October 15, 1999.

Now Little Spider's caught the Scout disease:

"So, are you gonna marry him?"

Sheesh, leave me alone people.

It's Friday night & I'm staying home. Yay nerdishness! My parents have even gone out...which makes me want to enjoy the empty house all the more. Besides, I'm tired. Last night was marvelous, one of those late dinner celebrations that makes one wish for Fridays off. It was Dav's birthday feast and I have no idea if the age he gave was in human or minotaur years. See, Dav has an alter-ego named El Torro and...maybe it's best if I don't expand the point further. A good bunch of folk arrived to pay tribute, and we spent the night talking Atlantic City, glitter, hawg buffin' & autism. The onion-layered Josh revealed that not only does he find employment as Garden security & web consultant...but that he also does highly specific entertainment at children's parties. To whit: Polkaroo.

(Yes, I realize those outside Ontario have no idea what I'm talking about. Mourn your loss & move on.)

I had a particularly hard time leaving the party, as today is my Special Ed volunteer day, and I wasn't terribly eager to rush home for another day of surliness & endless patient instruction. Fortunately I had a euphoric breakthrough.

I was sitting in class, trying not to interact with anyone unless absolutely necessary; feeling generally trodden upon & unhappy. The class began a lesson on converting percentages to degrees for the purposes of a pie graph, and right away hit a snag: the table the teacher'd written up didn't add up to 100% and had to be abandonned. I grabbed an encyclopedia & scanned for appropriate data to fill the gap, intending to give it over to the teacher. When I did so, she kind of brushed me off, so I chalked it up to overeagerness & sat down again. Then she asked me to do the data I'd found.

Well. No time to get nervous (although I did anyway). I was up there with population percentages, an overhead projector & a black transparency. I'm sure I stank of fear. But I got through it. And you know what? They got it. They liked doing it. They competed to be the person calculating the number of degrees. And I got that surge, that successful teaching surge.

I mean, pie charts. Could you have predicted it in a million years?

Anyway, that 20 minutes restored my faith. Fridays suddenly ceased to be jail sentences. Well, we'll see how it is next week I suppose. But for now, I'm happy. Happier than I've ever been in an office. I think this is what they mean when they say "calling."