(no subject)

It has been a very long first week, as first weeks so often are (despite only being four days of actual time.)

I've settled a wee bit and I'm no longer quite so bitter about not having my own classroom. Still pissed that my wing of the school does not have a single working copier. Still unthrilled with my particular version of the schedule --as predicted, Thursday and Friday with all five classes are very hard days. Made harder than expected by the fact that Thursday runs them all together in a row, three classes-lunch-two classes without any other break or prep between. Friday has a prep after the first two classes, a useless time because with one Algebra and one Geometry, I've already needed to prepare everything for the entire day.

I've been doing two sleeps for the last three nights --fall asleep involuntarily earlier than expected, wake up around one and do words, go back to bed. At least tonight I get to sleep very much in, since bells's been cancelled for tomorrow morning. I might do myself the luxury of not setting an alarm at all, but then I really might just sleep until three in the afternoon when I need to leave for wedding bells, and not help clean the house like I told Ezri I would.

On the plus side of everything in the world, I got to spend about two hours this afternoon with Clayton, my current favourite coworker. It was about 60/40 actual mentoring/shooting the shit, and was _so rejuvenating_ in and of itself. (Clayton is in his second year teaching, and we are in the new pilot program for Bonus Mentoring For Year Two, which seems like an especially critical thing if your first year took place 80% over the internet and you've never had a first week in a real classroom. This program means I get cashmoneys for doing something I would do anyways, and Clayton gets to not feel guilty when he asks me for help/advice/whatever and we talk for two hours).

The big thing though is _actually getting to interact with students_ is so utterly soothing to my soul. A lot of last week's total bullshit has melted off my brain, forgotten by so many miniature moments as I learn names and personalities and what each class will feel like. It is, in many ways, going to be a long hard year but I got into teaching because I'm an extrovert who especially likes teenagers, and I am enjoying this batch.

Next week will be much more content filled --I made a conscious choice to mostly focus on community building and deciding class norms and the like this time around. I feel it's gone so-so, but I've done some good activities and learned a lot of little things about who they all are, which was meant to be the point. I have some serious grading to do this weekend --not pointswise (the surveys will be graded on effort) but certainly personalitywise as I look for important details about the kids.

Forty or so more weeks to go.

~Sor
MOOP!

(no subject)

Today was a just-about-perfect fall day.

It started with brunch and family meeting and chores, which were mostly really good --I'm apparently a little twitchy about doing chorework around other people, but I think I managed to mostly find constructive tasks to do in rooms that weren't being worked in by Ezri and Rey, and that was good. We swept and vacuumed _everywhere_ which was a good accomplishment. Also I made blueberry pancakes, which was also a good accomplishment.

I liked the part during pancakes where I was singing along to a bunch of Little Shop, but it made me desperately miss the ability to schedule another musical singalong party. Someday, damnit!

After choretime, I got packed up and headed off to the T to ride to late-bells. We forewent practice today in favour of ringing for a wedding this afternoon! I was in a kinda drifty weird mood on the T, and got in some good weird daydreaming. Arrived horrendously early, and was fully prepared to go flop on the grass for a while and daydream more...and almost immediately ran into 5/8ths of the other ringers, who were hanging around the greenway with handbells.

We rang single-handbell Cambridge (which is too fast for me, because handbells always are, but at least with only one bell I can follow the line), and then Myles suggested we do some ringing on bodies, which is about my favourite kind of ringing --it involves physically moving around and feels Not Unlike Dancing. So we rang _St. Clements_ and _Kalamazoo_ and _CAMBRIDGE_ on bodies, all of which is Very Impressive and not remotely simple.

There's a lot of things I'm saying "someday someday" for, and getting a bunch of the intersection of ringer and dancer to do some regular on bodies with some complicated methods is very much one of those somedays.

The wedding ringing went pretty nicely overall --Danielle ran a nice little event. Weddings are fun because they always involve ringing for a bit, then sitting for like an hour, then ringing for another bit. In the intermediate, most of the ringers played set, and I sat nearby and did grading (which was lovely). Danielle turns out to be a _monster_ at set, which is always nice to see.

After the wedding, we all packed into a couple of cars and drove to Dale and Emily's house for Ringer Dinner Party, which is to say hanging out in the garden and eating pizza. I was excited to get to see baby Robin, who is a bit over two now and talking like a champ. She had to go to bed shortly after we arrived, but by that point all the ringers who were coming were there, and we all had delicious pizza and various drinks and tiki-torches and sitting on the lawn and just chatting for a couple hours. It was _so good_.

Austin and I split a can of Artifact's "Wild Thing" hard cider, which was _so good_. It was just about the perfect amount of booze for both of us, and a very nice tasting drink. And it was nice to be in company where I could try something without promising to finish it, and be able to have someone to split it with.

After many cozy talking and laughing and happy, we finally got a lift home. Tomorrow we get to see many of the ringers again, for service ringing, and I am happy for that too.

I hope your weekend is full of friends and libations and joy.

~Sor
MOOP!