of that last sentence out loud to them.

soren maintains supremecy

once again, soren has proven his position as supreme student. because of his inquiry into whether or not i thought the electoral college was a good idea, i gave him a printed copy of federalist paper 68. i don't know if he'll read it, but he just might. but the real showmanship: we're on the energy unit and i was showing kids how energy is transformed from one form to another and picked up a flashlight. i said that the batteries were potential energy and energy is changed to light when the flashlight is turned on. when i turned it on, the kids looked legitimately shocked that light came out of the end of it. i then said "wow. you guys look really surprised by that light. what are you? puritans in 1858?" and holy smokes did soren laugh. put his head down on the desk and laughed and laughed. SCORE!

and if you haven't caught a bit of children's programming on saturday, do yourself a favor. i just saw a commercial for "wet babies." apparently they squirt water on you when you squeeze them. one six-year-old's comment when said wet baby did just that "you're my baby now." really? if that's the criteria then color me mama. and doesn't seem like squeezing infants is a good idea to reinforce in six-year-olds. i think we all know they take things literally and the last thing we need is a renegade group of children with claw-like squeezing capabilities causing a wave of pissing and puking babies. regurgitating children they then insist are theirs.

puking pumpkins

highlights of the halloween weekend: the professor in a bowtie, ladies dressed as boys peeing in urinals, the simpsons halloween episode, and children dressed as pumpkins. pumpkins with zero self-control. at a halloween party this weekend, my friends and i were enjoying some delicious treats when i noticed an adorable little kid dressed as a pumpkin. the child was being held by his mother, who was enjoying a healthy amount of crab dip. as i'm shoving salsa in my mouth, i notice that the face of the little gourd is kind of scrinching up, and then white puke liquid starts dribbling down the kid's chin and onto his costume. i make a puking sound of my own and start laughing incredibly hard as the baby puke continues, saturating the front of his costume and getting dangerously close to both his mother's arm and her costume. she, of course, doesn't notice any of this happening until about 10 seconds after the vomit eruption occurred. What used to be a cute kid in a pumpkin costume was transformed into a bile-caked, vomit-soaked gross-ass bastard of a baby. good job breeders.

But why would a zombie want to eat a human?

last night the Professor insisted on dressing up for the crew of friends that came over to optimize costumes, enjoy Thai, and discuss the temperaments of dog breeds (weimaraners are apparently the dicks of the dog world). needless to say, the excitement of the evening was a bit too much for him and he passed out con bowtie.

the lesson to finish off the week was a delightful one. we are currently studying kinetic energy and potential energy, so i wanted to figure out a way to incorporate those concepts and halloween terror. this resulted in : 1- finishing off the daily math race by blasting the kids in the face with strobe lights; and 2- watching Night of the Living Dead and determining the kinetic energy of Barbra's car as it is coasting downhill in the graveyard, the potential energy of the half-eaten head at the top of the stairs, and the kinetic energy of zombies of varying masses. we discussed how Barbra might increase her kinetic energy in the car, either by increasing her velocity OR increasing the mass of the car. one of my students remarked that if the zombie jumped on top of her car the mass of the car would be increased. "yes", i replied, "but then you find yourself in the situation where you have a zombie on top of your car. although, it's better than having a zombie inside your car because they have terrible taste in music and always want to control the radio." i then spent the next few minutes reassuring students that i have never had a real zombie in my car.

and man did my students hate Barbra. every class erupted in cheers when Ben punched Barbra in the face, a scene i had kind of forgot about. there were also comments about how "there's always a shotgun in the closet." um.... ok. i even had a couple kids stay after school to finish watching the movie. so great... i'm just hoping that wasn't because their parents don't let them watch scary stuff and now i'm enabling them. but i'm ok with that. we also got into a rousing debate on why zombies aren't technically dead, but they're also not alive either. soren didn't buy it. the discussion went something like this:

soren: so zombies are alive.
me: no... they're not exactly alive, but they're not dead either. they're the undead.
soren: but they're moving around like they're alive like humans. they're using energy.
nathan (other student watching the film): but humans are alive and they aren't zombies.
soren: yah, but pigs aren't zombies either and they're alive. (he then started laughing super hard)

soren also could not get over why zombies would want to eat humans and not each other. i gently reminded him that if anything, zombies are persistent, but not necessarily intelligent. he just shook his head, genuinely frustrated by the whole zombie population. hopefully the conundrums inherent in zombie livelihood won't keep him tossing and turning all weekend.