I was driving intown this rainy afternoon to check out the Irish jam session at Brian Boru, windshield wipers flapping, singing along with Tears for Fears on WCLZ. Everything in the world just felt weirdly right. Then I realized why: my wipers were swooshing back and forth exactly to the beat of the music. Through the entire song. It was like watching a metronome. That is so never going to happen again.

Remember that Far Side cartoon where the man is saying, "I've had it, Ginger, stay out of the garbage..." and the dog is hearing "blah blah blah GINGER, blah blah blah blah blah..." ? I was wondering today what Bonita thinks her name is, since I so rarely call her by name. I have 3 guesses:

1. "hi, beautiful"
2. "sooooooo cute"
3. "don't bite me, you little weasel"

Research. I need more research.

Oh, that's right, I suddenly realize why, for much of the summer, all I wanted to do was sleep. Two days of getting ready for school and I'm completely fried. And I haven't actually gotten ready for school yet. And I have 9½ months to go.

Going into my second year of teaching, I find myself in much the same position as last year: no curriculum and a new room that's in chaos. One difference is that I know what the curriculum will be as soon as I can get to it. The other difference is that the staff now knows me and knows I'm the Building Technology Coordinator, and comes to me one by one or en masse in a panic about some computer- or network-related problem. After a day of absorbing and soothing the latent panic of impending student arrival from 30 other staff, (exacerbated by their terror at adopting PowerSchool), I finally had to go outside and lie down on a bench for 15 minutes. Then, as the custodians finally moved the furniture through my door, I sat down on a table to survey the disaster that is my new classroom. Computers everywhere, boxes everywhere, tables and chairs and filing cabinets and storage closets scattered about. Yikes.

Students come tomorrow (except Portland and Deering students, who will trickle in next week). Guess it's time to put young bodies to work unpacking things.

Just returned from a tango band rehearsal for our performance at SWELL tomorrow night. We're ready to have a great time; come out and see us play! We'll be at the corner of Casco and Congress Streets. Event starts at 7:00 p.m. and we play at 8:35.

Now, back to school I go to unpack my room. Ack.

What a beautiful day to play a wedding on Great Diamond, and what a relief to play with D. I last played with her in December and am a little bummed that I don't get to sit with her during Nutcracker this year; she will have just delivered twins. Today we played some beautiful Renaissance [I think; I sucked at music history] duets, rendered more flowing (and more confusing) by not having barlines. Unusual wedding music and completely appropriate. What a treat!

I never hung out with D. growing up. She's 4 years older than I am, and didn't live in the same town, so I only knew her slightly because of playing in youth orchestra. I think we might be truly great friends, if only we could get together. Between my teaching and band schedules her raising 2 (soon 4) kids, we haven't managed to hang out. As we chatted on the ferry, it was uncanny how similar our recent thoughts on technique have been, and she is one of the only violinists I've played with who really inspires me to play better. I often have gigs with people who are great players, but D. plays with her whole soul, and (unlike some musicians I know) when she turns herself inside-out, she's just as beautiful. When I play with her, I can make real music, music that matters more than the people who are playing it.

The longer I know D., the more lucky I feel that we are both back in Maine at the same time and the more certain I am that we should be friends. This is a different feeling than meeting a new boy. It feels much more important.

Cosmic Rays, a.k.a. Nondeterminism, a.k.a. Why I Hate Hardware, a.k.a. Why I Am Up at 1:30 AM on a Sunday Morning Trying to Find a Good RCX Simulator for My Class. The LEGO Mindstorms robots I ordered for my class are extremely flaky when downloading firmware and programs. The download (via the IR port) will go perfectly for a while and then just randomly stop working. And when it does work, it is sl-o-o-o-o-o-ow. We need a simulator or we will get very little done this year as we wait around for robots to download. Argh. Did I mention that I hate hardware?

Tonight I installed LMS, which so far I'm not wild about. Besides reminding me of Lincoln Middle School, it looks a bit clunky and the documentation is in German. Ack. Deutsch ist ausgezeichnet, aber Ich kann nur ein Bißchen Deutsch lesen. I think I know what I just said...

Tomorrow I'll look at Intellejos. Who said the second year of teaching is easier? So far it's worse because now I have expectations for myself...and my classes still suck. Hrmph.

I heard different variations on "this is easy" this week from my Java students. The first time, I was taken aback--programming isn't that easy! :-) A few seconds later I realized that I'm finally doing something right this year: letting students play with programming in small chunks, letting them get used to the vocabulary before talking about what they're actually doing programming-wise. I can see that the handouts I'm staying up all night to make are actually going to be useful next year. Yaaaaaaaaaay!

