Scottish Deep Thoughts

I made my first eBay purchase. Although I was tempted by the prospect of owning a rare collection of Steve Guttenberg's used chewing gum or 150 irregular carpet samples, I ended up buying 2 hockey posters for my classroom. I figured that the Scottish classroom needs a bit of Canada.

I don't know why but at least once a day I get someone telling me or I overhear someone saying, "She fancies you , Mr. Muir". Am I on the cover of "Teen-Beat" magazine? When did I become the fifth member of N'Sync? It is rather disturbinghearing this. It even happens outside of school. After going to the gym tonight, I went to get my dinner from the grocery store. I get out of my car only to hear the familiar giggles and "oh my god" being shared amongst a gaggle of girls. A brave "hi" comes from one of them. I muster an impersonal nod to the unknown person and brave the walk into the shop. If I'm not careful I could get a rather large ego living here!

So I think that I was successful in making an adequate fool of myself on Friday night. I drank WAY too much red wine. I would have been happy to sit and drink away the night but, being in Scotland, everyone must dance at a ceilidh! Dammit. It is well recognized that I have two left feet and I definitely do not own a pair of dancing shoes. I was dragged up to dance by drunk and, therefore, annoyingly persistent colleagues. It didn't help that one of the traditional dances is the "Canadian Barn Dance".

"Oh, well Mike MUST know this dance. He's Canadian. He probably has a barn. He's had too much to drink." awwww dammit.

Actually, I think I was okay until the end of the night. That's when things got a bit out of control and my memory gets foggy. The party moved to our place...sort of. Only 2 other people were still up for it when we left the school at 3am. Unfortunately, 2 students were out as well and saw us stubbling and yelling down the High Street (I'm not exactly sure what these kids were doing up at that time). We made it back to our place and the rest of the night consisted of throwing tea cups, trying to get the EXTREMELY drunk teacher back to her house and going to Nikki's friend's place and waking her up. A long story.

The memory of that night made going back to school today a bit awkward. News travels fast in a small school. Nothing like a few young teachers to liven up the geriatric ward that is my school.

aaahhhhhhhh...the end of a decent week. It went by quite quickly. I was able to sort out and organize a bunch of things in my class. The thick stack of paper that had been making it's home on my desk for the past couple of weeks has moved to my house. Now I have the uneviable task of sorting through this stack of mediocre essays and pointless department memos.

I started "coaching" rugby this week. The team is full of a bunch of good guys and I am willing to do as much as I can to make it a good season. However, I know very little about rugby...this could be problematic. Luckily, I have a couple of other people who are helping out.

I was soclose to not having to deal with the crazy cleaning lady anymore. She was ALMOST transferred to a different school. I think they hired a monkey instead.

Tonight should be interesting. There is a party planned for the exiting music teacher. I have a night of teachers getting drunk and making dancing fools of themselves to look forward to. yes, it will be interesting.

I was so excited for SUnday's game. I really thought that we were going to do well in our first game of the season. I was foolish to think such crazy thoughts. We were destroyed 23-2. I played like a smelly sack of poo. I scored one of our two goals and got one penalty. There was one good fight though. Didn't rally the troops like it was designed to though. Just made the game deteriorate into a search for opportunities to cheap shot other players. Another game in two weeks against the best team in our division. Can't wait.

We started "Thursday night jam sessions" last night in an attempt to become small-town Rock heroes. Before we go to the pub, Mike, Ian and I decided to get together to play (or in my case strum some strings and try to learn) guitar. I suck. Our intention is to play at the end of year concert but at this rate I fear that I will simply make a fool of myself. I have some serious homework to do this weekend.

Thinking about the cleaning lady having the hots for me is territory that I do not want to explore. I think she is just a bit unbalanced and, hopefully, acts this way with everyone. Disturbingly, she does give me odd things though. The current list of items stands at:

week-old newspapers
a cookbook
department store catalogues
foot lotion (wtf!)
a gag "Scottish passport"

Uh, thanks crazy cleaning lady.

I used to enjoy the end of the school day. Before leaving the school, I would check my email whilst listening to some music, get a bit of work done and just unwind a bit. Now, I am very uncomfortable and try to leave as soon as possible. The reason for this: the cleaning lady.

