What In Tarnation?!?!?

If you haven’t already, switch over the the Halloween theme now.

For those interested, I am dressing up as a fan of the St. Louis Cardinal baseball team. Creative? Yeah, I know.

Things of interest to me today.

Linky #1: St. Louis Now Most Dangerous U.S. City - MSNBC

It was a matter of time before St. Louis City was recognized for this esteemed honor and this would be the second title that St. Louis has taken from Detroit this past week. Thankfully the World Series is over so those Detroit (the second most dangerous city) Tiger fans wouldn’t be too frightened to visit St. Louis. Maybe instead of playing baseball, we should have had a brawl.

From the article:

This Midwestern city has long been in the upper tiers of the annual ranking of the nation’s safest and most dangerous cities, compiled by Morgan Quitno Press. Violent crime surged nearly 20 percent there this year, when the rate of such crimes rose much faster in the Midwest than in the rest of nation, according to FBI figures released in June.

Linky #2: Are You An 80’s Cartoon Expert? - TV Squad

I am ashamed. I could only identify four of these cartoons. I thought I was better than that. Let me know how well you did in the comments.

Linky #3: Michael J. Fox is Against Human Cloning - WorldNetDaily

I wouldn’t have guessed it after seeing his ads in favor of Missouri’s Amendment 2 Stem Cell Initiative. Oh yes, I know that Section 38(d) 2. (1) says that this legislation bans human cloning but those who have actually read the thing (ahem, Mr. Fox) know that the law doesn’t ban human cloning, it just redefines it. Isn’t that clever. No really, look at subsection 6. (2). In case you are lazy here is what it says:

“Clone or attempt to clone a human being” means to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being.

So now in order for it to be cloning, we have to implant it in a uterus or at least attempt to implant it. As long as we do it in a petri dish, not cloning. Reminds me of the Ellen Degeneres airplane bit. The difference in life in death in a crash is the few degrees that the airplane seats recline. “Alive” (upright) “Not alive” (reclined a full 5 degrees), “Alive”, “Not Alive.”I don’t know, it just seems to me that maybe he should have read the amendment.

Linky #4: Current Season Meme - Bayer Family Blog

Shows I Love

• Heroes
• Battlestar Galactica
• Jericho - though it does at times have some poor writing and acting
• The Office
• Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - though I can never remember the name

Shows I Like

• Veronica Mars - though I have yet to see a full episode this season
• Justice
• Boston Legal
• Prison Break
• House

Shows that have been on but I just started watching and they’re pretty decent.

• none

Show that have either jumped the shark or suck, yet I still watch.

• Lost - more of the jumped the shark side rather than suck side

New shows that I kind of like and am still trying out.

• 60 Rock
• The Nine
• Shark
• Brothers and Sisters
• Standoff

New shows that I tried but didn’t like.

• Friday Night Lights - what is up with the handicam, all the time?
• Smith
• Happy Hour
• Vanished
• The Class
• ‘Til Death

New shows that I liked but have already been canceled.

• None

Linky #5: Bless You - webeldotnet

The video linked above goes something like this:

Momma Panda thinking to herself: Mmmm, this is some yummy bamboo. Ah, look at my little baby resting on his tumm - HOLY POO BAGS! What was that? I gotta go change my fur.

Linky #6: Firefox 2.0 - Mozila.com

Firefox 2.0 is out. If you aren’t using Firefox as your browser to surf the net you need to download it now. Version 2.0 makes the whole package even better. My favorite feature is spell check with right click correction.

And finally, just because I care…

Linky #7: Ben and Jerry’s Halloween Fun - Ben and Jerry

Just for grins.

Class dismissed!

October has been a doozy and a bit of kludge. Time management could be to blame here, however not all of it my fault.

