Oh, Might As Well ...

.. start writing in school. I haven't done that this week, I think. But I am now brain-fried, brain-dead, wiped out. I stayed up for Lost last night, and then, as anticipated, couldn't get to sleep until maybe 1.00. And I finished grading those projects just before lunch today. They were mostly not bad, but those kids who made the mistake about not spelling the town's name right -- there were three of them -- I just don't know. One of them spoke to me about it, but I hadn't even given their papers back yet, and he didn't know if I had graded his project yet. (I had graded it just about an hour before he came in.) Which means he knew the mistake was there. And this is the kid who checked it with me just before he handed it in. So I'm guessing he did it on purpose as a kind of test to see what I would do. I do not appreciate that.

I reached a last-straw kind of moment last night and decided that I will not bring my lunch anymore, or even have breakfast and coffee at home before I leave for work in the morning. Believe it or not, this leaves me a fair amount of down time, even though I get up around six and leave the house around seven. This morning, it gave me time to run by McDonald's on my way to school, get a breakfast burrito and eat it in the car, and then have coffee to bring into school with me. I also bought my lunch in school, which is going to take more thought to get right because all I had today was one slice of less than lovely pizza and a horrid salad.

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Just took a break here; a kid was showing me his iPhone in great detail and ooooohhhhhh wantwantwantwantwant. But will not get, not at least for some time. I just got a new phone in January, so I'm not switching away from that until the contract expires, and anyway, I'm not doing it. Unless. I have a ticket for the PTA raffle next Wednesday and first prize is a $1000 gift certificate to the mall, which I would happily spend at the Apple Store and the Bare Escentuals Store, and have half leftover to split between the girls. I'll keep my fingers crossed, but I won't hold my breath. Although I do think that a person who buys a $10 ticket to the PTA raffle every year for 32 years should eventually win, no?

So now I have a mere twenty minutes left in my workday, after which I will go home and kill an hour before going to visit the therapist at four. That gives me an hour to try to remember all the stuff I wanted to talk about yesterday. Who makes an appointment for a Friday afternoon?

And today, of course, would be the birthday of Jack, which I mentioned earlier in the week, which means my cousin's grandtwins are six today. Their mother has no interest in visiting the East Coast, so although I saw them when they were a year old (because I was in Colorado), I am unlikely to see them again. That first year, we got daily email bulletins from their father -- they had been born at about 29 weeks, I think -- and they were apparently the only adorable children ever born on earth, these days we get nothing except a printed picture at Christmas along with a tacky newsletter, which really, I thought the kids' dad, who writes them, was way beyond, especially considering that he writes for a living. But whatever. Did not mean to get into any sort of weird rant today.

Oh god, why are kids still taking books out? Do they not see the photocopier right over there? Any book checked out today will only have to be ruthlessly hunted down in two weeks when it is overdue, even though I'm telling each one of them that all of our books are due back next Friday. I can see how June is shaping up for me. At least they're not seniors.

And .... at the bell ....


WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1767

It's a Simple Question

Why isn't Lost on at eight, or some other reasonable hour? Seven? I'm just saying.

So here was my amusing moment of the day. Sometime during second period, I got up and left the library (as I do) and I noticed that there was a piece paper on the floor right at the threshold. I stooped to pick it up and saw that it was printed, and taped to the floor; I looked around and saw several others taped to the corridor walls and floor in various places. It seems that one of the biology teachers, for a lesson on evolution or something, put these signs up in relative positions all over the corridor to give the kids a sense of the huge spans of time between each development. The sign at the entrance to the library was



(Sorry for the blur.) Anyway, this just amused the hell out of me, and, I felt, demanded a reply. So I wrote up a post-it (the lime green blob in the picture), on which I wrote in black Sharpie

"However, these organisms were not Mrs. Chai and Mr. SCM" and underneath, in script, "The Management"

Because really, didn't the original sign make it look like the first organisms were, y'know, there? In the library? It was literally at the edge of the library carpeting.

So, in other news, I went to my therapy appointment today and she was not there. I am a little concerned that perhaps her chemo did not go well last week. I called to leave a message about rescheduling, and her voice mail said that she would be out of the office until the 26th; this being the 29th, I have to wonder why she has not changed that yet. So I hope she's okay. I really do like her very much, and I think that going there is good for me.

K and R are both taking pre-Lost naps, but I think that's a bad plan for me. I just have to tough it out, I guess, or stay the hell out of the faculty room tomorrow.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1766

Maxx is Such a Trooper

I heart Maxx, my Mac. I heart the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. Over the weekend, I moved all my music to an external hard drive to make room for the system upgrade (Leopard) and last night, in a fit of boredom, I decided to put all of nephew JJ's music into iTunes, and when I fired up iTunes it was -- horrors! empty. Devoid of all music, audiobooks, little movie clips - all of it. Even though I had made sure that the program knew where I had moved the music to. Or so I thought. I immediately went to the Apple Store website, made an appointment for this afternoon, arrived a half hour early which is when I saw someone, and in minutes, all was well again. The guy also showed me where to buy more RAM (since they no longer sell it for Maxx) and how to install it myself. And how to install the Leopard upgrade.

*sigh*

In other news, I've been reading more of those student projects, and except for that minority of, let's face it, dopes, who handed it in late and don't understand why that should matter, or who uploaded it to the completely wrong place and don't understand why I didn't look there as well as where I told them to upload it to, they are really quite good. And fun to read. One kid's grandfather (or great-) was a general in Peru. Another one's served in the Korean War -- in the Korean army. (We have an extremely diverse student body.) Probably the most unusual ethnic origin was the kid whose grandma and grandpa are from France! We don't see that one much. We also have many, many kids with a fairly direct connection to the World Trade Center, parents or relatives who worked there or across the street, or whatnot. Kids who saw the smoke from their backyards. Anyway, a lot of the projects are very well done and often amusing, in a cute way.

19 days. I'm just saying.

Okay, I'm off to call R, who stayed home with the sniffles today.



WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1765

We Return You Now ...

... to our regularly scheduled programming.

I only have to prepare at night and get up early in the morning 20 more times until summer vacation. There is a possibility of a nightly countdown here.

