Christmas Break, Days 11, 12, & 13

Tuesday I went to see The Life Acquatic With Steve Zissou. Amilynne summs it up best by saying it's like Bottlerocket: Little Boys playing at being grown-ups with jobs, and floundering about a lot, but really just playing. It was a lot of fun--especially all of the David Bowie songs in Portughese (Major Tom being the best-placed of them all). Afterward I got my new exercise bike. Which prompted a re-arranging of everything in my room to make a spot for it. Moving bookcases is slow work, especially because I took the time to rearrange the books into basic categories.

Wednesday I picked Thomas up at the airport and got him to help me put the bike together. I was going to do it myself until I opened the instruction manual and the first instruction was "While another person holds it up..." Hmph. So I enlisted help and got it put together.

Around this time Amilynne and I started having conversations something like this.

Me: I got a bike.

Amilynnne: It's not a bike, it has no wheels.

Me: It does have two pedals that cycle around.

Amilynne: It is not a bike. Quit calling it a bike. You are a liar.

Me: I'm not a liar. (Then, to piss her off...) I think I'll go make some s'mores.

Amilynne: S'mores?

Me: Yeah, but I think I'll use Fudgeshop cookies instead. (This brilliant idea is rightly attributed to Daryl, who made s'mores this way while camping, and I must say that it's better this way than with nasty grainy Hershey's chocolate.)

Amilynne: That's not s'mores. S'mores have chocolate bars and graham crackers. You're a liar.

Me: No, I'm toasting a marshmallow, and eating it with chocolate. It's s'mores.

(S'mores is a word that is not in the dictionary. Amilynne and I have both looked, I in my Webster's and she in her almighty Oxford American. Will someone tell me, please, why this word has been overlooked?)

Amilynne: You're a liar.

Me: Well, you claim you sell coffee, but it's really just milk. (Amilynne works for a certain Seattle-based coffee empire.)

Amilynne: Yeah, it's just milk. With a little coffee.

Me: Expensive milk with a little coffee. Yet it's supposedly coffee. You're a liar and a price gauger.

Amilynne: You're a liar.

Me: You're a liar.

And it disintigrates from there. I can't think of anything that can keep Amilynne busy for longer than an argument about semantics. There's something else she claims I lie about, but I can't think what it is at the moment, I'm sure it will come to me eventually.

Tonight I mixed Nutella with fondant to make some candy centers. At the outset of this break, I was sure that I would make chocolates, yet here it is, day 13, and none made yet. Blah. But I must say that the Nutella centers are glorious.

Christmas Break, Day 10

I sat down with 8 1/2 again to finish it. The movie is so bewildering until it finally starts to pull itself together and Fellini's genius is staring you in the face. Then as I was doing some dishes, I put it on again with the commentary track and learned a whole lot, like I already knew that Fellini would choose his actors for their looks, then have them say their lines in their own language, and dub in their voices later in Italian, but this commentary track pointed out that the studios at Cinecittà were built before sound movies and were therefore not soundproof, and so this voice dubbing thing was actually quite pragmatic. It is also why even the Italian actors' voices don't really seem to be coming from them all of the time, why, for example, Mastroiani's voice often seems so much larger than it should be, even though they matched the words to his lips pretty well. Anyway the film is delicious and worth watching so many times. And listening to the commentary, I realized that I had understood and followed along watching it just in Italian without subtitles just fine, even though it was confusing enough that I worried that I had missed something at the beginning. I know that in all reality, I really do understand Italian, but I look at watching a movie without subtitles as a proof and a test, and that always makes me a little nervous, like failure is immenent, and like I will suddenly lose it and be pulled back to the world of speaking only English.

I went to lunch with Katie--we just met at the food court of a mall, because niether of us would decide what we felt like eating--then we walked around the mall and shopped and chatted for a while. We went into this store that specializes in really garish things for pre-teen and teenage girls--rugs and pillows and handbags and the such, all with lots of fucsia feathers and sequins. They had a cool pillow, though, a Tootsie Pop, with a stick--I imagined myself bopping my students on their heads with it to keep them in line, the fantasy soon ended when I realized that their reactions in this situation would amount to pure chaos, and that eventually they would steal the pillow from me and bop each other, and possibly with the stick, not the pillow end. That wouldn't have ended well.

After that, I went to a karaoke party. Actually, when I got there, they were watching Napoleon Dynamite, which makes me laugh a lot, especially since Dad's from Preston, and it shows the spirit of the town well even if the film portrays everything stuck a little too much in the 80's. I have to say that the movie loses a lot on the small screen, because part of what makes it great is Napoleon's dance at the end, and a big part of that is him being blown up larger than life on a movie screen. At any rate, the party moved forward to karaoke, which proved quickly that there were really only two people at the party who could sing, (I was definitely among the non-singers) but we all had fun anyway.

Christmas Break, Day 9

Yikes! Christmas Break is half over!

Tonight I tried to watch 8 1/2, but the phone kept ringing and I kept falling asleep. Maybe tomorrow. The problem was in trying to watch some dumb French film first (a movie with Amelie in it before she made Amelie)--so I started off bored. I'll try again tomorrow.

Christmas Break, Days 6, 7, & 8

Shopping Cooking Shopping Cooking Shopping Shopping Shopping Cooking Cooking Cooking Cooking Cooking Cooking

Merry Christmas!

Shopping: Last year, Thomas gave me one of those shiatsu massage chairs. Fantastic. So fantastic that earlier this month I broke it. And I have missed it terribly. So terribly that I went shopping, only this time I got a massage mat that I can lay down on and that has heat. I ♥ it. ♥ it, ♥ it, ♥ it. Deeelightful.

I've also spent a lot of time making candy--fondant for fondant centers of chocolates, and a batch of carmels. I have yet to dip any chocolates, but I would hate to be without a project, wouldn't I?

For Christmas Dinner, I went to Jane's. She was my department head my first year here, and her best friend was my principal the first two years. They always have Christmas and Thanksgiving together, and they are kind enough to invite me along when I don't go home for a holiday. When I called to see what I could bring, Jane said an appetizer, so I made a spinach and ricotta cheesecake with smoked salmon and capers on the top. I must admit that it turned out well. Unfortunately, though, there was a lot left over, so I'll be eating it for a while. The dinner was fantastic, delicious beef tenderloin with a bleu cheese sauce, everyone there was so nice, I had a wonderful time. Although I don't think I'll be invited to play spades again, as I tend to bid a little wildly, and Jane's mother is a card shark.

I also spent a lot of time on the phone with my family and with Elizabeth. I think Dad liked the glasses I got him, a lovely red, and Alan was very funny giving me the play-by-play as he opened them. Amilynne called me early before she went to work and we opened presents over the phone. She got me a cool persian rug mousepad, it's beautiful, but she got the one that replicates the rug Freud draped over his couch, so now that my mouse rests on it, it tells me a lot about its mother. David sent me 8 1/2, a Fellini film that I like a lot.

I also talked to mom, she got engaged.

