This Week Will TAKS My Finances

Here we sit on the eve of the TAKS test (the middle schools already did some sort of pre-thingy today, but it didn't effect me personally), and I might as well be on Spring Mini-Break II for as little teaching as I'll be doing in the next three days. I've already griped about this test (and even pointed out when a very brave teacher did so in the paper), but now we're on the eve of the blasted thing, and it's really hitting home what a supreme waste of time it is (especially during the days when one grade takes a portion of the test while the other two grades get one last review session).

Thankfully, I'll be able to fill the intervening time with good stuff--extra workouts, a trip to see one of my fraternity chapters, arranging, practicing, extra sleep--but still, I'd rather be teaching, and I bet the students would rather be learning things like music instead of the same test elements drilled over and over for the whole year. Oh yeah, and as I said earlier, I'm out about 450 bucks because of it. Thank goodness this week only happens once a year, but still, to me, that's once per year too often.

The cube root of 13,824: I'm continually amazed how, after only a few months of watching, 24 just keeps getting better and better. I'm so glad I'm hooked. If you missed it tonight (or, perhaps better yet, if you didn't), Dave Barry has a humorous synopsis on his blog.