So, back to work today, and the SCM was out, of course, because if there is a vacation or a long weekend, he must have an extra day. I think what bugs me about this, other than the obvious, is that he knows he's taking a day, and we generally tell each other in advance if either one of us is going to do that, but he never does on these extra vacation days. I know he's get plenty of sick days saved up and he's entitled to use them, but it's always been a courtesy thing not to spring days off on each other (unless we're actually sick, of course.) So say I, so say we all.

I saw The Resnick this afternoon for a follow up to last week's colonoscopy, and all is well. He had been thinking of increasing my meds, but based on my lack of symptoms (although the test shows there is still some inflammation) he's leaving well enough alone. I also aired out my thoughts about how he and the other doctor -- the internist -- reacted when I sick in December, and he clarified that side of the story. Go me for bringing it up. Whaddayaknow, therapy really does work.

So listen to this weird thing that happened yesterday. Two weird things. I went to the ShopRite in the morning, and as I was passing it to turn into the parking lot, I saw an elderly woman standing on the sidewalk, and suddenly trip and fall over a bag on the ground. I didn't expect to be the first one to get to her, since I had to drive in and all around the lot, but it was an off-time and empty there, so I was. I helped her up, etc. and then she was okay and walking, although her knees were scraped. I thought, Oh, must be my help-an-old-lady-day. Then I got home and there was a phone call, and old lady voice, I didn't quite get the last name but she said she something like Shirley Shiller. Yes, an old lady named Shirley called me on the phone yesterday. Somehow, I knew exactly who this was, but why was she calling me? (She is my sister's first husband's current mother-in-law; let us remember that Satan J, my former BIL, has no contact with my sister and certainly not with me.) Well, Shirley did not quite know who she was calling, and when I explained who I was, she apologized profusely, but I said it was fine, fine, which it was. Seems that Good Guy Nephew is having an engagement party of sorts at the end of June, thrown by his MIL-to-be -- long story -- and this Shirley isn't sure what to wear and her daughter (Mrs. Satan J) says she needs to wear something dressier than what she was planning. Why did she call me? I think because my name and address are in the invitation stuff because people are sending me recipes -- see last week's panic attack -- and she thought I was someone else. But I have met this Shirley a few times, and she is really a doll, and I was happy to talk to her, and it felt really good talking about some normal thing with a nice old Shirley yesterday. (And the outfit she described sounds lovely. Mrs. Satan J is a jerk.) Looking forward to seeing her at the engagement party. (Excuse me, the couple shower.)

Had to turn the A/C on today, as today turned out to be the first humid day of the season. We do humidity very well here in New Jersey; it's a fine art. None of those crisp New England summer mornings, but at least, not the waking-up-in-a-swamp you get in D.C.

Well, my lunch is ready and my clothes are out, but I do have towels to fold and put away. And then I want to go to sleep. I don't care if it's eight o'clock.


WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1764

Yahrzeit

This is such a strange week now, Memorial Day weekend and the week that follows. It was always closed linked to my father, whose birthday was May 30, and who was told as a little boy by his own father that the parade every year was for him. (Aw.) He would tell us that he remembered seeing the Civil War veterans marching, all with white beards. (This would have been in the early 1920s.) Memorial Day was Jack's birthday.

Then it wasn't always, of course, when it became a Monday holiday. Six years ago, my mother died on Memorial Day Sunday, so to speak, the day before Memorial Day, which was today's date, May 26. Technically, then, this is not her yahrzeit because it's not the same day on the Hebrew calender, but I think she'd understand.

We couldn't have the funeral the next day, as is the custom, because it was Memorial Day and the gravediggers don't work holidays. And we needed a day for my cousin to fly in from Colorado, so we scheduled it for Wednesday, the 29th. Less than an hour after we got home from the funeral, my cousin got a call from her son that his wife was in early labor with their twins, so she flew right out to San Francisco to be with them.

The twins -- a boy and a girl -- were born just after midnight, on Jack's 83rd birthday, less than a week after my mother died. As if that wasn't excitement enough, that night was K's senior prom, which she only agreed to go to because it was really the last thing Shirl took interest in that last week of her life, and she had been very interested in all the details of the dress, the date, the shore trip for the next day. So there was a prom. A death, a double birth, a birthday that would turn out to be father's last, and a prom.

That's a lot to remember for one week.


WATCHING FRASIER :: ENTRY #1763

Just Hanging Out

It's the slow moving, quiet weekend I expected. Here's a look at the new tattoo from yesterday:



That's the back of my right leg.

No other news. I upgraded Quicken on the Mac yesterday, which is only interesting because as I was going out to get it, I said to the Hubs that I was going to the big computer store and did he want anything? And he said, yes, a digital camera. Now, for him, this is as if he had answered ... oh, I don't know, a steak and fries? (Vegan, remember.) Or as if he had said, yes, a pink tutu. In other words, 100% out of character. He does not use cameras, never has, even one that I got him for Christmas once many years ago at his request. I asked a little about what he wanted to do with it (take pictures on his long walks), so I picked one up for him, an inexpensive entry-level camera -- who knew G.E. made cameras? -- but with a decent zoom and a macro option. I put it on his desk when I got home, and he was surprised when he came in. He thought maybe I'd get it for him for Father's Day, so I said, Consider this Father's Day, then. Gah, he's so impossible to figure out.

Speaking of which, I've been trying to figure out Flickr and what do with it, and I just can't. I don't get it. But I am trying to switch over to using Photoshop Express online so that I can do without Photoshop Elements on the computer, and that's okay, except you can connect it to your Flickr account and I don't see the point, since the P.E. program gives you a site to store your pictures at. Maybe it's a summer project.

I should pay bills today, which would be simple because I've actually already got the checks done and it all just needs to be put in envelopes and stuff, but I'm not in the mood. Maybe later. I think it's nap time now.

WATCHING BEVERLY HILLBILLIES :: ENTRY #1762

Missions Accomplished

That really has taken on a kind of ironic new meaning, hasn't it: mission accomplished? Thank you yet again, Mr. President.

Anyway, I got a lot done between last night and all day today. I moved all my music off my computer and onto a separate hard drive that I already had, so now I have about half my hard drive free. And it looks like they don't carry RAM for my computer anymore anyway, so all I need to do now is get the new operating system -- Leopard -- and put that on. I'm all backed up and ready to go.