Tonight when I got home from dinner, my carbon monoxide alarm was going off, and I couldn't get it to stop. You can silence it for like two minutes, but then it goes off again. I feel bad for my neighbors, because I'm sure they could hear it (I can hear theirs), and I don't know how long it had been going off, since I was gone for about 6 hours. I had to call the emergency maintenance number and get them to come--I had a pilot light on my stove that wouldn't stay lit, so he cleaned that up re-taped a hose, and replaced my alarm. I was sad to call the on-call guy at 10pm on Christmas, but I didn't want to die in my sleep, either.

So that's the big day. Now a week to recover, and then back to the grind.

Christmas Break, Day 5

Well, I didn't manage to complete ANYTHING on my plate today. I got up early to take Thomas to the airport, and on the way home stopped off at the grocery store (I think it was so early that I was their first customer of the day) to buy some unsalted peanuts for making peanut clusters. I came home and did nothing--talked on the phone, but nothing--I wanted a nap but I wasn't quite tired enough. What a grumpy, cranky mood.

In the afternoon I used a free movie pass (free is good!) to go see Ocean's 12. Which was more of a fun character sketch than serious burglary planning like in Ocean's 11, but I found it delightful, and laughed out loud a lot. Sometimes it's splendid to go to a movie alone. It's like the effect of watching is amplified 10 times because all of those little moments when you would elbow or grab onto or mumble something in a friend's ear has to remain inside, so the emotional effect builds up to the point of bursting. Not that movies with friends are bad--especially after the movie when you're out to dinner and rehashing it--the point is that a lot of people don't like going to movies alone and I do relish it. One other plus side: if the movie's a weeper, and I'm not with anyone I know, the embarrassment factor goes way down, becuase I admit that I'm a weepy one, and it is SO embarrassing to cry in front of people I know, especially when you've cried in the last 3 movies you've been to, and especially if they aren't crying, especially if they're guys, or most especially if it's my dad, who laughs at me when I cry at movies.

I ended up the night on the winning side of a Cranium game (my favorite game) at a party. A splendid way to end the evening.

Christmas Break, Day 4

Finally I got a chance to watch the Return of the King extended edition! Hooray! Great show! Long show! Great, long show! I have to admit--I do love it, and I loved the extra goodies, but I was quite ready for it to end. Four hours is just a long show. Or maybe it's just a long time when I'm sitting on my couch (not the most comfortable piece of furniture in the world).

I also finished decorating for Christmas. The living room is clean, the nativities are out, it's beautiful and joyous and festive.

Christmas Break, Day 3

I worked hard today! I finished packaging packages, and did Christmas cards, and took the whole lot down to the post office. Living far from home is not cheap around the holidays. The post office lady kept looking at me like I was a loon for sending so much stuff, and I just said "It's the holidays, and this is the price you pay when you don't go home." C'est la vie. It wasn't even really the whole bunch--I'm waiting on one updated address and I'm still waiting on one thing that I ordered for Amilynne. These items might get shipped in August.

I did some surfing on epitonic and found a great new band called Bedroom Heroes, which I liked so much that I ordered their disc.

I also began the monumental task of cleaning my house. Ick.

I collapsed before 7:00, and slept until about 10-ish, then spent a couple of hours on the phone with Elizabeth and Amilynne, and made some fondant. The bad thing about having made good cooked fondant in the past is that I now expect good cooked fondant every time. It is very labor intensive, but the creaminess of the final product can't be matched by uncooked methods--no matter what, they turn out grainy. So there may be fewer chocolates, but they will be of a higher quality. I figure I'll need to make at least four more batches, plus carmels. It's busy, and all of the mixing and kneading is labor intensive, but it is relaxing to do something besides reading a textbook or correcting tests (although there is some of that to do on a later date as well).

Amilynne is reveling in the family-sized jar of Nutella she bought. She's eating it with vanilla wafers. I must say the combination sounds delightful.

Christmas Break, Day 2

Today I did very little. I got up and popped in Rushmore and worked on the dishes and a bit of gift wrapping. Then I went to church. It was the Christmas program, the choir really sounded good, but I was cramming the last half of Ether because I had a feeling that I would be teaching Sunday School. You see, we alternate weeks, and I was talking to a friend and found out that a couple of weeks ago the guy who teaches opposite me was asking for volunteers to teach while he was gone for Christmas, but I just kind of felt like I should be ready to fill in. So I was cramming during the Christmas program.

Sure enough, Sunday School came and no one was ready to teach. I got up after a while--everyone was just visiting--and said "Is anyone teaching?" and no one said that they were, so I said I would wing it, and I did. The good thing is that I focused on chapter 12 (faith) and ignored chapter 15 (complete destruction), and there wasn't a ton of time, so I got through it without being reduced to tears.

I came home and wrapped more presents and talked on the phone. Filomena called me and it was so nice to talk with her! She is fantastic and patient with me when I speak Italian. I also talked with Alan and Dad, and Amilynne. Amilynne is busy reading The Best American Non-Required Reading of 2004. She called me in sheer delight, reading something to me about parent-child relations that was, in fact, delightful, but of which I forget the details at the moment. I also called Sara to confirm that there is no "h" in her name. There's not.

Tonight we had a Thunder/Snow storm. Thunder and lightning with snowfall, fantastically wierd. I think it's time to make a nice cup of tea and pop in a movie (maybe Mary Poppins?) while I finish wrapping gifts. I also need to get the annual Christmas letter written. Ho Ho Ho.

Christmas Break, Day 1

I spent the day wrapping presents and getting them ready for the mail. I know that wrapping presents shouldn't take the whole day, but each one must be considered in the light of which of the 500 wrapping papers I purchased for this year should go on each. I know that having a wrapping paper room is kind of a joke, but I need one.

Wrapping presents also took all day because I did it while watching movies: Mulan, Shakespeare in Love, and Maverick. All three are such good flicks, and worth multiple viewings, such as today, when I was in the middle of a package when the movie ended, I just hit play again. I watched some of the bonus material on Shakespeare in Love. For a long time, I proclaimed that that was my favorite movie. I really don't know what my favorite movie is, but that one is up there. Maverick is great too. First off--just the scenery is splendid. It makes me miss the Southwest a lot, since it was filmed around Kanab, Utah, and that's just a hop from Jacob Lake, where I spent two summers while I was in college. All of the red cliffs--it's really a beautiful part of the world. Second, the writing is just splendid and fun, and the great script is only matched by the fantastic cast. And don't we all want to be Jodie Foster in that fantastic blue dress?

Amilynne and I also spent some time on the phone. A lot of time on the phone. I am completely worried because the recent AT&T Wireless and Cingular merger almost certainly spells sudden death for my phone plan. Maybe it's time to start shopping around again.

Well, there are more presents to wrap, but tomorrow is another day.

New Chair

Tonight as I work at the computer, I am doing so in lush comfort, because yesterday I broke down and bought a new office chair for my house. When I had been out of college for about a year, I bought an 8' table and a dinky $25 office chair for my computer from Office Depot. The table is still here, although there are items besides its legs underneath helping to prop it up, but the chair had to go. It had been on its last leg since about two years ago--its early demise being prompted by my becoming a teacher and suddenly doing a LOT of work at home. The seat became unattached, so it would flop around, and I even fell out of it a couple of times, and all of the hours on a broken chair were doing a number on my back.

