Weekend Visitors

Teddy, Denisha and Janessa, three of my siblings, stayed with me last night. I made them a dinner that they actually ate, we watched The Toy, an old movie from the 80s about a rich white kid who gets his dad to purchase a black man as a toy, we played a game and then we went to bed. This morning we lounged around for a while, ate some breakfast and then walked over to the art museum in the park. It was a long walk that kind of wore me out, but it was fun. The kids all seemed to have a good time. It's been a while since I've spent any significant amount of time with any of them. Janessa's patience with the others is growing. Denisha's language and communication skills are tremendous. And Theodore is struggling to learn new forms of affection that don't involve violence. Last night I was privy to all these things and more.

Dear Boise State Administration Building Employees:

As employees in the administration building, you see many students and faculty each day. Your job therefore, no matter which department you work in, is to deal with students and faculty. It is a customer service position. That means you're supposed to be nice and helpful so that people don't dread coming to your office or leave your office cursing.

In my experience with employees in the administration building, I have had people argue without listening to my question, I have been hung up on, and I have waited in line for more than a half hour. In fact, every time I visit the registrar's office there are only two (if not only one) work-study students working at the windows while "real" employees of the office stand around behind them talking about their vacations or their children. These "real" employees are almost always eating cookies during their apparent downtime. Meanwhile, students wait in line for sometimes longer than half-hour periods before speaking to someone at a desk. In the payment and disbursement office (one of the unhappiest places on Earth) as well as in the financial aid office, students cannot even see employees from the line due to the construction of their cubicle-like seating arrangement. Also for those offices, students have nowhere to stand in line, except out the door, as the measly lobby is little more than a narrow hallway.

All your office doors are always closed, as if to tell students that you don't want to see us anyway. But don't worry, we don't want to see you, either. Every student I've spoken with about this topic agrees with me; we hate your building and every employee within. It is a miserable place fit for the depths of purgatory.

My proposal to you is not difficult. I don't expect you to undergo a massive transformation. I just want you to be nice to people. Listen when a student talks to you about a financial issue. When a student calls your tech support line, don't inform that student to change her password and hang up. Acutally help. Wait until she tries changing her password before you hang up, at the very least. Don't make fun of students, thinking they're too stupid to pick up on it. Do not treat us like we're trying to scam you around every corner. Provide us with helpful answers. Treat us like we're human beings. We know your job is not a specialized one, for the most part, and that you just got lucky with the state benefits package because you work at a state school. We know we have more education than the majority of you. We know you aren't better than we are just because you're on that side of the desk. But we hold none of that against you. We just want a little smile and a genuine "Have a nice day."

So quit being so crochety and sour. Stop pissing us off. There are a few of you I wouldn't hesitate to run over with my bike someday. Why bring that upon yourself? Just be nice.

Craters of the Moon National Park

Star War (Just one of them)

This is all compliments of Kathy. In fact, I'm stealing some of her exact words from the email she sent me:

I found this a few months when I friend sent me this. It's a link to someone's blog. Aparently they went to China and bought a pirated copy of Star Wars Episode III. The subtitles are hilarious...they are a direct English translation of the Chinese interpretation of the script. If you scroll down to the end of the screen caps, it links to another person's blog that has different screencaps of the same DVD.

Now I have to admit (this is A again)...I don't particularly enjoy Star War(s), but this was dang funny.

I passed!

In order to be a "qualified" teacher in Idaho, you have to pass a technology assessment. Boise State offers a class to prep you for this test. I signed up for this class. On the first day we did nothing; she let us go early. On the second day we learned what the desktop and mouse were. By the second week we were all the way up to learning about recovering documents from the recycle bin. I couldn't handle it.

Last weekend I took the exam on my own, without having finished the class. I was surprised by the number of database questions, which my whiz-bang, computer and business savvy friend Kathy informed me that I would never use as a literature teacher. I thought that perhaps those questions would have prevented me from passing, but in fact they did not! I passed with a 78.31%. The awesome thing is that 1)no one will ever see my score, they'll only know that I passed and 2)now I never have to attend that technology class again!

Tales from a first-year teacher

One day around the beginning of class we got on the topic of style. Through the course of the discussion, I mentioned stream-of-consciousness and gave them a brief definition. After class one of my students came up to me and said, "Hey, what did you call that again where you just talk on the paper, saying what's in your head and stuff? Cuz I think I do that." I told him what it was called and gave him a little deeper definition and some authors who practice it as a specific technique. "Yea, yea," he said. "I think I do that." His head cocked to one side and his eyes took on a far-off gaze. When he snapped back to reality, he looked almost confused. "When you read what I turned in today, will you let me know if that's what I do? Because what I gave you is how I usually like to write." What I found in his paper was a wonderful example of stream-of-consciousness writing and I told him so. Since then he has been more excited about writing and developing that which he thought was just an easy way to put thoughts on paper.