She is one of the most bizarre people I have met since coming to Scotland. To describe her you must picture Chris Farley's Lunch Lady costume in Sandler's classic tune "Lunch Lady Land" and listen to the recording of Adam Sandler's "High School Janitor". She is very simple and has some very annoying tendencies. I try to ignore her but she continues to ramble about uninteresting and pointless things. It always starts the same way...

Cleaning Lady (I don't know her name): "I'm knackered" OR "I can't be bothered" (Either gets the point across that she is trying to start a conversation.)

Me: "oh"

CL:"You look tired"

Me:"yeah"(staring at the computer screen to insinuate to any coherent person that I am preoccupied and do not want to be disturbed)

CL:"ach well. It'll be holidays soon. I'm going to Majorca".

Me:"oh. that's nice" (in the least patronizing tone I can muster after hearing this bit of information for the fourth time in 2 weeks)

CL: "Is that a new shirt? Do you know where you can get cheap shirts? Asda (UK equivalent of Wal-Mart). £5 for 3! That's a good deal. I can get you some the next time I'm there."

Me:"I think I have enough for now, thanks."

CL:"I can't be bothered" or "I'm knackered".

Me:"uh, ok. bye."

I don't want to know about where there is a good swimming pool or where I can buy a tent for less than £10! I just want to be left to myself so I can have some peace and quiet! I suppose I brought this upon myself by staying to work after school. I did set a precedent by engaging in conversation the first day she started working here. I'm damned to listen to a strange cleaning lady blether on about pointless minutia for the rest of the year!!

The new roomie, Dugal, has the complete set of 24. I had never seen 24 before and seems a bit strange to be watching a VERY American series in Britain, but I seem to have a bit of an addiction to it. Plus, they are the only DVDs we have at the moment. I think I am going to get the Family Guy DVDs.

I received a digital projector from the school and I should have my wireless broadband connection hooked up tonight. Hopefully by next week the Highland Council will have announced a new scheme where teachers can buy computers at very cheap prices (50% off retail!!). I'm going to be investing in a new laptop to replace my current one. I am in techy bliss.

Saturday was pretty good. I had to wake up extremely early (6am) to get to Glasgow by 9. The course was informative. Again, I was the youngest by at least 10 years and more than half the people did not have basic computing skills. I'm not trying to be arrogant or a computer-snob but I think that people should at least have some basic skills!
Sunday was a pretty good night of hockey. Individually, we are decent. We are going to be put to the test next weekend with our first game. I have a feeling that we are going to get slaughtered. Oh well.

It's Thursday, which means more than a few well-deserved pints tonight and what looks to be like an easy Friday tomorrow. The kids get released early at 1pm (as usual) and half of my classes are gone on a school presentation. Sweet.

I'm heading down to Glasgow on the weekend to attend a seminar on "Computers in English". Sounds interesting. If not, I'm sure that there will be plenty of free tea and biscuits.

I got a new rommate. He's the trainee art teacher. Cheaper rent but I lose my valued privacy. Damn my hospitable nature.

Hockey on Thursday, golf on Friday, hill-walking on Saturday, hockey on Sunday, swimming and gym on Monday. If I keep this up I will be either really, really fit or dead.

I was absolutly loving being back on the ice on Thursday. I was breaking in the new skates so my feet were a bit sore toward the end. However, the new skates are amazing. Golf on Friday was ok. The midges (kinda like a Scottish version of mosquitoes) were out in full force so that made it a bit uncomfortable. Saturday was another epic walk into the Scottish hills. Mike, Ian and I went into the Cairngorms and made to to the top of 2 munros (over 3000 feet). The first one was the second highest peak in Scotland! We left at 10am and got back at 8pm - that is a lot of walking. The pints afterward have never tasted so good. Sunday hockey was good as well. We picked up a few good players. A few beginners have joined as well, but it'll be hard to be worse than last year. I forgot how difficult it was to understand these guys. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi everyone.

Scottish Guys With East Coast Accent: hiMikehowyadoon? Howwazuyursummerlike? DidyagitdoontathaCzechRepuliclike?

Me: uhhhh...yes?

SGWECA: ahdidnaekinyaweargoindoontathaCzechRepublicahwouldvemetupwithyalike.

Me: uhhhh...yeah (nods head, feigning understanding)