The Future

This week can't go fast enough. Hell, the next few days can't go fast enough. I'm finally beginning the process of starting over. It's an exciting prospect. Wiping the slate clean and moving on from it all. New friends. New place. New life.

But I can't help think about what could have been. If things had worked themselves out or if we had kept on pretending that everything was sunshine and happiness. I'll miss what I had but won't ever regret moving on.

End of a new beginning

Why it didn't work is something I'll never know. We seemed to be a perfect fit, at least for a little while. Coming home to you used to make me smile.

Somewhere along the way, things went off course. You weren't who you were supposed to be and I wasn't there for you. We couldn't change who we are into who we wanted to pretend to be.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. We were going to be the ones that made it through all the trials. We were going to succeed where others before us lacked the strength to go on. In the end we lacked the strength to see that we wouldn't make it. That it was doomed from the start. When we met, you meant everything to me. You filled the hole that had been left in my world. You brought happiness to where there was none. You gave me hope and helped me back up.

Maybe I was just blinded by your presence and couldn't see past our beginning. I was scared. I was afraid of being alone again.

I'm sorry we hit the bottom together. I'm sorry if you needed more than a positive attitude to make it through. I'm sorry I couldn't be what you wanted me to be. I'm sorry I wasn't the person you thought I was. I'm sorry for all I've brought down upon you.

I never meant to hurt you. I still want you to be happy. We both know that this is inevitable.

I'm sorry.

Death to the slow salmon

I think that NASCAR would be much less boring if they were to implement my following suggestion. The driver with the slowest qualifying time only has to complete ten laps of the track. However, they must do this driving in the opposite direction of the other racers. If they actually manage to avoid traffic (and make dreaded right turns) before the other drivers complete their regularly scheduled laps they win the race. And just because the only good thing in racing is watching people crash, the driver that takes out the slow salmon will receive a bounty, but only if they, too, complete the race.

Eat your heart out Gordon.

A lion wouldn't cheat on his wife, bit a tiger wood

Today was filled with the confusion of children over black history month. Right from the start, there was a fifth grader researching Colin Powell on the computers in the media center. She was very confused because in some pictures she said he looked black and in others he looked white. She wasn't sure if she was allowed to do her report on him because of this. She then pulled up a Google search for Colin Powell and one of the hits had a headline that read, "Is Colin Powell Gay?" She just sat there with a puzzled look and I had to explain to her that not everything you find on the internet is real.

In the afternoon, another student was in the media center with a teacher telling them to select a significant black person to write their report on. They had chosen Tiger Woods who, until a few months ago, would have made an excellent choice. The teacher explained that Tiger Woods had made some poor moral choices and that maybe another person would make for a better report. The student agreed and selected another book.

He picked the biography of OJ Simpson.

I died laughing.

Well look at me go. I've made ten whole posts. While this is not considered an amazing accomplishment to most, the fact that I've stuck with this blog for ten posts is impressive by my standards of being easily distracted by other forms of entertainment.

If I get to a bigger milestone, I'll get my self a cake. I'll eat it too. Because that saying is full of nonsense. If I have my cake I will eat it too.

Random, with a side of facepalm

Sometimes I try and think to hard about what to write here. Sometimes I wonder why anyone ever thought that the moon was made of cheese. I mean, really. I know that we've come a long way from believing that the world was flat, the center of the universe, and being carried around by a giant turtle, but cheese for a moon?

Never mind. I think I answered my own question.

Last year I had a kindergartner singing 'Low' (apple bottom jeans song). I couldn't help but laugh and think how ridiculous it was that a five year old knew the song and was dancing to it. I also didn't think anything could top that gem of awesome parenting skills. That changed today. I had another kindergartner singing 'Blame It On the Alcohol'. I'm thinking the same people who thought the moon was made of cheese have been breeding more than they should be allowed.

My mommy says I'm special

Trying to get myself back into the rhythm of creating again. It seems this blog has sparked more than just my interest in writing. I'm determined to produce a complete series of work in the near future. Until then, here are some quick sketches I've made over the past few days.

80 Days...

There are currently eighty more days of work with students until summer vacation. Not that I really mind working, but I think the best perk of being in the education profession is looking forward to those ten glorious weeks of summer each year. Of course, the hard part of the school year has yet to come. I just need to be careful not to let the students know just how close summer really is. Eighty days may seem far away now but it's really just right around the corner, sneaking up like a vacation ninja.

Nitty Gritty

So I got to the Lightning game last night and went to pick up my tickets from will call thinking it would be a quick and simple venture. I got to the window and gave them my ID and they quickly told me that there were no tickets for me. I insisted that I had ordered tickets two days ago and that they should be there and that they needed to check again. They checked and returned with the same answer. Without getting upset I restated that I had already ordered tickets for section 312 row B and that they should be there for me. They went back and checked again. By now there were three ticket operators and a manager typing into the computer trying to find any record of my order. Ten minutes later, a manager walks up and hands me my tickets. Well, they weren't actually my tickets. At least they weren't the original cheap seats I had ordered. Here's the view from fourteen rows back:

I just want to say that the people working at the ticket window are awesome.

The night kept getting better from there. Directly across the ice from where I was sitting was a flock of Calgary Flames fans. They gave me two priceless moments on the evening. The first came during the pregame warm-up when they were holding up a giant flag with their team's logo on it. Of course, they were holding backwards. But the best moment came after the warm-up when highlights of the Lightning beating the Flames to win the 2004 Stanley Cup were being shown on the big screen. Words cannot describe the sadness and dejection on their faces during those glorious five minutes of highlight footage.

The icing on the awesome cake came with a Lightning 2-1 overtime win. Actually, the Lightning had very little to do with it. Nittymaki pretty much won another game by himself for the team.

Shining On

One can't help but love this weather we're having. They bleak, dreary days. The limited sunshine. Not to mention the chance to study the adverse effects of the current atmospheric conditions on the elementary school population.

Three days into the week and there have been fights, yelling, lackadaisical attitudes, etc. It's almost like the school staff are the survivors of the zombie apocalypse and are one by one having their brains eaten by a mob of the undead. Come to think of it, that sounds like a much better scenario. The students aren't those slow moving zombies that you laugh at and stroll away from. They're those newfangled, speedy zombies you can barely keep a step ahead of before you succumb to their endless attacks.

Today was just one step further into zombie domination. I don't make a habit of yelling at students and, for the most part, have held firm to that during the uprising. I've become quite efficient at deflecting zombie attacks with preemptive strikes and indiscriminate distribution of time outs. Even a repeat fifth grader yelling out, "Mr. Baloney" wasn't enough to take me down. It was enough for me to stop, walk calmly over to them, and proceed to inform them about their place in life and respect for adults. The applause from a spectating teacher didn't hurt either.

Still, it has been a lot to deal with. Tensions are high. Nobody knows who will fall to the zombies next. Morale is low, but we keep pushing through hoping for a miracle. I would personally love to see Raptor Jesus come down and smite them. One can dream.

But today was a good day.

And I'll keep shining on.

Hungry, hungry, hippo

Lunchtime conversation at work today involved the discussion of a hippo eating a midget. Apparently the story was on the radio where a midget at a circus was tossed at a hippo. The hippo yawned at just the right moment and devoured the midget because of a gag reflex. Laughter until crying ensued as we tried to imagine the event, as well as imagining tossing some unruly students at hungry hippos.

Some quick Google searching at home revealed that this never really happened. But in my mind it will always be the truth.