stumbling through

thursday. cannot wait for the weekend, though a new mountain of grading looms before me. OGT practice tests. jekyll and hyde essay tests. so much for my brief respite. but at least i have dinner with the owp crew and a pomegranates show to look forward to.

so mbc (the school broadcast news magazine) ran their story on teacher's who blog, which seems to be just me. they had this lovely site on the screen several times. and in a strange twist, they had me saying that i don't like to publicize my blog while the whole time there was my blog on the screen. they didn't give the exact address, thank goodness, but enough of my students are bright enough to find it by the title, which could definitely be seen. so much for all the cursing i do here.

kidding. kidding.

i'll still be cursing.

kidding. kidding.

academic team (or as i like to call it, fun with smart people) had its first scrimmage yesterday against little miami. a bit intimidating - we walked into the band room with our nine students while their 50+ students (!) sat around eating pizza. but we soon proved that size does not matter. our varsity team annihilated their varsity team in both rounds, 72-27 and 73-38. and our JV did well - the first round ended in a tie, which we lost in overtime. and they were close in the second round. a couple questions here and there and the outcome could have been very different. i'm still frustrated that we miss so many literature questions, but then so did the other teams.

hilarious moment: the team is composed mostly of guys, and they give out what they call "man points" when they answer "manly" questions - sports, certain literature, etc. and they take away man points when you answer something "unmanly" - opera, show biz gossip, etc. so i was a little worried when we got to the fine arts section of the match and the topic was the top 100 romantic films of all time. i had to convince them they would not lose man points for answering. we got jerry maguire, but missed the toss up, much to my relief - the answer was the bridges of madison county, which was a bad book and a worse movie. bleah.

called tonight for an audition slot for cmt's beauty and the beast. figured i needed something to steal away all my time this spring, right? not sure what i should sing for the audition - my usual is "stars" from les mis, but i get the feeling it might be overused. trying to think of some other options - perhaps something from carousel or south pacific? unfortunately, i don't have sheet music for those. will have to see what i can scrounge up before monday at 9:00.

been doing some reading on reformed theology lately in response to some discussions i've had. now i'm a born and bred wesley-arminian, so of course i'm going to be biased. but i have major problems with much of what i've read so far from calvin. just the five points make me cringe. and then to hear how they are often interpreted and applied.... i truly appreciate the emphasis on the sovereignty of God, something desperately needed in most churches. but it seems such a hopeless way of viewing God and humankind. and i have a major problem with the idea that some are created just to be punished. that is not love. that is not grace.

enough blathering for now. feeling worn out tonight and am just needing to sit back and relax a bit. here's hoping i can actually do that.
Æ

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Now playing: Phil Keaggy - I Always Do
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about time

so today i was interviewed by the school tv for a special they're running on teachers who blog. so i suppose i should, you know, actually do some of that.

new trimester has started and i'm back to teaching sophomores, with one final class of seniors. i feel bad for my sophomores who took their summer reading test last week and are now being subjected to four days of practice ohio graduation tests. they are going to hate me by the time the week is over. but there's no way around it. though i'm not sure it's going to get much better for them this trimester. i'll be interested to see how the class goes with the new way of doing things. i'm going to have to find some ways to keep them - and me - from burning out.

so much to catch up on...guess i should explain the last post. the one about the beautiful girl. you probably should begin looking for signs of the apocalypse because the rumours are true: i am actually dating someone. i know, i can't believe it either. completely unexpected. probably won't be too many details here - i've never been good at sharing this kind of stuff. but she really is quite amazing. lovely. intelligent. surprising. and, unfortunately, far, far away. God's got a great sense of humour. so much for my wanting to get away from long distance relationships. been hard being this far apart, but we're trying to make it work. i got to spend thanksgiving with her, which was wonderful. nothing like nearly twelve hours in car.

(funny moment: we got stuck for over an hour in an accident on I-70 - ok, that's not so funny - but i turned off the car so i didn't waste gas. only... i forgot to turn off my lights. so my battery died. luckily, i figured it out before traffic started to move again, so i asked the over-sized pickup next to me if he could give me a jump and got her restarted before lifeflight flew away)

advent starts this coming sunday. hard to believe it's already here. not sure if anything special is going on or not. i hope so. we started meeting in st. e's again during st. e's, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. really is one of my favourite times of the church year.

ok, so the new coupland book arrived at my house today - only, it needed proof of delivery, so i have to go and try to pick it up at the post office tomorrow. grrr. hopefully it was worth the wait - i ordered the special box set from amazon.ca. was a little worried with all the fluctuations with the loonie and the dollar, but i still think it ended up cheaper ordering it from there - 40.03 canadian as opposed to the 60 dollars at amazon. com. good week for it to arrive, while i'm giving the practice OGT. will give me something to keep me occupied. that and the student teacher i have right now.

ok, time for sleep. hopefully i'll be able to get back into the swing of things here now that my end of the trimester grading hell is over. later.

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Now playing: Elvis - Vertigo
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