Hot off the presses & Hot under the collar

Every once in while I get a glimmer–and not the good kind of glimmer–of the type of stuff administrators deal with concerning the teaching staff. This usually occurs when the school newspaper comes out and someONE isn’t happy about someTHING.

This time the someONE happens to be the Ag department and the someTHING happens to be Pizza Andy’s column. His column concerned a recent election in which voters approved a bond to build a new facility for the Ag department, but nixed money to build a new high school and to buy more school land. In that same election, the community also went from dry to wet allowing beer and wine sales.

So enter Pizza Andy writing a satirical column about the entire matter. In his column, he referred to the new facility as an Ag Barn.

Yes, Ag Barn.

I heard that the peeps over at the Ag Department were not happy campers. “It’s not an Ag Barn,” they say. “It’s an ‘Agricultural Science and Education Facility.’”

And to that, all I’ve got to say is, “An Ag Barn by any other name would smell as…”

Tag! You’re It!

OK, OK, OK I’m new at this and I’ve been tagged and I’m assuming that’s a good thing. Got tagged by my new buddy Clix over at Epic Adventures Are Often Uncomfortable. So if I mess this up, cut me some slack. Hmmm, I’m, supposed to post the rules so here you go…

The rules are:

- Link to the person that tagged you and post the rules on your blog.
- Share 7 random and or weird things about yourself.
- Tag 7 random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
- Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Seven weird or random things about me...

#1… I camped outside the Cotton Bowl in Dallas to see the Rolling Stones. (I’ve seen them three times.)
#2… I actually saw Led Zeppelin in the 70s when we were all quite a bit younger.
#3… I knew my husband of almost 25 years about two weeks before we got engaged. We got married six months later.
#4… I have a tiara in my classroom (which I wear from time to time), then there’s Stevie the Penguin (and no, Clix you may not add him to your collection). Then, of course, there’s the chicken I use as a pointer…
#5… At journalism competitions, I compulsively add up the number of awards we win and compare them against the number our competition wins. Twisted, I know.
#6… I’m half-Italian and half-Polish. My mom’s parents immigrated from Italy and my dad’s parents immigrated from Poland in the 1920s. I make a mean lasagna.
#7… I am cosmetology-impaired. Much to my daughters’ horror, I cannot fix hair neither theirs when they were little nor mine now. Never have been able to. Never really cared (about mine), but apparently I’m supposed to. Sigh.

OK, now here are my 7 random tags… I hope they all got “plays well with others” on their report cards and don’t mind playing… If they do mind, well, sorry… Shadowhelm’s Journal, Mr. Teacher, Mike, Matt-a-matical, Assorted Stuff, Joel at So You Want To Teach and HipTeacher

Education Carnival

Hey folks, the Carnival of Education is out and is over at the Colossus of Rhodey. Make sure you check it out. Always lots of great stuff to peruse.

Deadlines, Counting & Playlists

Well folks, I am, once again, a deadline survivor.

Newspaper deadline that is.

Yearbook, sadly, is still on-going. sigh.

I had a friend once. (OK, so I’ve had more than one friend. OK, maybe four. And, OK, it’s been more than once.)

So, I had a friend once who asked, “Just how many newspaper deadlines have you completed? Have you ever counted them up?”

“Well, mercy no,” I replied, “that might be way too depressing.”

At that point I pondered scratching him off my list of friends or at least moving him down on my MySpace hierarchy of friends–as if I had a MySpace page. As if.

Nonetheless, that thought (no, not the MySpace thing, the how many deadlines thing) has been banging around my head for quite a while now, but numbers make my head hurt, so I’ve never bothered to do the math. (You may recall that I consider myself somewhat math-challenged which is why I occasionally go and take a peek at Matt-a-matical Thinking’s blog just so I can pretend that numbers and me are tight. Yeah right.)

So let’s figure it out now… hmmm 21 years of teaching… an average of about 7 newspapers each year… between 12 and 16 pages, but none traveling on Train A that leaves the station at noon and heads north at 125 mph… Let’s see…the answer, of course, would be 147. Now, that doesn’t include all those marvelous yearbook deadlines… Just the thought of those nasty critters makes my head explode. (I’m going to quit counting now because I’ve developed a twitch in my right eye. Jeez.)