I went to the podiatrist this morning and got my orthotics, so now I have to get used to them, an hour today, two hours tomorrow, etc. And this should really help my feet. The podiatrist is a very nice man, but a little odd, because, you know, feet all day, but I got them and that's that.

And I finally got my tattoo. I'll put up a picture over the weekend; I just uncovered it a few minutes ago and put on its first layer of shiny. It's very simple, of course, and took five minutes. Chi Chi was ready and waiting when I got there. I had a 2.00 appointment and I was home by 2.15.

And it was a day off, which was just so lovely. I slept until 8.00, showered and had breakfast leisurely, and didn't have to rush with my hair or make-up. It was a much nicer day today, after a rainy, raw week, and promises to be in the seventies every day through next Friday.

Okay then. I have Enchanted to watch tonight, having caught up on my Law and Orders until next season, I guess.

Are you really, really excited for chaos? Everybody wave bye-bye and throw a big kiss!

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1761

Open Up! Grammar Police!

Now, listen. I am not a horrible person when it comes to correcting people's grammar. (Although I thought this was funny.) I don't do it in person. I don't care about things that are written informally, like diaries. I know that my grammar is not perfect in my diary entries. I'm a nice person.

What I cannot abide is grammar mistakes in websites that should know better. Take for instance, this, from CNN:

U.S. deserter faces deportation from Canada

(CNN) -- A U.S. soldier who deserted to Canada will not face persecution if he returns to the United States, Canada's refugee agency ruled Wednesday.

Really? He won't face persecution? You mean his neighbors won't shun him, or mock him, or throw eggs at his house? Hmm. Could they have meant that he won't face prosecution, as in, there will be no legal penalty levied against him? I wonder. I also wonder why CNN has no editors who know better.

I had another one, but I don't know where I bookmarked.(It was an article from the Associated Press.) But as long as I'm ranting about general idiocy and kids -- didn't someone mention kids? -- there's this one. I have a new hero.

Yesterday, after school, a girl came to my desk to ask me for help with something, and while I was explaining to her, her cell phone rang and she she answered it. I didn't say anything, just turned to the next kid waiting for me, but I can tell you that it will be a long time before I will answer a question or provide assistance to this child. We'll see if she figures it out.

And then, my big project is due today and I have previewed several for the kids who've asked me. They fall into two categories. One is for the kids who are incredibly hyper about everything and whose projects are perfect but they're worried that they didn't get it right. The other is for the -- excuse me -- IDIOTS who sat in class and listened to my directions, and read over the printed directions I gave them, and especially followed along with me step by step as I did it on the big screen and they did it on their own computers and who have been asking me ALL DAY LONG how to do it. Yes, it's due today. So then they ask me if they will lose points if they hand it in late. Uh ... yup. One girl was trying to negotiate the rubric with me earlier today; what if she leaves out this or that, will I take off points? Well yes, dear, that is how rubrics work. You do the work, you get the points. The opposite is also true. I asked her if she remembered that a big part of this project is following the directions, and she said she did. But here's my favorite.

There is one boy who falls into the hyper-but-probably-getting-it-wrong sub-group. He is nervous, he is annoying. He must confirm every single possible detail with me before he makes a move, even though he knows the right answer, because at this point, when he asks me a question, I look at him and then he answers it himself. I understand that he is hesitant, nervous, meshuggeh. But then he got on my last nerve.

One of the more foolish directions I gave them, just to see if they'll follow it, is that they must spell the name of our town correctly. (They are not required to use the name of the town in the project, but many of them do.) The name of our town is two words, two separate words, each of them capitalized. It is on every street sign. It is on every school building. It is on every sweatshirt, t-shirt, athletic bag or whatever that 65% of the kids in the school are wearing or carrying every single day. Now, two-word town names being not the norm (I guess), outsiders will often misspell it as one word, no separation, no caps on the beginning of the second word. This looks ridiculous. Imagine that you worked at the Container Store, and people kept sending you mail at Containerstore. It looks stupid. So I told the little dears -- emphatically, with circles and arrows and shouting and yelling -- that they must spell the town name correctly, and if they spell it wrong, they will receive an F on the project, case closed. Why? Because I'm quirky, and this is what I told them and this is what they have to do. It's not difficult. It's intelligent. Everyone, really, by the time they're in high school should know the name of the town in which they live, yes?

So neurotic boy comes over today and asks "Do we spell it with one word or two? Which is right?" I look at him. "One word is wrong, right? If we spell it as one word, we fail, right?" Yes. Right.

And let me point out that this young fellow's father, a former student of mine, is a town police officer. So not only is the town name spelled correctly on the boy's own football jersey and class sweatshirt, it's spelled correctly on every item of clothing his father wears every single day.

And you wonder why the kids are giving me fits today. Some of them are behaving very stupidly. I have had to explain the same simple procedure (which I taught in class, gave handouts, demonstrated, checked for understanding, etc. ad infinitum) to maybe 20 kids between yesterday and today. And some of them still got it wrong. Oy.

And yet ... tomorrow begins a four day weekend, aka bliss. Maybe a little sleeping later, maybe a little of this, a little of that. Y'know, bliss.


WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1760

Miles to Go

Not miles, maybe, but I still have to get my lunch and breakfast ready for tomorrow morning. I just got back from physical therapy and really, I am too old for this shit. I just feel a bit worn out, but it's not bad, really. Some of the exercises were very hard, but I was surprised at some of the ones I could do.

The Hubs did indeed order new glasses last night, and said he was surprised at how narrow the glasses are now, as in, so little actual glass in front of his eyes. Well, yeah, dear, no one else but you is still wearing aviators, and those suckers have lots of glass in them. He ordered progressives so he won't have to take off his glasses to read, so we'll see if he's willing to take the few days to get used to them or if he hurls them across the room after the first hour.

I woke up very, very tired, and have remained so all day, and hungry. How nice that tomorrow is the end of the work week here. On Friday, I have another day of people doing things to me (as I did on Monday), starting with the podiatrist, and then getting an eyebrow wax, and then -- I hope -- finally getting that other tattoo. This appointment is a little earlier -- 2.30 -- so with any luck, the artist won't be up to his elbows in someone else's huge work at that time.

