Tales of the Invisible Ben

Lyle the Looming Liar

The InvisiblE-mailbox has been filling up fast this past week with messages from readers like YOU (yes...you there, eating the paste!) wondering what bold and daring tales of success I might share from the halls of Underwood High. Well, no such luck you success-starved sycophants. You'll get no riveting tales of inspiration this Monday evening. Even if I had some, and there could be a few posted later this week, they would be completely overshadowed by today's debacle of a lesson.

Said debacle was my first attempt to take the general student body to the lab. I had previously taken selected students, specifically those who were not failing 2 or more classes as of the second report card period, to the lab with great success and was looking forward to finally exposing the students to some hands-on science as a class. Unfortunately 2 of my 5 classes could not sit quietly through a 15 min. safety talk in the lab and lost their lab privileges for the unit. But I tried to put a good face on this...after all, fewer classes meant fewer possibilities for distraction/destruction/classroom management disasters as well as less stress involved in setup, cleanup, etc.

Still, due to a combination of factors things turned out going poorly. Perhaps the biggest problem was the lab I chose to unveil, without editing, from the district mandated core curriculum. The lab itself was not terrible; it covered a concept we had reviewed several times over--the difference between physical and chemical properties. Specifically, students were to utilize their knowledge of these concepts to identify 5 unknown powders--chalk, antacid tablets, sugar, flour, and baking soda. They would be provided with water and vinegar to perform their tests.

The trouble was that the lab was poorly edited. It did not provide a data table for students to fill in experimental results, only a section to mark their conclusions. Students also had difficulty distinguishing between making observations and forming hypotheses as to the powders' identities. Worst of all was trying to explain to my students that they had to write out a procedure before they could proceed with their experiment. When I explained this they looked at me like I was insane. I gave them the standard patter about the importance of keeping track of steps and the necessity of being able to duplicate an experiment for it to hold any scientific merit, but all they could do was ask why and then write a half-hearted, and in most cases painful to read attempt at a procedure. Not to mention the groups that ignored directions NOT to pour liquid directly into the powder cups as that would taint all possible future samples.

But the best, or worst, part of the day came in 8th period when for the second time in a day a beaker was broken. (The first time was in the morning and I'm relatively sure it was an accident.) This time a student, let's call him Lyle, was playing with the 250 ml beaker I had left on his lab table while I was trying to explain how the lab would proceed. And somewhere along the line, he bangs it on the table and the bottom half cracks off. I dispose of it calmly enough, but what amazes me is that even before I asked anything he was blaming it on the two other girls at his table!

Lyle is a large kid, a little more than six feet tall...built kinda like Forrest Whittaker (yeah...the Ghost Dog himself), he looms over you and peers at the world through deep set eyes. His voice always has a kinda quivering pleading to it. Like he's longing to be accepted or something. Or believed. Maybe both, because he always seems to get himself into situations like this one. Why, there were two last week alone!

Example 1: I had set my desks up in groups of three for students to work independently on some review worksheets. One of the desks in his group had been pulled away shortly after I had rearranged the setup between periods. I ask him why the desk is out of synch, and he immediately proclaims it is not his fault.

"No, Lyle...I just fixed the desks." I explain. "I know how they should be set up. Look around the room. That desk you are in now has been pulled away within the past five minutes. It was not there. You could not have found it there. If you are going to lie, at least make it a PLAUSABLE lie!"

He moves back the desk and we move along.

Example 2: Test last week on phases and properties of matter. Students, as always are permitted to use a 3 x 5 card worth of notes. By preparing and attaching it they get 5% extra added to their grade. (Golly gee, the Invisible Ben is a nice guy...don't you wish he were YOUR science teacher?) So the kids hand in their test and up lumbers Lyle, clutching his paper tightly in Stay-Puft hands. He passes it to me with his index card, covered with pencil scrawls, and I notice something is written in black marker on the back. I turn it over. It's my handwritten vocabulary card from the class word wall. I had been wondering where "sublimation" went!

I confront him on it, saying that he should not have used a vocab card from the word wall for this. He claims that he found it on the floor the day before. I make some comment about how you are supposed to have your own pack of 3 x 5 cards and that if he had found it the day before why not give it back to me so that I could post it on the wall again? He claims never ot have looked on the back. I turn the card over and look at the top margin...where his handwriting is. Bloody brilliant Lyle!

