I’ve decided to pretend everything with be okay with Thanksgiving, even though I get daily reports on oddities. Today’s news, the washing machine has been broken for months. Sigh.

Trying to pretend, I’ve created a tentative menu for what I want to cook. Some of it I can do in advance before I leave. I’ve already baked 2 batches of the chocolate cookies and 1 batch of the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Those are all in the freezer so they’ll stay fresh. I figure they can thaw on the drive. More cookies to bake this week. I’m also going to prepare the finger foods. They’re all things that can be prepared (or partly prepared) and frozen then taken out, thawed, and baked off.

I may end up scaling back, but at least I have the plans and the recipes. Actually more recipes than I need. I don’t really need a recipe for mashed potatoes or gravy; but they looked lonely without links. At least I have a starting place. Now we just have to all cross our fingers. Sigh. The stove and oven better not be broken.

I’m not completely sure why I did this, as it only tells me what I already know. I hate myself and never try hard enough. A quiz wasn’t really necessary to figure out things like I have no love.

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	4
Mind:	4.8
Body:	2.6
Spirit:	5.4
Friends/Family:	2.8
Love:	0
Finance:	4.7
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

My dear technical support friend at the MCI Foundation had the site back up by 10:30. We still don’t know quite what caused the problem. Which means that we don’t know whether it will come back or not. The highlight of the day, however, was a class of students who were supposed to use one of the interactives, and when they found that the site was down they sent us less-than-scholarly e-mails (which we had to reply to in a “professional” manner). Here are some unedited samples:

• i am pissed offf
  u guys suck

• you suck i need this site and it sucks you assholes
• as far as i am consirned u can shove this site up ur asss
• you dawm morons eat shit try not to get any on your lips
• asses.y couldnt u just keep your sight on it was fine i was just on it yesterday .dickheads.eat shit
• fuck you suck dick bitch (that one from someone named “Bob Dick”)
• shit faces cock master (from “u suck”)
• i hate you i had a progect due tomorrow n now im going to fail because of you.so now im going to get in trouble by my teacher n my parents. so now i cant get a 4 wheeler if i dont get it done n if you dont have it up by tomorrow u can shove this site up ur asss.fuck you

Good Times. Good Times. Of course, my question is where the devil was the teacher. Why wasn’t anyone noticing that these kids were having so much trouble, let alone that they were sending out all these messages?

I could describe the rest of the day, but what could top these messages?

This has been one full day. A conference call. Lunch meeting. Team meeting on some lessons and odds and ends. Work on the PowerPoint for the ReadWriteThink Advisory Board meeting. Finished the rough specs on the Book Cover interactive and sent them off to the developer.

Course all that is nothing compared to the fun I just had. Microsoft released some patches, which I diligently installed and which just as diligently shut down the SQL server. The site is down, and nothing I can come up with is fixing it. This is not really the way that I like to end an evening, and it means tomorrow is going to be stressful till the problem is resolved. Thank goodness the MCI folks can help with this sort of stuff because I’m lost on what’s wrong. I may as well get some sleep now. It’s going to be an early morning.

the naive believe
soft buds bloom early for spring
later comes the truth

quietly they hope
pink petals struggling upward
soon all is changed

innocence lost
wilted blooms shrivel then drop
their dreams left dead

I finished editing and posted the 19th and 20th lessons for this FY this afternoon. The two lessons are written by Susanne Rubenstein, based on info in her NCTE book, Raymond Carver in the Classroom. The lessons can be done separately, or one can follow the other. Put That on the List: Collaboratively Writing a Catalog Poem uses the Raymond Carver poem “Fear” and focuses on emotion as the theme for the poems. Put That on the List: Independently Writing a Catalog Poem uses the Carver poem “The Car” as inspiration for students to write their own poems on a significant object or possession.

Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
NCTE Inbox |
ReadWriteThink

This picture sort of freaks me out because I’m reading Coraline and it’s a little too much like the other mother. If the eyes were black, I’d have to go hide.

no is such a small word
yet i didn’t use it
when i should have
i didn’t tell myself
i didn’t say it to you
ever since i cry
for what i did
for what i didn’t do
for what i’ll never know

The presentation went well. A couple of people were interested in writing lessons for the site; and there was lots of positive feedback. After class, we went off to Noodles & Company for a lovely group lunch. After we ate, I got another nice hug from Jim, and then I was on my way again.

The trip to Stevenson was sad in a way. I had to walk right down that first floor hallway where my Willie Bobbie used to dwell, and now, he’s way far away and hard to get to.

Because sadness drives me to eat, actually everything drives me to eat, but back to the point, I was forced to make a little side trip. Forced, I tell you. I’ve never actually been to paradise, um, I mean, to a Krispy Kreme store. I got to see the whole donut making process, from frying to glazing to eating. I bought some for me, and then a bunch of pumpkin spice donut holes to take to work on Monday. Then I was on the road, on my way back home, eating donuts along the way.