I Need(ed) A Break! And After Reading All Of This, You Might, Too

It's SPRING BREAK, BABY!  And I could not be happier or more relieved.  It was a long slog to get here, believe me.  I thought March was bad, but these 20 days of April were brutal.  Brutal, I tell you.  But I made it, and now all that is left to do, really, is to clear out a few Occipital Oddments left clattering about in my cranium, and I'm good.  I can cross "put up a post at the Dept." off my list, move on to vacuuming, uncork a red, and figure out dinner.

I mentioned in Comments in the last post how awful our copiers are in our Brand! New! High! School! Well, this week we had yet another Epic Paper Jam, and because I had time, I set to work on it.  Under the watchful eye of Kathleen, I systematically began to clear the mangled copies out from the interior of the machine. "Damn it!" I exploded.  "It keeps lighting up the same error spot."  Kathleen calmly surveyed me kneeling next to the copier.  "Is it number 6?" she asked knowingly.  "I got stuck at number 6 forever last time. Forget it. There's no way to get in there."  I pulled out another drawer, undeterred.  "It says something about a conveyance in number 1.  Well, number 1 can go fuck itself at this point. I really don't...Holy shit!  Look at this!"  I withdrew a handful of tightly pleated copies.  "The Digestive System," I read aloud from the top copy, showing it to Kathleen.  "All this was stuck right in the middle drawer!"  Kathleen looked at it wryly.  "Oh, the irony," she said.

Another Workroom Diversion occurs when teachers read student work aloud.  Sometimes it's for entertainment purposes; sometimes it's out of frustration; sometimes it's because we are blown away by the high calibre of its quality and we're just plain impressed.  The best fun is Vocabulary Sentences.  Often, the nuances of usage escape students, regardless of their level.  My honors students, even, will misuse a word because they can't grasp the finer points of its usage.  For example, one of their words this week was schism.  A vast majority of them used it in this context:  The will left each of the children an equal schism of money.  See what I mean?  Here are two of my favourite vocabulary sentences shared by the team teachers Lisa and Karen this past week and a half:

*Amanda onslaught her boyfriend because he was messing with her car.

*The pizza was discernible from the living room.

You cannot put a price on entertainment like that.  Of course, we do not give points for Entertainment Value, but as we so often say, Life Is Not Fair.

Not so long ago, Jared--the son who used to co-author a blog with me--grew weary of thinking of segues or polite ways to introduce new topics of conversation.  (Sam, my youngest, used to use a Five-Second Rule:  that is, he'd wait five seconds, and if no one continued the current conversation, would simply jump in and start a new topic.)  Now, Jared simply says, "Unrelated" and then carries on with Whatever He Wanted To Talk About.  So...

UNRELATED

1.  I contacted Garnier about the hair gel I loved. Turns out it's not discontinued, only unavailable in my area.  They pointed me to drugstore.com, where I ordered 7 tubes because I'm not convinced.

2.  I think my formerly favourite TV show House has jumped the shark.

3.  Why are there so many cake-themed shows on TV? And why are they so bellicose? Cake is a dessert, people! No one should be battling, warring, building, or sweating and injuring themselves over cake!  Stop it immediately...I was going to say "before someone gets hurt" but it seems a bit disingenuous to say that now, doesn't it?  How pathetically ridiculous to take all the fun out of cake. What is next?  Will they ruin cotton candy and Nutella?  (OH MY GOD DON'T YOU DARE!)

4.  In my spare time, I worry about Richard Engel, Middle East correspondent for NBC Nightly News. First of all, is he adorable, or what? Great teeth, great hair, so well-spoken...but he has no regard for his personal safety!  He is constantly in a war zone, speaking Farsi to the locals and playing dodgeball with missiles and anti-aircraft fire.  (All the while looking fantastic and somehow cuddly and dashing at the same time.)  If he doesn't knock it the hell off, I am writing an impassioned letter to his mother.

Now then!  I think that will hold you all through Easter.  Or whatever you may--or may not--celebrate.  I'm going to have a lovely Break. Do take Some Time for yourselves, won't you?