While the world's attention may have been on the closing ceremonies in Torino/Turin and/or Iraq's impending civil war this weekend, Ireland had its fair share of excitement/tragedy this weekend. The Orangemen of the North marched down O'Connell Street in Dublin this weekend, sparking riots and all sorts of looting and crazy shit.

And so of course comes the next part: who's to blame? Fuck if I know. I don't really feel I'm educated enough to comment on the events, so I urge you to click over to The Gurrier's blog to hear his very in-depth analysis of the riots. Best to hear it from him, who can certainly describe the events better than I can.

I had the pleasure of buying The Gurrier a pint or two at Drogan's Pub in Dublin last summer, and if all goes well, I'll be doing the same thing again before too long.

A bit of a New York update...

Shortly after walking into the home of the Duders (once again, not their real name), Erica announced to me that she saw some cheap airfares to NYC. So instead of busting ass to get to Times Square and back home to Illinois in three days, Brems and I get to fly the friendly skies instead.

I love road trips, but a round-trip ticket to NYC for a little over a hundred bucks? You can't pass that up.

Aside from seeing the reunited Pogues play in Times Square, what else shall I do in the Big Apple? I hope to meet up with some bloggers, so if you're a regular reader of the blog and would like to take part in a meet-up, let me know.

A decent article on the Pogues can be found in this week's Entertainment Weekly. It's a brief overview of their career, and some info on the upcoming tour. Shane apparently has no teeth left, according to the pics in the magazine edition I got today in the mail.

I'm hoping for good weather. Good exploring weather. I've never been to New York, so this will be an experience. Brems and I grabbed some dinner tonight and decided to just wing it and wander around the city and just explore.

Although I do want to see that Chrysler Building. Gotta love the art deco.

Two Warriors Come Out of the Sky, by Brandon Bird.

I discovered this guy through Bunny's site, and I can hardly breathe after looking through his stuff.

I don't know how to explain it. Maybe I'm coming late to the party, but this is some awesome shit.

Click the pic above to surf around. Make sure you find Lazy Sunday Afternoon, and then proceed to marvel in disbelief.

What I'm Good At

First and foremost, I'm a damn good teacher.

I've spent most of my ten years in the education world teaching late-elementary kids in a classroom setting. 4th and 5th grade, mostly. For the past year-and-a-half I've been what's called an Academically Talented Resource Teacher (an AT-RT, as I like to call myself when I'm thinkin' about Star Wars), and that's been with the same basic age group of kids. I've been working with some younger ones this year for the first time, and it's been a lot of fun. Watching a group of eight-year olds realize that there's this special place where they get to be smart and be challenged is one of the great perks of my profession.

I don't get to teach much history, though, and I realized lately that it has left a huge hole in me.

I love history, but I'm not one of those guys that watches The History Channel incessantly or feels the need to dress up as a Civil War soldier during my summers off.

I can also get bored with it at times. It was my major in college, but by the time I was graduating, the last thing I wanted to do was read another dry academic history tome. I always come back to it, though, and the last several years I've become fascinated with the long, deep history of Ireland and the UK. The Angles and the Saxons and the Celts and the Picts. The myths and the legends and the languages.

It helps to look back on the list of books I read last year, and now I'm even happier I made that list. It shows a pattern and tells a story and points me in a direction I need to follow.

I miss teaching history, and more importantly, I miss being a student of history.

I'm good at it, and it makes me happy. And God knows I need a little happiness in my sad-bastard life right now.

My best spring break ever? Driving out east to Gettysburg and D.C. with my grandpa and three uncles, all history lovers and good guys to boot.

(I was never a typical college kid. Never could be comfortable there. But that's another story for another time.)

So I think this is what I need to get back into. I think I need to start teaching some history again. And I think I want to be a student again. I'm taking a class right now, but it's just a going-through-the-academic-motions thing, and it's about gifted ed.

I'd rather be learning about Hadrian's Wall or some other shit like that.

Hmm. Okay, that's a big breakthrough for me, folks. Step One is complete.

A lot has been happening lately, and I've been making a lot of important decisions.

I just get the feeling that I'm done with this version of my life. I've pursued every avenue, had some great successes, some horrible failures, and now it's time to reboot.

I've been in a serious rut for over two years now. No, it's more than that: I've been a pretty miserable person for a while now.

I need a change. And it's time to start doing something about it, instead of whining about it.

I'll explain more in time, but for now, I have a lot of work ahead of me.



I may take a little time off from blogging, or I may suddenly start blogging all of my thoughts out loud. Not sure yet.

It's a sad and beautiful world, people...

Valentine's Day at an elementary school:

So far I've gotten a valentine with Harry Potter on it, one with Tigger, and a Herbie: Fully Loaded valentine with Lindsey Lohan on the front.

This is always my weirdest day of the year at work. I would much prefer to have a party for something else, maybe a celebration of winter ending/spring arriving or something. But maybe that's too pagan.

Oh, and this is a picture of a Japanese protester on Valentine's Day. Dressed as a cow.

That about sums up how romantic I'll be getting today.

Happy V-Day.

One of the benefits of home ownership, I was told, was that come tax time, you tend to get back some decent cash.

Apparently that's not true for me. Did my taxes yesterday, and I'm getting back next to nothing. Less than last year. I dunno, maybe it's because I haven't paid a year's worth of taxes or something. It's a big crock of bullshit I don't need right now; I was counting on getting something worthwile, but I can't even pay my porn bill with my return.

