I’ll start with the best and work my way to the worst. The best thing I learned today came to me via email. Remember my student Jonathan whose girlfriend up and left to Tijuana? Well he hasn’t been to class all week and I’ve been worried. But today, I opened up my email to find a message from him. It said the following: “Miss. This because I find Pricilla. You know how much I love her. So I not come back. Goodbye. Will miss you.” So the romance continues between my two students and I am so happy for him. However, the teacher/mother in me also hopes he goes back to school in Tijuana at least. I assume the novelity of their reunion will wear off after a while and the imminency of a needed education will begin to follow him. Pricilla’s family values education too, so I believe she will pressure Jonathan to go to school. So in the end, I believe this is good news. This news also helped soften the blow of the next news.

See, obviously given the fact that my student emailed me personally to let me know he will not be returning to school because he found his girlfriend in Tijuana, I have developed a good rapport with my students this year. Last year, I had that same type of rapport with my fifth period class but apparently not with my second period class. See this year, one of my students received a Valentine Gram from a previous student I had last year in my second period class. I teased my student and then told him I had his girlfriend last year and to ask her about me. I asked him today what she said. He said that she told him I was a good teacher but I was moody and I once ripped her project in half. Yikes! I don’t remember doing that? I only rip up tests if a student is caught cheating. I’m hoping that given he is learning English that something got lost in the translation, and it was a test that I ripped up because she was probably talking during the test. But to find out a student viewed me as “moody?” That is hard! I did have a rough first period last year so I wonder if my emotional state second period varied depending on what happened with my first period class. I sure hope so! I’m going to start paying closer attention to how I behave after a tough class this year and see if I notice a correlation. This year is more laid back because I have a break almost after each class—First period, teach; second period, break; third and fourth period block class, teach; lunch; fifth period, teach; sixth period, teach. But in case next year, I get a similar schedule as last year, I defintely want to prevent that from happening again. I’m not a moody person so it came as quite a shock.

But who knows, I may not have a class to teach next year. The final news I learned today is that district will have to lay off 88 staff members , 25 of which will be from the two high schools. So—if I do keep my job, it will by the hair of my chiny chin chin. I keep trying to remind myself that change, scary or not, brings color to life. I just hope the color isn’t black. So keep me in your thoughts or prayers please!

…because I have joined the Iphone/BlackBerry “crackberry” technology-dependent cult. And any one of you “old schoolers” who roll your eyes at me and say “oh no, not her too,” let me give you my reasoning. I carry a large purse. Why? Well apart from it being fashionable, it worked for me because I need space to carry my day planner, my camera, my phone, and my ipod along with all the other stuff women keep in their bag full of tricks sans a pacifier, a Thomas the Train, wipes, and an extra diaper (okay, that’s only Saturday through Tuesday, but you get my mommy humor).  So needless to say, I have been eyeing the Iphone specifically because I knew it would easily work well with my itunes and my ihome player in my bedroom. I definitely wanted to wait, however, because it is a bit pricey compared to other phones, especially since my phone company demands a monthly Internet package when hooking up an iphone. But when I lost my phone last week, I knew I would have to hasten our inevitable union/love-affair. And so it was Thursday that my Iphone and I met. We have been getting to know each other over the last few days and I must say, he is everything I thought he’d be and more. I have now condensed my day-planner, camera, phone, and ipod into one device. I bought a holder for it that even has a slot for my ID/credit card so I can actually just leave my purse in the trunk when I want to travel light (although hanging my keys from my jeans belt loop isn’t very classy, but hey…sometimes I just don’t care). The added bonus is that I was able to sync my iphone with my Yahoo contact list and so when I inputted everyone’s telephone numbers into my iphone, my Yahoo contacts showed up with the same info. So God-forbid I lose my phone again, I will no longer have to bombard you with funny stories and excuses about why I need your phone number again.

So according to the History Channel, “some” researchers believe that on Winter Solstice 2012, the alignment of the planet and the solar system could freeze our telecommunications. By that time, I will have been used to and reliant on my amazing technological device for almost four years….oh yeah, I’ll be so upset. 😉

Thank God I haven’t been swindled out of money like my cousin or have had my identity stolen like when I was 21 although I just might get a credit report and double check. It all started after the first of the new year. The only thing I can think of which could have set everything off is that I changed my wireless account. This perhaps took my name off of the National Do Not Call Registry because within a day or two of doing this, I became bombarded with telemarketing calls from various companies, some calling me as often as four times in one day. When I did answer the phone to one of them, they said  they heard I was interested in their services. I said I wasn’t and asked them how they heard this. They said I filled out a form on the Internet. I said I didn’t. I asked them if this form had any other information about me besides my phone number and they said yes, an email address. I asked them for the email address. It was an email address with my first name but with a domain name I had no idea existed. I was very upset. The lady said she’d take my name off their list. So how did a spammer get a hold of my phone number and my first name so they could begin filling out forms in my name to get telemarketers to call me? The telemarketers have to be buying these phone numbers from people who are payed to get a hold of phone numbers and first names and then fill out forms using them and then creating fraudulent email addresses with their first names. I just pray to God they don’t have my last name or any other information. I just might change my website address to this WordPress account for that very reason.

After this disturbing conversation with this telemarketer, I immediately reregistered my number on the NDNCR and then checked out this domain with which I supposedly registered an email account. I called the company and they said they couldn’t disclose any information about the person who set up the account or when they did unless I filled out a subpoena at the police department which could release this information. She did, however, freeze the email account for me. So now I need to go down this week and fill out this form and get to the bottom of this.

My other spammer issue is a separate one entirely, not as disturbing, but annoying nonetheless.  I also am having to finally close my junkmail email account (the email account I use when joining or visiting any websites that are not important to my livelihood) after 12 years. Some spammers have gotten a hold of my email address and are using it to spam people. I have hundreds of emails everyday that are “delivery failure notices” to people I have never emailed. When I read the email I supposedly sent, its a spam email. Grrrrrr. So I just spent an hour now going to all my websites like facebook and babycentral and ebay and have had to change my email address to another junkmail account I recently created. Now I am going to erase my old treesa184 email address and start anew.

This is getting way too close in similarity to the time in my life when I was 21 and had my purse stolen by a prostitute in a dirty dive bar in Escondido. The woman memorized all the information on my drivers licence, used my canceled credit cards as other forms of identification and then after she was arrested for returning stolen merchandise at a mall nearby two months after she stole my purse, presented my drivers licence to the police officers. So she was arrested under my name until three days into her detention an intelligent police officer looked at this 300 pound woman (150 pounds of which was in her rear-end alone) and looked at the buck twenty younger woman on the ID and thought it didn’t add up. He looked up my name and found my police report I made about my purse being stolen. I had to go down and identify the woman. She was charged with stealing merchandise and impersonating me, but unfortunately didn’t get charged with stealing my purse because I couldn’t verify with 100 percent certainty that she was the same woman who stole my purse. I told them I could if I could see her rear-end in a line up instead of just looking at her mugshot. They declined. I told them 75% based on her face. Guess that wasn’t enough.

It might be time for me to set up some extra sensitive measures on my credit report like I did when this woman stole my purse. It was a 7-year screening on any credit inquiries about me. Can’t be too careful.