Your guide to having a great weekend.

As I write this, it's almost midnight on Thursday night. And you know what that means: it's almost the weekend!

(Skip forward to about 2:25 unless you want to watch the members of Loverboy engaging in semi-staged faux-witty banter.)

Because the weekend is only two short days long, you're going to want to make the most out of it. But it's not like back in university, when you'd shotgun a couple of beers at the crack of noon on Friday and keep the party rolling until sometime Monday afternoon* -- you work for a living! So, here are a few tips to make sure you squeeze the most out of your grown-up reprieve from responsibility.

* * * * *

1. Get a good sleep on Thursday night.

It's almost midnight, and I should really be under the covers already. If you're up late Thursday, you're gonna feel terrible all day Friday, and by 8pm you'll be fast asleep on your couch in front of a rerun of Just Shoot Me. So, bed down early, quaff a little NyQuil if you need to, and you'll wake up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Friday morning.

2. Pace yourself.

You've made it through Friday, and now it's nighttime and you're ready to party. Now, I know what you might be thinking -- I have a trunk full of beer, a mountain of coke and some knives already jammed into the stove elements; what man can stop me? -- but you're going to want to watch it, Pedro. Friday's merely a dry run for Saturday, so don't blow your wad all in one night. Besides, you have to get up early the next morning to pick up some eleven-sided bolts at Ikea that they forgot to pack in your Flüvënhävën or some shit like that.

3. Eat sensibly.

It's Friday night, it's 3:30 in the morning, and you've been going pretty hard. What could be better than a double Big Mac meal with poutine and a side of bacon grease? The answer is, absolutely nothing. Go ahead and pound it into yourself. It doesn't matter anyway; you'll probably just be puking it back up in a little while. But, damn, that's gonna taste good.

4. Make the most of your Saturday.

Farmer's markets, craft shows, free samples aplenty at the Costco: these are things that happen on Saturday mornings. Since you probably hit it too hard the night before, you're best off sleeping until past 4 -- woken up by intermittent bouts of projectile-vomiting, of course. Stay in bed, asshole!

5. Saturday night is the real thing.

Well, you made it through Friday without any (permanent) damage to your liver, a few hours in the drunk tank, or somehow waking up wearing someone else's socks on the outskirts of Owen Sound. Saturday is the real deal: get yourself gussied-up, pimped-out, whored-down, whatever's the parlance of the day. Then, plunk yourself down in front of the TV and watch that episode of Frontline on PBS you've been meaning to catch, maybe make a donation and get a nifty tote bag, and turn-in early. Besides, there's church tomorrow morning, if that's your thing.

6. Sunday is a day of rest.

• Meet the Press: NBC, 9am
• This Week with George Stephanopoulos: ABC, 10am
• Question Period: CTV, 11am

There's your plans right there. Make yourself a nice pot of coffee, grab the coziest blanket you have, and catch all those riveting round-table discussions on flat taxes, congressional redistricting and the latest goings-on in the Centre Block. Take notes; there's bound to be water-cooler talk on Monday about them, and you don't want to look the buffoon, do you?

7. Have a nice family dinner.

Grab a chicken from the coop, kill it, gut it, dress it, stuff it, and put it in the oven. (You all have chicken coops, right?) Make up a nice big pot of mashed potatoes, invite over the family (or someone else's, if you're an orphan), and enjoy each other's company -- until your mom asks you again if you're sure you're not gay because she hasn't met a girlfriend of yours in a while. Or ever. And you respond the same way you always do: Mom, just because your life has been an abject failure and "the 'beetus" took your toes doesn't mean you have to take out all your aggression on your children. But maybe that's just my family.

* * * * *

Whoops! Midnight, the "witching hour." And speaking of witches, has anyone heard from Ann Coulter lately? Anyway, it's off to bed for me. Good night, and have a fantastic weekend.
___________________________________________
* I went to Waterloo, so this never, ever, EVER happened.

We might be doomed after all.

My grade 9's are in the Electricity unit right now, and we're doing some very simple calculations involving power, energy and time. Seriously, folks, I'm giving them formula triangles which are simple as hell -- they don't even have to rearrange a formula, just cover up the one thing they want to solve for with their thumb, and the triangle tells them what the formula needs to be.

For the record, power = energy / time, or P = E/t. The triangle goes like this:

The question I presented to the class, and had them work somewhat independently to solve, went like this:

A refrigerator has a power rating of 3.2 kW, and it runs for 12 h. How much energy does it use?

This one kid, B, has trouble with math. Hell, B has trouble with everything; s/he's in their grade 11 year, but hasn't yet passed grade 9 science (failed it first time around, didn't manage to get it in Credit Recovery the next year (and if you can't do that, I'm sorry, there is really something wrong)). It really doesn't help that B can't seem to shut the hell up for more than 15 consecutive seconds.

