It's been a week or so since my latest blog and it actually seems like it's been much longer. I really don't have any excuses as to why I haven't written anything lately. I've logged on and read some stuff, but for whatever reason, I have put the actual writing off. To get back on track as far as blogging, I'll put together a list of somewhat random thoughts.

1. We have an after school math program that I am part of. It's near the end of the program and because of this, I've had to administrator a standardized test to the participating kids. I'm not done yet, but after giving me this test, I've confirmed my complete dislike for standardized tests.

2. My wife traveling for work pretty much sucks. She's been on the west coast for the past 5 days and it's been just me and the kids. Now, she's good at her job and I'm very glad she has the job, but I wish the travel was a lot less.

3. I'm blogging while I watch Arrested Development and this show is hilarious.

4. I have a ton of reading to do to catch up on the blogs that I've been failing to read. I miss the entertaining and relaxing writing that many of you do. I will catch up.

5. My daughter's soccer coach made a good coaching decision today (putting the good kids in at the end of a tie game) and the kids won their game because of it.

6. As of today, we have 19 days left of school - yippee!!

7. As much as I love blogging, I'm starting to realize that there are other things that are in competition with my time - kids, tv, sleep, friends, golf, etc. With the summer coming, I'm wondering if I'll blog more because I don't have school or I'll blog less because I'll have more stuff to do. Hmmmm.

This weekend, my daughter was in a soccer tournament. There were four teams in her bracket and it turns out two were 7 year olds and two were eight year old teams. They played one of the 8 year old teams today and were totally outmatched. Then, the head coach makes a horrendous decision - he stops the game. Now, my wife is the assistant coach and he asked her what she thought. Of course, she says to let the kids keep playing. They can use the practice and what does quitting teach them? Now, it was not even halftime yet and the score was only 7-0. He didn't take that advice at all and called the game. This not only pissed my wife off, but many of the parents were ticked as well. He also never told the girls the real reason the game was off. What does that teach them? The good news is that he told my wife and the team manager that he wasn't going to coach the girls next year! For the second game today, our team beat the other 7 year old team, so that was good. That team was hammered earlier today by the other 8 year old team. Tomorrow, was supposed to be the other games, but the coaches for all 4 teams wisely redid the games so we play the other 7 year old team and the two 8 year old teams will play each other again. This will be much better for all of the girls involved and we won't have to worry about our kids only playing half of a game. Thank goodness this guy's not a teacher!

By the way, we got a call from the insurance company yesterday about the accident and the car is totaled. We ended up buying a new car today and will pick it up on Tuesday. I think we got a decent price, but you never know how honest car salesmen are! Oh well.

My day started off just fine- woke up ready to go. Wife and son left for school and daycare and I was off with my daughter to drop her off at her school before heading to mine. After I dropped her off, I get a phone call from my wife that she was in a bad car accident on the way to daycare/work. To make a long story short, I proceeded to head to the accident, not go to school, then take my 4 year old to daycare. Luckily, he wasn't hurt. Then, met my wife at the hospital while she was checked out - nothing but a few bruises and some pain for her. After 3 hours in the ER, we made it home, took care of the insurance phone calls and are kind of back in the swing of things. Now, we await the call from the insurance company to tell us if our car is totaled or not.

I feel bad for my very sore wife because we have my daughter's birthday party tomorrow, a run/walk for the local school district, and 3 soccer games this weekend that she'll have to somewhat suffer through.

On the good side, no one was seriously hurt in the accident and I missed the day of the week at school where my schedule stinks because I have some crazy classes.

Tonight was my last grad school class for the semester - and am I happy. No more Monday nights wasted sitting in a windowless room while the professor reads the info from a Power Point to us. I turned in my final assignment tonight - that's another relief. Now, it's time to wait for the grade - which apparently will be an A. According to others who did some background checking on the professor, rumor has it that if you turn your work in and it's not totally crappy, you get an A. I can now spend the next few Mondays watching my 4 year old play soccer!

This Friday marks one of the big days. We will be training our staff on how to do the elementary report cards online. A couple of the teachers who were previously trained thought the process was fairly simple - time consuming at first, but easy. As they got going with it, they liked it much better than the paper report cards. We met last week to plan out the day (this Friday) and to get ready. We already know a few people who will need extra attention, but we'll work with them. Hopefully things will go smoothly, if not, we'll be heading to a local establishment for some adult beverages while we complain about the technology challenged who came into the training with a bad attitude and left with a bad headache. Oh well - let the fun begin!

I had one of those days today. I'll apologize right now, but this is going to be more of a venting post that anything else.

My day was going pretty good. My morning classes were pretty good - kids worked hard and for the most part, behaved. Afternoon kindergarten classes were better than normal. This was a little surprising since a college student was in to observe a library class for a while. Don't things usually go a little wacky when someone's observing? This time, they were great. Anyway, the day ended, I got some work done and then it was time for the after school math kids to come in the library for about 15 minutes before their after school teachers came to pick them up. Now, I'm not usually Mr. Strict during this time because I believe the kids need a little time to let loose after a day of classes and before another 45 minutes of learning. However, today, I lost it. There were about 45 kids in the library and things started to get a take a turn for the worse. First, a carton of milk, which they had for snack, suddenly spilled all over the carpeting, on it's own apparently, and no one told me about it for at least a couple of minutes. Then, I see several fourth graders playing a little tag - yes, running around the library. Of course, I tell them to stop. Then, some more wonder children decided that some pushing needed to occur. I'm not talking about a little one handed push - I'm talking two hands, hard to the back of another unsuspecting student. Well, this of course, resulted in the pushee shoving another student in the same fashion. The girl who got shoved, was pushed into some other students and I lost it. I yelled louder than I probably have ever yelled at a class. I told everyone to sit down on a chair at a table and be quiet. I would have loved to say "Get your ass to a table and shut the hell up," but of course, I couldn't do that. Since this was near the time when their teachers were going to pick them up, I now had an audience of a few teachers, including the principal, to hear my lecture on behavior and safety and so on. I'm quite sure the principal heard me blow up from where ever she was in the building. She took the 2 pushers and the other kids involved out. I left school shortly after that pretty pissed off. I feel better now, but it still bothers me that these little children don't know the difference between good behavior and screwing around. Thanks for listening. I hope to put together a more meaningful post in the next day or 2.