True to form, my yearly theme starts in October

In keeping with my omnipresent ability to chug on forward, 2009 has already moved to 2010 in my mind. Which makes me almost half-way through the year! Yeay! My enthusiasm for being done with this year is tempered only by my intense level of fatigue. Working Title 2010: Year of Imbalance (not to be confused with In Balance, of course)... j'arrive.

For a lesson plan I was doing, I remade my Medicine Wheel. And it served its purpose in deflating me completely. Because My Medicine Wheel? Only not TOTALLY out of balance because I was basically nurturing none of the four areas -- Heart, Mind, Spirit, Body. And I do mean none. Zip. Zero. Everything that I need to do to be in my best place, I was not doing. Don't get to chill with the friends I adore nearly enough (meaning: at all), don't get to read or write on this blog, don't avoid bread and dairy like I should, haven't played soccer since September, don't get to be not working on the sunny days in order to soak up my Vitamin D... The list goes on. So the only one remotely getting attention was a spoke on my Heart area. And that was only because I made the hopeful leap (read: mistake) of putting The Boiler (a.k.a. The Turtle, Salty Dog, My Piece of Mat) on it.

So I come back from my camping trip to the very lovely but cold Hendy Woods and voilá, The Turtle pokes his emotional head out enough to call it quits. Why? He finds things to be out of balance between us -- i.e. he sees me as being more into it than he is. Which I think is true, but perhaps not in the way he perceives this. But then again, he must profoundly not be into it, because, as many of you know, I have spent a tremendous amount of time on the fence about the concept of a relationship and my very mixed feelings about him and me in particular. I only moved to calling him boyfriiiiiiiiiend this fall when things seemed solid enough to say to myself,

Giiiiiiiiiiirl, you gotta either open it up and really attempt this or be done.

[My Inner Jew Editor responds: Whatdja think, your patience, tranquility, positivity, and generosity alone were gonna make something like a relationship actually work out for YOU?! Ha!"]

And more to the point, I have to now remake my stupid medicine wheel and notice how almost entirely absent the entire wheel's contents are now. And I have got to stop settling for the imbalance of putting myself out there and sticking with folks who either cannot or are not interested in giving back. As Animal says in The Muppet Movie:

Irritated!

So I am taking a vote. Preferences?

A. 2010: Year of Imbalance
B. 2010: Absence of Zen
C: 2010: Like a Pebble in My Shoe
D. 2010: _______________________

Sometimes OK Cupid is Not So OK...

I think OK Cupid is a little drunk on his own misguided power.

So I checked my datin' profile after many a month just to sweep out the cobwebs and found four messages that ALL started with references to Burning Man. I always read profiles before reading notes and found each profile alluded to wanting to find life partners with whom they could grow old at Burning Man. (I can imagine Burning Man rapidly aging me within a week, actually. But I digress.) Seems strange to receive so many Burner messages but I just figure that post B-M, the Burners are out to replenish themselves and fulfill their intentions and manifestations and all that. So I come to the last messenger's note. I notice that on his profile he has gone out of his way to write that he wonders why everyone OkCupid thinks he'd be a match with Burners since he has never been. Curious.

Then I read his message title: Burning Man

And the message:

I said I'm confused about why OkC thinks I'd be a match for everyone who goes to Burning Man.

So, what does the new "Icebreaker" thing do? It matches me to you because you "like Burning Man". Hilarious.

Under his message is this little double-decker marshmallow-esque ice cube-ish icon with a little heart on its chest. Next to it is the italicized sentence:

I think you both like burning man.

And I wonder: Were OK Cupid and I in the same room?! Because in my profile, when prompted to disclose "the most private thing I am willing to admit here" I wrote:

I have a tic: when I hear the term Burning Man, my eyes roll... all by themselves. Strange.

Suitor #4 is right. That is hilarious.

Valencia Street: The Oh My of the I-ron-y

It was mayhem on Valencia Street this afternoon well into the evening, with San Francisco showing its true colors of equal parts concern and self-absorbic irony.

Valencia Street off 19th was filming Trauma, apparently some new show that is based in San Francisco. I have no idea if it is a "reality" show, but if it is, I am gonna assume the episode's trauma involves a car running over a bicyclist, a boy getting stabbed on a MUNI without working surveillance cameras (no wait, that is seemingly weirdly prohibited north of Mission Street), or some BiRite Creamery eater cracked out on the toxic levels of sugar in their Salted Caramel ice cream starting a restaurant riot because some menu lacks sufficient vegan options...

Meanwhile, Valencia between 16th and 17th was also shut down for an actual trauma, in the form of a jumper the po-po were trying to talk down - apparently, they were still trying to around 9:20pm. True to form, at both locations were gawkers saying stupid inappropriate shit and taking cell phone pictures. And in both locations were people totally irritated that they couldn't get to their preferred happy hour drinking establishment/cafe in a timely manner. One-dress-stop-shopping Valencia Quarter, how nauseating.

