Never mind the homework, here's the Vegan Teacher

In an attempt to lose this embarrassing gut I’ve managed to retain from a summer of sitting around on the stoop, I’ve put myself on a no sugar, no wheat herbal cleanse for the next two weeks. I’m on day 3; attempting to introduce more variety into my meal planning. I also seem to have worked the kinks (and sugar withdrawl) out of my daily eating routines.

Day 1: (This day was shitty and I felt out of sorts.) tofu scramble, a can of corn, some vegetable stew, rice crackers w/almond butter, an apple, popcorn.

Day 2: (This day was a bit better but damn, the cleansing part kicked in and my god… piss me off when I’ve got a class to get to.) oatmeal with berries, rice crackers w/almond butter, an apple, some more vegetable stew, a can of beans, rice pasta w/tomato paste & garlic, popcorn.

Today is a holiday, and the first day in a while that I’ve not felt guilty for sleeping in, on. Yes. Anyways, I was called out to my favorite high school yesterday at 6:10am. I don’t usually pick up the phone that early as I like to have things sorted out the night before however, I missed four calls for work on Monday because I kept justifying my need to sleep longer. Another reason why I like to know my assignment the night before: sleep always trumps waking up early to sort through supply work.

So I arrived at the school a bit early to pick up the key, look for a subplan (there was none, but she left a voice message for me) and use the restroom. (Seriously, this cleanse had me in there 5 times yesterday. Sweet Jezus.) It was an English class, three actually. The first was with the 11’s and we watched a movie after I figured out how to get the dvd to work (see: my daily struggles with technology). Luckily there’s almost always a student who knows how to work whichever system is -pause in writing for bathroom break- used in their class.

At the end of class, I was getting ready to head down to the library for a prep period when the office called and sent me to a behavior class. The regular teacher needed to duck out for whatever reason and left me with a couple ideas for the class to discuss. Basically, I was told to give’r and just kind of fly by the seat of my pants. The only thing she really had for me to do was talk about a bunch of images that had something to do with Rememberance Day. This was interesting because along with the teachers photos of vets and poppies, a video was shown at 11 o’clock with images of the current conflicts, military machinery along with a hokey Lee Greenwood soundtrack (a modified version of on old song that became wildly popular with patriotic yokels after 9/11). This juxtaposition led the class for the rest of the period as we talked about the idea of freedom, the historical significance of Rememberance Day and how it’s been appropriated by some as an extension of those little yellow magnetic ribbons you see on cars. It was a good class, those kids were bright and had a lot of cool things to say.

Lunch and two more English classes. The last class I had were 12’s and out of 31, 12 showed up. Again, there wasn’t much in my lesson plan but I found the movie version of the play they were studying so I threw it on and it worked well at keeping them tuned in.

I came home and was stoked to not have to work the next day so I decided to go see the Michael Jackson movie. Say what you will, I thought it was a heck of a thing. Dude still had it, especially when you compare him to his lip-synching contemporaries. As I watched it, I thought about how significant his music has been in my own personal interest and early development as a music enthusiast. From getting the shit scared out of me as a 4 year old when I first saw the video for Thriller, to running around the backyard in grade 2 accompanied by his album BAD, or listening to Dangerous on my sony walkman in grade 5 and for the first time really being cognizant of the interplay between voice and beats. Any fan of music can’t deny how integral a role he played in the development of pop music, and how many emulators have resulted. Of course, Kurt Cobain came along shortly afterward and my interest in Michael Jackson waned, but he’ll always be in there somewhere.

Ok, day off. A busy one of pissing around my apartment, no doubt. I’ve got a couple books I’ve been wanting to get to and some soup to get on the cook, but not before I leave you with the Cos introducing you to some tasty grooves.

We played our LP release this weekend. It was super fun and locals No Problem and (my personal faves) the Falklands blew my socks off! Vancouver’s the Pack A.D. played a pretty stellar show as well, albeit they left before we finished our set which was kind of weird. At any rate, someone posted a review of the show here.

Catching up on some more press, here are a couple other things of interest:

Journal interview.

Vue Magazine (with video)

Here’s one I did for the book (which is souled out until I print another run).

What else… oh yeah, I got called out to a very culturally diverse high school Thursday. It was ok, though at times difficult managing to keep everyone in line. In these classrooms where you have pockets of all these different students, and you’re a sub to boot, maintaining order can become quite a chore. The lesson plans weren’t as complete as they could’ve been either so I had to kick some improv assignments out at them to keep the kids in their desks.