Did I mention that I'm very happy with my new haircut? Perhaps I'll produce a photo, if I can. Most amazing of all is that I appear to be able to reproduce the style that I walked out of the salon with. Yes, I got the "product" he used -- but he used two, and refused to let me buy the more expensive one, said the other one would do me fine, and it has -- and a bigger hairbrush. I also replaced my blow dryer, which was on its last legs anyway. I guess this would look like short hair to most people, but since I've had very short hair before, it doesn't look that way to me. It looks like my last haircut, but without the bulk, and so far, without the frizz. I could not believe that it never puffed up at all yesterday, even though it rained all day. And when I put on a baseball cap to go out in the rain after school, I didn't get hat-head. Clearly, a magic haircut.

After lunch, two kids just came in to use the computers with a pass from ... K. This tickles the kids here no end, when they bring me a pass signed by "your daughter [giggle]" Or they love to tell me all day that they were just in a class and the substitute was "your daughter [giggle]." Sometimes they are fond of telling one or the other of us that she looks just like me, to which we always respond that they should see her sister, who is the one I have traditionally been told looks just like me. I don't believe either one of them does, but so it goes.

On a more serious note, a word about Senator Kennedy and his condition. In November, 1991, when my brain tumor was diagnosed, they said they couldn't tell exactly what kind of tumor it was until they saw it. (This was not strictly true, I later found out, but I digress.) I was told, though, that it was one of three kinds of possible tumors: 1. an acoustic neuroma, which is never malignant, but the removal of which would leave me deaf in one ear; they told me this was "unlikely" because of the size and location of the tumor; 2. a meningioma, which is sometimes malignant but very difficult to remove, because this is a cancer of the membrane that covers and wraps around the brain, and the tumor itself can grown into the brain; or, 3. a glioma, which would always be malignant and always be difficult to remove. I was totally rooting for the acoustic neuroma, which is what I turned out to have. (Years later, I read the pre-surgery report which stated firmly that it was an acoustic neuroma, but they wouldn't tell me that ahead of time just in case it turned out to be one of the others, although they knew for sure it wasn't.) Anyway, as soon as I saw the word glioma in a news report, I knew this was not a good thing.

I remember, of course, the death of President Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, but I also remember hearing the news reports of Ted Kennedy's plane crash and the Chappaquiddick incident. The plane crash happened in 1964; I remember hearing about it on the news while we were in the car driving up to visit family in Massachusetts. The Chappaquiddick incident happened in July 1969, the day before the moon landing, so I would have been home. I remember that week as very, very hot, and my father finally conceded to using the air conditioner that had come with the house but that we had never used before; we all spent that week bundled up in sweaters in front of the TV to get any news of what was going on in space. So we heard about that tragedy, too.

I am so sad for him and his family. But I don't know if this qualifies as the same kind of tragedy that has befallen this family so many times before. Many of those were odd, unexpected, unpredictable, unavoidable (except the scandals.) But illness, unless it's something incredibly rare, just happens, happens at random. Each one of us has to succumb to something at some point, and there are few illnesses of this magnitude that are in our power to prevent.

So that's tonight's serious. I need some couch time before I tackle the kitchen stuff.


WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1759

But First ...

a moment to pause and think about Senator Kennedy. Say what you will about the man's personal morals, it's the way the men in his family were raised, and that's not what I'm talking about anyway. As Art says, Ted Kennedy has been our staunch hero in the Senate for many, many years. It was easy when he was young and was one of the many liberal senators backing Johnson's programs, but he has not wavered, and has defended the position that is right to me, and others, even when we are the minority, even when we have presidential administrations that do anything they can to minimize his effect. We are lucky to have had him there all these years. I wish him the best.



And so. It is raining and cold and icky here all day. I don't think I've ever actually turned the house heat back in this late in May, and I ain't a gonna do it now. (I do have the electric baseboard heat on in the family room, though, because otherwise it's 60 frickin' freezing degrees in here.) And they actually did fix the A/C in the library yesterday, so it was a balmy 65 in there today, but I.Am.Not.Complaining. At least the air felt nice and crisp to breathe.

My sister has yet again canceled a trip to the Apple store, as anticipated. I'm just saying.

So after school today, I went to the town's newish recreation center with the Other Chai and we walked around the little walking track a billion times, and lived to tell the tale. Okay, we did 18 laps, which is a mile. And didn't die. So that's a good thing, and maybe we can do that some more. Walking with someone is a good idea, you just have to have someone to walk with. There's the rub.

Okay, the Hubs has just left for his first appointment with a medical professional in maybe 25 years. (Oh wait, he went to the dentist when K was about 3, so that's 22 years.) We'll see how that works out.

And I'm outta heah.


WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1758

Ever So Briefly

A very long, but not particularly unpleasant day, but I logged in to type this about two hours ago, at which point I remembered that I forgot to make lunch for tomorrow which I had started to do two hours before that, so, in brief:

The colonoscopy went well, and as predicted, I came home, ate breakfast, slept for an hour and a half, and woke up feeling terrific. At which point I drove to my haircut (which I wasn't supposed to do, but I was fine), and later to physical therapy.

My sister isn't sure if she'll have the energy tomorrow to go to the Apple store at six p.m. I swear I'll have to go buy her a computer myself. We'll see where that goes.

JJ, eldest nephew, was finally -- finally! -- approved this morning as having his Master's thesis complete and correct and will be getting his degree -- finally -- on Friday. They made him bring in old papers he had written for some of his classwork to prove his grades, since so many of his professors have retired and couldn't vouch for him. So it looks like he may get a real job someday in the future after all.

And the Hubs' car, aka Jack's old car, is finally on the ropes. The exhaust system is going, and that's too big to fix. Once again, that which I feared for years -- having to replace all three cars in one year -- is coming to pass.

And now, time to crash. I've been up since four this morning, and didn't sleep much before that, and it's back to work tomorrow.

WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1757

Checking In

I've had a full weekend. Or not. Things are very quiet. But today is liquid diet day, and you know, when you're not allowed to eat, it's the only thing you want to do. I've had endless broth -- sick of that -- and two cups of coffee this morning, and gatorade. And some jolly ranchers. The actual pre-colonoscopy ordeal begins in one hour, at which time I will drink the magic potion that causes one's insides to dissolve. In a manner of speaking.

