Yet another dilemma

So I've been spending a lot of mental energy trying to figure out exactly how many times I can go to Keva Juice in a week before it becomes irresponsible and gluttonous. Mmm, smoothies.

A New Dang Post

Following a one-day break for Memorial Day, school life has not slowed down since the kids were released. We have been doing a two-week training for a new language arts curriculum that we have been teaching. Class has met from 8 AM-1 PM every day, and we have had homework to complete in the afternoons. We have also been having endless "debriefing" meetings and doing end-of-year projects like moving classrooms and creating curriculum maps and plans for next year.

I have also been attending my exercise class regularly, and I am very excited to announce that I touched my own toes during our flexibility exercises this week. Hooray!

We took the final exam in our Spalding class today, so that is over, which also means that I no longer have an excuse to be in town every day. Regular blog posting should be resuming in the next couple of days. I hope that you have not all given up on checking in here!

Short Summer Thoughts

It's summertime and I'm taking a two-week long class on an intense language arts curriculum, so I'm taking a break from profound thoughts. Snippets are all I've got at the moment.

My 2007 calendar theme is "Nuns Having Fun." The June picture is of about 10 nuns fishing with their habits pulled up to their knees. Summer is the time of year when I am most happy not to be a nun, because even I would tire of the black sheath in 100-degree heat. The rest of the year, a multi-layered uniform has its appeal for its simplicity and warmth. But to me, June is the month of shorts and halter tops, and I'm glad not to be encumbered by strict guidelines of modesty and solemnity.

Our latest Netflix was The Guardian. It was good. Yay for the Coast Guard.

I've noticed how certain groups of people tend to have the same conversation over and over again. When it's a group I'm happy to be with and a conversation that I am interested in, this is infinite fun. When it's a group I'm annoyed with or a conversation that does not interest me, it tries my patience.

The curriculum I'm learning to teach is called "The Spalding Method." The inventor is a lady named Mrs. Spalding, who is now dead. The teacher of my course reveres Mrs. Spalding like she is the fourth member of the Trinity. It's kind of funny, and occasionally scary.

I'm reading a book about a man with two children. The son is named after his father, and the daughter is named after the grandmother. This strikes me as the most boring way of picking names, but I notice that many people actually do name this way. When my girlfriends and I talk about baby names, we almost never discuss family names, unless they happen to be unusually cool. It's more about finding a name that reflects the personality and style of the parents. We dismiss many names for being too boring: "I'd fall asleep calling my kids in for dinner," or too trendy: "I like that name, but we're just not hip enough to pull it off." I wonder when this new naming philosophy became popular. I think it might have been with the Hippies.

Despite my regular exercising and semi-consistent attempts to eat reasonably, I am still growing out of my pants. This is very annoying and disheartening. Maybe my aerobics class is causing me to gain lots of muscle mass in my thighs and buttocks region?

We've agreed to housesit for one of my work friends for five weeks in July and early August. I'm excited to be in town, in a nice house, and in a new environment for part of the summer to avoid summer doldrums. Look for the Adventures in the Moore's House series coming soon.

Hop on the Crazy Train

I have had a sneaking suspicion for quite a long time that I might be just a bad night's sleep away from becoming a raving lunatic, and this time of year always seems to give me lots of evidence to support that hunch. Take, for example, the fact that I have been trying to think of an awesome blog topic for several days now, and I still can't come up with anything more than fragments. But, since that's all I've got, and I am wanting to post, it's what you're getting today.

...the post-spring-break blues always bring out the worst in both students and teachers. Teachers go into panic mode, trying to cram as much content into the last nine weeks as humanly possible, and then go into hysterics when confronted with the reality that the students have been replaced by brainless yet behaviorally uncontrollable drones for the remainder of the year...

...and all of the sudden, I have no sense of humor. I feel my instincts regressing to those I have been fighting in my students. I want to roll my eyes, cover my ears, and deliver a well-timed kick to the shin of any student who crosses me at the end of the day...

...meanwhile, the end of the year events are piling up on the calendar. This weekend is Grandparents Weekend. This means that I have to finish my class's homemade auction project (okay, Stephen has to finish my class's homemade auction project), prep my seventeen drones to recite "Casey at the Bat" with flair and finesse, and attend two showings of excerpts from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Then we're running full steam toward the 4th Grade Play, Live Oak Classic Track Meet, Academic Decathlon, final report cards, a character award ceremony, and convocation...

...meanwhile, I am plagued by personal distractions...

...my cool brown plaid pants are officially too short to wear again...and besides, I think they're too fall-ish to be wearing right now anyway...

...it is only March but I have June bugs swarming around my front porch and shuffling off their mortal coils in my entry hallway. Did you know that June bugs ooze black liquids as they expire?...

...now that Daylight Savings has come, or gone, I'm back to leaving for work in the pitch black. It's dark, and I can't get good reception on my favorite AM radio station, which hasn't mattered too much because my favorite wake up on the morning guy has thoughtlessly taken a vacation for the past week...

...my entire faith in humanity is being shattered by the fact that Sanjaya is still in the American Idol competition. Not a confidence-builder amid all this talk about the 2008 election...