The beginning of a funny conversation I caught between two Muslim boys:

“Yo man, why are you dressed so white today?”

“What do you mean dawg, how are these clothes white?”

And then there was the kid with Tourettes who kept yelling “the burger shack!” throughout the class.

Lastly, for anyone who might give a hoot, here’s the setlist from the Propagandhi show here a couple of weeks ago. Interesting songs of note are Showdown (which Todd said they hadn’t played since the 90’s) and Funeral Procession, also rarely played for some reason.

Jr. High english today; the teacher left me a half-baked lesson plan and as a result, classes were more or less a write off. Unless you can keep these guys engaged, forget about it. The only thing to do in this situation is not stress over the fact that the students will put in minimal effort, especially for a sub they’ve never had before. As expected, the 9’s did just that. The 8’s were a little more into it, but the worksheet I was supposed to walk them through was confusing, even for me. It was full of the most ridiculous jargon and served as a huge turn off for half the class. I would try to get to those with questions about it, and would end up making little sense as I listened to myself struggle to explain the point of it to these guys. The 7’s worked a bit better, but only because I told them the sheet was due at the end of the period (it wasn’t). Guh. Blah. Sometimes subbing english can be a total chore.

The day was not without humor; as I interrogated a student for moving to the other side of class, his friend would elucidate that his previous neighbor smelled funny. I told him it wasn’t really an appropriate reason and encouraged him to get moving on his worksheet. A few minutes later, I found myself helping the accused and sure enough, he was emitting a smell somewhere between play-doh and oregano.

Then there was the Heckel and Jeckel of grade 7, a pair I had to closely monitor during the period in order for them to stay in their seats. These boys were super wired, no doubt a result of the 2L bottle of coke I saw them chugging during recess. At one point I went over to see where they were when one of them started scratching his head vigorously with his nails. He collected an impressive amount of kid dander with the palm of his had and showed it to the other, provoking a smile and enthusiastic “ah yeahhhh”. I left the two as they nodded slowly at each other, counting down the time I had until I could get some more coffee into my gullet.

09:45- The rough thing about administering tests as a substitute is the initial calming of the class. Should you wait too long at the beginning of the period, this will be a total chore no matter the grade level. The other day I made the mistake of trying to get a high school behavior class to buy into my shtick by starting off with a chat about the weekend. Granted, I was killing time while waiting for a few students to arrive but it still set a bad precident. None of them finished their 148 pt. midterm and several vehemently protested it throughout their writing of it. The class I’ve got now, I’m trying something new with. I’m sitting at the front of the class, making casual eye-contact with each student as I write this. It seems to be working, they think I’m writing something about them to leave with their regular teacher. This is much better than when I gave a test to my first class of the day. Huh, a girl just quietly dropped an f-bomb half way through the test (sensing her doom, later hanging in an incomplete paper). Now she’s looking at me, I bet she thinks I’m writing about her. Huh, I guess I am.

November 1st eh? It doesn’t really feel like it here on the prairies. For the first time I can recall, we had no snow on Halloween. I don’t mind, though one can’t help but think it’s another result of a changing climate. I heard somewhere that top climate scientists have agreed that managable levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are around 350 ppm, and that we’re currently sitting somewhere around 380. Hopefully the meetings this winter in Copenhagen will yield some sort of global plan regarding how we’ll collectively reduce emissions. It’s been a joke, really, how North America pissed away the Kyoto Protocol for a whole decade. First the US pulled out, and then the Harper government simply refused to step up to the plate after Canada had signed on. I know what it comes down to, nobody’s foolin’. The economy is #1, and it likely will be until there’s some sort of disaster that brings us back to our human roots. It just seems like a shame to me when prevention seems so easy.

Speaking of prevention (and an injection of some media hysteria) I had the hini this week. It sucked, but I’m ok. I’ll tell you what happens: you spend one night with a fever and don’t get much sleep as a result. Then you spend a night with the chills and if you can warm yourself up enough, you body more or less takes control and knocks you out for a good 13 hours. Day three is residual aches and pains, day four is grogginess and by day five you’re pretty good to go.

Anyways, I don’t know why I’m starting this off so surly. I had a really great night last night. We played that set as Black Sabbath and totally killed it. A super fun time and I definitely have a new-found respect for that band. Halloween has been really fun for the past few years because we always end up on this bill. A few years ago we were the Damned and last year it was AC/DC. The whole thing is good because it always gives us a bit of a break from regular rehearsals, plus I always learn some new things and improve my chops as a result.