Regular criminal mastermind this one. I tear up the card and tell him my decision. I won't deduct any points from his grade...but that card was mine. And he knew it and tried to lie about it. A stupid choice...but people make stupid choices everyday. And so as a result of this one, he will not be getting any points added to his test through that card's use.

Anyhow, the point is that he had a history of shoddily attempted deception. A history which continued through today when I took him into the hallway to discuss the broken beaker and he swore fervently that it was not he who broke the beaker. Not good ol' Lyle! It was the two girls at the table with him. They did it! They did it all along ! And why? To make him look bad. That's why they corroborated each other's story so closely...they were friends and out to get him...

The problem with this logic is I had already questioned several others who were not affiliated with the group and the truth was known to me. Oh Lyle...when will you learn?

Long story short, between the kids without safety contracts cussing me out, the broken glass, the continued inability to shut up, the addition of new kids into the class (or the reinstatement of old ones who had left 6 months prior), today was a miserable day and the lab only took place in 2 of the 3 classes I brought up. And of those, no one really got what the lab was getting at which was not merely scientific concepts but effective laboratory procedure. And it was a mess to clean up the glass and the powders.

So all in all, not the best day.

But who knows what the week may bring? Tomorrow we start our study of the periodic table. Up and 'atom, right?

8 Bit A Cappella

This is fantastic.
If memory serves, the singing group with which I was affiliated in college considered arranging something similar to this once, but never on such a grand scale.

Special thanks go out to my sister for bringing this to my attention.

Most Disturbing "Homework Assignment"...EVER

A simple assignment on phases of matter gone horribly horribly awry...I really hope this letter, mixed in with the rest of my students' homework, was not intended for me. It would be just WRONG on too many levels.

Dear Sexy,
I like you for a long time now that I see you almost everyday I'm going crazy about you more and more. I want you so bad, now your body is so sexy i can'nt stop thinking about you and as I think about you I get more horny and wet damn boo but this all I can say for today.

So call us
(555) 555-5555

Carmal & Chocolate

If intended for me, this letter is just wrong on so many levels: morally...ethically...grammatically...

Just plain wrong.

A disaster of biblical proportions

Just when it seemed like my last class of the day couldn't get any worse.

Actual question posed by a student who was supposed to be taking notes on physical properties of matter:

"Mr. ____________, can a dog have sex with a cat?"


The student who asked this claimed not merely that the aforementioned trans-species coupling was possible, but that he had actually witnessed such in his garage. He then proceeded to give a stunning (no other word fits really) interpretation of what such an encounter would sound like. Sadly, the written word is incapable of capturing this latest demonstration of how far my classroom management appears to have fallen in recent weeks, at least so far as that class is concerned. So far as science is concerned, I think they have only one field on their minds: reproductive biology. And unlike most teenagers, they don't limit it to members of the opposite sex...here it transcends species! What a world.

"Sweet dreams and boiling machines in pieces on the ground..."

Finally, after about (let's see...starting w/September) six and a half months or so I am beginning chemistry with my classes for the first time this year. As you may or may not recall, the district's much-vaunted core curriculum insisted that I take time at the start of the year to teach astronomy, earth science, environmental science, and meteorology...none of which are really physical science, but who am I to judge. Physical science, as far as I am concerned, is chemistry and physics, and I only started really doing that in January when we got into mechanics.

Now, for better or for worse, I never taught freshmen physics before this year. I HAVE taught chemistry however, so I feel a lot more comfortable with the material. I can play and experiment a little more. So, in that spirit, I decided to go borrow some equipment from an experienced chemistry teacher. We're starting with physical properties, and I thought it would be fun, while we were talking about stuff like mass, volume, and so forth, I should bring up boiling point. And what better way to demonstrate than with hand boilers? A hand boiler is a glass tube formed with a reservoir at the bottom connected via a helical tube to an empty bulb. The tube is filled with a chemical (methylene chloride) evacuated of oxygen and the combination of lower vapor pressure and a boiling point of around 40 degrees Celsius lets the liquid boil in the palm of your hand! It's pretty nifty actually; the sort of gift you could get at a science museum gift store and not feel badly giving to a younger relative.