I did have standards for the new chair, though: I wanted adjustable arm rests that would go up and down, and I wanted an adjustable back. I've been seriously looking for the right chair for over a year--and yesterday I saw it, brought it home, and put it together immediately. And I am now blogging in the most heavenly comfort--compared to the other one, this is like sitting on a cloud.

So here's to another late night working...

Cheers.

The best things in life are chocolate.

I don't think I need to say anything more.

MoTab for Christmas

Amilynne called me the other night and practically the first thing out of her mouth was "ARE YOU LISTENING TO MoTAB?" MoTab, for anyone new to the abbreviation, is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. A fine institution celebrating 75 years of Music and the Spoken Word this year. Actually, get me on the wrong day, and I can't stand it. In general, choral music is not my favorite, and I usually like something grandiose and symphonic (which the MoTab sometimes is, but isn't always) and more instrumental, or just some rock-n-roll. However, this all magically changes at Christmas time, because it is the time of year for choirs of angels, or of people, whichever you have handy. Ergo MoTab for Christmas.

So to Amilynne's query of "ARE YOU LISTENING TO MoTAB?" I instantly responded "Yes, it's Christmas. There is little better than MoTab for Christmas, except maybe Barbara Streisand, heaven bless her for doing it in spite of being Jewish." And to my surprise Amilynne came right back with "Yes, there is very little better than MoTab for Christmas." I admit I was a tiny bit shocked, but I soon recovered because I realized that she did grow up in the same house as I did and therefore she had been subject to the same range of Christmas recordings as I had been. MoTab would make sense for her too, thanks to our dad.

(Not thanks to our dad, we were also subjected to Manheim Steamroller's Christmas. We can entertain ourselves for a very long time immitating Manheim Steamroller's version of Deck the Halls. I do not suggest listening to it, or one may find onesself immitating it for hours on end, and I would propose that one's time could be put to better use doing just about anything else.)

At any rate, Amilynne commented on how the Christmas music at her work drives her nuts, until every once in a while MoTab comes on, and then she is happy.

I have listened to too much MoTab, though, because yesterday instead of working on all of my classwork and work work I got into the Christmas spirit and decorated my trees. (Yes, trees plural--but don't mistake it for anything fantastic. It's a group of three trees ranging from 18" to 3' high). In spite of their diminuitive size, the task took a few hours, as I decorated each individually and differently than its fellows. The best little detail is a nutcracker of a Venetian gondolier hanging from the largest tree. Also there's a bear that hangs from the lowest tree down to the ground, so he has his own forest to walk through. Very sweet. Makes me happy.

So at any rate I find myself coming out of this weekend even farther behind than I was before going into it, and yet there are lit trees, MoTab carols, and a jug of eggnog waiting for me when I get home. Sometimes putting onesself in the position of having to face stress and consequences is almost justifiable.

November 31

The calendar that's above my work area says that today is November 31. I probably won't find out otherwise until I turn the page tomorrow and find that it's December 2.

Fantastic Little Chicadees II

I have raised my kids right. Today one of my fourth years brought a panettone in for the class. She was like "Is this the stuff you brought for us last year?" and "It is from Italy, so is it right?" Turns out that she was thinking of pandoro, but that's all right. Later this afternoon I located and found pandoro to bring before Christmas break (my own tradition). But I thought, how fantastic that she saw something Italian cultural, recognized it, and brought it in! I was impressed.

A bit too much ink still smudging the top, but not too shabby for my first attempt at printmaking!

Fantastic Little Chicadees

I had the best time yesterday with two of my little chicadees at the Virginia Museum of Art's Teen Renaissance Symposium. And my two little chicadees were so good. We left the school around 9am and they threw everything they had in the back of my car and I looked at their empty hands and said "I notice that there are no notebooks in your hands." So I pulled out some new notebooks for them, admonishing them to use them for this symposium and for other fantastic lectures that they will have the opportunity to attend in college--lectures that maybe have nothing to do with what they are studying, but that will be interesting and that will broaden their minds anyway. I also asked them to think of questions they have and to write them down. We all piled into the car and soon arrived at the museum.

The first session of the day was on Michelangelo and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was based on findings by a Dr. Meshburger reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association Oct 10, 1990 that the red cape around God and the cherubs in the Creation of Adam resembles the cross-section of a brain. We then listened to some Renaissance music and danced a Renaissance dance. After lunch, there was a fantastic lecture on Fibonacci's number and the Mona Lisa, a lecture on feminism in Shakespeare, and a commentary on the work of Durer (a special exhibit of his engravings is currently at the museum). We also made intaglio prints (my first attempt, which I will post). Dinner and a lecture on Leonardo's view of the body and soul. I had a blast. The kids had a blast. The kids were renaissance dancing in the parking lot. It was a fantastic day.

Amilynne and Vincent

I just got off the phone with Amilynne and she had the best news: this weekend, she saw her first Van Gogh. There was a special exhibit that came to her museum with lots of cool artists, but of course the Van Gogh was really what mattered. She said that she stood in front of it for 10 minutes and cried. I did the same the first time I saw a Van Gogh--the resident one at the Kimball Museum in Fort Worth. When Ami was telling me about it I was the biggest geek but I cried too. Standing in front of a Van Gogh just evokes such strong emotions.

It's one of those things that you really just have to DO. Van Gogh has to be seen in person, becasue he is all about the paint. And no matter what, a flat reproduction can't get the fantastic effect of the paint across.

I have to admit, though, that it was quite fun this last summer before Amilynne had seen a Van Gogh to tell her about the fantastic Van Gogh exhibit that came through here. A couple of years ago I got us a pair of matching Van Gogh books, and all of the paintings from this exhibit were in there, so over the phone I was all "...Now if you'll turn to p. 128, I saw that one too..."--she was green with envy. Her eyes even turned green. Permanently.

Next we just need to take a trip to New York to see the Starry Night.... We might need 15 minutes of weep time in front of that one.

Who am I kidding? The must is that my sister and I just plain must museum hop until we're dead. It's all so much better in real life.

Electric Coconut

Today I was administering a test in another teacher's classroom. This classroom belongs to an English teacher, and the walls were plastered with definitions of literary terms and parts of speech. As I looked around, I really had to wonder why parts of speech are so foreign to my students. The information is there for them.

The first thing that hit me, though, as I walked into the room was an overpowering coconut/vanilla smell. Woah! The teacher had a plug-in air freshener in the wall. By the time I left 90 minutes later, I was heady with coconut. I wondered how the students, still in the room testing, were faring.

It's unfortunate, though, that as strong as that coconut scent was, once I left the room I left the smell. If I had been in a room of cigarette smoke, I would have stunk like cigarettes all day. I do wonder why it is so hard to make a pleasant smell stay.

