Aaarrrggghh!

I guess the title sums it all up. I'm trying like all get out to make it through the week, but sometimes you can be way-laid by the most stupid things. Take this one for example. I teach, we all know that, I've been teaching for 20 years. That's a really scary thing, but anyway, I went to work yesterday and stopped by my mailbox, which I do every morning, and found some papers for a program that we do at our school to keep kids from getting zeros. It's not a program I participate in, because, it's time consuming, and I don't have time. So, the papers are in my box and I look at them and they say, Mr. Welton. Now, with the name Shawn, I've had to deal with being a Mr. most of my life, but never in the 20 years I have been teaching has anyone ever used Mr. Welton on any kind of paper work for me. I even taught in the same building with my dad for three years and never got mail addressed to Mr. Welton. I have to say that I was angry. Really, truly, positively angry. The vice principal who made the mistake ought to know better because his name is Keri. I suspect he has received mail addressed to Ms. or Mrs. his whole life. I guess that's why I expected him to be ultra careful about something like this.

I took the sheaf of papers and walked into the other vice principal's office, Donna and put them on her desk. My comment was "This is my dad, and he doesn't teach here." She looked upset and told me that she would deal with it.

Today I talked to her and she told me she told Keri that he should ask if he wasn't sure about things. It's really not the response I wanted, but I guess it's better than nothing.

I'm really fighting a lot of being depressed lately. I don't know exactly why. School, relationship, life, etc. Not a lot of fun I suppose. I hate this time of year. It's not fun for me. I let things get me down and am entirely too sensitive.

My car is being a pain in the butt right now too. It won't start. It just cranks and cranks and cranks. It needs a jolt, but I can't seem to give it one.

So this has been a total rant, because I can rant here and not worry about what anyone thinks. I realize all of these things are small potatoes, but they are potatoes none the less.

It's no longer summer for a teacher

It's started again, that dirty word. Teacher meetings. We started on Wednesday, and this year I made it through the whole meeting without being frustrated at the administration. I can't say that happened today, as I just sent an email to my prinicpal asking him to explain the most studid opening-day schedule that I have ever seen.

Where do these people get this stuff?!

I've had a minute or two to relax this week after last weekend. I converted to Judaism last weekend. I spent an hour in a Beit Din, which is a question/answer session that is really quite grueling. I was nervous through the whole thing. Once that was completed, the three members of the Beit Din, Rabbi Beyer, Mike Medvin, and Pam Zohar went with me to Lamoille Canyon which has to be one of the most scenic places in Nevada for my mikveh. The mikveh is a ritual bath that you take to become purifed. You have to immerse yourself three times. After the first time, you recite some blessings that the Rabbi repeats for you. The second time, the Rabbi sings a quick song, and after the third time, your attendant, (mine was my best friend, Mira Kurka), says a special vow and prayer for you. I have to tell you that the water was the coldest I have ever been in and my toes were numb by the time I got out. This water is mountain glacier run-off. Sooooooo cold.

We then went back to our house where we had a shabbat dinner that was awesome, even if I was the one to cook it. We had grilled portobello mushroom burgers and grilled salmon burgers with artichoke salad that Rob made and a rice and pea salad that I made. We had challah and some smoked salmon that I did on the smoker that Rob's mom gave us. All in all, I think it went very well.

My good friends Walter and Cindy came to Elko with their son Luke. It really meant the world to me that they came. They are lovely and caring people. They stayed with Rob and I and it was such fun.

Saturday we had a ceremony at the presbyterian church. We don't have a synagogue in Elko, we're just too small a community, so we have the presbyterian church. We had a regular Saturday morning service with the conversion ceremony thrown in for good measure. It was a lot of fun. I was called up to the alter and read the blessings for the reading of the Torah and then we relaxed Saturday afternoon after a great Indian meal. For dinner we went to the Star Restaurant (18 of us) and Rob fed us all a great Basque meal. It was a tremendous amount of fun. We couldn't have asked for a better weekend.

Sunday, we got up and took our friends Walter and Cindy and Luke to our friends Mira and Gary's house. It is an amazing house and Walter who is a metal artist is going to do some work for them. It was a lot of fun to see all of the house and Mira's plan for it.

Well, I must finish with my syllabi. School starts on Monday. Have a great weekend.

Can I Do It More Often?

It seems like I have really good intentions to write in this blog once a week, not happening. I'm lucky if I get it done once a month. So, I've decided to do this. I'm working on a story and I'm going to publish the parts that I finish as I finish them.

We have been busy since my last posting. Rob has been working like crazy. We've been playing tennis and traveling a little bit. We went to Reno and Lake Tahoe the last weekend in July. Did some shopping and relaxed at the lake. I've also been preparing for my conversion to Judaism. It's been a long process, but with the help of a lot of wonderful people, I'm going to make it. I asked my sister Heather, the master knitter, to make me a prayer shawl for my Rabbi, because I can't knit for anything, and she does absolutely beautiful work. Here's a picture of her work for me. Can you believe that she does such great work? It's awesome.

