Hershey, Birthdays, School and Halo

Well, been kinda busy lately. So this is a big one.

Because my wife didn't really work much while she was going through cancer treatment, we didn't have a lot of money for vacation. Our big trip was to take my son to Hershey Park. Had a good time going up - was hoping he'd nap on the way but he didn't. He was excited and really enjoyed the tram ride from the parking lot to the park. Unfortunately, that was just about where his enjoyment ended. We did manage to do the carousel and a train ride, but after that, he cried in every line we were in. Lunch did not help. We ended up giving up on the ride thing and just walked around for awhile. We ended up leaving after about 3-4 hours. Once we got home, we had a chance to really look at the park map and saw they had a zoo. Oh well. Maybe next time. The next day, he told us about how he had fun at the park (surprised the hell outta us) and how he cried in line because he thought he'd either be left on the ride alone or would never get to get on the ride. The inner workings of the three year old mind!

We had his 3 year old birthday party this past Saturday. Spongebob Squarepants party. Had a good time, everyone was well behaved. The highlight must have been, as my son puts it, when the Spongebob pinata had his "strings pulled and blowpops came out of his butt."

My teaching job started back up for the new school year. The bad thing about work is they seem to now treat the teachers like students, even telling us at one point that we'd have to bring doctor's notes for sick leave. Administrators in the class every two weeks. Lots of "check ups" to make sure we're doing what we're supposed to. This is at the top high school in our county and one of the top counties of the state. A lot of the instructions they gave us sounded as if they were talking to the high school kids. We did a really boring school improvement plan activity with cutting and pasting to make posters, analyzing data to supposedly improve our teaching and some other things. Unfortunately, as all veteran teachers, the things we really need to improve our teaching, they conveniently never do. We've had all this equipment just sitting in the room for almost a year and a half. It is a danger to the students, collapses and slides on them, uses up classroom space. We've been trying constantly to get the equipment moved. Still hasn't happened. They scheduled one of my classes in a room that we don't fit in. Before the end of last year when it was still fixable, I went to the admin and explained that we didn't fit when the class was 16 kids, so now with 20 we'd never get in there. (meanwhile, the large music room sits empty now half the time.) We also didn't have the equipment to set up 3 rooms. The admin just nods her head and tells me this is the way it is going to be. I wanted to scream "WE DON'T #@$%* FIT IN THE #@% ROOM YOU STUPID #@%. "

I've had some really fun nights playing with 202P people and clan members. Lots of fun Halo games. I've given up playing it on the 360. Although, I think I've given up probably 20 times. I like the 360 controller much better, but games really seem laggy on it. I don't know how the good players can do it. I'll go back and forth. I'll play the 360, because as I'll say to myself, "If Dantez can be so good on the 360, it should be fine." (or some other players) But I'll get into these hugely laggy games where it seems that it isn't internet connection lag, but 360 emulation lag. Then I'll say, "screw it, I'm not doing the backcompat thing anymore." Play the regular xbox and dislike the controller, controller wire, and the fact that my xbox displays really dark now so that I can't see the blue guys in the dark areas. Then move back to the 360 and repeat the process. Please Halo 3, hurry!

If anybody in the DivXX or AA are interested, here is a link to some pics.

http://web.mac.com/thirdbear/iWeb/Site/Library.html