Catapults

Last night the Simpsons had a catapult in their intro: the couch in front of the TV was attached to a catapult and they ended up catapulted over a mountain range. I laughed. I do love a good catapult. It all started with seeing Monty Python and the Holy Grail in 10th grade English. I laughed so hard that I fell out of my chair when that cow came flying over the castle wall. Then again, a couple of years later, I was watching Saturday Night Live and they had one of their fake commercials for the Yard-A-Pult, a personal size catapult that gets rid of nasty things like baby diapers, hot coals, and dead pets by flinging them over the fence. Once again: laughed so hard that I rolled off the couch.

The real mystique is being able to throw things really really far using only physics. No gunpowder, no explosions, just gravity and torque, and CRASH! (or BOOM! or SPLAT!, depending on what you're throwing...) Total destruction.

When I was in Torino, I went to the medieval park they have down by the Po, and inside there was the coolest weapons shop, and they had a working mini-catapult. WOW. I wished so much that I had space in my luggage for that. It was beautiful, made of polished wood and all. And it would be so fun for flinging things around the house.

They also had guillotines in two sizes. But that's a topic for another day.

Life ReDesign

Sometimes I waste time thinking about what I would have designed into my life if I had started out with a bit of foresight. Nothing major--I'm not talking about warping into some weird life that doesn't resemble mine, because I have a good life and I'm quite happy with it. All the same, sometimes I find that I'm confronting a task and that my skill set doesn't quite measure up, and I think about when I could have possibly gotten the training I would need to attack said tasks head on. The skill set most often popping up as deficient is my skill with computers.

Now I'm not a complete idiot. I am a beast on Word and I'm darned good with Excel, and I make the meanest PowerPoint presentation you've ever seen. I love to play around on Illustrator and Photoshop, and I've even created (rudimentary) classroom materials with them. It's all kind of fun, because I don't know computers very well and so I can believe that computers inhabit a world with order where the right formula can get you what you want every time. It is this idealism that sinks my soul when I come up against a task that I want to figure out for myself but that just doesn't make sense, especially if it's something frivolous that I really could do myself but I just think it would be fun to make a bit fancier.

Or like blogging for instance. I would love to know enough to widen the column of writing on this page just a bit more. Why? No reason besides the fact that I think it would look better. Or I would love to be able to put together a cool web page, but I honestly don't have the skill, especially because I would want it to look good, not amateurish.

So should I ever come up with the ability to go back in time knowing what I know now, I wonder if I wouldn't make another choice--say web design--instead of what I do now. Or somehow in addition to what I do now.

It just would be kind of cool to understand better this cute little box I sit in front of every chance I get.

Breathing Again

How splendid is it to be able to breathe in again without accidentally inhaling too much political rhetoric! Sure, not all my guys won on Tuesday, but after watching the presidential race whittle down since last winter, WHO CARES! It's just nice to be able to see something different on the news (or to ignore the news altogether without feeling guilty about it).

On the downside, the people who live above me have been SO loud lately. They were shouting so loudly about 40 minutes ago that Amilynne could hear them over the phone. Now they're pounding around and stomping or dropping things on the floor or something. I usually try not to pound on the ceiling until nighttime, because during the day things are just more loud than they should be at night, but this is rediculous, and far beyond the noise of normal life. This has got to be the worst thing about living in an apartment.

The first nine weeks ends this week! Yippee! We're 25% through! And Thanksgiving's in 2 1/2 weeks! Yahoo!

Maria Full of Grace

Monday night we excursioned out to Williamsburg for a flick: Maria Full of Grace. All about a Colombian girl who decides to take a job smuggling drugs into the US by swallowing them. You would think that this would be tragic, and at times it is, but happily the movie didn't end in an absolute tragedy (although there is tragedy along the way) and that's good.

The movie also provides a glance into life as an illegal immigrant. It presents a very organized community that understands its environment and how to get by in it. What an issue illegal immigration is! I am worried that so many states are taking measures to withhold services to illegal immigrants. Of course I would prefer that all immigrants were legal, but I don't think that withholding services will effectively stem the tide of people leaving everything for a bite of the American hamburger. It will only create a wider diaspora between those that have and those who don't. How many people pushing for these reforms employ illegal immigrants to perform menial tasks an American wouldn't do?

How to fix all of this? I don't know. Giving opportunities for the poor of these countries to learn a trade may be the first step. Being willing to give legal status to the people who do our grunt work may also be a part of it. Keeping needed services from illegal immigrants is not the way to do this: it will only contribute to poverty, crime and disease in our society.

Mix Tapes

Yesterday I got the BEST thing in the mail. Amilynne sent me a mix tape. This was in response to an urgent SOS because the mix tape that she gave me when we saw each other in August has begun to self-destruct in my car tape deck. It's all I've listened to in my car since I got it, and it's starting to go. So last night I called Ami and said "Hey! I got your tape!" and she said "Pop it in!" and I said "No, I think I'll save it for the car--I'm going to watch I'm Not Scared tonight and then go to bed." "Oh." I could hear that she was a little disappointed that I hadn't popped it right in. But here's the deal: it's for the car, and it's not like I won't be SOSing in 2 months saying "Help! This tape is starting to warp! Make me another!"

But I couldn't wait. I popped it in when we got off the phone. It's magical. Where else can you listen to Brian Jonestown Massacre one minute and Bert and Ernie the next, and not much later you hear the Smiths? She even has Counting Crows on there, and I don't remember her liking Counting Crows.

I fell asleep in the middle of I'm Not Scared.

There is something about a mix tape. I've made lots of them; I've gotten lots of them. You're always in the mood for one. And somehow they end up getting shared around. Mix tapes are for being in love, for declaring independence from being in love, for letting friends know you miss them even though you live far away, for cool things you do with friends like roadtrips or climbing water towers. And sometimes exchanging them with your sister is just a hats-off nod to the enormity of her disc collection--so good you want it all; so big you know that in all of the Christmasses at Dad's you'll never get it all burned. I've got one mix tape from a friend I used to work with. She's a Beatles fan, so there's some of that, but nuttiest of all is an old recording of "When It's Springtime in the Rockies." I was singing it one day--she was like "Woah! My grandpa used to sing that to me when I was going to sleep!" and I was like "My great-grandma wrote the words."

I caught an interview on some talk show with Quentin Tarantino. When asked what he does to show a girl he's interested, he says he makes a mix tape. Woah. That would have to be the #1 reason to get up close & personal with Quentin Tarantino. He's got to have the bossest music collection around. That would be one heck of a mix tape.

All About Eve

No. All about Amilynne.

Amilynne is in class right now. She feels sad that I haven't posted many updates about her. She's right. I should definitely talk about her more.

We just spent a few minutes on the phone. Ami has seen I ♥ Huckabees. She reports that there is a Kafka moment and that it is the funniest movie in a long time. I must say that a Kafka moment is enough to get me into the theater, although I must also say that a Kafka moment is the reason why Amilynne and I should see this movie and our brothers should not. I do still need to see it myself. Something about fall and school, I tend to miss a lot of the shows I would really love to see.

