The Chit Chat Chit Chat Thread

[StarWarsGirl]

For @ajrwdwgirl
https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/teacher-life?bffbmain&utm_term=.rh1JwWXYm#.pu617Y3Qr

 

[donaldtoo]

Not sure, but isn't the only remaining (original band) member, Mike Love, performing these days?

When we worked their concert about 5 summers or so back at Carlos' N Charlie's, it was just Love and Johnston. Love's son was playin' guitar for them. Not sure about now.

 

[donaldtoo]

Bruce is somewhat original, as he joined the band just a few years after it started and he is still performing with Mike Love. At least he was on the show with him last night.

Hahaaa...! I should have just read down a little further...!
We actually got to briefly meet both Love's and Johnston late night after that show at Carlos' N Charlie's. I think oldest DD got some quick pics. I need to remember to ask her.

 

[donaldtoo]

I'll take it.

Sure looks like it's going to be an unusual summer for us here in Texas.

 

[donaldtoo]

@donaldtoo here is some of hubby's ribs and brisket. He spent all day with his smoker. The white things are some cheese curds.
View attachment 144076

Oh my. Those look like heaven...!!!!!
Oooo, please don't tell hubby I may (or may not ) have just blasphemed...

 

[Gabe1]

I think the teaches at my little guy's school have given up yesterday was the awards party and today is going to be outside play and a movie. Between the nice weather and being done with schoolwork I guess they have to just keep them from bouncing off the walls

It is a limbo week, killing time. Grades have to be calculated, textbooks turned in and accounted etc. Our PTO brings in outside hires for inschool type field trips, we do field days, the walk for the parent/school foundation fundraiser, stuff like that. We use to do a PTO luncheon where an ice cream truck came at lunch and food was brought in for an all school/district picnic until the food wars over health concerns put an end to that.

 

[donaldtoo]

Ill do once I get time.
I'm exhausted right now.
I expend 4 days transfering my NAS/Media server info to new hard disks, and then transferred most of my files to other disks, I finished a mere hour ago from wiping the remaining hard disks that I no longer need (I'm going to sell them cheap locally)

No problem, thanks!
Whenever you might find the time!
The first one was just such a hoot...!!!

 

[BuddyThomas]

Okay so why do birds like 52nd Street and Broadway so much? It's like this every day. I'm getting ready to go full Tippi Hedren. Ahhhh!

 

[donaldtoo]

Reminds me a little of a 4th of July, blueberry pie-eating contest that my brother and I participated in, when we were kids. That was so much fun slamming our faces into pie! We had blueberry all over our faces (and I even had some in my hair). It was such a primal, euphoric experience!!

 

[Gabe1]

Yep...it's the one big trip of the school year. Sometimes they take little trips to a theater performance, or to go ice skating around Christmas, but in June it's the big trip and they go to a different place every year...one year they took DD's class to the zoo....she got lost. The mom with her group wasn't paying attention and didn't notice DD was still looking at the fish and DD, who was only 8, didn't notice the group had gone on. Suddenly she realized her group was gone and she didn't know where they had gone. Fortunately, the school had prepared the kids for just such an event. Each group was color coded and each kid was given a paper with their color and the group leader's phone number on it, so DD just had to wait for the next group to come through and that leader could call HER group leader to let her know DD was with them, and she just walked with that group until they found hers. This year, DD is nervous because her class is going to a big amusement park here in the Netherlands tomorrow, but they don't have groups...the only rule is that they can't walk alone. So now she's nervous that she has to find her way around....I figure it's good practice in case she gets lost in Disney. Last year her class did survival training. DS's class is going to an amusement park in Germany (Kalkar wunderland) and the younger grades went to an indoor play gym yesterday. I'm glad DS's trip is NEXT week. DD just needs to stay healthy through tomorrow and then her trip is over.

