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Saturday, October 3rd, 2009
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Photography Club
Ms. V is starting a photography club for after school. The only problem? We have NO cameras! I am trying to find a way to pull this off, and most of it will involve me going out of my realms of knowledge to find grants and whatnot to make it happen. However, sometimes people's resources are really surprising. SO - does anyone have any suggestions about where I can get cameras for super cheap or preferably donated? I'm thinking anything above 4 megapixels, point and shoot...keeping it simple is the main focus, because the kids take all kinds of awesome pictures with whichever camera of mine I let them borrow. The club will meet at least 1 day a week after school (but more likely twice a week) and we will have different themes/challenges each week (from lines to family to sports). Ideally I will have 10-15 kids in the club and each student will be able to take the camera home with them for their assignments. I'd also like to incorporate different weekend trips into the club - the domes, the art museum, and other places where they could practice shooting. Even more ideally, I'd love to get Photoshop software on a dozen of the computers downstairs so they can learn how to edit things.
Suggestions, please.
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++++: 7 creepers - read my LJ.
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Monday, August 17th, 2009
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i swear to god, once school starts i will find one thing to record in here for each day. i'm also scrapbooking the school year... well, i PLAN on scrapbooking the school year.
no one ever even goes on LJ anymore!
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++++: 4 creepers - read my LJ.
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Monday, August 10th, 2009
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……………………………………………………………………
9:48 PM
XnicoleX414X:
i'm coming home in a couple weeks to take a dunbar g out for lunch. i will invite you when the time comes
……………………………………………………………………
9:49 PM
!!!C.O.B SKUL…:
OK I CNT WAIT
……………………………………………………………………
9:51 PM
XnicoleX414X:
i miss you goons
……………………………………………………………………
9:53 PM
!!!C.O.B SKUL…:
I MISS U 2 OLD LADY
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++++: read my LJ.
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Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
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Saturday, August 1st, 2009
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I woke up at 8:25am and by 8:25pm I had bought a car, gone to Warped Tour, nearly had a nervous breakdown, saw Less Than Jake twice (Warped then the Apple Store on Michigan Ave), visited my old loves at Bubba's and hung out with Meghan.
I got another Saturn - used and light grey. Goodnight light plum. My dad will have fun driving you. The whole experience was kind of like hell on Earth. My parents paid for it in full in cash and while that's awesome, the fact that my dad is on his last couple months of unemployment and my mom makes way less than even me really makes me feel kind of guilty about it all. They negotiated it down and I tried my best to just keep it together because I hate seeing them in such a hard place. It's 7 years old (the light plum was 14) and was owned by just one old man that whole time - only 25,000 miles! We will have a great life together, I'm sure.
Then I HAULED ASS to Tinley Park after signing all kinds of shit at the dealership - only to pull into the Tweeter parking lot as the Star Wars intro for LTJ started playing. Paniced, I realized that I had never been able to confirm whether or not my guestlist request was put in early enough and I started crying in the parking lot like a little bitch and almost just sat there in my car listening from a mile away because I knew I'd miss it all. Somehow I pulled it together and hauled ass to the gate FARTHEST away from the main stage, and was indeed on the list. I then proceeded to RUN... and I mean... SPRINT LIKE HELL to the main stage. I missed about 5 or 6 songs, but I did catch the second half that included "Sugar In Your Gas Tank" today, even though they didn't play "Al's War". Still, 2 faves covered.
Stopped to tell Kurt thanks and told him about my tumultuous journey. Then ran to say hi to Andrew (LTJ merch) and he was like, "You know they're at the Apple Store later today, right?" and I was like, "I don't need autographs, lolz!" and he was like, "NO! It's an acoustic set!" So I told Mikey Mayfield I love him, told Kurt I had to run - to which he was completely baffled that I just drove almost an hour and a half in traffic and left after 45 minutes - and booked it. Got my mom's car back home, had her drive me to the blue line, met up with Meghan at the Apple Store and watched them play acoustic. I missed Vinnie so much and I'm glad we got to talk. It's been too long. He's been my lifeline when it matters most the last couple of years and neither of us have managed to keep in touch since I moved. Boo for life.
