I’ve come to the decision that I should try Xanga again. I’m going to jump back into the Xangame.

I’m motivated by the quasi-epiphany that what I really loved about blogging was the social aspect of it. Jason writes and he does enjoy, even thrives on, the pure joy of writing, but it’s not the same for me if I don’t have the interaction of reciprocal reading and commenting. In all these years, I haven’t found another blogging site that creates that sense and ease of community like Xanga does. In those other places you can get dozens of comments per post only if you’re well-known. Here I have my old friends who walked in on the ground floor of Xangadom back in its early days, late 2000, early 2001. I know I can get at least a few to read me consistently here and frankly, that’s what I want. I spent many hours reading folks stating about how they didn’t care about who read what they wrote or if anyone commented. Sure, OK… then why are you posting on a public site? I do care. I admit it now.

For the past few years, no matter where it was, too much of what I’ve posted has been what I call “meta-blogging”: blogging about the act of blogging. I’d like to write some real stuff now. And since I do care, if you do read, please comment. I will reciprocate.

To catch up with anything else I’ve blogged, check the left sidebar.

That’s right.

There could have been a 2007 Mustang GT waiting outside in the snowy Denver morning for me, and it would still be secondary to my first Christmas gift: a cup of coffee.

Coffee is so ubiquitous in our culture that we all take it for granted, whether we’re drinkers or not. Local Starbucks were even open today (were they everywhere?) Anyone who knows me knows that I am quite the coffee drinker. A minimum of a pint a day– two if I’m home on a weekend. I like it warm and black. That’s right, black. Opaque black, but clearer than crude oil. No form of creamer or sweetner. Certainly no nonfat half-caf extra hot light foam double latte. Just good old-fashioned black COFFEE please.

Anyhow, on November 15, I got a flu shot. I promptly got sick– first with, well, flu-like symptoms. The next week, it turned into bronchitis. Eventually, a sinus infection developed on top of the bronchitis. I never actually saw the doctor– I have Kaiser Permanente and, if you’re familiar with them, their standard procedure is: 1) Call the main number, 2) Push the appropriate sequence of buttons, 3) Eventually talk to a real person, to whom you detail your symptoms, 4) 3-4 hours later (on a good day), a nurse from your physician’s office will call, 5) if possible, they will avoid scheduling an actual in-person appointment, and instead, will assess what you say and call in a prescription for you.

That’s all well and good, because if your malady in viral in nature, antibiotics aren’t going to help, and all you can do is take over-the-counter medications to alleviate the symptoms (but not provide any cure), drink plenty of fluids and get lots of rest, which, if you work full-time and have kids at home, is essentially impossible.

On December 3, we talked to the doctor again (well, my wife did– while I was at school) and he said, yes, this crud is going around, and it takes 4-6 weeks to get over.

Four… to… six… WEEKS. That’s how long something you order from TV is supposed to take to arrive– not how long you’re supposed to keep hacking up mucus from your lungs (and of course, examining its hue… flourescent yellow? yellow-brown like spicy mustard?)

On that day, Doc said the usual: keep taking Mucinex to loosen the mucus, Robitussin for the cough, drink plenty of fluids to thin the mucus… mainly water. NO COFFEE. Herbal teas were good, green tea still OK, but absolutely NO COFFEE– it has a dehydrating effect, pretty much the opposite of water.

Obviously, that’s not what I wanted to hear. Reluctantly, I agreed to go cold turkey from coffee until I got better. Maria made me agree to Christmas Day as the target date. So, I kept drinking green tea, especially in the mornings, as it provided a modicum of caffeine (though far less than even cola)– and lots of water (or tried to).

So you can only imagine my excitement this morning when Coffee Day had arrived. I had a bag of whole-bean Starbucks Christmas Blend I received from a student, I retrieved my Mr. Coffee grinder that I got my first Christmas here, five years ago, ground it up, scooped it into the filter basket, filled my Hamilton Beach BrewStation with an Eddie Bauer bottleful of cold, double-filtered water (approximately 36 oz.), and pressed that power button for the first time in over three weeks.

