The rigor of not being busy has given my fingers and brain such fatigue that blogging has been impossible- yeah right.  But there are already gajillions of posters posting posts about their trip to the grocery store or the same thing day in and day out. There are more new posts to read about not getting a job or being sick or not having anything to write about than I have time or inclination to read, and I happen to have plenty of time and a somewhat reliable supply of inclination. Why should I add to that and assume that anyone else has the time or inclination?

Here is my secret: I don’t. Assume. I try very hard not to, anyway. One of the things I dislike about the internet is the unspoken grandeur that some (not all!) bloggers feel. Now that one is part of The Internet, one has An Audience- or no, not just an audience, an Adoring Public! I try somewhat diligently to be un-hypocritical, and the way this affects the blog is that I have a secret/unsecret-I-guess-oh-well rule not to post anything I wouldn’t read myself- and of course not to talk as if people are reading. Hmm. Oh. Well I know my mom is reading, so there.

SO FAR, THIS POST IS PUSHING IT, LET ME TELL YOU.

However the past has been remarkably successful, and re-reading* keeps me interested and doesn’t particularly make me want to punch myself in the face. Not bad.

*I have re-read in whole. I won’t say when or how many times. Very satisfactory. No secret rules about avoiding self-gratification.

Blah blah blah excuses, blah blah didn’t write in a long time holy cow, busy, tired, nothing to say, whatever. Who cares.

Now that’s out of the way.

This isn’t a real post, but a post that so tomorrow* when I consider posting I won’t be able to say to myself “But you couldn’t possibly! It’s been so long!” I say something more or less like this to myself all the time. This is a hang up that I have and I have several, but I think my little ploy is going to work. I am already feeling how much I like to craft sentences.

*”Tomorrow,” as a concept, is applicable to any day of this business week, for purposes of determining the success of my trick.

Someone who knows both my local mailing address and the fact that I am interested in arctic ecology must have been behind the package I found in my mailbox. It contained one book and no identifying information.  The return address is that of the book’s author.

I have my suspicions! Thank you very much, and I am excited to have reading material delivered to me on the eve of my release from academic bondage. Last day tomorrow!

I just finished my Last All-Nighter of college.

There was no reason for it, really, but I have to turn in my Last Homework later this afternoon, and one thing leads to another. Fortunately some other things got crossed off my to-do list as well… forms, emails, and applications about which my mother is going to ask me and about which I am going to be evasive unless I get a response.

I am kind of tired and hungry and it’s raining, but today is the Last Tuesday of student teaching.

And tomorrow is the Last Wednesday. By the time I get to the Last Friday, on Friday, I’ll hardly be able to contain myself.

Congratulations to the NCDA National Champions, the GVSU Lakers!

Lakers, clad in black

Little sister and I were more than excited to rush to Grand Rapids on Saturday for what is undoubtedly the most exciting sport to watch or to play. Nationals were held at GVSU for the first time this year.  Though many have heard my dodgeball spiel before, may I remind you: 50 minutes of action, headshots legal, ten balls, thirty players, shots over 70 mph! Local West Michigan magazine, “Revue,” even included an article and pictures on the number one team in collegiate dodgeball three years running, and one local TV station included a clip. I can hear you laughing, but I don’t care. It was intense and we like it that way.

Saturday and Sunday were spent watching dodgeball with some equally dedicated fans, including but not limited to: three former players, the queen of the 2009 National Tournament Ad campaign, and a stuffed monkey.  We were pleased to offer the crowd some poignant observations and topical remarks on the state of the game, the quality of the opposing team, and the distastefulness of the sight of one player’s exposed underwear.  Monday was spent cooking and sleeping, and today we’ve just finished eating leftovers from Monday’s impressive dinner and watching American Idol after a ravine hike and a trip to Yesterdog.

We also talked to Bob and Papasaurus and ate some of THIS. It smelled and tasted like… well I won’t say here, for propriety’s sake, but the description included the word carpet, and it was mushy like a soggy muffin.

Tomorrow I will educate my peers with science.

I assume that I drove to campus (when I didn’t really need to, [instead of going home after school] where I subsequently made some decisions that resulted in my keys being locked inside  my car with my laptop and phone) on a very important whim that hit me for a very important reason, such as avoiding a terrible automobile accident that I would otherwise have encountered, or saving a drowning baby that was somewhere with the solution to my new key, phone, and laptop problem.

