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2002-04-30 - 10:30 p.m. I found out the worst news in the world. Apparently there are two different policies on late library books. At the library that is actually in my town, there is a seven day grace period and then they start fining you. At the library that is in the next town, which is about five miles away, the library doesn't give you any fines. I found this out the hard way--I went to the library in my town and found that in September I returned my books eighteen days late. However, the fine was only $3.80 so it wasn't a complete nightmare and shock. I feel sort of sorry for my library because most of their books suck anyway, and I prefer the other library. So now I will probably go to the other library more. It makes no sense, since they are essentially the same library. The librarian was even saying it made no sense (I didn't complain or anything like that). She also acted shocked that I came back to pay the fine (I didn't have any money on me at the time). She had to make me promise that the next time I came I would pay at least half of the fine. So I just came right back since it is right down the street from my house. She asked me if I was comfortable paying and that she wasn't trying to pressure me into it. It was really strange. I wonder if no one ever actually pays their fines or something. There is nothing I want more then to be able to speak with an English accent. After watching two episodes of The Osbournes for the first time last night, I woke up this morning and was able to say, "I want a little dumpling," with a perfect English accent. It's the only thing that I can say so far. I don't think that they said that on the show at all, so I don't know where it came from. That is one weird show. I'm not sure if I'm going to watch it again or not. I already watch too much TV. I'm also curious about the ages of the kids. They are some weird kids. I have been desperately behind on all my entertainment news. I can barely even keep up with one magazine a week now. I have no clue what I'm doing with my time, but I have a huge stack of all my magazines I get in the mail and never have any time to read them. It's actually pretty pathetic. Tomorrow is May 1st! That means there is only one full month of school left, and one half month. This is completely and totally insane. The weather has actually been nice a few days here, which is really wonderful. The only problem is that it gets really hot in my classroom because of the side of the school it's on. So sometimes seventh period is pretty unbearable. But it is so nice to get off work and have it be light out for quite a bit longer. I just love this feeling of summer almost being here. I think part of my good mood lately has also come from being caught up with grades for the last week or so. I actually collected journals in enough time to grade them without being too stressed out. I haven't started them in on the journals again and am not sure if I'm going to. I might just go crazy and not have them do them the rest of the year. We'll see. Tomorrow I have my meeting. I am a little worried about the sub because she hasn't really been a high school sub before and she sounds scared out of her mind. She mainly does elementary school. So that should be interesting. The kids always say, "Who is the sub?!? It doesn't matter who it is as long as it isn't _________ (insert name of crazy sub lady they hate here)." I feel sort of sorry for the woman. I had a good time in all my classes today. Everyone was good, no complaints really, and I had a nice time with my seniors. They actually liked the latest short story I gave them--it had a surprise twist in the end that they liked. My third period class is my smartest class and they all gasped in shock in unison. It was kind of cute. I finally went through this stack of papers that I shoved in my closet last year at the end of the year when I was too tired to file everything away neatly. It was a bunch of random papers and notebooks and assignments. I always clean up a little bit before a sub comes, so I got into this huge organizing mood and finally tackled it. I found some funny stuff like an apology letter from one of my students for blowing up and yelling at me. He said that he had been kicked out of three classes already that day and it felt like pick-on-Jake-day. I still have that kid this year and we've had a few run-ins but for the most part we get along well. I started making a scrapbook of the kids from last year and I want to continue it every year. I don't have a picture of this kid, though, because anytime I make them take a group picture he ducks down or hides his face. Maybe he'll get senior pictures and get me one because I do want to remember what he looks like. I feel kind of bad because he's been really down about how the other kids don't like him very much. He's one of my angry-young-men types. He went to prom by himself, which is actually pretty brave, but he decided to at the last minute so he had to sign up for a table by himself. I felt really bad about it. Speaking of angry young men, the angry young skater that broke his hand by punching a wall, wrote something in his journal that made me pause. He normally writes about two sentences a day. This one day, though, he wrote that every day he feels more alone and that he doesn't have any real friends. He only has one friend (the one that got kicked out for threatening Mr. Coolio), and even that friend gets mad at him a lot. He also is moving soon and is afraid about getting in fights at his new school. I feel so bad for this kid. He's a great kid half the time and the other half of the time he's angry-young-man. Sometimes you just wish you could be their new friend so they would have someone, but let's face it--who wants to be friends with their teacher? No one. Well, I think I'm going to go play The Sims. The Ms. Boombastic and Justin couple just installed a basketball court in their back yard.
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