Amilynne got to go see Senator Kerry do his campaign song-and-dance on Friday. She came away all signed up to help with the election. What a good little trooper Amilynne is! I've been looking at the Senator's website. His stance on education makes me hopping mad. He says that teachers aren't treated like professionals because they aren't paid enough and because they don't have enough responsibility. What? Not enough responsibility? Is that why I have to sleep for a week solid after school lets out for the summer? Because tonight I'm going to go see I ♥ Huckabees instead of writing the test I'm giving to my first years? Dad told me that Teresa Heinz Kerry said that Laura Bush had never had a real job. Hmmm. I'm pretty sure she was a teacher once upon a time. The Kerrys can take their opinions about teachers and shove it.

Sorry. I got off track. I'm writing about Amilynne.

Amilynne made me another mix tape. The one she gave me in August has not left my car stereo and is about worn out. I gave her some constructive criticism for this one: no Missy Elliott. Apparently she took the constructive criticism and I am looking forward to a real boss tape.

The Suicide of Ajax by Exekias, c. 540 BC. 

It's All About the Greeks

I picked up a copy of the complete plays of Sophocles. I haven't read Greek drama since my freshman year in college, when I had a fantastic Intro to Classical Lit class from Dr. Timothy (I think that was his name) Winters. He was so good that when he picked up and moved to some college back east the next year, there was a real temptation to switch to classical studies, pick up, and follow. We read the Orestia of Aeschylus. I remember really liking it, and I just dug open my treasure chest of files of notes from my undergrad work and found that the person I would have liked most to play was Clytemnestra. (Side note: there is nothing happier than my treasure chest of files of notes from my undergrad work. Everyone should get the chance to major in Humanities at least once--completely impractical, but what a richness, having the charge to study the best work and greatest achievements of humanity. It makes my soul soar just to think about it.)

At any rate, it's Sophocles I've got now, and not knowing which play would be best, I started with the one at the front: Ajax. Now. I do love the tale of Ajax. There is a fantastic Greek black figure vase by Exekias where Ajax is planting his sword in the ground to fall on it. I'll have to try to post an image. So back to Sophocles. Let me just say that for "saying it like it is" in a very straightforward yet naked with feeling way, it's all about the Greeks. And it's because of the whole strophe-antistrophe chorus thing: they have the ability, within just a few lines of dialogue, to lay bare a hidden agenda or emotion or to state the epiphany of the whole play. How do we know how deeply Ajax's wife dreads his death? She says how much, but rather than saying it to herself and sounding like an introspective fool, she talks it out with that most perceptive chorus. (Could the Greek chorus be the predecessor to modern psychology?) It doesn't just work with the wife; it works with the brother as well: Imagine! A manly way to express one's deepest griefs, fears, thoughts, and feelings!

It is no wonder that terms as singular as drama and pathos come from the Greek. The theater is their ballgame, and they describe it best.

Black Elk Speaks

Today I finished reading Black Elk Speaks, a narrative by Black Elk, a Lakota medicine man who tells about Custer's Last Stand and the Wounded Knee Massacre. A link to read it online can be found by clicking on the title of this posting.

The book is fascinating because of its details about what it means to be a visionary in Native American cultures, and because of its descriptions of everyday and special happenings at the end of the ninteenth century as native peoples experienced the injustices and changes related to the settling of the West. Black Elk talks about so many battles, and I found it amazing that he lived through all of them.

It was good and thought-provoking reading. And I so enjoyed having it online so I could just look up a chapter while I ate my lunch.

But I never wanted to see the underside of a semi

A lovely day today (yesterday now, I guess). Thomas and I headed for the hills for some autumn foliage viewing. On the way west, we stopped for gas and found gelato! The skinny's on the other blog (linked by clicking on the title of this entry). We then headed for the Blue Ridge Parkway and drove south. We dodged random showers and some clouds, but found mostly sun and a lot of breezes causing showers of leaves to fall on us on our way. We did a bit of walking at a couple of spots. We found one overlook, Big Spy Mountain, which was better viewed from the hill that the trail didn't lead to. Then we found Crabtree Falls and hiked up partway, but darkness was starting to fall and I wasn't sure I remembered how to get back to the main highway and we decided to make sure we got out while it was still light.

Then we hit the traffic. BLAH! As soon as we hit Hwy 81, we were at a standstill. It took us two hours to cover the 8 miles to the next exit. Needless to say, we hadn't planned for that slowdown. At fault was a wreck almost to the next exit: what we saw was a tow truck attached to a semi on its side with its wheels facing us. Scary! Well, best guess was that at some point it was across most of the road, because traffic was so stopped for so long. After we'd been in the traffic jam for more than an hour, a police car came by on the shoulder. Another one followed half an hour later, along with a big-blinking-arrow-sign truck. It was so nice to finally pass it all and be moving forward. By the time we were arriving home, we had started to run out of music to listen to, and I had brought the music, so you know how long that takes.

Red Skies at Morn...

... teachers be warned. I drove to work today with a most beautiful sunrise all around me. The skies were pink and orange and the trees in silhouette were still leafy and as I was crossing the bridge I thought how glad I was not to be a sailor.

Can I please be a sailor? No rainstorm, thunderstorm, or squall can compare with a roomful of 25 tenth graders taking the PSAT.

Gentile reader, you may wonder what tenth graders are doing taking the PSAT. Isn't that an eleventh grade thing? Well, I asked, and apparently all of the tenth graders are taking it this year too. What a waste of money.

You see, they haven't grasped the idea that standardized tests have a schedule and that they must be silent while they take them. There was also a guy who wanted to go to the bathroom as soon as I restarted things after the bathroom break. Too bad. If this had been an SAT session, I would have ejected about ten of them.

I wonder how much of a pay raise teachers could have had if they weren't wasting money having the tenth graders take the PSAT.

Too yummy for a title

I just had the great joy and privilege of introducing ten teenagers (my 3rd year class) to the bliss that is Nutella. Y-U-M-M-Y, or, put simply in Italian, che buono! Every job should have moments as fulfilling as this. It seriously reminds me of the day before I came home from Italy when Roberta Z. made me eat Nutella crepes. I had sworn not to eat the stuff because of its devastating effect on waistlines. The crepes were good. I didn't make crepes for my students--we had Bistro Cornbread crackers, which are super yummy with Nutella. But to make up for it, they got lemon Loacker too. They had to earn it by using various forms of the partitive to ask for it. (Repeat: Vorrei un cracker con della Nutella. Vorrei qualche biscotto. Vorrei un po' di tutto.)

Which reminds me that a while back I was watching a Will and Grace rerun and Grace was smacking on some lemon Loacker. Hee Hee!! It wasn't a product placement at all--you had to recognize that bright yellow bag in her hand. And recognize it I did.

