A Waste of Webspace

Given that I blog, I often wonder if any of my students also blog. A fellow teacher pointed me out to www.myspace.com. It's a free site where anyone can sign up for space, just like Blogger.com.

While browsing through MySpace, I've seen that it's become a dumping ground for teenage personals. I've seen a couple of my students on there, but they don't keep a regular blog. The only things they post are their stats and the latest quizzes they've taken.

I would really like to read some teenage blogs, especially from my students. They don't think I'm technology savvy, and oh, how I would love to email the URLs of their personal want ads to their parents. Many of my students answered to the affirmative when asked about drinking, and there's a profuse amount of profanity in their introductions alone. Like a potty mouth is attractive? What is up with this generation?

Wallflower

I went out and tried swing dancing. Although I'm a beginner and it was intimidating to go out on a dance floor with experienced dancers, the best way to learn is to get your feet wet. I spent the majority of the evening sitting and watching other people's foot patterns. I did dance, and I think I did okay. I danced with four older men, but I think they were the best partners. They were patient enough to teach me new things, like in a fatherly way. From what I've seen, a lot of the young men like to dance fast. I'm not ready for that yet.

To sum it up: it was fun.

Artistic Inspiration

I've just realized that this summer was my first official summer vacation--sort of. When I think about the past summer vacations I've had in the past, I was always taking a summer course to catch upon professional development or teaching summer school. Although I had conferences this summer, it didn't dominate 2/3 of my summer.

I actually had a lot of free time this season, so lately, I've been inspired to pursue my artistic and creative whims; hence my swing dancing lessons. Next up... possibly guitar lessons? I'm itching for the school year to start, so I can figure out my schedule of free nights to rendezvous with Apollo.

Work Is Fun

I am attending a conference this week on training teachers how to use their newly district-adopted textbook. If you think your taxes are being wasted on such a training, believe me, we teachers thought it was a waste of our time. But as we trudged through the first day, some of the stuff is really interesting. Since our school is switching textbooks, there's so much supplementary stuff and technology that's integrated with the textbook that it's no wonder why we have to be retrained or introduced to all this material. But I digress...

Many of the teachers are from my district, and about half the class is from my school and from my department. We're livening up the class with inside jokes, snarky remarks directed at each other, and other snide comments to make this conference a bit more jovial. We couldn't stop laughing. This conference is going to be fun if we keep this up all week.

It's moments like these when I realize that I work with a cool bunch of people and that I genuinely like my coworkers.

New Circles

Upon coming home from dance lesson this evening, a strange man called out to me--by name! For some reason, I wasn't too freaked out about it. The residents at the apartment complex I moved into all seem to be quite acquainted with one another. Unlike my former apartment complex, everyone pretty much stuck to themselves; individuals holing themselves up in their individual units. Anyway, this stranger called me out by name and waved hello. I wasn't surprised that he knew my name; word traveled fast that a new tenant moved into the empty apartment, so I waved back without knowing his name.

Right after I had just publised the previous post, there was a knock on my front door. At 9:40pm, I should be freaking out, but I wasn't. In fact, I thought it was all noise that my sister was making because she's still settling into her room. I didn't answer the door right away, but then I heard someone calling out my name again. I opened up the door and found two men at my doorstep, both of them were neighbors, and one of them I had already met. They were inviting me and my sister to go to a bar with them.

Mother never told me to go out with strange men, but I wanted to get to know my neighbors. My sister refused since she had to work early in the morning, but I was game. The three of us went to a local bar, which took me by surprise because I didn't expect to see such a homey pub behind the door of what looked like a hole-in-the-wall dive bar. There were lots of young people my age--again, something I didn't expect from such a neighborhood known for its historic sites and posh restaurants.

My neighbors and I had enlightening and intellectual conversations. One is an English teacher, so we talked about books and our jobs. The other is a writer for the local newspaper, so conversations varied from the mundane to poker. The funniest thing they ever said was their commentary on tattoos on girls' lower backs. They asked my opinion, and I thought they were just a trend; they are so common that it's not a fashionable statement. Then one of the guys said, " They're like a whorebrand. You know how they brand cattle?" Although it was just a humorous remark, both gentlemen find tattoos on that particular spot on women to be a turn-off. And as every young woman passed by with camisoles and low-rise pants, it was depressing for them, yet we'd laugh it off because we'd think of branded cows.

I had a good time with them. It was totally unexpected that I would be socializing with strange men at a late hour and actually having fun. Mr. Reporter, being a poker fanatic, invited me to play poker tomorrow night. I haven't played in a while, so I'm game for that. It's kind of nice to start actually socializing with neighbors again. It feels like I'm rebuilding a new community of my own, adapting to a new niche, like hitting a "jackpot." I like it here.

New Hobby

I've been taking swing dancing lessons. Tonight was the third lesson. I really like it, and it's really fun. But I'm not practicing as much, only when I have lessons. As my instructor says, I should go out dancing socially to start practicing and getting used to other partners so I won't get used to dancing one way. I'm afraid of going out alone. Another girl tried going out dancing and some strange partner wanted to throw her and she threw out her back because she didn't expect it. I don't want that to happen to me. So, a group of us beginners are thinking of going together as a group. Safety and support in numbers...

Where Was I?

I finally got cable again... I'm back in the land of mainstream pop culture with reruns of "The Real World," non-stop geek activity at the Sci-Fi Channel, and artsy BBC shows on Bravo, A&E, and BBC America. I can finally start recording educational tidbits on the History Channel if there's something good for the classroom.

I have TV again!

So the first thing I see on Sci-Fi was a rerun of "The X Files," in which the lovely Mulder and Scully are on their happy way to solving another paranormal whatever. In the last five minutes of the show, Mulder and Scully are watching New York City's bash to ring in the New Year, at which point--Mulder kisses Scully!

Where was I? Why haven't I ever seen this episode!? They kissed! OMG!!!!

This is my repressed excitement rearing its ugly head after a five year delay!

Moving

I moved again. What a tiresome chore! The laborious part is actually unpacking and organizing all the little things, whether they are ornaments or the daily necessities of life. The new place doesn't have air conditioning either. There are days when the rooms feel like a sauna, but I need to sweat. I haven't sweated this much since high school P.E. I feel like all this is a workout.

Off tangent: an old roommate used to say to me that "girls don't sweat; they glisten."