Though he says it's now or never, he'll wait forever...
Ladies and Gentleman, your clever inversion of an Elvis Costello Lyric!! That's right, he who was Imus before Imus was Imus has been the Main Attraction in the CD Player / iTunes this week, so I thought I'd kick things off with a lyric apropos. You know, what with my whole stick in the mud approach to career decisions. Yikes.
Alright, week in review... Monday night the Beck and I go tin another dance lesson, this time incorporating a spin into our promenade. Ooh la la, indeed. It was fun but frustrating as we were both pretty friggin' tired. Tuesday... ugh, Tuesday. I had given my students a Quiz is Pop (Yeah Yeah) on Monday, so they were not thrilled to see me on Tuesday - in an act of revenge, I made them watch a lecture series video on evolution. And they complained and complained, and they were right - hella boring. But informative. Whatever. It just set the tone for a drawn out day of tutoring and blah. I eventually made it home to the Beck who had been obsessively watching Dancing with the Stars on the internet all day. What the World Needs Now is another drawn out faux reality results show(and apparently that's now what we'll be doing on Tuesday nights) like I Need a Hole in My Head. I went for a run and started to watch a little baseball when I learned via the fantasy baseball board that the Tufts Emen Ultimate team was going to be playing LIVE online that night. Wahoo! It was pretty sweet to watch Ultimate live on the computadora, even if it is one of the worse spectator sports out there. The commentators, for instance, are constantly mumbling "I think there's some sort of call on the filed..." Anyhoo, the Emen won and are headed to Regionals. Exciting times. Here's a clip of Emen superstar of years past Rob Spies for your enjoyment:
Wednesday was a crusher. Get ready for a bunch of "And thens." To start, more of the usual, school-wise: class in the morning; we continued a video on the history of AIDS. And things just slowly got crappy from that point forward. Horrendous tutoring session with one of my students; he just COULD NOT get nondisjunction and other concepts of meiosis. Painful. Then I had a meeting with my advisees and told them about Arizona next year; most of them took it well but a couple were actually upset. And then some of my other former students (Grace, Sophie, Tory) stopped by and I told them, too, and they were very upset. A bad vibe all around. And then one of my tutees stopped by, one whom I'm sure I've mentioned before who I've been working with all year on chemistry and math and have occasionally served as faux counselor for, dropped by to cancel her appointment and tell me she would now be working with another tutor. I essentially got fired by a 16 year old for no discernible reason other than it was more convenient for her to tutor with someone who lives closer. I understand, and on paper it's no big deal, but the complete absence of any commentary from the parents and the sudden shutoff were not great. And then... one of my advisees parents called and asked me all about his college application process, and I only remembered about halfway through that his parents were bitterly divorced, he was emancipated from her and this was essentially a manipulative lady trying to get info behind her son's back. AWESOME! And then... the kicker was that the day ended with a faculty meeting that was completely focused on contract holds , which essentially means debating which kids were and were not going to get kicked out. Rife with tension and an overall air of childish bickering. People going to bat for kids and all semblance of any kind of unified (academic and artwise) school vision just vanished. Just a crappy and overly emotional end to the day. The final and then is that my afternoon tutoring client flaked on me - thankfully, this time I called her house before driving all the way out there.
SO the and thens stopped, and I called Beck - she and Ali were apartment hunting in the Gringoat's new city of residence, Providence, RI. We decided that based on a long day for everyone and a bad day for me that Bertucci's was in the offing. Hells yeah. It took a while for the ladyfolk to get back from P-town, but when they did I drove over to ALi's to meet them and we in turn drove to Bertucci's to wait for Ben.
Separate paragraph: the PGoat was on fire Wednesday night. She had decided to wear a top with what must have been a solar eclipse in the front. I wouldn't know, because I wasn't looking, but Beck kept interrupting Ben's stories at the restaurant by shouting "Ali, your solar eclipse is falling out of your shirt," which inevitably drew Ben's attention. But he was smart and only quickly glanced at the solar eclipse and then looked away, just like you're supposed to. Ali seemed moderately embarrassed about her overflowing solar eclipse. Beck then pointed out that Ben shouldn't be so excited because he gets to see solar eclipses all the time. I found this entire conversation very confusing. Ali later upped the ante by doing an impression of our friend Richard Johnson, complete with facial expressions and dancing and a threat to spit various liquids. And lest I forget, on the car ride over, Ali sifted through some of the "essays" written by my students and read them in her most theatrical voice. Let me just say that if you thought the Robster was funny, well, you have no appreciation of relative comedy scales. Ali's rendition of my student-who-shall-remain-nameless's essay on her ideal evolutionary animal will not be topped on any comedy scale any time soon. Hi-larious, and only mildly demeaning to the student who wrote it.
In seriousness, though, Ali was very sweet in asking about the crapitude of my day and the general crapitudes of teaching, and I appreciated it. beck of course made things much brighter as well. Ben rolled in a bit late and told us a sweet story of "Don" (whose real name was Mark), a adidas track-suited gold chain wearing mafioso type in Providence with not-so-subtle racial opinions. Ask him about it sometime, as I cannot hope to replicate it, but let's just say that all those New Jersey gangster stereotypes that you would think are too stupid to possibly exist in real life? They do. And Ben and Ali's mom met one. Named "Don."
We took a rain check on S&S (which i will cash tonight, dammit) and called it a night. Thursday (left the house at 6:40, didn't really get back until 9 because of various tutoring duties) was nowhere near as exciting, except that the Beck and I finished the Lost episode from Wednesday. this week, I only lost 12 IQ points, so things must be looking up. I drove in to work on Friday to give my class and then noted that my schedule of appointments / meetings and such had been canceled due to school assemblies and/or the prom that night, so I drove home through a ridiculous rainstorm - no Friday PM Cognex Ultimate for me. :(. But I chilled at home, finished The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Don't worry, a timely review is coming. Beck got home after a jaunt to the baies R Us stores - Sarah aka "Mound Plus" is having a shower this weekend, so there is now a bevy of (surprise presents) in our home. Beck and I chilled for the remainder of the afternoon, took a nap, and played a sweet game called Blockus at night. I am sure marital bliss is going to change our pattern extraordinarily.
I kid, I kid.
A little bit of tutoring this morning (calculus and then bio) and then it's back to a sea of NHL and NBA playoffs and baseball this PM. Maybe we will have more fun with Solar Eclipse and the Astronomer and Saviour Mound Plus tonight; who knows. But one thing is for sure, there will be scoops, swirls and inappropriate cursing at children involved, and not necessarily in that order.
More posts coming today, i swear.
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