Warning, Rant alert!

I typed this entry while on my plan period.  After this, my day got better, thanks to the magic of learning.

I wanted to take this opportunity to vent a few of my frustrations.  Weighing most heavily upon my mind right now is a conversation I had today with another teacher regarding the outcomes of this week’s school board meeting.  The board voted “no confidence” in our superintendent.  Out of eight votes on the board, we only had one person who lived in the city (or ever even really came to this city for any reason), and presumably in outrage, resigned his post this week too.  There have previously been closings of many other local schools, and it seems that ours is the next target of the bureaucratic tape cutters, which means that our school will probably not last long enough for me to fulfill my personal 5-year goal.  This was kind of central to the unfolding of my family plans in this early stage, and now my future in many areas has become uncertain-at best.

This really makes any other concerns seem petty and trifling, but here they are anyway: our students are issued their own laptops, and our district is proud of this 1-to-1 initiative, yet access to the internet is so strictly controlled that I can hardly even depend on the availability of resources that would be helpful, crucial, integral (?) to my technology plans.  Youtube is banned.  Google image search is banned.  Blogs are banned – yet at my special request, edublogs.org has been allowed.  So I was planning on having my seniors give powerpoint presentations on the world religions we are currently studying, and I was hoping to include images as a part of the requirements (because who would honestly enjoy a presentation consisting entirely of text?), yet my request to enable google images was met with the porno defense (you know, kind of like the “they can find anything on there” kind of excuse which could realistically be used to block ANY kind of site, because that is the NATURE of the internet).  I was miffed; and before I sent my rude high-and-mighty email relating my desire to teach accountability to my students and responsible use of the internet, I sought the advice of one of the older teachers, through which I came to the conclusion that this is not a battle that is worth my time and effort, especially since I don’t have tenure at this point.  This was quite the bitter pill, and honestly I am finding it incredibly difficult to bounce back from, which is the point of this ranting blog post.

The third thing that is really bothering me has to do with the way my students speak to each other.  How rude these kids are!  I honestly have no idea where they learned that it is ok to call a girl a “skank” even if “it’s true.”  I mean, we all know the type (of girl), but it is completely inappropriate to use that language even if you are joking, and especially if it is true.  But on the other hand, these girls don’t exactly act like ladies, either, so it feels like I am a very small island in an ocean of … well, you get the point.  I’m feeling quite isolated these days, and since I left last weekend, I have felt totally behind on my work, and that is frustrating.

I finished this little rant with some time to spare, so i looked around KS, CO, and MO for another job, how depressing!  I was feeling a little vulnerable, therefore, going into my 11th grade class, and for a while, it went horribly.  They were extremely chatty, and seemed unwilling to participate in discussion.  “Oh, great!” I thought to myself.  “This was supposed to be the fun, groundbreaking, mind-bending unit, and they were uninterested, apathetic, lost.  After a few minutes in which my internal pressure kept getting higher and higher, I decided “Fine!  Fuck it.”  I told them “Turn to the end, and do ALL the questions for after the reading.”  They took one look at that list of questions and freaked out.  Then I asked, “Do you guys want to talk about this piece now?”  My answer was an emphatic, unanimous YES!  So I begin just reading them the piece.  I read sentences over and over again, emphasizing different words, so as to break up the thoughts into manageable chunks, stopping to paraphrase when the language got a bit lofty.  (I didn’t realize as I read, that this was in fact quite the wordy selection)  But they got it, and better yet, they were excited!  The sparks were flying, and I was really breaking through to them!  It’s kind of hard for me to relate to their ideologies for obvious reasons, but once i got over the idea that they didn’t care too much for our president and started using examples that meant something to them, they really became engaged.  We didn’t get through the whole thing today, and I had planned on moving on to something NEW today, but it’s ok.  I’m just going to slow down, and it’s a good thing anyway, because i have multiple students who have to be gone at least a day per week for sports or field trips or whatever.  It’s incredibly annoying, but I guess them’s the breaks.  I’m slowing down.  My pace isn’t important, it’s the teaching and learning that are important.  And it’s worth slowing down to see them experiencing the same excitement I felt with this piece.  It’s powerful stuff.

One good thing about music: when it hits you feel no pain

So hit me with music

Camp Zoe Dreamin’

Back in my Schwaggin’ days, my mind would be geared towards the following freak out fest all the time.  I was always anticipating the next ’stock and how i was going to make it the best one ever.  I thought about it while i was awake, while at school and in transit thereto, while eating, while working, while talking about music and concerts at work, while sleeping.  I have probably had over a dozen dreams at or about schwagstock.  Some good, some bad–kinda like the people you see there.

