I like this theme because of all the sidebars – my long blogroll has been an issue with me. I know that it’s too long and that I really do need to weed out the links that haven’t been updated.

The blue color is pretty cool, too – though I’m in an orange phase and I was looking for something orange, but none felt right. I think I’m just in a mood of indecision

I went to Butterfly World last weekend, so I think I’ll end with a few pretty pictures.

Overall, it’s been a good year – my reading classes are great – a few individuals who I could do without, but mostly a great bunch of kids. Academically, I think they did well and we’ll be very happy with their state test scores. My 7th grade computer kids have also been awesome – I have accomplished much more with them this year than in previous years. Unfortunately, I attribute that to the fact that we got all the lowest level kids in a block reading class, which means they don’t get to take an elective. What it meant for me is that I got to teach at a higher level. For some reason, though that didn’t hold true for the 6th graders. Maybe they just aren’t mature enough – it’s no secret that I don’t have the patience for 6th grade silliness. I’d much rather teach 7th or 8th graders. Speaking of 8th graders- oy! I went from the best class ever (last year) to one of my most challenging classes in a long time. And it’s only a few kids who are ruining it. We had a day a month or so ago, when all the instigators were out on the same day! The rest of the class remarked at how much fun we had that day I had one student go overboard last week. I separated three big talkers and one girl kept on going by saying “Now who will I talk to?” I pulled her out into the hall and let her know that she had gone too far and that she’d better get herself under control. She admitted that it was uncalled for. We went back into the classroom and I warned everyone that anymore behavior issues and they would be off the final field trip and not be allowed to attend the 8th grade formal. I wasn’t making this up – that’s coming from administration. I hope they behaved on those two days that I was out before vacation…..

Anyway – I’m on vacation and I’m going to spend the rest of the week relaxing, and catching up on cleaning my house and of course at some point I’ll be grading and writing lesson plans

Last month I bought a new Dell Laptop. I planned to buy a new desktop computer as a Holiday gift to myself, but last week I priced one and I decided to buy it now. It’s in production and hopefully it’s shipping today so that I will get it on Thursday and have a long weekend to play with it.

In preparation for the new computer I rearranged my office area. My old cat (she’ll be 20 soon!) needs to live off the floor because the other cats (2 boys) annoy her. Her bed used to be on my desk, but I moved it over to an old printer stand so that I had more room on the desk for my new 19″ Flat Panel monitor

I also needed to prepare the old laptop, and eventually the old desktop, so that I can sell them. Last year I had a flood in my house from hurricane Wilma and I lost a bunch of stuff. Apparently my old WinXP disks and all the Gateway restore disks were among the casualties because I couldn’t find any of them. I consulted the IT guy at work and he convinced me to reformat the computers using Linux and other Open Source applications. He also turned me on to a program to wipe my disk. So today I wiped the old laptop and installed Linux and the other applications using Fedora Core 5.

The picture above shows what my office looked like this afternoon: (click on the image to see a larger view with notes)