The Daily News
1 Some will win, some will lose; I gotta write the Daily News...
2 Ha!
3 I had EVERY intention yesterday of going home and catching up with my grading, which is truly all I do nowadays.
4 But first there was a guardian of a student who wanted a full blown explanation of why she didn't do well in my class.
5 Then there was my favorite student who needed a recommendation to get in to a voluntary medical program of some sort.
6 Then there was the faculty meeting in which we had to completely re-vamp the grading system in the District.
7 Then there was the moment of actual relaxation, in which my friend Gemma and I sat on a park bench and enjoyed the afternoon chatting.
8 I thought if it rained, we both would have turned to copper, and turned into a rusted bird bath.
9 Then there was going home, and turning on the orange-and-black Parade.
10 THEN there were all the texts and emails from old friends and family, still enjoying the Moment.
11 Then there were more tears and amazement at the entire Bay Area miracle of the Giants. It's gone beyond the unbelievable, and on to the surreal.
12 I could make any number of cheap analogies, but I do think that the Santa Cruz gnarly image sort of works with me.
13 I'm gonna simply ride this wave. No guilt, no boushit. Catcha wave and you're sittin' on top of the world.
14 Catch a surreal, gnarly, orange-and-black wave...
15 That's "Way it's at" man.
16 All apologies to anyone not ridin' this one all the way in.
17 I LOVED the parade, and I wasn't gonna let it pass by.
18 This is arguably the greatest month of my entire life.
19 Ah, except for one thing.
20 Nicoley moves out this weekend, and the boxes suddenly appeared. That's my baby; that's my girl.
21 I naturally avoided going into the loft and pokin' around, because my Dad and I MADE the loft, and it is an area of the house where memories merge with spider webs and dust.
22 So my heart is getting packed up in old boxes with cracked tape and all, and somehow moving back into the living room, like some sad wraith.
23 Fortunately, she's moving right around the street, so I could go to her new apartment and work out in the gym, and still swim and all.
24 After all, this November is the arrested development of the summer of the Ages, right?
25 Last night I went to turn on the midnight Giants' game, and some horse's ass was talking about the Tennessee Titans.
26 Uh...who?
27 I hear Warriors and Sharks somewhere in the wind, but to me, it's STILL all about the Giants, at least for now. I'm living in the Moment.
28 Moving on, Part the First: With all of this orange-and-black blubbering and essential love fest, I almost forgot that I was the number one hack reporter on the planet.
29 Not good, not good.
30 My AOL special forces haven't even been getting the DN, because AOL decided to upgrade by downgrading once again.
31 Their "upgrade" did one thing: it has prevented me from being able to do mass mailings. Thanks, AOL, for the usual stupidity. Your improvements are pretty supportive of someone who has been with you since you were invented.
32 Moving on, Part the Second: At yesterday's meeting on restructuring grading, one teacher suggested we should be able to give F minuses to students who refuse to do any work.
33 He said that the group thought of calling them FU's, but decided against it.
34 HUGE applause from an overworked staff.
35 Moving on, Part the Third: I ALSO dropped the ball a bit on the Heidi Chronz, and any subsequent Heidi trips.
36 Only two, and one might have been a plant.
37 On Tuesday, while students wrote vocab sentences on the board, a student in my last class of the day picked up a playing card that he claimed was on the rug in front of the room. It was a nine of clubs, an exact replica of one I found on a sidewalk last year, and which I eventually tore up. Before I did, a student pointed out that the nine of clubs shapes an H. Okay. True.
38 I still claim that he brought it to class, but his sincerity seems pretty, well, sincere.
39 So I can't really call that a Heidi trip.
40 But this next item I can.
41 Yesterday I reviewed the Poe stuff: Annabel Lee, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Raven, for my students.
42 During my third period class, which seems to be Heidi-friendly, it turned cold when I reviewed Cask, if I may refer to it in it's abbreviated state. Not unusual, because I constantly have to change the temperature in my classroom because of the huge windows.
43 The second I finished reviewing The Raven, an enormous black crow smashed into my skylight window, which is high up on the front side of the room. I didn't see it crash, but almost thirty students did. I definitely heard it though.
44 Just another coincidence in a seemingly endless amount of coincidences. My first year at the Chill, I worked a volleyball game, and was caught there until around ten at night.
45 I was in the Activities' office inside Cougar Hall when I heard a flutter go past my right ear.
46 I looked up, and saw that a blackbird had landed on the small tee-vee in the office, and was quirking it's head at me.
47 Okay, if you've ever read The Raven, one thing the narrator mentions is the odds of a black bird entering your chamber. Here is the excerpt:
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'
48 I'd love to say, "Amazing" but I won't.
49 Well, it's late. The other night I found one of my very first DN's online. It had eleven items.
50 How I ever got it up to over fifty is beyond me, but it just seems that it needs to be done.
51 So it's almost 4:30 in the morning right now, so I think I'll call it a night. I did sleep from around eight to about 3:30, so this is really not categorically insomnia.
52 But I still have a saloon to run.
53 Happy November.
54 I'm outta here.
55 Peace.
~H~
www.xanga.com 
The Daily News
Recent Comments