Dear Continental, Delta, Southwest, American, and every other stupid commercial airline,

I am writing this letter to inform you that you suck.  Because you repeatedly jack up your prices around the holidays, you are making it impossible for me to see my family during my winter break.  While I'm no economic genius, I understand the basic concepts of capitalism and supply and demand.  I also understand that you take advantage of people like me, who can only take vacations during the holiday breaks, because that's when the schools are closed.  Flight prices magically go up between $100 and $300 from normally overpriced airfare if I want to fly during the only time when most children and teachers have time off.  I've been really excited about having some time off and seeing my family.  Thanks a bunch for ruining the only thing I was looking forward to during the break.  I'm sure I'll have a wonderful time sitting on the couch by myself while everyone else I know (including Lex) is still at work or is away visiting their families.  While we're at it, give a big high five to your friends the cruise lines, resort hotels, Disneys Land and World, and the rest of your evil little club.  In conclusion, you are a bunch of capitalistic jerks, so [insert your swear word of choice here] you.

Best wishes in this holiday season,

Lauren

Word of the Day:

frantic (adj) - very excited with worry or fear

What a day! 

I started off kind of bummed over some personal stuff I won't get into here.  Went off to work, same old, same old.  Had a nice chat with my mom this morning - I love her so much! - so that kind of lifted me back up and made me happy.  The kids came to school, and we actually got to all parts of my lesson plan for Language Arts, so that made me happy, but then things were a bit difficult for my Reading group, so we ended a little behind.  That happens sometimes, so I wasn't too bummed.  I got my students ready to line up for lunch and then stepped into the hall to ask another teacher a question.  When I came back one of my students was throwing a tantrum that eventually involved him grabbing my arms in an attempt to drag me down the hall.  Kind of a bummer.  He's only 82 lbs., so not too much physical damage to me, but any aggressive incident means lots of cumbersome paperwork.  Lunch was great - one of the other teachers and I set up this great Social Studies project for our kids to work on later - so I was happy about that.  Social Skills and Math were without incident.  Science was kind of tough due to student behaviors - bummer -  at the beginning, but half of my group got pulled out for independent services, so I let the two I had left catch up on some assignments while I wrote the incident report from earlier - definitely happy to get that out of the way.  Social Studies came around, we got the project going and it was fairly successful, but then one of the students (thankfully not mine) got really frustrated and threw a calculator at me, hitting me in the stomach - big bummer, it HURT!  More paperwork, of course.  The kids went home soon, yadda yadda yadda, I eventually left work and drove through traffic to my evening masters program class (which is a constant bummer, but we won't get into that here) and then I found as I walked into the classroom that it was cancelled!  Though I was bummed that I had driven there in the first place, I was so happy that I didn't have to spend 3 hours listening to the idiocy that is a constant factor of my program.  Plus, now I get to spend the evening with Lex (if he'd ever get home from work) and Charlie!  Definitely happy.

I hope tomorrow is a little more constant!  I don't particularly like rollercoasters, emotional or otherwise

(I realized the above is not quite true - I actually do enjoy many rollercoasters.  Ah, well.  I can't even spell Britney.  Clearly I make mistakes.)

Word of the Day:

That pretty much sums it up.  I hate to fly.  I don't have wings; it doesn't come natural to me.  But in 4 and a half hours I will be aboard a plane, defying gravity and nature and who knows what else, clinging to the arms of my tiny little airplane seat and [censored]ing off the person next to me (who will sadly not be Lex) every time I jump.  

 It's too bad I like my parents, otherwise I could stay safely on the ground, but alas, I do like my parents, and so off I go to visit.

Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if there was one day a year when I could take everyone that bothers me, sit them on a couch, and make them listen to all the things they do that annoy me or are stupid without them being able to interrupt.