Nirvana.

I wish my powers of written articulation, my command of the English language, my voracity for vocabulary, my sense for semantics, could adequately describe the sensation of that first sip. I don’t think Shakespeare himself could manage it; then again, ol’ Will died a few years too soon to savor the New World wonder of coffee.

Shame for him. Hamlet would have agonized far less had he enjoyed a cup or two.

I’m still sick– the sinus pressure is causing pain behind my ears, and the coughing is far more occasional, but still produces some pretty stuff. Maria has since become far more sick, catching everything I had, and then the flu on top of it. Still, we and our family had a wonderful Christmas, and I hope you did too.

Merry Coffee Day– and to all, a good night!

Unbelievably, today marks seven years since I first signed up with Xanga. Lucky seven. Store seven years of grain for seven years of famine. In Internet time, that’s an eternity. In 2000, no one imagined anything online lasting for seven years… Yahoo! wasn’t even that old then.

It was quite a different time for me then. I was a graduate student at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, pursuing a Master of Arts degree in English Literature. Thus my choice of screen name, “litboiler”– literature + Boilermaker (the Purdue nickname). I was single– well, a long way from married, anyway– and living in a dorm room in Young Graduate House. Now, I am a middle school teacher, husband, adoptive father of a teenage girl and stepfather to three more, living in my mother-in-law’s tri-level, four-bedroom house in a suburb of Denver, Colorado.

I’ve also changed my Xanga identity a few times since then, from “litboiler” to “enigma42,” back to “litboiler,” then to “education_is_life” and finally ”jasonwrites” The current name serves well because it applies no matter what my life situation may be. I’ve tried blogging elsewhere also. Problem is, much of what I want to write now is potentially troublesome for me if it were read by the people I work for, with, or may work for in the future. So if I’m to stick around here, I’ll have to make some of my posts protected.

There’s so much more I want to write about, but let me put this out here for my anniversary post. Now that I’m on winter break, more will come this week.

Let’s just face it. I’m a Xangan for life. Even if they don’t show that neat little “LIFE” icon beside my name, despite the fact that I am indeed a Lifetime Premium member. I suspect that’s the case because this isn’t the original account that had the LP, and I asked them to transfer it (twice). Regardless, I paid for it, I should use it, right? The few quasi-loyal readers I’ve ever garnered are here, and, of course, there’s the not insignificant fact that I met my wife through Xanga. But the place has changed a lot. They let you know that, as well. For example, I go into my Look & Feel, to change the background and such, and I’m assaulted with “You’re still using this old system? Try Xanga Themes!”

Now, I’m usually one to try new things, especially online. I try out different browsers, different programs, etc. I’ve even tried every other major blogging service I know of except for Blogger (and Typepad, because I didn’t want to pay). So, I tried those Xanga Themes. Some neat stuff, but a bit complicated for me. I’m old now, you know, and I’m not always ready to commit the time to try new things. Besides, when it comes to Xanga, I should follow the advice I give students– be more concerned with the content that what it looks like.

Maybe they were just trying to be funny, but I detected a whiff of presumptive haughtiness in the “this old system” comment? That wouldn’t be a first for Xanga. They always think new is better. But not all their ideas work out so well. See: Bianca Broussard, Xangalympics, Xanga Blogchat, Xanga Skins. I hope they don’t toss the old L&F system. They’ve changed even it enough over the years, and I like it how it is.

Enough metablogging. Let’s get serious.

Recently I returned from San Diego, California.

That was the view from my hotel room. We stayed at the Hilton on Misson Bay. Mission Bay is not actually the ocean. You can’t actually see the ocean from this point. This fact kind of bummed me out, as I had never visited California, the West Coast, or the Pacific before this trip.