Things that are helping:
- Captivate is saving my life. Thank you, W., for sending it last year! I finally opened it last weekend...
- The robots make Java so much more tangible. It's so much easier to explain Motor.A.forward(); when I can point to the motor connection labeled "A" on the brick.
- I am much better at making assignments and handouts this year.
- My students, for the most part, are far more engaged and excited about programming (and learning) in general, which makes them so much easier to teach. Actually, I don't think I'm teaching them--just letting them learn.

Things that are not helping:
- Being exhausted due to nighttime curriculum development and daytime classroom policework.
- Being exhausted due to nighttime unpacking of my classroom.
- Not playing the violin enough due to being exhausted.
- Not dancing tango enough due to being exhausted.
- Not doing enough physical therapy due to being exhausted.

The "things that are not helping" had me depressed at the beginning of the week. Isn't the second year supposed to be easier? Not when you have a classroom that's still mostly in boxes and a new curriculum (again). But now that I see that I'll be able to use this curriculum next year, I'm hoping the third year will be easier. If it isn't, high school teaching may have to go on the "Don't be Dumb" list of things I should not be doing post-MS. That would stink.

Meanwhile, I'll concentrate on keeping those "this is easy!" comments coming.

This Spring I had my violin students give me favorite songs and I wrote violin or viola parts for them so they could play along with their CDs during the summer. Guess I still had some of those kicking around on my iPod because Natasha Beddingfield just appeared amid hours of tango music. Before I knew it, I was up bopping around to "These Words are My Own" (much to snoozing Bonita's dismay), belatedly thinking that maybe I should make some curtains for my kitchen for moments like these? Good stuff.

During the second full week of school you start to see what the students are really like. This year's students were right on schedule, sneaking out to smoke, going to the bathroom and then loitering in the hall for 15 minutes talking to the Fashion Merchandising girls, swearing, throwing things...phew! I was beginning to think there was something seriously wrong with these kids! Thank god they're behaving normally.

At PATHS we have a "Progressive Discipline" sheet. This is not progressive because it's forward-thinking, but because it tracks a student's "progress" towards getting suspended. I'm not sure whether I'm the only one who finds this funny--certain administrators take this stuff very seriously. It's in quintuplicate. There are 5 sections on it. The first time I kick a student out, I fill out Section 1 of the top sheet (which copies through onto the 4 other sheets), tear it off, and send the student to the office with it. The second time, I fill out Section 2 of the now-top sheet, which has a carbon-copy of the last offense in Section 1, etc., etc. After 5 offenses (or sometimes fewer), the student is suspended or expelled or whatever.

Today in the P.M. class I held up The Sheet and said, "this is our Progressive Discipline Sheet. I have to fill it out when I send you to the office. Please don't make me use it." Just at that moment I almost snorted, because I had this vision of my brother standing on the winners' box at a college diving meet, grinning, holding a can labeled "Whoopass" and pointing to it. Silent caption: "don't make me open this."

Maybe I should get a can of Whoopass for my classroom? Hmmm. I suppose I'd have to name it something else.

Home sick today. Started feeling crappy yesterday afternoon, and by the end of my last violin lesson I needed to go straight to bed. Today I'm hot and crabby, can't sleep anymore but don't have enough brainpower to write an arrangement of "The Wedding Song" for my October 7th gig (blech) or to write more programming assignments.

My fridge also has a fever. Light goes on, but it's 65° in there. Double blech.

My fever has abated, the fridge's fever has stabilized at room temperature, Dad came over to loan me a cube fridge and, (with the help of the Fix-It-Yourself Manual), we discovered that my refrigerator's timer is broken so it always thinks it's in "defrost" mode. Now I'm nursing a headache, listening to tango, and finishing up my cheezy arrangement of the Wedding Song, ("There is Love"). Tomorrow, with any luck, Twin City Supply will have a replacement timer and I can install it before tango band rehearsal. If not, some fancy wiring will be in order to bypass the timer switch so I can have a working fridge for the weekend. Company's coming...

I picked up a replacement timer for my refrigerator today. Of course it couldn't be a simple swap with an identical timer; these days there's one timer replacement that you wire differently depending on what kind of timer you're replacing and what kind of cycle your fridge is on. The lady at the counter said, "this comes with instructions, so make sure they read them when they're installing it." I assured her that "they" would. At home, I opened the booklet: "blah blah blah COMPRESSOR blah blah REPLACEMENT TIMER blah blah WARNING blah blah blah PERMANENT DAMAGE TO THE UNIT..." I gave up on the text and just read the schematics, connected the wires, reseated everything, plugged the fridge in, and turned the timer dial until it clicked. The compressor came on immediately. Yay.

