NCTE

I'm blogging this from the NCTE Convention in Philadelphia, PA. It's my third day here, and, so far, the conference has pretty much been worth it. This is partly because you reached me at a really good time; I just got to see Kelly Gallagher speak, and he's someone I've read for years, and I'm happy to say that his discussion was one of the best I've seen in a while about the practice of teaching. I'm rushing over in a bit to buy his latest book, Readacide, which seems to be about a lot of what he talked about today - how schools are killing reading in this country, and how this is partially fueled by NCLB.

A colleague and I presented together yesterday, a session that we called "Found in Translation: Changing World, Changing Books." We pulled it off. A third person in our group dropped out two days before we left, which was a bummer, but I think the small group we presented to was appreciative. I hate talking so long, and wish I had worked on the presentation longer, but overall, well, we pulled it off. I'll hopefully to it again someday - maybe about teaching James Baldwin, perhaps in concert with other under-appreciated authors for study.

Coming to this conference is mostly a humbling experience for me. I see so many great ideas, and this causes me to reflect on my own practice, and I just feel inadequate. Kelly Gallagher, for example, just used an example of a teacher who makes her students put a post-it on every page of Romeo and Juliet to annotate the text, and asked, rhetorically, if we would want to stop a film every four minutes to stop and take notes. Of course not. I'm not a natural text-marker except when I feel the need to remember something, and I have caught myself requiring students to do it before. As early as last week, in fact - once per paragraph. It was for something short, but still... Ugh. Am I committing Readacide? I hope not. (Judging by the mostly positive reactions I've had to Baldwin, so far, I think I am not, though.)

I'm about to head back to the exhibitions, to look for Gallagher's latest book. I'm excited about getting back to school, though daunted by the prospect of going back on Monday. So much going on right now. I wish I could just slow things down for a bit. Hopefully after Thanksgiving I can feel normal again, after my folks come down for their visit.

48 hours from now, I'll be watching Junot Diaz speak. Until that point, I have 2 days of sub plans to write, tomorrow's 9th grade reflect-about-your-first-high-school-report-card lesson, a train ticket to buy, quizzes to grade (really want to post grades tomorrow before I leave to inspire hard work while I am gone), and, most importantly, an NCTE presentation and packet to finish.

Updates

I'm going to go back to blogging just here. I'm not blogging nearly enough anymore for two blogs, and it just doesn't make as much sense to keep both of them running. School and education issues will be here. So will mundane life issues, like buying a car.

So, what's new?

(1) Over the summer, I decided that it would be very worthwhile to read a Shakespeare play and then see it live. I searched around for local theaters performing Shakespeare, and ended up with the logical choice - the Folger Shakespeare Library, where I studied at the NEH-funded Teaching Shakespeare Institute a couple of summers ago. They were performing Much Ado About Nothing in the fall, so I would teach that play and then we would go and view it. The plan involved some risks - I would could choose the play, but something could happen with the field trip, or it could be sold out. Because it would have sold out otherwise, the plan also involved me buying the tickets before school began, putting out my own money. Also, I had real issues with chaperones and help. However, I'm happy to say that the field trip and the play was an overwhelming success. I have honestly never had so much fun at a play, and I think the students really enjoyed it and got a lot out of viewing it.

(2) I present at the National Council of English Teachers Conference on Friday. The presentation isn't finished yet.

(3) Very, very busy. Can't even think about buying a car right now. Too busy.

(4) Will be gone through Sunday, then parents come down on Wednesday for Thanksgiving. Need to clean the house!

Another sleepless night

I had another one of those nearly-sleepless-nights last night, and I'm trying to get to the bottom of it. It was different than the previous one, though. For one, I didn't feel all that tired. I had slept in that Sunday morning until 9pm, and went to bed sometime before Saturday Night Live went off the air, so I slept over 8 hours. This is unheard of for me.

Secondly, I worked really hard into the night, finishing my grading (grades were due today) and planning for the next day. The previous time, I had a calm night and went to bed fairly early. Last night, I had a harried night until 1:30am or so, then went to bed feeling kind of harried still. I was not surprised when I couldn't fall asleep. I began to feel some anxiety after I lay there a while that I would never be able to fall asleep, but I did fall asleep, at around 4 or so. The alarm clock rang at 5:30, and I was up and at 'em then. I didn't feel miserable in the morning, but I did feel miserable most of the day.

