I wish life was one big summer vacation
I've been slacking again. It's been two weeks since my last update and I suppose that's cause nothing very exciting has happened to me since getting the job.
I brought my mom with me to the school and the school board office to sign the contract and she's pretty jealous, even to the point where she's telling me to look for openings in my county in case she ever wants to transfer. Everyone is just sooo friendly! My principal, assistant principal.. They've told Mom that they're going to take good care of me. The people in the school board office were warm and welcoming, unlike Bedford where you know they are above you in the pecking order. The human resources woman even brought Mr. Walker, the superintendent, in to meet me while I signed paperwork and he was awesome. He told me I was more than welcome to e-mail him or give him a call if I had questions or needed anything. I think at that point, Mom was hoping she'd be able to find a job opening.
So. I'm very excited about the environment I'll be working in. I'm a little nervous, though, with the whole planning thing. I haven't been put together with my mentor yet, and the lady that offered to share all her life science resources hasn't gotten in touch with me yet. At this point it's all a matter of blindly waiting, I suppose. I'm going to try to make a visit to my school tomorrow morning to take an inventory of the things the previous teacher left. Hopefully then I can ask my principal about how to start planning and to see if she can get me in touch with the other science teachers so I can hit the ground running.
The Fox family reunion was last weekend, and was a blast, as usual. Sometimes reunions can be so awkward cause I only see these people once every 4 years or so (if I'm lucky) and it's not like I have any real relationships with them.. but something happens at every reunion where once we get the initial weird "so what have you been doing since I saw you 6 years ago??" conversations out of the way, we always end up having a jam session and sing-along and sometimes people bust a move. It's great. This year my brothers and I brought our guitars and joined our distant cousins Steve and LeRoy to form a band. [Steve is a former Elvis impersonator who has played with Johnny Cash, knew Waylon Jennings, and hung out with KISS when they had the same manager. Oh, and he was in Return of the Jedi as an Imperial Stormtrooper on Endor.. he recalls he may be the one that takes the gun away from Chewbacca in the bunker. LeRoy just plays banjo and is awesome.]
I told the Mag7, I've never done anything like that before where I just sit with other musicians and start playing random things, taking requests from the audience and performing whatever they want. I had to stare at Steve's fingers to figure out what chords we were playing next and I had to build my ability to anticipate chord progressions and learn bluegrass strumming patterns, which I'm pretty sure I've never used before. The second night we jammed, Steve quit early and LeRoy taught Shawn and I about 25 bluegrass songs by saying "okay, this song has chords x, y, and z" and would start playing, expecting us to pick it up and stay with him. It was ridiculous at first, but after 2 hours of jamming with him like this, we were naturals. LeRoy gave me one of his CD's with the classic songs we always sing at reunions and told me my homework is to practice these for the next reunion in 2009. By then, I'll be a performing artist.
That's pretty much all about the reunion. I had to leave halfway through Saturday to see Amanda and Jimmy get married and it was a beautiful wedding. I loved the candles and the music (Amanda's brother is a friggin awesome singer) and it was great reuniting with so many Longwood people for awhile. The only thing that was lame was having to leave an hour and a half before the reception was over so I could get back to Richmond for more reunion festivities. It was weird because when I was at the wedding, I was sad cause I was missing out on the reunion, but when I was back in RIC, I was sad that I was missing out on all the fun at the reception. It sucks not being able to be in two places at once, but I'm glad I got to do a little of both.
Today, inspired by
lizjw, I called Dell to let them know how crappy my computer is. Though mine isn't quite at the state as hers, what with the odor and all, I still told them how hot it gets and didn't even get to mention how many hard drives I've been through, how many buttons are broken, and how it never stays shut.. this is because as soon as I mentioned the heat, the girl told me she would check on what they could do for me. The clincher: my warranty expired 2 days ago, so she wasn't sure if she could work anything out. But with a little bit of prayer, she came back saying they would do a system exchange and would send me a new computer and I could send mine to them a week after I receive the new one. yaaaaayyy!! So thank you Alice for inadvertantly reminding me about that whole warranty thing cause if I had waited any later, I probably would be stuck with this thing!
