Daily Work: ReadWriteThink Lesson Plan and Calendar, NCTE Podcasting, and Police

February 15, 2006 by

Today is my younger brother Noel’s birthday. I am celebrating by eating cookies without him, given that he’s 11 hours away.

I was in on a brainstorming meeting this morning for ways to use podcasting on the NCTE Web site. They are getting a tool that lets them do phone-in recordings. Stuff that I’ve already played around with quite a bit to be honest. Not sure when this will unveil or how it will show up on the site, but they are working on it.

I broke the acid reflux rules and had quesadillas for lunch. They turned out to be not spicy at all, and I have so far survived even the tomato that was involved in the garnish. Perhaps one day I will even be able to eat lasagna again.

This afternoon, I finished editing the Decoding the Dystopian Characteristics of Macintosh’s “1984” Commercial lesson plan, and I zipped through the editing feedback on some calendar entries. We have 5 new entries spread through the calendar:

A few more coming by the end of the month. I even got a few broken links taken care of before I had to turn in the content report. We’re at 37 lessons for FY2006. We have to get to 60.

I am sponsoring a Blogshares raffle for the Albert Einstein action figure. It simply had to be done. The excitement of that action figure needs to be spread through the cosmos!

The strangest event of the day was apparently my near miss on what is apparently a murder scene. I was late to work, and after I cleared the best intersection for such things, I saw the train crossing the tracks down the road. I decided to drive down to the next traffic light and turn there to take an indirect path back to the interstate. Two blocks down the road, I looked down the cross street and saw that the train was already finished. It must have been the world’s shortest train. So I turned and went through a neighborhood that is considered shady, but hey, I was on a direct trip and I knew what I was doing. There was this one car that came barreling down one road toward me, but I was stopped at the stop sign, and didn’t worry about anything. (There’s no evidence that it WAS anything). I went to work and didn’t think anything of any of this, but told Sharon and Lisa about my short trip through the bad neighborhood. They laughed at me and told me I shouldn’t have been there. On to other things. A few hours later, we went out to get lunch and drive by the same neighborhood. The police have a half a block yellow-taped. Lights and a crime scene unit, and a lot of scurrying about going on. When we drove back by after picking up the lunch, the police were tarping off the front porch and areas of the house. Something very, very bad happened. When my boss left work around 5, all the cars and such were still there. When I left work at 6:45, they were still there. We still don’t know what happened. I didn’t hear anything on the local news. But the thing is I was RIGHT THERE about two hours before all this started. And that odd, speeding car? It looked like two young girls. They waved to two guys crossing the train tracks when we went across. I think they were just driving too fast. They didn’t do anything crazy to get out on to the main road. But still… I’m rethinking everything now. I hope it was just a drug bust. It’s going to be far too spooky if it’s a murder.

Filed under Journal