I'm Pre-Approved!

I got an email back from the head of the New Teacher Training Cadre informing me that I can interview for the position I applied for, even though I'm short of the requisite 3 years of teaching experience needed. Okay, it's not a huge deal, it really just comes down to three extra Saturdays and a couple of weeknights a year, but I will be training teachers new to CCSD in one of our professional domains....

Okay, that makes it sound mind-numbingly boring, but if you look at it as an opportunity to effect grassroots change in our school district, it is much more exciting. Ask Tyson. He's doing his whole doctoral study on teacher training and retention.

My Trite (TM) Weekend

Today I learned how a drain snake works: remove the pipe elbow and jam in the thingie, then turn the other thingie when it gets stuck, then swear and generally telegraph your frustration until a man comes to bail you out. It may be an imperfect system, but now I can do dishes, and we've both fulfilled our gender-normative roles for the day.

I also butterflied and high-roasted a chicken. The inside of a chicken is gross, my oven only heats up to 475 degrees, and my so-called kitchen shears didn't stand up so well to scissoring up a chicken, but it was still very tasty. It turned a very lovely gold color and because I brined it, it was very juicy. I also made sauteed zucchini with nutmeg.

I "paid bills" yesterday by checking my bank balance online then finding a heavy-duty Kitchenaid mixer on sale on Amazon and ordered it. (I am making pizza this week, and watching Alton Brown use his fancy-schmancy dough hook Friday night made me jealous and also ambitious).

I roughed in lesson plans for American Lit for the rest of the year.

I finally figured out the password to set up my email on Tyson's laptop. I am confused and perplexed by the new operating system, and I don't know that I won't just have to write it off for good.

I looked up Masters' degree programs and different state licensure standards. I want to learn about computers, specifically in the area of educational databases, so I'm checking out what it would take to get an MIS (Masters' of Information Systems), a library science degree, or a curriculum and instruction degree that would also complement National Board certification requirements. Right now, they are pretty prohibitively expensive--too much so for immediate consideration.

Tyson and I had a stellar dinner last night at Todd's. I really, really love food, but hate mediocre food. We had a great watermelon salad with cayenne, feta, and toasted pumpkin seeds, and split a great steak.

There is a chicken in my neighbor's juniper tree that showed up in the neighborhood on about Wednesday morning. Nobody knows whose it is or where it came from. I also found out that she is the grandmother of one of my students. Now I'm paranoid when I go out in my pjs to put trash at the curb or get laundry from the dryer.

It's Movie Night!

Proactivity Saves the Day! Woo Hoo!

Tyson's and my dinner date was cancelled tonight, so I came home and started laundry and chores. I am going to watch Battlestar Galactica guilt-free tonight (and not only for watching TV with undone chores! Now I won't have to feel guilty on my date about secretly wanting to be at home watching BSG even though it was dinner with a friend who is about to move to the east coast).

Hooray!

Hooray for Memory!

I just got a 4G memory card for my new phone that is just smaller than a fingernail. My first computer, an old 8088, had 64 KILOBYTES of memory on it. That is just too weird for me to think about sometimes.

So now I can put 1000 songs on my phone.

Instead of 1, which is all that would fit on the phone's internal memory.

64:52:37

Only three days left.