So, here's the story that I'm working on. It's based on our trip to Spain last summer, and it's called "A Fisherman and the Rolling Stones."

It’s the summer, and every year or so, my fiancé Rob, his daughter Lilly, and I (Shawn), go to Spain. Beautiful women, handsome men, pristine beaches, the Mediterranean, what more could a person ask for? Would a Rolling Stones concert with 40,000 intimate companions be the icing on the cake?
I’ll be honest; we hadn’t started the trip with any plan to see the Stones; just the opposite in fact. We were near Barcelona, but the Stones were going to appear there before we got to our little village Peniscola. They were to appear in Madrid but it would be after our trip was over. The only other venue in Spain was at El Ejido – seven hours south of Peniscola.
You have to understand about Peniscola for this story to make any sense. Rob has been going to Peniscola for thirty-some years. He has an interesting collection of friends. Chris is his friend from high school. Cristobal – ex-pat New Zealander – runs a stall in the hippie market during the summer in Peniscola. Chris and Rob have a love-hate relationship now, but when they were younger it was Chris, Rob, and Antoni.
Antoni, Toni for short, is a fisherman. He finished the eighth grade and went to work on the family fishing boat with his Dad. Toni speaks very little English, and what he does know he learned from rock and roll songs. The first English Chris ever taught him was “The sun is very hot.”
Chris, Rob, and Toni don’t hang out together much anymore. Chris got married, Toni didn’t. Chris quit getting blotto every night, Toni didn’t. They just grew apart. This has frustrated Toni because he’s a very loyal person and he has taken Chris’ behavior as a bit of a betrayal – but really, I digress.
Toni is a really animated guy—he smokes – always. I’m not exaggerating. He smokes always. He has a cigarette hanging from his mouth every waking hour. He’s a very affectionate person. He likes to touch you. He’ll put his arm around you to talk, and poke you in the chest to make a point.
Last year was a hard year for Toni. Both of his parents died. Toni had lived with his mother and his father his entire life and he and his father, Senor Martin, were the best of friends. Toni is living on his own now and all he does is fish. Rob and Toni were talking about the deaths of Toni’s parents and Toni told Rob that to go to the Rolling Stones concert would be “an injection of life”, as he made a motion of injecting a drug into his arm.
Toni thought it would be great for him and Rob to take the train to El Ejido and watch the Stones. Rob, not really believing that Toni was serious, said that it would be fun. The next evening Toni tells Chris that Rob is going to go to the Rolling Stones concert with him. Chris tells Toni that Rob doesn’t want to go, and that we’re on vacation. Why would they want to include you in their plans? Toni adamantly believes that we would go with him. Now here’s the rub, Rob can’t let Chris be right. Remember that love-hate thing? He certainly can’t disappoint Toni either.
Rob comes back to the apartment that we have rented and explains that we have to help Toni by going to see the Stones. I was vehemently against going. I don’t believe I can express to you how much I didn’t want to go to this concert. We had just seen the Stones in November, (Vegas, Baby), it’s a seven hour drive, and I just don’t want to go. We’re standing in the entry foyer to the apartment. This way I can’t walk away and do something else. I like to leave in the middle of confrontation. Lilly doesn’t want to go either. Loud noises bother her and she’s afraid to go to the concert because it would be too loud. She also wants to stay put, as we had been traveling for a week prior to arriving in Peniscola.
But, I finally see the light and where Rob is coming from. Lilly and I would find out if there were any tickets by searching the internet. If we’re really lucky there won’t be any tickets left for the concert.
Lilly and I get dressed and head to look for internet – Rob is going to the bank and then we’ll all meet up at Toni’s boat for a tour around the island with Toni and some of the other fisherman. It’s the Diada San Joan and that means the last day of the fishing season for two months. Lilly and I started up to the old city, because I knew of an internet café that had been there three years earlier. Of course, no luck, it had moved. On our way down, back to the apartment and the new city, we stopped at the info booth and asked about internet cafes. The girl at the information told us to go to the pizzeria on the corner. We look up the information and guess what? There are tickets.
Lilly and I would really like to find Rob to tell him this development, but he’s at the bank and we have to meet Toni at the fisherman’s bar the Hogar del Pescador. Lilly and I should have taken the trip around the island without Rob, but we both wanted him to be involved. Rob was late, because he couldn’t find a bank that would change his money. Toni is annoyed and well on the way to becoming intoxicated. Hey, he had a reason to celebrate; he was done with work for two months. Eventually he makes the best of it and buys us a drink while we wait for Rob. Lilly is taking pictures of everyone’s shoes while we are waiting. She calls it the shoe series.
Finally, Rob appears. I tell him that there are tickets, and that Lilly and I had talked, and we decided to go with whatever happened – we would go to El Ejido and make an adventure out of it.

So wait for the next installment tomorrow, or the next day, as I have to take Lilly to the plane today to send her back to her mom, which depresses me to no end. I really miss her when she is gone.