In addition to all the excitement, I'm going to Busch Gardens this weekend! Finally I can use the fun pass I bought a month ago!
I brought my mom with me to the school and the school board office to sign the contract and she's pretty jealous, even to the point where she's telling me to look for openings in my county in case she ever wants to transfer. Everyone is just sooo friendly! My principal, assistant principal.. They've told Mom that they're going to take good care of me. The people in the school board office were warm and welcoming, unlike Bedford where you know they are above you in the pecking order. The human resources woman even brought Mr. Walker, the superintendent, in to meet me while I signed paperwork and he was awesome. He told me I was more than welcome to e-mail him or give him a call if I had questions or needed anything. I think at that point, Mom was hoping she'd be able to find a job opening.
So. I'm very excited about the environment I'll be working in. I'm a little nervous, though, with the whole planning thing. I haven't been put together with my mentor yet, and the lady that offered to share all her life science resources hasn't gotten in touch with me yet. At this point it's all a matter of blindly waiting, I suppose. I'm going to try to make a visit to my school tomorrow morning to take an inventory of the things the previous teacher left. Hopefully then I can ask my principal about how to start planning and to see if she can get me in touch with the other science teachers so I can hit the ground running.
The Fox family reunion was last weekend, and was a blast, as usual. Sometimes reunions can be so awkward cause I only see these people once every 4 years or so (if I'm lucky) and it's not like I have any real relationships with them.. but something happens at every reunion where once we get the initial weird "so what have you been doing since I saw you 6 years ago??" conversations out of the way, we always end up having a jam session and sing-along and sometimes people bust a move. It's great. This year my brothers and I brought our guitars and joined our distant cousins Steve and LeRoy to form a band. [Steve is a former Elvis impersonator who has played with Johnny Cash, knew Waylon Jennings, and hung out with KISS when they had the same manager. Oh, and he was in Return of the Jedi as an Imperial Stormtrooper on Endor.. he recalls he may be the one that takes the gun away from Chewbacca in the bunker. LeRoy just plays banjo and is awesome.]
I told the Mag7, I've never done anything like that before where I just sit with other musicians and start playing random things, taking requests from the audience and performing whatever they want. I had to stare at Steve's fingers to figure out what chords we were playing next and I had to build my ability to anticipate chord progressions and learn bluegrass strumming patterns, which I'm pretty sure I've never used before. The second night we jammed, Steve quit early and LeRoy taught Shawn and I about 25 bluegrass songs by saying "okay, this song has chords x, y, and z" and would start playing, expecting us to pick it up and stay with him. It was ridiculous at first, but after 2 hours of jamming with him like this, we were naturals. LeRoy gave me one of his CD's with the classic songs we always sing at reunions and told me my homework is to practice these for the next reunion in 2009. By then, I'll be a performing artist.
That's pretty much all about the reunion. I had to leave halfway through Saturday to see Amanda and Jimmy get married and it was a beautiful wedding. I loved the candles and the music (Amanda's brother is a friggin awesome singer) and it was great reuniting with so many Longwood people for awhile. The only thing that was lame was having to leave an hour and a half before the reception was over so I could get back to Richmond for more reunion festivities. It was weird because when I was at the wedding, I was sad cause I was missing out on the reunion, but when I was back in RIC, I was sad that I was missing out on all the fun at the reception. It sucks not being able to be in two places at once, but I'm glad I got to do a little of both.
Today, inspired by
lizjw, I called Dell to let them know how crappy my computer is. Though mine isn't quite at the state as hers, what with the odor and all, I still told them how hot it gets and didn't even get to mention how many hard drives I've been through, how many buttons are broken, and how it never stays shut.. this is because as soon as I mentioned the heat, the girl told me she would check on what they could do for me. The clincher: my warranty expired 2 days ago, so she wasn't sure if she could work anything out. But with a little bit of prayer, she came back saying they would do a system exchange and would send me a new computer and I could send mine to them a week after I receive the new one. yaaaaayyy!! So thank you Alice for inadvertantly reminding me about that whole warranty thing cause if I had waited any later, I probably would be stuck with this thing!
In addition to all the excitement, I'm going to Busch Gardens this weekend! Finally I can use the fun pass I bought a month ago!