What I’m Reading
Oct
30
Dying To Get Out
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This post begins the third in the Choose Your Own Blogventure series. Much like the Choose Your Own Adventure series of my youth, these stories are meant to give you, the reader, a chance to direct the narrative. Rather than write all the story options myself, I wanted to get other bloggers in on the action and have them each write a piece.
The catch? Each writer has their own point of view and can take the story in any direction they want. The point is to have fun and enjoy the ride. In honor of Halloween, this series has a Spooktacular theme.
Just one note: all the posts will be up by 10 a.m.(EST) today, so don’t start reading until then unless you want to hit a dead end.
Happy reading!
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Annelise looked thoughtfully at the ancient iron key she held in her hand. She had found it in the bottom drawer of her father’s desk, buried behind some folders filled with newspaper clippings and a slim volume titled Haunted Happenings in New England. Annelise knew she shouldn’t have been snooping around the library- in fact, she had been expressly forbidden to enter the library after scaring herself silly on some of her father’s anthologies of ghost stories- but once she had heard him on the phone with Professor Kildare she knew she absolutely, positively needed to see what they had been discussing.
Annelise tucked the key determinedly in the pocket of her skirt and started for the stairs. She knew that her father thought she was too young to hear about his research in paranormal activity, and her frequent nightmares probably didn’t help her case, but the giant wooden trunk that had arrived two days earlier was just too big a temptation. Her father had mentioned to Professor Kildare that it had been discovered deep in the jungles of the Congo, and had been stolen from a chief in the dead of the night. Both her father and the Professor seemed very concerned; bad things had been happening to everyone that had handled the trunk on its long voyage to Massachusetts.
The pilot of the tiny plane out of the Congo had had engine trouble and crash landed right near the air strip. They managed to recover the trunk in time to pack it into a ship headed east. The crew of the tugboat that had brought the trunk the rest of the journey had developed raging fevers and thirty-three of them had died while still onboard. And now her father had been missing since the day he had signed for the trunk when it showed up on their doorstep. Now that she had finally found the key her father had mentioned hiding away she was sure that the secret of his disappearance would be made clear- all Annelise had to do was open that trunk and its contents would reveal where her father had gone. Follow the clues, just like Nancy Drew.
Standing in front of the giant black chest, Annelise hesitated. It seemed to be emitting its own pulse; either that, or it was the thudding of her own heart in her chest. She took one timid step towards it and the pulsing immediately grew stronger, like it was pushing her away. Annelise turned to flee the room and made it to the door before the thought of her father popped back in to her head. It was now or never.
Slowly Annelise edged toward the chest again. Every step she took the chest seemed to pound in her brain. “Turn back, turn back, TURN BACK.” Though it seemed to take eons she finally found herself standing directly in front of the ominous-looking lock. Her hand fumbled in her pocket for the key. She was starting to feel physically ill but she stretched her hand towards the lock anyway, trembling.
If Annelise should press on and open the trunk to see what it contains, click here.
If Annelise should listen to her gut and get out of the room, fast, click here.
Oct
25
You Are All My Witnesses
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As soon as I start to let my guard down and think not every guy on the face of the planet is a giant douche something happens to bitch slap me back into reality. Right here and now I am declaring: never again will I be duped!
Okay, let me back up a bit. My cousin invited me to a Halloween party that was costume-mandatory. I agreed to go despite not having a costume and not knowing anyone else who might be at the party. Why? Because I am a sucker. The party was at a friend of a friend’s house, a guy who frequently has football parties on Sundays that I occasionally attend, so I thought maybe I would recognize some fellow football fans. I did not.
Anyway, we show up dressed as a Greek Goddess-type person (me), a pirate wench (my cousin), and Dirty Sanchez (my cousin’s husband). None of us were trampy enough to be at this party. Still, there were a couple of really good costumes, like the girl who came as Victoria from Twilight complete with bare dirty feet, and the Jon and Kate zombie couple who stapled eight baby dolls to their Ed Hardy t-shirts. And after five or six beers I was high-fiving the tramp-ass bar maids and Playboy bunnies and the multiple dudes dressed as Star Wars characters like we were BFFs. At some point I played multiple rounds of beer pong (yes, hi, I was in college NINE YEARS AGO), and during this whole period of drinking there was a dude hitting on me.
I’ll give him props for showing up dressed as Jonah Hill from Superbad. He was even carrying around a Tide bottle, which, okay, hilar. I’m a sucker for a guy who can make me laugh. And he was persistent. After many hours of skulking around me with compliments and smiles and asking for my number I finally relented and gave it to him. He leaned in for the kiss, and as soon as I walked away my cousin said, “Hey, you know he’s married, right?”
F
M
L
No, clearly I did not know he was married. That information might have been more useful say, before the kissing. Once again, the fates were conspiring to tell me something and I chose not to listen. That message was: STAY AWAY FROM DUDES! Like, forever! And then when forever is over, stay away from them some more!
