Prom Queen

Both my sister and brother won a state championship in high school, my sister in tennis and my brother in hockey.  I did not.   And they like to bring that up every so often.  Especially now that I am coaching tennis.  But I was Prom Queen!! And neither of them were even on the Prom Court!  Ha!  

So it was my sororities 80's Prom Informal, and part of the reason I won was because Caitlin was caught stuffing the ballots in her favor.  But, I was still Prom Queen, and as you can see by the picture I deserved it!  (And you can see I was still in my awkward phase that all began with the bangs/mullet.)

The "chaperone" is cousin Jannie.  She actually was the chaperone of the dance, so she just dressed the part and really looked like a chaperone.  Sorry Jannie, but consider this payback for Teddy Dog Show...

Thoughts...?

To begin, I teach at a Catholic high school.  The students have to wear uniforms everyday except for Fridays and other special days.  Overall, the school is great, but very conservative.  A mom called me an atheist and an Obama supporter in one accusation!!

Tonight, at our usual Tuesday night dinner, I started talking about an incident at school involving dress code, a detention, and making a student change his shirt.  Immediately everyone jumps on me for being a mean teacher!  Now maybe they were siding with my grandmother, who thinks and tells everyone that I am the meanest teacher in the world, to earn brownie points.  But here is the situation and then I would like to hear your thoughts--am I a mean teacher or did the family jump on the black sheep once again?!?

This student likes to push the limits.  He is nice, but a does not like to follow any rules.  Previous examples, when he was on Academic Probation he had to meet with all of his teachers once a week to catch up.  He never showed up once, and every teacher arranged his/her schedule to accommodate for him.  He asked me if he could have my cell phone number and we can meet at a Starbucks one Saturday to study.  And his school polo was never tucked in (dress code violation) and had multiple warnings and detentions for that as well.

 Today was one of the days when the kids were allowed to wear jeans and a green top if they donated money to a charity.  This student comes to school in jeans and a Pabst Blue Ribbon St. Patty's Day shirt. (For those who do not know, PBR is a cheap, nasty beer.) For violating school policy,  I wrote him a detention slip and asked the Dean of Students to make him cover up his shirt somehow.  Now, was I a mean teacher by punishing a student who wore a beer t-shirt to a Catholic high school?!?!

Thoughts...?

Fourth time is the charm!

Yea!  For a few weeks I have been on a kick of trying to make a really good soft pretzel, but have failed on all but one attempts.  The first time, I put wax paper in the oven and almost burnt the house down... oops.   The next two times were not good, too bland.   But today, I found a new recipe, thank you Alton Brown!  

I know the picture does not show how good these are, but trust me, they are goooooood!  And, they are almost gone...

Now, I need to work on making dips for them!