I have big plans in the future, and I need some spare cash, of which I have none lately, thanks to the joys of home ownership.

Looks like I'll have to turn to that life of crime I always kept in the back of my mind.

Or worse: get a roommate.

A little more than a month, and I will be here...

There's a teacher in my building who is retiring after serving as an educator for most of her life. 30-plus years in the business, like so many others who have come and gone.

Her husband died a couple of days ago. Six months ago he was fine, and all of a sudden they found cancer, nothing they could do, and bam, he's gone.

There has been too much death around here lately. We just lost Jason, and before that we lost a little girl to brain cancer or something.

Too much death.

Not enough life.

Not enough of a life worth living, too much waiting, stalling, wondering when the good times return.

A life worth living doesn't come to you; you have to go out and find it, if that awful day comes when you wake up and look around and realize that the salad days are over, replaced by dull monotony and failed dreams.

If the life you live is full of complaints and frustration and dead-ends, then get out of it and find a new one. Tired of yourself? Then become someone else for a while.

(I'm talking to myself, by the way, but if any of this advice helps you, feel free to take it.)

My five observations on The Life Pursuit by Belle and Sebastian:

5. The deluxe edition is worth the extra $5.00. The packaging is beautiful and the DVD is a nice extention of the Fans Only DVD that came out a few years ago. One more reason to buy the real thing instead of downloading it.

4. This is the first CD that I've sat down and listened to with no other distraction in a long, long while. Again, the nice packaging helps with that (see #1).

3. The sound is very, very different: they're a long way from the mopey melancholy of the early records. It's not a record to listen to while drinking tea in your pajamas; it's a record to dance to, and that's a good thing. As much as we'd all like to have another Tigermilk or Sinister, it's better when one of our favorite bands pushes themselves to try something different.

2. At the same time, I still miss Isobel.

1. Thanks to the packaging, Scotland has never looked sexier. Lots of pics of gorgeous women wearing tartan kilts and those high socks. I've never been prouder to be a Highlander. Scotland's for me!

Four die in fresh cartoon protests

Sometimes I can't believe I live in a world where a headline like that can even exist...

One more thing: click the pic below for a link to that V for Vendetta Super Bowl commercial.



For as much as I'm hyping this film, it better be worth it.

There's a scene in one of my favorite movies, Lawrence of Arabia: T.E. Lawrence spends an evening sitting on a sand dune, wrestling with the decision of how he is going to help liberate Arabia. He sits up all night, thinking and thinking, and his concentration never wavers, even when his two Arab assistants try and wake him from his thoughts.

That's how I've been these days. I spoke of changes to come recently, and among other events that have been happening these days, I find myself buried in thought, attempting to discover the right decision to make, the right path to take, wondering where my own crossing of Sinai is to be.

In other news, I have to mention a former actor of mine from the days in Sandwich. Kris was one of my main guys, the gang that started as freshman during my first year as Spring Musical director, and stayed with me for four years, and when they left after their senior year, so did I. Yet I try and keep in touch with most of them, as best as I can, and this weekend I got to see what Kris has been up to.

Aside from running his own DJ business and hosting his own radio show, Kris has been directing for a kids' theatre group in Dekalb, and he invited me to come see his production of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It played at the historic Egyptian Theatre in downtown Dekalb, and it was a great show. He had a cast of at least 50 actors, crammed on a tiny stage with questionable sound equipment, but he pulled it off, and I'm proud of the guy.


The rest of the weekend was spent with friends, celebrating Jeff's 36th birthday on Saturday and eating chili and cheese and drinking beer at two Super Bowl parties.

And tomorrow I grab an early commuter train into Chicago to attend the annualIAGC Conference. It's fer them teachers of the smart kids. It's at the Marriott on Michigan Avenue, so that means that when it's done for the day I head to the Virgin Megastore to try and find some decent music.

Speaking of, the new Belle and Sebastian album comes out Tuesday. Make sure you all go out and get it. It's supposed to be their best yet.

Until my next random post, be good to each other, world.

Now, of course, I wouldn't rip on any Right-leaning figure such as Bill O'Reilly (he's Irish! aAd of course I love anything Irish), but I'll let Keith Olbermann rip the freak-job perv from Fox News a new one...

Click here to enjoy opinionated journalism at its finest...

This is an interesting time of year when you're a teacher: the long hard months of January through March are the time when you put your head down and plow through the real Hard Work. The review of the First Quarter and the holiday interruptions of the Second Quarter are gone, and you work as hard as you can getting your kids to learn as much as they can before spring break hits, and the sunny days and warmer weather of the Fourth Quarter start chipping away at your students' attention spans.

This is the time of year that first-year teachers start learning if they've been hired back for next year. And in my district, this is the time of year you start hearing about all of the changes that are coming.

We're growing at a fantastic rate, the second-fastest in Illinois, I believe. New schools open every year, which means constant building reassignments and frequent staff changes. Administrators retire or move on, teachers become administrators, teachers retire, new postions are created (or eliminated), and throughout all of this, everyone asks themselves...

Where will I be next year?

That's what has been on my mind lately. Rumors fly around like crazy these days, and it's best to just be patient, do your best at work, and have all of your ducks in a row when the changes do come. I think I'm in pretty good shape when it comes to being ready for change, so we'll see what I'll be doing once the dust settles.