Let’s get back to the survivor thing. I am a deadline survivor (although I’m not sure I like this kind of survival). Having survived at least 147 deadlines, I got to wondering what the perfect deadline playlist would look like (as if I actually had an iPod in which to download one).

So, whomp, there it is–and if that doesn’t date me a bit, then what in tarnation will?

Here’s my Top 5 for the playlist…

#5 Loser 3:56 Beck Mellow Gold

#4 Deadline 4:27 Blue Oyster Cult Cultosaurus Erectus

#3 Hello Stupid 1:54 Slick Shoes Far from Nowhere

#2 Dazed & Confused 6:26 Led Zeppelin Mothership

And, of course, drum roll pah-leese, the No. 1 song (as if it’s a surprise)…

#1 Take This Job & Shove It 2:41 Johnny Paycheck All-time Greatest Hits

148th Carnival of Education

The new Carnival of Education is out. I haven’t had a chance to look through all the entries because it’s like zero past dark thirty in the morning (that’s 5:30 in the a.m.), but one caught my eye right away. You know how fond I am of stick figures so you must check out Scott Walker’s entry. (For those of you computer challenged, just click on the cartoons and they’ll pop up so you can read them.) I’ll get to all the others later today. In the meantime, pop over to So You Want To Teach and see the other carnival entries. It’s well worth the stop. I was lucky enough to be included in this week’s carnival with my post “Detoxing, eBay & Dumber Me,” but you don’t need to go there to read it here.

Mike, Proper Photos & Me

I must give props to my photo buddy and professional photographer Mike McLean who is a big fan of this blog. He decided I needed a “proper” portrait on my blog in my “About Me” section. (Geewillikers, I guess the feather boa photo was a bit much for him.) At any rate, Mike took some photos of me while listening to a gazillion “Am-I-Going-To-Break-Your-Camera jokes.” Still he managed to squeeze out a fan-ta-bu-lous photograph. (“It’s all in the lighting,” he says. And, I say, “Yeah, right.” But I must also say, that boy is a miracle worker.”) So flip on over to the About Me section for a brand new me and then go check out his home page. He’s unbelievable. [Note: I removed the photo from the About Me section because it keep following me around when I would post on someone’s blog, and I found that rather annoying. Now, it’s just on my blog below the boa photo.]

Detoxing, eBay and Dumber Me

I should be grading that stack of photo contact sheets stashed in my blue book bag.

I should be proofing yearbook pages, but I didn’t have the heart to cart them home.

I should be reading my journalism classes sad stack of editorials.

Instead, I’m drinking Long Life organic decaffeinated green tea and munching on organic ginger snaps in an effort to detox the stupid from me and prevent my head from exploding or my brain cells from dying.

Here’s a question I’ve always pondered: If you read enough stupid stuff, will brain cells start dying off?

You see, I wonder if I am becoming exponentially stupid.

Now, I really can’t remember what an exponent is much less remember what to do with one–so doesn’t that prove my point? All I know is that saying “exponentially stupid” sounds way better than asking, “Can you become more stupidier by reading stupid stuff?”

See what I mean?

Why just yesterday I was in the newspaper room grousing at the kids about how far behind we were on newspaper deadline. (Will we ever be ahead?) It was Pizza Andy’s birthday and he was huddled behind a computer with his birthday cupcake and iPhone in hand speaking in a somber, conspiratorial tone… “I’ve got to have it…”

“Andy,” I said, “please get off the phone. We have work to do.”

“Hold on,” he said to me. “I’ve got to have this Darth Vader tie on eBay.”

You would have thought he was discussing a stock split with his broker. Jeez.

The bidding was up to $40 by the time I pried him off of eBay and he delegated the auction watching task to his dad.

“Quit bidding on people,” I said.

“Uh, Richie,” he said in a tone better reserved for a 2 year old. “They don’t sell people on eBay…I think it’s against the law.”

“Ok, fine, whatever,” I said. “Then look for a couple of elves. We sure could use the help around here.”

See what I mean? Me. Exponentially more stupider.