Before passing these hand boilers around to my students, I decided to give a very strict warning. Be very careful, I said. These do not belong to me. They are very fragile If you break them, you will not be going to the lab.

So what do you think they do within 10 minutes?

Go on...guess.

Oh, you better believe they broke it! So I gave them the storm and thunder. Not that it made that big a difference. And then I calmed down a little stepped back and commented that I wouldn't be that angry about the boiler if it were mine, but I had borrowed it. And I could not have been more explicit in my warnings unless I wrote them in big yellow letters on the board. I was, and still am, disappointed. And the four kids who were laughing and playing around got assigned a detention with me for tomorrow afternoon. This led one kid to cuss me out, so he's getting suspended. Even if he doesn't know it. And the kid most likely responsible for the actual breakage? he was already on the ninth grade academy leader's hit list. So he's suspended. Works for me.

2 out of my 5 classes already have lost their lab privileges. I would not feel safe taking them up to the lab. That's it. Plain and simple.

At the same time, I'm really looking forward to Dry Ice Day next week. I wonder if those kids will listen when I warn them not to lick the sample in the ziploc bag...

The Hydrangea Scene

While cleaning up the old Invisible Penthouse, I stumbled upon a note scribbled to me by a colleague during professional development in February. I had always intended to post this, but there never seemed to be time.

Well here it is, in its entirety. I think you will agree that it is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful pair of critiques on professional development you could ever have the pleasure to read:

Did you ever see The Manchurian Candidate (original 1962)? There's a scene where a group of captured U.S. soldiers (Korean war) believe they are guests at a womens tea party in the south. In fact, they have been brainwashed. They're really in a sterile auditorium, filled with Communist representatives from around the world. The lead speaker is trying to demonstrate that the brainwashed puppets can be made to say or do anything.

When I attend a meeting like this I actually relate to the speaker. I see myself in front of the class trying to force something that they are not interested [in] yet I must drone on and try to fill up the class period. It is amusing to see the speaker get frustrated when the group will not cooperate.

(The other side of the paper also has a note...I'm working to verify the authenticity of the names, otherwise the history seems valid. I should note beforehand that the following is not intended to make light of the Holocaust, but rather serve as a pointed critique of district-run professional development sessions.)

In 1941, Yohan Streussel (sp.?) submitted to Adolf Hitler his plan for 'the final solution'. He proposed that prisoners in all concentration camps be systematically herded into cramped spaces. Each group would be 'showered' with ehe latest rhetoric churned out of Berlin. When each prisoner was at the point of death, the large groups woudl be subdivided into smaller sets, who would work on pre-written questions and concerns facing the Jewish state. A speaker from each sub-group would related their committee's comments to the larger group. This process was called 'political development.'

One heroic prisoner was able to smuggle out a report of this torture. The Geneva Convention got wind of this horrible practice. Under pressure fromt he world, the Third Reich was forced to resort to the more accepted practice of death by gas, overwork, and starvation.

In some settings, this form of cruel and unusual punishment still exists.


And now back to work cleaning up.

Graphology 101

So last week with the weird schedule, I assigned my students a packet of 6 worksheets, the equivalent of a full week of homework (+1). This way even if they didn't have class, they could still keep their brains thinking about science, even if it were only for a little while.

Friday I collected the homeworks and was pleasantly surprised to see that most students actually had completed it. Even students who normally didn't do homework. Even the kid with a 10% average. Now this was mildly surprising, because this was the kid who basically told me point blank at the beginning of the year that the only reason he came to school was to avoid truancy. He's one of the students who got less than a 5% on a recent test. But you know what? I would have been willing to accept that he had turned around and decided to embrace a work ethic.

Except for one thing.

The handwriting. It wasn't his. In fact, it looked VERY SIMILAR to that of another student in the class. In fact, it was IDENTICAL to that of a female student in the class whom he happens to be dating. How coincidental is that?

I took the girl in question aside at the end of class and asked if she could explain this fantastic coincidence...but she denied any similarity.

As I mulled over the situation later, I realized that I was less annoyed that my students were cheating, but rather amazed that they were so very incompetent at it. I suppose it ensures my ability to stay one step ahead, but still...positively mindblowing stuff!

If Only Life Imitated Art...

