Summer vacation

My summer vacation officially began exactly 42 minutes ago. Since then I've come home, put Ella down for a nap, changed into my pajamas, eaten a bag of gummy bears, drank a glass of chocolate milk, and started watching Cinderella Man. Needless to say it doesn't get much more relaxing than this. Now before you start the chorus of how easy teachers have it I will tell you that I start teaching summer school on the 12th and I'm enrolled in SEVEN classes, all online however. So my time off won't consist simply of floating in a swimming pool and drinking pina coladas all day long. I actually have stuff to do. But for today it's all about taking it easy. My apologies to all of you who are reading this while stuck at work. That must suck right about now.

White Chicks was robbed!

This weekend I watched Bravo's four-hour countdown of the 100 funniest movies of all time. For the record Animal House and Caddyshack were the top two, neither of which I have ever seen. After you see Ben Stiller movies pop up six times you tend to question the experts who compiled this list. Plus Ace Ventura and The Wedding Singer both in the top ten? And which person over the age of nine would rank Shrek as the third funniest movie ever? Granted there are comedies that for some reason or another I love that critics and the general public loath. So here I go with my top 25 comedies. Sorry Tom Green, Freddy Got Fingered just missed out.

1. Annie Hall
2. Ferris Beuller's Day Off
3. Swingers
4. When Harry Met Sally
5. Uncle Buck
6. National Lampoon's Vacation
7. Raising Arizona
8. Rushmore
9. Dumb and Dumber
10. Pretty Woman
11. Tommy Boy
12. Some Like It Hot
13. Austin Powers
14. Broadcast News
15. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
16. Good Morning Vietnam
17. Groundhog Day
18. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
19. Napoleon Dynamite
20. Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
21. Elf
22. Hitch
23. Waking Ned Devine
24. Parenthood
25. Bruce Almighty

An awfully smelly insect

In Science we're doing a unit on insects and today we were talking about butterflies. So the lesson is going along nicely. The students are actually listening and not goofing off for a change. As we move on to discuss the life cycle of a butterfly I simply write the word "butterfly" on the board, or so I thought. As I walk away from the board after jotting down the final letter my students go back to their normal giggling and talking out. Frustrated, I ask them to quiet down when one brave girl raises her hand and says "Mr. Ritchason, I think you made a mistake." She points to the board and I immediately realize I had forgotten two very important letters. Instead of butterfly I had written the ever popular insect known as the butt fly. I'd better be careful to not leave off the first two letters when we discuss the grasshopper next week.

Something you don't see every day

So Ella and I were just sitting on the front porch after a stroller ride around the neighborhood. Out of the corner of my eye I notice a junior high age girl across the street on a unicycle. The best part was that she was arguing with herself. "No you don't like me because I don't have pretty hair like Becca. I hate her!" When she discovered that both Ella and I were staring at her transfixed the girl jumped off and reached into her Full House backpack. She whips out a flip phone, opens it up, and immediately begins yelling into it as though she just received a frantic call from Homeland Security. In her best Jack Bauer voice she bellows "We don't have time for this! It can't wait any longer! Something has to be done!" She snapped the phone shut in fury and threw it back into the knapsack with a picture of Candace Cameron. Before heading off she pulled a Twizzler from her pocket, popped it into her mouth, and contined on her journey. Anyway, I've gotta go because Ella just cleared a shelf of about 25 CD's which are now scattered on the floor. If she destroys my 98 Degrees albums I'll be irate.

Good luck

This morning a boy in my class walked up to my desk and said "Hey Mr. Ritchason, smell this" as he pushed a dirty key chain 2 inches from my nose. Refusing to take him up on his offer I pulled my head away instinctively. He said "My grandma gave this to me. It used to be her good luck charm." Realizing what a sweet momento it was I reached for it and saw that it was a promotional item for a casino in Mississippi. "She used to have her car keys on it until one day she crashed her car into a barn and totalled her car." Guess it didn't bring as much good luck as she would have hoped.

Letter from a rocket scientist

So this morning a girl in my class hands me a note from her mom. It read.....

"Mr. R - I have concerns about Vicki learning that Pluto is classified as a planet. In the last few years scientists have actually kicked it out of the planet club because its pattern of rotation is not the same as the rest of the planets in the solar system. Plus the scientists believe it is actually a broken piece of a larger planet like the moon is possibly a broken piece of the earth. It is hard to help her when what she is being taught is not what I learn in my GED class."