Poor DD. Lost isn't fun. Disney has a very good set-up. Cast Member stays with child in area found until parents surface and security is immediately notified and they scour the immediate area looking for lost parents. If parents are still missing the child is then taken to the Baby Care Center or First Aid if there isn't a Care Center and the kid is entertained by staff to distract them from being separated from parents.
I found a lost kid at Typhoon Lagoon (who was so scared but didn't want to go with me to get the help of the CM within sight. Get that. I pointed to the CM and said see he has a name tag, he works here. You go first and when you are safely there I will check to make sure you are safe and will look for your parents OK? I explained and they took him to First Aid and there was a door marked Lost Parents. The water parks I think is the easiest place to get separated from your family. By the nature of most of the attractions you can't stay together.

We always picked a meet up bench at each attraction in the water park to regroup.

Never needed it but I always took a picture of my kids before we left the room each morning. Had it been necessary I had an exact picture of kid and clothing being worn down to the shoes.

I saw a family not long ago in pure panic their kid was gone from pool area where the entire family was. They scattered and the panic kept ramping up screaming his name, cast trying to help but a boy in a bathing suit is really non descript when wet. Ultimately the boy was found coming out of the QS area he had gone to refill his mug. Never heard the calls for him in there. His Dad was so angry, Mom burst into tears. Grandma was surprisingly rational. Cast kinda comes out of the woodwork for 'lost parents.'

 

[Gabe1]

Do you want some of this to go with that jelly?

And for those non peanut butter folk-Trader Joe's

Looking for these, came out today.

 

[donaldtoo]

I have a sick munchkin. I have to take him to the doctor in a bit when his sister gets out of school. Poor baby is miserable with stomach ache, neck pain, a high fever and a bad headache. Woke up at 5 this morning asking to take his temp because he didn't feel good. I gave him a paracetamol to combat the aches, and he promptly fell asleep and started talking in his sleep. Hope it's just the flu and he's better next week when he has his field trip with school to the amusement park in Germany. I'd hate for him to miss that!

Sympathy like.
Hope the little dude is feelin' better by now.

 

[Gabe1]

Thanks! I'll be sure to put some pictures on here so you all can get your Disney fix.



I read somewhere that it is temporary and they are going to make it bigger.



Yeah, we usually just used our names before or initials.

Keep learning things here. Well if they are going to make it bigger I hope they move it. The downside that kiosk was a major road block to the flow of the sidewalk. Look forward to your photos.

 

[donaldtoo]

Because we are all close here in this thread, I will happily share the secret of cruise eating. I just completed a trans-Atlantic cruise. That 14 days on a ship that might as well been a giant refrigerator. I got home had lost 7 pounds from where I was when I left, so I know something about this topic. So if you are ready, I'll wait until you get a pen and paper to jot down notes . Okay, you should be ready... pay close attention:

Spoiler

Spend the previous two weeks just before the cruise on what is comparable to a death march all over Paris, Venice, Pompaii and Rome. Then spend the first few days on the cruise exploring Ports of Call in France, Italy and Spain. Simple and effective... you are welcome.

If you're gonna' "death march" before, and partially during, a 14-day buffet, it might as well be destinations such as those.
Duly noted.

 

[donaldtoo]

I miss those days, now its work every day every weekend and even sometimes on holidays and vacation days XD

Sympathy like.
I know you don't work retail, but, I know how you feel from when I was laid off during the most recent big recession and worked as many as 3 retail jobs at a time for 4+ years just to help make ends meet. And, I was middle-aged at the time.
And, I know I've mentioned this before, but, I once went 3+ months without one single full day off. A 6 hr. shift somewhere was the least I had. Woof. How the heck I kept up with that I'll never know...

 

[donaldtoo]

I woke up to go to the bathroom Saturday night (without my brace) and heard a "pop" when I was shuffling to the door. It didn't hurt at the time but now I need an MRI. It stinks getting old.

Ouchie! Sorry. So far behind.
Hope nothing serious. How is it now...?

