thing is, i'm sort of proud of myself for doing this journally thing. i really am. because at least it means i'm writing *something*, y'know? but occasionally i'll read over what i wrote in the previous entry, and i can only think about how totally incoherent i sound sometimes. i notice all the small errors, like when words are in subtly the wrong place, or i don't have quite the right ending on a word. and i wonder if it's even worth it. i mean, it is to me, because i like spewing my opinions and feelings and such. but for the reader? i'm not convinced. the only other journal i read with any regularity is Blueberry Hill, written by this very cool person named Jessie who also happens to be one of my boyfriend's ex-girlfriends. and i read her entries and sometimes i just despair. they're so... coherent. they have a *point*. sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are serious. but they have a cohesiveness that my entries and writing styles simply lack. at least when i'm writing as freely as i do for this journal. sometimes, though, i read her entries and i rejoice, because it makes me so happy that someone is out there saying things which i feel, and agree wholeheartedly with, and saying them so much better than i ever could.
at work i am getting to something different, that isn't labs, and that has been really wonderful. i'm still a little blah-feeling, but not nearly as much as i was on Monday. the boss is insisting i try to take a vacation day sometime soon [like, she wanted me to take tomorrow or friday, but neither of those work, so i'll probably do it early next week] because, as she puts it, my energy levels seem to be way down and i haven't taken a vacation day since May and it will help me to do something totally out-of-schedule like that. she's probably right.
it's funny, i'm sooooo tired of lab-related stuff, but i'm also way psyched about Middle School Science -- even specifically the activities for Middle School Science. there's some great stuff on the web for Middle School teachers and students. now if only there were actually a way to put the great stuff into a textbook without fucking things up.
i'm completely failing to see any Tanglewood performamces this summer,
which i'm very sad about. but it's just not feasible monetarily. which sucks,
because i actually have friends in the chorus. but alas, it is not to be.
hmm. this is apparently the Chad's ex-girlfriends entry. tonight he's seeing Marsha, the ex that was directly before me. she's the one i didn't meet for the longest time "because it would make her uncomfortable." but i did finally meet her by the simple expedent of running into her on the street one day while i was with Chad, and she seemed quite nice. anyway, she moved at some point and is now working for Prentice-Hall out in Chicago and is visiting their Dedham, MA office for a couple days. Prentice-Hall is evil, man. their middle school science program is notoriously rife with errors, which they fail to fix through repeated revisions, and use bad science to try to explain away. there was even a 20/20 program about them. i mean, they had were claiming a bunch of *biologists* [many of whom later denied authoring the book at all] as authors of the *physical* *science* book. does this seem like a bad idea to anyone else? *and* they tried to conceal the fact that they were biologists, trying to give them impression that more competent people had reviewed the book than really had. check out this Review of Physical Science Texts to see what i mean. the Prentice-Hall review is near the end. it's really quite frightening. the funny thing about Prentice-Hall, though, is that their college textbooks [and i believe their technical reference books] are really very well-respected. how do they fail so badly on the books for the incredibly important middle school years? note that i have no idea what Marsha specifically is working on, and this is not at all to be a reflection on her -- it was just a sort of tangential rant. i just wish i could actually hang out with her at some point. i think it would be nice. after all, some of his other exes are really great people. of course, some of them are evil, evil bitches, but what can you do. my belief is that Marsha would be on the cool, nice side.
of course, nearly everyone so far has failed miserably at putting out a decent middle school textbook. or even not-as-traditional middle school program. it's sort of pathetic. hopefully we'll do better. :) there's always something to be said about room for improvement.