Apple Store set-list:
"Suburban Myth"
"Does the Lion City Still Roar?"
"Help Save the Youth of America from Exploding"
"How's My Driving Doug Hastings?"
"National Anthem"
"Automatic"
"Conviction Notice"
The witty banter was at an all time high. The civilians in the store were mortified, but it was amazing. It was seriously like having them play a show for me and a dozen strangers who all sat behind Meg and I. Happy birthday to me!
Pics to come!!!
Next tax return - new LTJ tattoo. <3
xXx
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++++: 3 creepers - read my LJ.
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Thursday, July 30th, 2009
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Less Than Jake setlist:
"Last One Out of Liberty City"
"Automatic"
"Johnny Quest"
"Sobriety Is A Serious Business And Business Ain't So Good"
"Help Save the Youth of America from Exploding"
*Cougar Dance-off*terrifying video of mom shaking booty to come*
"Plastic Cup Politics"
"Ghost of You and Me"
"The Science of Selling Yourself Short"
"Al's War" (my birthday wish)
"Conviction Notice"
"Look What Happened"
"All My Best Friends Are Metalheads"
highlights of the day include:
- walking away from work, just leaving it behind
- Meghan, Peggy and Lexi as my company for the day
- Chipotle
- new friends/old friends (Anthony@GuitarHero, Skyler, Danoh3!)
- hearing about Andrew's baby... and wife
- reuniting with Mikey Mayfield <3
- Vinnie hugs
- Streetlight Manifesto
- Less Than Jake playing Al's War... and me not breaking down
- the pile game
- straight edge revenge
- dinner with Kurt at Safehouse... best dude ever
- watching people in the bus parking lot MOVE a car... sucks for that car owner!
Tomorrow is back to the daily grind. Ice cream truck's last day out. Mass mailing all our students and parents. Learning the lunch process will be killer too. Hopefully I can take care of the main business in the AM before 11 and the truck will occupy me for the rest of the day. Then a fun and wild weekend. Driving back home to Chicago tomorrow night to get Sultan's for dinner. Saturday hopefully we find a car nice and early and hopefully LTJ plays nice and late and I can go to warped again. Then Sunday I'm going to chase MKB around the city and hit up a baby shower. OH MAN. Then bringing back my nephew for the most insane week of the pre-school year.
Yea, somehow he thought they'd never understand.
That nothing lasts, and he just knows that time,
is just spinning by, and life, is passing him by so fast.
xXx
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++++: 5 creepers - read my LJ.
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August 22nd the school is hosting a Block Party, as planned by me. we've been flyering for it for over a month. Tomorrow is my big day to start planning away for this thing. Give me ALL your best Block Party suggestions!
- What do we NEED?
- What would be fun for kids?
- What have you had at your own block parties in the past?
- Ideas for a sweet raffle prize?
- ANY OTHER IDEAS?!
As of right now, this is a completely blank slate, although there are a number of things that we'll be bringing back from past years. For now, I will just disclose that there will be a moonwalk bouncy thing and food. You tell me what else I should do. I just need to see a list of ideas before I move forward.
Commentz pleez, tnx.
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++++: 3 creepers - read my LJ.
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most often, very little good comes out of doing good for others for next to nothing.
I told AJ everything I touch turns to shit. He told me he wasn't shit and neither was his girlfriend. She was perfect. I'm glad he exists for this comment alone.
Also, my Meghan and Peggy are amazing. But I swear, the window to that world of sincerity and genuine kindness and compassion is so fucking narrow it legitimately pains me sometimes. I'm glad in most cases we still judge people by their intentions and not their results.
Going home to see No Doubt this weekend.
xXx
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++++: 1 creepers - read my LJ.
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Saturday - School staff Brewer's game outing.
- "The PIG is doing a kegstand!" regarding a teacher's husband doing a kegstand.