You can, however, see one of the towers at Sea World, which is a short distance over on the south side of the bay. And at 10 p.m. each night, you can watch Sea World’s fireworks.

I was there for the TCI (Teachers’ Curriculum Institute) Implementation Conference. There were over 500 attendees, mostly teachers, a few school administrators, and the TCI employees. It was four days of both training and advertising. See, we got invited because we agreed to pilot the TCI curriculum for our 7th-grade Geography classes next year. Their focus is really more on History, but they recently developed the Geography program and have a Government program in the works, as well as plans on moving into other content areas beyond Social Studies.

In addition to various employees, the company’s founder and CEO was there. He gave the keynote and farewell addresses. He endeavored to talk to everyone at some point; I didn’t know who he was when he introduced himself the first day, though. I still didn’t know until he addressed us that evening, as well. Reminds me of the time that I was working for Coca-Cola and we peons from the World of Coca-Cola got to visit corporate headquarters (long story… Wil knows). The #2 man in the world’s best-known company came up and said something like “glad to have you here,” and I replied with, “who the hell is that guy?” because 1) I honestly didn’t know and 2) he came off as a condescending schmuck to me.

Anyway, the TCI founder was a very dynamic individual, indeed. In fact, his presence and the way employees interacted with him struck many of us as cultish. No matter; I for one was pretty sold on their programs. Their slogan is “Bring Learning Alive!” and thus their curriculum series have titles like “History Alive!” and “Geography Alive!” (the one we’re using). Their approach is to take Social Studies instruction away from the traditional and deathly dull textbook and worksheets method to a more student-centered, active learning approach that utilizes hands-on activities, interactive notebooks, and a range of best practices in constructivist learning (oh god, kick me before I keep rolling with the teacher jargon… and yes, I wrote that sentence myself. It’s not even their spiel).

We had training sessions during the day, and then various activities at night. Sunday night they fed us dinner and we got the keynote address. Monday was “Casino Night.” They brought a company which, well, puts on Casino Nights. They have card dealers, but they’re moonlighting after their “real” jobs. You play with fake money (a good thing, really). And if you don’t know how to play a game, they’ll help you. I sat and observed some hands of Texas Hold ‘Em, but still didn’t really follow it. I know it’s the hot thing right now, but I prefer good ol’ five-card draw. I avoided craps and roulette because, even without real money to lose, those games seem entirely too much based on pure chance for my taste. I headed for the blackjack table where one of the colleagues from my school was. The other colleague in attendance joined later. I played for about an hour and just about broke even. I called it a night for gambling after that. At the end of the evening, we got one raffle ticket for each $100 in chips we’d won. This meant I only got five tickets, whereas some virtual high-rollers had accumulated thousands of “dollars.” Mr. Cult Founder drew a half-dozen or so winning tickets from the hopper, and I was one of them. I got to pick out one of their full curriculum sets. Woo-hoo, you may say, but hey, those things cost hundreds. I got the 8th-grade U.S. History set because even though we’re not using TCI for that class this year, I am teaching the class for the first time and I think it’ll be a nice resource, plus it can help us evaluate if we’d like to go to their materials for American History in the future.

Tuesday night, our last evening there, we were offered free transportation to either Old Town San Diego or the Gaslamp Quarter. I hadn’t requested my free bus pass when I first registered, so I had to take what they had left, which were all for Gaslamp. I was kind of bummed about this, also, because all the people I knew were going to Old Town. So I was put in the situation where I had to befriend new people– not something I do well as a matter of course. I’m friendly, but I’m just not particularly outgoing. Well, I found a woman from Omaha, Nebraska who teaches 5th grade. She was hanging out with two other Omahan attendees, who she had just met at the conference. So we became a group of four.

We arrived in Gaslamp

 a gaggle of teachers thinking, “Now what?”

