What I’m Reading
Mar
30
Library Closed, Do Not Enter
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It’s my favorite two weeks of the school year- standardized testing! The state-mandated exams are basically an excuse for me to hang up signs saying “Library Closed” and sit on the couch reading the new, updated Sweet Valley High series while the kids scribble furiously in number two pencil over questions about area and distance and indirect object pronouns. I’m sure the taxpayers of Massachusetts would be thrilled to know they are paying someone with a Master’s degree to read trashy young adult novels for hours at a stretch but someone has got to do the dirty work of catching up on Jessica Wakefield’s sordid California life and it might as well be me.
Sidenote for those SVH lovers among you: they’ve completely ruined the new series by changing the twin’s car from a red Fiat convertible to a red Jeep Wrangler. Excuse me, but the Jessica Wakefield I know would not be caught dead in something so sporty as a Jeep Wrangler, especially not when Lila Fowler is tooling around Sweet Valley in a silver Bentley.
Anyway, the next two weeks should be quiet and uneventful, unless a kid gets stabbed in the eye or has a testing meltdown. Which is possible- the tests really stress some of the kids out. They are given a two-hour stretch to complete the sections but there is no actual time limit, so last year I had kids “going over answers” from 10:30 a.m. till the last bell of the school day sounded at 2:00 p.m. I know it’s important for them to check over their work to make sure the bubbles are filled in completely and accurately and all, but four hours of checking seems absurd. Whatever; the longer they check and double check, the longer I get to read about star quarterback Todd Wilkins and how he goes for the nerdy twin over the cheerleader twin.
I was reading some of the practice test questions for the exam this year and I can tell you firsthand, there is nothing that will make you feel more stupid than not knowing how to solve an eighth grade math problem. Good thing I passed eighth grade in good old New Hampshire- the Live Free or Die state would have collectively punched the test-makers in the face if they tried pushing that crap on us. And besides, look at me now! A productive member of society. I may not know the formula for figuring out the velocity of a tennis ball, but I sure as hell know the name of Elizabeth’s best friend in books 1-14 of the SVH series. Everyone needs an area of expertise!
Mar
27
And The Winner Is…
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You didn’t really think I’d tell you until the very end, did you? I know you’re all going to scroll down there first anyway, so go ahead. I’ll wait right here.
There. Congrats to the winner!
Moving on, I promised the people at Universal Hub that I would write a review of the show for which they so generously gave me three free tickets. Let me just preface that review by saying that I am not, in general, a fan of musicals. Sure, I like to watch Annie when I catch it on TV, and I saw Rent a couple of times back in my high school and college days, but on the whole I find the singing/dancing combo pretty cheesy. So when I saw the ads for Vox Lumiere I thought, awesome! It’s rock music set to a silent movie! No cheesy dancing and singing numbers!
Oh, friends. There was singing and dancing. In addition to the rock music and the silent film. It wasn’t bad singing or dancing, by any means, if you’re into musicals you’d probably have thought it was great. It’s just that like I said, that sort of thing is not exactly my cup of tea. Plus, I felt it made it difficult to pay attention because if I watched the singing and dancing then I was not watching the movie, and since I had never seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame before I would promptly become lost as to what was happening. We also had seats right up in the second row so we were kind of looking up at them, and sometimes they would be standing right in front of the movie that we were supposed to be watching/reading.
Chris’s brother did note that he very much enjoyed the actor’s costumes, by which I assume he meant the skin-tight bustieres worn by the women that looked like they came from Hot Topic and not the black bedazzled t-shirts worn by the dudes.
Overall, I enjoyed the production as long as I ignored what was happening on the stage. Watching the silent film was much more enjoyable with a few cool guitar and bass riffs. Also, I had never been to the Cutler Majestic Theater before and that’s a damn shame because that venue is a gem. Totally beautiful inside. Sadly I only had my camera phone with me, but I did get a few shots. They do little to convey how majestic it truly is but you get the general idea.
So, Vox Lumiere… a good attempt at a great idea.
*The handy dandy number generator spit out the number 28, which just so happened to be… Heidikins! Congratulations, lovely lady, there will be a very special package coming your way via US Postal Service, provided you email me your address. Hooray! I hope you like live eels!
(Just kidding.)
Mar
25
When I Win, You All Win
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Last year Universal Hub was giving out tickets to see Shear Madness for a few lucky Boston-based bloggers and I scored some sweet front row seats for Chris and I for the price of a blog post about the show. Imagine my delight when UH announced a similar deal last week, only this time it was to see the Vox Lumiere production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It looks like it will be kind of a crazy show, featuring the original silent film playing in the background, actors performing (miming?) the play, and a rock concert soundtrack. I have no idea what it will be like, but tonight I will get to find out because once again, yours truly scored a couple of $65 tickets for FREE.
