Saturday, February 25, 2006

Friday

Funny:

8th Grader A: I can't do Math. It hard.
8th Grader B: I can't do Science. Science blows.
8th Grader C: Oh yeah? Well, I can't do Lunch. It's hard to put things in my mouth.
8th Graders: ...................
8th Grader C: Wait. That didn't sound right.
8th Graders and Immature Substitute Teacher: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!

8th Grader D (following some other thread of conversation): Hey, does your mom know how to do that?

Not Funny:

Following b/f through crowded kitchen at his family party, while he tries to make a path, jostling others and saying "excuse me, pardon me, coming through," and when that doesn't work, "HEY! LADY WITH A BABY HERE!!!" so that I instantly turn purple and try to point at other people not me, while everyone within range turns to stare at me and starts saying congratulatory things. Jerk.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Bring More Booze

On Saturday night, Carl and I went to the Celtic Music Festival at the Valley Forge Convention Center and had ourselves a Hootenanny. There was a whole lotta "hoot," via many beers...and a lil bit of "nanny," i.e. hits off the whiskey flask. Carl at one point called his friends who were on the way, but couldn't hear them over the music, so just yelled "bring more booze!" into his phone and hung up. Which they did.

Me to Steph, yesterday: I heart Searson.
Steph: Buh?
Me: They are this Celtic folk rock band with three sisters and a brother and I love them. I want to be the bassist for Searson.
Steph: I see.
Me: She is so cool. And hot. The chick with the fiddle is hot too. But I really like the bassist. She's all chillin back there, laying down smooth beats while her sister freaks out on the fiddle...



Steph: Wait, wait. Do you want to be the bassist, or do you want to do the bassist?
Me: Yes. Um...wait. Be. Be the bassist.
Steph: Ok, but do you want to be the bassist herself,
Me: ...um...
Steph: ...or do you want to just be you in the band as the bassist?
Me: shut up! I wanna be the bassist in Searson when I grow up now leavemealone!



Also, an ice-tea bottle full of booze + Celtic folk bands = Carl leaning his head on someone's shoulder, rubbing their back, and stage-whispering, "I'm drunk! Don't let me go shopping for things!"

We spent a lot of time after that stumbling around shopping. For things. Things like little frog earings and candles and a black leather sporran (man-pouch ball-sack) to match his black leather kilt. And a Searson CD, which they signed while I stood there like a slack-jawed idiot, only mumbling "I-love-you-guys-you-rock" as we were backing away, clutching the CD like a couple of giddy drunk squirrels with a nut.

Love Loaf

This is what I made for dinner on VD last week:



Yes, it is a heart-shaped meat loaf and pink mashed potatos. Gag me with a spoon, right? (Actually, Erin was totally convinced that the pink taters were going to give her VD or something. So skeeved out.)

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Whur Can I Git Me One aThem Faincy Necklaces?

Can you imagine the scene at the after-Olympics buffet, where the medal winners are standing around congratulating each other, and the bunch of dorks on the curling team comes up to join them?

The speed skaters are macking on the underaged figure-skating champions, the cross-country skiers are telling everyone again about how no hip injury was going to stand in their way, and the bob-sled team is reciting an inspirational story of triumph that sounds like a cross between Iron Will and Cool Runnings. They are all raising champaigne glasses in an honorary toast delivered by Michelle Kwan, when from the back of the room, the curling team begins clinking beer bottles together and chanting "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!" while their captain pours his seventh Miller Light down his throat.

The male figure skater, lost in a glory-induced reverie recalling a life of sacrifice and his ailing mother back in the Ukraine, suddenly bites his tongue when Bob, the guy from Buffalo (who got into the Olympics four months after watching a curling match on the Discovery channel), pounds him on the back, chuckling, "Hey! You got one of them gold medals too! Ain't that a kick in the haid?"

I imagine they might get along with the snow boarders. Or at least throw a kegger with the Canadian ice hockey team. "C'mon Bob! We're gonna go run through Kwan's speech wearing nothin but our medals, eh?"

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

The Art of Being Broke

Being po' can be seen as a great opportunity to explore one's creativity.

Take, for example, my afternoon spent turning six dollars of fabric into new curtains for the dining room and attractively aranging random objects in the window sills. Ok, it's not exactly the cutting edge of art, but if I didn't place that plant on the little chair with the watering can at a jaunty angle next to it, no one would have. That's all I'm saying.

I've also been expressing myself creatively with my finances. When one is leaping that treacherous gorge between running out of money and one's next paycheck, bill-paying can get a little colorful. One begins paying phone bills and buying gas with credit cards, and then opening new credit cards (with the justification of a %0 interductory APR), and then using that new credit card to pay off the existing ones.