Otherwise, you know, you've gotta see the silver lining. Colonoscopy at 8.15 tomorrow morning means, essentially, a free day off from work. I should be out of there at ten the latest, and alert and happy for my haircut at 1.30. And it's a three-day work week, since they "gave us back" a snow day we didn't use by giving us the Friday before Memorial Day weekend off. (For those of you in sunnier climes, each school year has several days built into the calender when school will be closed for snow. Let's say my district allows three snow days, meaning we could lose three days of school and still meet the state required number of days. If we only use two of those three for snow, the Board of Ed. has the option of giving us back the third day by giving us an extra day off somewhere. They are generally loathe to do this, but it's become the trend in these parts in recent years. I'll have to remember to tell you about the hurricane, though.)

So, Target this morning, of course, and the Sibs is coming by any minute to pick up something I got for her there. She's waiting for her husband to finish watching something so he can drive her over because apparently she does not drive anymore, or doesn't want to, or I don't know what. Let's not get me started.

Oops, there's the doorbell. Hold on.

I'm back. K and I watched The Namesake this afternoon, which was very good. A gentle movie about a family and its life. Thumbs up from me.

I've been weeding stuff off my computer like crazy, but I don't know if I have enough spare hard drive space to install the Mac system upgrade. I mean, I do, but I'll only have a tiny slice of memory left. So I've been recording passwords and registration keys in case I end up having to reformat the drive, or to get a new one. I can't find out anywhere online how much that would cost, so I could walk into the Apple store and ask and they could say five hundred dollars and I would say oh, that's lovely, thank you; see you around, because that would be just crazy. But you know, I like having my ducks in a row and knowing what's going on, so it just irks me that I don't.

If I have one more cup of broth I will sprout chicken feathers, but let me tell you, I am hungry. Ah well. This too shall pass.


WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1756

Happiness Runs

Tonight's title has no significance whatsoever except that it's the title of a random song I happened to hear yesterday. (By Donovan, very sixties.)

Again, a day. I finally got to grade those papers, most of which were not good. This was basically an exercise in following directions, which some of them simply did not do. I know not why.

It's a rainy icky one here today. April showers will henceforth come in May, I think.

No other news of note. I was looking forward to tomorrow's trip to the Apple store with the Sibs and Little K, but it seems she's not up to it for some reason, so we've switched to Tuesday evening. I want to look into more memory for my computer, so I have my own ulterior motive for going. I know it's nothing for them to put more RAM in -- I only have 512 mb, which is actually probably enough -- but I'd really like a bigger internal hard drive so I can upgrade to the new Mac operating system. Perhaps that is not to be.

Hmm. I put a wash in a little while ago and I have no idea at all when that was. I don't want to go down to the basement if it's not done yet. And this is the biggest crisis of my day, which is not such a bad think, I think.

Okay. I'm going to watch Stardust -- after I put the wash in the dryer -- and lie down flat on my sore back.


WATCHING THE SIMPSONS :: ENTRY #1755

La La La La La

It's just a day. Just after eleven, I'm awaiting the arrival of the HMM, who said he was coming today but didn't say when. K is working today, so she hung out here with me during her free period. I'm finding that she's becoming more and more critical of me these days, which is the perfect indication that it's time for her to live on her own, but there just isn't fundage for that right now. Unless I win the lottery tonight, in which case she can buy herself a freaking luxury condo someplace. Let's hope it comes with a maid.

It's hot in the library, for a change, but I'm warmly dressed because yesterday it was on the cold side. Not a good day clothes-wise, although I'm wearing very comfortable jeans, and crocs. My upper me is roasting. Which reminds me of this goofy article I saw the other day.

I'm having a lot of trouble with the days of the week this week. Some weeks are like that. So it's Wednesday, right? (Oh, I know it's Thursday; I have a date-book open on my desk.) Some weeks are like that.

It looks like I have need of an exterminator. K keeps seeing bees in the house, which is not good, and she also hears the scurrying of little feet, something we did not much hear during the cat years. I don't want any chemicals or anything sprayed around, I just want nests and hives removed and openings plugged up. Exterminators do that, right? I need to find some numbers and make some calls, maybe tomorrow.

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At noon, when the SCM came back from first lunch, he said he'd just seen the HMM in the office downstairs. Now that's timing. What did I do? I grabbed my lunchbag and beat it down the hall to where I have my nice Tuesday/Thursday lunch group and enjoyed my only free 45 minutes of the day. It was lovely. When I got back to the library, the HMM (with his wife and a friend of theirs) was still there, so I did chat with him/them for fifteen minutes or so before they had to move on. That's about my limit. He immediately saw everything that was wrong with the library, as I knew he would, because he's a good librarian. Yes, he looked older, which was certainly to be expected. He and the FIL, in fact, worked together in the same school as first year teachers some 55 or so years ago; he and the FIL are the same age, which is 80.So that's that.

After school I need to stop at the pharmacy and pick up that delightful stuff I have to drink Sunday night erev colonoscopy, and while I'm there, a winning lottery ticket as well. No condo for K without a winning lottery ticket.


WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1755

It's a Quarter to Three ...

but there are plenty of people in here besides ... well, me. I can go in fifteen or twenty minutes, but since the library stays open until 5:00 now under the watchful eye of a different staff member each day, we tend to fill up right after school. It's very nice, actually.

An odd day today; I am actually not tired, which doesn't happen all that often. I've even agreed to try walking one day after school each week with the Other Chai, starting next Tuesday. We'll see how that goes.

Strange event of the day today was that I decided to catch the kid who was drawing a penis on the lunchtime sign in sheet every day for the last week. It would certainly be a boy (because girls don't do that kind of thing), and most likely a freshman. Once the lunch period started, I casually strolled over to the sign in sheet every few minutes to see if it was clear, and then I saw two boys signing in and giggling. I checked the sheet and there it was, so I followed them over to the table where they had just sat and spread out their books. And I said firmly

"Now I am going to write up both of you for sexual harassment, unless one of you would like to claim responsibility for it. I want it to stop, and stop now."

One of the boys looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and the other one hung his head and said quietly, "It was me. I did it. I'm really, really sorry; I won't do it again." I said

"I know that at this particular time, this seems to you like an extremely clever and witty thing to do. It's not." He nodded. I said "And do you understand why it's sexual harassment? Do you understand that you force every girl who signs in after you to look at that?" He nodded again, head still low. I marched back to my desk, trying very hard not to start laughing until I was out of their line of sight. I think they were good boys who got caught up in doing a silly thing. So this was their warning. No more penis drawing in school!

