Summer has Officially Started Kids!

what can i say? the one-hundred and eighty-seventh contractual day hath passed and so goeth me in the way of the ecclesiast-everything is (not so) meaningless. not much of a biblicist (nor a religified person, but tolerable of both) but peep dis verse (guess which book):

'Meaningless! Meaningless!'
says the Teacher.
'Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.'

3 What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?

4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.

7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.

8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.

9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which one can say,
'Look! This is something new'?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

11 There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.

it's not all gloom and doom; anyhoo, here's my paraphrased version (i don't necessarily agree with everything is meaningless but most everything certainly is): one day, we're eventually going to hang out with st. peter, or become constituent, sub-atomic particles (i mean really that's all we are if you think about it, orderly arranged but headed towards entropy) like right after the beginning of time-your choice. so, the ephemerality of your presence at work and everything that's not work makes you aware of choice (i.e. how do i choose to spend that time participating as parent/spouse/competitive cyclist/employee?). i ask you how are you going to spend your time? personally, i have 10 weeks to demonstrate my participatory balancing act. i'll start if i don't stop.

speaking of time, my science department just recognized my wicked valuable, extremely cool, co-teacher's efforts in my school district. the district, therefore, after all these (34) years of dedicated service is giving her a pension. that's right, she retired. i worked with this lovely young lady for ten years! it flew. one day, she's working with me; the next, she has quite the grin on her face. she is a class act, the science department-myself included-is going to miss her presence sorely. ten years y'all...

the last day-our teacher inservice-was kinda busy for me. i had 4 kids come in whose missing assignments were going to do them in (fail them) for the semester. they all finished their respective assignments-all late as hell may i add-in front of me, in my classroom, showing an honest effort, and i graded it without late penalties (why would you arbitrarily make it less because of lateness? i agree though, somethings are not negotiable; if they had to make up a lab-forget it). it ranged from some major, test-worthy assignments to piddly daily assignments but they're so delinquent with their homework, everything counted. needless to say they all passed with a "d" except one boy who earned a "c". the one common denominator they shared was drama. regardless of gender, drama is unfortunately a unifying, as well as ubiquitous, thing here at the high school. i'm sure y'all remembered high school hi-jinx. nutty. i told them if y'all go of to college this type of behavior wouldn't even fly. hope they listened. we'll see.

today, i checked out early to go for a mountain bike ride with my boys. a little thundercloud rolled through and they all deferred (read: chickened out, wimped-out, spontaneous loss of spinal vertebra, ambivalence, lame-osity, no shit-or-get-off-the-pot-filter, don't make me think for myself...etc. get it?). so i did a solo off-road, uphill time trial at mount falcon. i did the climb okay. not in off-road mentality that's for sure, too much time on the road bike. low rpm climbing rhythm, no decent turns in the Ss. i'm doing a race this sunday, so i need to get miles in any way, shape, and form (off-roading counts). i'll let you know how that goes. the race might be rained-out though.

my teammates registered to do the iron horse classic in durango which is (one-way) 6 or so hours away this sunday. the weather there too doesn't look good and the race starts at 8k feet and wouldn't you know it? they're forecasting rain/snow mix at 80% chance. not good. so i wonder who's actually going to be foolish enough to drive 12 hours for a 20% to race in decent weather. statistically i wouldn't do it (but then again i didn't preregister and have to fess up 70 bones).

i think friday, tomorrow, i'ma go for a road ride with my boy chip.