Never mind the homework, here's the Vegan Teacher

I’ve been super busy these days getting aquainted with the new job. So far, so good. I think the whole experience is going to be very positive. I’ll detail it in the next couple of days as I’ve got a band practice to go to and only have about 20 minutes to take a break and grab some food. Until then, from the bank of funny seaches people have used to find my blog comes “wich lizard is the dirdist”.  Ha!

Bachelor Surprise Reprise

Spend 14 of 17 dollars you have left on your overdraft to buy soymilk, cereal, pita (you have loads of chickpeas for hummus) and juice. You can make it ’till the weekend because you’ll be able to eat at the restaurant tomorrow and then be tipped out in cash.

Survey the fridge, it looks grim. Begin by boiling some macaroni that you found in the pantry. If you’re not sure if it’s yours or your roommates, don’t use it all or you’ll look like even more of a d-bag. Look for canned tomatoes you could use as sauce, settle for half a can of tomato paste that’s been in the fridge for about 2 weeks. Don’t worry that it’s open, the can has been resealed because the lid has been stuck to the sides by the residue left over from the original opening.

Rejoice when you find a can of mixed vegetables. You can get nutrients from these! Think about ways to incorporate them in tonight’s meal.

When pasta has finished boiling, drain then put back in pot. Put tomato paste in there, dump a bunch of olive oil in there while you’re at it. After all, this will improve the taste somehow as well as stop the pasta from burning on the bottom of the pot. Mix ‘er up with fork you used to check pasta cookedness. Dump the can of vegetables in there and mix some more. Find half a block of firm tofu in the fridge, might as well throw that in too for added protein. Mix. Take can of paste out of the sink and scrape it out for an extra tablespoon of concentrated tomatoes, this will help turn the tofu from a weird beige colour to a more acceptable red colour. Mix.

It tastes like shit.

Add nutritional yeast and taste. Better. Look at the stove and realize that things usually taste better after they’re baked. Kick cat out because it’s being gross, licking used utensils and motioning for the pot. Transfer pasta-tofu-vegetable mix to square cake pan (casserole dish is dirty) and turn oven on to about 350 degrees. Check with roommate regarding how long it should be in there, agree that about 20 minutes should do it.

Watch Oprah because the Simpsons has been canceled in leu of a Habs game.

Remove from oven and sprinkle with nutritional yeast. Convince yourself that you’re basically getting all the vitamins you need and enjoy!

I slept for about 16 hours yesterday and woke up in good spirits, with most of this thing shaken off, so I went in to continue with the orientation. It’s funny, working in an Office. Anyone who has seen the movie Office Space can relate to all the weird little things that go down between people in their cubicles. After “spacing out” in front of my computer for the first 20 minutes, I got myself acquainted with this new software I have to learn. One of them was a new email program (because I now have an official public schools email), and when I logged on I found it stuffed with a bunch of mail that had no relevance to me. This is a new thing, office spam. I ended up throwing the baby out with the bathwater and had to fish around in the trash for a couple important emails having to do with my contract.

After this I started making phone calls as it’s up to me to contact the parents and teachers to coordinators each kid’s home instruction programming. I went through my list of callouts learning about the student’s situations, where they are at with their work, and scheduling times to go meet with them and their teachers. As you can see, I’m basically the go between for the kids and their schools. It’s a neat program, each of these kids have something serious keeping them out of school and I’m supposed to keep them in the loop and moving forward, in order for them to eventually re-integrate.

I’m not sure how much I should divulge on here, but my students have each had a rough go of it for the last little while. Some of their situations are pretty mind blowing, but they’re all looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. It should be good, I’m excited. Tomorrow, I’m riding along with another teacher to see how she does it, then I’m picking up some materials. Monday will be the big day where I’ll get to meet all the kids as see what the deal is first hand.

Until then, I’ve got some subbing lined up for Friday and another show to play afterwards. This afternoon, I have to go down to central bureaucracy to sign some papers and get my new benefits package rolling. When I step back and look at all this stuff, it’s fairly humorous seeming more and more real-job like.

But I think these things are what you make it.

On that note, I’m getting tired of hearing newscasters bum out about the gloomy state of the world economy and whatnot. It never ceases to amaze, the human condition of letting an economic system we’ve created rule our daily attitudes. Every morning, it’s the same thing. “The DOW dropped blah points”, “bear market this”, and “oil down again, investors worried”. What do they say, something like how in Chinese, the word crisis is a combination of danger and opportunity? That being said, maybe we’ll come out of this with a redefined vision of humanity, and the things that we should really value. Like a healthy ecosystem (humyns included), clean air and unpolluted waters. Just sayin’, it is Earth Day and all.