For the record.... B and I got into a bit of a verbal back-and-forth a couple of weeks ago in class. I asked B, for the bajillionth time, to stop talking during the lesson. B shot back with the standard, "Sir, I'm not the only one who's talking!" -- and it went predictably for a while. But I got thrown a "Why are you picking on me?" and decided to go for broke. I shot back with, "I'm picking on you because I care about you. If I didn't care about you, I'd let you do whatever the hell you want. But I don't. So, stop it." And B stopped. But I can't keep bringing out this bazooka every time B can't stop talking, which is every fucking day. For the record, if you tell a kid to move across the classroom to an unoccupied desk and they don't... what then? I mean, you could send them to the office to get dealt-with down there, but honestly, that has always seemed like a huge cop-out to me. I'm not saying I've never done it, but the number of kids I've sent to the office in my nearly-11 years of teaching is very likely in the single-digits.

Anyway, I'm circulating around the class, helping kids individually that needed it (about half the kids, far as I could tell, managed to solve it on their own), and eventually I come around to B. Naturally, B hasn't even started -- but I decide that, darnit, we're going to get through this.

The first thing I have the kids do, after they've read the question at least twice, is to go through it and pick out the numerical information. These are grade 9s, so I don't pull tricky stuff on them like giving them extra numbers that don't mean anything; I play it straight with 'em.

I'll refresh your memory:

A refrigerator has a power rating of 3.2 kW, and it runs for 12 h. How much energy does it use?

me: "Alright, so, let's read this... 'power rating of 3.2 kW' -- what do you think you have there?"

B: "Uh.... [long, long pause] that's power, right?"

me: "Yup, it is. So, write P = 3.2 kW right there in the 'Information' section."

B: [writes it down]

me: "Alright, good. So, let's keep reading... 'runs for 12 h'. What do hours measure?"

B: "Ah...."

me: "OK, so, if you say that a baseball game takes three hours, what does 'three hours' measure?"

B: [utterly bewildered look]

me: "Look, it's going to be one of three things: energy, power or time. Look at the formula you're using. So... what does 'twelve hours' measure?"

B: "I... [long pause] uh..."

me: "All you need to say is one of the words 'energy,' 'power' or 'time.' So, which thing would '12 hours' measure, out of these three?"

B: [cautiously, but without any sort of certainty] "...energy?"

me: [head nearly exploding] "Um... no. Hours measures time. It's time. So, write t = 12 h here."

I'd like to say things got better, but they didn't. Meanwhile, as I'm trying to teach B some exceptionally basic mathematical reasoning skills, the rest of my class is starting to go insane and bounce around the interior walls of the place.

As I've said before, my job is ridiculous.

With co-workers like this, eh?

Around the lunch table today...

me, licentiously: "That Serena Williams, man. YES."

several people: (laughing)

R: "Oh god. No thanks."

me, more licentiously: "YYYYYYEEEESSSS."

V: "Really? Her? I thought you were into petite Asian women."

me, puzzled: "Um... what?"

V, backpedaling a bit: "That's... what you're into, right?"

me: "Hey, I'm not gonna say I've never dated one in the past, but I wouldn't say I'm exclusively into them."

V, disappointed: "...oh."

* * * * *

I fully realize Serena Williams is an acquired taste. But, brother, have I acquired it.

Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

A new word I learned.

Admittedly, this is second-hand, but well worth sharing.

This kid I taught last year, let's call him Steve... wow, he was a crazy one. I won't get into specifics, but let's just say he was easily in the top-3 most challenging kids I've ever dealt with. That said, he's definitely likeable, in a weird way -- but, he will drive you fucking crazy.

Oh, and he's also exceedingly vulgar.

A colleague recently relayed an anecdote wherein he was having a conversation with the lad in question, and Steve used this phrase:

"he clapped her ass"

Now... to you and me, that might mean something like "he patted her on the derriere" -- you know, like two hands clapping means one hits the other. But no, it means... well... copulation.

Two things jump out at me.

1. That word is very typically South Scarberian -- partially opaque in meaning, short in length and sharp-sounding, and vulgar. Pure textbook.
2. Really? Steve thought it was appropriate to mention anal sex in a conversation with a teacher? That's god damn insane.

But then again, so is Steve.

Things teenagers say.

Vignette #1
Two boys, grade 9 science class working on seatwork, the day after Sidney Crosby got hit in the face with a puck

C: "Hey, what's the name of that guy who plays for the Leafs?"

J: "Um... which one do you mean?"

C: "You know, that famous guy. Is it... Stevie Wonder?"

J: (bewildered) "Uh... do you mean... Sidney Crosby, who plays for the Penguins?"

C: (relieved) "Yeah! That's the guy."

J: (bewildered) "Wow."

