"This Time For Sure!" -- Bullwinkle J. Moose

The word "haphazard" is a very cool word, but even it fails to capture the lolly-gagging attitude yours truly has had about blogging the last few weeks. And don't we all enjoy reading blog posts about not blogging? No, it's not fascinating stuff, but heading into a long-awaited Spring Break I've just not had the oomph going toward the whole blog thing.

But now the excruiatingly-awaited Break is here, and like a sheet pulled off a lousy painting at a bad art auction a new, dynamic blog is now unveiled. I even promise to write about something other than my not writing.

One new exciting feature here at Babble (for the next two weeks, anyway) will be "Live Blogging: Europe", in which your humble blogster spends far too vacation time in internet cafes telling you all the stuff he would be doing if he wasn't doing the same damn net surfing he could be doing in ABQ. Well worth the price of admission right there, I tell ya.

I'll be reporting "live" (and isn't all blogging "live" when you think about it?) from Munich and Prague, using funky keyboards with weird umlauts and the letter "Z" where our letter "F" is on the keyboard. One way you, Babble reader, could help out would be by paying me for this blog, hence making the trip tax-deductible.

A one-penny donation into a PayPal account and I can write-off all the $7.50 coffees and $19.00 blintzes I can consume. Or maybe I can't. I'm a schoolteacher, don't ask me about tax stuff. Those that can't do taxes teach and therefore never make enough money that taxes become a problem.

Whether tax-deductible or not, the wife and I are very excited about the trip because it will allow us to "live blog" from Europe. Okay, that's not why we're excited about the trip. In fact, there are probably 1,532 more exciting things about it than "live blogging". At least...but we do have the "live blogging" thing going for us, too.

And what does that mean for you, Burque Babble consumer? It means more blog entries (I'm almost to 300 now), with more cynical blog goodness cooked right in! It means you'll get to learn where various letters are on Czech computer keyboards! It offers you the vicarious thrill of getting vicariously fatter and fatter from all the sausage-heavy meals downed with pilsner beer to be gobbled over the next 10 days or so! I'm getting fatter so you don't have to!

Enough marketing. I always sucked at marketing...hence the teaching thing, perhaps. By the way, despite the fact that few if any people seemed to like them, I will be posting more "inside the temple" teaching stories that don't conform to the typical "what about the children, won't anybody think about the children?!?" ranting. I found over the last few months that it's hard for me to write about teaching while actually doing it. I'm guessing my reaction was like that of an ER doctor who comes home from work to watch "ER". I needed the time from the "box" (my term for the classroom) to be consumed with thinking about anything but school, and writing about stupid things like testing, more testing and "what about the children...." was just making me morose. On top of that, nobody seemed to like reading the entries.

But ignoring that last fact, I'm going to lay a few teaching stories down from the safe distance of another continent, including why our school police officer took a job as an educational assistant. Trust me, it's pretty funny....if you like to laugh at things so pathetic and sad that most people would simply cringe and look away in self-righteous disgust. Okay, maybe I'm overselling it...but it is pretty funny.


And now on to more packing. To all my teacher/student friends, have a good Break, and try to think about everything but "the box" as much as possible. Lastly, thanks to Sarah (if I got that name right) for your very nice comment to my last post..the one from weeks ago. And to the other folks who wondered just where the Hell I wandered off to...thanks for wandering by this little piece of the blogosphere. I promise to be better, really, I promise. This time for sure.