Issue #1: The Open House. Our school was the last elementary school scheduled to have an open house to show off the new addition to our buildings. Nothing much had been said about the open house other than it was coming up and we could worry about it later. In the mean time one of the other elementary buildings had their open house. Myself and a few other teachers decided that we would go over and see if we could get some ideas for our own open house. What we saw took us by surprise, it was a huge event! Enormous with balloon arches, student led tours, refreshments and the halls were jam packed with student work and art. We knew we were in trouble. We hadn’t started planning at all and our open house was two weeks away and now our vision of what the open house should look like took on a much grander scale than any of us had imagined. Our had to be better, never mind the fact of the time issues. Ours had to be better. I was determined that ours was going to be better but I also realized how much work that was going to be but I was prepared to do. Those of us who went to the other open house went back and reported back to the others the task we had ahead of us. At times I felt like Joshua or Caleb returning from the promised land. There was a real negative vibe about what we would be able to accomplish and I was trying to rally everyone. I got a better response than Joshua or Caleb but then life happened as life has a tendency to do. We had a teacher whose father discovered a large brain tumor, a teacher have a baby, a teacher whose mom unexpectedly had to go in for some major test and one teacher whose husband collapsed at work and was airlifted to Springfield. Teachers were dropping like flies. The rest of us picked up the slack and kept moving.

I made sure I was on a committee that was going to be steering what could have very well been a ship wreck. I shared my ideas, the other open house seemed focused on their character education program which is great but I thought that the focus should be on people rather than programs. To that end I suggested that everything done should be driven by two main ideas: 1) Our kids and 2) our community who voted to spend the funds on the new buildings as a secondary thought, it would be cool if it tied back into our movie theme for the year, but that was not the main concern. Using that as a template we came up with a wish list of things that included things like pictures of kids everywhere, thank yous written by the kids to those who have supported their education, kids in rooms talking to visitors about the new facilities, I suggested that during the program we could even have a video of our kids while the fourth grade was singing one of their songs. Of course I would have to do that. Then the matter of refreshments came up. Someone suggested that a group of teachers could bake several hundred star sugar cookies. I also signed up for that.

Of course, all the while I was keeping in the back of my mind that I would need to make sure that I had time to get my own room ready and the computer lab since I am generally thought of as being in charge of that. It was going to be tight but I felt reasonably sure that I could do it all. The best laid plans…

Issue #2: The Unwanted Conference. At the end of last year when we were making plans for my new T.E.C. (Technology Enriched Classroom) room, we were looking for cheap training opportunities. Most of which fell through over the course of the summer. There was one that I was really unsure if it would be useful but at the urgings of my principal (her reasoning: “it’s cheap, just sign up for it.”) I signed up for it. Flash forward to the week before the open house in which I had almost over extended myself, I get a call reminding me of this meeting. It was two days before D day. I was going to have to take time to make sub plans (an extensive and time consuming process) and be out a whole day to Columbia for a conference I wasn’t sure applied to me but it was cheap, right? This certainly put an extreme strain on the schedule and come to find out, it had nothing to do with me and more to my horror, it was a year long commitment that included four more online meetings. I drove back to Rolla none to happy. A whole night and day shot with this little wild goose chase. That night was scheduled to meet with the cooking baking team to make cookies which leads to…

Issue #3: The Rainforest. The teacher I team teach with recently started a rainforest project in which a model rainforest was going to be constructed in another room. Of course we would have it up in time for Open House. This didn’t really involve me much because my team teacher usually handles the majority of the project. I said that I would design an ultra cool waterfall but that would be the end of my involvement. That is until while the both of us were working in the rainforest, she began to step down off a counter onto a folding chair. The folding chair slipped and she fell backward landing flat on her back. This meant that I was going to have to take on more responsibility in the rainforest that I was expecting. Cheeky!

Issue #4: Cookies Everywhere and Those Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Tuesday night after the stupid conference, I drove in to bake cookies. I wasn’t anywhere near complete on the video, hadn’t started on my room or the computer lab but I felt it was important that I was there to help bake cookies. I went to my room to check e-mails and headed down to the cafeteria kitchen where we would be making the cookies. The principal dropped off several pounds of the premade sugar dough and left us to it. Unfortunately that dough is not made for cutting shapes out of and when baked, the cookies spread out into some unrecognizable blob (not to be confused with blog). Through an incredibly ridiculous process of adding large amounts of flour to the dough did we get the result we wanted. After baking well over 600 little star cookies I went back to my classroom and locked the door without going in and headed to my car. I was so tired but I knew I had several hours of working on the video to go. Going to bed around 3:00 am had become the routine for a couple weeks now. This night would be no different. The dirty rotten scoundrels that I mentioned have already entered the story but you, like me at the time don’t know it yet.