Ugh.
But! Speaking of Halloween, I hereby present you with the list of the participants in the Fall 2009 CYOB Spooktacular which will go live this Friday, October 30th, at 10 am EST:
Definitely RA
Funky Carter
The Modern Gal
Oh! How Lovely
Sov Knight
Poppy Cedes
Pat and Fran
Subject To Change
Snow Covered Hills
Bright Yellow World
Notes From Under the Desk
Marie’s Blog Cafe
Life in the Left Lane
The Daily Tannenbaum
Green Duckies Girl
Parlant A L’Ether
Grand Allusions
Beej Loves You
Srah Blah Blah
Pardon the Egg Salad
Malfeasance
Flurrious
The CYOB cheers me up a little, so make sure to stop in on Friday morning.
Oct
23
Home Alone
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Hey ho, Cheerios. I would like to think that since I am down to roughly two posts a week as opposed to my usual routine of five (how did I ever have time to write five?!) I would have tons of awesome things to tell you when I click on that Add New Post button. Joke’s on me though! All I have to report this week is that I have spent an inordinate amount of time grading; I seem to have made the (rookie, never-to-be-repeated) mistake of making everything due at once and no amount of wine makes the red pen process go any faster.
Actually, I think the wine may be a hindrance. But oh, so necessary. You don’t know pain until you try to read the thesis statements of thirteen year olds.
Anyway, I had a meeting with my Assistant Principal yesterday and she was pretty much gushing about how awesome I am, and how flexible and accommodating I’ve been this year, and how she fully supports the need for an actual librarian in the actual library. Which was all nice to hear, clearly, but still does not make up for the fact that I now spend my prep periods wiping down keyboards with antibacterial wipes instead of shelving books.
As for my personal life, it has been reduced to a series of school meetings and logistics. The good news is that I am now about 90% moved in to my new place, but still constantly marveling at my lack of stuff. I’m talking about stuff like one of those silverware trays that goes in your kitchen drawer. Really? I have to give Target money for that instead of the cute new cropped plaid jacket I saw the other day? Fine, but I don’t like it.
Pros about my new place:
- I don’t have a roommate
- I live on a quiet street in a nice neighborhood
- It’s pretty, and I decorated it the way I wanted
- I live next to my family
Cons about my new place:
- Living alone means every strange noise is panic-inducing
- Cooking for one is not easy
- No one around to play Wii Ghostbusters with me
- No one to yell at me when my piles of shoes migrate from the closet (correct) to the living room (incorrect)
- No one to con into doing the dishes
- The suburbs are not exactly a draw for the rest of my friends still living in the city, so I am constantly making the half-hour trek south into Boston
- I miss the city
All of that said, I actually am enjoying my new place. I think it’s what I need for right now- my own space, but still near enough to family and friends that I’m not feeling isolated or lonely at all. And bonus: it’s 50% cheaper than living in the city!
And the rest of my personal life, well, I’m trying to just let it fall into place. The idea of actively dating gives me the heebie-jeebies, still, six months after Chris moved to California. I’m thinking that is either a sign that I am permanently damaged or I just need more time for myself. Either way: screw boys. Who needs them, anyway?
Oct
19
Demons and Blog Friends
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So, I figure I have a couple of ways this Monday evening can go. The first option would be to pour myself a glass of wine, don the beloved Snuggie, and break out the old red pen to start grading research papers. That was my original plan for this evening, until my sister and I had the brilliant idea to take in a matinee viewing of Paranormal Activity. For the first hour of the movie I was tapping my foot in semi-boredom. For the last half hour I was gripping the armrest so hard I thought my arms would snap off at the shoulders and watching with half-closed eyes in an attempt to make it less horrifying.
Seeing as how I have never lived alone before, I kind of wish I had had the foresight to not watch scary movies at night. Too late.
So my second option for this non-snowy Monday evening is to pour myself a glass of wine, don the beloved Snuggie, and watch Say Anything in HD on my TiVo to calm my frayed nerves. I’ll admit, this option sounds very appealing.
And yet, the third option is to pour the wine, throw on the Snuggie, and write a post on Ye Olde Blogge about how awesome this past weekend was when OPH and Heidikins came to visit. Here’s the short version: very awesome. The slightly longer version is that we went on the World’s Worst Haunted Ghost Tour in Salem, MA, saw a bajillion pumpkins at the Keene Pumpkin Festival, did a little geocaching, had lunch with Kelli, and laughed a lot. Hanging with fellow bloggers always makes me feel like I am among my people. Plus, we can gossip, which, if I did that with my non-blogging friends, they would think I actually have gone off the deep end talking about my imaginary internet “friends”.