The very important reason didn’t turn out to be that someone had planted a bomb in my car, because it was still in one piece when I returned an hour and a half later.  It wasn’t that I was supposed to run into some friends I haven’t seen in awhile and invite them to hang out with us tonight, because though I did run into them, I just waved. It was nothing about a baby, drowning or otherwise, and I didn’t find a lottery ticket or a dinosaur or participate in any thrilling coincidences.

I guess it could have been just that I needed the exercise of walking across the campus and back home from the bus stop and back to the bus after Mary let me in to get my spare keys. It could have been that I needed the information that I overheard while riding said bus about the effect of pornography on relationships, the male to female ratio at Grand Valley, and the fact that that kid’s name was not- though his ‘friend’  “was close!”- Zach, but Kyle. It could have been that the mere sight of me walking down the street with my green jacket and my $1 reusable eco-friendly Meijer bag brightened someone’s miserable day.

My CT would likely say that it was because by the time I got my car back and made it to my semi-final destination of the library to pick up some holds, the smartie pants boy from second hour was there with his mother and sister so they could collect reading material for their spring break trip to North Carolina while I was on hand to inform his mom with a smile that if he read a mystery book and filled out a form he could earn extra credit and achieve over 100% in our way too easy class.  He was so pleased to have me let her know, and he said “Gee, Miss Liebig, you are mighty helpful- and so into run-on sentences today!”

When it was my turn to answer the question-of-the-hour at the circular dinner banquet table on Saturday night, I told the four pairs of Michigander eyes that I was in Lincoln so that I could avoid having to teach last Friday. This was mostly true, and though I didn’t have the compelling reasons reported by my dinner companions- “My boyfriend goes here” …. “Our friend did her undergrad at UNL- she’s over there, and she’s Asian”- I am more than content to have spent twenty hours in the car and an undisclosed number of dollars out of my own pocket to attend the Midwest Ecology and Evolution Conference on March 27-29.

I also wanted to go to a conference and leave the state and go somewhere new and get a free water bottle.

The conference, hosted by the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, was mainly for students, and I won’t pretend that I didn’t feel overwhelmed by all the science that I didn’t understand, but I felt better knowing that many of the talks I attended were given by masters or doctorate students, just like the ones that had dinner with me. Three of them were from Michigan State University, and the fourth from the University of Michigan. The MSU kids drove, too, and thanks to the ambitious member of the group,  they’d left East Lansing at 4a.m. on Friday and arrived in Lincoln around 2p.m.

My own travel plans were not so extreme, and included scheduled stops in a) Davenport, Iowa, and b) Seward, Nebraska. I was joined by my mother on Thursday afternoon, and we drove to Davenport, where we accepted the hospitality of one of my three Aunt Jans, and the company of my uncle and my cousin. First-cousin-once-removed was there, too, but in an asleep sort of fashion. One of my favorite things is seeing relatives or friends out of context, in this case, context being “Christmastime.”

We enjoyed our night in Davenport and our drive to Lincoln the next morning. The afternoon included a trip to Seward, where my travel companion and an assortment of her sisters and inlaws learned to be teachers at Concordia Teachers’ College.  I took a picture of the joy.

Joyful

It had been nearly thirty years since this person was on the little campus!

On Saturday, I had to give my talk. It was a success, if you choose to buy into the idea that no one asked me questions afterwards because I explained everything so well- rather than because it was a giant mess.

Fortunately, I was able to chat with the aforementioned Michigan students and some dinosaurs, since Dear Mother was spending the day not at the conference, but at a pizza place, a quilt museum, and our hotel room, which I suppose is good enough for someone who doesn’t travel to other cities for science.

In conclusion, a man and his German speaking dog chased us around the Iowa welcome center on eastbound highway 80 during Sunday’s return trip.  And we didn’t leave Nebraska without one of these.

RAR! is probably not a good stegosaurus noise

“Tell Mrs. B you want to keep teaching,” “Please, we like you better!” and “How about ONE more day” are among the things the tricky seventh graders are saying to try to entice me to keep them from returning to a teacher who doesn’t let them talk in class as much as I do. It won’t work for a minute though- I’m done. And untrickable.

