you're done

i'm at panera now, to add definiveness to my prior post, where i said i'd either be at panera or B&N...

they shout out your order here, and one guy said, "so & so, you're order is complete" and that was kind of different, cuz as i listen, people are saying "so & so, you're order is up", which i am more used to.

but when the dude said 'complete', i thought of what it would be like at the end of a person's life if some angel's job was to shout your name and say "your life is complete" or, in the panera verbage, "so & so, your time is up..."

saying it is complete would kind of be incorrect for some people, for dying early on in years or for not doing very much in their life. more correct would be to say 'your time is up,' cuz eventually that's true for everyone, regardless of how much time they've had or how they spent their time.

i certainly want them to say my life is complete when my time is up.

April's ending

today i paid bills & now i'm going to either panera or B&N to do lesson plans... also hafta make math tests for this week and the rest of the year, and hope to get those done today. what a nice little saturday.

last night i went out with sutton & his cousin & lisa. had free dinner at club reign... i went home earlier than the rest of them, i don't know, i just can't get into that scene too much. i graded papers when i got home... that's more my speed.

today at school we have a guest speaker: Brian "Fox" Ellis, talking to us about conservation and nature. i don't think i've ever heard this guy, but i hear good things about him. this was planned to go along with earth day...

tomorrow is an institute day, we get out at 1:00... we hafta go to another school though, and learn about our new math series. that should be interesting, and i'm glad to get some practical math training.

mmmkay... gotta get to school...

equinox 2

bike report:

i'm kicking serious butt as far as riding goes... today i rode to forest park, walked a mile or so, and biked back home (the hill up from forest park is monstrous - it's so steep that my front tire kept coming up off the ground and each pedal cycle carried me like 6 inches)... but i'm getting good at uphill, it's going against the wind that still kills me. i need to be more aerodynamic: any suggestions?

i think my ratio is about 135:1600 bike to car miles since march 20, and that's bad, but still, i feel good and i think 135 miles in 31 days isn't too bad.

lately on rides i've been listening to harry potter 5. trying to get ready for #6 which comes out in july.

pj pants

i love my pj pants because they are so warm (and it's been cold!)

i hate my pj pants because they attract and cling to cat hair!

i have a love/hate relationship with my pj pants.

can you tell it's a slow-writing day? (as my roommate who writes for the paper would say)

i did write a poem, but i'm too shy to post it... i'll tell you the pattern of the rhyme, though, but i don't know if it's a true poem:

4 counts each line
a
a
b
a...b

4 counts each line
c
c
d
c...d


e 5 counts
e 5 counts
f 4 counts
e...f 6 counts

yeah...

things to stop doing

complaining
arguing
criticizing
biting my fingernails
procrastinating

i'll think of more things later.

i have been so irritable lately, i don't know what that's been about. although i hear from other people they feel the same way; can it be that there is a "b*tch" bug going around, or what? anyway, i have to try to be more positive.

by the way, to anyone who cares, i have been biking to work quite frequently. mondays i can't cuz of class, but i usually go three of the other four days...

a visit to my classroom

yesterday Tracy & Mom came to my classroom with my niece Holly & nephew Luke (Tracy's kids)... it was cool, the kids in my classroom decided to demonstrate complete chaos. that was okay, i guess. Jake came too; he comes by often, and the kids are always excited to see him. so the kids in the class bonded with some of my family members... after that, we walked on campus for a bit (bradley), and then Mom & Jake went to sam's club while Tracy & Holly & Luke & I walked around Borders at the Shoppes at Grand Prairie. then we met up and had dinner at Famous Dave's. yummy! oh, yeah, and then we went to Schnuck's for a little bit and Mom & Tracy & Luke & Holly went home... they probably made it home around 3:00 am.

Thanks Mom, Tracy, Jake, Luke & Holly for visiting my class!!!

a rose by any other name...

was in borders today and saw a cd rom of bird info and thought that would be cool, it had videos and many pictures and the names of all kinds of birds i'm sure. i thought that would be cool but then i thought, why? why learn the names of the different birds?

call a cardinal a 'snuzzblot', it won't stop being red
a buzzard by any name will feed off the dead.

call a redwinged blackbird 'bill', he still rings like a phone
mistake a goose for a duck, it still finds a way home.

a loon called 'pontoon' flies and hunts underwater
a pigeon called bernice is a pet, (if you caught her)

i have no problem with birds of a feather
being called the same name, it's a pretty good measure.

but i can see them, remember them, listen to their voices
and what i want to name them, those are my choices.

