I thought that this was Halloween???

Jesus H. MF'ing Christ (I know that I am now going to hell...), I am certain that it is the 31st of October. It is now 7:00 and we have not seen a soul come to our place. I even made sure that the front gate was open and wedged so the kids that wanted to come in could do so easily. But no, we have a large bag of chocolate candy, and no one to eat it but me. DW enjoys them but not as much as the candy that is in our freezer. With all of the houses in this part of the suburb of LA that I live in, also with the number that are decorated for the evening, I thought that we would be filled to the gills with children and their parents.

But no, we have not seen a soul, except for the Chineese Food delivery man that we called for food this evening. I am extremely disappointed. Is this a sign of the times, or has "trick-and-treating" gone way of the dodo? I am pretty sure that it is due to the fact that this day fell on a Monday, and the God forsaken Jesus freeks (I was one at one time, so I can call them that) have sworn off this beloved holiday, so that there is no one in the neighborhood actually "celebrating" it.

Oh well, fuck it, I guess that I will just give out more candy for my students in the near future, or become a larger cash-cow for my eventual dentist.

I better not have a bunch of zombies in all of my classes tomorrow, seeing as they were not coming to my door.

This past weekend

This past Saturday was big. I had a busy day.

First, DW and I went to breakfast. We don't usually do this, but we were in for a big day. I had a waffle with both strawberries and bananas, while DW had her customary potato pancakes. Then DW and I went to IKEA and enjoyed purchasing yet another couple of pieces of furniture. We got a new desk and table for our spare room/office. DW wanted a new place to put her sewing machine and other crafty stuff since we had to leave her other craft desk in NC during the move. The desk is for our school/work stuff and to house our printer so that it does not overheat on the thickly carpeted floor. We are still emptying boxes in that room, so it was necessary to get these things. It was a pain in the ass trying to put together the solid wood desk, which was surprising. All of the MDF pieces that we have gotten from there are perfectly crafted and easy to put together. The real wood desk was milled wrong, had broken pieces, and one corner just did not want to come together. I do not know what else to say, but I know that I still enjoyed paying 15% less for the opportunity to build crapily made furniture.

After we got home with our purchases, we watched USC totally destroy Wazoo on the television.

Around 8 that evening, one of our friends/housemates from my Senior year at USC, named Alpha Centauri, came over for an enjoyable evening. We caught up since we hadn't seen him since DW and I were married in 1999. He is a great man who has had an interesting life in the last couple of years and it was great to see him. If only we could get our other friends to come by and we could do the same... We ended up going to Robin's BBQ for a big BBQ beef dinner.

We also did a "Negative Time Tommy's Run with Alpha Centauri. We left at 1:55, and got back at 1:53. Beyond that, another double hamburger and a Cherry Pepsi bit the dust. Remember, CalTech froshies: "Tomorrow is ditch day" and we all know what that means... At approximately 3:00 AM I finally fell asleep and woke up at 8 am on Sunday morning. I think that I am still feeling the effects of the sleep dep...

OMG!!!!

Today I have a new post. I know that I have been very lax on my posting, but I have been busy with my computer going down, rebuilding my gradebook (that was stored on said computer), changing to a district mandated online gradebook, getting/building new furniture, planning for my classes, cleaning my classroom, getting in the first 6 week progress reports, trying to figure out why my bike is making "funny" noises when I ride it, etc, Need I go on?

To take a line from DW's favorite Mel Brooks movie "Lets face it, I'm pooped" --Lili Von Shtupp

I still have 2 beginning teacher's meetings this afternoon, and "Back To School Night" until 8:00 pm. Sometime in there I need to get something to eat, a nap (maybe), and my paperwork together for the meeting. I was up until about 12am this past night and I am totally drained.

I have two saving graces: I will not be required to talk about grades to my student's parents, and I will only have them in my classroom for about 10 minutes at a time. They will have to walk the halls as their children do, so I will not have any questions about why their students are coming late to class.

More later... one of the two meetings is about to begin