Sunday, Nov. 28, 2004
Slow evening, posted at 12:14 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com On Thanksgiving night, there was a double shooting just a block or so from the restaurant where I work. Scary stuff luckily no one was killed. Still, it certainly did kill our business tonight. Fell's Point was dead all around. I don't know if the shootings had all the effect on it, but it wouldn't surprise me that my 7 covers tonight were a result of the shooting.Thankfully, I was second off tonight. It was up to me, and I struggled hard with my decision. I could have decided to be the closer, like I was on Friday night, and go for the most money. If I knew I would be walking with $100 or more, then I would have taken that section. Instead, I went with the other slot, and I'm glad, because, while the closer will probably walk with $70 or so tonight (business sucked!), he'll also have to stay four hours more than I did. And I made $42 off my seven covers over the span of five hours. Certainly not great, but it could be worse. For example, I could make $70 over the course of nine hours, and then go to work the next morning sleep deprived.
I woke up today and banged out twenty multiple choice questions for my midterm. Frankenstein was out in the car and I left my copy of the Odyssey at school, so I figured, what the heck, why not work on the midterm. I still haven't totally decided what I'm going to do with the Odyssey. It's long, of course, and the kids will have read through Book (Chapter) 5 on Monday. There are 19 books to go, and there's a part of me that would really like it to be pretty much done by Christmas. It would mean working them to death until then. I'm also not sure what I want them to be doing while they read. What motifs should they be tracking? What should their major assessments be? The ideas are swimming in my head and not quite formulating yet. It's my first time really teaching the thing. Ditto Frankenstein, where I have the same questions.
I read "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" yeserday. I think I'm supposed to teach it this unit. Eh. It didn't do much for me. It's amazing to me that a poem like that can form a stranglehold on a nation and time period as that one. My friend tells me it's because I didn't read it in one sitting. I might try that tomorrow. I don't even have any ideas about how I'm going to teach it. Read it out loud with the kids? What else? The thought alone of doing that bores me, and I can already hear them groan.
It's so important to be enthusiastic about what you teach. I'm into Frankenstein now, so that's good. Hopefully Coleridge and his dumb poem grab a hold of me soon.
***
I worked out hard today and ran three miles afterwards. Felt really good.