When i had succumbed to the soul-sucking, cold, heartless, vain reality the last shreds of hope for ever returning to my other home, when i stopped constantly planning the next big blowout and started envisioning my life as a teacher, the party time nate kinda died out.  I had still planned on stretching my freak legs this summer, but without the annual gathering of the tribes at the sacred camp site at Schwagstock, my life just seemed incomplete.  The loss of this important part of me was also felt in my dreamscape.  I no longer dreamed of camp woo.

I just wanted to write this little blog post to let all of you out there know, but most of all to remind myself, since you guys don’t really exist anyways, that the SCHWAG’S BACK!  The dream is not dead, because i dreamt about it last night!

In my dream, i was at my parents’ house and it was time for me to leave.  Except i wasn’t packed.  And since i was at my parents’ house, I didn’t have anything to pack.  I freaked out, trying to scrape things together, but i don’t think i ever made it out of the house in the dream.  I think this dream has something to do with how I’m not leaving on Thursday this time.  In the past, I would be preparing for at least a week leading up to departure, so that i could have all the details ironed out and checked off the list.  Since I have to wait for the wife to leave town first, I feel like I am going into this whole business half-cocked, like I’m cutting off a foot so that i can run a three legged race.  I’m sure everything will be fine…

WOOOOOOOOOO!

Brother Nathan (If all else fails)

If all else fails, I could always become a brewing monk.  Because what is a monk?  A religious scholar? I could study the bible… A priest (or priest in training)?  Only working on sundays? hmm…  I think i could handle that.  I could spend the afternoons playing frizbee golf with my brothers, discussing the finer points of practicing our religion, afterwards checking on our latest abbey ale, which could be “sold” as a tax-deductible donation to the church!  How awesome would that be?

Maybe I could just make this my retirement plan.   B)

