First Day & Vampires

So, not sure how many of you are actually friends with me on facebook. Probably all of you do since only my friends read this. Ha.

I am relaxing with a beer after my first day of school with students at Wilde Lake! I love the middle school kids! I have four 7th grade classes and two 6th although I'm not technically supposed to teach the 6th graders, because they are considered elementary school kids. The GT class is so excited about learning that I could barely handle them. I can't wait to see the true colors of the kids come out since they will be getting to know me and each other over the next few weeks.

So, I'm into True Blood and it's cool or whatever but I just have to say that I'm in love with Eric Northman and if he does from the sunlight with that douche Russell, I'm going to stop watching the show. He is so hot. He makes the show. There are too many new weird characters with weird magical powers that it's getting overwhelming. Anyway, I just wanted to reiterate that I love Eric. Thanks.

I'm excited to spend the weekend with my sister in New York. We are leaving on Friday and get back Monday. We don't have that much planned but it should be a good time regardless since all we really need is food, some wine and hang out time! :) I'd be perfectly happy doing nothing!

Luna wants to go outside or eat or something because she is getting up in my grill and getting her hair all over my laptop computer. Niiiiice, Luna. Every time I make a move she thinks I'm moving to play or feed her.

Love,
SL

p.s. i have a student named Lexus.

NYC & Carpet

Good morning!
I'm sitting here watching Fresh Prince of Bel Air and eating my amazing bowl of yogurt and fresh peaches, raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. I know you are jealous. But what I know you aren't jealous of is the fact that there are two guys here that are installing our new carpet for upstairs. Do you KNOW how expensive that shit it? Wow, we were shocked when the Empire Carpet guy gave us the estimate. Oh, well, hopefully it will look great when it's done. :)

New York was awesome per usual, can't ever expect anything less than that. I stayed with Leah for a few nights in Brooklyn, which worked out really well for me since I needed a place to park my car since I drove up. My days in the city were fun. I did a lot of exploring and got a lot of shit done. Let's go through some of the highlights:

1. getting a bikini wax
2. buying "starting fire" in Union Square and then reading it in like three hours.
3. drinks with Jason and Caroline - was able to catch up with him! Seems like I can run into him in all corners of the world
4. dinner with Leah (x2)
5. dinner with Jess - major catch up session needed!
6. Private tour of the Frick Gallery courtesy of Julian, including when we were locked in the basement for about 5 minutes.
7. Chatting and catch up with Brianna while walking around the Whitney
8. Picasso exhibit at the Met
9. seeing "The Other Guys" because it was too hot to continue walking.
10. happy hour with former Lehman ppl!~
11. dinner and drinks with Tanzer - my favorite!

I did a lot and walked a lot but it was such a fun time. I wanted to profile two people that I saw riding the subway. The subway in New York is an excellent way to get some good people watching skills in. I saw one creepy guy that looked like baby huey kid, maybe about 28 years old or so sitting on the 4 train with two HUGe packets of sweet tarts, like the kind that come in big rolls. He was eating them like there was no tomorrow. It was like, before he was even done chewing one, he was shoving another into his mouth. It was so gross. Although I love sweet tarts and would have asked him for one had he not looked like the most disgusting person on earth.

Ok - this entry is only average. I'm going to write more things soon.

Love, SL

WMST Scandal & Maggots

So, I'm sure that you are really curious about my title. I want to talk about the serious one first and then the second part is not serious, just totally disgusting. Let's go.

My professor for one of my classes works at a charter school in DC. It's called WMST. She taught AP World and also was the staff development person for the school. She worked closely with the principal and the a few others on the administration staff. This year they just learned that they did not make AYP. For those of you that don't know, AYP stands for "Adequate Yearly Progress", it's a sister acronym of the No Child Left Behind Act. Basically is consists of meeting proficiency tests in both Math and Reading. Not only did they not make it but their scores dropped by 60% in Math and 40% in Reading. WHAT? How is this possible? Also note that the past 7 years that AYP has even been in existence, they passed, so their benchmark of proficiency was really high. This past year they improved 8% in math and 5% in Reading. They were on their way to improve. My professor and the principal were dedicating to improving the school and really getting them out of this whole. If you think that there is some test number fudging....read on. I mean, how can students drop scores by 60%? No teachers changes were made, it was the same teachers teaching the kids! Read on...