We found a bar/restaurant named Hennessy’s. They were serving 2-for-1 burgers, they had Guinness on tap, and the All-Star Game was on, so I was a happy camper. Burgers were really good too. After that, we walked around a bit. We were kind of disappointed; Gaslamp didn’t appear to be much different than your typical trendy district in any city, such as LoDo in Denver, or Buckhead in Atlanta. We decided to keep drinking, so we decided to walk in, of all places, Hooters. Surprisingly, the aforementioned token female of our group had no objections (it was me, her, and two other guys).

Hooters is, well, Hooters. It’s pretty much the same wherever you go. I hadn’t been in one in a few years– my best friend of the time and I used to frequent them in our late teens/early 20s, for obvious reasons– but it hasn’t changed much. We were just there to drink, anyway, but the girls were mildly entertaining, with their bad singing and barstool dance routines.

 notice the requisite hoola-hoops!

Well, that resolution’s definitely down the drain.

I don’t want to take what’s left of my dreams and dash them against the rocks of real life. If I’m ever to be a writer, I have to write. But I may need to concede that it can’t be in a public forum, not on a regular basis anyway. Notebooks and journals and the backs of store receipts and even my left hand work as well.

I’m playing hookey today because I had a bad feeling about driving to work on the snow/ice-packed roads resulting from our fifth winter storm of the season this weekend. It wasn’t quite clear enough to qualify as a premonition, but it was definitely a feeling. I feel like I have to justify myself. The three days (two personal, one sick) that were originally to be used for our Christmas trip are credited back to me because the district was closed all three of those days, during the first blizzard. So, I felt it was OK to take a sick day this month and here we are. I’m just glad I work at a school where subs will come in on short notice. I think my plans are straightforward and easily manageable today, so I’m not really concerned, but I always feel a twinge of guilt when I’m not there and my students are.

Then again, it will give me a perfect opportunity to read this poem tomorrow.

Besides, it’s most likely that I won’t be back in this district next year, so I might as well use the days I have available. That’s because it’s most likely I won’t still be in this state next year. No worries, the family’s coming with me. The rest is a long story.

Having lived for some 16 months of my life in northwestern Indiana, a third of the way up I-65 from Indianapolis to Chicago, I’m glad to see those two cities’ teams matched in the Super Bowl. A Midwestern dream, to be played out in south Florida. The Saints will come back strong, no doubt drubbing my Falcons twice again next season. And the Patriots… my principal may be a diehard fan (he wrote in an e-mail that he “needs counseling” today), but haven’t they had enough success lately? Time to share.

It will probably be Super Bowl time when I post again, so here’s to a great remainder of January for all.

 

here’s the wall we were facing in our seats– and a couple of folks trying to catch some winks on cold, hard floor (but the Native American artwork is cool, eh?)

OK, so my resolution (not for the first time) is to write every day. Here’s the start… and boy do I have some stories to tell!

Yes, hard as it may be to believe, it’s been six years as of today since I signed up for Xanga (here). Makes me wistful enough to actually try it again.

Now, on to the news…

In case you didn’t hear, a massive blizzard hit Colorado this week and shut down Denver International Airport for over 48 hours. Guess what? We had a flight to Atlanta scheduled at 10:25 a.m. Wednesday. It was snowing that morning, but not “blizzard” conditions yet… we arrived around 8:25, and the flight was listed “on-time.” We checked-in, checked baggage, and the flight was still listed “on-time.” We proceeded downstairs through security, took the train to the concourse, came up the escalator to the gate level and saw the monitor… CANCELLED. Less than an hour before departure, and now we were stuck.

We waited in line to check with customer service about rebooking. We waited for around two hours, and then they told us lines were shorter back in the main terminal; and so there we returned. Though there were more agents at the counter, the terminal line was actually longer. We waited around another two hours, and finally got to the counter. We were told we were rebooked for Saturday night at 7 p.m.– and first-class to boot. At the time it sounded bad, because that would cut four days– over half the time– off of our trip. But we weren’t about to argue at that point.