 

[Gabe1]

I was rather fortunate that I was able to do my student teaching in a town an hour away from my home town, so I lived at home, but my student teaching was not paid. I worked weekends in a restaurant waiting tables, which is what most of my friends did....either waiting tables or working fast food. So working during the day doing student teaching and working evenings and weekends to pay the rent. You basically have no life. Plus, the requirements of the student teaching were kind of unreasonable. You only got 2 sick days for the entire semester or you failed. They told us we could start earlier than the required date so we could have some extra days built in, just in case, but if you did that, you didn't finish any sooner...you just had some leeway. So I started 10 days before I was required to. I took 2 days off because my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and I wanted to be there for her surgery and first chemo treatment. So basically, I still had those 10 days extra. But, they still wanted to fail me. Why? Because I had more secondary school days than elementary school days. With music, you are qualified k-12, so you have to do student teaching at both elementary and secondary level. I did the first half at a junior high. My last day there, my mom had a mammogram and they found the lump. So I started at the elementary school halfway through...all of those extra 10 days I had were done at the junior high. I didn't take any time off at the junior high. So I had 12 days more at the junior high level and they wanted me to have equal experience at the elementary school level. My liaison in the district went to bat for me...she had just finished her own breast cancer treatments, so she knew how important it had been for me to be there with my mom, and she knew it was unfair to expect more out of me than other student teachers who DIDN'T start early and who didn't have to do more than one level. So she managed to get them to pass me. They wanted to fail me for going above and beyond the requirements. But I completely agree with you...it's so unfair to expect students to somehow be able to work for free, but still maintain an apartment, car, and have outside hobbies, etc. I think mostly it's because companies don't want to offer internships if they have to pay interns, but students are required to do an internship. In this day and age, you are really lucky if you get one that pays! You just kind of have to accept that you will have no life outside of work for the duration of the internship.

Yeah I am not a fan of the evolving twists to internships and am happy some laws were tweaked to change the tide. I get the student teacher thing as my son pulled his teaching certificate all the while having no intentions of going that direction. A fall back if nothing else. It takes a special person to be a good teacher who thrives off educating children. Both of my kids had a first grade teacher with that passion and she remains their favorite teacher. They had many a dud inbetween and my son had a saint of an advisor. My DD had a horrific one that did things to deliberately get in her way. Fortunately the class grew and her senior year, critical with scholarships she had a new advisor who worked with her and did amazing things on behalf of my DD. Fortunately being a school board member I had the ability to thwart the first advisors behavior.

My DD bestie is now a Doctor and a Pharmacist to be. She has to do a years internship for free working at for profit pharmacies. To me that is just wrong. For the past two years she has been working at the same pharmacies as a tech and getting paid well. Now free labor doing the same things.

 

[donaldtoo]

OK gang, I'm off like a dirty shirt...
Have happies...!
See y'alllllllllll...!!!

 

[Gabe1]

In my school each class has there own Guidance Counselor so she is with us for the entire 4 years and she is so nice and great. She has already helped me set up some of my volunteer hours that I have to do.

So glad our High School had done away with this. Volunteering is that, volunteering. My family is very civic minded and we volunteered throughout the years from coaching to mentoring etc. Once it is a requirement or mandated it is no longer civic it is a requirement to be fulfilled and frankly it was abused by many organisations requesting volunteers from the high school. It was discontinued by the time my kids hit high school as it became labor in many instances. I taught my kids from preschool how to volunteer to help others. My kids helped me volunteer as toddlers with Market Day, they'd move a box to the proper table. Hand a lady her change. They'd help me sort kids sweatshirts for fundraisers. They both went onto becoming mentors and school tutor volunteers. My DD volunteered as a buddy for Special Olympics.
Volunteering comes from the heart not from a school mandate IMO.

 

[Gabe1]

See, that's because you are a NICE wife. Hubby has been known to make a lunch and forget it. Or just not bother. I figure I've got enough to do with the kids' stuff and cooking dinner and such. He's a big boy...he managed before we met, so he's perfectly capable of setting his own alarm and getting dressed, and making his own lunch. I wash his clothes, I cook dinner almost every night...he has to be responsible for his own work stuff and I do the rest.

I can appreciate that.