more bullets...saphire bullets....

• Found out that I'm not going to be teaching English to 7th graders this year. I like english, but I'm not sure I'm very good at teaching it. And it's hard to teach and it's hard to grade. And I was not looking forward to living in Searcy, AR for 3 days this week at a Literacy Workshop. The workshop seemed interesting, but I just wanted a little more summer before it starts ramping up again. Also, if I ever found myself behind on grading last year, it was invariably because I was procrastinating grading 7th grade english essays. Not fun.
• So, what will I be teaching? 7th grade math, 8th grade math, and one class of Social Studies. 7th grade math I actually have experience now and I found out that our 7th grade benchmark scores were crazy good. 8th grade math will be new, but my room happens to be right next to he 8th grade math teacher, so it shouldn't be too rough. The Social Studies class will just mean that I'll actually have a common subject with my Mentor teacher and I think it will be interesting.
• I've been actually reading Sherlock Holmes stories. I absorbed a lot of knowledge about Sherlock Holmes from my dad who was a big fan and watched the PBS episodes regularly. However, I was always a little too antsy to sit and watch, and I definitely never waded through reading one. They're still a little dry, but I'm kind of liking it. More than anything, I'm shocked and appalled when 7th graders tell me they've never heard of Sherlock Holmes.
• I've been doing a lot of research looking into moving my web-site from my current, long-time web-host to something cheaper. The fact is that I'm doing much more with (and that's still not much) blogging than I am doing anything to update my actual web-site. I'm not sure anybody's even reading the blog, let alone visiting shacknotes.com, so I don't really need to be paying so much to keep it where it is. So, just be ready, everything might be changing soon.
• Spent most of today, writing/recording my first radio jingle with my colleague, jmiller. As the day has gone on, I've found that J and I could actually do this and make money at it. However, I've also become more and more concerned with the business aspect of this particular venture. I'm trying to tell myself that if we get completely stiffed with this particular project, if it gets used and people like it, it might open opportunities later and we'll be more prepared to deal with financial matters. It could make a nice side-job for sure.
• Still haven't seen the Dark Knight. Soon...