two dimensional frivolity

There is a teacher in the advanced level who failed most of her students and the students are out for blood, they want the teacher out and sure enough after my own classes finished I was asked to take this teacher’s classes so tomorrow I’ll begin teaching the advanced level class and within minutes of reviewing the textbooks I am tempted to rebel. 

Strong winds today produced a khaki pall over the city, causing anxiety in my nose to no end, and cold medicine is not available here unless it is included in advil.  Well, if I don’t have a headache do I want to take medicine I don’t need?  That is my choice here. sneeze, blow.

I don’t know why I am listening to Bon Jovi.

So, a new level, while getting acquainted with mostly irrelevant material, I am not sad to leave the growing class in room E2-8.  Nice students, perhaps a third will pass, a third will fail and that third already I could see their hearts were not in it at all.  The classroom and everything in it is bad and as I met with the teacher with whom I swapped she is not happy at all.  “This is punishment, I work hard, I do everything for them, sure I failed them they did not perform to my expectations, but I am going to the smallest room in the building with the most students?”  Yeah it sucks.  Really.

As soon as I got back to the grotto I laid down and something chewed on my ankle. A bed bug, I recognize the row of bites. This job has always left me tired.  Last year when I didn’t have a car I dozed at the desk until it was four pm and then I was ok.  Now, I look, one o’clock, two o’clock, I start fading so I go.

Google’s video chat worked so so today with the mountain folks.  I suspect doing a chat with someone with a faster connection would definitely make this a serious option to Skype since that service is blocked here.

Three Bon Jovi songs was enough, they sure did howl a lot then.  How about the Boss’s Devils and Dust.   I did not have a chance to read “No Ordinary Time” today.  Such a story, the base in Pearl Harbor simply was not ready.  There was no one at the radar that early morning.  Really.  Leading up to this infamous date the book describes the homefront build up and yet my father was on the USS Dickman off the coast of Cape Town.  The Coast Guard was certainly a hellava lot more ready than those described in Kearn’s account.

How about Nebraska?  I am embarrassed to say I’ve never listened to this through.  As long as you have a decent connection, bro, and something to do while you listen.  Even if you don’t know what he’s singing about?  Just listen.  I should get the headphones.

3.9.15

It’s coming up to nine in the evening, I finished reading and marking written paragraphs from my new class, I stayed until four today writing aims and objectives to introduce more writing into the syllabus, I don’t know there is always room for improvement in my work I say and as the hours pass I am too tired to make changes.  What the hell. 

An individual I don’t really know but was a fb ‘friend’ removed herself from the site I think because her mother and father told her to stop flirting.  She’s a good kid and I commented to a mutual friend the excitement she must have been feeling getting a hundred likes and more for the images she posted of herself.  She’s a new flower, enjoying the limelight for the first time.  The last pics she posted were selfies with her hair going everywhere.  That was it, papa said, and the nineteen year old kid is back to the real world.  Good thing, too, people get real goofy if they think being harmless has no consequences.  Did it concern you, old man?  I wondered for a few days what happened, but I never thought of anything with her.  I am not addicted to two dimensional frivolities. 

The sandstorms have abated and rain is expected on Wednesday.  Let it rain and cancel class.  I’m already burning out and it’s the second week for pete’s sake.  It was a congested night of sleep I hope I can get through the night without reaching for Advil with decongestant, nasal spray and the inhaler.

I teach 8 to 9 fifty and then 11 to twelve 50 and today I learned half the class has math classes at ten.  But do they have math classes every day?  I'm giving them more time to eat, but it might be risky.  I give them an extra twenty minutes to squander, they gotta do the work, they gotta show me they are learning.  Quality or quantity, can they learn.

We’ll see, don't be squanderers.