This evening I got to see a new film called Fever Pitch. Apparently it's based on a novel by Nick Hornby of High Fidelity fame, although some adjustments have been made for the American audience. In the original, the main character is a diehard fan of the Manchester Arsenal. Here, the hero, played by Jimmy Fallon, is a diehard fan of the Boston Red Sox. The entire movie is a love letter to the stalwart holdouts of Red Sox Nation, who have suffered long and hard due to their devotion to their team.

Honestly, it was only a passable film...a standard romantic comedy plot with a few standout moments (e.x. a depressed Fallon watching the Buckner footage over and over again...), and the trailers before it were downright painful.

But the movie will hold a special place in my heart now and forever for a very simple reason. How many other movies can you name where an eccentric high school teacher named Ben wins over the beautiful girl and lives happily ever after?

Yeah, me neither.

"A paperclip can be a wondrous thing."

Every so often I have a moment of brilliance with my students. It's extremely rare, but there are moments where everything works out and my demonstrations actually succeed in engaging student interest.

Ironically, the latest addition to my list of teaching triumphs occurred outside the classroom. I was lending a hand at Underwood's after-school tutoring program. The regular staff is an English teacher and an algebra teacher. They're the ones who show up everyday and get paid for their trouble. I normally am around after school anyway so I like to drop by and help out. But this week has been odd due to state-mandated testing, so the crowds were small and even my students had very little immediate homework.

Which meant it was time for the Invisible Ben to work on another one of his famous experiments. This week I had done a mini-unit on magnets and figured that the best way to end it would be an experiment my father showed my friends and I while we were doing Young Astronauts in fourth grade. The idea, in short, was to build a motor. Dad's design used a cork, several feet of enameled wire, a wooden base, one ceramic magnet, some tacks, and a pair of paperclips. Unfortunately, this weekend, I did not have a large amount of time to assemble kits for all my classes, or even for groups of four. I needed something else.

Which led to some research, a new plan, and me in the library with a styrofoam cup, some paper clips, tape, and a five pack of ring magnets from Radio Shack. And what do you know? I pulled off the Macguyver...the motor worked! A few of my students bravely volunteered to hold the wire contacts to the battery in the absence of a holder, and thrilled to see my little motor spin even as the exposed metal slowly heated up. (Things got especially bad when we put 4 D cells in series to power the device...the wire actually started smoking, which would be cool if it weren't so terrifying.)

Here's a diagram showing how a much neater version of this motor would look.




I wish I could claim the design was original, but the diagram came from the Exploratorium website. And in the end, the originality of the design feels less important to me than the look on my students faces seeing that scientific miracles are all around us, just waiting to be discovered with a few relatively common materials and just a little bit of patience.

Spring Break Recap

So with all this chat about dead mice and electrically themed malapropisms, I realized that I have been remiss in describing the fun filled and exciting events of my spring break. Now as mentioned before, spring break this year was oddly scheduled. Unlike most school districts, including the one where I attended high school, Underwood's spring break was only 5 days. School was in session the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of March. Then everyone got Maunday Thursday and Good Friday off. The weekend proceeded as normal and then the following Monday we stayed on break. And then it was back to school on Tuesday. So really there were three days that we would not have normally been away.

And how did I spend those days? Well, I'm glad you asked.

Thursday, March 24: To celebrate the start of spring break, I did my taxes. Ended up paying the federal government more than I normally would thanks to my nanotechnology research stipend. But, such is life, I suppose. I also sent in the official paperwork for my state teaching certificate, so on the off chance I want to keep doing this for the rest of my life, I'll at least have a piece of paper saying I am qualified. Despite suggestions that it might merit display, I intend to keep that paper safely hidden so that my students do not feel the desire to draw on, spindle, or otherwise mutilate it. Or me. Spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up the apartment until I grew too stir crazy and went to the bookstore to read Sin City collections over a bowl of chili in preparation for the new movie. The chili was good, the books were better.

Friday, March 25: A big, fat stinking heap of nothing. That was the agenda for Good Friday as far as I was concerned. Everything important had been finished. Everything else was inconsequential. I could clean the remainder of my apartment, finish a novel, watch some movies, hang out with teacher friends who had not abandoned the city. The world was my oyster. And everything was going great. Slept late, but that was no problem--it was vacation. And then I got a phone call from Deep Throat.