* * * * *

Vignette #2
Grade 9 science class, during a whole-class discussion about the Earth and the Moon and their structures

(N.B. "N's" English is about 70%; he's originally from Pakistan)

N: (at back of class) "Um... sir? Have you ever heard of... ah... what's it called... [makes gesturing motion with his hands]... I think it's called a... a 'glory hole'?"

class: (absolutely no reaction, [surprisingly])

me: (showing no outward reaction) "I... no, I've never heard of that."

N: (gesturing again) "It's... hmm. Well, have you ever heard of a hole that appears in the ground? Apparently it's really deep?"

me: (inwardly relieved) "Ah! You mean a sinkhole. Yeah, there was just one in Florida a few weeks ago that swallowed a house and killed a guy."

N: (relieved) "That's the story I heard too. Do we get them around here?"

me: "Nah, we're alright here. We have a different type of bedrock."

* * * * *

Vignette #3
Grade 12 physics class, most students are paying attention to the demo at the front of the class (some working on problems already)

Demonstration: Newton's Cradle (in the context of elastic collisions)

me: "So, eventually the motion dies down to nothing, because the collisions aren't entirely elastic, and the kinetic energy goes away into sound and heat. Then the balls are motionless." [you see where this is going. --ed.]

N: "How could you get the thing to go on forever?"

me: "If you lose a tenth of a joule of energy every time through, and the ball only has 1 J of energy to start with, that means in ten swings it's done. What you have to do, then, is increase the... uh... mass of the balls..."

N and a few others: (big grins, then bursts of laughter)

me: "Well then... I think I should probably just stop there."

Things teenagers say.

"If you're going to steal a car, you've gotta know how to parallel-park."

Truer words have possibly never been spoken.

Greetings from the Sunshine State.

Well, so much for writing here regularly.

Anyway, bitches, here I am. And where am I, pray-tell? Currently, I am seated on a chair in a room in a hotel in Lakeland, which is in Florida. It's my Seventh Annual Spring Training Baseball and First Sunburn Of the Year trip, and so far it's fulfilled both criteria:

1. spring training baseball
2. sunburn

Because I'm exceptionally pale -- they'd probably let me in the door at the Albino Convention -- I managed to get a pretty nice pink glow today. Part of it was my fault, as I'd forgotten to put on sunscreen before the game. But a good chunk of it goes to Mother Nature herself, because until noon it was either pouring rain or just sorta dreary and misty, thereby allowing me to forget the aforementioned sunscreen. What a bitch, eh?

Today's game was on the Gulf coast of Florida, in the city of Clearwater, against the Phillies. I've never been to Clearwater before, and I didn't really get to see much of it, but it's close to Tampa, and Tampa is a god damn hell hole. Ergo, there's bound to be some spillover to Clearwater, right?

(Actually, I don't think that's true at all. Clearwater is much closer to the coast than Tampa is, and the places on the coast tend to be tourstified/fancy/at-least-presentable. So there's that. If anything, Clearwater would form a barrier protecting the coast from the shittiness of Tampa, and vice-versa.)

After the game, instead of diving elbows-deep into Tampa's notoriously bad rush-hour freeway traffic -- the intersection of 275 and 4 is referred to as "Malfunction Junction" -- I decided to head up the coast a bit on US-19 to see what was up there. What I observed can be summarized in a bullet-point list.

• oodles of billboards frequently advertising things such as...
• vasectomies (including "No incision! No scalpel!" and an assurance that the doctor in question has performed over 26,000 such procedures)
• plastic surgery of various flavours (chiefly liposuction)
• personal-injury lawyers (including one with a female lawyer which asks rhetorically, "Have you ever argued with a woman?")
• a picture of a cute baby and the caption, "My heart starts beating 18 days after conception!" -- so, presumably, something right-to-life-ish
• gas station after gas station, all puzzlingly displaying different prices (in Toronto most of the stations move in perfect lock-step, except for full-serve ones which are consistently 0.4 cents per litre higher than self-serve)
• the red/green cycle on traffic lights is WAY longer here than in Canada, which makes for some idiotically-long backups
• lotsa churches, man

The jewels of the US aren't often found along these crazy-busy, strip-mall, chain-store roads. They're found in the smaller places, the independent stores, the places that you need to dig a little to find. Hell, tonight I had dinner at a little Turkish restaurant in downtown Lakeland, and it was fantastic (and not out on US-98 with the Applebee's and the Hooters and the TGI Friday's).

That's why I'd love to go back to France -- I visited Paris in 2001 for a week in July, and it was insanely busy and touristy -- but go to a much smaller place. I think it'd be amazing to find a little place in the middle of nowhere, where few people speak English (if any), and just chill out there for a week, forced to sharpen my rusty grade 11 French into something workable. Could be fun.