A Long Week

This week I:

Attended 3 meetings.

Administered 5 final exams.

Conducted 11 detentions.

Failed 31 of my 187 students.

Confiscated a note from a boy in which his girlfriend graphically detailed how she masturbated while thinking of him.

And today, to top it off, I stepped on a used condom on the ground floor of the 200 building. Again.

I'm glad it is Friday. I need a break.


Peace to all. Pray for your kids.

Attack of the Killer Mold

As my recent post mentioned, we have receieved a lot of rain lately. Well, I was going about my housely duties of cleaning up in our bedrom this morning when I came upon a surprise. I decided to move the chest of drawers to retrieve an article of clothing on the floor. What greeted me made me ill.

Mold. Well it was probably more like mildew because I think mold is usually accompanied by some sort of fuzzy texture. Alas, there was no fuzz.

Anyway, I swear we really are clean people. But I guess with the recent deluge some amount of mositure got into that corner and took root. The chest of drawers is about 41/2 feet high and 3 feet wide and the mildew filled the entire area of the wall behind it. As if that were not enough, my curiosity got the better of me and then I moved our bed out from the wall only to discover an even bigger swath of the greenish-brownish menace. I stood for several minutes just gazing in fascination at this marvel. I looked at it so long, I think I began to notice shapes in the surface. Kind of like cloud watching. The more I looked at it, the more things I saw. At one point I think I spotted the Virgin Mary, or was it Elvis?

Anyway, I spent the next hour cleaning every wall in the room. Thank goodness for hot water and Chlorox bleach. Luckily there is no rain in the forecast any time soon. In fact it was 73 degrees today. Five degrees above normal. So much for ending our drought.

Hope all are well. Peace.

Really, I swear, we are clean people.

Here Comes The Rain Again

If you have heard anything about the greater L.A. area recently, the news has probably been about the rain. Not the usual crime, violence and general weirdness of living in SoCal, but the rain. You see, as of friday, we have received more rain than we should get all year. Over fifteen inches of the wet stuff to be exact. From this latest series of storms we should see about four more inches of rain. Snow is falling in the local mountains in feet, not inches as it normally would. People are actually getting stranded in snow.

Now, to my northern blog family members this may seem like nothing. In truth, it really isn't anyhting big. It seems more like a more normal winter that I remember from my childhood. But ever since global warming and the drought set in six years ago, we haven't had much of a winter. I'm just hoping that the snow in the Sierras sticks around through the spring, perhaps ending our drought. Pray for cool temperatures this winter.

We have a very dense and clay-like soil in this part of town and it is so wet that it is actually muddy. All the decorative bark we spent money on to accent our landscaping has long since been washed out to the street. Once graceful plants and shrubs in our garden have been beaten down flat. Leaves from trees five houses over have found their way to our front and back yards due to the high winds. Neighbors who neglected to bring their trash cans in after friday's pick up will find them floating down the street. Our rain gutters have been so overwhelmed, they almost seem useless since the excess volume just spills over.

I hate to post on something as mundane as the weather, but frankly, it is the most noteworthy thing going on right now as we cannot really leave our home without getting soaked before getting to our car. The forecast is for two more days of this before things calm down. I love it.

Hope all are well. . . and dry. Peace.

Christmas Vacation by the Numbers

Inspired by Sherry's moose post and the good people at Citibank, I thought I'd share the details of my winter respite.

456

Miles traveled to Grandma's house for Christmas.

4

The number of times my oldest son asked, "Are we there yet?"

41

The temperature outside while my father-in-law and I put Christmas lights on their house.

500

Number of lights we hung.

45

The miles per hour the wind was blowing outside Bakersfield on our way home. The dust storm reduced visibility to less that 100 feet.

2

The number of times my oldest boy threw up in the car on the way home.

35

The age I turned on December 29th.

6

Hours we spent cooking on New Year's Eve. I'm not sure which was better, the meatballs, the brociole or the pasta.

187

The number of students waiting for me when I got back to work.

Sixteen days off with my family, sleeping in, and drinking coffee on cold winter nights. . .priceless.