The strange thing that came in the mail yesterday was an invitation to my nephew's "couples" shower. This is being thrown by the bride's mother, which I always thought was supposed to be gauche, but I guess times have changed. The kids didn't have an engagement party, so they're having this. Oh joy. My sister says she thinks that over a hundred people have been invited. What startled me was that, along with the professionally printed invitation -- to a wedding shower -- was a note asking people to send in recipes, which will be collected into a book, and to email them to ... me. So there was my email address, the one I use for family and other secure correspondents, sent out to over a hundred strangers, and my snail mail address. Which means ... I get to type some of these in myself?

Now, I did have some prior knowledge of this, but what I read in the invitation was not the level of involvement I thought I was having. I did discuss this with Wonderful Niece; it was her idea to do something like this, since I had done exactly this for her shower, but it seems that her brother's future mother-in-law had caught her off guard and she just gave out my information and the same plan as last time. I had thought that WN was doing all the typing and co-ordinating the recipes as they came in, and that I was doing the printing and binding into books. So I freaked a little, and K said now who was being the glass-half-empty sister (which I think was a bit harsh) but I did talk to my sister about it and she said a) if she herself thought I was typing all the recipes she wouldn't let me, and b) WN suddenly feels that she has no role in the project at all and would love to do all the typing. And when I called the Sibs this morning with a happy birthday call -- oy, my own sister is 60! -- she said she had indeed discussed it with WN and in a way so that she doesn't think she accidentally dumped this on me, because I don't want her to feel bad about it. [breathe] Anyway, we're working it all out, which is what counts, and I didn't hold it in and stew over it, which is also good. Won't my therapist be happy when I tell her?

Okay, so I'm home now -- it's actually after seven -- and I've got less than an hour left of Harry to hear, so I'm going to do that, and cry during the last battle because I love them all.



WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1754

WOLS

If this day were going any more slowly, it would be moving backwards.

I contacted another vendor, spoke to the Assistant Superintendent about some other money thing, called in several kids to try to shake their overdue books loose, went through everything on my Google Reader twice, had the coffee in my thermos, and then I looked at the clock: 10:04. Gah. That's only halfway through third period! Isn't it time to go home yet?

Now, this is going to sound crazy, but what I need are some papers to grade. This is because the Other Chai is giving my some projects one of her classes did that she and I taught together, and I'm grading the technical part, and I pretty much cleared my day today so I could get that done, but she hasn't given me the papers yet. I've got my little rubric all ready to go. (A rubric, for the uninformed and/or over a certain age, is like a scoresheet. This is the way we need to grade papers now. Each kid gets a copy of the rubric beforehand so s/he knows what we're looking for and what they're being graded on, and then they get the completed rubric, showing them what they did right and what they did wrong, when they get their papers back. Only I didn't give them my rubric at the beginning this time, but it doesn't matter; they're only getting a point for what they did -- what I told them to do -- and no points if they didn't do it. It's not complicated. My other recent project, the one where they write their autobiographies in historical context, has a hell of a rubric, because designing rubrics is The Perfect Job for an obsessive-compulsive list maker. Hey, maybe that's what I should do when I retire: become a professional rubric maker. Or not. There's only so many times in a day that you can stand to say or hear that word.)

I was also looking online at the Apple site to see what they're offering now so I know what to tell my sister to look for when we go shopping on Saturday. It's not hard; she doesn't need anything with the word "Pro" in it, and she certainly doesn't need a MacBook Air, because really, who does? It's a super-lightweight and thin computer, but is otherwise no big deal. Not a big hard drive, no internal CD/DVD drive, not enough ports. Not worth it to me. But now I'm wondering if I could get them to put more memory and a bigger hard drive in my computer, and what that would cost. I'll have to look into it.

Okay, that took five minutes. Now what?

Okay, a bell rang. Third period is over. I thought you'd want to know.

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It's fifth period, aka first lunch. I have second lunch. Will this day never end?

Oh, here's an amusing moment I had last night. The Hubs says that next Tuesday after work he's going to the optometrist. This must mean that his eyes are literally falling out of his face, because I gave him the doctor's card five years ago when his second to last pair of glasses broke. (He's now wearing wire-rim aviator glasses.) Maybe more than five years ago. I'm sure he has not gotten a new prescription or pair of glasses in 20, maybe 25 years. He is actually going to see a medical professional. Anyway, so I figured he'll have the exam and then order a new pair of glasses and refuse to get them when he finds out what glasses cost in the 21st century. So I warned him not to drop dead when they tell him how much the glasses will cost. He said, deadpan, "So what are they now, 20 or 30 bucks?" This was something my father always did; when you came home with something new, he would say "How much did you pay for that two-dollar dress?" when you had gotten it in a fabulous sale for $35 or something. So I answered the Hubs, "Yes, Jack, glasses are now up to 20 or 30 bucks, that should do it," and he laughed. Boy, is he in for a shock. I realize he won't need what I have -- maybe he will -- but my glasses run in the $400 to $500 range, and I get the cheapest frames I can find, or put new lenses in frames I already have. He'd better not re-use those awful aviator frames. He has one backup pair left, which I swear he wore in high school, which he wears when he's watching TV in bed. This is what he looks like in them (the one on the left, but taller):



Well, we'll see what he comes home with.

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6:15. So I went to the orthopedist, and I have rotator cuff tendonitis, and I got a cortisone shot in my shoulder, for which I rewarded myself with a pastrami sandwich for dinner.

I won't go into the stress I got in today's mail -- maybe tomorrow -- but I think I will put an icepack on my arm, which is a little sore from the shot, and then, I'll be back tomorrow with more fun.


WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1753

Just a Day

No biggie. I was very busy at work, although not with teaching. It was time to get ready to renew all our subscriptions to online information sources (periodical indexes, online reference works, etc. etc.) and I spent a big chunk of the day calling one vendor or another to get them to send me current price quotes. Not exciting, but it kept me occupied.