Now you might think that a couple of free tickets are pretty damn good all on their own, and you would be right. But when I realized that Chris’s older brother from Rochester (not to be confused with his younger brother from Florida) would be visiting us on the night of the show, I emailed the dude at the Majestic Theater to ask if I could purchase an extra ticket for our out-of-town guest. I was afraid I would have to send Chris and his brother off to the show without me if I couldn’t buy a ticket near ours- then I would have made Chris write a detailed account of the show for your reading pleasure- but damn I wanted to go too! Then I got an email back letting me know that they had snagged me an extra ticket- FOR FREE! Three free tickets! Really, could these people even be any nicer or more accommodating? Maybe I should email them back and ask them to take all of us out for dinner beforehand, too. And I could use some extra cash, while they’re at it…
Or maybe I won’t press my luck.
Anyway, I am feeling very lucky and very generous, so today I would like to spread that lucky love around: I am hereby proclaiming a contest. The winner of this contest will receive a sweet package from me. It will include many cool things, “cool”, of course, being subjective. And it’s the best kind of contest, too, because you don’t have to even do anything special to win. All you have to do is comment! Every comment you leave gets an additional entry. You’ve got till tomorrow night!
Who knows? You could get lucky.
Mar
24
I’m sure you’ve all been eagerly anticipating the highlights reel from the Sixth Grade Sleepover Spectacular, so here is the brief synopsis: it was a long, long night. The kids had a blast and I’m pretty sure it will live on in their memories forever, which is nice and all, but damn if it didn’t mess with my head. In the end I managed to snag two hours of sleep on the library couch, during which I had a dream that I had woken up and it was Monday and I had to start work all over again. GAH.
We started out the night by having them stake out spots for their sleeping bags in the hallways, boys in one hall and girls in another. They were excited and chatty and spent a good ten minutes debating which spots would be the most fun. A group of girls picked a spot right next to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that leads out into a courtyard and I casually mentioned to them that one of the other teachers had told me that he thought he had seen a mummy out there earlier in the evening. And if you think eleven-year olds are too old to buy into that kind of thing, you would have died laughing at how wide their eyes got.
Around eight, we fed them pizza and soda and read out the list of rules. I had the brilliant idea to trick them at the end of the meal by telling them that when they were done they were to report to their homerooms for extra math practice. I am not ashamed to tell you, I most definitely get my kicks from watching these kid’s faces when I am messing with them. They were completely disgusted and grumbling “math! I hate math!” before some of them caught on that we were all watching them and laughing. Yes, children, because there’s nothing we love more than a little midnight math session.
Then the kids were free to run around and do what they wanted for a few hours. It was amazing how the building they are in every single day became a giant playground for them at night, but it helped that they had karaoke and Guitar Hero and indoor wiffle ball and eighteen pounds of candy each. A lot of the kids were trading candy with each other and one poor little Asian boy was trying to trade with the Saltines his mom had packed him. Really, lady? You couldn’t even give him some Swedish Fish or something? Are you actively trying to set your kid up for social failure?!
Eventually we settled them in for a movie and when we had finally got everyone quiet and engrossed someone let rip the hugest fart I’ve ever heard. No one would own up to it but I have my suspicions as to who it was and glared the evil librarian eye in his direction while suppressing a giggle.
Finally the movie was over, all the candy and ice cream sandwiches were gone, and it was time for the kids to get on their sleeping bags. We knew there was no hope of them ever sleeping but then they started begging for ghost stories. So we told them about the senior citizen who used to volunteer in the school but fell in the hallway and hit her head and no one found her body until Monday morning and by then her spirit was trapped in the building FOREVER. And now she haunts the school at night, which is why the night-time custodians have to be out of the building by 11:30 pm and they lock all the doors behind them, but hopefully she wouldn’t come out tonight…
During which time the rest of us had snuck upstairs and had started moaning down into the stairwell where the girls were sleeping. I could hear them chatting and then one would say, “Shhh! Did you hear that?!” and then they’d all get quiet. When they’d start talking again I would quietly moan until they all heard it and JUST THEN my other co-worker started running around the glass-encased courtyard in a sheet with one of the masks from the ancient Egypt projects that were lining the halls over his face.