Well, I was pretty good and only had half a cracker with the Nutella stuck on the knife scraped onto it. Then I had my lunch of a sandwich, an apple, and some edamame. Now it's back to work. We'll see how long the Nutella stays locked in the closet.

www.nutella.it

3-Way Calling, Ad Infinitum

Tonight all of my family was on the phone together! First it was Dad and Ami and me, then David called and Dad called him back. We needed Alan! I tried to explain to Ami how to go get him. Dad and David kept talking over me... Ami eventually hung up on us trying to get Alan, so I took the opportunity while I was getting her back to explain the process to her without male intervention. ;) It worked, and we were all on the phone together. It was like Christmas.

The best part is that now that we've done it, there is no excuse not to do it again. I love talking with my family! We laugh and joke and have such a good time. I would say that the only thing better is actually getting together, but this does have some advantages: 1. No one is sneaking off to their room to read a book or to the family room to watch TV; 2. No poking (except mental poking); 3. It sure costs a lot less! Hooray for good phone plans!

Little Miracles

This afternoon as I was doing some correcting after school, I had my door propped open and two of my former art history students stopped by to say hi. The first one had a locker outside my door last year so I used to see her all the time. (She was my student two years ago.) In fact, earlier today while I was standing in the hall between class changes I was thinking that I hadn't seen her for a while. She's the nicest girl and it was great to talk to her. A little bit later, another girl stopped by with a friend. I asked her how she's doing and she said that sometimes she misses art history class. That about floored me. I mean, I worked really hard on those classes, and I think that some students got to a point where they were thinking about art and were able to recognize basic formalist characteristics in it, but I didn't think anyone would ever tell me that they miss the class sometimes. That was so fulfilling because above all I want for my classroom to be a safe place where everyone has the respect and nurturing they need to have the confidence to learn. And I think that both of these students were responding to that more than they actually responded to the subject of art history. It was such a nice end to the school day.

Mirah

Ok, please follow this link and download the song "Cold Cold Water." I was listening to Launch tonight while lesson planning and this singer came on with an Italian song that I teach my students (it's a fun WWII song that the Communist party has picked up as its unofficial anthem...)

Anyway so I went online searching for the song, and I found this page, and this song rocks. The other one is good, too, but "Cold Cold Water" is where it's at. Let me know what you think.

http://www.epitonic.com/artists/mirah.html

Stove Top and Politics

John Kerry used the phrase "Islamic Muslims" in the debate! He also threw the word "kill" into the mix a few too many times, as in "hunt down and kill the terrorists". (Due process?) That said, Bush's domestic policies aren't working, we should not have raced into Iraq only to let Bin Laden escape (we all know exactly WHY Mr. Oilman attacked Iraq), and I'm angry that the national defecit continues to mortgage my future. Both candidates are idiots for putting the No Child Left Behind act into play-- (Nice concept--if it didn't fly in the face of IDEA, deny critical thinking skills, and act as cover for a huge movement to move public school monies into private schools.)

Enough politics.

Last night I was making Stove Top. Apparently they won a "best pre-packaged stuffing" award. But I have to wonder... is their stuffing the best, or are we just so innundated with it that we think that's how it should taste? Don't get me wrong. I adore Stove Top (except for the little dry onions that don't really blend in) but my dad's fresh stuffing is so good that I have to believe that someone could get a little closer to the real thing.

As a side note, tonight I called in about jury duty for the last time. They don't need me. Thank heavens! I have a test to give tomorrow.

Magic Car Crystals

So if you've seen Napoleon Dynamite, you'll remember the scene where Napoleon is about to try the time machine: Kip is all ready to plug it in and let it rip, when Napoleon stops him and says, "Wait! I almost forgot the crystals!" He dumps some little crystals into a receptacle at the top of the time machine and the rest is history.

My car's name is Mary Jane. She is the best car! She is a replacement for Juanita, my first car. Juanita made me really happy for about nine days, when she stopped on the freeway with a clogged fuel injector. Juanita made me nervous ever after, and she died in a freak accident at 1:00am, getting rear ended and pushed into the car in front in a rainstorm. Both of the other cars sped off. Juanita never started again.

Mary Jane is a Corolla. She runs and runs and runs. She drove all the way to Virginia, then last summer she took me on a fantastic roadtrip to Minnesota. She's had a tire with a small leak that's been giving her the blues, but she handles it like a trooper. She has little stash places for coins. When I lived in Texas, I rarely used them, but here in Virginia where I have to cross a toll bridge every day, the quarter slots are in constant use. That is where the magic crystals come in.

When the Texas quarters came out this summer, I lucked out and got two rolls fresh from the mint! So I reserved the quarter slots by the emergency brake for Texas quarters: a sort of good karma token for Mary Jane since she's a Texas car. This is real magic, not the fake new-agey stuff like crystals. This is four-leaf clover and rabbit's foot material.

Hopefully by next summer, Mary Jane will be able to have the tune-up and new tires that she needs, and then we'll be off again, taking another roadtrip. Driving west, across Tennessee, into the sunset, back home.

Another too-short weekend

I will say right now that if you are looking for sunshine and angels in this post it ain't here. It's 7:07am on a Sunday morning and I have just put in my second load of laundry. Yes, I woke up before 5:30, which is a bad, bad way to have a Sunday morning start. At least I'll have fresh towels when I get in the shower.

Teaching is tough on the system. In addition to doing laundry, I've spent this morning working on a Jeopardy game to review before a test I'm giving to my 3rd years. I still have lesson plans to make for this week. I spent yesterday trying to attack some really dry reading for my reading fundamentals class. The weekly journal on the reading is due in less than 2 weeks, and I need to post some thoughts on it on the discussion board. I hope when I'm a professor I remember that assigning a journal along with a discussion board both on the subject of the reading is redundant.

I admit that the one good thing about the text is that it has little glosses on the side about things to expect when teaching second language learners to read English. That is its redeeming factor, and it will most likely provide the subject matter for each journal entry/discussion posting. It also gives me something to think about on a foreign language teacher level.

Well, laundry needs to be moved and I've got a Jeopardy game to finish.

Never Had It

So my favorite childhood (circa 6th grade) joke is ruined. Here it is:

Q: What do a nun and a bottle of 7-up have in common?

A: Never had it, never will.

And yet this summer a new 7-up appeared. A 7-up to compete with Mountain Dew. A 7-up with caffeine. And it's emerald green.

Emerald green! Thomas's roommate Rob had consumed at least a whole case of it, then last Friday or Saturday I was over and Thomas offered me a can with a glass. I poured it out and Rob just stared--he had previously had no idea of its brilliant sparkling color. I'm not joking when I say emerald!

Flavor? 7-uppy Mountain Dew. Limier to go with the color, maybe? And the label is upside-down. 7-up has been turned on its head.

Apparently the new 7-up is only available on limited release. We have it here, but it's not yet available back home in Idaho--the 7-up company is probably well aware of the backlash a caffeinated version of its caffeine-free flagship might encounter there.

What do I think? I'm just bummed that my joke is ruined. The nuns stand alone.

Formatting Issues

The fact that the long web address in the previous post messed up the look of the blog by shoving column 2 way down below column 1 is driving me crazy! Oh that I were a web designer!

Hero

I've actually been trying to get this post finished and up for about a week. Things have been hectic! I guess if I didn't take extra Arabic classes there would be more time to finish things up, but sometimes you do things for yourself.

