I think it's kind of funny that here it is the end of October and the secretaries and custodians are just now coming around to ask me about the furniture situation in my classroom - if I have enough, and the right kinds and such. I mean, if I've been getting by for two months and you haven't heard about it, secretaries and custodians, things can't be too bad, right? Still, I scored a new work station and a big curved table for my ever-growing piles of hand-outs, so maybe I shouldn't complain. Wow, does it feel refreshing to be able to say stuff like that again. Please please please, no one tip of The Man (read: the crafty tech guy from school who outted me back at the old site) that this site exists. If I don't have somewhere to dump all this stuff, I'll suffocate.

And another thing - oh shoot, I know there was another thing. Oh yes. The World Lit book I'm expected to use is ridiculous. That's my second job-related beef for today. They devote approximately one hundred fifty pages of their thousandsome page book to all of Chinese and Japanese literature. Now, first of all, these two decidedly distinct cultures should not be lumped together in one place - especially not in a classroom in a school district where acknowledging diversity and celebrating the slightest nuance of uniqueness is always encouraged. And then there's the time span; the editors have chosen to use texts written from 1300 BC to 1800 AD. One hundred fifty pages for more than three thousand years of two different cultures. No accurate picture can be painted with that kind of broad focus (oxymoron, I know...but you know what I mean). I think of U of M where whole semesters are devoted to a fraction of that kind of material, and I sigh longingly. But, because it's all we can really do and because we have to, we'll read some Confucius and some of the Tao te Ching and some Haiku and pack it all into a week or two. I'll do it...but I won't like it!

I'm such a negative Nancy tonight. I'll cut it out and go grade some quizzes - now that I've purged, maybe I'll be a little more generous with the points

Party in Grand Rapids this weekend! Anyone who's cool should come!