I did go to Target with the girls yesterday, and then out to lunch, and then later we ordered our take-out but the order was messed up so the Hubs had to go back. At about seven, I got a whispered phone call from a not-happy FIL asking if we were planning to call the MIL for Mother's Day. Well, duh. I told him we were going to call in a few minutes, as soon as everyone was finished chewing. He chuckled and said "This call never happened." Well, of course we were going to call, what are we, barbarians? It was unfortunate that it took that long for all four of us to be a) home, b) awake, and c) not eating, and in fact, the Hubs hadn't finished his dinner yet. But we called.

My sister, Miss Glass-Half-Empty, had said earlier in the week that she doesn't like Mother's Day, it's a sad holiday. "Why is that?" I asked, and she said "Because I don't have a mother." Pause. "Oh, you too." Oy. She has four children and two step-children; I think she needs to shift her focus a bit here. I did talk to her last night but the Mother's Day thing never came up. She was all charged up because she'd had the last straw with her D-E- double hockey sticks computer, and has decided to get a Mac, so now I'm her guru, as I have been for her with all things computer.

In other news, I'm going to see the physician's assistant at the orthopedist tomorrow, which of course means that my arm has stopped hurting today. I'll let you know.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1752

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mothers Day, y'all. There didn't seem to be much point in telling you that tonight, when I usually write, so here's a quick entry.

So far, so good. I slept incredibly late, for me, about 8.30, and K got up soon after. And volunteered to go out and get Starbuck's and bagels. So, yay! I just downed my bagel and lox, and my latte is cooling off a bit. R will be here in an hour or so, and then we will, of course, go to Target, because it's our Sunday thing, man. Other than that, we'll have our normal Saturday Chinese food tonight, and thanks to a little talk I had with the pharmacist yesterday, I now know that I can have a little wine with dinner, like all the other grownups.

Ahhhh ..... latte is good.


WATCHING I LOVE LUCY :: ENTRY #1751

Taking a Break

It was a slow afternoon, so I've been listening to The Deathly Harrows in the house, as opposed to in the car, as usual, and it's hard to break away. I have about three hours of it left, so I don't know if I'll finish it tonight. There's a bit too much of the old-time radio experience here, in that I don't know where to put my eyes! Really, back in the radio days, what did they look at while they were listening to all their shows? I've straightened up my desk, eaten dinner, and that's about it. It's not something I'm good at, but you know, I make my sacrifices for Harry.

I didn't write yesterday because somehow I forgot, although I had a meme done, which I'll put down below. I watched Martian Child last night, which I liked, but not as much as the book.

I did have a real strange experience this morning. I had gone to Ikea for a simple wine rack and wine glasses rack, which were cheap, and I got them. Came home, and I could not put them up. Now, I am the one in this house who has always installed and assembled everything, and I have to say, that's all in my past. And not in a good way. I don't mean, whew, don't have to do that anymore. I mean, here's something I was always good at and now I'm not. I had to install these things underneath a kitchen cabinet, and although I could drill the holes because I had the rack there as a kind of template, once I took the rack away, I could not see the holes. I can't look up and see anything close because the part of my glasses that sees close is the bottom of the lens. I would have had to drape myself over the microwave on my back and look up, and I still wouldn't have been close enough. It was a real "Oh, I'm old now" moment. Anyway, the Hubs, who takes his glasses off to see close, says he'll look at it. Well, that would be nice. And a first, him putting up a shelf or a rack that doesn't hold his personal books or videos or something. (But I'm not bitter. Although I sound bitter, so maybe I am. And I'll believe it when I see it. Although he did really really trim the trees along the side of the driveway that threaten to pull the antenna right off my car when I drive in or out, so that was nice of him.)

Okay, enough bitching. Here's my meme, and then back to Harry and the Battle of Hogwarts.

A book meme, stolen from quirkybook. I may have done this before, somewhere in the dim mists of time, but I don't think all the titles are the same. Although, as I believe I observed last time, I've read a lot of Dickens for someone who detests Dickens with the burning passion of a thousand fiery suns.

What we have here are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you read for school, underline the ones you started but didn't finish (or are on the shelf waiting for a free week).


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment read the first hundred pages three times
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote recently downloaded the ebook
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov it took me all summer to read it.
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway wha ...?
Great Expectations gah, I hate Dickens
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury made no sense to me whatsoever
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything listened to half the audiobook on a long car trip
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road found this very annoying to try to read
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid and I read it in Latin, back in the day
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield

WATCHING WILL & GRACE :: ENTRY #1750

The Report

But first. I was just about to start typing here when I got an email that distracted me. A dear friend sent me a video of her four year old granddaughter, who has cerebral palsy, walking. First with a walker. Then with tiny little pink canes. And then, just walking, without crutches or walker or anything. Very excellent.

So I did go to the radiology place today, along with the Sibs, and we had our boobies variously x-rayed and whatnot, and I had no needle biopsy. Hooray! So now we both need to have mammograms and sonograms every six months, and I need to get that MRI once a year. This is all okay.

Our appointment was pushed back to 2.30, so after lunch, we had time to go to Barnes and Noble and Target. A very big day for all concerned.

After I got home, K and I dropped off my car for service and then went out for some foodie, and I got to drive her very cute little car for the first time. I like it mucho. I will have my car forever now, which is fine, but that little bitty Toyota Yaris was a nice driving car, if anyone's interested.

I set my alarm for later this morning -- six -- but I woke up at 5.30 anyway. Even so, I didn't get into the shower until nearly 6.30, and I still got out of the house by seven. How this all happened I do not know, although I did have my breakfast before shower, and I didn't need to make my lunch today because I was leaving school early, before lunch. (And went to the Olive Garden, yum.) So this is a good thing. And now I also don't have to walk to school tomorrow -- no car -- because K, who isn't going in to work, is going to get up early and drive me. (She's staying home to write a final paper for class, and figures she might as well get an early start at it.) So that's good for me, too, and now I can bring my lunch, which I wouldn't have wanted to carry if I was walking.

And now I'm off to put tomorrow's jeans in the dryer, and then settle down for Ugly Betty. I'm going to go to sleep right after, and we'll watch Lost tomorrow night.


WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1749

I Ask For So Little

I made some changes to my computer dock -- where all the program icons are along the bottom of the Mac screen -- over the weekend, and you'd think I bought a new computer. I'm so tickled just to see the different icons, and to see the icons for the Mac calendar and address book applications that I started using. Really, I ask for so little.