No, not the one who leaked Watergate, although I can't say I've ever seen the two of them together. No, Deep Throat is an old high school colleague who earned the nickname "Throat" for his tendency to go deep for passes on the frisbee field. In any case, he had heard rumors that I had been pondering a trip north during break. Specifically to visit my friends in the Boston area. This was true: after the past few weeks I felt a trip out of town would be in my psychological best interest. However, Boston was a seriously long train ride and the best trains had already left. So I had basically decided I would not be going.

Until Deep Throat gave me some of that confidential information for which he has already become famous. He had abandoned the nation's capital in favor of even more confidential work in the wilds of southern New Hampshire and noted that it would be possible for me to fly into the Manchester airport with relatively little difficulty, reducing a 6-7 hr. train ride to a 1.5 hr. plane ride! He could then pick me up at the terminal and commute down to Boston in 45 minutes. I checked the schedules and made one of those spontaneous decisions that I normally regret to roll the dice and take the trip. By then it was about noon and I had just booked tickets on a flight leaving at 4:30 or so that afternoon.

After quickly packing a suitcase, I rolled on down to the corner. (Actually, I walked...my suitcase rolled.) And imagine my luck, there was the bus! Pulling up to the corner. Stopping. And rolling away without me! Stupid Good Friday traffic. Ended up having to wait an additional half hour before the bus came, and the trip to the subway proved to be particularly frustrating since everyone and their cousin decided it would be a good idea to take the bus that day. Perhaps the most amusing character on the trip was a loudmouthed girl of the age I teach who actually held up the bus for an additional 5 minutes while she sent someone to pick up the brush she had dropped on the ground outside. Later on I listened to an argument she had with another passenger over the correct pronunciation of the word "ignorant":

Girl: It's "ignorant."
Other passenger: No, it's "ignant".
Girl: No...it's "ignorant."
Other passenger: No, that's what the white man has taught you.

Around this time, I saw Christ walking down the side of the road carrying a wooden cross over his shoulder. But I didn't have time to watch beyond that because the subway station was ahead.

Caught the airport shuttle and finished the novel I brought with for the flight north. (Confederacy of Dunces--an entertaining book, though I think I might have appreciated it even more had I actually read Boethius.) Checked in at the airport, where security measures were even more strict than before. I actually had to scan my fleece jacket in addition to my laptop and shoes. Oh yes, this was also the first opportunity for my hideously ugly drivers license to make its appearance in this story. I can't wait until I finally get to replace it later in the year.

The plane ride was relatively stnadard. I spent most of it completing the in-flight magazine crossword and involutnarily listening to the mindless chatter of the two women next to me. I did enjoy the flight attendant's sarcastic and humorous approach to inflight announcements though. ("Please be sure to take all personal problems, I mean baggage, with you upon deplaning...")

Arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule in scenic Manchester, met up with Deep Throat, and after a gas/oil run and a quick stop at the Throat's apartment, we were Boston-bound. On the way down I played catch up about all the friends who I never see: Mathman, Caseator, Ramblin' Dave, The Skiing Chemist, and of course Deep Throat himself. Just as we were getting into the details of Throat's plan to open up an Aspen brew pub however, we were in Boston. We stopped at the home of the Mathman, right across from a store promising "Live Poultry, Fresh Killed," before adjourning for dinner at the Cambridge Brew Pub. The Skiing Chemist and his girlfriend were also in attendance, and I made a fool out of myself by forgetting that I had actually met the girlfriend during a previous trip north. She was kind enough to forgive me this day my trespasses though, and we went off to break bread and tip back a few cold ones. The brew pub in question had excellent fare overall. Despite some hesitation on the Mathman's part to recommend it, I thoroughly enjoyed my wasabi-glazed tuna. In another foolish move, I also helped my old friends kill off several pitchers worth of beer figuring that it was not particularly often that I was in a position to drink without having to worry about driving home or getting up in the morning. Now, I will not say that I was plastered. I've been there before. But I was halfway between drunk and plastered by the end of that night. I looked around the table and suddenly realized halfway through dessert that time was behaving strangely, as though time had slowed down and instead of flowing like a river now oozed like maple syrup. I remember conversations about graduate school with the Chemist, mortgage policies with the Caseator, and video games with Ramblin' Dave, and in my memory they are all reasonably coherent. I can not say whether I was slurring my speech, though such would not be surprising. It was not a good night for my liver.

