his eyes open. no alarm? this could be bad. what time is it?

7:07. this is bad. oh, nope, today is F day. 3 4 5 6 7 1 - prep first block. he can go in late. he's not supposed to; other teachers have told him that the administrators are always watching. by contract, he should be in the building by 7:15. he doesn't care; they can go ahead and fire him. usually, he sets his alarm for 6:15, snoozes until 6:40 or so, brushes his teeth, irons his clothes, and is out the door by 6:55, but today all of that is shifted back 40 minutes.

the drive is autopilot by now. he's been listening to the same pearl jam cd (69 - san francisco a, or maybe it's chicago b, or maybe seattle a) for a few days. it's got some good ones: given to fly, wishlist, better man, evenflow. he halfheartedly curses his useless ipod in the back of his mind for the nth day in a row. it takes half an hour instead of 20 minutes to get to the school because he left later than usual.

he gets in at 8:07. 18 minutes left in first block - not bad. he checks his mailbox - empty. he goes up to 312, the room that contains his, along with 12 (he thinks) other teachers', desks. he starts grading homework; he gave the students a take-home quiz that involves that section and he owes it to them to return the assignment so they can use it to help with the quiz. he realizes he has not structured a lesson plan for today, beyond teaching surface areas and volumes of spheres. he flips to section 6-6 in the book. project to find the surface area of a sphere involving foam balls, yarn, and scissors - yeah, right. derivation of the volume of a sphere involving n number of pyramids - also yeah, right. what's left to teach - diagram of a sphere, equation for surface area, equation for volume. ok, lesson's ready. not much time until 2nd block; he grades more papers. he gets up just as the bell rings.