A few years ago I had a molar nearly reconstructed. Yesterday as I was eating lunch, I hear ‘clang’ and see a large piece of metal sitting in my tupperware container. Yes, my stupid filling came out. Today I have an emergency dentist appointment to have it checked out, so I’m taking the afternoon off from work. I’m hoping they can fix it today, because it hurts to drink anything since I’m missing half a friggin tooth.

I have an interview this afternoon for the 1st grade position. It would have been earlier in the day, but because of dumb tooth, I needed to reschedule for around 5:00. Let’s hope that if the dentist numbs me up, I’ll be OK to talk again by 5:00. At least I’ll know everyone doing the interview and they’re aware of my situation, so I won’t sound like too much of an idiot. I’m not sure if I’ll get it or not, but I do know I’m the best person for the job. My fear is that they won’t want to pull me from my current position AND have the kids transition to someone new again, even if I do already know half the class from having them in art all last year.

Yesterday I sold a good amount of the remaining chocolates from the craft fair in school. After the fair this past Saturday, I was in the hole about $80. Not really what I was expecting. Fortunately the teachers seem to want to get their hands on ‘em, and I’m up into the profit margin now. I’m pretty sure I can get rid of everything in the next week or two. I’ll sell them here one more day and then I’m gonna start exporting what I have left.

Despite the “state of the economy” that everyone in the media keeps whining about, my online store is on pace to have my best December sales yet. We’re only 10 days into the month and I’ve already made $63. Not bad, and still plenty of time left.

I love half days. Sadly, we only get one true half day all year, and today is it. On others, teachers have to stay for professional development or conferences or any number of things. Kids always seem to have more energy on half days too, especially before a holiday.

My group of kindergarteners today were so cute. They always crack me up. We were playing a rhyming memory game when all of a sudden one of the girls says to me, “You look strong. I can see your muscles.” I laughed out loud at that one. Then when they were leaving, I wished them all a Happy Thanksgiving and one boy asked me, “Can I give you a hug before I go back to class?” At this they all joined in with, “Me too. Me too.” So funny.

I’ve been slacking heavily in the blogging department. I find that I tend to go through spurts of it here and there, then trail off for awhile, then back into it. My free time has been very well spent lately, so I’ll update on that along with some other things that have been going on.

The biggest of recent events is unfortunately a sad one. A couple weeks ago, a first-grade teacher at my school died suddenly. It caught everyone off-guard. From what I’ve heard, she had trouble breathing that morning, was rushed to the hospital, then her heart stopped and there was nothing they could do. At this point the school is back to a somewhat normal functionality, but for a few days it was a strange feeling. On one hand, it was very sad and tragic. There were both teachers and students hit hard by the loss, and it was a noticeable one. On the other hand, it showed a beautiful side of people. During an all-school meeting, it was amazing to see children hugging and comforting each other, really caring about one another. For a little while, we were a lot less of a school, and a lot more of a big family. That’s by far one of the things I like the most about where I work.

WrestleFest has come and gone, not without it’s own drama. JC was worried about the attendance the whole time, but I assured him frequently that it’d be fine. I don’t know how I knew, I just knew. The turnout was good, and the crowd itself was great! They were very much into the whole show. My return match was decent, and my “death” sequence was cut short. I was disappointed at the time that it didn’t play out how I would have liked it too, but myself and Volpe have already figured out a work-around that’ll make it work. Lots of work to do in the off-season, including several creative meetings and making entrance videos for everyone.

There’s a craft fair in Rochester coming up on Dec, 6th (I’ll post more specifics about the event soon). Every year several teachers from the school participate by selling one thing or another. After some discussions in the lunch room, I was asked to participate and sell the chocolates that I make around Christmastime every year. I’ve thought of selling them in the past, but never actually got around to it. The fair gives me a good opportunity to start that process. Maybe I’ll get into making different stuff around holiday seasons year round. I’ve already gone out and bought about 58 lbs. of chocolate, so I’m gonna be a busy guy between now and Christmas. I started production the other night and made about 50 peanut butter cups in 2 1/2 hours. I’m a machine!

That’s a long enough post for now I think. Stay tuned, I’m sure there’s more on the way.

Remember all school meetings? We have them once a month, when the whole school gathers in the gym for some announcements, acknowledgements, and sharing of classroom events. Recently I had made a suggestion to the principal to help with the efficiency of the meeting and he’s started implementing that idea. When I had originally given him the suggestion, he joked with me asking, “Do you wanna run the meeting too?” Being only half-serious, I replied, “Any time you need me to, I’m comfortable on a microphone at this point.” Now, I didn’t really think this would ever amount to anything, because who am I in the school system really? Guess I was wrong, cause he came up to me first thing today and said, “Remember when you said you could do the all school meetings? Well tomorrow morning I’ll be at a meeting so would you mind?” Lol…funny how those things come back to you. We’ll see how it goes.