Dear Diary

Once again, New Year's has me thinking I should resolve to have more discipline about blogging more regularly.

I'm also wishing I could spend all day everyday reading, writing or cartooning instead of planning, grading and teaching.

Don't get me wrong, I love kids and believe nothing is as important or as rewarding as teaching, and obviously no other job offers as much freedom to read, write, or create. Be that as it may, I'm still lazy and selfish like anybody else. Did I also mention that I wish I got paid twice what I make to do whatever I want instead of dealing with all the hoops to jump through from the State, the AEA, the board & administration and dealing with unmotivated or uncooperative students?

Anyone want to pay me $100K/year for just blogging? I'll cartoon or take goofy photos too if you want.

Glad I disconnected this blog from feeding into facebook & twitter since this is such a lame, self-indulgent entry. Anyway, enough time wasting, I need to either do some school work or help my wife dismantle the Christmas decorations.

DVDs rented over break

'Hoodwinked'- great kid flick, funny, Jim Bulushi's German accent sucked, though **1/2 (out of 5*)
'Dolphin Tail'- excellent "feel-good" story no matter what age, plus Ashley Judd ***1/2

'The Change-Up'- raunchy and formulaic but funny (if you're a 14-30yr old male), first time I didn't like the character Jason Bateman played, actually I disliked both characters he played in this one. *1/2

'One Day'-  Spoiler alert, this is NOT a "romantic COMEDY," still it's a decent chick-flick and as usual  Anne Hathaway not only looks beautiful, she acts beautiful. ****

'Larry Crowne'- Tom Hanks really is the ultimate "every man." This one is for every "nice" guy who was always frustrated by the fact that Molly Ringwald always ended up with the rich, hot, popular guy in those 80's movies (oops, did I spoil it?). Plus it's got a great message about staying positive and rolling with the punches in hard times. And Cedric the Entertainer is a kill too. Not sure why real critics panned it, maybe because it has a narrow appeal to lower class, middle-aged, guys who believe in working hard and treating people decently. Makes me want to go out and buy a scooter. ****1/2

New Year, New Opportunity

Recently a couple of Monona County Democrats invited me to contribute to the blog http://www.idp4.org/blog, twitter feed https://twitter.com/#!/IDP4th and facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/IDP4th for the Democratic Party of Iowa's new 4th District . I hardly feel qualified (I've only lived here for 10 years), but progressives are so rare in this side of the state that I agreed to help. I've felt strongly that the few of us here in Crawford County really need to be better about networking and communicating.

I'll add these links to the right-hand menu of this blog. I can't believe how much busier I've been this year since I started teaching 8th grade Civics, so my contributions may be few and far between, but as I told the IDP4th webmaster, at least I'm more likely to keep my posts below 700 words than I was back when I had a column in the Mapleton PRESS.

If you're of our rare breed ("Blue" in a "Red" district), I hope you'll caucus next week so that we can replace Congressman Steve King with former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack and State House (Dist.18) Representative Jason Schultz with someone like Kasey Friedrichsen. 

Who knows, I may even send up a political cartoon once in a while.