Job

Well, about two weeks ago I put in my letter of resignation. So I am officially without a job for next year. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I was in Anchorage where I had interviews with school districts throughout Alaska. I received two job offers, but I turned them down. I had a screening interview with the principal of the school I really want to go to, but I wasn't offered a job because they are still doing internal transfers within the district. But, she said she really wants to hire me and that she sees no way she will fill all the positions that I could take and wants me at her school. She also said that she would like me to come back sometime and tour her school. I took that as a really good sign. I was also told by a few other districts that as soon as the internal transfers were done they had a job for me. So, while as of now I'm unemployed for next year, I'm not too worried about finding a job.

Problems at church today

Today we had some problems at church. First, in sacrament meeting, we had two families walk in and there was nowhere for them to sit. We had to pull out the hard/unpadded chairs for them to sit on.

Then in Relief Society, we had so many sisters in the Relief Society room that we had to get chairs out of the other classrooms and put them in the aisle. There was no way to walk in the room. Even then, we had a sister standing in the doorway. It's a good thing the fire chief didn't stop by. The sisters sitting in the middle had to wait for the sisters on the edge to leave and move their chairs so that they could get out. We decided that we need to stick the primary outside in the conex and take over the primary room. That or add a second story.

Then at the potluck, all the round tables were set up with chairs around them. We usually only use five of the seven. Half of the branch had gone through the food line, and there were no more spots to sit left. So, we had to pull out the long tables that never get used and pull chairs out of all the classrooms. It was a little crowded in the chapel/multi-purpose room. I told the branch president he might want to look into getting a bigger building.

Isn't it nice to have problems at church.

Basketball

This year, our girls team has had an interesting time. Here's a new story about what's been going on. If you have a bunch of time to waste, read the comments and you'll get an idea of people's midset up here. It's not necessarily good.

http://www.adn.com/2010/03/15/1184935/barrow-keeps-defying-odds.html

By the way, the girls took 5th in state and the boys took 3rd.

Battle of the Books 2010

My team just finished up this years Battle of the Books. This year's team work really hard. We meet at least once a week during lunch to study and they meet on their own.

I decided to take the role of coach a little bit more seriously. Here's what they had to do when

they missed questions

.

On the 26th of January we competed in the district battle. They did very well and beat the 2nd place team by over 30 points. Since the total points possible was 128, that was a pretty big win.

Here's a picture of the team during the battle. Popcorn was a favorite treat during the competition.

Celebrating the Win.

Showing off the medals they received.

Posing with their district trophy.

We made it to the state competition. They made it all the way to the second round of the tournament where they took 10th place. Here's a picture of them in the sate battle.

Sun Again!

Once again it's that time of year. The sun choose to show it's face over the horizon. We had a teacher inservice planned for Saturday during that time. Luckily, even the administrators realized what an important day it was and allowed us to have an extra long lunch so we could go out and see it. Fred, R.J., and I drove out to a spot where we could get a good view of it.

Fish Bowl

Have you ever felt like you were in a fish bowl and that a lot of people were staring and watching you. Well, I had that experience this week at work. I received an e-mail on Monday telling me that about fifteen administrators from across the district would be in my room on Wednesday afternoon to observe. What they were there to observe I wasn't told, and I still don't know. They came in right before my last class started on Wednesday. Since that's one of my small classes, there were more administrators in the room than students. I have to admit that I was quite nervous about it. It's really hard to act normal and natural when there are a lot of people watching you when you don't know why. I even had a couple students comment that they were nervous too. One students said out loud in front of all of them, "I can't work with all these people in here." The good thing is, that I couldn't have picked a better day for them to come observe. I had the students working on a survey project and acted great. It looked like a perfect assignment. The students were applying math into a real life situation, they were graphing, calculating , and even writing about their discoveries. What's weird is even now I have no clue why they were there. I haven't heard a thing back from anyone. I guess I couldn't have done too bad or I would have heard for sure.

Shoveling Job

I haven't been using the front door to the building where I live this week and everyone else in my section of the building has been out of town since the start of the week. So, Thursday after the Thanksgiving dinner at the church this is what I saw when I was dropped off. I have to admit I was a little surprised at how deep it was. There was noway in. Luckily I have another door around the corner that wasn't blocked. I only had to wade through thigh deep snow to get to it. But, on the bright side, I was able to open it.

So, this morning I got up and shoveled. First, I shoveled out a path from the door I was able to get in. Then I went around and tackled this entrance.

The snow was almost as deep as the shovel was tall.

Finally, about an hour later, my door was accessible. Yeah! I didn't even feel bad about skipping my run today.

By the way, these pictures were all taken around noon. You can tell there's not much light left here.