I bumped into a friend of mine the other day who subs in the district where I did my first Ed practicum. He said he was at a high school and got talking to his kids about music when one of them mentioned the student teacher who always related science to Futurama and had his band play in the gym. I can’t believe that was two years ago already.

Well, it’s a lovely day here and I’ve got much cleaning up to do. I’ve been neglecting things for a few days and my room feels disgusting. I’ve got to rid it of the sickness and get ready for a busy week. I’m booked solid as far as subbing goes and the band has one more thing on its plate for the fall: our LP release is next weekend. We’ve got some press to do, posters to hang, songs to practice; all of these things will fill in the gaps between work and sleep. I’m really hoping after it’s all over with, I can get back to moving along with the comic. I’d really like to transfer these anecdotes to some form of visual medium, but it’s going to take some time and a lot of practice.

Holy smoke, we get to open for Mudhoney a couple times in January!

In other news, I think I’ve come down with the Swine Flu which sucks because I have a bunch of work lined up as well as this Sabbath show to play on the weekend. I hope I can shake it in a couple days.

The prairie tour went well. We played some venues I’ve never played before with previous bands, people came out and we didn’t lose any money, always a bonus. I was/am super broke until I get paid at the end of the month so I relied on book sales to feed myself while we were out. We met some new friends who put us up after the shows; aging dudes with kids, still involved with music. It’s been this way for years and it never ceases to amaze: the consistency of kindness and people doing the best they can to give you a break on tour. No matter where you go, there is always someone more than willing to put you up or make sure you have some food in your belly. I’ve experienced this all across North America and it’s something I truely cherish about touring in a band.

The shows went well too and I got off the road with some nice calluses on my fingers. Another thing I like to geek out about is the history of who has played whichever venue before us. You can usually tell this by backstage band graffitti or glossy promo-photos often left hanging around. I know it doesn’t mean much, bands are just people after all, but it’s still neat to think about how 15 years ago Radiohead played the same club to 200 people. In Saskatoon we played a small club that hosted a few bands of note in the 90’s: Pavement, the Jesus Lizard, the Hip, the Dirty Three and Heff Healy. When I was getting ready to play, I couldn’t help but think about how David Yow was likely once hanging from the rafters above me. But I digress.

When I arrived home, I slept for about 45 minutes before Mike was over to pick me up for the Propagandhi show. Fighting the urgent need to continue sleeping, I made my way down there with him where I was guestlisted and made a measly attempt to sell the advance ticket I’d bought a couple months ago. The show was great; their second night in town. The set was interesting as a result and they played a couple of songs I’ve never seen them preform live before. I love it when bands pull out the rarities, in this case the tunes were Showdown and Anti-Manifesto. Shot the breeze with the guys afterwards and was home shortly after midnight.

Slept for 5 hours and was off to a middle school the next morning. The kids here were great, some of my favorites in the district. Then I came home to make something to bring to a dinner for a bunch of friends, who came over until I had Black Sabbath practice. This lasted until about 11; when my body was too tired to continue drumming. Home, then up at 4:30 to take a friend to the airport. Slept for a couple more hours then went out to an assignment at an elementary school, then home again.

So I’m taking tonight off.

I’m going to lie in bed, watch some youtube videos, wikipedia a few dumb things and then I’m going to go to sleep.

I have about 10 minutes and then we’re off to play a few shows around the prairies. It’s not enough time to fairly comment on my day teaching and I won’t have a moment for a couple days. Between now and then, the memories will fade into different shades of pleasantness and the frustrating bits will no doubt be lost. But I enjoyed my Jr. High English class today, it was at one of my favorite schools. I hadn’t been there for a few months and the kids were all in higher grades since the last time I saw them. Most of them remembered me, and I remembered some of them. Very interesting was it to find myself thinking about the first time I was in that school a year ago and the things that have changed in me as a substitute and the things that have remained the same.

I try to pick up on this when I get back. I have to go buy some drumsticks and leave this town. Have a good weekend.

Inner city jr. high kids with behavioral issues today….

Let’s just say I’m looking forward to going out, grabbing a couple of beers and playing some Sabbath jams.

The band shot some live video last night in a studio at the best weekly in town and I went home afterwards to share a box of Tofutti cuties with my roommate.

