What In Tarnation?!?!?

You are Morpheus, from “The Matrix.” You
have strong faith in yourself and those around
you. A true leader, you are relentless in your
persuit.

What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Link found via bloggedy blog

Class dismissed!

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?
Eating the most pickles in one hour.

2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
“So long and thanks for all the fish.” –Douglas Adams

3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?
Surviving.

4. What about the past ten years?
Making it through college, in which I had to cut out tiny little things out of construction paper in order to make an A. I hate cutting things out of construction paper.

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
What I told my third graders at the year (actually it was more than on piece of advice: “Treat others like you want to be treated, read something cool everyday, and remember, always remember, Mr. Wright is the coolest teacher EVER.”

Got some wacky answers to this week’s questions? Tell me in the comments.

Class dismissed!

OneDay03 was an interesting expereince. My favorite time from the experience was the worship under the stars. The evening started with some worship let by Shane and Shane, then Steve Fee who was followed by one of my favorite Passion worship leaders, Chris Tomlin. I even enjoyed The Dave Crowder Band, I usually skip their songs on the Passion CDs. After frying the top two layers of epidermis, it was nice to be under the cool night sky worshipping God.

I am a wimp and did not go the camping route, instead Pressed, Michael and I got a room in McKinney, TX about a 45 min drive from Bells were the OneDay field was.

One thing that I really like about the Passion/OneDay is their focus. They go out of their way to say that an event like OneDay is not about the bands, not about the speakers and not about just having an event, it is all about glorifying God. To that end, just about everything that is done is inspired by scripture. It is nice to see that much thought and consideration put into each facet of the event.

The speakers that I saw were all very good. Beth more discussed missing God’s glory. Here are the notes I took though it might not make much sense to you.

1 Samuel 7

Missing God’s glory.
If you are returning to God it must be with all of your heart. All of me. Going in and out of relationship is caused b\c we leave part of our heart.

If we don’t have a passion for God we will have a passion that is unholy. God has called us to commit but he will not beg us.

In visiting the OneDay03 site, I discovered a few interesting tidbits:

We are currently in the process of evaluating the recordings from OneDay03 and anticipate having both a CD and a DVD in late summer. Yeah!

As you heard at OneDay, weather-related challenges made for extra financial demands. At the close of OneDay03 we were short of the necessary funds for the event. Passion Conferences will make no profit from OneDay, seeking only to make this opportunity available to this generation.
If you would like to help offset our expenses, a gift may be made to Passion Conferences, PO Box 2192, Roswell, GA 30077. Sounds like the weather really took a toll.

Take a look at the reflections of some other participants:

Pressed
Tracy
Adena
Michael doesn’t say much but it sounds like he enjoyed it.
Update: Jen has a wonderful recap on her blog.

Class dismissed!

I will fearlessly be trekking across this great country of ours to join 20,000 other Christians at the OneDay03. As a result I will be away from the keyboard until Wednesday. I plan to take this time to begin to focus myself on things that really matter in preperation for the ministry that I will be taking part in this summer with the youth of my church. This will be a good time for seperation of me and all the distractions that get in the way. Please pray for safe travel as Michael, Pressed, and I head south.

In other news, with a little help from Michael, I got my classroom all packed up. I expect the custodial staff (God bless them) to move it at the end of next week. I am glad to have all that behind me. Now I can start really thinking about next year.

Have a great week guys and I’ll see ya back here on Wednesday or Thursday. Oh and if you post something really good on your blog while I am gone, tell me about it in the comments so I make sure that I don’t miss it.

Class dismissed, for awhile.

1. What brand of toothpaste do you use?
Usually the kind that has the mouth wash, toothpaste and whitening agent all in one little bottle.

2. What brand of toilet paper do you prefer?
No prefrence, 2 ply.

3. What brand(s) of shoes do you wear?
Doc Martins, Reebock, Air something or other, Croft and Barrow.

4. What brand of soda do you drink?
I don’t drink soda very often, but I drink most flavors, well not the clear flavors like 7-Up and Sprite.

5. What brand of gum do you chew?
Whatever someone is nice enough to give me.

How ’bout you?

Class dismissed!

28 years to go until retirement! I’m counting the seconds.

Today was our last day of school at Wyman. We had a half day and third and fourth grade walked over to Lion’s Club park to play and picnic.

While the last bus was leaving, the crazy teachers had their normal celabration (POP-up alert).

This year seemed to fly by. I had another really wonderful class but drastically different from my first class. I think the kids enjoyed themselves, most seemed like they didn’t want to have school end, which I think is a pretty good thing. One parent shared with me that her daughter’s birthday wish was that I would move to fourth grade.

There are times when the kids will drop little hints telling me that I just might be making a difference. They don’t know it, but it is those momments that I relish. Two examples, one recently and the second actually happened today.

Student 1: Some kid hit me on the playground and I almost punched him back cause that is what my dad told me to do. I don’t think that would have been a good idea though. I remembered what you said about treating others like you want to be treated and I didn’t like being punched.

Me: (Swelling with pride.) Good for you. That wasn’t the easiest choice.

