I’ve spent the day doing laundry, baking one more kind of cookies, running errands, trying to assemble all my junk for the trip (and catching up on the blog). I still feel like a train wreck. I don’t know why I can’t do things smoothly or why I can’t just be coordinated. Instead, I’m a wandering moron. I’m just tossing things in willy-nilly. No planning. I don’t even know if I have the stuff that I need any more. I don’t really know what it is that I do need. I did manage to fill up the gas tank and stop the mail. At least I have accomplished that much. Not that anyone is really rejoicing over such minor accomplishments. I hate myself. I’m never able to do things right.

In my procrastination, I fiddled with the iTunes Signature Maker. It was set to create the sig with the songs that were played most often. I created a new sig for today that is based on the songs played most recently—which turn out to be all Christmas songs. I guess I have to get back to figuring out my life now…

My travel plans are such a mixed-up mess. I thought I had to wait till Monday to get everything done and because of other things that are going on. Now I’ve learned that the caravan to Pennsylvania has been called off because of weather. So now I’m not sure whether I should try to leave in the morning or wait or what. I’m so confused. It did clear up some work things for me, since I just finished all the immediate stuff and didn’t let things drag out. I was going to try to finish another lesson today, but time just got so mixed up. We had our interdepartmental get-together today (aka the lunch bunch). The idea is to do some cross-pollination and keep one another informed about what’s going on. It was also the cookie exchange, AND we had to fetch food from downtown for the meal. It should have been simple, but it turned out to be a major mess, mostly the fault of the restaurant. It was 2 pm before we got to sit down and even consider the ReadWriteThink stuff that we wanted to accomplish. I finally just gave up and finished everything on hand after I talked to the family and found out that they had changed their travel plans. If I can work in Virginia, I can get out of here sooner. Still, I don’t see how I can leave in the morning. Just not enough ready to go. I feel so scattered and confused. :( I don’t know why I can’t organize my life. I’m such a mess of a human.

Finished editing a lesson play by one of the authors of NCTE’s new book Amy Tan in the Classroom. The lesson focuses on the connections between language and identity. It’s Exploring Language and Identity: Amy Tan’s “Mother Tongue” and Beyond.

This evening, I’ve been editing the next lesson plan, by a forthcoming NCTE author. It’s about the design of comic and uses comic strips to talk about showing and telling. In between editing work, I’ve been baking Monster Cookies for tomorrow’s cookie exchange at work. It’s a huge recipe. I may never finish baking.

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

Had our division gift exchange at work today. ReadWriteThink falls under Professional Development, which is within the Division of Publications and Professional Development (or something like that). Basically, the group is ReadWriteThink, the journals folks, and the books folks. My secret pal loves dark chocolate, so I filled a box to the brim with a variety of kinds of dark chocolate. She was very pleased. The present I received was a big bag of office supplies. Don’t groan. I LOVE office supplies. When I’m stressed, I go to Office Depot and wander around. Office supplies solve many problems. And these office supplies are incredibly cool things. Fancy hooks, push pins, and post-its. Wonderful paper clips that are cool colors and crazy shapes. I’m quite entertained and pleased :)

Lifehacker told me all about iTunes Signature Maker today. After a little fiddling with my machine (turns out I had two libraries), I created my own iTunes signature. It’s probably way too big, but it was fun. Now I have to figure out how to play around with the settings to get a tighter file. It can change based on what you’ve played most recently on your machine, so maybe I’ll need to create new ones weekly. Though that would suggest that I’m actually listening to songs regularly.

I’m so used to going straight home after work. Tonight, I ran around doing errands, searching for presents for the gift exchanges at work. Didn’t get home till after 9. After that, the entire evening was mixed up. In my head, I get home around 7; so I couldn’t get the mental clock reset no matter how hard I tried. It’s nearly midnight, but it feels more like 9:30 or 10. I’m spending the time wisely, as long as I’m wide awake. Working on an onomatopoeia lesson plan. It’s based on a lesson that I wrote for another project. It’s a very simple and basic thing, but fairly standard.

Finally finished and published Writing about Writing: An Extended Metaphor Assignment, while baking even more cookies. The highlight was the triple chocolate decadence cookies. Mmm.

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

I managed to actually get dressed and leave the house. Really. On a Saturday. I got dressed. Two Saturday in a row really, since I went to the holiday party last weekend, and I guarantee that I was dressed for that too. I need to gather some things for presents, mostly little things really. Also need to figure out presents for gifts at work. I began collecting for one of them, and I got the various stuff for wrapping. The cookie baking continued as well. You’d think that I have a million cookies. Really, it’s just that I’m a very slow baker. I think I wait hours between batches. I really should be more coordinated. I can’t even bake cookies properly. Geesh.

More snow, though there’s really only a few inches on the ground. It’s just persistent. I spent most of the day working on the writing metaphor lesson plan and most of this evening working on holiday stuff (checking on presents, working on recipes, etc.). My travel plans are so screwed up. I was thinking that I would go to Virginia on the 17th or 18th, but now my family is planning a caravan to Pennsylvania on the 17th to see my great uncle. Everything is all mixed up now, and I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s all a dream vision anyway. I have a lot of work to get done before I can leave here. The biggest millstone? My book has come back up in conversations at work. They want me to get a draft turned in. I still haven’t done anything with the draft since about August. Well, that’s not true. I found the draft and drove it back and forth to Virginia at Thanksgiving. It’s so hard to chop out the time to work on the draft when I’m also supposed to be meeting so many other goals at work. I feel so mixed up and uncoordinated right now. I’m not even sure that I really have a plan for the trip home. Just the idea of a plan.

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

Snow…the ground is all white today. NCTE even closed an hour early. Of course, I just came home and continued working. I’m writing up a lesson that I used to do in FYC. Students explore Richard Wright’s poem “The Writer” then come up with writing metaphors of their own. I’ve customized it over the year, but it’s always been essentially the same lesson. It’s fairly basic really, but the Advisory Board for ReadWriteThink pointed out that we needed more “basic” pieces. They noticed that so many of our lessons are pushing teachers. They suggested that we add some basic lessons, so I’m going through my files and pulling out some of the things that I used to teach. They need minor changes, but most are quite close to 9-12 lessons already.