Ten Things

I watch a lot of TV. I have to have something on in the background while I'm knitting.

I watch the usual prime time shows, and I watch shows that I won't tell you about because I refuse to admit that I watch them. Recently, I stumbled across a new show that The History Channel's H2 is presenting called 10 Things You Don't Know About.

Every half hour episode tackles a new topic. While some of the facts they present don't surprise me, most of the time they are true to the title. In the eight episodes I've seen, I already had heard maybe two of the "things" before (one for sure).

(I didn't know this one.)

And here's the 30 second commercial about the series...

I find stuff like this fascinating. And it's nice to learn something while I'm knitting my nephew a stuffed owl for his upcoming 2nd birthday.

Do you have any good shows to recommend? Or would you rather hear about my Vampire Diaries obsession?

Mistaken Identity

It's spring break for my district, so I'm reposting something from the now defunct old blog. This post is from May 4, 2007.  

6th period. I had 7th graders today.

This boy who was sitting in the front row told me that I had gotten him into trouble last year. I had several problems with this statement, but the main one was that it wasn't me. It couldn't have been me. I don't sub elementary school.

The little ones scare me. I avoid elementary school. I have never covered a 6th grade class. Ever. I've covered one 3rd grade and one 5th grade--only because the sub caller begged and I was cornered. But that was ages ago.

I get mistaken for other people all the time. There are two teachers that everyone says I look like (I've met them, and I don't see the resemblance). But I generally know if they mean it was actually me or if they're mistaking me for someone else. My memory may not be perfect, but it's pretty good.

I informed the boy that it wasn't me. He argued with me about it. He insisted. I told him he was wrong. And since the class was really getting into it, I cut it off right there and got into the lesson plan.

If it hadn't've been crazy, I might have gotten into another problem I had with the statement. I don't "get" people into trouble. They do. I only report the behavior. But that's a complaint for another day.

I still haven't ever covered a 6th grade class, and since the last time I covered an elementary class things went very, very wrong, I don't think I'm going to get the opportunity in the near future at least. But I don't mind that so much.

The Unending Purse Project

I've been purse knitting again.

It's kind of a long story, and it starts in January of last year. I knit a purse from a pattern I liked, but I didn't like the resulting purse (seen here). I tried again, making this purse. This one was slightly better, but I had some issues with it (it was a bit too large, the strap was too long, and the zipper looked like it was installed by me). I decided to try again.

I knit the thing:

Felted it:

But it wasn't quite right. I even knew this at the time. But it was past time for me to start my Christmas knitting, so I had to wait and ponder. How was I going to do it the next time?  

I finally got started on the new purse in March. Once I got going, it knit up pretty quickly. Then, as I was just about ready to assemble and felt the thing, I found that my strap solution wasn't going to work.  

I didn't fret too long, however. Just as I saw what wasn't going to work, I saw a way to work it differently. At the same time, I figured out how to rework this purse with a different strap. I had just seen a crocheted strap on Knitting Daily, and I started on that right away.  

On Friday, I finished that strap, cut off the old strap, and attached the new: 

The color is a little off, but the purse feels so much better. The old strap was way too bulky. This strap is lighter. I think I like it.  

On Saturday I was able to felt the new purse. I'll post pics when that purse is completely finished. (It takes a couple days to dry, and then I'll need to sew on some hardware. And I might decide to line it.)  

Here's hoping that this one is the one. At last.  

What do you think? Am I too much of a perfectionist? Should I just go out and buy myself a purse?  

Unencumbered by Stuff

Back, ages ago, when I was a high school student, I used to wish for a day when I wouldn't have to carry anything to school. No books. No pencils. No paper. Absolutely nothing.

I was never able to do this. Even my very last day of school was filled with finals, so I had to carry writing utensils. And I couldn't not bring my yearbook around for everyone to sign.

Nowadays, I can get some semblance of this when I am asked to cover an extra period. I will leave my school bag in the room I'm in for the day, and I'll walk around campus unencumbered by stuff. It's a free feeling, and I enjoy it immensely.

Thursday was the last day of the quarter, so it was a minimum day. I expected a class filled with random movie. Instead I was to administer the district-mandated quarterly benchmark exam.

I have done this sort of thing before, so I knew the drill. I was a bit surprised that the teacher hadn't left me any #2 pencils as many students forget to have one on hand, but there was nothing to be done at that point (I don't carry extras). I dove in and hoped for the best.

The first class trickled in, and everyone had their usual school stuff except for one girl. She was dressed in sweats, and she carried nothing with her. The other students asked where her backpack was. She told them she left it at home. It was the last day of the quarter; no one was doing anything.