There's really not getting around it: I am really burning the candle at both ends. I don't use my weekend time well enough, true, but I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon and then a huge portion Sunday on school work (planning and grading), I still feel behind. This is a big week, too: an observation by the Assistant Principal, a field trip, grades due. I'm also dealing with a particularly irritating situation at school in regards to my presenting at the National English Teachers Conference next week, and the situation is causing me lots of unneeded stress. I hope it might be rectified with a meeting tomorrow.

I didn't call in sick today after my 90 minutes of sleep, but I did skip my Monday night "class". I also made a doctor appointment, with a new doctor that I'm trying out. I haven't had a doctor in a really long time, but I feel like it's time. I've lost about a dozen pounds in the last couple of weeks as I've concentrated more and more on my health and my fitness, but I'm still getting strange heart racing and I'm still out of breath way more than someone who exercises as much as I do should be. I think it's probably stress related, or caffeine related (I've cut down on caffeine recently, and the weird heart stuff has stopped), but it's still scary. I'd also like a doctor who is mean to me about my weight. Really. I heard this guy is, kind of.

I realized just now that I made the appointment for 4 o'clock on Thursday, which is when I'm in Washington DC for the field trip. Oops. I was really excited about the doctor appointment, or at least excited that I went ahead and did it.

Cars and cleaning

Thank you all for the tips about used car buying.

It doesn't appear my credit union has a used car broker, although that would be nice. My dad, however, is best friends with a used car salesman (back in Michigan), so he's on the lookout for me. I think I've narrowed it down to 6 or 7 cars: CRV, Rav 4, Nissan Versa, Subaru Forester, Kia Sportage, Toyota Matrix, and a Scion. I fell in love with a blue Rav 4 in the parking lot at Trader Joe's yesterday, and that's my #1 choice right now. I found a blue 2004 Rav 4 for around $11K on Craig's List today, and called the number, and might test-drive it this week sometime. I'm looking to spend $14K at the top of my price range, but I need a good interest rate too.

(By the way, the car has to be blue, red, orange, or yellow. No browns, tans, grays, whites, or blacks for me.)

If the friend in Michigan comes through, he'd charge me his minimum upcharge (I think it would be $800 more than he paid for it), and my savings would probably be worth all the hassles of getting registered in Maryland with a car bought in Michigan.

I'd really like to buy by Christmas.

That's all. I'm also re-considering combining my blogs back to this one. I get about 75 hits a day there, and, unbelievably, over 100 hits a day here, so it might make sense to keep everything here. Everyone who wants to know who I am knows anyway. And I so like the name 'Epiphany in Baltimore.'

Lastly, can anyone recommend a good housecleaner in Baltimore? I know this is kind of ridiculous, but I think I might need a deep cleaning of my house and maybe even a regular thing. I just can't do it, or I don't care enough about it, and a recent visit to the house by someone of the opposite gender sort of confirms that I should care about it more. And it's almost all dog hair that makes things a mess, nothing else. But that is overwhelming to me, and the vacuums don't work on it, no matter how many new vacuums I've bought over the last several years.

I could use my dad here in Baltimore...

I'm realizing I don't really know how to shop for a used car.

My process 9 years ago was to go to the first used car store I saw, get out, and see this beautiful grand am. I had a dream about it that night and went back to buy it the next day. I've been very happy with the car, but I got hosed on the interest rate and don't want that to happen again. I was 23 and fresh out of college and I won't let it happen again.

I could go back there (the guy sent my car a birthday card every year for the first five years or so), because it's really not their fault their financer gave me a bad rate. But, eh... seems I could do better. I'm fishing around for an hour or so a night on the internet, reading up on things, but still don't really know the best place to buy a car. Should I go to a dealer? Well, then it seems I would already have to know what kind of car I'm getting. But I don't know. I have it narrowed down, I think (CR-V, Rav4, Forester, Saturn Vue, Pontiac Aztek are some of my ideas), but part of me also is thinking about a hybrid, like a Ford Escape Hybrid or even a Prius, which I like. They're all just so expensive, though! Maybe I should just get a cheap 4-door car or a hatchback that will last me a few years until I really have some savings.

I want to buy by Christmas.

We'll see.

Pontiac Aztec

I wish they still made the Pontiac Aztec.



Called the ugliest car of all time by Time magazine, but I think it looks cool. And is the perfect size. All the driving reviews for it that I've read are terrific.

October is the Month of Stress

After having dinner with some friends last night (the 3rd meeting of our "See You Next Tuesday" Club), I came home, did some work for school, and hit the sack at around 11:15pm. I'd set the alarm for 5am, in anticipation of hitting the gym this morning.