I returned from band practice to an appropriately chilly fridge and to a bunch of notes from my dad, who had come by to check out my handiwork and to shove the fridge back into its crevice. He also vaccuumed. My dad is the best.

I feel a little silly that a working fridge is such a relief, but there it is.

A rainy Saturday is fine when I've been to the farmers' market and am now indoors, finishing up my arrangement of Cumparsita while my houseguest snoozes on the couch looking so impossibly sweet that I'm sure it can't be legal. Tomorrow: a tango wedding reception!

The tango band decided to participate in the Battle of the Bands at Tango de los Muertos this year. On the web site, bands are advised of the following:

The point here is not to choose the band with the highest level of musicianship - although that is important - but to choose the band that is the best TO DANCE TO. What makes a band great to dance to? For starters they have to have a strong, driving beat with few tempo changes; they should play repertoire that is familar to dancers; the music must have a good walking tempo (120bpm or faster); and please note that dancers don't necessarily appreciate clever arrangements.

Oh, puh-leeease. With the exception of the "good walking tempo" comment, I disagree with every statement in there. As a dancer who listens to the music (relatively rare in most tango communities, I realize, but that's another topic...), I live for music that's interesting, varied, well-orchestrated, and soulful. So unfortunately those tips had the effect of making me and the rest of the band want to mess with dancers' heads--just a bit. We've been so looking forward to it that we sort of forgot it was a competition until someone mentioned it the other night. Oh yeah--winning? We're not even going to try to win. But we'll try not to torture the dancers too much.

I just finished an arrangement of La Cumparsita, which we'll rehearse this Wednesday in preparation for the Battle. Strong, driving beat with few tempo changes: check. Familiar repertoire: check. Good walking tempo: check. Oh, yeah, it's also written in 5/4. Let the fun begin!

What a sweet wedding on Sunday. The groom, (an artist and tango instructor), did the explosion of fanciful sketches all over the wedding program. The ceremony was outside at the top of a tiny ski hill in Manchester, NH. The bride and groom marked their wedding with graffiti. All very cute. I was there because J. asked me to come because it was a tango wedding and the bride asked him because he's a tango dancer. I was delighted to realize, when the groom arrived, that I knew the groom and several other dancers present. It ended up being a good time. It was mostly lovely to dance with J. If only dancing were real life. Alas, it's not.

J. and I returned from the wedding at 12:15 a.m. on Monday morning, in time to get ready for bed and prepare to get up early so I could drive him to the bus station before going to school. At 12:30 I knew I obviously couldn't create new curriculum for the school day, so I took a look through my folder of last year's handouts. Miraculously, there were a couple of assignments that were perfect for my students. Now I get it. Next year will be easier because, (unless I give up the LEGO robots), I will actually have a full curriculum ready for students. I can spend nights and weekends grading assignments instead of making new ones. Cool.

Over the past several months, Sherry has been documenting her efforts to be open and truthful on her blog, and talking about how it's helping her to be a more open person. I've been finding it very interesting, because most of the time I try not to open up too much on my blog. Well...that's not quite true, but I definitely make sure that I don't open up on my blog more than I would in real life. Real life is real, and the Internet is not. Call me a Luddite.

I like having a blog, because some of my friends have blogs and I like to read their blogs and they like to read my blog and it's a fun way to keep up with what's going on in our lives. I like having a blog because sometimes I put things in there that I never thought to tell a particular friend, and we end up having an interesting conversation about it in real life. Maybe it has opened me up a little, but that's because of my one blogging rule: if it goes in the blog, I have to have discussed it with a real person first.

This one rule constantly forces me to remember to open up to my friends, something I've always found difficult to do unless I've known them since age 5. This rule also reminds me that reading my friend's blog does not take the place of e-mail, phone, or face-to-face conversations, even if I know that my friend is also reading my blog. For me, commenting on a friend's blog also does not take the place of actual communication, because commenting is a public forum. Even e-mail, in comparison, is relatively private.

Sometimes I really want to put something in my blog, and I know that if I do, I have to tell somebody about it first. If I can't do that, it doesn't go in my blog. But sometimes I'll go for it -- I'll tell my thoughts to a friend, with a slight feeling of dread that usually turns to relief when I realize that opening up to another person isn't as painful as I thought. That's probably the biggest thing having a blog (and having my personal blogging rule) does for me.