Chaos ensued with much shrieking, and we all laughed our asses off while telling them to get back on their sleeping bags, that they were just imagining things. This went on for a while until we got tired of the shrieking and then let them chat nervously to each other about how the ghost in the courtyard DEFINITELY had a chainsaw and a knife and OMG do these doors even lock?!
Finally I decided it was time to try to catch at least a couple hours of sleep on the most uncomfortable couch in the world. It felt like I was sleeping on a pile of rocks and the heat was off in the building, but at least I didn’t have to crash on the linoleum like the kids. At six in the morning we snuck into the band room and found the cymbals and the kids had a lovely wake up call. We made them sweep and clean and pack up their stuff and then their parents finally came and picked them up at seven, congratulating us on surviving the night.
And then I went home to take three separate naps because I felt like I was hungover. And so ends the saga of the slumber party, not to be done again for at least another five years. Or, you know, ever, if I’m laid off. You’re welcome, kids!
Mar
22
How To Irritate the Crap Out Of Me
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A step-by-step guide!
1. Not returning phone calls or emails until your significant other is away and you’re bored enough to pretend to care about hanging out.
2. Parking your shopping cart in the middle of an aisle and then walking away to look at something and leaving it directly in everyone else’s way.
3. Interrupting a conversation to answer a text message.
4. Making me watch anything starring Rachel Ray or Alec Baldwin.
5. Updating your Facebook status every single day with “So-and-so is at work.” Because guess what? EVERYONE ELSE IS TOO! And also, I DON’T CARE!
6. Calling a sandwich a “sammich”, or worse, a “sammy”.
7. When you buy a house/go on vacation/splurge on big ticket items and then tell me you have no money and expect me to be sympathetic.
8. Bloglines trashing my RSS feed.
9. Posting 50 tweets in a row on Twitter, defeating the entire purpose of the 140-character limit. JUST WRITE A BLOG POST, PEOPLE.
10. Opening my windows to get some fresh air and in return hear the endless agonized, pointless shrieks of the neighbor’s children fighting over who gets to use the scooter next.
Sorry, it was absolutely imperative that I got that off my chest before I imploded with unnecessary anger. Next up: tales from a middle school sleepover! Prepare for hilarity.
Mar
20
Wish Me Luck!
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And so begins the 24-hour marathon of staying in my school building. Are you jealous? Don’t try to lie to me, I know you all dream of being locked overnight with one hundred pre- and currently-pubescent children. Actually, if you did dream of that I’d be afraid for your mental health, so please don’t tell me if you do. But I’ve got my sleeping bag ready to go and some Twizzlers and a liter of Diet Coke and a bottle of nail polish, so I am trying to psyche myself up for a night of fun and games. I wanted to bring my Shocking Autopsy game for this evening but my co-workers suggested that jolting the children with electricity might solicit the ire of some parents so I left it at home for Chris to play.
I think I’ll try to escape the school building for a little while this afternoon, maybe drive over to the grocery store parking lot and take a quick nap in my backseat and then grab some dinner that doesn’t consist of candy and soda. Driving around here has become a real chore because the construction has started back up. You know, the construction that lasts from the second there is no snow on the ground to December. Basically, every moment the weather does not suck, the construction crews make it their goal to suck things up anyway with giant traffic jams and inefficient police officers vaguely waving people around without looking up from their cell phones.
Speaking of cell phones, yesterday on my way home from work, while I was driving on the highway, I saw a dude swerving in and out of lanes. I sped up to pass him (was he drunk? who’s drunk at 3:00 in the afternoon?) and saw that no, he was probably not drunk, but he was talking on his phone WHILE READING A BOOK. Literally, a book propped on the steering wheel held in one hand and his phone in the other, yammering away. I wanted to 1) ram my car into the side of his to get his attention, and 2) give him the finger once I had his attention, and finally, 3) call the police and have them tow his car away and leave him on the side of the highway. A dude who had ten Long Island iced teas would have been driving better than this ass. Instead I made it past him and kept my fingers crossed he didn’t cause an accident on one of the busiest highways in the metro-Boston area during rush hour.
Oh, and one more quick thing- if you usually read my blog via Bloglines, it has not been showing any of my posts. I won’t pretend to know why but apparently you need to update your RSS feed, otherwise you will miss all of my future whining.
Mar
19
In my quest for possible future employment I have been sending out a few resumes and cover letters whenever I’ve found an interesting opportunity. Which, in case you were wondering, is rare. One school district I applied to yesterday included a Gallup poll that you had to complete in order for your application to be accepted, which I thought was strange; shouldn’t that be something they do after they have at least glanced over your resume? But I filled it out anyway because why not waste 35 minutes of my paid work day trying to find some job security for 2010?
