ski trip 2003 finished off pretty well! only real mishap was that the stupid owners of the cabin double booked the damn place, and so we had no place to stay. luckily mike li hooked us up with a place. lots of rooms, hot tubs and all...just no kitchen so sandy couldn't have food waiting for us when we got back from skiing. but the ski conditions were fine, had 18 good friends to chill, didn't get TOO sunburned, and i only lost 25 bucks gambling (least ever!).

so i came back to school this week, and already i can't wait for my own spring break (mid-april). i've been giving the kids lots of worksheets that i've made, but i don't think they've really been learning too well. i am making them make a brochure about a particular ecosystem which i hope they're learning from. and this one punk ass who's not my student pushed passed me to slap his friend in my 5th period. i came so close to taking the fucker down. i got so pissed. i mean, if i let it slide, it's not really a big deal cuz he didn't mean any harm to me. but the fact that he actually physically pushed past me...i came so close to just grabbing him and putting him on the floor. you just can't do that. what was the moron thinking? of course, he wasn't thinking cuz he's a moron, and he goes to skyline like a lot of other ghetto morons who just come to play and fool around.

i've started marking kids absent even when they are present because i'm requiring them to be mentally present. they don't take that very well. i just stare back at them with the expression "i don't give a shit about you b/c you're a fucking loser and you don't do squat in my room". for some reason some of them don't take that very well..

so what does it take to turn a young energetic youthful teacher who wants to help out poor disadvantaged kids into a formerly young bitter teacher who just wants to get through the day? i guess it depends. skyline is a total trip. i had a faculty department meeting...and man oh man..my department head has been a total asshole lately. to ALL the teachers. he cuts us all off and says "end of discussion. we need to move on. there's really no point in discussing this", the funny thing is we're discussing common standards and cooperation among science teachers.

so my latest ideas for how i'm going to occupy my summer is to work on my backyard. i've started to rip down this vine that has grown EVERYWHERE (even under my house) and some of the things i've found have been a car battery and a garbage can. both of this was completely buried underneath the vine. the only place it doesn't grow is next to the redwood tree....go allelopathic tree!...oooh, biology term! one of the things i'm thinking about is a stone walkway up the right side of my house that would lead to a hot tub. only problem with that is it'd take constant maintenance, and there's not much privacy from one side of the yard b/c there's an apartment bldg next door.