Today I had a stop in town and I was right next to a fairly new coffee/ice cream shop. I’ve been there once or twice and decided to treat my self to a cup of coffee. It was a fairly trying day, so I thought a cup of coffee would be welcome.

I had a sip or two of my triple espresso and left to drive on home. Just as I was getting into my car, a gust of wind threatened to blow my hat halfway down main street. Instinctively, I reached for my hat, but I had in that hand a cup of coffee. The coffee flew all over, most over me. Being espresso it had a very strong aroma. I was able to smell that the entire ride home. Even after changing clothes, I was able to smell it. Seems it got in my hair too.

Well, so much for a relaxing cup of coffee. I ended up wearing most of it. I guess I didn’t need the caffeine.

No, there were no burns, and I’m not going to be suing any coffee shops. My own stupidity was responsible for the coffee on me. Reach for a hat with the hand coffee is in. None too smart that.

Of course, if you can’t laugh at your own stupid antics whose can you laugh at. Really a decent day after I got my jacket cleaned.

And while I’m on the subject of time capsules, the following article about hidden history really caught my eye:

(CNN) by Kelly Marshall — A long-hidden message has been discovered inside Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch, the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History announced Tuesday.

Watchmaker Jonathan Dillon was repairing Lincoln’s watch in April 1861 when he heard about the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and wrote a short message on the metal inside the watch, the Smithsonian said.

There it remained, unseen for almost 150 years, it said.

In a 1906 interview with The New York Times, Dillon reported that as soon as he heard the news about the first shots of the Civil War, he unscrewed the dial of the watch and wrote on the metal, “The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try.”

The actual message that the museum found differs from the watchmaker’s recollection. It says, “Jonathan Dillon, April 13-1861, Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date J Dillon, April 13-1861, Washington, thank God we have a government, Jonth Dillon.”

According to the Smithsonian, it was not unusual for professional watchmakers to record their work inside a watch.

“Lincoln never knew of the message he carried in his pocket,” said Brent D. Glass, director of the National Museum of American History.

The museum decided to open the watch after being contacted by the watchmaker’s great-great-grandson, Doug Stiles, who had heard about the message Dillon said he had inscribed and wanted to see if it was really there.

I think it’s really cool that this window into history was only recently discovered.  If we had known about it all along, I don’t think the message would carry as much significance.  The fact that the message’s existence was the subject of a family legend only adds to the mystique, and it’s a good thing the museum decided to follow up on the great-great-grandson’s tip!

In our local newspaper lately, there’s been multiple stories covering the demolition of an old high school in the county.  The demolition uncovered a few surprises; one was a time capsule, placed in the brick walls by students and faculty in 1922 when the high school was built.  I found it really neat that no one knew the time capsule was there until a few weeks ago when a bulldozer found the vintage peanut butter can filled with letters from students and other 1922 memorabilia.

The high school was finally knocked down, but construction crews are still deconstructing the foundation of the old building.  In the newspaper the other day was an item about another buried treasure.  It seems the school was built with a long-forgotten swimming pool, whose existence was uncovered after many weeks of demolition.  Upon further investigation and interviews with surviving former students, it was discovered that the former swimming pool did actually exist but was never actually used since it was contaminated with raw sewage (eww!) shortly after it was built.  They filled in the swimming pool with clay and built over it, and it was forgotten about until the school’s demolition all these years later in 2009.

The story of the legendary swimming pool was of particular interest to me because at my own high school (located in suburban Chicago, far away from the rural Ohio area where we now reside), there was always a rumor of an ill-fated swimming pool.  Our gym’s floor sounded hollow, and there was always chatter about the existence of a secret covered-up swimming pool underneath the gym floor.  I never did find out if there was any truth to the rumors, and I wonder if students attending that high school today talk of the same legend?

There are two channels on you tube that I regularly frequent.  One is operated by a new friend who has just joined our community theatre and is very talented.  He has already filmed video clips as previews for the first two shows of the season and hopefully more of those to come.  I however, have become a big fan of his own creation: the piratical Captain Smith.  After moving north he has been working on a way to bring the exploits of the character with him.  At last report, he has been working on a big fully-developed storyline.  Hopefully, this will be full of swashbuckling adventure, bloodthirsty villains, and everything else that a good pirate film contains.  Be sure to check out Moonlight Productions.  I’m sure the good Captain would appreciate the traffic to the videos.

The other site is full of zany fun.  Stupid Game Show Answers is full of clips from various game shows over the years featuring all kinds of not only STOOOPID ANSWERS but also other not so graceful moments.  I can’t remember if the unfortunate female contestant from a bygone episode of The Price is Right who “came on down and fell right out” is in one of the clips or not but there are lots of other hilarious moments.

Be sure to check out both channels and comment.