So I lay there for a while, and sleep didn't come. I tried turning on the fan, to give myself some white noise. No go. I turned on the space heater, because I figured I'd get drowsy if it was extra hot. Nope. I turned and lay the opposite way than I usually do. Nothing. I called the dog up to the bed. I pushed him back down. Nothing. I lay there until nearly 1:30am, then got up and started googling "insomnia".

I googled for a while, then read for a while, trying to make myself completely exhausted. Then, I tried going back to bed. I lay for a long time, and, then, I realized that my alarm clock was going to go off in less than an hour. I was absolutely miserable, felt horrible, and decided to get up again and make sub plans; I would take a sick day. I did so, set my alarm for 7am, called in sick, and then proceeded to sleep in until around noon. The sleep trick of wiggling my toes worked. It was my first sick day in over a year.

In my googling, I saw that insomnia is almost never the result of something physical, but, rather, something mental. There is some sort of stress in the mind that is keeping me tense. I'm very much a roll-with-the-flow type of person. The opposite of neurotic? That's me. I take whatever stress there is and sort of put it on a shelf in my head, assuming I can ignore it and it will go away.

So, what is stressing me out right now?

(1) Money. I'm fronting for all books and field trips and it's costing me a hell of a lot of stress. I'll eventually get paid back, I know, but I always ends up getting screwed. As of now, I've overdrawn my account, and, even though I have a separate savings account with money in it, my debit/checking account is charging me $28 per overdraw. Therefore, a $2 bottle of water that I used my debit card on cost me $30 the other day. I'm also paying nearly a grand to go to NCTE, out of pocket - $300 for registration, $150/night for hotel. Ugh.

(2) This big field trip. I have no co-chaperone. Stressful.

(3) Piles and piles of grading. Stressful.

(4) Day-by-day planning. Stressful.

(5) Even with the loss of 6 pounds last week, still weigh so much that I could get a killer heart attack at 40. 251 on a 5'10 scale, even with some muscle throw in, is unacceptable.

(6) I really need a new car. With #1, that makes it tough.

(7) All these little things. A senior citizen dog who, suddenly, has started shitting in the house and deposits so much hair everywhere that I have to vaccuum every other day. (I complain about Holden, but, really, he is such a huge stress reliever that it's hard to be mad at him.) Friends who are takers, not givers. Other things regarding dating and starting a family that I just don't blog about anymore.

(8) National Boards is a lot of work.

All of it, I guess, is creating a lot of stress in my life right now. To try to alleviate some of it, I'm heading to the gym right now. I think more regular exercise will help the whole insomnia thing, too (I had missed Tuesday).

Thinking about a new car

I bought my 2000 Pontiac Grand Am in the winter of 2001/2002, my first year in Baltimore. It's been a pretty great car for me, fitting exactly what I wanted from that ages of 26-32. I wanted a sporty car with 4 doors. I wanted a distinctive color. I wanted an American car. I wanted something reliable and safe.

It's been all those things and more. I've loved this car.

That's not to say it hasn't had its problems, most of them being my fault. Within a year after purchasing it, I had let my insurance lapse (that was when I couldn't handle the summers of not being paid) and when I re-upped it, GEICO put the minimum insurance on it rather than the full coverage that it needed. I didn't realize it, because I don't notice things like that and assumed that the GEICO lady was re-upping me on what I had been on before. I didn't realize it until I ran into a curb (obscured by snow on a snow day) and both air bags deployed, and Geico wouldn't pay for it because it was a single-car accident. Thus, I've gone about 7 years without a horn or airbags; they would cost $5000-6000 out of pocket to fix.

About three or four years into my owning the car, I noticed that the power steering made noise when I turned the wheels. As I am prone to do, I just ignored it, although I thought I was just low on power steering fluid and just re-filled it a few times and it was fine for a bit. It turns out that I was slowly destroying my power steering. I'm not good with cars but when I brought it in once to a mechanic, he said the rack and pinion were shot and that the whole thing would cost $2000 to fix. I can handle a car without much power steering, so I just let it go. Around this same time the sun roof also stopped working - when it was open. It was fine because it was the summer, until one day we had a thunderstorm. I ran out to the car and put a garbage bag over it, and brought it into the dealer later. They almost gave up on trying to close it after trying and trying, but finally someone figured it out. The sunroof is now permanently closed and doesn't work.