At any rate, last weekend I saw Hero, and what a movie it is. A warning if you haven't seen it, I'm going to write liberally, which will most likely include spoilers. You may want to stop here.

Overall, it was one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. The others that come to mind for sheer cinematographic (is that a word?) beauty are Legends of the Fall and Seven Years in Tibet (mind you, I said "cinematographic" beauty, not beauty of fake accents). Both of those were breathtaking, but in a "Wow what great shots of those amazing mountains" kind of way. Hero is different. The beauty is orchestrated and arranged with intentional color. I saw one other Chinese movie several years ago (I wish I could remember its name) that also used flowing, brightly colored silk--in fact it was set in a silk dyer's workshop--and it had fantastic scenes of this beautiful hanging silk, which ultimately went up in flames. At any rate, these three movies are the only ones I can think of that rival the visual beauty of Hero.

(Bonus observation: Possibly the most beautiful thing in the film? The banners of the emperor's army with a red flower followed by a string of stars.)

That said, It's the symbology of the colors that I want to get into, because there is no way that these were arbitrary. Jet Li, the unnamed assassin, first approaches the emperor wearing black. In his story of defeating the other three assassins, they all wear red. Then the emperor's reinterpretation of what may have happened casts the people (and even the library) in blue. The unnamed assassin retorts with what really happened, and everyone is wearing white until within that version Broken Sword tells his story of meeting Snow, in which everyone wears green. It's then back to white as events unfold and word of the unnamed assassin's death reaches Broken Sword and Snow.

Here are some sites I consulted about color symbolism:

http://www.qi-whiz.com/McFengshui/color.html

http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/color2.htm

Therefore, I think it breaks down like this:

Red: prosperity, visibility, energy. This is the version the unnamed assassin would like the emperor to believe about his rise to prominence above the assassins. Here he actually defeats the others and claims to be a faithful servant to the emperor.

Blue: knowledge. As noted, even the library changed colors this time. This is the emperor's best guess as to true events. Blue reigns over the realm of ideas in an etherial manner, which I think would hold true in both western and Chinese color readings. (And by the way, if the banners weren't the most beautiful thing in the movie, people in blue fighting over a mountain lake was.)

White: bare truth, in a way. This was the hardest to pin down, but it seems to symbolize all of the straightforward realities of life: certainly death and a struggle against forces greater than one's own, but also purity: this is the color of actual events and of people acting after their ideals.

Green: new life, harmony, hope, and family. This is the history between Broken Sword and Snow, and a rememberance of a time when the world was wide open to possibility.

Black: harsh reality, and ultimately death. Assassins bringing death wear black. The emperor and his army wear black. Black always spreads across the screen as the ultimate, unescapable fate.

I can't wait to have this one for my DVD collection.

Mumtaz!

Tonight I attended a free Arabic class. Hooray! I had such a good time. This is a beginner's class, which is good because I really don't remember any Arabic at all from my classes 6 years ago. But little by little as we went over the first 5 letters of the alphabet and some basic greetings, I started to remember things, and as I walked out my brain was quickfiring vocabulary. Ok, maybe not quickfiring, but a few synapses were reconnecting, and that's a great feeling.

The Arabic class is my reward for finishing my homework in my other class. Learning a skill like speaking a language is so satisfying--much better than reading about research or falling asleep to crazy made-up case studies. I have such a hard time staying awake with that! But with language learning, I always have something new to test my brain and to stretch my concept of the language. It's tremendous.

Hooray!

Hang the Jury

As though there weren't enough to do anyway.

It's the first month of school and I've been placed on alert for jury duty. When I got the first notice in July, I tried to be excused on the grounds that finding an Italian-speaking substitute teacher would be next to impossible. I also pointed out that I'm working full time and working on a master's degree. The case failed to convince, and I've been assigned.

I therefore spent a large chunk of time creating substitute lesson plans for use in the case that I am called. The problem lies in the fact that this early in the school year, there is just too much to do, and I will really have to re-do substitute lesson plans each week in the case that I am called. I don't want to be called, but it miffs me terribly that all of this planning is for nothing. How dare they place one's life in limbo!

Ok, so there are worse things that could happen than jury duty. But I still hold that teachers are serving the community better in class than they are in a courtroom, so at least during the school year, leave us off of jury duty, and we'll do our best to keep the students out of the courtroom.

Back to "Normal"

School has started. All of the kiddies are back, syllabi are distributed, and now it's just how many months to June 22? Actually, it's funny how normal it all feels. Even though I have made an art of sleeping in all summer, it just feels natural to be back with the students. The first couple of days back are the best! It is so great to see the students you know, and the new haircuts, and the new glasses, and they are so happy to see their friends again, and anticipation is high. As a teacher, it is so hard to hit the right tone--to inspire both excellence and the fear of God on the same day, and to suppress my delight when students walk back in the room after a summer off. As icing on the cake, my homeroom students are finally juniors, which means they have learned to sit still. Hooray!

The school board implemented a new dress code this year: the students have to tuck their shirts in. So we spend the whole morning yelling "Tuck it in! Tuck it in!" before they go to class, then in class we say "Tuck it in! Tuck it in!" and between classes we yell "Tuck it in! Tuck it in!" and they think they can untuck the second they're out of sight. I am so hoarse. Hopefully my voice will heal and I'll be able to speak loudly all day very soon. The second the students are gone, I pull out big bunches of grapes for lunch because they are little bombs of moisture to soothe the throat.

In all, it looks like it will be a good year. My classes are smaller than I would have them, but it looks like a good year nonetheless.

Burning The Man, or Not-So-Great White

Amilynne and I were on the phone last night.

She called just as I finished watching Lonely Planet. It was a tour of the Southwest with Justine Shapiro. Justine is a picky, whiny traveler. I would hate to meet her. I would probably punch her in her turned-up nose. In general, I don't like Lonely Planet anyway, because the travelers try too much to be cool and cutting edge. Really, their destinations can do that for them. But they blow it. For example, we had to watch a little montage of Justine trying on motorcycle clothes for the new bike she just bought (and which she would ditch for a junker car in the next town. Are we shocked when the car goes into the shop? No.)

At any rate, Justine's last stop was the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. She passed through Reno on the way. I had to wonder whether Amilynne had ever gone to Burning Man. Just then, the phone rang. Amilynne.

I asked her if she had been to Burning Man. She says she has been invited to go next year. She also said that it is going on right now. I had been unaware. Apparently, happy hippies have been coming in and out of the store where she works all week, buying gallons and gallons of water before going north to the desert. I observed that the whole thing seems to be quite hedonistic. "Yes," she said, "but you should see how happy these hippies are." They get to burn The Man. They get to be happy and free for a week. Yippee.

Then she dropped the bomb. She told me that tickets cost $200. Yikes! That seemed very wrong to me. $200? Yes. For the cost of the fire insurance.

"No way!" I said. "No way! $200? To be naked in the desert for a week? No way!"

