Odds and Ends Thursday 17

I’ve been cranky this week. I’ve been bored and one of my computers stopped working and I’ve been going to bed too late at night, and it’s made me pissy. And it’s been raining too much. Anyway, yesterday was the worst of it. I’ve been in much better spirits today. I’ve been away from people too long, but I think I’m having boarders this weekend, so that will be good. Here are some other odds and ends from this week:

• Michael Jackson died! I was going to devote some bullets to the subject, but now that I think about it, I think it’s worth an entire post. So look out for that tomorrow.
  
• Speaking of music, I found this new artist online, Rosi Golan. She’s another in the Feist/Ingrid Michaelson trajectory, but I like Feist and Ingrid Michaelson, so I accept. I only caught this new girl on a podcast, so I don’t know how widely available her stuff is. One of her songs was on Grey’s Anatomy recently, so she can’t be that small-time. Anyway, if you can find it, try her “C’est L’amour” song.
  
• One of the teachers was working in my computer lab late into the afternoon yesterday after I left. He was supposed to padlock the door, but instead he just threaded the padlock through the eyehole without closing it. Everything’s still here, but it still makes me not want to trust that guy next time.
  
• So you know the picture of the English rugby team from mass last week? I heard later on that the church had volunteered to hold a luncheon that day for the English team as well as Samoa’s treasured Toa Samoa after mass last Sunday. Well there was miscommunication, and the first time the alleged organizers heard about the luncheon was when it was announced at mass. Oops.
  
• I’ve been talking about center alignment with the year 9s and 10s all week, but I realized yesterday that they spell it “centre”. Oh well.
  
• I’ve played over 1,000 games of expert Minesweeper in the last 2 weeks. I am not proud of this.
  
• But my win average is 20%, which I am proud of. In an embarrassed pride sort of way.
  
• It’s pretty cold at night these days, but I still have a hard time sleeping under a sheet. Yeah. One single sheet is still pretty warm. It’s best to turn on the fan to make the room cold enough for a sheet to be necessary.
  
• I was teaching the 9.1 class today, and after I wrote the definition of word wrap on the board, I turned around and started reading it aloud, and the class immediately broke out into laughter. They apparently felt I was speaking very loudly. So then I started speaking very softly, and it killed. I’m so funny.
  
• Speaking of being funny, I got my first “chee-hoo” in my 11.1 class on Monday. It had to do with using student names in an example and giving them fake English grades. I admit I have no idea what was funny about it, but it was “chee-hoo” worthy, and I’m taking the credit.
  
• A “chee-hoo” is somewhere between a “yippee” and the “whoop” that my follow a surprising or scandalous joke. Dan gets lots of them in his classes. His brand of humour is big and confrontational, which resounds better with high school students than my brand of self-reflexive nerd humour. But when I can, I give the people what they want.
  
• I really enjoyed teaching class last Saturday, and I was thinking it might be something I’ll do regularly during this term. But I’ve been in consequent sleep debt ever since, and that’s pretty lousy. So I’ll continue my policy of keeping Saturdays to myself unless class is absolutely necessary.
  
• Two of my Clif Bars had their wrappers breeched and the ants found the two very quickly. There’s speculation that the ants are the ones that caused the breech, but ants in my house aren’t known for doing that. I’ve had a packet of M&Ms on that shelf for a couple months when I first moved in and the ants respected that wrapper, so I don’t know.

And that’s all I got for this week. We’ll talk MJ tomorrow. Pictures below.
















High jump practice. Finals are next Friday.
















Anyone know how to fix this?
















This guy was twitching in the doorway of my bathroom this morning. The weirdest part is their little heads.