As most of you know I generally sub at any grade level I can in the districts I’m signed up for.  That could mean anywhere from K-8, though my most comfortable levels are around 3rd-7th and during the less lean times I stick to them for the most part.  However, these are not those times and I will pretty much take anything that comes up.  8th grade is actually not uncommon at all for me to take even in the best of times, and neither is 2nd- adding one level to each end of my comfort range.  However, pre-kindergarten is pretty rare.  Not just for me to take, but just to be offered since it is not one of the required grades.  Come to think of it, I don’t think kindergarten is required either but it has pretty much become standard since at least the middle of last century to prepare kids for 1st grade.  Now of course many, many families take advantage of preschool, so it is no surprise that school districts are picking up on this age bracket as well.  I’m not sure just what the requirements are to enroll ones child in public preschool but they are probably simple like “must be able to walk” and “must be toilet trained.”  In some districts they actually have to be considered special-needs kids to qualify, so toilet trained is not necessarily required for these kinds of kids- I can attest to this as assistants regularly change kids of all ages, usually behind closed doors but there was one classroom where they changed an 8th-grade-aged boy right in the classroom with very little in the way to prevent seeing those parts usually covered up, not that any of the kids would have cared anyway since they were all similarly impaired.

But back to normal kids.  Monday I was in an 8th-grade science classroom at the very early district meaning an arrival time of 7:15AM- this coming after I had maybe 4-5 hours of sleep.  Fortunately this lack of sleep always hits one the following day as opposed to the current day, and Tuesday was no exception.  The kids had a video to watch about the first 25 years of NASA.  They talked about the start of our aeronautics exploration back in 1915 with the inception of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) though the birth of NASA itself wasn’t until 1958, and continued with the US response to Sputnik, the trips which eventually landed us on the moon, and remote exploration of the planets.  This was a 60-minute video so I didn’t get to see the whole thing, but I suppose it must have ended talking about the three space shuttles up to that 25-year point in time.  There really isn’t much to say about the classes themselves- they were six identical classes.

Tuesday I found myself at the opposite end of the scale, but only at the end of the day- I started as an ELL resource (pull-out) teacher for 1st-5th grade.  In fact, most of my morning was spend with some kids from the very classroom I subbed in a few weeks ago.  We went over some reading, some letter names and sounds, played some games… Pretty enjoyable.  I then went to Wendy’s (baconator- mmm) to grab some lunch and headed to the other school where I would be in preschool.  This was where my lack of sleep two nights before would catch up to me.  I really did nothing much in these two classrooms (half an afternoon in each of two preschool classrooms as a floater) except act as an extra set of eyes.  I had been in one of the rooms a couple of weeks before during ISAT week and that day they started with putting simple puzzles together but today they would start by doing some coloring.  St. Patrick’s day pages of course, this bing March 17th and all.  There was one little girl who smiled at me with a “you don’t see me doing anything wrong” smile the entire way as she headed to the trash, hands behind her back, to throw away here pages because she messed up coloring the first page.  Uh-huh- nice try.  I fished them out and she had to go back to coloring them.  I guess I did get to do something- I got to read a book about some kids trying to catch a leprechaun for his you-know-what.  I tried to give it a bit o’ an Irish lilt as I read the leprechaun’s lines, and other parts of the story.  During their centers time I had to gulp down the rest of my caffeinated water as apparently the caffeine from the Dr. Pepper I had for lunch was very weak and I was in danger of collapsing on a chair.  But I made it.  They were in their centers for an hour before I went to the other room which then finished up their own centers- both rooms have pretty much the same routine, did some singing and listened to another story (read by someone else in the room regrettably), packed up, and went outside to play until their buses arrived.

So how was today?  Maybe I’ll tell later.  Another LD classroom, self-contained, 5th and 6th grades.

My youngest daughter Disney has a cold, so lately, she’s been waking up every hour (at least).  So my sleep has been totally interrupted, which, for a person like me, is not good.  I’m barely functioning.  My body aches, my head pounds, I have no attention span, no patience with anybody, and I’ve been very grumpy – the fact that I’m admitting it says a lot :).  It’s been difficult for me to find joy in things lately, just because I’m so tired, and the thought of retiring to my bed at night now fills me with dread because of the ‘night terrors’ – waking to my daughter’s screams and demands.  Even if I don’t wake up, I can still hear them in my sleep, and it’s causing chaos in other aspects of my life.  I’m barely even looking forward to this business trip we’re taking this weekend to New Jersey.  A few weeks ago, before this all started happening, I was ecstatic about this trip because it’s right next to New York City and I’ve never been there.  Not only that, but we’re planning on stopping at TWO zoos on the way there, which as you might know, would normally put me over the moon with excitement.  But now I’m just worried about getting there in one piece.  My husband is the one who is actually crawling out of bed with our daughter; he is the slave to her every demand.  So if I feel this bad, is he going to feel well enough to get us through the 10-hour drive and back safely?  He assures me he is, but I don’t know; I just feel SO crappy all the time!

