Dear Six Flags

Dear Six Flags,

There was a time when I would beg my parents to go to Six Flags Over Texas.  Any part of Texas, really.  Arlington or San Antonio, it didn't matter to me.  I LOVE roller coasters.  I love theme parks in general.  I'm older now and I still love roller coasters and theme parks, and in my heart I still love Six Flags, but I'm also a high school teacher.  And once a year, we take all of the band, choir, and orchestra students who have earned the right to play at Texas State Solo and Ensemble in Austin to Six Flags Fiesta Texas.  And they love it.  They love it so much.  It makes me happy to see them have a good time.

But, dear Six Flags, it's always at the end of May and it's always too humid for this El Pasoan. Furthermore, it comes after a grueling weekend of long bus rides (did I mention we live in El Paso?), fast food, gas station food, hotel breakfast, and running around after kids all over the UT Austin campus, often while carrying or dragging heavy things and stepping over exhausted teenagers stretched out on every available surface, whining about how incredibly awful their three hour car ride home is.  So, unfortunately, by the time I get to Six Flags, I just can't bear to get on a roller coaster.  I fear that it would anger my aging body and really, a ten hour bus ride home after that just doesn't sound all that appealing.  Not at all. I had spinal surgery last year and, because I know you post signs warning about such things, I won't be going on the roller coasters at all.

I will spend my time at Six Flags in the air conditioned food court, probably with a book and a bottle of ibuprofen, watching Looney Tunes.  I might hop on the train once or go through that Scooby Doo haunted house ride.  It's pretty tame.  And let me tell you: after two days of fast food, gas station food, hotel breakfast, and UT Austin student fundraiser barbecue sandwiches, there is virtually no limit on what I would pay for a salad bar.  Your website indicates that your pizzeria offers salads, but, a salad bar is pretty different.  I'm going to take a guess and say that the pizzeria salads are pre-assembled and are primarily lettuce.

Let's start at $25.  I would seriously, at this point in the trip, pay $25 for a single trip to the salad bar.  A.  Single.  Trip.  Throw in extra trips and make it a really, really good salad bar (a la Jason's Deli) and I'll up it to $35.  I'm not even kidding. Because even if I don't spend the day in the heat at the park, I spent the day before this in the heat at UT Austin, and the thought of just about anything else makes me a little queasy.

Thanks, Six Flags.  I'll always love you deep down.

Stuff...and Thaaaangs

This isn't likely to be a coherent post.  That's ok, right?  You guys don't have great expectations from me at this point.  It's been like two weeks since I posted my last post.  And right now, thanks to some spasms in the muscles in my neck, I am under the influence of muscle relaxers and I will not claim responsibility for anything that follows.  Here's some stuff and thangs from the last couple of weeks.

1. We said goodbye to old White Cat.  It was time.  He was losing control of his legs and was getting to be a pretty cranky old man.  Our vet was wonderful.  They even sent us a card.  We buried him underneath the tree out back and he spent his final days outside in the herb garden at every opportunity and had tuna for every meal.

2. We had UIL contest this past week.  I don't know if anyone here watches "Glee", but look, that is so not what it's about.  Sure, we spend time preparing the music, but going to contest is pretty much paperwork.  Double check the performance requirements for your school.  Select literature. Fill out a purchase order for any music you don't already have.  Submit.  Wait for it to come back from business.  Mail to vendor.  Complete online entry for each group.  Request failure report from office clerk.  Receive failure report. Ctrl+F for the name of every student in your program.  Write everybody down who's failing.  Determine who gets an AP/IB/Dual Credit waiver.  Check eligibility action days to see if the ineligible kids can regain eligibility at the next progress report.  Fill out a form 1, in alpha order, and print. Put every single eligible kid on it, for Pete's sake, whether they're going or not.  For each group.  Track down an admin to sign it.  (I think admins should all be implanted with tracking devices.  Sometimes they're hard to find.)  Complete a list of students who are attending, complete with ID numbers, on the appropriate attendance form.  Deliver to attendance. Complete a stage diagram.  Assemble and number three sets of judge's scores (so, this is 9 pieces of music per group). Scores didn't come in?  Get on your email and see who you can borrow it from.  If nobody has them, you can make copies, put them in a binder, and include a receipt, a purchase order, or a letter from the publisher. If you used an eprint, better include that receipt as well. Collect permission slips from each student.  Double check them.  Put the medical forms and student travel acknowledgement forms they signed in the beginning of the year in a binder just in case someone falls off of the stage. Have kids who are planning to go home with their parents?  They get to sign a release of liability for alternate transportation.  Congratulations.  You are now ready to go to contest.

