Okay, maybe it isn’t a blizzard, but we do have a chance of snow this weekend. Snow! In April! It’s mighty cold out right now, the wind is howling and it’s alternating between hard rain and a steady mist. Nasty stuff! Maybe one last freeze will kill some of the brown dog ticks we’re already having trouble with, though.

Gayleen pointed out I hadn’t posted a blog in almost a week. I’m not gonna whine and air all my inner feelings online, so I’ll simply say I was feeling down about the whole writing business following another rejection. Marcy will accuse me of playing number games, but I was thinking of how I’ve been writing for over 20 years with nothing to show for it but a few virtually unnoticed books from two-bit small presses that won’t pay up, won’t answer e-mail, etc.

Yeah, I’ve done a little more than that, but the big goal is still out of reach and on some days it just looks completely unattainable. But I’m doing better now, and I attribute a lot of that to my kids, who keep me too busy to wallow in self pity. So let’s move on.

It was an interesting week at school. I began taking my Non-fiction class to the Academy’s computer lab. Will the computers work or will they not? It’s a crap shoot. Considering that squeezing one draft of an essay out of kids is hard enough, it’s really hard to teach them the value of revision if they have to rewrite the essay in longhand every time. I guess we need to apply for one of Bill Gates’ technology grants.

We’re reading Paul Zindel’s young adult novel The Pigman in my Foundations of English I class. I enjoyed the book. It reminded me of the books I read in junior high, books like The Pushcart War and Watership Down. The kids don’t like it. They say it’s boring. Or gay. Usually gay. I made the mistake of asking how a book could be homosexual and was given a demonstration of literary humping. Yeah. Ninth graders. Somebody has to love them.

In Science Fiction we’re doing The War of the Worlds. (Yes, I know, but this is a new class, so I’m reading it yet again.) The kids wanted the audio, so I’m playing those horrid CDs again. I really think the CDs are so bad they inhibit the reading, but they’re totally against silent reading. I’m looking forward to finishing TWotW and moving on to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Man, I haven’t read that in years and years … not since before the Internet became popular. It’s going to be fun revisiting that one.

Prom is next Saturday. I’m not required to go, but it’s “suggested” I show up for at least a little while so I guess I will. I don’t really have very many students who are juniors or seniors, though, so it’s not like I’m going to know many of them.

Well, I reckon that’s enough rambling for one evening.