one not-so-good thing

Having your student tell you in the middle of class that your fly is down. And finding out that it's not a joke.

a few good things

• being told that my teaching techniques are "borderline genius." I'm more prone to believe that they are beyond genius, but I'll take the compliment.
• other teachers telling me that they heard their students talking about how much they loved my class
• free laptops
• and long weekends
• and a lot of other stuff
• making fun of Ben mercilessly for showing up to the faculty party wearing the exact same shirt as his fiance. I am so glad they found each other. And so grateful for the hours entertainment found at their expense.
  

guess where i am

No, seriously. I want you to guess.

Fine. I'll tell you. I'm sitting on the floor in my living room typing on my brand-new laptop. Now, you may be wondering how I can afford a brand-new, fingerprint recognition, built-in wireless internet laptop on a teacher's salary. I'll tell you how I can afford it. I didn't pay for it. My school bought it for me, mainly because they love me a lot. And the only thing I have to do in return is use it a lot. I'm pretty sure I can do that.

i have just one question

How exactly does one end up driving west on a road that is not I-10, a road that is, in fact, so far from being I-10 that it has stoplights and pedestrian crosswalks, when one's only job for ten full hours was to drive east on I-10 without getting off?

I'm just not sure.

I think it might have had something to do with the traffic jam. The traffic jam which occupied four of the five lanes of freeway, while the fifth lane was empty due to the fact that it led somewhere that the traffic jam did not. And if everybody wanted so badly to get where the traffic jam was going, badly enough that they would remain in said traffic jam instead of occupying the empty lane, then clearly the empty lane must be leading to nothing but trouble. Kind of like when one pulls up to a toll booth, sees the green light over an empty tollbooth lane, the light which means "this lane is open", but one still pulls into the next lane, the one behind a row of six cars, because clearly there is something wrong with the empty lane.

"Huh. Nobody's going through that one. It must be broken."

And although one saw all six cars pull in right in front of you, and knows perfectly well that they are not receiving a secret message informing them of the demise that will surely come as a result of driving though the empty tollbooth lane, a secret message that you are somehow missing, even though you pulled up at the same time they did, one still avoids the empty tollbooth lane.

"How come nobody's using that one? The light's green. It's open. Idiots. Me, I'm not an idiot. I'm just not in any sort of rush. So, in order to prove that I'm not in a rush, and am so totally laid-back, and so totally selfless as to leave the empty tollbooth lane open to allow other cars to go in front of me, I will sit in this long line behind six other cars and wait patiently. That's how nice I am."

Yes. Yes. I'm pretty sure that's it. One somehow got off of I-10 going east and onto a non-freeway road traveling west because of the traffic jam. Because one, being all the way over in the left lane, the designated "fast" lane, did not want to inconvenience the other traffic jammers by cutting in front of them, even though one would surely wave the "thank you for letting me in" wave, since one obviously is aware of proper driving etiquette, just to make the poor traffic jammers jealous that one got to drive in the empty lane.

That's nice. That's very, very nice.