Hairiness

I have discovered a very addicting game. I seriously spend hours playing this game when I'm waiting on Rex to get home from work.
http://www.addictinggames.com/pandasmahjongsolitaire.html
I finished all of the Christmas shopping today. Now I just have to wrap the presents for the Family Christmas party that's going on Sunday night and then I'm completely done. Hooray!
There's not a whole lot going on. I didn't have a job today so I went and got my hair did. I'm a brunette again!
The cats wanted to have their pictures on here, so here ya go (as well as a picture of my new hair):

Crystal wanted to be on the Interwebs.

Jake always has to be in the middle of everything.

Lizzie is just plain cute!

Hooray for dark hair!

Christmastime is here!

This is a closeup of the decorations around the railing. Yes, those are handmade bows.

The view of the railing from inside our apartment.

I was trying to take a closeup of the icicle lights, but it turned out really neat and blurry.

Parking lot view of our apartment's balcony.

Our tiny Christmas tree that hopefully the cats won't knock over this year.

Rex and I decided to decorate a little bit for Christmas last night, so I went to Walmart today to get the lights and such. It took me forever to decide exactly what I wanted to do, and then to find everything I wanted to do it. I think it turned out rather well though. :)
Last week was pretty boring for me, as not too many teacher like to take off the week after a major holiday that they get several days off for. If I did get a call to sub for someone, it was approximately 30 minutes before I would need to be there. So I did not work for BISD last week. I did enjoy getting back to work at the library. The children's librarians were all very excited to see me back. One even told me that when I'm not there everything goes to pot. That made me happy to feel like I'm contributing.
I'm working a half day tomorrow at a high school, and then I get to go see Twilight again with a friend from work. Life is good.

Ridonculousness

Tonight on the news there was a story about a school bus driver spanking a child. The news interviewed the child and the kid admitted to bullying another student and when the bus driver tried to verbally warn him, he asked what the driver was going to do about it and continued with bullying the other student. Then the bus driver had enough and went back there and spanked him. Then the kid started mouthing back and continued taunting the other child and the bus driver and the driver had enough and started chasing him around the bus. The news showed the video of the incident. What really fires me up is that the bus driver is going to get fired for this. Why??? What else can the driver do? They are required by law to stop bullying, but when this driver tried the child refused and continued bullying and taunted the driver as well. Finally the bus driver lost their temper. I know that the bus driver should not have spanked the child, but that child obviously needed it. The child said in his interview that he did it just to see what the bus driver would do. It drives me insane that this kid is going to get away with this! He probably won't even be kicked off the bus, which is definitely the LEAST that should happen for punishment. This kid needs to be taught a lesson, but there isn't going to be one. All this kid knows is that he won: the bus driver will no longer have a job. I was talking about the incident to Rex and he said that the kid probably will grow up to be a horrible person and probably already talks back to his parents. I told him that I know he does from my own personal experience in today's classrooms. The kids who will talk back to their teachers are the ones who talk back to their parents. The kids who are good in class are good for their parents. I can only think of one exception where the kid was good for me but bad for their parents, and that was because the kid liked me as a teacher. This kind of crap really makes me question whether I want to go back to regular teaching after this year's break. There are more and more children like this kid in the classroom. That is why so many teachers are quitting and there is a shortage of good teachers out there. There are so many of us who just get sick of all the crap and don't want to put up with it any more, so they go back to school and get their degree in business or something and get a boring office job, but at least you don't have kids yelling in your face and asking what you're going to do about it.
I have some serious decision-making to do. Right now I'm still wanting to be a band director, but the more stories I see like that in the news and the more bad experiences I have subbing....well...it makes me question my choices.