Runnin’ Wild
Listening to: No Matter What – by every artist who sings it!
Reading: Once Upon A Star Nora Roberts
Weather: 32, partly cloudy
Trivia: Why do we say people are "cold blooded?"
Long before the rise of the scientific method, everyday experience showed that there are strong links between emotions and blood. During anger or after activity, sensations in the face and neck hint that the vital fluid has become warmer. Feelings that accompany acute fear can be interpreted to mean that temperature of blood has suddenly dropped. Medieval scholars found it striking that temperaments vary widely. Some persons easily become enraged, so furious that their blood seems to be at the boiling point. Others seldom lose their tranquility, so may be derided as passionless or cold-blooded. Modern science has debunked the myth of wide variations in blood temperature among humans. But influence of the past and the association of cold-blooded reptiles with evil made a lasting impression upon speech. Practically everyone now knows that a thermometer would show a healthy person's blood to be at 98.6 degrees. In spite of all that, we still describe anyone considered cruel or vindictive as being cold-blooded. We also use the term to describe people who seem able to behave in a mean-spirited fashion to their fellow man without any remorse whatsoever.
Cool word: Monday [n. MUN-day]
Traditionally, Monday is the second day of the week, when everyone goes back to work, presumably renewed by the quiet, restful weekend just completed. The Anglo Saxon name for the day was Monan daeg (day of the moon), which was a translation of the Latin Dies Lunae, itself a translation of the Greek hemera Selenes (day of Selene). Modern words for this day are similar in many languages. In German we have Montag, Dutch and Swedish have Maandag, and in Danish it's Mandag. The romance languages acquired the Latin term more directly. In French, the day is Lundi. Italian has Lunedi, while in Spanish it's Lunes. In Rumanian it's Luni. In Russian, Monday is known as Ponedel'nik ("the day after Sunday," or "after do-nothing day").
This was a typical Monday. I entered the building and was hit with phone calls, emergency meetings and other irritants. Nothing was easy.
A parent has accused a teacher of calling her son "stupid" and is demanding that the child be removed from the classroom. Now I know darn well that this teacher would never have said that, but there was no convincing the mother otherwise, she would only believe her son. She pretty much accused the teacher of lying.
So the principal has to move this kid, which is something we never do, especially at this point in the year. It becomes complicated in that he is on an educational plan had has to be placed in a room that gets special ed support services. We don’t have enough staff to create a new room for this kid, so he can’t go into the room that the mother wanted.
I suppose that means that the saga may continue. Lord help us.
Then there were the zillion phone calls to set up meetings. Those aren’t too complicated, they are just time consuming.
Then there was the belligerent kid who I had to test and who wouldn’t co-operate. He was one of the few kids that I can say I took an immediate dislike to. He wouldn’t follow the directions and wasn’t paying even the slightest bit of attention so I know the test scores that I was able to get are invalid. I barely got anything done with him at all. If this continues I’ll have to call his mother. I won’t put up with this baloney. Even with the little I got done with him he’s scoring at grade level.
It’s going to be really tough to keep on testing him, because he’s so opposed to the whole thing.
On the brighter side, I had my four reading kids writing a story about being a snowflake, and they’re really cute. I especially liked Celina’s ending:
"I spent the rest of my days in the pasture. Some days I was on a horse and others I was in the barn. Then one day the sun came out and I melted into what I am today, a puddle. A worthless puddle."
I just thought that was so creative and cute. The rest of the story had some great description in it. She talked about the "tree branches falling like dominoes". Of course not a word was spelled correctly. I wish I could fix that!
On the upside I had quite the surprise from Vitamins.com today. I had placed my first order about three weeks ago because the initial offer was just too good to pass up. You got $25 off the order, free shipping, and only had to spend $25.01! Well this was easy enough to do; I got vitamin C, zinc, calcium and a shower gel for dry skin. The total I had to pay was $1.43!
This morning I got an e-mail from them apologizing for the shipping delay, but they had been having technical difficulties. To get me to forgive them they gave me a gift certificate for $15 to use at CD Now ! I zipped over there this evening and ordered the cast recording for the new Broadway show "Swing". The gift certificate didn’t totally cover shipping, so I had to pay 57 cents.
Not bad, huh?
All this stuff has ended up costing me a grand total of two dollars!
Some days do have their little perks.
It felt downright balmy out today. It was actually thirty degrees when I left the house this morning and there was no wind-chill.
Now they are saying we’re going to get walloped by a storm that’s coming up the coast. It sounds as if I could have another scary commute in the morning.
Yippee.
If things are bad tomorrow night I’m going to have to cancel; my adult ed course. I have no intention of staying through in a bad storm.
Of course the weathermen are all idiots so I can’t place much stock in anything they have to say. At five thirty this morning they said that the storm wouldn’t amount to a thing.
We’ll see.
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Horoscope
ARIES
Your highly visionary expectations for the year ahead may be surprising even yourself as you find yourself raising your expectations about what is possible, not least in the area of enjoying fabulously rewarding friendships and associations with people and organizations. It will prove an excellent move to join a club or society in an area you find really satisfying.