Today I was called out to another elementary today, grade 2. The school was in a very multicultural suburb and the kids were pretty great. It took about 30 minutes for me to figure out how to get the right response out of them. Every kid responds differently and some things work better than others. It also took me a minute to figure out that two boys who kept asking to go to the bathroom were using the opportunity to screw around in the hallway. I was informed of this by a pissed off janitor who caught them and the boys lost their bathroom privileges for the rest of the day. After getting called on this they were attentive and respectful for the rest of the day. We made some more fall observations, the kids drew me many pictures of things they like to do this season and we followed that with some math. It was a good one, I liked those little guys I had today.

I got called into a grade 1 class in a higher SES neighborhood at 9:30, so I rushed out the door after a shower and quick bowl of oatmeal. I bumped into the lady I was covering for in the school’s parking lot, she basically told me that she left a sketch of a lesson plan on her desk and to just kind of giv’er. I walked into the class as the principal was taking them through a matching exercise. I took over and we went over some words with ‘ow’ sounds in them, then the class read a poem out loud. Not too bad, but then the principal left. A minute later a girl was crying, two boys were having a swordfight and two other kids were taking off their shirts. I settled the class by giving them a drawing task and rode it out until lunch recess.

After recess the girl who was crying before lunch proved to be quite the little drama queen; crying when she didn’t get to do this, crying after falling when running up the stairs, crying when she couldn’t figure out her assignment and crying when she didn’t want to toss a ball around, then crying when the ball hit her fingers. I asked her if I should call an ambulance, she cried louder and coughed on my face. I told her to take some breaths and got the secretary, a wonderful lady who put a wet paper towel on the crying girls hand. The miraculous healing powers of the wet paper towel calmed her down and gave me a chance to deal with two boys who were crying as a result of horsing around.

Total number of kids who’d cried by 3:30:

14.

I spent the weekend up in the Yukon with the family and it was a good one. I always enjoy walking the streets I spent so much time growing up on. I go by the place I lived in 15 years ago, down to the pond where I would spend summer days and by other significant personal landmarks; where I played my first show, where I used to buy records and the river. Sometimes when I walk around, the streets seem to smell the same way they did before I left. This often evokes a song or a person I haven’t thought about in ages. Sometimes I think about what I would’ve done if I’d never left, or what I would do if I moved back. Those things don’t stick around that long, there’s not much up there for me right now but it’s interesting to see what my mind comes up with when I let it get carried away.

The flights were fine though, a few things always get stuck in my craw when it comes to air travel: the 150 ml beverage with two ice cubes and useless napkin always top the list. This is followed by the time people spend standing in the isles between the point when the seat belt sign is turned off, and the opening of the cabin door. But air travel is magnificent nonetheless.

I returned home late last night and was booked in for a jr. high math assignment this afternoon. The classes were rough. I had a headache and wasn’t into dealing with alot of their monkeyshines. It’s the way things go though, directly before and after holidays kids are more prone to losing it. You can never take it personally. I bumped into someone in my old Ed class at the school who took over for someone on maternity leave. I asked her what she’s teaching there and she told me gym. She asked me if I’d like to fill in for her. I was careful to not give out my number in order to avoid another gym assignment. I will sub for almost every class but jr. high gym class. I cannot think of any worse punishment for a person than to spend an hour trying to control 30 kids who want nothing but to nail you in the face with a dodgeball by accident. Not for me.

At any rate, I’m stoked to be back and am going to try to get work every day from now until xmas. It shouldn’t be hard being that it’s swine flu season and all.

We got asked to open for the Trail of Dead this friday then we’re doing a short prairie tour next week. These things break up my life enough so that I always run short on downtime, which I like. When I don’t have much to do, I’m prone to being slothful and start coming down on myself. Being busy means I’m being productive and somehow worth my weight in salt. But I digress. Time to eat and practice some Sabbath with the lads.

In a grade 4 behavior class all day yesterday with one of the gassiest kids I’ve ever met and I spent most of the time wondering if his butt had medical problems.

… and I’m outta here for Thanksgiving!

Super busy yesterday. I was called in for a high school Art assignment. These classes are always a complete gong show as half of the class is always disinterested in something. When I arrived at the school, I found no lesson plan. Thankfully I had a prep first period to get it together and it turns out the lady I was covering for was just too sick to hit the send button in her email account. The morning class was all IB students and we made some pottery. They were stoked on their projects and I had little to do other than make sure things were clean when they left.

I took the lunch hour to figure out what I was going to read for the book launch. I picked about 10 entries and tried to sneak in a nap before the bell rang.