And now, one glass of wine and half of Say Anything and a whole, if crappy, blog post later, I am ready to go to sleep without fearing demons dragging me out of my bed at 3 am. Still, this may be one of the few times I wish I had a roommate.
Oct
15
I did give you all fair warning that I would probably be rather ranty about my job this year, but still, I feel a little bad that the chipper, happy-go-lucky NPW from days of yore seems to have vanished on this blog. She still exists in real life, I promise. You can ask any of my friends. Except Aaron, since I haven’t seen him in about 9 months, even though he now lives approximately seven minutes from my new apartment.
Did I tell you I got a new apartment? Oh. Yeah, I did. That’s part of the reason I have been so busy (read: not commenting on your blogs), and I am still only partially moved in. Moving is one of the only times I wish I owned a pickup truck. Anyway, I have all the important things in my new place already, like my Wii, and my XBox, and my 42″ TV. And a bed and some shampoo, but who needs those if you spend all hours catching ghosts with your Wii proton pack? I just hope my weekend visitor, the lovely OPH, doesn’t mind me spending our time together on my headset talking to other gamers instead of her.
Did I tell you I will be having weekend visitors? No? Oh. Yeah, I am. OPH and Heidikins are both coming to visit this weekend and I am super squee about it! We have all kinds of fall activities planned and no amount of wintry weather or gloomy rain is going to hold us back. We will also be joined by fellow librarian Janssen, and her husband Bart. On the agenda are the Keene Pumpkin Festival and the Head of the Charles Regatta, as well as many other Boston-in-the-fall activities. I even have tomorrow off of work as a personal day so that Heidikins and I can meet up for lunch. Fridays off FTW! And doubly so when I already had Monday off as well.
In other news, I am still struggling with finding my co-worker niche. An email went out to the faculty about a Friday afternoon “choir practice” at the local bar, which I would have been excited about if I didn’t already have the day off. When I went to lunch today, the art teacher was animatedly talking about how excited she was for choir practice. “Oh, me too! I love choir practice,” I chimed in. The health teacher laughed and said, “Me too, but only in moderation.” I laughed. The art teacher looked at us both in a puzzled way. “So, what do you think we’re going to sing?”
SIGH.
Oct
13
TechnoRage (TM)
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Over the years I have written a large number of posts about the Technology department in my school district. Most of those posts have been of a ranting nature, which is due in large part to the fact that the staff there are incompetent fools who should have stopped working in technology back in 1994, when the internet was still called The Information Superhighway.
I’ve also written a number of posts about my tech-illiterate colleagues, much to my own chagrin and the delight of my readers. But if I stop to really think about it, I can only hold my co-workers partially to blame for being so idiotic about computers because in truth it should be our Technology department’s job to help them out. Unfortunately, it seems that our Technology department’s ACTUAL job is to frustrate people so badly that they never want to deal with anything technology-related again. It’s a pretty effective system.
This morning there was some kind of malfunction where half the student work was missing from their network folders. That is a little bit horrifying when you’ve just spent 7 weeks building that system of documents with the kids. I emailed the Head Honcho of Technology.
Me: “Most of the student’s work is missing from their folders. Please help me recover it.”
Head Honcho’s response: “It shouldn’t be missing.”
NO SHIT, GENIUS. Hence the email I sent you!
Then do you think he helped me out? No, no. That would be silly! Because there is a protocol. First I need to submit a work order, then it has to be approved, then it has to go to the Principal to make it a priority so it gets done today instead of next week, then Technology needs me to send them all the student’s names, the names of the files they are missing, when they last accessed them, their social security numbers, the names of their first pets, what their favorite movies are, their year of graduation, and a bunch of other stupid crap they should be able to look up as the HEAD OF ALL TECHNOLOGY, and then- THEN!- they will look into the situation. I’m only half surprised they don’t make me initial and notarize my work orders before I submit them.
It’s really a testament to my willpower that this entire post isn’t in caps. If anything ever deserved a caps lock, it is my TechnoRage.
Oct
9
Some of you may already know this, but for those of you who don’t work with children on a daily basis I’m going to let you in on a little secret: kids are dumb.
Now, I’m not saying they are intentionally ignorant, or fundamentally unteachable, or anything like that. They’re mostly dumb because they are young and have had relatively few life experiences. Hell, I’m willing to bet that in middle school I was an idiot too. But I think what really drives their dumb factor home with me most days is that they constantly need the same things repeated. Over and over and over… and over. I will no sooner be done giving instructions when one of them will shout out “WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BE DOING RIGHT NOW?” Or, conversely, will hear the directions given and then sit there staring into empty space with a blank face.
If I were teaching kindergarten, this might be acceptable. With twelve year olds, it is not. It only illustrates that they are not paying attention when they should be.
