No real subject

Nothing huge to report on todays blog, but it has been a while since I checked in so I should update you on the latest goings on here in Johnsonville. As stated in the previous blog i have been working as a substitute teacher in the local school district. While it has kept me busy and supplied me with a paycheck it has also kept me pretty bored. Hence the lapse in blogging. I mean how many times can you say it feels weird to be the man. Plus I think I could get in trouble if I wrote down what I'd like to do to some of these punk kids. If nothing else it has given me a new view on education. As someone who has been in voluntary (and expensive) higher education for the last few years it is very strange to see kids who really just don't care. I guess I didn't see it that much when I was in high school either as I chose to take honors and AP classes for the very purpose of being around others who cared about their education. Its really quite amazing to see these kids who at times it seems have to actively try to not do their work. Its amazing.....and not in a good way. I get up in the beginning of class and in so many words announce that their teacher has left them a disturbingly easy assignment that he or she will be using as a guide to who behaved and who did not. And that all they need do is finish the assignment (which in many cases involves scribbling a few notes down on a movie) and not light the classroom on fire. The resistance to this is baffling. The funny part in this all is how little the kids think that you are on to. How often they think they are gonna put one past the substitute.What, was I born yesterday? Anyhow, its a mess and it is with great hesitation that I say that it is much more prevalent at my alma matter than at the hated rival a few miles away(it doesn't help that this is also the school my father-in-law attended and a school I have held a general feeling of contempt towards for much of my young life)......I feel like such a sell out but the truth hurts sometimes.

Erika continues to be showered with awards and baby clothes. The first at a banquet held to honor district employees who have displayed excellence where she received the "rising star" award as a great educator with under 5 years in the district. She really is that good and in light of my previous comments I should say that in a previous awards banquet her principal said that when he observed her class room that one of the things he noticed was that kids looked like they were excited about the class and therefore actively engaged in learning. The baby clothes have started to roll in as her co-workers threw her a shower this week. It is staggering the things a kid "absolutely needs" these days to survive. While I guarantee my parents didn't have a lot of the things that babies are just expected to have now (and they turned out ok) who's to say that they wouldn't have become super human had they had some of these essential baby life support items.

On the baby front we think we have settled on a name......and no we're not telling. Not even family. Not even close family........Especially not close family. We did attend our first child birth class at the hospital last night. The most exciting part for me was that it was held in the spine center conference room/library and so on breaks I could wander around and see what the spine surgeons were reading up on. My favorite had to be a book called pathology of idiopathic scoliosis. Get out the dictionary you will laugh at that one. The class was a little basic but first time around I guess we gotta hit em all. I did draw some world class doodles and learned that in a couple of weeks our son will learn how to cry....just great not even out yet and already he's taking after his mother.

Elsewhere in our lives we decided to go beach camping over Memorial day weekend and got the full San Onofre camping experience. If you have never been there you drive down just past the huge nuclear reactors (featured in the Naked Gun) to your site 50 feet from the hourly amtrak commuter train and on a bluff where you can't even see the water. Oh and our site. I wish I had had the sense of humor at the time to take a picture. It was hardly big enough to put up our four man tent. Surf was fun though, and we packed it up early so we could catch the Angels getting crushed by the Mariners (also the team of my in-laws) on Monday night. It was really all down hill after the fly-over. If you have never been at an event deemed important enough by the powers that be to have a real fly-over you haven't experienced one of the absolute thrills of a lifetime. They are especially good at the Big A.

Other than that its pretty boring around here. Just day to day stuff. Work, Church, fighting over who's turn it is or who's job it is to make the bed. (my stance is for a rotation of responsibility and Erika's is that the last one out has earned the job......guess who's always the last one out?) Its a fight very rarely won as it usually ends up as the job of the first one who wants to go to sleep......but I'll claim that as a moral victory, hey you gotta get em where you can.