3. Speaking of UIL: for my non-Texan friends, and non-musician friends,  here's a breakdown.  Get all of your kids on the bus and travel to the contest site. Enjoy lovely views of the border fence on your way. Be greeted at the contest site by a monitor who will verify your school and take your judge's scores, form 1, and stage diagram.  Get instructions on where the kids will wait. 20 minutes before your scheduled warm-up, go to the unpacking area.  Your kids may not play in here or you will get disqualified.  (I should mention: any violation of UIL rules, DQ.  Improper planetary alignment, DQ.  They don't mess around.)  Collect every cell phone and carry it with you from now until you are done. Warm up for your designated time.  When the monitor calls time, you must stop playing.  Kids go to the stage in a single file line, while two backstage monitors with clickers count them.  If the number of kids is greater than the number on your form 1, everyone must line up and roll must be taken.  Anyone not on the form 1 will not perform.  If you have more kids on the form 1 than are on stage, that's ok. But if you take an ineligible kid, you can expect to go before the almighty UIL gods and risk your job or sanctions to your school that last for years.  Everything on stage is already set up thanks to your super accurate stage diagram.  Perform within the allotted time.  Yes, they keep a stopwatch on your setup and tear-down and everything.  Come off of the stage and get handed a cold bottle of water immediately.  You need this because it is blazing hot on stage. Kids are counted again going into the sight reading room.  Your numbers must match.  Sight read (this means that you have 8-10 minutes to teach the kids a piece that you and they have never seen before, and they can't actually play until it's time to perform it.)  The rules for this could be a book roughly the size of the US Tax Code, and they're worse for band.  Luckily, the director gets a three minute score study period, which is nice. Leave sight reading, pack up, and wait for buses.  Give cell phones back.  Go backstage to get your scores.  Either get disapproving lectures or a hug from the UIL region secretary.  Sometimes both.  Smile when you remember that regardless of your score, there's a candy bar in your results envelope.

4.  As you can see, I've been busy.  But we've done a lot of planting in the back yard despite the busy schedule and we have some neat things up.  I'm not doing too well with transferring of photos lately, so you'll have to take my word for it.

5.  PJ decided it was fun to play with a fledgling sparrow that was in the backyard and we had to take it to wildlife rehab.  You have to get there before 8:00, because that's bird bed time, apparently.  They're very nice people.  The little bird will be ok.  PJ continues to PJ.  Right now he's on my lap (all 90 pounds of him) because he's scared of the thunder.

6.  On Saturday night we bought cheese from a kid in a gas station parking lot.  Look, it's asadero and that stuff is delicious.  It's worth the risk.  Later we ended up in what is possibly the sketchiest dive in the sketchiest part of town, right next to Chico's Tacos, which is the sketchiest food in the world.  It was a good night.

7.  I'm really enjoying this podcast right now, and all of you sci-fi and conspiracy nuts should get in on it.  It's free.  Welcome to Nightvale.

8.  Saturday was Free Comic Book Day.  If you didn't go, you missed out.  We came home with 52 free comic books.  I'll take this opportunity now to tell you how I got into reading comic books as an adult.  When you're teaching, unfortunately you don't often have time to read for pleasure.  Comic books are nice because they come in installments that are short and easy to digest.  They also have wonderful artwork, and are a little less limited in some aspects of storytelling than novels are.  They're a wonderful medium.  I highly recommend visiting your local comic book store and giving them a try.  We have a box and subscribe to several titles between us, but find one you like and follow it for awhile.

Comics I'm reading:

• Rocket Girl.  
• Pariah
• The Twilight Zone
• The X-Files and its companion series, Millenium
• The Walking Dead
• Chew

If you aren't big into giving out candy for Halloween, or if you just want to encourage kids to read, check out Halloween Comicfest for information about ordering mini comic bundles for Halloween.  We did this last year and they were quite popular.  We went through something like 150 mini comics.