Student Quote of the Week

Another reason to miss teaching elementary school:

In one corner, ladies and gentlemen, we have Kevin. Kevin has the disposition of an old man who might hang out in A Streetcar Named Desire but is trapped in a second grader who looks like a generalizable second grader would, whatever that means.

In the other corner we have Carlos. Carlos is Captain of Future Pro Wrestlers of America trapped in the body and mind of a second grader trapped in a size and shape more typical of a kindergartner, whatever that means. In keeping with his profession, Carlos interacts with other second graders by flying into them from out of nowhere and attempting to pin them to the ground. He is very kinesthetic. Some would call him spirited. Others might say he is very Lucha Libre. Carlos consistently talks in a WWF voice a la Hulk Hogan and does that creepy pulsing flex-curl-arm-pose in front of him like some retro Arnie Schwarzenegger to pop his ghost pecs while gnashing his teeth and shaking his head rapidly side to side. Raise your hand if you can visualize this. Hoganito only refers to himself in the third person. More specifically, as Thor. I refer to Thor as WWF.

Ding! Round One.

Kevin is brought to teacher, howling with the eye tears of only a second grader:

Miss, he (puffy second-grader accusatory finger point) punched me in my gut!

WWF growls back, gritted teeth:

He punched Thor in his emotions first!

Ding! Back to their corners. Let's all commend WWF on his superb use of the term emotions. Referee, wanna take it from here?

Grrrrrrr.....

My school district is reportedly quite concerned with the GPA of our students and their subsequent graduation (or not) from our high schools (and more specifically, how these numbers reflect on our our district... but please don't get me started). They would probably be more concerned about this issue for middle and elementary schools, too, if not for the beauteous reality here known as social promotion. So what if someone has a 0.0 GPA in three years of 6th grade. Pass summer school following "8th grade" and we'll send them to high school. Nice. Anyways, one of the cornerstones of our district keeping on top of how folks are doing is the frequency of our grading cycle.

Which means that every six weeks I cry and mutter and drag myself through giving grades.

This past year, our district elected to force all of us to put our grading on-line. Which would be fantastic even for the paranoid and ludditic among us, I am sure, if they would just choose a program that had been tested, tried, and basically as bug-free as our current, more individual ways of doing it. Fundamentally speaking, a program that worked. Is that so much to ask? I am sure they made such a brilliant move into the not-quite-competent future to increase everyone's ability to see a student's progress-- the student, their parent/guardian, teachers, etc. Only a cynic would suggest this was done primarily to allow administrators to put their noses in my grade book whenever they want without ever actually setting foot in my classroom. (I get a nice little alert every time they peek. Sweet.)

So this grading term, I had to say good-bye to my tried and true grading program/system, refined over the last ten years, and say hello to a small form of purgatory known as the almost-working district system. Fortunately, I am a wary enough sort that before entering grades into the program, I recorded every single one of them on paper. Like... old system + new system = two systems full of time.

Having passed through our first grading period in this Brave New World, I, like Prince's advisors, have renamed this ritual. Formerly known as Grades, they shall now be known as Grrrrrrrrrr.

Why?

Because our grades were to be submitted through the program by 3pm on Friday.

On Thursday, at 8pm, I sat in bed, lap top as an electric blanket, inputting the last of the marks into the system that would hopefully add them up correctly and spit out a grade for the period in question.

I saved every three minutes or so because the program makes a habit of "de-recording" scores during certain times (though when those times will be is decidedly less certain). Around 11pm, I start getting pop-up messages alerting me to save my work, since the program is fixing to shut down momentarily for a "fifteen minute" upgrade. Highly convenient, that. This pop-up message came onto my screen approximately every ten seconds, resulting in a complete inability to save anything. Slightly even less convenient.

So I logged off. Took 20 minutes and one shower off. Tried to log on.

Error message.

Took another 30 minutes off. Tried to log on to the following message:

Dear Program Member:

The Program is currently performing scheduled maintenance on your school's web site. Account logins and certain other activities are
unavailable during this period. Today's maintenance (9 Aug 2009) is
scheduled through 4:00pm PDT, but may complete sooner. Please check
back.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this upgrade.

Thanks.

The Program Team

So let me just recap here. 1. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrs are due at 3pm on Friday. 2. The system will be down until 4pm on Friday.

That is just awesome.
And so I did what all responsible teachers would do. I wrote one nasty venting note to my Assistant Principal and went to sleep. 1:30am.

Later (5am) Friday morning I got up, tried to log on to nothing, sent snarky text messages to some dear ones, and figured I should go to work to 1. get chewed out for not getting grrrrrrrs in on time and 2. do the grrrrrrrrs the way I had previously done them, which of course would take me at least seven hours, since I had to re-add up and then bubble everything. Oh and 3. teach classes.

All of this reasoning left me standing at 6am in front of this MUNI bus stop sign:


And I admit it. It was not my finest hour. I was inspired to raise a finger in toast and yell the following at this particular campaign:

Fuck you. Our bell doesn't currently fucking ring until 3:35pm. So fuck you, nimrods.

Ahem. Adjust tie. Smooth down hair. Board bus. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.