It Seems Like Only Yesterday

Coming back to work after a three-day weekend. Funny how things change. Thought about the previous job earlier today. How I would show up in the mornring, and my largest contribution to the workplace was making the coffee. Talking for hours about American Culture with my Ukrainian boss. Sending out emails, clarifying statements, writing papers, placing all of my ducks in a row for school.

Showing up on the morning of Memorial Day, bus on a holiday schedule, to a dark office. Turn up the music, take the cordless phone into the server room and stare out at the free people down at Pioneer Square. Always tired in that air, always stifled.

Having to dial the same 24 numbers eight times per day, once per hour, 120 times per week, until you recited them in your sleep.

Two years later, waking late, coffee, writing, lesson plans, pets, laundry.

Sometimes I miss the private sector, but never on a three day weekend.

Senior Skip Day

What has become of this blog, is it nothing but dispatches from a technology teacher at a suburban high school in Southwest Washington? Hey now there's an idea.

So today is senior skip day, and with it comes with the anticipation of a three day weekend, and all the alluring promises that it brings. The static in the air is palpable, the staff let down their guards, movies, video clips, music played in the classroom, people let down their hair. Students either work or stare out the window. Either way its here, the three day weekend, put off by only a few minutes, the last few minutes of the day spent in the last period of the week, and when they come back on Tuesday the weather will be back to normal, and the teachers will have grins on their faces the size of Gilbralter.

"It's called promoting your curriculum."

Nothing is Random, Everything Has Purpose

For a little fun in class today, I wrote the above statement on the board. It has nothing to do with Web Design, but I thought it was important. I wrote the statement on the board, in big, brown letters, peppered with streaks of blue to give it that chocolate cake look to it, just to start the class off on a philosophical slant.

I called for the students' attention once the bell rang, and began to speak of why I think this large statement written behind me.

I told them that I had heard the word "random" for the upteenth time and that I needed to follow that up with a statement of my own. If so many things, were "random" in the eyes of the students, then wouldn't their reality be something that forever happens to them, instead of the other way around?

I stopped for a moment, before writing this, and even when I was in the middle of drawing the circle in the "r" I felt that maybe I had made a mistake. "What does this have to do with Web Design?" I asked myself. But the more I looked at it, and my overall job as a teacher, the more I realized that I had to do this. If it was important enough for me to stop and even consider the change, then it needed to happen.

Most students understood what I said, many pulled up every example they could think of.

"What is my purpose in life"

"Your purpose in life is to create beauty and find love"

I don't know if they will view Web Design the same after today.

the rest of us went home angry

Drive By Truckers & Son Volt and slicing open my finger and bleeding all over my shoes, jeans.

Visiting other classes that teach similar subjects. More writers group action!

Driving down to Ashland,OR to spend a final weekend (for awhile) with a friend. It's that time of year. The students are rearing to go, they are almost off of their leash, the sun has returned, the skies are clear, and everywhere the sound and smells of fresh cut grass.

Hearing Rick Moody's short story, Albertine on the Ipod. Being sucked into stories again.

The itching of sutured bandages. The prose of Poe Ballantine, reading Guided by Voices Biography, eating Mexican food in the sun.

Heart Cooks Brain

Wedding Anniversary coming up.

The cat ate the cream, and James Joyce's Ulysses will never be finished. Maybe I'll never know what happens to Bloom, his kidney and the cat.

American Pretension is back!

Next year's teaching assignment is in: Digital Photography and Video.

Thoughts of swimming to go with our new kayaks. Summer bearing down on all of us, and we'll all squirm until June.

Lots of shows, family visits, forever it will be this way, the start of Summer, the celebration of Marriage. The sun beating down on my neck as I drive, drive drive..