The poll asked me some very loaded questions, like “Do you find yourself becoming irritated with slow students?”, and “Do you think teaching is the most important profession in the world?” If only I didn’t actually need to find a new job, oh how I would mess with these questions!
“Agree or disagree: you often find that you are much more competent in your field than your co-workers.”
Dudes, obviously. First of all, I’m the only librarian here. Second of all, most of my co-workers are still stuck in the land of typewriting dinosaurs and dot-matrix printers with those tabs on the side that you have to rip off. So, yeah: AGREED. For further information on my feelings about this, please see any of my blog entries between the months of September and June from 2005-2009. Thank you.
“Are you quick to judge others?”
God yes. My Idiocy Meter runs pretty high these days and I can sense almost immediately whether someone in my presence is going to piss me off with their ridiculousness. But don’t worry, I hide my irritation pretty well, and I don’t often act on my raging anger.
“Do you think students should be praised: if they do an exceptional job, depends on the situation, always, never?
Do you Gallup people even work in a middle school? There is no such thing as an “exceptional job”. Unless you are a parent of a middle schooler, then every thing your son or daughter does is “exceptional” and also “amazing”, “precocious”, and “brilliant”. I prefer to praise kids when they can manage to perform normal, every day, polite tasks, like holding open a door for the person behind them, or pushing in a chair when they get up, or saying “excuse me” after an exceptionally loud burp.
“Do you think teaching is the greatest of all the professions?”
Uh, no, I think librarian is the greatest of all the professions. Which is why I am one. I mean, technically I am also a teacher, and yeah, teachers do a lot of great work and deserve far, far more credit and money than they get, but who’s to say they are more important than doctors, or social workers, or garbage men? So, polling people, are you trying to trick me into revealing myself as an elitist jerk, or are you really looking to employ only people who feel that teaching is the highest aspiration one could ever hope for? If it’s the latter, you can keep your stupid job and kiss my ass. Peace out.
Mar
17
I Might Even Live To Regret This
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Yesterday I woke up ready to head off to work and then had a thought. My bed was so much more comfortable and warm than my office on a Monday morning, why should I leave it? And so I didn’t! I took a mental health day and spent it lazing around the house, drinking coffee and playing video games. I didn’t even feel badly about the no-show. In fact, I even felt a little bit entitled to it since I have officially agreed to be a chaperone for the sixth grade sleepover this Friday evening.
Yes, I know. I’m completely crazy.
When I was originally asked to chaperone I thought, hell no! If I’m getting laid off, why would I want to spend my Friday night with kids? For free? But first reaction aside, I am hoping it will be fun rather than stressful. My optimism knows no bounds, and plus almost everyone I asked encouraged me to do it. I’m pretty sure all the encouragement was because they want me to have some good stories to tell after spending the night locked in my school with one hundred eleven-year olds, and I’m pretty sure that to everyone else, “good” stories equal “nightmare horror” stories for me. Still, it will be funny watching these kids on the brink of puberty try to interact with each other at an all-night event. One boy asked, “Will we all be wearing PAJAMAS?” Unless you usually sleep in your jeans, kiddo, then we will all be in pajamas. Even the girls. Prepare yourselves: there might even be flannel!
Right now I am planning on reading ghost stories in the library with all the lights turned out and just a flashlight to illuminate my ghostly librarian face. I also have Wall-E on blu-ray and we’re having pizza and ice cream sundaes and we’re going to paint our nails and the boys (and maybe some girls) will play indoor soccer in the gym. All the things I can remember from my sleepover party days- the prank phone calls to boys in our class, sticking the hand of the first person to fall asleep in a bowl of warm water and hoping they pee in their sleeping bag, drawing on each other’s faces when we fell asleep, freaking each other out with the “light as a feather, stiff as a board” trick, repeating Bloody Mary into the mirror three times and hoping she doesn’t knife you in the throat, and asking the Ouija board if our teachers were really evil aliens that came to Earth in order to torture us with knowledge- well, as a bona fide adult, I should say that I hope they don’t happen at this sleepover.
But if they do, I will probably giggle at least a little bit.
Mar
13
What’s The Opposite of Having the Blues? Having the Yellows?
