do you ever go through all those old files you saved from when you were teaching, say, 10 years ago? i was looking for what i thought was a persuasive writing assignment this evening. it turned out to be an analytical/classification paper. what i found was more interesting though. i realized that before i ever knew what things like technological literacy and student-centered pedagogy were i was focusing on them in the classroom. okay, sure, i found some very odd and embarrassing stuff—we all have strange grammar exercises stashed away somewhere don’t we? i’ve managed to save piles of copies of things too. apparently at some point, i thought that i’d use that same peer review sheet or sample essay or invention exercise again; so i saved all the extra copies. going through this pile of stuff, somehow, i still couldn’t part with all the extras (or the grammar exercises). i’m not sure exactly what i need them for, but it feels a bit like an archive that i shouldn’t change. besides there’s proof in there that i knew things before i knew i knew them :)

well, i tried to figure out how to set up my archive links here so that only the four most recent show and you can control the order (most recent first or last). i thought that i followed the instructions on the Blogger archive script generator carefully. the result did create links, but unfortunately, they all read “undefined NaN”—not exactly the result I was hoping for :( Oh well. Maybe someone on techrhet will understand.


today, i edited and coded a readwritethink lesson plan on newspapers and short stories. other than that, i spent time trying to catch up on the odds and ends from being out of the office. and i had to spend some quality time with Stanley. he gets so crabby when he’s left alone in the tank with no human to beg for food. poor fishie.

spent much time reformatting my old vita. came to realize that it hasn’t been updated since 2002 or so. somehow revisions just slipped away as i began having depression problems. as i look at the piece now, i really wonder if anyone cares about all this junk that’s documented—every piece of software, every piece of documentation. it’s interesting to read it all. i find myself discovering work that i did that i had completely forgotten about. i end up wondering too just how much of my work over the last couple of years should be added. should i document all the flash and shockwave files? they’re all published. i’m guessing that i can list all the lesson plans as a group, as i do the tens, and point to the page on readwritethink. i’m wondering too about backups of the RWT work. should i be making my own backups of all those lesson plans so that they can be pointed to later? questions, questions.

despite the fact that i have had some horrible gastrointestinal ailment for the last 36 hours, got all the technotes pulled over, so that they’re part of the site and match. I just hope people still visit the real technotes page so that b/sm stays happy. linked the readwritethink stuff too. still need to update the vita, but no one is really looking at that right now anyway so i’m not worrying about it.

i really like the site. this may be the first time that i was really happy with my site. how sick is it that i want to just sit and look at the pages? it just seems polished and structured in ways that it hasn’t before and i like the colors and bkgd floral bits. sigh. it’s so nice i think i’ll look at it a big longer.

spent all day yesterday and all this evening working on revising the formatting and layout so that things match. tengrrl.com looks like one site again—or maybe for the first time. added search too. course the site needs crawled again before the search engine is going to be useful, but the code is there and waiting. just a few more files to clean up. even ran a links checker and cleared up the breakage. much work done, and done more quickly than i thought. i was thinking this would take a week or more. woo.

well, i failed.

april’s come and gone, and i failed to write. i didn’t even notice. what does it mean that a month passes and i don’t even see it?

I’m close to failing on my New Year’s resolution. Thank goodness I remembered before next week and was able to pull this entry off.

today’s most excellent news: early closing because of weather! so it’s slippery and slidey and i can’t really do much other than drive home where i sit and do the work that i would have done in the office, but there’s something wonderful about getting out early…harkens back to those fun-filled school days. i ought to put a pot of soup or stew on. oh, and get some hot chocolate. then things would be perfect.

sleep. sleep. sleep. sleep that lasts forever. or at least from 6 pm till 8 am. sleep. how could i sleep so long? it’s like i just gave out yesterday afternoon. i left work early, went home, took off my jeans, and climbed in bed. woke up around midnight and decided that sleeping in clothes was not the most comfortable thing. changed things. went back to sleep. and even when the alarm clock went off at 7, i still couldn’t get out of bed. i set it for 8 and went back to sleep again. if i didn’t have to come to work today, i’d probably still be asleep.

i’m not sure why sleep is such a great escape really. i have these dreams which taunt and frighten me, but somehow even that seems better than being awake. so much easier to hide with dreams than to be awake with the real world.

monday night, i forgot to blow out the candles in the front room. while i was sleeping, they were burning and burning, steadily on. when i got up tuesday and found them, i panicked thinking of that time that i left the gas on. was it on purpose, or did i really forget? what if? a million what if’s.