Office. Cleaning.

I'm cleaning my office. It's a work in progress. I have already lost interest, after an hour of trashing and stacking and re-piling. Now I'm hard at work burning a stack of CDs I had started last year. Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is an Aquarius. They have a tendency towards procrastination. But they are dreamers.

I don't have enough room for my stuff. I could use another tall bookcase for DVDs and, well...books. We already have 7 floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and three half that size. Only 4 are in my office, and they are full. Every bookcase we have is full. Unlike my buddy Mabel, I am allowed to keep books that I have already read. I really should start my own library. And movie rental business.

Well now. Here's a fine kettle of fish. At the bottom of my CD stack was my Glencoe Interactive Teacher Edition of one of my science textbooks. Hmm...funny that I didn't even miss it. Of course, I haven't used that text since December. So I'll excuse myself. I might have been looking for it next week. Or not. It is from the old texts that I use for half the year--my Earth Science material. There are numerous copies of this CD, and I'm the only one that uses this text now. So I'm sure there are several others at school in my cabinet. Scary, isn't it, that I could be teaching your kids.

I don't even want to look at The Pony's corner of my office. He has a penchant for leaving game CDs out of their cases. We are like those people who live on top of layers of magazines and newspapers, with just a narrow path through the offal. Doesn't bother us. But now I need elbow room for the new school year. So I'm cleaning up.

I also found my Earth Science text and my Algebra I text. It's Saxon. Not that you care. But some mathies are quite persnickety about their texts. I regard Saxon as my no-frills text. Compared to the ones I used in Lower Basementia for the 7th and 8th graders, Saxon is bare bones. It's like: "Here's today's lesson. Here are the problems. Now get to work." The problems contain concepts from the previous lessons, so it's also a kind of review. Not that I use a text for my class. I made up worksheets from my buddy Saxon. The kids think it is different from what their other Math teacher gives them, which is not such a good thing, because I am supposed to be presenting the same concepts in a different way. I guess it is working if they don't recognize it as the same stuff, but they know how to do the problems. Some of the problems are the same exact ones from the book. They get discombobulated, these kids, because I present it differently. Of course I do. My class is smaller. I give individual help. I give less work and collect papers at the end of class. That means the ones who don't turn in homework have to turn it in in my class. So they have to do it. Which is half the problem. They have a better chance of understanding it if they actually do their work.

Oh, dear. I just found a 6.3 oz. Regal Dynasty Imported Chocolate dark chocolate candy bar. Wipe your drool. It was best before 10/2006. Not that chocolate goes bad, mind you, but I think I'll pass. Hey! Fleetwood Mac Tusk! I wondered where that rascal had gone. I haven't listened to it in about 3 years. Here are some printouts from one of my old blogs. It's only December thru January. December 18, 2006! What was I thinking? I guess the whole rest of the blog wasn't worthy of printing out. Or else it's here somewhere. This is like an archaeological dig. The oldest stuff is on the bottom. That the Law of Superposition, people! I ain't a Science teacher for nothin'. Here's a 1-inch ring binder. It's the poor man's version--no little opening thingies. You have to pull the rings apart with your bare hands. Now I am weak. This project is just too tiring for me. It doesn't look like I've done anything.

Maybe I'll put it off until tomorrow.