Is it too pretentious to have a latin name for this blog? Is it still pretentious when I tell you that it came from a bumper sticker on a freshman car in the Dunham parking lot at Ham Tek? So anyway, it's 6:40 and I'm still trying to get going on my lesson plans for my substitute for tomorrow. Tried to call a parents of 2 kids who skipped my detention on Friday. I checked in w/ CR and got some advice for how to approach the parents (her suggestion, quite usefully was about 200% less furious than my previous ideas on how to do it...) but then was kicked in the ass again as my kids have apparently given me fraudulent phone numbers on their info cards. I'm powerless... duped by 12 year olds... shudder.

Had a long talk w/ my dad today, and got some good advice... I need to approach this the way I'd approach any situation with a bunch of adults- work the room. Start with my allies (the kids who want to volunteer info, pay attention, etc.) then move to the difficult kids... a "keep your enemies closer" kinda deal. At that point I should at least be able to make some progress and get to the silent majority snoozing in the middle of the class. My allegory has been all wrong so far- I'm thinking army style, demand instant respect and punish disobedience, but I really need to think politics... that's what I'm good at, and probably how I'll win this class.

In non-school related news, RGH and I rolled down to Long Beach today to check the place out. I needed to get out of the house, get some sunshine and wander around. The LBC is way less dodgy than I thought it would be- I pictured a grim looking seaport with lots of surly longshoremen hauling things around, cursing, and smoking. Nope, shiny new skyscrapers, nice parks... a little too much touristy kitsch around the Queen Mary (must all attraction designers append a quaint faux-euro village to every theme park and 2-bit tourist trap?) but overall very nice. Encountered an interesting subculture that would be pretty intriguing to study if I was in ethnography not politics-of-7th-graders- the group of folks who fish off the pier, some of whom I think are doing it more for nourishment than for pleasure, and a disproportionate number of whom own chevy astrovans.