This morning I had a particularly difficult 6th grade class. It was one of those, “He touched my keyboard! She turned off my monitor! He’s cutting and pasting notes when you said we couldn’t and if he’s doing it then why can’t IIIIIIIIII?” types of classes. As soon as one of them would finish what they were doing they’d yell, “WHAT SHOULD I DO NEXT? WHAT’S NEXT? WHAT ARE WE DOING NEEEEEEEXT?”
Ahhh!
So I had them all turn off their computer monitors because otherwise they are like zombies staring dully at the screen when they should be listening to directions. One boy sighed loudly. I turned to him and echoed his loud sigh. “Zach. I know life is difficult. Sometimes, teachers ask you to do things and then you need to do them! Crazy! And believe me, I realize that turning off the computer monitor is very, very hard work, but it needs to be done. Also, have you met Mrs. Smith, the drama teacher, yet? No? I suggest you seek her out because I am sure she would recognize your dramatic talent straight off.”
The aide who was in my room at the time had to go out in the hallway so the kids wouldn’t see her shaking with laughter. The rest of the kids, including Zach, just sat there smiling up at me with clearly not much going on in their hormonal little brains. Kids, I have an idea! Let’s go to dictionary.com and look up sarcasm. Monitors back on!
Oct
6
Want To Help Me Grade?
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Heeeey now. How are things going out there in the Land of the Interwebs? Me, I’m just cruising right along. Things are getting done around these parts, yessiree. Papers are graded, belongings are being moved into my new pad (which is shaping up to be super cute, albeit tiny), and my story segment of the CYOB is written and passed along. Alas, all of this productivity means I have less time for blogging, commenting, and being a general nuisance around the internet.
Things at school are… well, they are better, I guess. My co-workers are still sucktastic, but I do have one new Facebook friend out of this ordeal. I suppose it’s still early in the year, so perhaps I just haven’t found my niche, but damn if my immediate team members are not the complete opposite of everything I stand for. I mean, 3 out of 4 of them enjoy country music and NASCAR. Just sayin’.
So I’m going to give my colleagues the old PASS and move on to the students, who are far, far more entertaining. I assigned a project called My Hopes and Dreams and let me tell you, some of these kids’ hopes and dreams are downright hilarious. The essays almost make up for the absurd amount of time they take to grade. Some of my favorite examples:
One girl’s greatest dream is to create a game show called “Designing Up The Streets”. The basic premise of the show is to find homeless people living on the street and design new outfits for them. The designer with the best outfits gets to take their homeless person on a shopping spree. Because, you know, clearly people who live on the street have a great need for designer clothes and a giant wardrobe.
Another kid wrote that his dream is to be an anesthesiologist like his dad. I thought this was pretty admirable until he continued with, “I’d like to be an anesthesiologist so that I can seduce people before they have surgery.” Err… unless you’d also like to spend a good number of years in jail, kid, you might want to think about using the word “sedate” instead.
The next young man wanted to engineer alternative, eco-friendly energy sources. When discussing why he thought this was an important goal, he wrote, “One thing that has influenced me to want to do this are the majestic killing machines we call polar bears.” ENOUGH SAID! A+!
One girl’s greatest hope is that she can be “exactly like Reese Witherspoon in every way, except brunette, not blond.” Way to dream big, kid.
I really need to start saving some of the best examples so I can pull them out when I’m in a bad mood and re-read them. Guaranteed laughs, I tell you. Who’s volunteering to help me grade?
Oct
1
Housekeeping
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WHHHHHY? Why did I pick this week to announce another CYOB? Truly, I am an idiot. Anyway, despite the fact that this week I have had a book club meeting, a training session for the district’s new website, my school’s Open House, and a dentist appointment (the first of the school year! it’s a record for me!), I have managed to put together the spreadsheet of who will be participating, as well as the dates on which each story segment will be due. So keep an eye out for those in your email sometime this weekend!
Every night when I get home, it’s all I can do not to collapse in pile of exhaustion wrapped in a Snuggie. I actually considered it a triumph last night that I managed to watch the DVRed episode of So You Think You Can Dance before my eyelids slammed shut, only to be rudely reawakened five minutes (fine, six hours) later. This weekend I plan on writing the first part of the CYOB to pass on to the lovely RA and the semi-reliable Aaron, and it will go from there. Rock on, my little legion of fiction writers. Rock on.
And now I am seriously sitting here contemplating whether or not it would be feasible to try to correct papers while getting a filling. I’m going to say probably not, especially considering the track record of these student dentists, but these papers need to get grades on them somehow. Any volunteers to read about the professional goals of eleven year olds? They are guaranteed laughs, no joke. One girl writes, “My greatest dream is to be a vet. I think I would be a great vet because I am tough from wrestling with my uncles. I think I would need that toughness so that when an animal bites me I can tough it out, help the animal, and treat my bite wound.”
Kudos to you, girlfriend, but don’t come whining to Ms. NPW when you’ve come down with a hot case of cat scratch fever.