"Why Do Little Blue Midgets Hit Me With Fish?"

Got the new Bob Dylan and Ray Lamontagne CDs last night. Also picked up Season 1 of The Tick. Man, that show kicked ass. I had high hopes for the live-action version they did a few years back, but it never really lived up to expectations (even if it had Patrick Warburton in it).

The new Dylan album is great. Very mellow, digs deep into traditional American musical styles. Sweet. Ray Lamontagne's new record is also really freakin' cool. Sounds very different from his first album, drops the country-rock-meets-Van Morrison feel of his first record in favor of a very atmospheric, R&B-tinged collection. I'll try to have something more substantial to say about both of those later this week.

I got my schedule for school today. It's pretty good, for the most part, though there are a few things about it that annoy me: for instance, I'm helping out in an Algebra class. My math skills are, of course, pretty pathetic. Non-existant, some might say. But that's okay, 'cause I get to do three history classes (US History, World History I, and World History II). I'm also helping in an English class, since the new woman we hired to teach English quit last week before school even started. I'm also helping out in Art, which is always groovy.

The most interesting class, to me, is that I get to teach a Humanities class. When I asked my boss what she wanted me to do with it, she basically said it was up to me. I've been kicking around ideas with Michelle and Wendy, and I've got five or six different units figured out for the class. We'll see what I come up with (like textbooks...don't have any of those yet).

We learned CPR today at the school. It's been about a decade since I last did CPR, so it was interesting to see how much I'd retained of it (of course, it's not like CPR is that difficult or changed that much in ten years).

Tomorrow's more orientation crap. Most of this stuff is really useful for the new teachers, but not for the returning teachers. I mostly just want time to get the classroom in order and get some lesson plans written up. We'll see.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Bob Dylan, "Thunder on the Mountain"