Lastly, the new album by Somali-Canadian rapper K’Naan is fantastic. I would check this one out if I were you, and you were interested in tunes that are an antithesis to all the manufactured pap out there.

sick. went home early today and slept until 4. so far, i’ll be working with 3 kids. they’re all over the map. one of them had a stroke. another has lupus. these sorts of things. it should be interesting. i can’t wait to fire up the old scooter and spend the next 2 months basically tutoring these kids. will keep subbing on the side. for now, sleep.

It was totally Physics 20.

Ok, got a bunch of things today. So last week I went for that interview, it was for a position with a school that does a lot of outreach-type home schooling with kids who are either in transition, have behavioral issues or disabilities that keep them out of the class. I thought the program sounded very unique, so I told them I was interested at the end of the interview. They told me right there that I was hired, and that they’d bump it up from a .5 to a .6, which means 3 days a week. By the sounds of it, it’s going to be a bit like my job at the Y last summer, some social work and some teaching. I’ve got my own office and everything, the contract runs until the end of June and my first day is tomorrow!

So until then I’ve got a subbing gig this afternoon at a high school a few blocks away, teaching Science. Now that I think about it, I have no idea which kind. I really hope it’s not Physics 12 or something, but if it is I’ll just go with it as usual.

Took the old scooter out for a rip around the neighbourhood this weekend. It should also come in handy with this new job, since it’s going to require some travelling around the city.

I was working at the restraunt the other night when a guy came in from that pottery class I had a couple months ago. He brought me the bowl he helped me make, which he had glazed and fired in the kiln.

Lastly, we scored AC/DC tickets for their big outdoor show here this summer. It was a little stressful as the ticketbastard site was crashing, so a friend and I hopped on our bikes to the nearest outlet. Just like old times, there was a lineup and by the time we go through, there were only singles left. To add to the ridiculousness, their credit card machine was down so we had to get them to hold our tickets so we could use the day to scrounge for dough. In the end, 4 of us managed to find $115 and scored seats right beside the stage. Stoked, with $17 dollars to my name until the 30th.

Yesterday was the worst. I’ve had a good run of it for the last couple months so I guess I was due for one of these days.

Alright, a Science assignment at a Jr. High. The sub plan the teacher left for me was bare bones, the kind of thing where there was only about 15 minutes worth of things to do to keep the students engaged. There was even a surprise class at the end of the day that was marked as a prep. To top it off, the students were absolutely off the wall. Not into watching the videos, not into doing their quizzes. Talking, running around, throwing shit all over the place, playing knuckles, wrestling, playing Nintendo DS, looking at girly pics on ipods, lying on the floor… holy hell. I could not wait to get out of there.

I think there was a reason I was called out there though. In the morning, when I was setting the class up for the impending shitshow, I went across the hallway to the other science class to score a connector for the projector. There I found the science teacher, who was totally a friend of mine from the first year of my after degree! I’d totally lost touch with him, one of these people who you buddy up with all semester then go your separate ways without really thinking about it. Turns out the school hired him right out of his practicum! I love bumping into old friends at school, it’s one of the great things about subbing; seeing who is doing what and all that. So like I said, besides the hellish class it was worth going out there.

Today took the day off to interview for that contract. I don’t know a whole lot about the position, but I reckon I’ll probably post some info on here afterwards. Besides that, I forgot to mention that we played with Nomeansno the other night. It was killer and those dudes were super nice.

Home Ec today on the North East. Pretty straight forward, uneventful for the most part. Had a class with the boy I worked with through the YWCA in the fall. It was a funny situation and I don’t think either of us really knew how our roles should play out in the school environment. I didn’t get to talk to him much and then I felt like a bum for not taking that opportunity.

Alright, got some news to report here. I’ve only worked twice thice week. It’s been kind of a bum-out because I’m in the groove and want to work as much as possible, but it’s also been good because I’ve taken care of a bunch of crap I’ve had building up, worked on some drawings and the like.

Today I was at a High School. I taught Bio 20, then had to do a bunch of marking, then some P.E. stuff. Not a lot happened to talk about. High school kids the day before a 4-day holiday are kind of in their own little world, don’t care much about work and could care less about what I have to say. So I gave them their assignments, we watched a short movie and I just basically tried to make the class interesting enough for them to stay in their chairs. Talking about water-poisoning in relation to the excretory system.