NYC Days 2 & 3

The past couple of days have been utterly exhausting.  The past two nights I’ve been going to bed at about 1, setting the wakeup call at 9:30, but never making it to the bus before noon.  We have been stopping at this bodega in staten island for bread, meat, and cheese, and making sandwiches to bring with us to manhattan.Tuesday we did a lot of shopping at Times Square.  I pretty much exhausted the discretionary spending portion of my budget right away.  I bought a ton of shit at the Virgin store, like a Rolling Stones ice cube tray… he he!  I got a swatch, it’s freakin sweet, it has eight little wheels in it that turn and make designs, ask me, i’ll show it to you.  I’m probably going to be wearing it all the time now, since my lacoste watch is really nice and I want to save it for when I get dressed up.We went to see the Empire State Building.  It took us over an hour to get to the observation deck, and it was fucking hot inside, so i was all sweaty when i got to the top, where the wind was cold and fierce and cut right through my sweaty fleece.  It was a really breathtaking view, though.  I did enjoy it, I got some good videos (my memory card is full), it was weird to me (not really now that i think about it) that there were fewer people speaking English than not.  I heard a lot of spanish, some french and german, japanese (i think).  I’m sure there were others, but it is hard to remember because i didn’t focus on that.  I really liked taping all the people up there and the way they were acting and interacting.  I liked that I could basically tape anyone and everyone, because they were all focused on getting their own shots and not paying attention to me.After about an hour up there (it’s true about the New York Minute, time really flies here), we caught the train down to Greenwich Village and ate at Famous Original Rays (“There are like 30 ray’s pizzas.  they all claim to be original, but the real one is on eleventh” -Santa from “Elf”), and went to the broadway comedy club in chelsea, but we were grumpy and not feeling it, plus there was a two drink minimum and everything was hella expensive and they didn’t even have good alcohol anyway.  So we cut out of there before our first round of juices came.  Plus we were worried that  we would miss the last ferry to staten island (we later found out that they run every thirty minutes all day and all night long).  We decided, since firstly the boys couldn’t drink at the club, secondly, since the drinks were so expensive, that we’d find a liquor store and drink at the hotel.  It took us about a half hour to find one, we asked a bunch of people who all directed us to closed shops (dammit) but eventually marshall remembered the one we passed on Broadway.  A fifth of Crown royal cost $45, and a pint(what i got) cost $27 (the price of a fifth back home), but i attribute it partly to new york, partly to the part of town we were in (broadway, as in the original famous broadway.  We have broadway in kansas city, but it pales in comparison).  We got back to the hotel at about midnight.  The boys didn’t want to go to sleep, so when the wakeup call came, they (me too) kept sleeping.  We ended up getting up at about 10, and three showers later, we were on our way.Day 3: Wednesday.Today we went to the world trade center site.  What a waste of time that was.  Well kind of.  They had two city blocks closed off and it was hard to walk around it.  But i kinda tried to imagine what the towers used to look like and what it would have been like to be in that area on 9/11.  That was the first thing we did, and we were still tired, and i had the my first bad latte in new york.  it was as bad as java break, seriously.  I only still drank it because i needed the caffeine, but i’m sure there wasn’t as much as there could have been.  I watched her make it, the coffee was pre-ground, she didn’t pack it, and for the “extra” shot, she just pushed the button again without reloading the portafilter.After WTC we went to the museum of modern art.  We went to the first floor and i was kinda pissed, because they didn’t seem very artistic.  some chairs mounted on the wall, like a perpendicular waiting room.  some knitted stuff, and a naked chick doing a hula hoop, fun to look at, (i guess that is what art is?), but then i remembered that the best stuff is on the top floor (remembered from my trip to SF), so we skipped everything else and went straight to the top, where the exhibit was called “designs of the elastic mind.”  (aka right up my alley).  there was so many different awesome things there, there was green lazer designs on this long hallway, tons of shit too complex to describe.  There were prototypes of different kinds of technological doo-dads, like oxygen generators, a light machine that is designed to augment seasonal affective depression, which is what makes you sad in the winter, sneakers that used your kinetic energy to charge batteries that would then be used to run lamps at your house, and many others, i really can’t do it justice.  that’s why i have pictures (and movies too).  After seeing all the cool shit there, we went down to the museum of sex.  it was interesting.  They had a collection of toys that i had never seen.  They had a female urinal…hmm…  Then they had a big section on sex in movies and the evolution of porn.  Then we went to find the apple store on 5th avenue.  The address was 767, so i thought i would go to 77th and 5th, but no.  Really it was on like 55th or so. and it was raining.  and i got soaked.  luckily i brought some towels from the hotel (it was raining when we left, and none of us had raincoats), so i was able to dry off pretty quickly.  from there we headed on down to the highline ballroom.  we had to wait outside and there was like a foot of space under the awning, so only my feet got wet.  The show was really really really good.  the venue was sweet, and i got some good video.  Now we’re home, my body is exhausted and my mind is racing, turning the wheels to remember all the stuff we’ve done.The boys (and me, too) are getting progressively more tired.  We decided to sleep in (longer, anyways…I personally think that sleeping until 9:30 is a god-sent blessing) and have a more laid-back day tomorrow.  Our plan is first to get some food and take it to central park, chill out, then go to chinatown and get fake Rolexes, little italy for some gelato, take the ferry to the statue of liberty, and maybe if we have time, we will go back to MoMA to see the other floors.  Tonight we are also going to see the Cribs concert in Brooklyn.  I kinda like that music, it’s good for “indie.”  i think i’ll have a good time.Well that’s about it for now, except i didn’t say about my weirdly vivid dreams from last night.  I remember that I had three distinct dreams, and monte was in the second one, and i was at a drug party with my bosses and co-workers in the last one. 

Dreamscape:NY

Weird dreams almost always come along with staying the night in a hotel room.  I had that weird shit all night long…

But now that I’m awake and watching fresh prince of Bel-Air, I can’t remember any of them, but i know that I woke up again and again all night, boo

NYC Day 1

Phew!  Man.  Happy St. Patty’s day!

Today I got up at 5 AM, flew to minneapolis where it was snowing-damn!-then on to la guardia.  We arrived at about 1:30, took a cab ride to our hotel at Staten Island – 85 bucks, damn.

We went to Times square this evening, we were trying to get our NYC passes, but i forgot to write down the address for the office where we were supposed to pick them up.  mer.  The bus takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get to the ferry, which takes 25 minutes to get to manhattan.  The ferry is sweet, we got some awesome pics of the skyline at sunset and at night, some sweet pics of the statue of liberty, and some sweet pics on times square.

I saw the swatch store… there are so many sweet watches there!  I had never seen a swatch before, sad, huh?  I picked one out, but decided that i would buy it the next time I get down there.  We went to the virgin megastore, and i saw a few totally awesome t-shirts that i am totally going to get tomorrow.  There’s one that’s like a subway map, and a grateful dead one, that i had never seen before.

Max wanted us to go to this camera store, and we walked past all the Irish pubs and some dude threatened to knock me out for giving him the wrong directions to grand central station.  I had never been there, y’know??  Anyway him and his buddy were so fucking shit-housed and scottish and so drunk that we couldn’t even understand them.

Basically I love New York, and I can’t wait to see all the other crazy shit on my list!