The afternoon was tricky. 10’s in first and they were a wiley bunch. There were over 30 kids in that class too which made keeping them on track drawing objects on their desk somewhat difficult. I ended up sitting near the back where a few were being super loud when one of them asked if he could draw me. He did that while I attempted to draw him drawing me. The rest of the class was easily managed as a reslt of everyone’s attention being focused on this.

The last class… oh the last class really got stuck in my craw. I saw on a previous sub plan some notes about boys that were being jerks the day before so I knew who to watch out for. Sure enough, those three managed to do nothing all class. Not only did they do nothing, but one of them stated right from the get-go how he liked to drive subs crazy. I didn’t pay much mind to this, after 5-10 minutes of shooting the breeze he was pretty much under control, until another sub on his spare came in. An older guy, nice enough but with attributes that attracted the attention of the three heathens. I told him that I was ok, but he insisted on staying thus beginning a huge power struggle between him and the obnoxious. Every time the kid would say something like “don’t touch me, that’s assault!” the other sub would counter with something that would make the situation worse, to the point where the kid was completely out of my control. Unfortunately, this particular school doesn’t have that great of sub support either when it comes to students being jerks so we just kind of toughed it out. It sucked and I left with a headache.

When I arrived home, a friend of mine (who had offered to help me work the launch) came over with a couple beers. This chill out time was exactly what I needed before the reading since I’d been building it up all day. We went down to the venue, set up, soundchecked and settled in. It was a fun time! I think somewhere around 40 people showed up, my friends played and I sold a few books! I didn’t make enough to pay rent but I’m selling the scooter tomorrow so it’s alright. She had a good run but with the impending snowfall and no storage space, seems silly to hold on to it.

Alright, one more day to go then I head home for Thanksgiving.

I went in on Friday afternoon and subbed for a 5/6 split class. The school was on the outskirts of town on a range road and it seemed like the students were mostly farm kids. One of them had the same name as me (a rare occurrence) and I kept getting confused when the girls would yell at him for messing around in the back of the class. This was a result of the moment I signed in; two of the kids were helping out the secretary and heard me mention my first name. By the time class started, they all knew it and refused to call me anything else. It was a pretty relaxed afternoon. Some socials, some science, some gym… it’s funny how you can give kids a bunch of balls and they’re more than happy to just spend 30 minutes wailing them at each other. I went straight to the restaurant afterwards, was dog tired by the end of the night and ended up in bed by 11.

Tonight the band works on some more Sabbath, tomorrow I see if anyone will come out to the book launch.

Yesterday I was called in for an English assignment. Once again, I found when I arrived at the school that I would not be teaching English at all, but rather a cooking class. I led 3 in total. Two Jr. High and one Senior class. The options were to make cookies or chicken stir-fry. Thankfully (for me) the students all voted on baking cookies. One of the grade 8’s was not stoked, told me that they’ve baked cookies 17 times and that his Mom was starting to get mad.

It was a fairly easy day. I spent a lot of my time shooting the breeze with the kids in their kitchens as they put the ingredients together. The more occupied I kept them, the less likely they were to throw things or chase each other around with wet tea towels. Actually, it was really fun now that I think of it. I had the 11’s for a double block and had to give them some paper work to keep them occupied for the first period. Then we did the same thing. It was a good one.

Some exciting new on the band front yesterday as well: we received our records and album covers! They look fantastic and we’re excited to have them available soon. We’re also rehearsing a Black Sabbath set for Halloween. Turns out their bassist, Geezer Butler, has been vegan since age 8. How about that.

I got called in for a Math assignment at a new high school this afternoon. I arrived to find that the teacher who called in sick decided to tough it out, saving me from certain doom (Math is trapped below the many layers of grey matter I’m not often able to access). So I sat around in the office while they looked for something I could do. Marking, maybe help a Phys Ed class… it wasn’t looking good then all of a sudden a Social Studies teacher had to take off. Reassigned!

2-80 minute Socials blocks. The first one was with a small class of grade 10’s. We watched a video on imperialism and I gave them a worksheet to complete. The worksheet was from last year and their teacher has yet to synch the pages up with the new text book so half of them couldn’t figure out how to find the corresponding chapter in the revised text. It was a chore; going back and fourth, telling them where to look, admitting that I had no idea where such-and-such picture was and so on. It was kind of a bummer too because I was excited to talk about the subject, but they were too confused and turned off by their outdated assignment. Oh well, at least I got to talk to one kid about Kyuss for a while.