Anyways, I was marking (some incredibly boring CALM stuff) when I got a call from an assistant principal. She wants to see me next week because there is a .5 contract that she thinks I might suit. It’s with special needs kids, 12 hours a week from the sounds of it. I figure if I can balance this off while continuing with the subbing, I just might go for it. So that was rad.

It’s also warming up in my town. To celebrate the beginning of my favorite season, I took all the dough I’ve been saving from being tipped out at the restaurant and bought a scooter.

I’m pretty much the most stoked a person can be right now.

I took what I thought was an English assignment today, but it turned out to be another behaviour class. It was at a Jr. High on the NE, kind of a rougher neighborhood. There were 3 grades that I was working with and had the help of a couple other teachers as well who were helpful at getting me orientated as far as the kid’s personalities and routines were concerned.

The students were pretty good. Being that it was the first day back from spring break anyways, most of them more or less slept through the morning. Those who had already downed their morning Red Bull or Rockstar Energy Drinks (don’t get me started on this one) sat well through my Math classes. One boy chatted my ear off about the difference between DC and Marvel comics while another complained about the effects of drinking apple juice with mentos mints in your mouth.

Lunchtime was spent playing poker with a couple of them (one who beat me with a full house) and talking to the other teachers about strategies to use on kids with oppositional defiance disorder and whatnot. Dodgeball after lunch, had a couple balls hurled at me by a kid with a cannon for an arm, then a drama class in which the students ran through a play while barely noticing my presence.

An easy day.

Back home with a couple days left of spring break. My trip out west was great, a much needed reprieve from the seemingly endless prairie winter. I had a funny thing happen on my way back here though. I’m sitting in the airport (being white with my macbook), and across from me is a mandolin with an Obama sticker kind of wearing this white cowboy hat. Beside it sits a blackberry wielding business man. He can’t be an undercover artist, can he? I look behind me and see a large familiar figure lumbering around the corner. Nah, I’m tired and figure my eyes are playing tricks on me. Frustrated by my laptop’s inability to connect with the airport wifi, I put it away and moments later the owner of the mandolin reveals himself; a half-cut Corb Lund.

A brief background: Corb used to play in a band called the Smalls who were active from about 1990 to 2002. In their hayday, they were one of Alberta’s finest exports as far as heavy music was concerned. I remember them coming to my town one summer and drawing 5% of the population down to the hockey arena for an evening of rock and roll. They never caught much of a break outside of western canada, though they put out some solid records and managed to d.i.y. it across Europe a few times. Anyways, after a decade they called ‘er a day and the only one who kept at it was Corb, who took a roots-country approach to new music. He’s doing pretty well for himself too, the last time he played a local show I think it was at the coliseum. Pretty good for a dude who’d spent so long in the independent music scene.

So Corb sits down and we get into it. The last time I saw him was a couple years ago when he came out to a show I played. Afterwards we got to talking about how SNFU gave the Smalls their first break by bringing them out on tour in the early 90’s. At the time, I was trying to arrange an SNFU tribute album and he offered to throw a track in. One thing I admire about him is his ability to keep his word. That night I asked him about a smalls documentary that never did see the light of day. He was surprised by my interest and told me he’d mail me a burned copy. I didn’t think much of it, but a couple months later I had it in my mailbox. This was the second time a musician I’ve held in high regard has come through (the first being Scott Schifflet from Face to Face sending me the tracks that didn’t make it on their album Reactionary).

Anyways, turns out he’s a busy as ever. They just finished a tour of Australia and he was coming home after recording some new tunes in Nashville. He seemed pretty stoked about the whole thing since I guess he just signed with a label that works with dudes like Steve Earle and Kris Kristofferson. I guess the funny thing about bumping into him was how two days ago, I found myself wondering what ol’ Corb was up to. As well, when I found out that my flight was delayed and I couldn’t occupy myself with reliable online time-eaters, I couldn’t help but think of how boring the wait was going to be. Maybe you could say that life has an interesting way of filling in the gaps.

Here’s the Smalls covering a classic Pretenders tune:

Turns out over 3X as many migratory ducks died in that tailings pond as was originally estimated last year. The Alberta government responded with a statement claiming that they’ll be monitoring oil sands sites for duck deterrents next month.

April Fools?

In other news, the band raised over $2,300 bones for the cause the other night. I slept for about 2 hours then was on the plane, en route to the coast, though not before I was randomly selected by airport security for a full-on pat down. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t turned on just a little.  But seriously, I thought I traded my skate-punk look in for young professional? No matter. Vacation rules.