Anyway, to help try to regulate my sleep until this passes, I’ve been taking the diet supplement Melotonin.  It’s been providing me with some calm before I fall asleep; I used to lay there for about 30 minutes at least with a pounding heart and tense muscles before I could fall asleep, just waiting to hear my daughter’s screams.  But the Melotonin is helping me calm down a little bit, and hopefully it will make my bedroom feel less like a prison and more like the restful haven I was used to.  One side effect of the Melotonin I’ve noticed is that it’s given me VERY vivid dreams.  The other night, I dreamt that my mom gave us these yogurt containers all stacked  in rows that spelled out some sort of life advice.  You know how they print stuff on product containers?  Well, she had collected different flavors of yogurt that said different things and stacked them all up until they made a few sentences of wisdom.  It was a gift for something; we got to read the advice and then keep all the yogurt.  I wish I could remember the life advice they spelled out, but I don’t.  And after she gave us the gifts of yogurt, we found out that she and my friend Megan had been awarded shared custody of one of my daughter’s friends whose parents were getting divorced and didn’t want her anymore.  That was random…  but aren’t dreams always that way?  Here’s to hoping our family’s sleep can regulate in the near future.  I’m taking Disney to the doctor on Thursday – I’m at the end of my rope.  Luckily our pediatrician is also a sleep expert, so maybe he can help.  I have so much going on right now that it would be SO great to be able to actually enjoy it!

There are several things one can do right from the convenience of their car.  Fast food can be ordered and picked up. Convenience stores and pharmacies typically have a pick up window. In Las Vegas, a marriage ceremony can be performed while the couple sits in their car.  On Monday, a bank robber was able to successfully obtain a large sum of money from a drive-thru bank teller.  The perpetrator drove up to the window of the Lone Star National Bank in Pharr, Texas.  He slipped a note into the box listing his demands.  The female teller filled the order and the crook drove away.

I was torn on my reaction to this story.  From what I understand, there was no apparent weapon involved and the teller was behind a bullet-proof window.  However, there was no information regarding bank policy when confronted with that situation.  Yet at the same time, I could not help thinking that this would make a phenomenal genius post, but decided to give the teller the benefit of the doubt.

PHARR, Texas — A bank robber in South Texas held up the place from the comfort of his car.

Police in Pharr say a man used the drive-thru lane Monday morning to rob Lone Star National Bank. Police say the driver slipped a note to a female teller, who provided an undetermined amount of cash, then he drove away. Lt. Guadalupe Salinas says the man was alone in the car and did not appear to display a weapon. Salinas told The Associated Press there’s no indication that the robbery was an inside job. Law officers declined to release the contents of the note. Police are reviewing bank surveillance video. The FBI declined comment.

Trivial stuff. Its all good right? History, geography, arts, foods, science, hobbies. All fair game for trivia questions. Today, the trivia should be based St. Patrick’s Day Right? I could come up with all sorts of trivial things about St. Paddy’s day, but why go through all that work when someone already did it.

So for your enjoyment at St Patrick’s Day Trivia quiz.

I just received an email from a former castmate who is in her high school production of Grease in the next few weeks.  She informed me that this is the first musical their school has done in 20 YEARS!!! I was shocked and amazed by this admission.  If there is one thing I frown upon it is the decrease in the amount of arts related activities in schools (large or small).  However, it sounds as if this school is at least making an attempt to reestablish an artistic presence.  As our biggest rivals in what seems everything (at least in my day), I well remember the fun competitiveness between the schools.  I knew the music director from the school reasonably well who has since retired from the position.  Not sure who inherited the reins, but hopefully they can reinvigorate the program.

I remember assisting Emily direct several musicals after I graduated from EHS. I remember The Wizard of Oz (basically the 1939 movie with a few added sequences), The Sound of Music (which I helped from BGSU and on weekends I was able to make the trip home), Bye, Bye Birdie, and South Pacific.  There was talk of doing Annie again.  I emphatically offered my two cents on this.  Not only had it been done (at that point) only 3 years previously, but at the time, it seemed that every high school were taking turns performing it.  I remember watching a larger school’s production a year after ours.  I was not trying to be biased but their Rooster did not even crow.  He simply said “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo.”  However, musicals at my alma mater have also not seen the light of day for some time.

Strange thing. I remember reading the Bradbury novel, and seeing the movie. But, I am now watching the movie and I can’t seem to remember it at all. Oh, I remember the basic story, but I don’t seem to remember any of the details. I remember the carnival coming to town, and of course Mr. Dark. What I’m not sure of is how different the book is from the movie. I will have to read it again.

So far the movie is very good. But now my youngest just stopped it to watch a TV show… Hmm, am I going to have to get another TV just to watch what I want? I guess not, she’ll be leaving on her own soon enough.

What I did find out is that Bradbury actually adopted his novel and wrote not only the screen play for the 1983 movie, but a stage play and radio play. The stage play was written in 2003… Wonder what the royalties on that show would be. Could it be done on a small stage? Where would the Carousel fit? I would love to play Mr Dark… Hmmm…

Maybe we could do another “Stage” version of this play.

Interesting.