not as good...

On Friday, after school, I spent a good 45 minutes writing a tremendous post, full of funny-isms and details. When I went to post, the blog host (blogger) crashed and would only post the title and not anything else. I was so mad. I started to re-type, but then felt angry so I stopped. I'm going to do my best to recreate my wonderful post here tonight, though it might not be as great.

For those of you who haven't seen me recently, I dyed my hair...yes, again. Last time I dyed it, it was kind of like pink/redish, but only lasted a few days. This time, it's a little darker pink/redish and it's permanent. I love it. It's something a little different. Not that I did it to please anyone but myself, my students have got a kick out of my new 'do.

Last week in school, I was teaching my students how to write a personal narrative. For most, it was like having a root canal. I keep telling them that there isn't a right way, necessarily, at first--just to start writing. That doesn't seem to help. I've showed examples. I've sat down with several and told them what to write and they still struggle. I'm hoping to wrap up the narrative writing either tomorrow or Tuesday...sadly, it's painful for me, too. This is their 3rd quarter final project and I think many will be surprised to know how much having it finished (or not) will affect their grade.

My 4th period class is my candy lovin' class. There is a student (who I think will be a millionare before he graduates high school) who buys large bags of candy at a local candy shop and then turns around and sells the candy to his friend. It's not, like, normal candy...no Dum-Dum's, no gummy bears. One of the most popular treats he's been bringing in the last few weeks looks like this: If you can picture it, this sucker is mango flavored. I know, that's not so weird. The weirdness comes when you put the sucker in your mouth. It's covered in hot, hot, chili powder. Yeah. Chili powder. One of my students gave me one last week and I took one lick and my head nearly exploded. I brought it home for Ben to try, but he's no dummy.

Apparently, I found out last week, I'm also in charge of spring portraits. This is a little less formal than the regular pictures that go in the yearbook. These are the ones with fun backgrounds where the kids can choose their pose. That is coming up next Monday. The good thing is that we're doing it just like we did yearbook pictures, by English class. That means I already have the schedule made and everything. Now I just need to phone it to get a sub for that day so that I can be down with the photographers helping where needed.

I had another "fight" break out last week in 6th period. I can't really call it a fight because it invovled one single slap of the hand. A boy and girl had been going at it jokingly all afternoon...teasing each other back and forth. I was desperately helping a few students with their narratives when I stood up to approach the two bickering brats. As soon as I turned to them, the girl (an overly agressive student to begin with) slapped this boy (a not so tough Polynesian) right on the face. He instantly began to cry and amongst all this, two other students started throwing pencils across the room and one hit the slapped boy in the back of the head. I took the girl out, trying to remove her from the situation (those big, tough Poly boys looked as if they were going to come right at her). I realized that I had to do something a little more drastic, so I went back in, got the sobbing boy to come with me, as well as a group of students who saw the whole incident, and marched these kids to the office. The girl is suspended for one week. I'm quite nervous for her return to class; I'm afraid it might be ever so slightly awkward with her back in there and am pondering a request to change classes for her. We'll see.

Yeah. Just as I had expected...this post isn't nearly as great as my erased Friday one. I would appologize, but you, the reader, doesn't know how fabulous that post truly was. I'm going to post a few more pictures before I atempt to post this sad, sad wannabe post. (I recently got a new camera phone. I. Am. Freakin'. Obsessed.)

Our "little" Zeus. He's gotten so big the last few weeks. This was taken just last week and already, the picture doesn't do justice to just how giant he's gotten.

A nice butt shot of me as I climb up a rock wall. It was at the grand opening of a boat shop where Ben's uncle, Dan, works.