Guess again.

As I had already passed out their answer sheets, they knew immediately what was on the agenda for the day. The girl had to scramble to find a pencil. She asked me, of course, and I told her what I told the other five students who asked before her. She did what those other students had done as well--she found a classmate to borrow from.

This is why I never went a day supply-less when I was in school. No matter how sure I was that we were doing nothing, I knew that one teacher would give us actual work. One always did.

Did you ever go to class supply-less? Did you ever wish to?

Judging Yourself

What if we had no idea what anyone else thought of us?

Well, really, we don't. We can't know for certain what is in anyone else's heart. We may deduce certain things by how people react to us, look at us, talk to us, but we can't be sure that it's about us. (If I have a disgusted look on my face, it might be because I just read something that bothered me and not in reaction to a person who just walked by me.) The only way we know what someone thinks of us is when they tell us what they think of us.

Of course, what anyone else thinks of us is not really about us. It's about them. How you judge someone else is more about your belief system, your background, and your own self image than it is about who you're judging. Most judgment is a projection of some sort.

But I'm getting away from my point. What if you didn't know what anyone thought of you? What if every negative, judgmental, and belittling thought they had about you was completely blocked from your perception? Would it make a difference to you?

Theresa Milstein posted a link to this article on Facebook, and after a day of trying to get through to the end (the site keeps crashing due to the traffic, I think), I finally was able to read it. It got me thinking, and this is where my thoughts went. (It was a long and strange train of thought. I blame the Solitaire.)  

Written Excuses

It's time to go back into the vaults and see what I can come up with. Today's selection was first posted on April 24, 2007. 

It was one of those video days. The 10th graders were watching Julius Caesar (they're reading the play as a class), and I needed something to do so that I didn't do something drastic as they were not paying attention to the TV.

The teacher had this stack of letters on his desk. From what I could gather, they had some major essay assignment that many of them did not do. As punishment, or maybe as follow-up, the teacher gave them all detention and made them write letters explaining why they did not do the assignment. I had some time, so I flipped through them.

It reminded me of the time that I had a group of seniors who were just awful. Their teacher made them write me letters of "apology". I actually got them. And it was a stack of excuses and it-wasn't-mes. It was amazing how many of them were not at fault. I must have been imagining the bad behavior, then.

Anyway, these letters were similar in repetition. Several of them explained in detail how they did not have access to a computer, or rather, they had access, but their printers were out of ink. One student explained that he/she went over to an aunt's, and only after doing the work the cousin said that the computer had no printer.

A couple were more honest. One student talked of how he/she (I didn't look at the names as they were under the paperclip) just didn't want to do the assignment and he/she didn't think he'd/she'd get into trouble over it (taking the "F" was acceptable, though). And another student talked of plain old procrastination.

After about a dozen or so of these I got bored. It was the same whine over and over. And the grammar was a mess as well (you'd think that for the English teacher they'd try to make an effort--maybe they did).

Sometimes they just make me feel tired all over.

I think I still have those letters of apology somewhere. I should go and look...

A Card in an Orange

Oh, how I hate assemblies. I thought I might get out of this one, but alas, I had to go. It wasn't as bad as some of them--they had a "motivational speaker" who called himself a mentalist--but it was 7th graders only, so I spent most of my time staring down students who were misbehaving.

I wasn't the only one. All the teachers in the gym were busy moving students who would not calm down.

The speaker called for volunteers. In his final bit, he blindfolded a student, blindfolded himself, and then did a card trick. He pulled out a machete and he was going to pick a card out of the air, but the student threw the cards too soon, so when the guy stabbed, he was only stabbing air.

It was pretty funny and probably planned.

I was a bit surprised when that volunteer was in my 5th period class. (I shouldn't have been as the 7th grade isn't that vast.) I had bigger issues to deal with, so I didn't mention that I recognized the boy from the assembly. He brought it up.

The boy told me that he almost got stabbed. I told the boy I was there, and the machete was nowhere near his vicinity at any time. The boy didn't believe me. He claimed that his volunteering was dangerous.

The conversation then turned to an orange. The picked card ended up in an orange that the speaker cut open with that machete. They tried to figure out how the card got in there. He must have inserted the card at some point. But the boy could attest that he had examined the orange and no card marks were on the outside.

Then they all wanted to know: what happened to the orange? They each wanted to eat the orange. The boy asked the speaker if he could have it. And when everyone found out that the orange did not get eaten by anyone, all considered that a huge waste.

7th graders. They go off on the weirdest tangents.