The Hotness

As of tomorrow, there are only seven days left of summer school. After July 26, I will have more than a month off, and am trying to think of ways to occupy my time. At first, I had planned on heading over to Europe for a couple of weeks, but the cost of plane tickets and the current exchange rates put a damper on that. I also briefly entertained the idea of traveling to someplace in Central America...such as Belize or Costa Rica, but eventually decided that now is not the best time to be spending the money, as there are debts and other things to take care of.

So, I think I'll be sticking around California next month... probably make a trip or two down to the San Diego area, and maybe head up north for awhile on another soul-searching journey, like the one I made in 2002.

I'd also like to take advantage of the time off and see many of the sights in Los Angeles that I have neglected to see over the last five years. Believe it or not, I've never been to the Getty or LACMA or MOCA or even the rather cheesy La Brea Tar Pits.

Summer school has been just as dull as I said it was during my last post. I ended up having to spend almost two weeks covering nothing but fractions and the adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing of such. Most of them didn't have trouble with multiplying and dividing...but adding and subtracting threw many of them into confusion, and left me feeling inadequate as an educator as I struggled to get them to understand why and how one finds the lowest common denominator. Eventually, most of them got it...although the cynic in my wonders how many of them will still remember in September.

So, last weekend, I made a brief foray up to the fair city of Fresno, in order to attend my cousin's 30th birthday party. I left Friday after work, and returned home late Sunday afternoon, around 6:00. It was a good time, but being around all my married cousins with all their children was indeniably frustrating, as I continually had to dodge questions about when exactly am I going to get married.

I finally saw Batman Begins this weekend, having not had much time for movies as of late. I have to say: I loved the hell out of this movie. Batman Begins was everything that the original Batman should have been, and more. What amused me even more was the manner in which the creators of Batman Begins pretty much completely ignored the other four films in terms of continuity. It's almost as if the creators of this film knew that their product was far better than any of the others and didn't have to bother with making this one fit. As far as I'm concerned, those other four films never even happened. Christian Bale's Batman was far more intense and far more believable than Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and the extremely laughable George Clooney.

It has been extremely hot over the last couple of weeks here in Los Angeles, with temperatures occasionally reaching into the high 90s. It's supposed to get even hotter next week as well. I honestly cannot stand the intense heat- particularly not in my crappy little shit hole apartment, which is normally ten degrees hotter than whatever the temperature is outside.

So, I imagine that about covers my life over the last three weeks. This week I will be trying to get kids to understand how to find the area of triangles and circles. Wish me luck.