does this make sense?

there's a car insurance commercial that says:

"when our drivers get into an accident, we want them to get back on the road as soon as possible."

yeah...

roadkill stew

yesterday i was riding my bike home from school... i took some detours for fun, and with my work clothes in a sidebag, i got a pretty good workout lugging things. i was riding out along route 8 where there aren't many houses. i had just been noticing the junkyard down the hill from the road on the right when i noticed an animal on the side of the road. along this route, i see lotsa dead raccoons, groundhogs, possums, squirrels... i thought, this one looks fresh, his fur isn't as dusty and matted as most roadkill. i was within a foot of this guy when he picked up his head looking at me, i was freaked out but he just stayed there, didn't run away at all. i thought he'd either run away or try to bite me since i snuck up on him. he was a good groundhog, though.

idioms

someone whom i have not seen in a while just walked by me and said, "marc daczewitz, as i live and breathe..."

after we exchanged pleasantries and she left, the expression of 'as i live and breathe' played in my head a few times. and i thought, hmmm... maybe i'll start saying to people:

"so & so, as i choke and die..."

"well as i choke and die..."

this entry in no way reflects my feelings toward this person i saw today, not that she knows the address to my blog anyway. i'm not trying to say i don't like her, i just like the idea of saying to people, "well as i choke and die"

happy saturday. i'm sitting in my hanging chair, hanging from the maple tree in my front yard. lovely weather, grading papers, eating popcorn, visiting neighbors, contemplating a bikeride.

call me...

okay, this is the third time i am typing this entry, because blogger is quirky, last night it deleted my entry when i published it, and today i was trying to protect against that and i hit shift+delete to copy it to my clipboard, and i couldn't get it back... i loathe having to retype stuff!!!

anyway, i was going to say call me "mr. garbage disposal fixer" cuz i fixed mine yesterday... my roommate broke it. he wanted to call a repairman & charge the landlord, but i knew that he had broken it... a good amount of our spoons are mangled from him turning on the disposal and not checking for silverware falling (we need one of those guards for that) but anyway, i said there was no way i'd charge the landlord for fixing something 'we' broke, and i would try to fix it...

i dissected the disposal to find a penny was lodged between the moving parts. when the roomy saw that, he was suddenly struck with the memory that he had 'washed a handful of coins that were in' his car. hmmm... one of the pennies must have fell in the sink. i wasn't pretty pleased about that... at least he admitted it, although he was laughing about it as i put the disposal back together.

disparity

ummmm, I don't have a good ratio for the miles from bike to car right now. I'll admit it, but I think I have good excuses, mostly weather related.

but yesterday I rode to school, then home after school, then to Carlos O'Kelly's for a meeting, then to Barnes & Noble for study fun. I was pretty tired last night! Today I didn't ride at all, and I only drove to & from school...

I don't know if I've talked about the names of months in this blog yet, but I'm going to do it again.

1 January
2 February
3 March
4 April
5 May
6 June
7 July
8 August
9 September (sept = 7)
10 October (oct = 8)
11 November (nov=9; or new, but probably 9 here)
12 December (dec = 10)

Also, because the cycle of the moon takes about a month, I think "month" is related to "moon." And Monday starts, obviously, with "mon." I wouldn't have thought this was related to "moon" except that the spanish word for Monday is "Lunes" which also comes from moon: lunar...

who cares, right?

Lunes, Martes, Miercoles, Jueves, Viernes, Sabado, Domingo...

Sabado is related to sabbath, and I don't know if that is a sabbath day for some people.

Martes starts with "mar" which is the spanish word for sea. I wonder if their monday is moon, tuesday is sea, wednesday is ...? thursday is...? viernes sounds like the spanish word for winter... then saturday is sabbath, domingo is ...?

I have parent teacher conferences tomorrow... I should be working on that instead of wasting time writing gobbledy-gook.

Summer Plans

Tomorrow starts the last stretch of school before summer break. I've got quite a busy summer planned:

Three grad classes - one that cuts into the last couple weeks of the school year, one that
spans June-July-August 10th

Two dmb shows

A cubs game

Harry Potter 6!

Wisdom teeth removal

In this last stretch of school, we have 2 days off, I think. It kind of turns out to be a long 8 weeks, but with all the end-of-year stuff, it sorta goes fast enough. In my class, we'll be raising painted-lady caterpillars to butterflies and doing some spring artsy stuff: sort of a spoonful of sugar. As the weather gets better, we'll go outside for recess more...