- "EAT A DICK!" my country bumpkin teacher gets hilarious when drunk.
- "I'd rather eat a pussy than eat a dick." Again... country bumpkin, are you serious?!
- Laura was a great date and she got to meet the crazies who teach the crazies.
- SUNBURN
- Dinner with TJ and walks around the 'hood.
- ready to pass out by 11pm
Sunday
- Brunch with Beth - delicious... Beth that is.
- A quick sunscreen-less walk to the park leads to more.
- Find a crying kid at the park, find out one of mine punched him in the face.
- Then found out the punch was an hour ago and he was still crying. Suck it up G! You at the park!
- Basketball with some of my shorties and some randoms at the park for 3 hours without sunscreen.
- 1st grader dropping "nigga" like it was the only word he knew; "I got 20 girlfriends, NIGGA!"
- Cock blocking a phone number exchange. Sexually active 6th grade boys don't need any numbers. Gross.
- Ice cream run
- Stoop sesh
- Laura left :o(
- Discovered where all the weirdos of Milwaukee hang out - Locust Street Fest; got there 5 minutes after the shooting
- Walked back alone and got holla-ed at too many times for my liking, then got Chipotle for dinner.
Now I'm off to work! Hooray. Instead of being the token white lady handing shit out at these 5th grade graduations, I'll be the RED TOMATO lady. All my fault.
xXx
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++++: 3 creepers - read my LJ.
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i went through all my pictures just now and i have just under 200 that i need to crop and do all that jazz with before i post. needless to say, my student photos are a main priority so that i can burn a CD for all the teachers/email them pics of them in 'em by friday. then i swear to god sometime next week there will be a megapost.
until then i leave you with two videos from the bamboozle weekend.
GIRL. BONER. You can actually feel me moshing and dancing and hearing me scream in this video. Gwen Stefani will probably be the only woman I am envious of for all of eternity. Again, girl boner. I would give a liver or $million on a very long-term payment plan to anyone that could get us tickets for No Doubt within the first 5 rows. I would DROP. DEAD.
And this is to embarrass Meghan. It also proves that driving to or from New Jersey is mentally debilitating and the only music that still excites me enough to keep my eyes open and on the road while I'm driving is Fall Out Boy. TG4FOB.
We'll ignore that my credit cards are maxed out and my debit balance is officially $0.00 and payday isn't until Monday. Welcome to the Tragic Kingdom.
xXx
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++++: 5 creepers - read my LJ.
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emotional and financial breakdown.
just sayin'.
i don't know how i'm going to make it through the summer.
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Today my goal is to have our Juneteenth recruiting event SET - as seen here!
What help I could use from LJ land:
- Anyone know where I can get a cheap lion costume?
- Anyone want to be a lion?
- I emailed The Fun Ones about some games. I still don't know if they're in our budget or not, but I may need some help BUILDING things similar to: - Lucky Sucker - Tic Tac Toe - Prize Wheel 36" Round - Roller Bowler... well the roller won't be possible to build, but the Tic Tac Toe should!
- Balloon artist Half Twisted-Half Knot agreed to hooking us up with a special package if I could get a hold of my boss to confirm!
What else can we do?! Anyone want to come up and help out that Friday?! FML!
xXx
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++++: 6 creepers - read my LJ.
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Some people have had experience with stuff like this, and others have been in these kinds of situations. I need advice!
On June 19th we're setting up a booth at the Juneteenth festival here in Milwaukee. If you don't know about Juneteenth, read here. We will have a booth under a tent, just like you'd see any vendor/info distro at a block festival. We cannot have music and I am pretty sure power won't be available because I didn't request it when we applied, so who knows where we'll be set up.
