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2002-01-20 - 3:59 p.m. Exercise: 30 minutes on my new Gazelle Edge Machine. Okay, so I'm going to try to remember to record my exercise. I should record what I eat too, but I don't want to start it on a completely bad note. All the stuff I ate today probably cancelled out the exercise anyway. :) I am so glad it is a three day weekend, but sad that it is almost over. I spent it with Justin, but he left awhile ago. We went and picked up my new exercise thing at the post office, and he set it up. I also got a new CD rom drive and he set that up, too. I feel bad that I sort of fall back into a stereotyped gender role and let him do all that stuff for me. Somehow, though, I am totally incompetent when it comes to things like that. How awful. I am so glad that I got those things set up. As soon as he left I started exercising. The nice thing is that it isn't too hard, kind of like a treadmill or something, but after you get off you feel good and exercised. Hopefully I can stick to this. Justin and I also ended up going to the boys' basketball game. It was against a team that is pretty good, so we lost. It was still fun to watch. Justin seemed to have fun. He is really into sports, and he never wants to go to the games because he is afraid everyone is staring at him like, "Look, it's Ms. Boombastic's boyfriend!" but they didn't really this time. So maybe he will actually go to another game with me. I really do like going to their games, and I don't really like going alone. I am always amazed that people can do things like go to movies alone. I haven't tried that, but I have gone to restaurants alone. I feel so awkward. This semester is almost over. This next week is the last week. We have next Monday as a teacher workday so we can finish all of our grading and such. I am really happy about that. I am not sure what I am doing next with the seniors and I need to figure it out really soon. I have three different books we can read, but I feel like they need sort of a break before we read something long again. I can do sonnets but somehow I am guessing they won't be that into it. Last year I related one of the sonnets to Dido's song "Thank You" and they seemed to like that, but other than that I don't have any bright ideas. Oh, we also rented American Pie 2 which was okay. Neither of us saw it in the theater so we thought it would be cool. My favorite part was watching the casting tapes. I love it when DVDs have casting tapes--it just seems so interesting to me. I could never be an actor. I am still listening to my new Smashing Pumpkins CD non- stop. I can't believe I never bought this before. One of the weblogs that I read fairly regularly went off on this big diatribe against some friend of a friend who is going on welfare and all of this crap that made me sick. I am disappointed. It's really weird when someone has a totally different viewpoint than you on something like that. Even though I don't email or chat with the majority of the people whose diaries/weblogs I read, I sort of feel like I know them. This totally made me feel as if that person is not who I thought they were. I am fairly open minded but I just hate it when people are so hateful. The majority of our tax dollars do not go to supporting welfare mothers, but somehow Americans have this huge vendetta against them. I would also argue that the majority of "welfare mothers" are not abusing the system. I would also argue that the system is what is messed up and puts them in that situation in the first place. There are a few simple things that would help some single moms get off welfare. For example, a national health care plan. When my single mother was on welfare, part of the problem in getting off welfare was no longer having health care for her child. Anyway, I am guessing there are tons of people who feel differently than I do on this, so I don't know if it is fair to hold it against this person or not. I am always surprised at how many people who are supposedly liberal will go into the whole, "My parents worked their asses off to get where they are and they deserve to keep their money." There are a lot of poor people who work their asses too, but they still don't have everything that they "deserve." One of my students is seriously pissing me off. Last week he kept saying something to this other kid about being Indian. Almost every day he kept teasing the kid for various things, the bottom line being that J gets away with everything because he is Indian. Like when J would come in late with a note, M would say, "Yeah, J never gets tardies just because he's Indian." J just laughs but has this look on his face like, "Where is this coming from?" and didn't say anything back. M said things like, "Yeah, J got free glasses from the Tribe." Anyway, I don't know if they are friends or not, but I've never seen them hanging out. J is a really sweet quiet kid. Finally, M said something like, "Yeah, J hates the white man, right J?" out of nowhere. I was standing nearby and I just said, "Why do you keep picking on him?" The kids around were like, "Yeah, why?" M tried to say he was joking and obviously everyone involved knew that. Another girl was like, "Well, it's not funny and you should stop!" J didn't say anything. M kept going on and on about how he was joking and clearly had nothing against J. I just said it was fine and he could do what he wanted because I did not feel like turning it into a huge argument. I was just annoyed because it seemed very one-sided, and not like J was joking back. It's fine if they want to joke around about that together, but I know I would be annoyed if someone made fun of me for being white and having special privileges every single day. When the other kids agreed with me I thought I did the right thing in saying something. However, later on in the hall I walked by M. He was across the hall from J. As soon as I walked past he yells at J, "Fuck you, J!" I pretended I hadn't heard but it really pissed me off. He just did that to sort of rub it in that he had been joking around and didn't hate J at all. I could have written him up for saying that, too, so he's lucky I ignored it. I just hate it when kids get into that whole anti-authority business. I wasn't asking him why he kept picking on him as a teacher, I was just saying it as a general comment. I think it made him mad because I was calling him on his bullshit. I don't know. I told Justin about it, because he is half Korean and I was wondering what his thoughts on it would be if a white kid kept making comments like that to him. He agreed with me that it was messed up, and even if he was friends with him he would get tired of it if the kid kept bringing it up. So I don't know. Of course I think I'm right, but maybe I'm not. Anyway, this was the kid that I mentioned before that made rude comments to me and is always thinking he is much smarter than me and trying to point it out. I love mean people, don't you? Apparently the kids were really good for the sub on Thursday. I am bringing them a treat on Tuesday. It was only fifth and seventh that had the sub. Seventh can be pretty bad for subs, but I guess they were really good too. I really am starting to love them! They always have the strangest stories for me when I come back about how things went with the sub. I think they exaggerate, but they do tell the funniest stories. I guess one of my students pretended when he first came in that he was retarded (awful, I know) and the sub said, "Hi, what is your name?" all slow in the way some people talk to retarded people. Then once he revealed he wasn't really retarded he gave a twenty minute summary of what the book was about (I told the sub to ask them to refresh everyone's memory). They were also like, "Wow, Ms. Boombastic, we got through so many pages of the book. Much more than when you are here." Then they said, "Even James and Michelle volunteered to read, we were all really helping the sub out." I was like, "Even James and Michelle?!? They never read when I'm here! And you got even farther in the book than with me? It sounds like things go so much better when I'm not here!" Then they quickly assured me that they like it better when I read because the sub read in a monotone voice and I do different voices for the different characters. So of course, that made me feel happy. I think they know how to get on my good side. :) Well I had better go get ready to take the movie back. Hopefully I can get some work done tonight so tomorrow won't be another day from hell for me where I spend all night grading. Oh, I had the most disappointing experience the other night. I was watching TV and flipped through some channels and came across this made-for-TV-Disney-movie. It was called Model Behavior. I had this instant flash of recognition that this movie was supposed to have Justin Timberlake in it. Of course I decided to watch it. Now, I swear I have seen Justin Timberlake in an interview before, and he was cool and wanna-be-thuggish. Well, this movie showed me a side of Justin that I didn't love. He was wimpy, a bad actor, and talked like a little dork. He also had incredibly bad lines (not his fault, I guess). I was so embarrassed that the object of my affection was this little geek. My image of Justin has been scarred! Even worse, I told my Justin about it, and he did a hilarious impression of the way Justin Timberlake talks and pointed at my Justin Timberlake calendar and mocked me. He felt that now that I knew what a geek Justin T. is that I should throw out my calendar. I weakly argued that I still liked Justin Timberlake, despite his nerdiness, and that if Britney sees something in him he must not be all bad. I feel so disillusioned.
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