We went back and watched one of my favorite movies in recent memory, Shaun of the Dead--the best example of a rom-zom-com (romantic zombie comedy) ever made. Such a good film! And then to bed, crashing on the Mathman's couch.

Saturday, March 26: Very little planned for this day. Which is perhaps the best thing given that it was a vacation. Deep Throat and I woke up relatively early and went around the corner to hunt down some food. Mathman's corner of Cambridge is a strange place. Not only is it home to the only shop I've seen in recent memory proclaiming its willingness to kill fresh poultry right in front of you, but the convenience store had such unique items as quail eggs, sugar cane, and mango jelly. We settled for cereal and a quart of milk for breakfast. Mathman had digital cable which meant that for the first time in a long while I could watch everything from ESPN to the History Channel. The latter had a fun special about a guy who built a computer in the 1970s to help him win at blackjack. (A wooden computer, no less...old school!)

A little later, we went down to play frisbee with a few of the Throat's buddies. Mathman and I, neither of whom had played frisbee regularly since high school, were put to shame as the others displayed near perfect tosses, while, for example, my forehand kept listing to the left. I got a little semi-professional tutoring to clean that up, but we'll see how long that lasts during the relatively frisbee-free school year.

We returned back to Mathman's pad, and soon enough it was time for Deep Throat to head south for Easter to visit family. I went on a brief tour of the neighborhood with Mathman. Highlights included a building that served as both a courthouse and a prison, which must make things convenient for local district attorney, the Mathman's place of employment (which shares its name with my dorm in college), and the local mall and its frenzy of capitalist consumption. A return home followed by a southern-style dinner (jambalaya!) with Ramblin' Dave, who right now is living the good life programming role playing games. Of all of us I think he has come the closest to having the perfect job. The secret, if Max Fischer is to be believed, is to find something you love to do and then do that for the rest of your life. Dave has done that. I can only hope that we all do someday.

Once more to the Mathpad where we unwound watching The Incredibles on DVD. An excellent, excellent film made even better by extras. "Thanks to you, Mr. Skipperdoo!"...Indeed. I'm still tyring to figure out who did the voice work for the various superhero files on the extras disk. Some of them sounded very familiar.

Sunday, March 27: Easter. Learned from Mathman's roommate that Jesus is a Terminator, or at least looks like one in The Passion. Almost, but not quite, enough to make me want to see it. Spent most of the morning watching Sportscenter on ESPN, before a trip to one of my favorite childhood haunts, the Boston Museum of Science. Unfortunately, I learned too late that science museums are far more entertaining to a kid than to a grownup. The lightning show remained fun though. Gotta love the 3 story tall Van de Graaff. I was most disappointed however not to hear Leonard Nimoy asking me who put the bomp in the bomp sha bomp sha bomp on the massive Imax stereo system. That was always my favorite part! Oh well.

We went for dinner that evening at Fire and Ice, a Mongolian BBQ where I had far too much to eat of far too many different kinds of meat. Even got to see the Josh, the lawyer in training and insominac residing near Allston if his blog title is to be believed. Not that he's blogged since September, so this was something of a catchup. Josh actually knew a few of the folks there from quiz bowl and he fit into the group well. A shame that we basically went our separate ways after dinner with Throat driving me back to Manchester to crash before my flight home the next morning.

Monday, March 28: Woke up far too early. Throat has a routine...he likes to ride the stationary bike in the morning for an hour or so, which meant that I got to wake up at 6:30. All was forgiven though because we got to watch Highlander DVDs. It had been a while since I saw early episodes of the show, but it was not nearly as cheesy as I feared it would be. Except during the Quickening. That always seems weird.

Throat dropped me at the airport and I had an uneventful flight home. the only thing of note was the choice of reading material, Angels and Demons, which for those who don't know centers around events after the death of an established Pope. An interesting coincidence.

When I returned home it was driving rain, which made waiting for the bus sans-umbrella fun, but I got back by 2 in the afternoon and was able to lesson plan and get ready for the next week.

But I've already blogged about that, so I guess I'll wrap up here. It was a great trip, not all that eventful, but definitely worthwhile for seeing all the old guard. Special thanks to Deep Throat and Mathman without whom none of it would have been possible. Now if I can just make it until my next official day off...Memorial Day!