THE ISSUE:
We basically need something to draw people to our booth - specifically 5th and 6th grade kids/families. We're trying to do this on the cheap, so help me think of something! A game? A mascot? In the past they had wondered about having someone in a lion costume since that's our mascot, but I don't know any lions and we'll be short-staffed that day, so I'd need a volunteer because I need to be out stalking people. What kind of booth games do you think we could play? What kind of prizes? A drawing? For what? Candy? Balloon artiest? Face paint? HELP ME PLEASE!!! I have all this Disney experience, but usually we hire someone's nephew for ballooning - he doesn't live in Milwaukee. And usually I am the facepainter, but I can't do that there. If anyone would like to volunteer to face paint MRA lions (it's really easy) that would be AMAZING!
And if anyone is interested in getting a free MRA tshirt and holla-ing at some shorties, feel free to join us on Friday, June 19th. I can use all the help I can get. I will buy you dinner and be forever grateful.
xXx
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++++: 2 creepers - read my LJ.
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Generally speaking, I have more pictures than I will ever be able to post.
However, I needed to resize 2 for this particular entry.
Ladies, thanks for a great 2009 Milwaukee Spring Seminar.
This weekend consisted of playing basketball with my kids and colleagues (Laura and Nyree), root beer tours, eating out a lot, playing in the sand with a group of people all wearing black and jeans at the beach, and being creepy. Thank you for coming up here. It seriously was awesome - even though I contracted this shitty fucking sinus infection in the middle of our glorious weekend seminar.
2 more "real" days of school. No school Friday (I will be in Chicago to visit Dunbar my last time); then Monday and Tuesday the 6th graders are out for an overnight camping trip while the 7th graders have half days; and Wednesday is an all-school half day (LAST DAY!) with a family BBQ in the afternoon. Friday the top 25 awesome 7th graders get to go on an overnight trip to Madison. I feel like this school year flew. Although, if I think about how I started off in August at Dunbar, I can't believe it's still a continuation of the 08-09 year. Unreal. At least myself and my shorties made it out alive (although my boy DB got shot after that basketball game in January, but he's aight now!)
Kisses.
xXx
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++++: 3 creepers - read my LJ.
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SURVEY
1 - How old were you when you graduated 8th grade?
2 - How old were you when you started freshman year of high school?
3 - How old were you when you graduated high school?
4 - How old were you when you started college?
5 - How old were you when you graduated college?
Keep your answers simple. Some people probably had birthdays over the summer months, which is why that question may seem redundant. I'm realizing a few of my kids are too damn old to still be in 7th grade. Most of this is a result of being held back in the milestone grades (prek/1st or 4th/5th) and probably more often it has to do with families moving around a lot during a school year and a school not being able to actually promote a kid - either because of attendance or simply because they had no consistent and logical way to see their growth. I'm just curious to see if there are huge differences in the population that reads my LJ. I was pretty young all throughout my academic career because my birthday was in August, so I was the last kid to turn the age most kids were turning over winter.
If you have experience or comments about grade level retention, feel free to discuss.
My answers:
1 - 13
2 - 14
3 - 17
4 - 18
5 - 22
xXx
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++++: 15 creepers - read my LJ.
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Matt and I are looking for someone to loan us LOST seasons 2 and 3. We started season 1 yesterday and will be zipping through these by the end of this week. Hook us up for just a little while!
Comment if you're awesome.
The next couple weeks will be miserably insane.
xXx
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++++: 9 creepers - read my LJ.
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I was going to post about how bored I am at a show being headlined by people I honestly consider to be solid dudes, that I didn't even pay for, because the opening bands are too many or too terrible... but then I realized I will sound like a bigger shithead than all these little broads yelling at their moms to hold their $100 merch purchases while they galavant in their short shorts past ambiguously straight dudes for attention.
FOB goes on at 9.25 and I'm tired and cranky because I didn't get a round 2 of coffee today. I'm glad I got to spend today with Kaitlyn though. She's great. We went to sonic and watched cute boys unload trucks full of pop syrup boxes. Now I'm going to stand around and wish this was Midtown right now.
Too old for this shit but still secretly lovin it,
Ms. V
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++++: 8 creepers - read my LJ.