The most remarkable part of my success was that I didn’t self-sabatoge. I’m notorious for having difficulty getting out of bed. Just ask Jobby, who took it upon himself to be my wake-up call in Alaska. There is almost nothing that sounds better to me than staying in bed 5… 10…. 15 more minutes. No matter how pleased I am about the upcoming day’s events, I still have to force it. So you can imagine that when my agenda included “7a.m. to 4p.m.: Student Teaching,” the feat was nearly impossible. I forced myself out of bed, I forced myself to go out in the cold ans scrape off my car, and I forced myself to keep driving the whole twelve and a half miles to the school. I even forced myself to go to bed by 10:30, which in itself is remarkable, but I couldn’t stop the constant internal conversation:

Jenny: I could just call in sick.

Other Jenny: No. She already doesn’t like you, don’t push it.

Jenny: I hope the school is on fire when we get there!

Other Jenny: I suppose that would be nice, but remember, you have an observation today, and it WOULD be a pain to reschedule.

Jenny: You’re right. Can I take a nap when we get home?

Other Jenny: Of course… not. You have 75 papers to grade and some science to do.

Jenny: Crap.

I hoped for worse than fire, but there’s no need to go into detail. Now that I have SEVEN days remaining that require me to be physically present at the school, I am coasting… and staying up later. But why shouldn’t I? I have television to watch and rocks to paint and the last month of college to catch up on, and as I’ve mentioned, I’ve done remarkably well until this point. So well, in fact, that some people might think I don’t hate student teaching as much as I’ve reported, but don’t let yourself be fooled. Oh no.

Staying up late on purpose is a novelty at this point. I haven’t even been able to sleep in for days and days, in part because of my trip to Nebraska this past weekend. Picture proof for now, words for tomorrow.

Goodbye Nebraska.

I enjoy using RSS aggregator Google Reader to manage my hectic blog day. This way I can monitor the internet with ease, including blogs that belong to professors that made me get a Google Reader and a WordPress account in order to hone my skills as a blogger, an educator, and a connoisseur of the English language.  He probably doensn’t know that I still read the blog, but I bet the link will give it away, as he’s both clever and interested in technology.

Evidently I subscribe to too many crummy blogs, since I am starting to get the same HILARIOUS INTERNET JOKE AND SLASH OR PICTURE AND SLASH OR NEWS STORY from several of my sources, and I should probably cut back.

I think that the deodorant coincidence was just a simple coincidence though. (I love coincidences more than occurrences but not as much as deja vus.) The first half of the coincidence was- well, it wasn’t a coincidence yet. But it was a report on the usefulness of baking soda as deodorant from a woman who is eliminating plastic use from her life. I find it very interesting, since I dislike plastic’s aesthetic qualities. I’m not as concerned with the health issue as much as many activists are… or even at all, really, but my sister DID call me an eco-snob after I told her not to drink bottled water, so you tell me. No no no no don’t tell me, actually. I was just kidding.

The second half was Jorge Garcia!

I will have to be careful in my feed-pruning not to eliminate a blog that my friend Renato and I have been enjoying lately because I was quite pleased with the post from today. The title might as well be “Frequently Contains Bacon.”

Even I contain bacon, today!

My cooperating teacher  and I wore the same shoes today. The next eight school days cannot pass quickly enough- we can’t have me morphing into an English teacher unintentionally.

Friday was dress-down day, of course, so I wore sneakers. They came from Payless and cost something like eight American dollars, but some girls (Shmisa comes to mind), will squeal over them anyway.  One fourth hour student commented that I looked shorter, and I cheerily reported (remember! warm and enthusiastic) that I was wearing different shoes that day.

“Yeah,” said the kid in the opposite corner of the room. “She has a million pairs of shoes.”

Yet another blow to my fragile psyche – never did I think I would be mistaken for someone with more than five pairs of shoes!  Ack.

Cute shoes or no cute shoes, the kiddies are getting tired of me. One boy politely asked when my “time serving this postion” would be over.  As a parting gift I am giving them an opportunity to boost their grades by memorizing and reciting a poem for the class.

To prove how much fun this opportunity is, I was able to whip out one of the most trusty weapons in my arsenal, my old poem standby, “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” They didn’t get it, but that’s ok, because my CT thought that I’d memorized a 108 line poem in two days, so I may end up with bonus points for “dedication” and “preparation” come performance review time.