LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

School

Gettin’ old.

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Yesterday Lloyd called to ask if I’d like to go to a spontaneous birthday party that one of his co-workers was having for herself. “Sounds fun!”  I replied!  So, we all met at Red Robin, and it turned out to be us and several of her friends from around Lincoln.  It was very interesting, since all of them had jobs that WEREN’T teaching.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve been with a group like that.  One worked at a company that produced newsletters for other companies, one was a pastor, one was a nursing student, one worked at UNL (but not as a teacher!), one guy was in charge of all the computers for some call-processing place, and one was a grad student.  I thoroughly enjoyed the evening…..until I realized I was the oldest one there.  That’s going to start happening alot, now, huh?

singin'

“Happy Birthday, Customer,  We hope you liked the food, We sing this made-up birthday song just so we don’t get sued.  Stupid Michael Jackson, or was it Paul McCartney? He bought the rights to the real song and ruined all our parties.”

“I teach preschool.”

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Spin, Spin as fast as you can!

This post is in honor of Brad’s comment at the doctor, “I teach middle school.”  You can read about it here, but I warn you – it’s graphic!  Being a teacher grants you a license to do anything weird.  We get free stuff from McDonald’s – straws, boxes, juice, donations of all kinds, and MRI results.  (When my dentist had finished making my crown, he handed me the plaster casts of my teeth. “Here, you teach preschool.”)  With such power come responsibility, so it’s important not to abuse it.

Last week during the Day of Fun, I took a giant cookie into the mall to have it’s picture taken on the merry-go-round.  (This was a cookie my class made back in November – he was a ‘runner’.  When we went to check the oven – he was gone!!  Oh no!  We made a bunch of ‘Missing’ posters, but he hasn’t shown up yet.  Since so much time has gone by, and they keep asking me about it, I thought that perhaps he had gone on some ‘adventures’ and would send us some postcards.)  Lloyd thought I was crazy, and that the people at the merry-go-round would think I was crazy, but all I had to say was, “I teach preschool.  Could you put this on the bench so I could take its picture?”  Without blinking an eye, the girls said, “Sure!” 

Ah, it’s fun doing weird things.

Gooda wark Danialsan

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We have three “Access periods” each week, because good middle schools have things like that. It’s in all the literature. Our access groups are students selected at random from 6th-8th grade. Once you have someone in your access group they stay with you until they enter high school. We don’t know what happens to them after that. So we’re pretty much stuck with the kids that we get unless you can convince another teacher to trade with you.

I have the best access group. It was a little experiment in self-fulfilling prophesy. When we first started doing these groups I told mine that they were the best access group. We fed off the fact that we happened to win the first inter-access group contest, and now they are the easiest group of middle students to work with ever. The 8th graders make the 7th graders tow the line and 6th graders are all terrified of me.

Wax on... Wax off...

This week we’re talking about bullying, and to introduce it we showed The Karate Kid to the rugrats*. It works well for an introduction, and when we first did this 2 years ago I made up a Karate Kid “talking points” cheat sheet for our teachers to use to lead the discussions. It’s an interesting movie to use, because it’s got the swears, drinking, smoking, fighting and racism in it, but it’s incorporated in a way that makes it easy to turn each one of those into a useful discussion. I think next time we show it I’ll include all of the swears in my introduction so the students aren’t shocked when they hear them in the movie.

We tried something new this time. We took a long sheet of paper from the art teacher and combined the two 12×12 screens into one huge 12×24 screen and showed it in letterbox. It worked surprisingly well.

*I said “rugrats” because I knew Annette would jump all over me in the comments if I said “kids”.

Trapped?

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Lloyd and I have spent the weekend working in the computer lab switching old computers over to new ones. Actually, I spent most of Saturday reading and watching movies, but today I’m a big helper. My skills at drilling holes have come in handy to attach cable holders and surge protectors to the underside of tables. Lloyd’s doing stuff, too, but it’s not nearly as important as the hole-drilling. Hole-drilling is key.

Anyway, there’s a big ol’ buncha snow falling from the sky, so I’m certain we’ll be trapped in Lincoln overnight. So, Annette, if you’re reading this, I’ll need tomorrow off. (heh heh heh)

Worst Day Ever.

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Poor Lloyd.  Something went tragically wrong this afternoon and the server at school died.  (He tried explaining what happened, but all I hear is ‘blah blah blah’ with some acronyms thrown in.)  Anyway, he drowned his sorrows, and kept uttering the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.  “I’m like other men.” (He says this when he can’t fix a computer problem.  Mere mortal.)

Note the many beer bottles on the table.

All Day.

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Watch out for killer frogs.

Here we see the Lloyd in his natural habitat, surrounded by computers, servers, and frogs.  Today the Lloyd spent ALL DAY moving things around inside those computer things, while his wife went slowly insane.  (Some shopping was done, but then…..) 

Part of the Lloyd’s habitat is polluted by the natural wastes they exude, and that section of the cage had to be cleaned.

Who's kidding who?

Lloyd asked for help pulling stuff out of the server room (er, closet) so he could sort through it and clean it up.  Here it is all over the table in the computer lab.

  Holy moly, that's a lot of cables.

 I have complete and total faith that he will get it done tomorrow.  He’s wicked good at cleaning up.