Insanity

Before I continue, let me make this disclaimer:

I am glad to have a job! For the most part, I love what I do, I love my students, and I am oh-so-glad to be employed.

That said, it is insane. At last count I had 240 students in 6 periods. I rarely work fewer than 10 hours a day and I'm still behind. It took 3 hours to grade a 10 point quiz because there were so many of them. I feel like I'm brand new at this. The only good thing is, I'm not the only one. All of the teachers in my school are working crazy hours. We're all behind on our grading. We're all feeling frazzled.

Not to mention we're having some major behavior problems we haven't had in the past. That couldn't possibly be linked to the fact that we're serving 100 more students this year than last with 1/3 fewer teachers, could it?

Needless to say, life is insanity. I also committed to stage managing The Laramie Project prior to being recalled to my job. It has been such an incredible experience but if I'd know then what I know I might not have done it. Eh, what am I saying, of course I would have! But I am looking forward to Saturday when the show closes and I can feel like I have some free time again.

catching up

Apologies for my prolonged absence. I'm working on finishing the college memories posts. I was going to wait until those were done to post this, but decided not to.

I got my job back. I know, right? In the midst of our economic crisis, when districts are cutting jobs like crazy, I managed to get my job back. I don't know all the details of how it happened, but I know this. The school board voted to add 27 teaching positions back to the schools. Our school got 2. I was one of the positions recalled. I also know my principal was working hard for weeks to get me back. I am now teaching drama full time. So not only was I rehired, but I'm full time instead of part time.

Things are crazy busy since everything is incredibly different, with bigger class sizes, longer terms and a completely different daily schedule. I now see the kids every day for 18 weeks instead of every other day for 12. Since I wasn't rehired until 2 weeks before school started, well, I've had a lot of work to do.

I've got a lot more going on in my life than that, but I'll post about it later. Now I need to get to bed.

College Memories #5: Whirlpools and Wheelchairs

The saying in the training room was that if you were never hurt as a high school athlete you'd spend all your time in the training room in college, and vice versa. I was one of the lucky ones who got to spend hours in the training room each week for therapy and treatment.

My catcher and I used to joke that we'd be in wheelchairs by the time we were 40. I have 12 years to go, and I'm not so sure we were wrong! We used to get in the whirlpools after games to help with the muscle pain. Sounds lovely, doesn't? Two close friends hanging out in the whirlpool after a game...

Yeah, well, it's not. In training room terms a whirlpool is an ice bath. Yes, an ice bath. You know which body parts I had to whirlpool? My hip flexer, hamstrings and lower back. Guess what that means? You guessed it - sitting in the stupid whirlpool with who knows how many pounds of ice swirling around. I'm surprised I still have all my toes.

College Memories #6: White Bouquet

Our sophomore year, Amy and I decided it would be good to have an air freshener for our room. I can't remember if she picked it up or if her mom did, but neither of them knew of my sensitivity to floral smells (as in, I can't stand them and they give me a headache). I thought it would be ok, but the Glade plug in was just too powerful for our little room, even on the lowest setting. So, being the smart college sophomores we were, we unplugged it and set it on the dresser.

Set it on the dresser, next to the stereo remote, not thinking about the fact that oil is viscous and permeates just about anything meant to hold it in...especially something meant to let the vapors out. Yeah, that's right, it leaked all over the place.

Our room reeked of White Bouquet, the offending odor, for weeks. Finally we got rid of it. Until one day....

Amy and I both snapped our heads up from our books. What was that smell. Could it be? No, it'd been months. But it was! Where was it coming from? Not our room...let's go, we'll figure it out.

And like Toucan Sam we followed our noses and found that people at the end of the floor had a plug in air freshener in - you guessed it - White Bouquet.

College Memories #7: Local Restaurants -or- The Only Place Open Past 9pm is Shari's

For a small town, Newberg had some decent restaurants. We had Lucky Fortune, the good and cheap Chinese place where a HUGE plate of whatever was somewhere around $6. Cancun, one of the best Mexican places around, was always a huge hit. Checkers, an awesome sandwich shop, opened during my junior or senior year. Underground was one of 3 awesome coffee shops off campus, and my favorite of the 3. Mocha Milkshakes rule! And of course we had Jem 100, the local ice cream shop and burger joint.

But when you start getting into "fine dining," the options are slim. Yamhill Grill was where everyone went when their parents went to town, and Shari's was the one place in town open past 9. We spent a lot of time at Shari's...a lot of time. Because all on campus housing had floor hours, and because Shari's was the only place open real late (that is, until Underground opened our junior year), it was not uncommon to head there around 11 or 12 pm and find several booths or tables filled with "mixed company" GFU groups. Man I drank a lot of coffee at Shari's!

College Memories #8: The Plagues

Freshman year we somehow managed to start a prank war with another floor. To be honest, I can't remember how it started. The part I remember the most is The Locusts.

Around 2 oclock in the morning, my roommate woke me up saying there were crickets in our room. I told her there weren't and to go back to sleep. She insisted they were in our room...and then I heard them. We turned on the light and found that there were many, many crickets or grasshoppers or whatever they were, in our room. Opening the door to the hallway revealed that several people had woken up to the same realization. We had been infested.

We found out that the boys with whom we'd been having a prank war managed to get into our dorm floor (they took the door to our hallway off the hinges!) and released 200 live crickets onto our floor. We were fighting those things for months.

Sadly, the boys weren't very smart. They forgot that their dorm and ours were connected by an underground hallway. The crickets traveled a lot throughout the year and had babies who traveled, who had babies who traveled. Not only were we fighting them, but all 3 floors of the 3 dorms connected by the underground hallways were fighting them - including the floor that introduced them to our dorm!

College Memories #9: What Really Went on in the Theatre

The theatre was a bizarre place, to be sure. A lot of very strange things went on there. Some of the highlights...

• During a camping trip for Quilters so that the cast could get an idea of what the pioneer women went through, one female member awoke to find the arms of a male crew member wrapped around her. In his sleep, he mistook K for his wife!
• Many of us had blankets and slippers stored in a room in the theatre.
• For a theatre major, there was no better place to sleep than in Wood-Mar. Nice and dark, quiet, and only other theatre majors could get in!
• As other techies know, rehearsals get real old real fast for tech crew. Singing "YMCA" during tender moments or mocking the lines of a show was standard fare.
• I spent many an evening reading by aisle light during rehearsal. Ah, the joys of trying to stay on top of academics during hell week!
• Somewhere around here I have a picture of me in a hawaiian shirt dancing with a glow stick. 'Nuff said.
• Initiation. After a show, all the newbies get to be Retarded Earthworms. During strike, we'd head out for pizza and a shrimp pizza was ordered. All newbies had to eat a piece. Some cried, some cringed, I dug right in! No on liked initiating me since shrimp is my favorite pizza topping!