On the Bright Side

Things lately have been, shall we say, less than ideal. Yeah my new car is fun, but not as much fun as if it had been purchased out of necessity. Finding a new job is also fun (okay, that's not true at all), but once again the whole necessity thing adds a damper.

(As a side note, California residents would be doing me and the children of our fair state a personal favor if you were to vote "yes" on all propositions in the May 19th special election. I'm just saying.)

So mostly out of fear and avoidance of the real, pressing issues, I've decided to dedicate this post to one of the good things going on. Namely, that I have found evidence on my whiteboard that there are at least three students who don't hate me.

 

I think that R., the author of the comment above, likes me because I let her come in my room during passing period when it's cold outside and she has once again dressed for the weather she wants instead of the weather we have.

 

I.'s message implies that she's something other than the kind, smart, funny, interesting girl I've known since September. Is there something I should know about that would make me think otherwise?

 

Initially I would have taken this as a weird, purposeful spelling mistake from N., but after last week's out-of-nowhere tirade about not doing homework "and you can't make me," I suspect that really she just wanted to let me know about her affinity for shrubs.

 

Then there's this, another one from R., which is so amazing that I can't even think of anything facetious to say about it. Fortunately, some of my other students did not have their hearts warmed to quite the same degree, so they took charge and erased some key words. While it's undeniably true, I'm just not as moved by the statement that "Ms. L. is the teacher I've had."

Knight Rider

I know that there are a lot of things to look for when purchasing a new car. How reliable is it? What kind of gas mileage does it get? Is it safe? After growing up with a safety engineer father, I definitely made sure I paid extra for the anti-lock brakes. The dealers, of course, took one look at the fact that I'm female and tried to sell me on the more superficial aspects. "Can you see yourself in the red one?" "What kind of interior do you think you want?" "Once you get a moonroof, you'll never be able to drive another car without one."

It happens that the new Focus I bought comes with something called "SYNC," a fancy little system that connects my phone and music to the car. This was definitely not as important as the anti-lock brakes or manual transmission, but it happened to come with the one car that fit the more important specifications. But now I'm finding out just how awesome it is. Everything is voice activated and turns on when I turn the car on, so I just say "Phone. Call Mom & Dad" and it calls them. No more headset; I just talk into the air. I can also say "USB. Play Artist Kanye West" and it will start playing the Kanye songs on my iPod.

So it's pretty exciting that I can talk to my car (would've come in handy on the long drive when I moved out to California), but it turns out that it will talk to me too. It will tell me things like when my car needs service and it'll read text messages to me. Hopefully someone will start texting me phrases that KITT, the car from Knight Rider, would say. If this car lets me feel like I'm David Hasselhoff, it was worth every penny.

Teacher Cologne

A: "Ms. L, you smell like my math teacher from last year."
Me: [raises eyebrows questioningly]
A: "I mean... I don't know, I can't describe it. You just have the same smell as my old math teacher."
Me: "It's the math teacher cologne. They give it to us when we get our teaching certificates."
Y: "That's not true, is it?"
Me: "Oh yeah, when I went to that math conference a few weeks ago I got a new bottle."