Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2003
A little bit of name-dropping about 24 and ephadrine and grading essays, posted at 10:01 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com I just finished watching 24. God, how I love that show. One thing that I have not shared yet is that one of my new students is the niece of actress Penny Johnson, who is incredible on the show. She plays the divorced First Lady, a cunning Lady MacBeth of a character who is damn good in the show that I look forward to watching her villianess character more than any other. The niece says she has been known to come into schools and give "talks" - including at her middle school last year. That would be a thrill beyond belief. This woman is incredible. I would love to meet her.I have been rocked a bit by the death of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler. Officials are now linking his death to ephedrine, which is concerning to me because I have taken this before. I did a lot of research and weighed the pro's and con's. I didn't do it to lose weight - it's not how I lost 112 lbs - but took it a little bit this fall to try to get out of my plateau. I decided it was too expensive so I stopped. I know some doctors don't recommend it, but I sort of decided that if the government allows it to be sold, it must be basically okay. Now I'm regretting that decision. But I don't want to jump to conclusions, as the toxicology reports have not been performed, so he might have taken a whole messload of it instead of the recommended dosage. Plus, he was out of shape, it was hot, he had high blood pressure, and he was dehydrated. I will definitely be watching it closely. If it is found that the Xenadrine caused to his death, then I hope some movements are made to take ephadrine products off the shelves.
I am still totally and completely bored. One of my students is currently AIM-ing me not for help on her essay but just to chat. And I'm actually enjoying the conversation. I wonder if I will regret giving out my AIM name to my students? Not yet. I figure I can always sign out if I get overwhelmed.
Grading papers by tape-recording my comments is taking longer than I thought it would. I'm saying an awful lot. I expect it will get quicker as I get better at it. I hope that this will be a useful thing for the kids. I'm going to pass back the essays and the tapes with their scores, and they will be transcribing my comments and then reflecting and responding to them.
I have no left the house today. I keep hearing little crashes outside, which I suspect is snow falling off the roof. There does not seem to be much activity outside, and our sidewalk is cleared as much as it's going to be cleared with our crummy shovel. The sidewalk on our block has become a winding 18-inch path cutting through what seems like three feet of snow. I had thought of walking to the grocery store today, but didn't. I would have had to walk in the street, and carry the groceries home, and the thought was not exciting to me. I had water on my cereal instead of buying some milk. If I don't get out of the house tomorrow, I'll go insane.