To all the go-to-work dads out there. Let’s hear it for the silent majority!
http://milesetc.blogspot.com/2006/02/to-gtwd.html
(Yes, I’m really too tired to come up with something original on my own!!)
mrc
The little guy (gal?) pictured above is our new houseguest. My brother Mark thinks it’s an orb spider. It is nocturnal with a nightly ritual of coming out after sundown, building a big web on our front porch, guarding it all night long, and then deconstructing it before sunrise. I’ve sent a picture of it to my college entomology professor with hopes of finding out the specific species and seeing if Mark is right in telling me that they make “neat pets.”
The last week or so has been eventful with the start of school. Kathryn is now in “big school” (translation: “big school” to her is the preschool on the second floor, as opposed to the daycare on the first floor) and Duncan has started daycare. Duncan had a lot more time at home. He started daycare at 4 months as opposed to Kathryn’s 6 weeks. Both are adjusting well to the change from the summer routine.
I’ve also started the new school year at Canyon HS. It is one of those years with a LOT of changes. New principal, new associate principal, about 20 new staff members. Combine this with the fact that we finished out last school year with approximately 850 students and will probably have right around 1,000 students when all is said and done this year. It seems like all of our teachers have HUGE classes, with some of the core teachers have sections with 35 students in them. One of my class periods is double-stacked, meaning I am teaching two subjects concurrently. Not the ideal teaching environment, but better than just getting rid of my dual credit programming class, which I understand was pretty much the only other option. I suppose the kids and I will just have to find a way to make it work. So right now I have about 115-120 BCIS I students, 25-30 BCIS II-DC students, and 7 BCP-DC (programming) students. Up quite a bit from last year, to say the least. I’m hoping having some BCIS I students in the same room with my programming students will make it easier to recruit students for programming next year. The word through the grapevine is that the magic number (i.e., the minimum number for a class to make) will be 12. The highest number of students I’ve had in dual credit programming is 8 so I will have to make an effort to make sure I have enough kids to sustain the program.
The biggest excitement in the world of work is that I have had 3 official days of a (gasp!) CLEAN DESK!! It is one of my New Year’s Resolutions (I make these in August, not January, since I’m a teacher) that I keep a clean desk. We’ll see how it goes. I found the “Basic Laws of Stuff” on a message board, reformatted it, printed it and hung it on the side of my bookcase in my classroom. They are:
1. Stuff Breeds- the more you have, the more you need.
2. Useless stuff crowds out the good stuff.
3. Dust, bugs, rodents and moisture love stuff.
4. Stuff love to stay where it lands.
5. Stuff expands to fill the space available.
6. Over time stuff becomes invisible.
7. Stuff costs you money more than once.
8. Stuff has a powerful effect on your state of mind.
9. Stuff takes on value only when it is used.
10. Stuff doesn’t make you happy; you do!
We’ll see how long my clean desk challenge lasts. Maybe it’ll be so successful that it’ll motivate me to tackle the garage!
I finally managed to mow our lawn today. It has only really needed it for about 2 1/2 weeks. After I finished the front yard, our elderly Italian neighbor lady told me it looked “so much better.” 
The past few weekends have been really busy and by the time we get Kathryn and Duncan down for the evening it is usually 9:30 or so. And I’m thinking the neighbors would probably frown on nocturnal mowing.
Duncan has been a little pincushion the past couple of weeks. He got a Hep-B immunization last week. Most kids receive it right after they’re born but our pediatrician thinks that Hep-B immunizations are unnecessary. However, our daycare doesn’t. We could have applied for an exemption from the State of Texas but that takes a little time and we didn’t realize that we would have to do that for daycare. Duncan also received 2 immunizations of Thursday afternoon. I think he did a lot better than Heather and I did!
Well, it is now almost 1 a.m. I am going to sign off and hope that I do better about blogging from time to time!
…my wife and I do make beautiful babies! As much as getting portraits made is a pain in the butt, I am always pleased with the results.