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Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
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So tonight Matt and I went to the Saves the Day/Alkaline Trio show on a last minute whim when his friend Kris was able to hook us up with some free tickets. I went the first leg alone, and other than just picking really fucking boring songs, Saves the Day sounded pretty fine to me. I felt like Chicago was some kind of trainwreck because everyone said they sounded terrible, so maybe I just had really low standards that were easy to exceed. The drumming was a little sloppy on some songs and there was lots of tuning though. Somewhat annoying. At one point, Chris and the drummer are having a full-on conversation. Like... 2 minutes. That's a long as time with hundreds of people just staring at you waiting for you to play another song for them to take a hit on their bong to (thanks, Milwaukee).
So they play "Sound the Alarm" and literally right after the last beat, the drummer just picks up his sticks and his shoes and walks off the stage. Everyone looks completely confused, but not even a little annoyed by this. They all just look at each other blankly and everyone else walks off the stage except Chris. "So... I guess I'll be playing the rest of our time acoustic. Any requests?" He plays one or two songs I guarantee no one asked for, and while chatting over another request realizes that his time may be running out. So after a whole minute long banter about how he can't play such and such song because it's been to long, you hear the sound guy's muffled voice. Then Chris tells everyone to be quiet because he can't hear anything in the monitors and then is like, "oh... I guess we're done. Thank you Milwaukee!"
Shit was SO awkward and so anti-climactic that I wasn't even mad. Granted, all of 2 people around me seemed to even have heard of Saves the Day while they stood like zombies watching (which - thanks to the set list was hard to avoid). So, I don't think anyone cared, but no on around me could share in the WTF moment I was having. Thanks for texting Cronin. I seriously needed someone to share that moment with. So weird.
Then Trio played and I haven't listened to a Trio record in so long that I didn't even remember the lyrics to "Queen of Pain", which just reminds me that I'm lucky 7th graders can't get tattooed (at least in my day) because I'd be one goofy ass person with a Trio heart and absolutely no idea how many records they put out after Good Mourning. BUT, they sounded good and "My Friend Peter" is my favorite song and was first, so they were a pleasure to watch. Some of the fucking characters around us... I won't even get into it because the Chris Conley thing was mind boggling as it is.
And that is how I saw Saves the Day and Alkaline Trio. And thanks to Brotherhood I'm going to NFG Friday. Well, I would go either way because I think it's just what I need. I'm so out of the loop I didn't realize until yesterday that was this week and I had no idea that Fireworks and Set Your Goals were on this tour. It's seriously the perfect combination of bands and I will be enjoying it even if I am just floating around like a lost puppy. I need to get my head out of my work ass and have a little more fun or I won't survive the next 7 weeks.
xXx
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++++: 5 creepers - read my LJ.
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Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
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summer vacation? are you here yet?
really though, today was not half bad - aside from not getting ANYTHING on my to do list done, yet still doing a million things that were unplanned. tomorrow. mark my words - to do list.
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++++: read my LJ.
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Thursday, April 16th, 2009
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Probably my favorite thing about teaching thus far has been getting presents from kids. And when I say presents I basically just mean drawings. DM - my #1 goofy at DaBar - was the best. He drew me a baby Donald Duck and a Sylvester the Cat for me... AW would draw tons of pictures, but gifted me a good portrait of Lupe Fiasco... but CR was always on the receiving end. I used to draw him post-its of various Naruto characters on them with threatening remarks, like, "Sensai Kakashi is NOT impressed with your effort" or "You need to work a little harder, like Rock Lee." Apparently he's been doing less than awesome during the second half of the year (never really was doing awesome the first half either), so I spent the last 2 days finding pictures to reference so I could draw him a comic strip. This is what I came up with, and I'm very proud of myself (Matt thinks I'm lame for this). But seriously, I can't draw shit to save my life, but these characters are so easy and for some reason even things I hate like shading and whatnot are fun with them. I didn't even trace one bit!
( the legacy of the failing grade )
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++++: 6 creepers - read my LJ.
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xxxnicolexxx's journal