I have a student whose family is Chinese. She grew up in California, picking strawberries on a field while the world was still dark before going to school all through elementary school. She told me she's finding her voice through writing - a voice that was never allowed by her family. She's scared, but she never fails to venture onto that limb. She asked me to push her a little and make her speak up more because she finally feels comfortable in an environment where that is encouraged and praised.

This marks one of my student's first year in school in 23 years. After leaving an abusive husband and caring for a dying (now dead) mother, she is ready to reclaim her life and figure out who she is and what she's doing. She thought writing would be a good way to do that, so she signed up for a writing class.

I have a dark presence in my room in the form of a young, attractive man who only writes what he thinks I want to hear. I sense fear in him - fear of providing me with something I have the power to dislike. His last reader response was a complete summary with no reflection. The last sentence stated that he "now knows the importance of peer review." I keep trying to push him for more, for something a little more open and giving, while at the same time praising him for bringing interests to class topics and assignments. He's naturally quiet and shy, I suspect, and his declared major is construction management, so I presume that his opinion of taking a writing class is pretty low on the priority scale. Perhaps more than anyone else, I want him to crack, just a little. Perhaps it is because of his reluctance, but perhaps it is because he may just have something wonderful to say. I just want him to give me that chance.

Sometimes I get very mad at my dog. Like right now.

Today after school I rolled leisurely home on my bicycle, not really looking forward to coming home to an empty house (Kelly's on a three-day work trip), but still enjoying the cool afternoon and the sun warming the top of my head. I wheeled the bike around the side of the house to the gate, where I witnessed a scene that stopped me dead in my tracks.

Before I even opened the gate, I saw the mess of my beautiful 100% Peruvian wool yarn strewn across the grass. Upon entering the patio area on the other side of the gate I saw not only the wool, but a broken stitch holder. I prayed that that was the stitch holder I hadn't been using instead of the stitch holder that I had been using to hold together a piece of a baby sweater. Turned out to be the latter. In addition to the three skeins of Peruvian wool yarn, Radley had also helped himself to a skein of chunky white yarn, chunky purple yarn, and a skein of red embroidery thread. The yarn mess began in the house with the back part of the baby sweater on the front room floor, chewed. Another beginning to the yarn stemmed from its home in the living room. All portions of yarn met outside, where some of it wrapped its way around the patio, some of it meandered through the lawn, and the rest of it hung lazily around the tree.

Radley is still outside, hopefully feeling very sorry for himself. I may let him in tonight to sleep in his bed. If he's lucky.

Paragliding

Here, we're on the ski lift being carried to the top of the mountain.



Kelly took this picture of me on the ground. I am the little person-shaped dot above the orange square in the middle of the shot.

Pics From The Sand Dunes

Theme: Earth, Wind, Fire Water

Friday the second was my day to turn the big 2-4. My totally cool friend Mandy calls it The 24 Club. Kelly had a whole slew of surprises ready for me, starting when I came home from school Thursday. The house was clean and the dishwasher was on. I love that he knows that I wouldn't be able to leave before those little chores were out of the way. After packing, we loaded up the Jetta and set off for some unknown-to-me destination.

We soon arrived at Bruneau Sand Dunes State Park, where we did some hiking on the dunes and took lots of pictures. Speaking of pictures, they'll have to wait because my whole internet setup is being uncooperative right now.

Thursday night we drove to Haley, Idaho, and stayed in a bed and breakfast. I've never done that before - it was AWESOME! It was just this really nice, old house that has been done up to house multiple people where they feed you the most wonderful three-course breakfasts. The rooms were beautifully decorated - ours was kind of a cozy, Asian-inspired, earthy room.

Friday morning we awoke (ate our yummy breakfast of scrambled eggs with smoked trout and French croissant toast with homemade raspberry syrup) and drove up to a ski resort in Ketchum. When we walked into the lodge a man handed me a sheet of paper and told me to fill it out and sign it. Upon reading a few words on the page that stood out immediately, I said, "What? Flying? Possible death? What are we doing?" Turns out, we were paragliding. It wasn't nearly as fearful as people think, especially since we both went tandem with an experienced guide. Actually, the most fearful part of it for me was the part where we had to run about five steps downhill to get the wind in our gliders. Seeing the hamlet of Ketchum below me with the massive Sawtooth Mountains jutting up all around.

After paragliding we went to Craters of the Moon National Park for some hiking and a picnic lunch. We walked through some lava caves that were constructed by Mother Nature (and a some boiling portions of the internal workings of Earth) herself about 2000+ years ago.

Then we walked around Ketchum for a while, ate dinner in Haley and went to the Mint, which is the bar Bruce Willis owns. His band was actually playing that night, but tickets were all sold out so we couldn't go watch. Incidentally, at the Mint I drank the best margarita of my life. Well, it was really good anyway.

Saturday morning we drove up to a hot springs in Sun Valley. I stuck my foot in a pocket of water that was near a boiling temperature, so that was unpleasant. The majority of the springing experience was good, though. We were expecting more springs where we could sit and veg for a while, but these weren't that kind. Then we drove home!

Ah, but yes...Pictures to follow. I put links to things where I could in case you want to check stuff out.