What really happened was that Pearson Vue, you know, the testing company, had sent a report to the DC Governing Education Body (OSSE) letting them know that WMST tests had a SIGNIFICANT amount of eraser marks on their tests. Normal range is like 3-4%. They had 14%. WTF. OSSE also told the Board of Trustees of the Charter and they did NOTHING. In fact, the report was pretty private that my professor just found out about it. Someone at WMST was doctoring the tests so that they would make AYP. But, since it was only the first year that both the principal and my professor were at the school, it makes it look like since they took over, the test scores dropped.

Both of them were FIRED, along with one other admin person. The person who most likely fudged the scores is now the new principal. They were escorted out of the school building by fucking cops. It is insane. It's such a fucked up system. Oh, and the board now realizes that they made a mistake in firing them since school is opening in three weeks so they are trying to negotiate some sort of transition package for them. How fucked up is this? This is like some Erin Brockovitch shit. Tell everyone you know how insane this is!

Ok, last week there was a crazy storm here and my parents lost power for quite a few days. I did too, but for less than 24 hours. It was annoying, but I obviously survived. My mom was freaking out about how she was nervous about all the food that was in the freezer. I told her since I have an extra freezer I would store it until the power came back on. The problem was that we had a bunch of old nasty shit in there, like old hamburgers and meat and hotdogs - all expired. I used this as an excuse to throw it all out.

Fast forward until this morning when I'm taking out the trash. I open up the bin to throw away another bag of trash and there ARE MAGGOTS ALL OVER THE BAG. THEY ARE CRAWLING ALL OVER THE PLACE AND IT SMELLS LIKE DEATH. After about five minutes of straight dry heaving. I finally was able to drag the bin to the street. I swear I almost wrote and apology note to the trash people. I also almost wrote another note that said, "just throw away the whole trash can". So I drove to school all while trying not to visualize those disgusting maggots. Sorry if all of you now have a visual image of the situation. After school I was so scared of the bin. I opened it with a stick and then dumped massive amounts of bleach into it and ran away leaving the lid still open. There were still some maggots left at the bottom but I totally murdered them. I will spray the shit out of it later on when my stomach has settled down. Any suggestions?

Lesson of the day: don't throw away pounds of raw meet in the trash during the summer and expect there to be no consequences.

Ok, must get back to all the crazy paper writing!

Love,
SL

Skunks & Plum Bread

Good evening my fellow friends,

I a pleased to exclaim that today I did not get sprayed by a skunk, much to my perpetual fear. Is this irrational? I'll tell you why I don't think it's so irrational. Whenever I run in the neighborhood, I ALWAYS smell skunk at least two separate times along the streets. Is there anything else that can smell like a skunk like that? If not, then there are totally some crazy-ass skunks hanging out in Woodmoor. So, my fear is not irrational. I would be especially annoyed if I got sprayed before my panel presentation at school on Thursday. I wouldn't want people to think I smelled like ass. My mom also told me, and so did TV, that taking a bath in tomato sauce or tomatoes, or whatever, doesn't work. What would I even do? Do you think there is some sort of skunk "off"? I'm curious now. Do you think they have skunk repellant? I'm considering investing in some.

So, yesterday I made plum bread out of these mini plums that I bought with my parents at Baughers. The plums were really ripe and delicious raw but....

Basically I'm trying to tell you that the plum bread sucked. Who wants to eat fucking plum bread? I should never have made it. I gave it to my mom, who can't taste and my dad that will eat anything homemade. Thank god for them! I was able to pawn it off to them without feeling like a complete failure.

I have to say that today was a pretty good day. I feel like accomplished a lot. Whether or not that's actually true - the jury's still out. I just feel like a bad ass. I like this feeling.

Erin - if you read this, which I'm pretty sure you don't. Thanks for peaking my interest in "Criminal Minds" now I'm obsessed and also have increased nightmares because of it. It's cool - I don't blame you. I blame my brain lobes and my subconscious.

Susannah - so great to see you the other night. GREAT catching up and also it was much needed.

Hope everyone had a great Monday. I love you all.

Love,
SL