2001-11-20
mf/db concert, wknd w/friends, school good news, posted at 11:58 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Long time, no entry.On Thursday night, I enjoyed one of the best nights of live music in my night - the Melissa Ferrick/Dan Bern concert. It was pretty amusing to see the audiences of the two artists rubbing elbows - Ferrick's primarily lesbian audience, and Bern's primarily male audience. Still, their music is pretty similar, and they're two of the best, most intense live performers touring today. It was a night of great music. Dan Bern was better than he had been the last few times I had seen him (I often have problems with his audience-hating attitude), and played with a tighter band than I'd ever seen him with. Melissa Ferrick was also good, but her fans were pretty annoying. I'd never seen her in a bar before, and was shocked at how they talked through all her songs. The incessant smoking began to bug me, too. If you go to a concert to hear someone sing, you listen to them and shut your trap. At least that's what I thought, at least. Oh well. Best moments - Dan Bern changing the lyrics in "Marilyn Monroe" from "I had a best friend whose goal in life was to one day go down on Madonna, that was his one goal in life" to "that was her one goal in life", Dan Bern singing a particularly moving "God Said No", Melissa Ferrick rocking out on the best version of "Til You're Dead" that I've ever heard. The show got long towards the end (Dan played a little longer than an hour, Melissa about 90 minutes, and it didn't start until 9:45 or so), but was a great night. Mike, Jason, and I all enjoyed it.
I didn't come into school on Friday, which meant no computer and no update. I had taken the day off as a Professional Day to attend the National Council of Teachers of English Conference here in the city. However, I didn't go - on Friday, at least. That's probably grounds for some sort of supervisoral punishment, but no one even asked about it when I returned. I hadn't signed up for it, and was just planning on going in and doing as much stuff for free as I could. I ended up doing that on Sunday - getting tons of free stuff at the exhibition portion of the conference and checking out a session. Next year, in Atlanta, I think I'm going to go all out and pay for the whole thing. It wasn't a very good time for me this year, despite it being in the city that I live in. That sort of made it too convenient to skip, I guess. Also, I didn't really have the money for it this year; maybe next year I will. It will be an odd experience to go to one of these conferences and actually pay for it. What a bad person I am. My mentor teacher from last year did come down, though, and it was nice to see her. She told me that a session on Friday night with John Waters (for a whopping $65) was the best part of the weekend - they showed "Serial Mom" and he spoke for an hour afterwards.
Friends from Michigan came down on Friday, and that was fun. They drove ten hours to see me - how cool is that? I missed them a lot. We had a good time over the weekend. On Friday, we went out to breakfast, slept a bit, then went out to the Fell's Point area. On Saturday, we started out early to Fell's Point to watch the MSU/Fell's Point game at Crabby Dick's, and that was a good time (great beer). We ended up doing an hour's worth of shopping at the huge Barnes&Noble downtown, then headed home. We scrapped plans to go to a dueling piano bar downtown that night, and stayed in and played board games. It was fun. They left far too early on Sunday.
One of the things I noticed about myself this weekend, however, is that I am far too argumentative with friends. I just can't be placating enough. I need to learn to be. I pick dumb little fights by saying things like, "I can't believe that you two, as feminists, liked Tomb Raider. I mean, it was a movie that was basically an ode to Angelina Jolie's boobs." True, yes, but why even say it? Open mouth, insert foot. I also got into a stupid argument over a Taboo game. Nothing is more frustrating to me when it feels like people aren't listening to me.
I'm now back at school, and things are okay. Yesterday was trying, but today has been damn good. I had a meeting with my supervisor and department head that checked up on the progress of my evaluative portfolio, and I think I ended up ahead of most of the other teachers. She also gave me a couple pieces of good news: first, she totally understood about the four mistakes I made on my grades because of my trip, and told me she'd sneak them onto the computer without others (re: the principal) finding out. Secondly, she told me that I no longer have to teach Advanced Writing next semester. The latter is wonderful news; I was very leery of inventing a new course from new scratch when I'm struggling to plan lessons for two. Instead, I have three sections of Freshmen English. I'll definitely have to improve my classroom management skills a bit, but I had to do that anyway. I have just one prep (!), and I'm going to do a damn good job on it.
(I sort of feel guilty for having just one prep. The fact that they're all freshmen sort of makes up for that guilt, though.)
Tomorrow, I'm heading back to Michigan right after school. I'm not looking forward to the 9-hour drive, but both Jason and Mike from DC are coming along. Plus Holden, in his first long car trip ever. I've been trying to take him along on odd errands in my car so he gets used to it, but there's not a whole lot to prepare him for that long in a car. I hope he does okay; I think he will. Last night, I had to tie him up in Barnes&Noble for a minute or two while I wrote a check for them. I told him to sit, and he was sitting in the same position watching the door intently when I returned outside.
We're starting Huck Finn today with my sophomores, and so far it's going well. I like the book a lot more than I did last year. Their Eyes Were Watching God is going to be started next hour by my freshmen. They've been awful lately - I sometimes feel like they have no respect for me at all. I hope starting the book will provide enough excitement for them to start to focus again.