S1: It wasn’t that hard cause I also knew that if I punched him I would have gotten in trouble too.

Me: Ah. Good point.

Probably the main thing that I have been trying to teach my students is personal responsibility. A tough lesson. Today, at the park I took away all play time for one of my students becuase he was fighting with another student earlier. On the way back to the building that student was walking next to me.

Student 2: I’m gonna miss you next year.

Me: Really? I guess even after I took away your play time today?

S2: That wasn’t your fault. I was the one who was fighting. I wasn’t being responsible. (Momment of silence.) Well you could have given me like 10 minutes to play.

Me: I would have if you would have told that earlier.

S2: Really?!?!?

Me: Yes.

S2: Shoot.

It’s been a good year. Next year I’m sure I will have more fun stories for you and complaints about construction. I can’t wait.

Your assingment, in the comments tell me about your favorite teacher and how they influenced you. I love collecting cool teacher stories.

School’s out!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is ending its seven year run tomorrow. I’m not sad at all, even though I have been a really big fan of the series because I think the series has run its course, it is time that Buffy moved on. To commemorate the passing of the series, I am going to look back over the past seven years and remark on my five favorite episodes.

5. “The Becoming Part 2″ — Season 2 finale has the moment that defines Buffy the Vampire Slayer for me. Buffy’s boyfriend, Angel (who also happens to be a vampire with a soul) has turned evil because of one night of passion with Buffy. Willow has been working on getting Angel’s soul restored while Buffy has been hunting him down. Angel has opened a portal to a hell dimension and the only way to stop it is to send Angel into hell. At the moment that Willow manages to restore Angel soul, Buffy has to run him through with a sword. What angst. I actually stood up and yelled “Yes!” at the end of this one. Finally a show that didn’t wrap up all the loose ends with happy laugh by the end of the episode, and they did it with style.

4. “The Gift” — “She saved the world alot.” Buffy saves the world and her sister in this season five ender. Buffy battled the god-like creature, Glory, all season long and it comes down to this. The Gift hits all the right notes. Giles steps up and cleans up Buffy’s unfinished business, other Scoobies step up to help Buffy and her plan, Buffy sacrifices her life for the world but more importantly Dawn.

3. “Hush” — The Gentlemen are the most frightening monsters ever created for a Buffy episode, ever! Whedon was taking some heat for the witty dialogue in his shows, kids don’t talk that way. He answered that criticism with this episode. Most of Hush is done without any dialogue because the Gentlemen steal the voices of the citizens of Sunnydale. The Scoobies must devise other ways of communicating with each other with hilarious results. The Gentlemen glide around to take the hearts of seven people, all the while with a smile on their face.

Here we come to an unfortunate impass. I can’t for my number one moment. So I will have two. It’s my list, I can do that.

1. “Once More With Feeling” — Both of the episodes listed as my number one picks totally blew my socks off. It literally took me awhile to regain my composure. Once More… totally shocked me. I knew that Buffy head honcho, Joss Whedon, could craft a mighty good story, but who knew the man could write a musical? The truly amazing thing about Once More… is that the device of a musical could seamlessly be plopped into a episodic television series without the show loosing momentum. Joss didn’t stop the continuing story line in order to have this episode, instead the episode is a turning point for the season, the linchpin, if you will. The story is different than any other but is organic to the season, and the music ain’t half bad. Yes, I do own the soundtrack.

1. “The Body” — Buffy encounters a new situation, one not caused by a demon, not caused by some other worldly craziness, Buffy, along with the audience, experiences the death of her mother. This powerfully scripted episode leaves a pit in my stomach every time I see it. The beginning of The Body is shot in real time (it appears that the camera never breaks away), the audience experiences everything that Buffy does. The beginning also unfolds without a score making the event seem more profound. After the commercial break, the episode continues to examine what happens to family and friends when they deal with a death of someone special, most poignantly with Anya’s confusion on mortals. How this episode was overlooked for an award is one of those mysteries of the universe.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up for tomorrow’s series finale. But its hard, especially when Entertaiment Weekly gives it an A+. Sigh.

Class dismissed!

1. What drinking water do you prefer — tap, bottle, purifier, etc.?
Whatever will provide me tang-free water. Rolla water, unfortunately has a flavor that I hate, so I used to only drink bottled water but I have since bought a water purifier and I am very pleased with it.

2. What are your favorite flavor of chips?
Sour Cream and Onion without a doubt. Somethin’ ’bout the sour, and the cream and the onion that hits the spot.

3. Of all the things you can cook, what dish do you like the most?
Lasanga. Mmmmm. I make a good lasanga, Garfield would be pleased.

4. How do you have your eggs?
Unless they are deviled eggs, I have them scrambled. Love them but I rarely have them because I very rarely eat breakfast.

5. Who was the last person who cooked you a meal? How did it turn out?
My dad bought a horrible Prime Rib that was pre-package–just POP it into the oven. Mental note to readers: Don’t buy pre-packaged–just POP it into the oven Prime Ribs. Just a note, usually when he cooks it is very good.

Let me know your answers.

Class dismissed!