...I am noticing that I only have one disk left until the end of Season 5 of 24. There is no way that this plot is going to resolve to my satisfaction in four hours, and I'm starting to vaguely recall the viewer outrage I heard as this season concluded on TV last spring...

...So, amid all of this trauma, I'm falling back on my never-fail comfort objects:
-Starbucks coffee: even though it will contribute to waistline trauma in the near future.
-vintage DC Talk: it's like musical Red Bull. It makes me want to sing and dance and rap into my Talkboy (oh wait, that wasn't me...)
-wildflowers: so pretty
-my dogs' ears: so funny
-denial: my personal favorite for serious problems that are outside of my control anyway
-social time: especially when it's AT Starbucks!
-a good night's sleep: and I'm heading that way now.

Happy Thoughts

On Friday I finally had a breakthrough moment with the kids in my Latin class. I had a difficult start, because my class contains some students who have had Latin for a couple of years, and some who have no experience studying a foreign language of any kind. So I've been blowing their brains out by talking about inflected endings, which is why we say puella for "girl" when it is the subject, and puellam for "girl" when it is the direct object, and I have heaped vocabulary on their heads all the while. So last week I decided that I'd let them have a little fun, and I taught them to sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" in Latin, and this turned out to be very effective in helping them to associate happy thoughts with the class. So I was pretty ecstatic on this day, when I walked outside the classroom a couple of minutes after class was dismissed, to hear Latin still on the lips of my students. One was demonstrating our new song to some friends, one was trying to translate the "Hello, mother...Hello, father" song into Latin using mater and pater, two of his new vocabulary words, and one of the cool guys was taunting another by telling him "Tu mater est oppidum magnum," which roughly translates to "Your mother is a large town." After thinking for a minute, the recipient of the insult got it, and both boys broke into hysterical laughter. A little nerdy, you might say...but it was music to my ears.

So my bliss continued when I was wasting time on the internet this weekend and I found that not one, but THREE of my favorite artists have some new albums coming out: Pat Green, Clay Aiken, and Josh Groban. I was excited about JG in particular, because it's been a LONG time coming. I put all three items, plus some more, on my Amazon wish list (link to your right) for your holiday shopping convenience, Mom.

Yesterday I bought "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Playing the Piano" and started practicing on the keyboard at the church between services. This has been on my to-do list for a long time, and I feel very gratified. Today I practiced the right hand notes for the Doxology, and it was sounding pretty darn good if I do say so myself. Also I finished "Dispatches from the Edge," which was a surprisingly enjoyable read by Anderson Cooper.

Add into the mix that we enjoyed a nice afternoon on the town yesterday, went to a very encouraging church service, had dinner with some friends, got some free cake, and had two nice services at church today...I've had about all the excitement I can take for one weekend. It's a good thing that I have to get back on the job tomorrow or I'd start getting spoiled.

Things to do When You're Stuck at Home

One thing I have learned about living far away from civilization is that I can't waste time away from the house like I used to. "Going into town" is a major investment of time and gas.

Since I have had to make trips to Town for the past three days (which always last at least until dinnertime), I decided to stay home today and be productive. Thus this post. Here is what I did.

1. Blog more than once.
2. Check e-mail. Repeat in five minutes. Repeat in five minutes. Etc.
3. Walk down the street to check the mail. Only do this once as it is 102 degrees.
4. Check blog for comments. Repeat in five minutes. Coordinate blog checking with e-mail checking. Periodically place guilt trip on self and resolve not to check e-mail or blog for at least an hour. Break resolution.
5. Dust.
6. Swiffer floor.
7. Read book.
8. Find recipe for church potluck meal on Sunday.
9. Finally get around to printing address labels to put on change of address cards.
10. Watch director's commentary on favorite Friends episodes.
11. Plan for first days of school. (See previous post. Please continue to comment.)
12. Clean leftovers out of refrigerator.
13. Organize kitchen around painting drop cloths.
14. Place all unsightly boxes of decorative items into spare bedroom closet. (Problem solved!)
15. Clean out e-mail inbox.

Who says life in the country is not fun?

Christian Coffee

I could come at this post from two directions. One, we just heard of a guy in Abilene who is opening up a Christian coffee house that is called "Monks." Their graphic-T design shows a monk giving a big bear hug to a nun, with the caption "Embrace the Habit." Har, har, har.

Or, I could talk about the Christian culture's kind of embarassing habit of creating Christianized knock-offs of successful endeavors in the greater society. The whole coffee-house thing is working pretty well for Starbucks and other smaller coffee outfits, so it's only a matter of time before we claim this business for the Lord.

Stephen and I were at the Java Hut the other day trying to come up with clever names for a Christian coffee house. We came up with some ideas, and now I'd like to get some of yours. Groaners are welcome (I will set the example). This is not a contest, because it is too stressful for me to choose winners. So add some ideas, and we'll all be winners!


*Holy Grounds
(Stephen says you could invite people to remove their shoes as they entered)

*WWJD: What Would Jesus Drink?

*JavaJesus

*BGCT: Best Ground Coffee in Town

*StarBYX
(Christian fraternity coffee...complete with knock-off logo)

*Focus on the Frappe

*The Joe of the Lord is My Strength

Okay. You guys are marketing experts, teachers, theologians...I have great expectations!