SUMMER FUN!!

Spring break is looming and it’s going to be awesome.

But not as awesome as SUMMER!  I keep thinking about all the awesome shows I am going to see at Rothbury and Waka, and I can barely contain my excitement!  I downloaded some Lotus today, and it kills, it slays, it fuckin rocks, sonn!

Yao Ming?

Does that ever happen to you?  Future plans so extreme or exciting that it makes focusing on your current endeavors torturous?  Whoa.  What a feeling.

I’m feelin it! (let’s hope mcdonalds doesn’t steal that one, those I’m lovin it bastards)

F-in Thursdays

I really wish Thursdays weren’t out to get me.  (I know what you’re thinking, how can a day of the week be evil-monday excluded? Allow me to demonstrate.)  Two thursdays ago, I missed my weekly night class due to a snowstorm.  Last thursday, I had to go home sick from school.  Massive make-up work resulted (not really that much MAKE UP work, per sé, but I lost a lot of work time on some rather intensive projects).  This week I have had to write a paper each day in order to keep up with assignments, including two due monday, one tuesday, one wednesday, and two today.

As if that weren’t enough, today I couldn’t seem to get myself going.  I drank THREE double lattes hoping to eventually WAKE UP, but even though i felt the caffeine, it wasn’t having the desired effect.  I kind of wished i had some maté, i knew that would do the trick, but I would have to wait until after I had made up my test, finished my paper, and sat through my first class (which I was totally on track to do, until i realized that i had forgotten to get my computer power cord from home, resulting in a dead computer containing the only copy of my paper due today.  I couldn’t email it or save it anywhere else, it was dead.  Fortunately my teacher is understanding and granted me an extension.  I dozed off in class, and he noticed, commenting before turning us loose, how embarrassing! Especially after so much coffee)  I went home (to my bro’s) and made some maté, it’s the BOMB, baby!  hopefully this means i won’t fall asleep in my night class that i’m attending for the first time in three weeks.  sheesh.  i feel like a slacker.

Yep

Well, I did it. I have always played weird and frightening music when opening at the coffeeshop, in an attempt to make people feel like they woke up into a dream. While i have never had anyone else actually tell me that i was successful, it definitely worked on me this morning. Coffee isn’t helping, I am tired and unmotivated. It feels like real life has no effect on me today. I keep thinking that i wish there was an easy way to get energy AND motivation, but the only thing i can think of to do this is drugs…or sleep, but i don’t have time for either. What i really need is some maté. That shit is the bomb. I made some and iced it yesterday…it’s the f-in go-JUICE! son! The trick, though, is that you don’t brew it like normal tea, you have to steep the infuser in boiling water for like ten minutes. I like it dark. That means it’s chock full of drugs that would like nothing better than to make your life a dream come true, at the same time waking you out of the illusory dream which ensnares me.

My paper feels like a lost cause right now. I tried to read what i had written on the screen and got frustrated after my first two sentences. grr.

What’s my deal?

Really, all i need is to get through today, then the major portion of my stress factor goes away for the week (one class tomorrow, 10-11, then i’m done). The only problem with that is that i know that if i get started on my HW and use my free day friday to get a jump on next week’s assignments, i can keep this unhealthy stress at a manageable level, but i don’t.

It’s like Chris Tucker says in that movie… “It’s Friday, you ain’t got no job, and you ain’t got SHIT to do!”  (and it really doesn’t matter if I DO have something to do, not when you say it like that.  I really have no choice but to get elevated and sit on the couch watching TV or something like that when you put it that way)

Yesterday one of my classmates prompted us to think about the summer and what plans we made for the enjoyment thereof.  one person  was excited to work on staff at summer camp, another couldn’t wait to take her family’s boats out on the Lake of the Ozarks, and another was excited for her town’s annual festival.  I can’t wait for camping.  I have already made tentative plans for a few overnight excursions to Clinton Lake’s Woodridge park (the ole stomping grounds) as well as TWO blow-the-doors-off music festivals (at least(knock knock)).  I also have been dying for some decent frizbee golf action.  My brother and I have tried to get out and throw on those random warm days Kansas is known for having, but on those days, the warmer temperatures are almost always accompanied by gusty winds that have their way with our discs, and a few ended up in the creek.  Damn.  I also bought a couple new pairs of shorts, as well as some new camping gear, and it would please me like nothing else to be able to go have fun with them ASAP!

stupid cold weather.  stupid germs.  (I’m still not 100% better, coughing, hacking, hocking loogies, stuffy nose full of snot…it’s almost like i never actually got better)

so… tired… I’m going to make myself another latte.