Nice TIMing

Thought this was a cool pic taken by a cool guy.

He made a funny.

The most (only) rewarding part of my job is when I can laugh at/with my students. But there is one student who never laughs. He has Asperger's (often classified as a form of autism). So while he's a walking dictionary, he doesn't "get" how to interact with others. He's socially awkward, but he desperately wants a girlfriend.

He has a lot of anxiety, and he often yells and slams his books around when he is stressed. Any time I ask everyone to hand in homework, or assign it, he freaks. Since I'm rather softspoken and am put off by any sort of tempramental outbursts, his behavior is unsettling to me. I always make sure I go over everything with him, and he always calms down once I explain the change in his routine. It's hard not to adore him, knowing that his family didn't know what to do with him and stuck him in a school for non-native English speakers because he was so withdrawn. He wasn't properly diagnosed until last year. Being a teenager is hard enough, I can't imagine what it's been like for him.

I love that he's incapable of lying and he refreshingly lacks the ability to suck up to me. He doesn't understand sarcasm, so some of my best material is lost on him. (Oddly enough, sarcasm is classified as corporal punishment, which is legal in my state, but illegal in my school district. I think it's a form of humor that encourages a higher form of thinking, and keeps me from having to repeat directions 7million times.)

So yesterday he actually laughed. A real, genuine laugh. First time. I had asked everyone to take out a piece of paper and a pen for their test and to put everything else on the floor. He took his paper and pen and put them under his chair. I braced myself for the impending outburst, but he started laughing. He said, "well you said to take everything off the desk!" I gave everyone that sits at his table the you'd-better-laugh-and-make-this-kid-feel-accepted-for-a-split-second look, and they forced out some giggles. Since I don't think he understands disingenuousness, I think it was the right thing to do. Maybe it's not so bad to only see others as comletely sincere.

Tools with small tools weekend.

It's super car weekend! This means that the idiots will be out in full force tonight. I will have to join them. Pics are from i7's photobucket, and that one cracks me up.

Funny Obama Stuff

Thanks, Lawless!

This also cracked me up. The Mariner is so pissed.

Open Hizzy

So someone handed me the walkie talkie and I handed it off to someone else (duh). I guess the volume was turned all the way up. So when someone started talking on it, it scared everyone in the non-airconditioned cafeteria, especially my partner who was so startled that she dropped it and her flag. Which wouldn't have been a big deal, if the flag didn't actually consist of a yard stick with a huge piece of cardboard attached to it. I started laughing.

Then we had a really cool "producer" talk to the parents. He had a Led Zeppelin tattoo on his forearm. He must not be aware of a thing called imdb.com, which verified that he was lying about all of his credentials.

So that was my Sunday.

Back to the Grizzind.

The first week back at school was pretty brutal. I was operating on about 4 hours of sleep per night due to my unhealthy approach to holiday break. There were also some mildly amusing things that happened at work:

1) Staff meeting--semi-stable teacher sits down next to me with a gold gift bag. I joke to my other friend that it's probably full of drugs. So then, I have to look in it. It's filled with a banana and every kind of diet pill under the sun. She spends the meeting devoting equal time to sketching her wedding dress for her pending nuptials, and getting up randomly while people are talking so that she can use a computer.

2) We are having Open House tours today, so we had another meeting to figure out how to corral 600 parents and then give them a tour. About 4 buildings make up our campus. Each member of the math department was drawing maps (to scale) and was fretting over how we were going to walk from one building to the next. Then we were informed that we'd have walkie talkies. Chaos broke out.

3) Some famous writer/producer showed up at school in his yellow Lambo. Taking up two parking spots, of course. Looked like a total slob and gave me the creeps. I will add more, as I'm sure this story will develop.

Not much else is going on. I took it easy this weekend and stayed in both nights. Went surfing on Friday night and Saturday afternoon.

2008: Fail.

Happy New Year! Sorry I couldn't post over my looong vacation, but I was too busy watching "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" on hulu.com.

I decided that I would make a resolution this year: no artists in '09. That lasted about thirty minutes past midnight. But, in my defense, it was a guy I dated three years ago. So that wasn't a new artist. I am not a complete failure.

I wrapped up '08 with a nice sunset session on the log. I just wanted to relax on the little waves all by myself. Maybe talk to Kris. Make some decisions about leaving Margaritaville. But nooooo, this stupid SUP'er kept back paddling me. Now, there are many problems with SUP'ers, but what really frosted me what that he made so much noise. It was really quiet, no one else was out, I was enjoying the solitude, and here he is splashing all around with his oar and falling off his board even though it was almost flat.

Then I almost stayed in, but my neighbors' fireworks display ensured that I wouldn't be able to sleep, so I went to a party. I gave the host a bottle of champagne. Then I walked around looking for other opened bottles, saw none, went back and grabbed my gift and started drinking it. Classy. I'd say the high point was that one of my friends had the Valentino heels that I've been coveting for weeks. Also, at the end of the night they played Lil Wayne's "Mrs. Officer." Luckily I was too drunk to find my phone and drunk-dial Carey.

Does anyone else feel that getting group text messages about holidays is more insulting than getting no text at all?

Work: Not a very auspicious start

Class began after break and I grabbed one of the dry erase erasers and started fiddling with it while I talked to the kids. Noticing I got marker flakes all over my hands I had the brilliant idea to use the dry erase spray to get the junk off of my hands. So then that turned into my hands turning black and I had to somehow play it off like nothing was wrong.

Oh, and our principal went on sabbatical for the rest of the year. Which is odd, b/c I really don't know what research he's doing.