Adventures in..

So my best friend from high school called me today. and emailed. wondering where I've been. I looked back in my calendar and email and oh my goodness- I've been totally MIA for 2 weeks.

Where have I been? Work! Yippee!

Tomorrow will be my 6th day of teaching and so far it's been pretty good. I'm glad to be at the school. I'm learning to be much much much more flexible (and I was pretty flexible to begin with). I'm hoping to finally finalize my schedule (as an ESOL teacher I can, in theory, service PK-6). It looks like I'll be doing almost all push-in. This is good since there isn't room for me to pull out. Most time will be in 2nd grade, topped off with some 3rd and 4th grade writing. I'm also going to do some behavior mod with some PK and Kindergardeners. We'll see. My coworkers seem nice and are super welcoming. I like the kids a lot and am looking forward to building stronger relationships with all of them. : )

Anyhow. Teaching means I need to get up early. I'll post teaching pt 2, etc. I'm sure.

Any teachers out there want to send me advice? : )

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
Boston
The West
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The Inland North
North Central
The South
What'>http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have">What American accent do you have? Take'>http://www.gotoquiz.com/">Take More Quizzes

Um, whatever, my non-descript accent can't be anything but non-descript.
Here are the places and years I've lived- this all equals a midwestern accent...
Born Philadelphia (parents from Philly/S. Jersey and Long Island/S. Jersey)
Lived S. Jersey (Sweedsboro) until 3
Lived Baltimore County Md. (Timonium)until 4
Lived Ossining, NY (on the Hudson, 1 hour North of Manhattan. Downstate. Really) until 7
Lived Tokyo, Japan until 9
Lived Ossining, NY until 18
Lived Clinton, NY (Central NY, north of Albany, east of Syracuse) until 22
Live Washington, DC (but my parents now live 1/2 in Madison, WI and 1/2 in Sarasota, FL- does that make me a midwesterner enough to claim the accent???

Family wedding last weekend. Stay tuned.

Yehaw Dems!

Well, the hometown just got a bit friendlier. As you may know I am afraid of jinxing things so I wasn't even holding out for a house takeover, let alone the senate. Some might call me a cynic but I'd just rather be pleasantly surprised than to be disapointed.

::sigh:: I'm super excited about the committee and subcommittee leadership changes--- strict corporate oversight, reapeal of tax cuts for the super-rich, control of the judiciary committee (try to pass those nasty anti-choice, anti-gay court nominees W, just try). NCLB needs to be reauthorized in 2007- hopefully we'll have some good changes to this hefty and unfortunate education law.

Speaking of education. I got fingerprinted today. FINALLY!!!! All I need to do now is take my oath and I'll be able to teach- yippee! By next Friday I hope. Not by Halloween (as I originally expected) but it's looking more and more likely that I'll be in well before Thanksgiving.
PHEW. I won't talk to bad about this process with HR, but it was a bit of a nightmare (to say the least). I am sending a letter to our mayor-elect who wants to fix DCPS. Mr. Fenty, look out for this one.

Anyhow, on to basking about the Senate. My dad arrives tomorrow and he and I and N are going to my cousin Amy's wedding up in Columbia. It should be interesting.

Yippee!

I live in DC, so therefore there are ALWAYS adventures in politics.

So, we won't know about the Senate for a while. If Testor loses, then we know that the Dems don't have the Senate- but if Yellowstone County comes through then we just wait for this Webb/Allen recount. Come on Yellowstone!!!!

Yay for the House. N and I went and campaigned for Lois Murphy (PA-6) this weekend- no decision yet on that one. I'm excited about NY. Elliot Spitzer! Also, I'm looking forward to Acuri out of the Utica/Rome area (that's my college district)- they haven't had a dem in that spot for a longlong time.

In non election news- New York City plans to allow people to change their gender on their birth certificates without surgery. This is fabulous, fabulous, fabulous.

Once again, yay! I love NY.

This is very cool- I'll be adding blogs from here to my sidebar as soon as I find some I like- very neat AOL.

Happy Disability Employment Awareness Month (hey, it's good to be aware........)

:)

AOL Introduces Blog Targeting People with Disabilities
"AOL Ability" Site Provides Specialized Content in the Areas ofEmployment, Entertainment, News, Family, Health and TechnologyAvailable October 2006: http://ability.aol.com/

In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, AOL has
introduced a new AOL Ability blog site and forum(http://ability.aol.com/) dedicated to millions of people with disabilities, and their families, friends and colleagues.Designed to provide focused content for people with disabilities and to heighten disability awareness with mainstream audiences, the AOL Abilityblog will bring together relevant news, stories and information in thekey areas of employment, entertainment, family, health and technology.AOL is partnering with The Paciello Group (TPG, www.paciellogroup.com) and recruiting bloggers from the disability community to provide the majority of content in these areas.By reengineering corporate software, TPG is focused on results tosupport technology vendors, government agencies, e-commercecorporations, and educational institutions to build community, foster interaction through social networking and deliver accessible communication services to make their technology equally accessible to all people with (and without) disabilities.The site incorporates specific features to increase accessibility among users with disabilities and functional limitations including the ability to select a high contrast view (yellow text on a black background) and increase fonts to a larger text size for blind and low vision users."Our goal with the AOL Ability blog is to provide a unique venue wherepeople with disabilities, family members, friends and the generalaudience can come together to share information, access resources andview disability in a positive light," says Tom Wlodkowski, AOL's director of accessibility. "The goal shared by TPG and AOL to provide a dynamic "port-of-entry"into the world of blogging for people with disabilities of all ages isthe cornerstone of the AOL Ability concept," said Mike Paciello, founderand principal of The Paciello Group (TPG). The AOL(r) Ability blog also provides links to other resources on theAOL(r) network that offer additional features for people with disabilities, including direct access to free, daily CNN videos withclosed captions from the AOL(r) Video portal (http://www.aol.com/video) to enhance the online media experience for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. As the AOL Ability virtual community grows and evolves, so will the Website with more features that are important and impactful to those withdisabilities. The AOL Ability blog is an extension of AOL's Accessibility Policy, acompany wide priority that aims to address and meet the technology needsof people with disabilities. More information on AOL's accessibility efforts is available at http://www.aol.com/accessibility.