Of course, some debts, like student loans and car insurance, can not be easily paid with credit cards. The agencies holding those debts prefer (for some reason) to be paid with a check. With real money. It's okay though. Credit companies are thoughtful enough to send these devilish little things called convenience checks. It's like a cash advance, writing checks that will be credited to your card at a rediculously higher intrest rate. Isn't that convenient?? I seem to think so.

I am also getting pretty good at making creative little bargains with myself. Like, "OK, stupid. You open this new credit card, transfer all the balances from the higher-interest cards, and then close those accounts so you don't run them up again (but not until after we charge a new suit from Victoria's Secret to my old credit card behind our own back, deal? deal.)"

"I will want to go to work a lot if I have new work clothes," I try to explain to myself later. Right. We've heard that one before.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Employed

So, of course, I get me a job going 'round filling in for AWOL teachers in schools I've never been to, and the first thing that happens is two feet of snow and a two hour late opening. If I had no job, this



would not have happened. That's right, it's all about me.

The interview on Thursday was as I expected: less of an actual interview, more of a hey-I've-got-a-pulse-and-a-degree-gimme-a-paycheck session. They even put my shit-eating grin on an ID badge that same day. I said I could start on Monday (i.e. today), so of course they called me around eight that night asking if I wanted to work Friday. And then again on Friday morning at 6am.



What, baby? What's that smell? Oh. That's the smell of sixth graders with nervous tics and sugar highs. It smells like cafeteria tuna caserole and Britney Spears' Curious. It also smells like cash.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Bums vs. Hobos

I recieved a yarn gift certificate for Christmas, with which I purchased two skeins of this delicious wool/silk blend, or what I call "teh green goodness":



I haven't really knitted anything for myself in a long while, and after careful consideration, decided on fingerless gloves. Behold, the newest addition to my "Bum-beautiful" collection!



After knitting the right one, I decided that I was going to make the fingers longer. Not because I think the shorter ones make my knuckles look fat and ugly like porky little gnomes wearing turtlenecks, but because I realized my fingers were still a little too chilly. So for purely practical reasons, I made the fingers on the second glove longer.



(Did you notice the rustic setting? Just for you, internets, just for you.) Jaimie said that this is more of a "hobo" glove than a "bum" glove. You see, hobos are more motivated and mobile than bums. Bums are much lazier than hobos, and are usually snoozing the nights away in some fancy shelter, whereas hobos are always on the move, picking up cans and seeking out a better, warmer cardboard box. Hobos need their hands to be a lot warmer, because they are out later, pushing around their hobo shopping carts, which is very cold on the hands. They only need the very tips of their fingers for the most dexterous hobo tasks, like rolling new ciggarettes out of all the butts they collected during the day, or picking up winnings from a game of dice with their hobo friends before the fuzz breaks up the game.

Hobos also have a very keen fashion sense. They realize that the longer fingers make their hands look more elegant and less porky. And nothing ruins a hobo's day like realizing they have porky fingers.

Friday, February 03, 2006

The Terrible Foot-Eating Monster



and, also, my sister's new hair color. It looks refreshingly like her actual hair color, which is a lot like my hair color, which looks dang sexy on her, when she's not devouring feet that is.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

TB Free Since 2003

Greetings, my peeps. I am here to tell you that I have an interview on the 9th. An interview for a job. A job that does not involve lunch meat, selling a quota of Swedish foam pillows, or tips by the dollar.

Ok, it's not so much an "interview" as an "appointment," seeing as once I prove that I have a pulse and I don't molest children, they'll give me a job. Anyone with the right paperwork can be a substitute teacher. You know it's true. Remember all the mouth-breathing hacks they had babysitting you when you were in high school? Yeah. You remember. Well, two weeks from now, if all goes well, I will be one of those mouth-breathing hacks. Keep your fingers crossed for me, K?

One of the requirements of the sub service is at least three letters of recommondation. Yeah. I only have one. So I am in the process of gently harrassing my cooperating teacher from my student teaching days for said letter (seeing as I'm a dumbass and never asked for one back then), and also tracking down a prof I had two years ago who probably doesn't remember me and whose memory probably wont be sparked by my description of "a bright but sleep-deprived senior in that class you taught. You know, that class with that guy who called himself Strider? Remember?" She was a great professor. We would finish teaching our mini-lesson or whatever, and there would be this pause...while she collected her thoughts...and she would say "you...are a gemstone. A gemstone." How great is that?

Another requirement is that I prove I don't have TB, because PA is against giving children TB. Crazy commie hippies. It turns out that the last TB test I had was in December of 2003, and they want it to be recent within the past two years. Well it's not, people. Some of us procrastinate about getting jobs. Some of us procrastinate until just after all of our TB tests and criminal clearances run out, and we have to scramble to get new ones before February9th, okay??