I mean c'mon already. I was kicked out of the Latin Club in high school and I never fully got over it. I can't imagine the insecurity issues that Pluto is nursing after being kicked out of the ultra exclusive Planet Club. Screw my Masters degree. Maybe I need to go back and get schooled for my GED.

The greatest invention of all time

Two weeks ago a man dropped by our house and changed my world forever. Now before your mind conjures up some bizarre Brokeback sequel I'll let you know that my excitement was over the cable guy. I finally jumped on the Tivo bandwagon and haven't left the house since. FX ran a Prison Break marathon and now I'm hooked. (I dare you to find a better two hour block of television than Fox's Monday night lineup of Prison Break and 24.) I love the ability to instantly rewind a live program and relive Katharine McPhee's frightened expression as she makes her way down to the bottom three. I haven't missed a single one of Rachael Ray's fifty-two different Food Network programs. I've been able to catch up on movies that I've put off for years (Wall Street, Backbeat, A Knight's Tale). I mean I'm even Tivo'ing things that I normally would channel surf right past (Brendan Fraser hosting a 2001 episode of SNL). There's no better feeling than falling asleep on the couch and not having to worry that you missed yet another side-splitting episode of The George Lopez Show.

Not your typical peanut butter and jelly sandwich

Each Wednesday I let my students stay in the classroom for lunch and watch the previous night's Idol telecast. Today Kaelob was opening his sack lunch and taking out its contents when he pulled out a red handkerchief. He look puzzled and I asked him why that was with his lunch. He let out a baffled "I don't know" as I asked him to come up to my desk. Upon closer inspection I realized that it wasn't a handkerchief but rather a pair of silk panties with a piece of paper safety-pinned to it. I snatched the unlikely item from Kaelob's hand and quickly stuffed them in one of the drawers of my desk. After a few minutes I took a peek (what man wouldn't?) and opened the attached note. It said "Sorry I've been so busy. I'll make it up to you tonight." I immediately burst out laughing, gaining the attention of the whole room. I just blamed it on yet another ridiculous Kevin Covais performance. I looked back over at Kaelob and he still looked perplexed, unable to eat. I walked over and asked him what was wrong and he told me he hated the meatloaf that was in his lunch and couldn't understand why his mom had packed it for him. Instantly it clicked as I realized he had gotten ahold of his dad's lunch instead. A smile crept across my face as I pictured a burly construction worker opening his lunch and pulling out a Lunchable and a cranberry juice box. I gave Kaelob $2 to go get a school lunch while I slipped the crimson thong back into the lunch sack. When he finished eating I just told him to put the sack back in his bookbag and take it back home to his mom. I would love to be a fly on the wall when she discovers her mistake tonight. Priceless.

Snow day

You would think that I was a little kid. I've been up ever since I got the phone call at 5:34 this morning that school was cancelled because of the six inches of snow we received overnight. I got to do all of those things I never have time to do in the morning. I drank a whole pot of coffee, ate a real breakfast that didn't consist of a Kudos bar, read the paper from front to back, and watched last night's Letterman. While Rachel was giving Ella a bath I walked across the street to vote in today's primary, identifying only three names on the ballot that even rang a bell. I mean McCullough sounds like a distinguished name for a judge so why not vote for him. Since Rachel had to work, Ella and I braved the elements and headed to Peoria. We rented a couple of movies (A History of Violence, The Squid and the Whale), grabbed a drink at Starbucks (venti vanilla latte), picked up a few necessities at the Bradley bookstore (hoodie, Sweet Sixteen t-shirt, Braves onesie), and bought a few items at Kroger (formula, baby food, cheese, Kleenex, hamburger buns, cookies, gummy worms). So now we're back home as Ella sleeps in her swing and I get ready to pop in a movie that most of you have never heard of. I could get used to this.

Scratch my March Madness predictions

So just yesterday I went out on a limb and predicted that 10th seeded Seton Hall would be the underdog team that went all the way to win the NCAA championship. Those dreams came to a screeching halt today after being crushed by Wichita State by a 20 point margin. Maybe I'll get it right next year.