Debbie has a fantastic comic/column about freelance writing. It updates every Wednesday (which means there’s a new one today!), and it’s great stuff. Check it out!

Will Write for Chocolate

January has been an abysmal month for substitute teaching, at least for me. (Meaning that it has been DRY.) I already have three jobs lined up for the first two weeks of February, though. Woohoo!

I spent today doing some business-y things…ordering business cards, took another step toward getting my “professional” website going. Teaching, writing, and calligraphy services. I’ll keep you posted on my progress. Oh, and if I can bug you about design stuff, give me a holler. 😉

Oh, and thanks to all the technonerds who posted in response to my plea for help. Since I do not have the computers networked (and don’t even have wireless internet at my apartment), I decided to transfer the files I wanted with a jump drive. That took longer than I wanted it to, but was relatively painless.

As promised, here’s some more about our weekend in Cleveland…Jen already posted about it.

Anyway, it was great to see Jen, Tim and baby Jacob (cutest. baby. ever. of course, I say that about all my friends’ babies. but it’s always true!) and the rest of Jen’s wonderful family. This weekend was just about spending time together, hanging out, playing games and generally having a good time.

Please check out Jen’s website, Design Your Beads. She makes beautiful jewelry, and purchases benefit cancer research.

Oh, and my new most favorite game ever? Catch Phrase. We had WAY too much fun playing this. My face hurt from all the laughing.

And finally, thank you Jen, for making sure the jumbo music block songs didn’t leave my head!

So that’s a big ‘yay!” to spending time with friends. 🙂

By far the best entry in the 50 Most Loathsome People 2005 list:

16. R Kelly

Charges: As if videotaping himself urinating on an underage girl wasn�t bad enough, Kelly decided to follow up by inflicting the worst piece of music in American history upon the public consciousness. Kelly claims he is a genius for squeezing out what are so far 12 installments of his �hip hopera,� �Trapped in the Closet� like so many virtually identical turds, with no variation in musical content and a story line so patently terrible that it soon became the subject of a parody-frenzy involving Saturday Night Live, South Park, Mad TV, Jimmy Kimmel, and the Upright Citizens brigade, among many others. Even his good songs all seem to be about fucking underage girls.

Exhibit A: Seriously�pissing on an underage girl.

Sentence: Trapped in a closet. Eventually dies of thirst.

Details on fun weekend in Cleveland to come…

But first, tell me what you would pay for something like this:

(a hand-lettered, personalized wedding gift, the couple’s song in calligrapy with their names and wedding date)

Click on the photo to see a larger view.

(photo posted at Carol’s rememberance page)

This is my grandma. Here’s a link to the post I wrote last year.

I can’t believe it’s been five years.

And as I wrote last year…I still miss her. We all do.

So since Dannon has gone away from the plastic lids, every single time I’ve opened a yogurt, I’ve torn the foil top while tearing it off. Sometimes in half, sometimes in thirds. I end up peeling a strip down the middle and having to pull off the sides.

Rand laughed at me.

“That has never happened to me. Ever.”

Oh, and then there was this exchange:

Me: Does the yogurt ever spit at you when you open it?

Rand: Spit?

Me: Yeah. When you open it, the air forces some of the yogurt out. It happens to me at work a lot. I get yogurt on my clothes.

Rand: I wasn’t even aware that was something that could happen.

Me: *sigh*

So apparently, I’m in a battle with yogurt, and so far, I’m losing.

Had a great time at Buffalo BloggerCon II (although Rand says if you don’t pay $60 to get in and stay at a hotel, it’s not a convention. Feh. ;))

I’ve updated my blogroll. People I’ve met in real life are in all caps. If I’ve forgotten you, please speak up!

I’ll link to Alan and Jen’s much more detailed reports, because I’m lazy like that.

It was great to finally meet Kelly, and very cool to meet up with Kevin and his wife Val. (Kevin, you seem much, much happier than you did when I last saw you!)

So, a good time was had by all. If you didn’t make it out to this one, we hope to see you at the next one!

So I’ve got a bunch of music on my home desktop PC…much of which I no longer own in physical form. Is there an easy way to transfer this music to my laptop (a Mac)? By “easy”, I mean other than using iTunes to burn it all to audio CD and then ripping it to my laptop.

Super Sub!

Heh.

So last week, I was in a high school English class. The teacher was sick and had been out the day before as well. She had left a message for me to call her when I got in.

She had a collaborating teacher who knew what to do for three of the classes. One class was a small group elective class. It was the last class-a class of freshmen-that she thought I might have trouble with.

“Don’t be afraid to send them out of the classroom if you have to,” she told me. “We haven’t had a sub in here, even the most experienced ones, who haven’t had to send at least one out. If they give you any trouble, just call the office.”

They were studying Romeo and Juliet. She’d had them watching the movie (the newer Baz Luhrmann version), and said that I could have them finish that and then have them start watching the older version.

I was warned that the previous day, it appeared that someone in the room had an electronic device that was controlling the VCR.

The teacher gave me a couple of suggestions about what to do with them, lesson-wise, and said she’d leave it up to me.

I spent all my free time that morning figuring out what to do with them. I decided to try a lesson I had used in one of my teaching classes, but never used in a “real” classroom; we’d watch the suicide scenes in both movies, the students would keep track of similarities and differences using a chart, and at the end, they’d be asked to answer several questions about what they watched.

As a classroom management tactic, I stole something I saw a veteran sub do at another school…I had them write their names on a square of paper. I began by setting out my “rules” for the day. I explained that if anyone broke these rules, I would take their paper and leave a note on the back for their teacher. Any second infractions would result in a call to the office.

Most of the class passed without incident. Toward the end of the period, one student seemed to be arguing with someone across the room. He stood up, basically challenging the other student, swearing. I walked over to him.

“Would you like to sit down and be quiet?”

“No.”

I asked him to give me his paper, which he did, and then sat down and didn’t say anything for the rest of the class.

Which I made it through without having to call the office. Yay, me!

I worked the next day at my “good” school, where I was teaching seniors. Again, we were watching a video. Most of them were fine. One class, though, had the behavior of eighth graders. They even threw a paper airplane. I picked it up, threw it away, and said, “I don’t want to hear anyone’s voice for the rest of this class.”

And I didn’t.

In other teaching adventures, my classes at the community college started yesterday. It’s going to be a challenging semester. I’ve got one section of 099 (the remedial class) and one section of 101. In each class, I have two ESL students. In my 101 class, I have a girl who failed my class last semester. That should be fun…but I also have three students who were in my 099 class last semester and signed up for my section because they wanted me!

Speaking of last semester’s 099 class…I don’t think I mentioned this yet…all but two of them passed. One of them failed because he got caught plagiarizing on the final. *sigh* (this was the student with Asperger’s Syndrome)

Don’t forget to check out my other blog!

Over at my other blog:

The Places I Go

Also, Jen’s been posting over at the 27 Chronicles. (if I’m not mistaken, I have one that’s overdue for posting…sorry about that!)