What’s Goin’ On…

So much!

We got through school elections this week and our next plan is to move to creating a proper constitution and planning the school’s first Homecoming Week.  The kids want to do the entire thing up the right way – a complete Spirit Week with dress-up days, penny-war fundraisers between the classes, selling spirit items like ribbons and face tattoos, etc., having a full homecoming dance with a king, queen, prince and princess.  The athletic department said they’d even try to work with us to schedule a pep rally.

Choir is choir.  They’re learning to read music faster than I expected them too.  Several of my boys are still tone-deaf, though.  I have absolutely no idea how to fix it.  Also, the kids can’t sing in parts to save their own lives.  They do fine when they’re doing their own thing, but when they’re all required to sing together, they lose their focus.  And, unfortunately, I can’t put as much an investment in them because I have so much in yearbook and leadership by default.  So, we’ll see what happens.

Speaking of yearbook, it’s going well.  We finally chose a company and should be getting our startup package sometime this week.  We’ll have our first pre-sale over the next couple weeks and I’ve had them start shooting pictures.  Five of my cameras, the most expensive ones, came to me without their lithium-ion battery chargers, so I have to figure out either where they are, or how we can get a couple new ones.  Long story short, it’s attributed to the incompetence of someone else who handled the cameras last year.  This frustrates me because we have no time to waste in getting good photos, and not having charged batteries sets us back a lot farther than I’d prefer to be.

I’m finally learning how to use the computer grading system they have for us (it wouldn’t work on the computer in my old classroom last year, so I did everything "by hand" in Excel), now that grades are due by the middle/end of this week.  Life wouldn’t be exciting if I didn’t wait until the last possible minute to get things completed and turned in on time.  Although, this grading program actually is so easy that I really can wait until the last minute to put in grades and be just fine.  With as much as I have to do from day to day, grades are usually the last thing on my mind.

On the home front, things are well.  Band things are coming together, we’re about to go live with the website, the boys are really tuning and polishing – they have a really great sound.  They played at the Cat Club the other night and most of their set surprised even me – it had an edgier sound.  Edgier?  More edgy?  They were off the chain.  We’ll just say that.  And it’s a good thing, too, because they’re set to play the Viper Room come the end of this month.  If you don’t know, the Viper Room is one of the hottest venues for indie artists.  In order to play there, you have to have a fairly large following and you have to prove it by selling a massive amount of tickets. 

It’s the place that was our goal when we moved into the city last year.  We didn’t think we’d achieve it this soon, but what do we know?  How did we manage this so soon?  We’re actually opening for another guy.  His touring company contacted Matt and said that they liked the band’s sound and would love to have them open for him.  So, we only have to sell about half the number of tickets required to headline.  So, if any of you live in or will be in the LA area on October 27th, let me know!  A great show at a great venue for only $12.  If for no other reason, we’re hoping that this can get us some great exposure and help build our fanbase.

Oliver is doing well.  We bought him a barking collar and I swear, it’s the best $50 I’ve ever spent.  I just put it on him before I walk out the door in the morning and I have no worries, when I come home, that the house will be an utter disaster.  For some reason, it calms his behavior as well.  My guess is because when he gets to going on a shoe or the carpet, he starts growling and barking, so it shocks him.  Therefore, he avoids it all by staying calm and relaxing.  We’re still trying to train him not to bark when we hug or tickle – he goes nuts, so we put the collar back on him when he does that, to teach him that it’s unacceptable to bark like that.

So, that’s pretty much what’s going on.  Sometimes I feel like my plate, and my head, is more full than I can handle, but it seems to be working so far.  I’m just taking each thing at it’s face value and working on it until it’s time to work on the next thing.  And, so far, that seems to be working for me.

And now, it’s time to stop working on this and move onto something else.

~J