The most annoying thing just happened about a month ago. My dad, for Christmas last year, got me a GPS. It changed my life. Even when I know where a place is, I turned it on, just so I didn't have to think about when to turn - the device to told me. I get lost all the time and often choose places to go based on not being worried about getting lost. So, the GPS really did change my life. I loved it. However, about a month ago, the cigarette lighter in my car conked out. No apparent reason, and I tried to replace it, to no avail. Probably a fuse or something, something I have no idea how to fix and some mechanic would probably charge me $150 to fix - not worth it.

I've also had some surface problems. My parked car got hit, knocking off the mirror. It was about $100 to fix it, and I didn't feel like it, so I never did. There's also a big crack across the windshield, that I don't care that much about. Plus currently the rearview mirror is dangling down after I hit a big pothole. I've bought the kit to fix it, but accidentally superglued the peg within the mirror, so now I'm not sure if the kit will work. I don't care that much about it.

Obviously, that's my thing. For a long time, I've not cared what happened to this car, because I'm just sort of waiting for it to die. I've loved this car and it's nice to have a paid-off car, but I've needed a new vehicle for some time now. First off, the power steering thing has a capacity to be dangerous, I think. Secondly, I'd feel like a Darwin's Award candidate if I died in an accident because I don't have airbags. Thirdly, the car is not reliable enough to risk on a trip to Michigan, so my trips to Michigan are always more expensive (re: I might have to fly, or rent a car, or both, now) and less rewarding (no gallavanting around the state visiting friends). I barely trust it on a trip to DC.

Still, I love having a paid-off car and, after just buying a new house, don't want to add a car payment to my expenses. I still have a couple thousand dollars worth of credit card on my plate that I'm trying really hard to eliminate before I add a car loan onto my total debt. I only have about a grand saved up. The car is fine for getting me to work and around Baltimore.

I really want to drive home for Christmas, though. And I'd like something a little bigger to cart around my bike or baseball equipment or kids easier. But, I'm not sure what I want to do. I also want something with decent mileage.

I'm having a pretty hard time deciding what route to take. Should I go ahead and just get something cheap, like, say, a 2002 Ford Taurus? I could probably get one for a few thousand dollars, and it might very well be reliable. But how reliable? That's the rub. I'd really like to get a Liberty or a Honda CR-V (both are smallish SUV-types that perfectly fit what I want right now), but they might be too expensive. I don't want to get another bad car loan. I'm not sure whether to save up for something I really, really want, or take the plunge sooner rather than later. We'll see...

Fitness this week

I made it to the gym on Monday and Tuesday mornings for good, intense 90-minute workouts. I'd forgotten how good it feels to go to work fueled on endorphins; it just makes the days so good.

On Tuesday night, I hosted a dinner party. Some friends and I are getting together on Tuesday nights and cooking each other dinner. So far, our "See You Next Tuesday" club (sorry for the vulgarity) is only two weeks old, but we'll continue it for a while. After my impeccable spaghetti and (veggie) meatballs, we watched the game for a while. They were here until around 9, and I didn't start my preparation for the next day until after they left. It takes a solid 2-3 hours to write a quiz and plan a lesson for the 9th graders, so I was up until around midnight. That shot my plans for a gym trip in the morning. It also wasn't helped that a group of loud men decided to park out on the street outside my window and yap for a few hours. I slept about four hours, it seems, and was all messed up.

Yesterday, I was at school for 12 hours, came home, and planned from 7-12 or so. It was a crazy long day, and didn't make it to the gym at all. So, I guess I took Wednesday off, and was up so late I didn't go in for the gym on Thursday morning. I'll make it tonight, though, and am about to head there right now. I'm going to work out extra intensely for missing yesterday.

The conclusion? Staying up late one night messes up my entire schedule and make it harder to live healthy. I have to say, though, hanging out with some friends on a weeknight really broke up the monotony of the week, so I'm still glad I did it.

Getting it off

Got my butt up to the gym this morning, worked out from 6-7:20 or so - all cardio. I'm still a bit shocked by how much weight I've put on since the last time I weighed myself. No wonder my clothes weren't really fitting very well.

I was exhausted at around 5pm today and ended up napping, so now I've got some energy, unfortunately. I'll still try to hit the sack by 10.

The other thing I'm doing: no beer until Christmas. I don't even drink that much beer, just once a week, a few drinks on Friday night, but I'm going to give it up (a friend bet me that I wouldn't. I'm a sucker for a bet.) Next off the list is cereal. It's just too easy to eat and too good. Cutting out a few of these things will help cut my caloric intake.