That was about the time that the airport officially closed. They tentatively planned to re-open the next (Thursday) afternoon. Later that was postponed to 7 p.m Thursday, then 9 p.m. Thursday, and finally to noon Friday. That meant that all the people who were rebooked on flights for Thursday or Friday morning would have to be re-rebooked– and made us feel lucky that ours was not until Saturday. We wouldn’t have to go through the process again, and would still arrive before Christmas, which quickly became a fleeting hope for many travelers.

In the meantime, though, we were still stuck in the airport. Joyce (my mother-in-law) had driven us there that morning, but conditions had worsened significantly in the meantime– she had a white-knuckle drive back home, and several more hours had now passed. We could not, in good conscience, ask her to come back for us, being that she’s 65 and also would have three small kids in tow. We hoped that we could catch one of the SkyRide busses that would at least take us near our house, where it would be safer for her to pick us up; but we kept chasing out of the doors (not desiring to stand in 30-mph winds dumping several inches of snow an hour) to check each bus– and you had to get literally right up next to the bus to read the sign, as visibility was zero. We repeated this process for an hour, but the bus we needed never showed. Finally, around 3 p.m., we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to camp out in the airport for the night– along with as many as 5,000 other stranded passengers.

It wasn’t too bad, all things considered. We grabbed a trio of seats facing the International Arrivals gate. Seated alongside us were three older gentleman who soon would become fast friends: Gene, Jeff, and George. When they started distributing “accommodations” for the evening, one of them managed to get a cot, but we did not.

To be continued…

Just a  quick note to say … you  need to come visit me here. And leave  a comment, please? WordPress now maps domain names… which means my blog can reside at jasonwrites.com, and you can read about me at jasonwrites.com/about, and I could write about teaching at jasonwrites.com/teaching, or my wife and kids at jasonwrites.com/family, or make any other kind of page I want at jasonwrites.com/whateverthehellIwant. So I’m going to blog there and inch my way toward a full-fledged website.

But if any of you are on Myspace, then please go over to http://www.myspace.com/jasonwrites and add me as a friend because, for someone who’s been on the Web for over a decade, I don’t have many “friends.” Yes, that’s a shameless plea.

Enjoy what’s left of November…

3:00 p.m. Right now, the bell would be ringing. School’s out.

Except, there was no school today. We finally got our only “comp” day of the semester. Sure, we had Labor Day, but that’s only a fortnight into the calendar. I’ve missed one day for Language Arts Induction and another, two weeks ago today, which I took as one of the two days I’m “entitled” to as a first-year teacher– days we don’t have to come to school, but still have to spend doing something “curricular.” In my case, it was grading. Grading is a relentless pursuit (see previous post) but I find it keeps getting pushed to last priority after P&P– planning & preparation. Veteran teachers don’t have any less grading to do, they just have far less P&P, especially if they only teach courses they’ve already taught for years. One shouldn’t follow lockstep with what you did last year, much less five years ago, but down the road it becomes much more tweaking and much less creating from scratch. Plus, when it does come to grading, when you’ve seen this same assignment for five years, you can crank it out pretty quick. Which, to some extent, makes it ironic that most new teachers quit within the first five years, just before it really does start to get easier.

Hold on… let me grade a book report.

Hrm, a little under three minutes. Need to get faster. This is what they call a day off? One day I’ll figure out how the make the most of every minute during the day and take nothing home. I see other teachers doing it and just scratch my head.

On the upside, first quarter is done, I got my grades posted, I had my first evaluation and was told I’m doing most things right, and at least as well as can be expected at this point; and I’ve endured my first parent-teacher conferences as well. Consecutive 12-hours and meeting with 30-40 parents– I lost count– was not difficult but definitely exhausting. By 6:30 on the second night, my mind was slipping and I had to tell myself to focus. The last parent told me that her son had never liked Language Arts– until my class. That made the whole marathon, in fact the whole year so far, worthwhile.