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Because I ended yesterday in a bad mood and started today in an even worse one I think it’s time to metaphorically punch my brain into submission. I’m going to be happy today even if it kills me, dammit! Internet, make it be so! Here are some things that I am currently repeating over and over to myself to improve my doom and gloom:
1. Yesterday on my way home from work I was talking to Chris and he mentioned I got a package from Amazon. Which seemed odd because I couldn’t remember buying anything, but whatever, it was probably an impulse buy that I had just forgotten. When I got home I ripped it open to find the Blu-Ray 20th anniversary edition of Dirty Dancing! My favorite movie of all time! And I definitely did not order it. Chris bought it for me when he saw it was available and even went so far as to rip an old Amazon label off a package addressed to me and stick it over the address label addressed to him, just to fool me. HEART.
2. I am wearing a new yellow three-quarter length sweater with a purple and white scarf and some pretty spangly earrings. I feel very Spring-like even if the thermometer outside disagrees with me.
3. The weather this weekend is supposed to hover near sixty degrees, so maybe I am actually willing Spring into existence with my Spring-like attire. You’re welcome, Boston!
4. Saturday night is girl’s night and I haven’t had one in a very long while. Red wine, my long-lost friend, it will be so good to see you again. Plus, we are going to try a new Ethiopian place that Chris flat out refuses to try with me because he says their bread tastes like Ace bandages. Maybe it does, but I would like to find out for myself!
5. I got a giant shipment of new books in despite the spending freeze; I had forgotten that half of my last order had been backordered and was finally released. Getting a huge box of books in the mail never, ever gets old. And even better, the kids seemed more excited about the new books than I was. I consider that a library success.
6. On Fridays, one of my co-workers always stops in during first period and writes down my coffee order. Then he walks to the coffee place right down the street and ferries my coffee back to my office. I wish I had a coffee courier every day, but it does make my Friday mornings a bit brighter.
7. My sixth graders this morning spent a good five minutes laughing when I talked about website evaluation and called them all Internet Explorers. I hadn’t realized the joke was that funny until I saw the kids falling all over each other in hysterics. Apparently, sixth graders are still a mystery to me after all these years, but a good one.
So what are you happy about this lovely Friday morning?
Mar
12
I’ve been working my way through the sixth grade class over the last week, trying to coach them into not using Google or Wikipedia for their research projects. It’s an uphill battle when the teachers who can’t immediately find a book resource say to the kids, “Whatever, you can just Google it.” NO! No, you can’t just Google it. Do you know how many search results come up if you Google Christopher Columbus? Do your kids have time to sift through all the information that comes up on the TWELVE MILLION SEARCH RESULTS? I didn’t think so.
I tell the kids, if you’re looking up the phone number to the pizza place down the road, use Google. It will be helpful to you. If you’re looking up biographical information on Frederick Douglass to be used in a research paper, DO NOT USE GOOGLE. They whine about it, we talk about it, I show them some alternatives, then they go back to using Google. But I am planting the seed, at least.
Another uphill battle is that the Technology Department recently blocked Wikipedia from the school computers. You might think that this is a good thing, right? No more random information cut and pasted into a Word document! But hello, aren’t we trying to teach the kids how to evaluate information they find on the internet? What good does it do to block a website when they can just go home and do whatever they want? Apparently the Tech Department’s reason for blocking the website was that they had a complaint from one of the teachers that they had found something offensive written in one of the articles. REALLY, TEACHER? How about you use that as the starting point of a lesson on how to discern information rather than demanding the school block an entire website! What will we block next? Google? There might be some offensive material on there, quick, get rid of it! MAYBE THEY’LL FORGET IT EVEN EXISTS!
So anyway I’ve been using a website about explorers that includes a few basic articles on different people, but half of the information is true and half of it is totally ridiculous. I ask them to read the articles and write down a few facts that they think are interesting that they’d like to share with the rest of the group. I have kids furiously scribbling down notes like, Ponce de Leon was on Larry King Live! Sir Francis Drake was trained as a pig handler! And did you know that Christopher Columbus called up his cousin Pizarro on his cell phone when he reached the New World? AMAZING, CHILDREN.
Almost every group has eventually, after hearing their classmates recount such idiotic facts, realized that I was tricking them. That “ah ha!” moment has been slow coming to some of them but once they do they think it’s kind of a riot. Except the group I had today. They just kept reading off facts like “Jacques Cartier lived on the streets of New York selling watches,” and everyone else in the class would nod dumbly. The “ah ha!” moment never came to them so finally I had to ask, “Does any of this information seem strange to you? Like maybe it is not all factually correct?”
One kid stared at me. Then he said, “Well I know my article was correct. It says Henry Hudson was abducted by aliens and I know I read that somewhere else.”
LESSON FAIL.