Haines His Way

The WILL & GRACE episode tonight is one of the funnier ones of the season - the SOUND OF MUSIC singalong which also introduced Taye Diggs as Will's potential boy friend.

There are new episodes of SMALLVILLE and SUPERNATURAL tonight (and the CBS shows, too, I believe.)

Thursday morning greetings!  I'm in telephone reference now until noon.

TOD - Swisshotel, Chicago; Flanigan's Inn, Springdale, Utah; Cave Spring Farm Bed & Breakfast, near Mammoth Cave, KY.  Later this afternoon, when I'm at my desk computer, I'll post more info on this last place.  It was so unique.

Then there's the time I was hired to do a workshop by an agency in eastern Ohio and they put me up in a Motel 6.  But I guess that's another TOD all together.

Bem thanks for sharing about your reading....you can take the lad out of the theatre but you can't take the theatre out of the lad !!

My stove needs replacing.


There are blue sparks coming fromthe elemnets... not a good sign in Vixdad's opinion... so last night we went stove shopping.  What an exciting life I do lead.


In other news, the Vixter's report card came and she is on the honor roll due to her getting her math grade up five points since last semester, and a total of 10 points since the first semester... thanks to DR WFO for being available for homework phone consultations!!!

Congratulations to the Vixter on her great report card and honor roll designation!

DR Vixmom - something similar happened to our oven and we just had to have the element replaced.  Or do you mean the stove top burners?

Wonderful to see dear Rodzinski back amongst us


Hello Roddy!
Well, Hello Roddy!
It's so nice to have you back where you belong

Vixmom, tell the Vixter that I am very proud of her ...don't tell her I flunked math, however.

I struggle with math terrribly... thank goodness for Professor  William F  Orr... mathematical genius extrodinaire!!  He helped me pass my college math courses and now he is helpng the Vixter in middle school!!


_{(because I can't!!)}

Good morning all!

Well the director has cast 50 people in THE SOUND OF MUSIC and created non-existent characters for some (son for the butler, daughter for the maid) and it will be chaos....but I am out of it!!

DR TCB - Max's songs are in, as are I Have Confidence and Something Good from the movie.  My Favorite Things moves to the thunderstorm scene, and I am not sure what happens to the poor goatherd, but time will tell.  The only song GONE, as far as I know is An Ordinary Couple.

This method is reminiscent of a community theater director I have had the disfortune, I mean pleasure, of both working with and seeing his work.  He loves to add extra characters to accomodate all who auditioned.  Mostly they just sit in the background pantomiming badly, but once he added a significant character who had tons of stage business and interactions with the cast.  The thing was, we couldn't tell who the hell she was supposed to be.  We narrowed it down to ghost or cognitively impaired family member that nobody speaks of or to.

I did terribly in math all through middle school and up until my junior year in high school where I found myself with an AMAZING teacher for algebra 2 (was a sequel really necessary?) He differed from all of my other teachers because he had multiple ways of explaining a concept, so if you didn't understand the first time around, he wouldn't just repeat but try explaining from another angle.  He could be kind of a jerk in that he had high expectations of our behavior and if anyone strayed he took it personally.  But for the most part he was an awesome teacher. When I ended up in someone else's class for my senior year, my mom demanded that I be transferred.

My spring break started yesterday afternoon and will last for the next week and a half.  I'll still be working at GMHC through Monday afternoon, but then I'm totally off until the 24th.  My mom is coming for a visit on Monday night (this is the busy season for houseguests!) and we are going to take a brief roadtrip.  Okay, so I also have class next Tuesday and an interview and job fair to attend next Friday but it's still mostly like a spring break, just sprinkled with a few obligations.

Oh and once I go back to my internship after spring break, I will only have 2 weeks remaining.  I can't believe my last day is May 4th.  Although I am tempted to see them one more time the following week so that I can help transition them to their new therapists.

Oops, thought I'd logged out earlier!  I got yanked away for more "training" on our new PC reservation system, which is now up and (sort of) running.  

Can you say TECHNOSTRESS?

Looks like THE COLOR PURPLE, JERSEY BOYS, and THE DROWSY CHAPARONE will have three of the Tony Best musical slots for themselves. The fourth I suppose will be between LESTAT, TARZAN, and THE WEDDING SINGER, all of which have been getting mixed word of mouth. If none of them take off, I guess they could throw Lloyd Webber a bone and put THE WOMAN IN WHITE up just to fill the last slot, but usually that goes to a show that is at least still running.

I expect that a certain portion of the Vixter's math issues are genetic...both Vixdad and I excelled in English and struggled in math and she seems to follow suit....(although we have still not admitted to her that we struggled in math becasue we don't want to give her an excuse for not trying.)

But last years math teacher was horrible.  She was a first year teacher, who had spent her  student teaching  time as a social studies teacher and then  spent a year as a "permanent substitute" in social studies.  She had no math teaching experience at all and they start algebra and geometry in 6th grade now.  

When Vix brought home failing grades I went to the teacher to ask for extra help classes and/or remedial classes and she told me "Well, I'm not really worried, she's only 'just' failing... she has about a 60 average, and over half of my students are failing and she has one of the highest failing averages......"

HUH???!!!!!

Over half a first year teacher's students are failing ... and she's not worried?!!!

I ended up raising a stink for weeks before I was finally able to get her put in a remedial class  that met once a week.  After ONE session with the remedial teacher the Vixter got a 100 on a math test, she hadn't passed a single one to that point.

Unfortunately, it took several months before they put her in the remedial class and then it was only once a week and she fell way behind where she should have been for the beginning of 7th grade.

This year's teacher really has been patiently working with the Vixter.