My cooperating teacher has a sub in, so I’m basically doing pretty much everything. Cool.

Today’s lesson went OK; the kids were a bit squirrelly and excited. I think if I had it to do over, I’d have them take notes on some kind of data sheet during the discussing, to focus them a little bit.

On the bad side, I’m doing all this on, best estimate, four and a half, maybe five, hours of sleep: the magazine staff meeting last night tended toward the explosive, and ran late, so by the time I could sleep it was after 2 AM, and I start on waking up at 6 (but because of a random 2-hour delay, I got the equivalent of another hour or so, yippee). And I need to clean out my car tonight, since I’m sure it’s my turn to drive to class in Portland…and dump a quart of oil in it…and do a bit of homework tonight…and hopefully get some writing in. So, no catching up for me. Which SUCKS: I’m probably going to be carrying this sleep debt until this Saturday, when I’ve got to take the ESOL Praxis. At least it’s session 2, not session 1, so my reporting time is around 10 instead of around 7.

Finish unit by deadline. Including giving kids enough time to do the post-test. Even though I took two days off because of talking like a cartoon character, basically lost yesterday and today because of taking a half leave day and needing to keep the classes on the same schedule and get them to start actually writing the persuasive paper that I assigned…oh…two weeks ago? And even though I started out behind schedule because of getting practically nothing done over winter break, and the pre-test dragging on and on and ooooonnnnn…

And start my job search…in what time, exactly?

And not a lot of fighting to get them out, either, though I kept getting interrupted.

And nary a hiccup in the upgrade!

Plus I got a really cool line written down, without sticking it in the “scraps to put in order” file. I’ve relied way too much on that file in the last few years.

Of all the random-butt things, my doormat apparently got stolen last night or yesterday. Street value: probably about $3. I think it was under $5 two years ago and it’s been, well, walked on since then. Annoying, because this is going to lead to shopping. At Volde-Mart, even, because I want to see if I can match it, so that I don’t have to actually pick a new one. Ugh.

With the same car insurance company. So my monthly rate’s dropping to $46.83 instead of $55 (gee, I somehow thought it was higher than that–I guess it’s been that long since I paid any attention; started out between $70 and $80 IIRC), as of March…OK, having an old car helps too. And getting that one speeding ticket two years ago dismissed; now that would’ve made things unpleasant.

Anyway, yay for getting some perks for being responsible and stuff.

I just decided against the spring break job search trip…I just couldn’t get job fair listings to line up in a way that’d make it really worth a plane ticket. Maybe I’ll find one that’s close enough to friends to justify a plane ticket for one job fair on grounds of trying for 2% of a life, over the two weeks off, or whatever, before summer term…but spring term, I need to be able to focus on my middle school math work sample. At least I’ll probably be mostly ripping it from the curriculum.

I still might renew my youth hostel membership and go out to the coast for three or four days, or something. I could use a few days to relax, focus, all that. Downside: Spring Break people. Maybe I’ll make it earlier in the break or something. Or maybe I’ll just do it anyway.

No, not the Oregon Vortex or anything cool like that…the family vortex. I went over for a couple hours, maybe a couple hours plus crashing there so I wouldn’t have to drive back late…and got back a couple days later. The cats were hungry, feedbag ran empty–plus they went totally psycho on a bag of kitty treats that they found. I can’t be mad at them, since it was my fault for letting the feedbag run empty for too long, but it’s funny how shredded the bag is. Pic to follow shortly, I think. Squirrel was extra-skitty, too…even Panther was, a little. They’ve calmed down a LOT overnight.

Today, I felt cruddy enough in the morning to call in. Mostly congestion. Little bit of a sore throat. Headache and stuff, of course. Much unpleasantness…

I know exactly where all but one of them is; I haven’t started covering the last-page material yet, so I haven’t thrown off my baseline, I don’t think. The regular kids’ scores run up to about 10% or 15%, the TAG kids’ scores cluster around 30% with one outlier at 75%. Running average is 14.26% right now. I definitely didn’t make it too easy, but I’m going to have to do some heavy differentiation for the 50% and 75% scores. And some of the 0% scores…

Make sure the right test scores are punched into the right line.

Make make-up packets and keep track of which kids are doing them.

Make “science folders” because I’m generating too much paperwork to have them stick it all in their homework folders.

Make a checklist of what they’re supposed to do, and have them keep it in their science folders…and a report card kind of thing…

I’M LOSING MY MIND!!!! But that’s OK, I’ll figure it out.