The second block was grade 12’s. These classes can either be super fun (the student’s are the most mature, right?) or a total drag if they decide they don’t want to listen to the sub (of which they are experts). The class was twice as large as the one that proceeded it so I had to be on top of my game. First thing they had to do was read an introductory chapter in their text book. Right. How many grade 12 kids do you know would voluntarily read 25 pages in the last period for a sub? The best you can do in these situations is use it as an opportunity to get to know your students a bit so they’re less of a pain in the neck as class proceeds. Maybe 2 or 3 of them actually read, no matter. I cracked a few jokes and talked to those I knew would be likely to cause a ruckus during the video. I found that the class was pretty bright during this time and started to get stoked for the next part.

I told them we were going to watch a video from 1981 and they protested, wanting to watch youtube clips instead. I sold them on it by telling them I’d heard a lot about the film. It was called the Wave and was about an experiment that went down in a High School History class in the 60’s wherein the teacher successfully demonstrates to his students how easy brainwashing is, in response to a student questioning the rise of the Nazi party. (A fascinating experiment actually, check it out). The movie was a bit dated, and I worried that the class would be turned off by this. But they were the opposite and after settling, watched intently for 45 minutes. After the movie they were pretty stoked to talk about it which is what I enjoy most about the Grade 12’s. They gave some really intelligent opinions on influence, peer pressure and the parallels of the experiment to other fascist movements.

Tonight I have to help a friend with his radio show. It’s late and I don’t know if I’ll be working in the morning.

What does the loss of public drinking fountains have in common with the rise of public schools? Here’s a short essay written by another teacher that draws an interesting parallel.

First day back at it. The school was downtown in a lower SES area. These are always interesting days because the most important part is the kids actually showing up for school. If they do that, they’re ahead of the game. The next challenge is trying to get them to do work which, as a sub, can be next to impossible at times.

I had 7-9 Math and Science students today. Also a couple behaivior classes to round things out. Overall, the kids were pretty great. We talked about genes and DNA first period and the more inquisitive were curious about the reasons behind why, when you have surgery, you don’t physically change according to the amount of DNA you lose.

The next couple of classes were a gong-show but surprisingly, amongst all of the chaos, most of them finished their worksheets. One girl was compleining about her long walk home after school, 1.5hrs. I asked her where her bus pass was, she told me she sold it because she needed the dough for something.

I was getting really tired by the end of the day. Late night last night, and I’m trying to adjust to working hours again.

The book is done. 50 copies printed, cut and bound. I was shooting for 100 but time is not on my side. It’s cool, and I’m stoked because the end result looks fantastic. I did some press the other day too and hung up some posters for the launch. I’m curious to see if anyone comes out to this thing.

Lastly, Screeching Weasel are being flown into town for a one-off. I never thought I’d get to see those guys, they hardly tour and Ben Weasel is a bit of a looney toon. Gonna have to pick up some tickets for that one…

Things have been very busy down here at the Pattern Press. On Friday, the machine I was using to print copies of the book started giving me guff. It began with streaking, ended with several paper jams and I eventually accepted the fact that the machine was taking a day off. With a thousand pages left to go, I headed to the print centre at the University (a stop I planned on making anyways to burn off the covers). Those machines were not into it either and by the time printing was through, two of them ended up in a similar state as the original. But the printing was finished. The cost was to be born unto my Visa (“credit card does says yes!”), but those machines were also down. I had most of it in my bank account, which I withdrew, and the girl who helped me sort out all of my ridiculous printing challenges ended up lending me $5 to cover my shortfall.

Yesterday I trimmed all of the pages to the right size so that they wouldn’t give me a problem when it came time to bind them. Then I went to a football game and any more progress on the book ceased until I woke up this morning…

After I woke up and shook it off, it was time to bind! The cats kept me company as I used my roommates Atomic Binding Machine to fasten the pages to the cover. 2 Black Sabbath albums, countless youtube videos and 22 glue cartridges later, there’s only one thing left to do: trim the books down to size!

I’m stoked with my progress, and am glad that I was able to complete each step of the process myself but damn has it ever taken up a lot of time. I think the next pressing will probably involve some outsourcing as there’s no way I’ll be able to put this much  into it when I’m back to teaching full time.

Speaking of which, tomorrow is my first day back subbing! A freind from Ed called me in to fill in for his Jr. High Science class at a school I’ve never been to. Only thing is, I still have this ringing in my ears from the Bad Brains show. Dumb dumb dumb. You must always wear ear plugs to loud shows. The older you get, the longer the fuzzy ears stick around.