"Yes," said Amilynne, "for the fire insurance. Look on burningman.com."

http://www.burningman.com/

"No way!" I still said, "Fire insurance doesn't cost that much! Bands do pyrotechnics all the time and tickets only cost $50!"

"Well, Great White obviously didn't buy enough insurance." Amilynne can always tie in Great White. She then proceeded to speculate that the whole Great White disaster may have simply been a publicity stunt. One never knows...

After a moment, a light came on. I had found the Truth. "There's some old hippie getting really rich off of Burning Man!" I proclaimed.

"No! Hippies are happy! They are poor!" Amilynne protested.

"Not necessarily old hippies. Old hippies might be happy, but maybe it's because they're rich! Maybe it's because they're THE MAN!"

"No! No!"

"Yes. Tickets at $200 a pop? It's not like you start getting in free once they've paid for the fire insurance." No, some old hippie is definitely out there getting dreadfully rich off of this festival, and loving every minute of it. In fact, in writing this post, I checked burningman.com, and Lo and Behold, they are warning that tickets at the gate of the festival start at $350.

Amilynne argued that tickets don't start at $200 in the beginning. Advanced ticket sales are much lower, but she couldn't tell me how much. I just find it disturbing and a bit odd that this festival of "community" would take such a bite. Yikes! Burning man is a sham!

School with a vengeance

School hasn't even started yet and I'm already bone tired! Hear me groan: ugggggggg! At least we got out of some staff development today (thanks to all of the rain from Gaston: for those who didn't hear, areas here got up to 10 inches of rain in an afternoon), so I had an entire day to work on my room. I took down all of the art history decorations and prepared to replace it with Italian. Tonight I went through more of my pictures and I have a LOAD of stuff to stick to the wall. Hopefully it's enough.

And speaking of Gaston: that was freaky! All of that rain, and the canal behind my house filling up. The greatest thing was that my hurricane frog came back! During Isabel, I brought all of my plants indoors. The morning after, something was moving in the rosemary. I thought it was a mouse. I moved it outside, and a little frog came hopping out. This time, when I went out to shake some rain off of the plants and see how they were holding up, my little frog jumped out again. Now, of course I cannot know for a fact that this frog is the same frog, but I am just convinced that it is. And thankfully my ground was high enough for both of us. Now if Frances will just steer clear...

Sadly, Summer's Ending

Today was the end.

For the next 10 months, I'll be working. Boo Hoo! I love summer vacation! I completely wasted the day by going to see two movies: The Village and Garden State. I had seen The Village before (totally worth multiple viewings). I was still jumping at all appropriate parts; it still left me decimated in tears at the end. As far as I can tell, the film is technically perfect (tight framing, fantastic use of color, spine-tingling sound effects), but the storyline and the themes are what resonate to me. The story is just so human--wanting so much for the ones you love--and the built in disappointments that furrow the path of hope. And yet you want to hope; you want so much to hope; in the face of all that's ugly or hard you hope. Aren't we all sometimes just blind readheads (terribly cute) with enough tenacity to get through anything ... or don't we at least want to be.

Garden State had some of the same. It was also very good--not perfect and not by any means a masterpiece, but solid. (Do I sound like a nut in wondering if drug use is as commonplace as that show made it? No wonder one of my students was so incredulous and certain that I had never lived when I told her that I had never smoked pot.) Natalie Portman really came into her own here, breathing life into my flatlining interest (which is exactly what her role is designed to do; she did it stunningly). Well, this one is pretty new out, and I would hate to spoil plot. But let me note how much I liked the cinematography--effective framing, long shots, and of course whatever you call it when you lock on one person and let the world speed around him. Isn't that the exact equivalent of being absorbed in your own tragedy or of spacing off.

Fantastic.

Soon I hope to post something about some of the reading I've done this summer. But I think I'll spend the rest of the evening working on Il nome della rosa, which I fear I will not finish before school starts Monday.

Water from home

I just picked up my water bottle for a drink: the water bottle that I filled up at home and carried back: the water bottle that was still full. What a difference ... kind of the same difference as between 2% and skim milk *seriously*. In the same sector of the tongue.

I miss home.

AAAACK to Party Politics

Last night, instead of the Olympics (I should be shamed after the last post) I watched CSPAN. They were showing all of these insane ads going back and forth between the Bush and Kerry camps regarding Kerry's testimony before the senate in 1971. Then they showed what remains of the testimony in audio or video format.

Before I go further, let me say that this race is driving me nuts. I hate Bush! He is an arrogant right-wing bumbling fool! If I see him smile and throw his head back like a cocky jerk one more time I'll scream! I also hate Kerry! Could the Democrats have found anywhere a better chamelion to run for office? What does he stand for? He has voted for all of the same things that I hate Bush for (most notably, the No Child Left Behind Act)! It appears to me that in order to keep his job Senator Kerry has gone with the flow at every turn. Bush must be removed from office, but I dread seeing this opportunist take his place.

At any rate, I must say that anyone who takes offense at what Kerry said in his testimony would also have to be taking offense at the whistleblowers who said 'something is wrong here' at Abu Ghraib. These are the same atrocities. For anyone who is interested, here is the link to the complete testimony on CSPAN:

http://www.c-span.org/2004vote/jkerrytestimony.asp

(I must add as an aside that it was interesting to note how some of Kerry's speech patterns have changed since 1971. He has definitely tamed some of his vowel sounds to sound a bit more everyman! A lesson Bush could use before he prompts us to rush into another stage of the war on terra.)

Hooray for the Olympics

Yes, I have spent too much time watching the Olympics, but I feel a twinge of guilt whenever I make a move to turn them off. There they are, all of these fantastic, dedicated people, with a shot at supreme greatness, and I have better things to do than watch? I think not! What kind of person would I be if I had not watched Rulon Gardner leave his shoes in the center ring of the wrestling mat? Because his tears spoke of leaving a dream after it has exploded into something great and of a walking away from years of work because the accomplishment is complete. Who are any of us to miss that moment?

The other aspect that makes the games a must-see, though, is the surreal realization of "People get medals for that?" Example: Amilynne was just telling me that her favorite event to watch so far has been Women's Trampoline. Because the action is basically "Boing..flipflipflipflipflipflipflip..Boing..flipflip flipflipflipflip..STOP" That was the key factor--the stopping. Apparently part of the skill is in being able to stop without making lots of little bounces. That goes contrary to physics as I understand it.

Which explains a lot about why I am not an Olympian.

Throwing down Amilynne and her claims

On our first night back in Idaho Falls, Amilynne and I decided it was time to see who could win at arm wrestling. So we plopped down on the floor and locked fists. I got off to a quick start, and then we held . . . and held . . . until she started to cough, at which point I threw her down. Now. She claims that this was cheating. I do not. She is also now claiming that this cancels out the time she cheated at Cranium in Dallas. Absolutely not. That was blatant cheating. One does not pick a card, decide that that card is too easy for the opposing team, then shuffle it into the middle of the deck and pick a new card. All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with throwing down a coughing opponent while arm wrestling. Nice try, Amilynne.