Issue #5: The Needle that Broke the Camel’s Back. Wednesday I was running late for our morning faculty meeting. For some reason I just couldn’t get up out of bed. The night before I did finish the video and burned it to DVD so the fourth grade could practice with it. The meeting had was going to feature one of our administrators to thank us for all the hard work in getting ready for the open house on the next day as well as to talk about a new policy that would require us to keep classrooms locked at all time throughout the day as a response to all the recent school shootings in the news. After the meeting I headed down to pick up my kids from the new gym. I took them to go to the bathroom before we started the day. One of the other third grade teachers who also was there last night baking cookies came our of her room looking panicked. “Christopher! My projector is gone!” It took me awhile respond. After processing the whole situation I went over to look in her room and sure enough, there was nothing but wires hanging from the ceiling mount where the multimedia projector should have been. Next I started thinking about if technology would have taken it to clean it or work on it while I had been gone on Tuesday to my conference. Having ruled that out I got the kids and walked quickly up to my room. Turned on the light and there was an empty ceiling with wires dangling in my room as well. I surveyed the room and realized that there were also two 17 inch LCD monitors missing. I began to feel sick. I tried to collect my thoughts and get the kids settled in which was exceedingly difficult since “their stuff” was gone. One extremely sensitive child started complain of an upset stomach. I called the office and reported the missing equipment while trying to calmly manage a room full of frightened children. The sensitive child started complaining even louder now, I told him to grab a trash can. He did and he immediately started throwing up large amounts of breakfast. I still had to check the computer lab which had been used the previous night for an AR night presentation for parents but before that I got another call from the teacher downstairs who first noticed. She said one of her computers was missing. I asked her to clarify whether it was a computer or just the monitor. “The screen! The screen is gone!” I tried to reassure her and get off the phone to check the computer lab and to try to calm my class down and to do something about the vomiting one. I had another student escort the vomiting child, trash can and all to the nurse’s office while I slipped in the computer lab. There, again, was an empty projector mount. I called down and reported the missing projector. I don’t remember what I did the rest of the morning except for during my plan time when I turned out the lights, closed the door, cried and e-mailed Pressed asking for prayer. I felt as though I was responsible for this and this would ruin the open house. Instead of talking about the generosity of the community, I would be forced to talk about the morons who would walk into an elementary school and steal stuff. That was it, I just wanted to retreat into a hole and be by myself. The last time I remember feeling like that at school was September 11, 2001. It got to the point that day, I didn’t even want to be in my room. In fact I had classes in empty rooms about the building just so I didn’t have to be in my room. Plus it took the kids’ minds off the whole thing as they wondered where I was going to take them next. It wasn’t until later in the day that I realized that my personal iPod was gone and well as several dollars worth of change in my desk. After that day I still had to work in my room to get it ready. One problem with that, I got a voicemail from my mom saying that she had locked herself out of the house and she needed my key. I called and she instantly remembered what week it was and that I was planning on working all night at school and that I really couldn’t really afford to leave for two hours to make the trip to Sullivan. She said she would just sit outside until my father got home from work at about midnight. That wasn’t a good solution either so I called my buddy and fellow Cranium Leakager, Michael, and asked if he could drive her to Rolla and back. Being the kind of person who is always there for a friend in need he was more that happy to do that. That last night I got the room looking nice and technology had a few projectors that hadn’t been installed yet in other buildings that they temporarily installed in my room and the computer lab. I also managed to make a third grade poster, put finishing touches on the rainforest (three dimensional sound) and put a DVD together of all the videos that I have made for Wyman to be played in the computer lab. I didn’t get around to putting up anything in the hall but I had one more day.

To be continued…

Class dismissed!

Oh yeah, I forgot one thing:

Way to go St. Louis Cardinals!

Just so you can keep your records up to date…

The collection is complete!

Class dismissed!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 2,942 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

WITty Points for the first commenter to tell what TV show the title of this post comes from.

From the quiet and not so original…

Class dismissed!

And they are right here.

In other news, I am going to officially be taking a break from here. At least to the end of the month.

Work has gotten crazier than it has ever been. An end to the business is coming, it just isn’t near.

The main issue has been our open house for the new part of the building. Unfortunately I opened my mouth and volunteered to do some things for it. At the time I didn’t realize how many technology workshops I was going to be doing or how often I was going to be gone to workshops. Not to mention I had to move parent/teacher conferences up a week so I can be gone to a two day technology conference. It seems that all kinds of things seemed to land in the same couple of week in October.

But this too shall pass.

Class dismissed!