Speaking of which, K is always asking me what I want for my birthday, Mother's Day, Christmas, etc., and I always tell her that I can't think of anything because I can't. I did tell her a couple of weeks ago that some day I would like to have a really nice sock monkey, which for some reason I don't have, and want. I seem to recall that I had a sock monkey as my cherished toy as a child, but I must have gotten sick or something and so my mother had to sterilize my environment and she threw it out. She did that. Anyway, it's not like I've been craving a sock monkey for the last 50 years, but I do like them, and homemade ones -- I've made them; even out of baby socks, which are adorable -- are just not sturdy.

But I did point out a back massagey thing at Brookstone on Saturday and said "This. You can get me this." And now she seems to think that I have demanded this item. I said hey, you asked. I don't care if I get gifts or not. Which is true. And we shall see.

The play was excellent last night, btw.

I am very achy today, though, partly from sitting on the straight backed chair and partly because I am an Old Woman. My hands were very, very sore today, so when I went to CVS for my bargain extravaganza -- eh, not so much -- I got a box of single-use arthritis heat wraps for hands. Well, I have very small hands. Typing with this thing on is killing me. So much for the cure. And which is why I shall post now and type no more tonight.


WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1748

Dear Heavens

It's ten after six. How on earth am I going to go out at 7.30? I'm considering closing my eyes for the next hour or so, if I can, but then what will tonight bring? Sleep, I'm thinking, but maybe not. Oh well, if I can't sleep, I can catch up on my Law and Orders.

Play tonight at the high school; I'm meeting the Colleague there. It's opening night. I don't know how many kids asked me today if I was planning to see the play, and when I said I was coming tonight, they got all excited. Freshmen can be so cute sometimes.\

I had five nice classes today, but our computer lab was sub-zero, about 15 degrees colder than it was at my desk, about ten feet away (but on the other side of a wall/door.) And so it goes.

No big missions today, still haven't gotten my CVS bargains, but I did clear out the clog in the bathroom sink. Go me. This is the excitement that is my life.

Okay, I'm going to see if I can catch twenty winks, or at least ten.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1747

So I'm Thinking ...

I am so tired and I have so much to do after school today, I'd better write this now -- about 1.45 -- and post it later. And maybe have something actually interesting to say then, although I doubt it.

We journeyed south yesterday, down the Garden State Parkway to where all the old people live, for the FIL's 80th birthday. We brought his sister and her husband, who live in Bizarro Town, with us. It was really a very nice day. The niece and nephew on that side are really turning into lovely people as they hit adulthood, although their father was at his goofiest best yesterday. (He's suspicious of everyone -- not family, just anyone else who might be trying to cheat him -- and was telling some crazy tales yesterday. Among other things, his town started picking up the trash earlier, before he put his barrels out, and this infuriated him so much that he boxed up two weeks of trash and mailed it to the town hall. Oh yes. And then they moved the pick-up back to the old time, which I'm sure was a coincidence, but he thinks he won.)

For my newest trick, I'm having a lot of discomfort in my arms and hands, especially my right arm. It's hard to write by hand. Part of this all is the tennis elbow coming back, so I made an appointment to see the physician's assistant at the orthopedist's office next week. We'll see what all this is. (I know, I know; as I said to my sister, How long you been using those arms? But it's worth looking into, there may be an exercise or something I can do.)

I never had time to shop for food over the weekend and I got nothing, so I have to go this afternoon, even though my usual shopping partner, K, will be in class. I'd also like to return something to Target, if I can, not to mention get to CVS for the great toilet paper/paper towel/liquid Tide sale, but I may have to put that one off until tomorrow. Tomorrow night I'm coming back to school to see the drama club's play, which was written by the club's advisor. I've actually seen this before, but he's staging it completely differently this time, so I'm curious to see how that is.

I got an email today, out of the blue, from the person I have called here the HMM [the Horrible Mean Man], who was the head librarian here before he retired and I got his job and the SCM was hired for mine. He is not so actually horrible when I don't have to work with him, and he did retire 18 years ago, so I guess I ought to let that all go. Anyway, he and his wife will be in the area next week and they want to come by and see the new library. Now, here's the irony. When he retired, I used to say that my goal was that one day when he came back to visit, the library would be so changed that he wouldn't even recognize it anymore. So hey, be careful what you wish for, eh? Laughs on me, ho ho ho. Anyway, he'll be by a week from Thursday.

This Thursday, of course, is my long awaited needle biopsy, thought with any luck, the ultrasound that comes first won't show them anything worth sticking a needle into. (I'm not keeping my hopes up.) Again, not that I'm at all freaked out over this because I know it's nothing, but really, getting a big needle stuck into your boobie? That just falls into the category of Nobody Likes It. But you gotta do what you gotta do. In other words -- you knew this was coming -- que sera, sera.

(Oh, bluesleepy mentioned in a comment last week about que sera, sera and my saying that not everyone gets it; she said "What's not to get?" You have to forgive me. I spend lots of time with people aged 14 to 18, and there is just a whole lot of common knowledge that they don't have yet. I've had to explain it to every kid so far who's noticed it. They never heard that before.)

Okay, I'm going to stop typing now because apparently that hurts my hands, too. I'm going to have to get one of those Stephen Hawking things that you blow into the end of the tube and it communicates for you. Or something.

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Back from my many missions, and now I'm not just tired, I'm hot and I have a headache. (I am what they called in the old country a kvetch.) No idea what I'm having for dinner, but at the moment, I'm thinking ice cream. Or maybe just tylenol.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1746

Easy Going Day

But first, this. Am I the only one who's read The Harrad Experiment?

Moving on. It was just, as the title says, an easy going day. I woke up about six -- horrors -- but managed to fall back to sleep, where I had an amusing dream. I dreamed I was Yvonne (whose link I can't get to at the moment). I mean, I was me, but I was somehow in Yvonne's body and life, and I assumed she was in mine, but I couldn't figure out what to do next. But I knew that I had two boys somewhere in the house, and I had a whole gang of friends waiting downstairs for me to get dressed and go out. I had fabulous clothes, and I couldn't decide what to wear, and I had -- let's be frank -- a great pair of bazooms on me. Anyway, one of the friends came up to see what was taking me so long, and to my surprise, it was my my-life friend The Other Chai, but when she looked at me, she saw Yvonne, who was apparently also her friend in dream-world. I kept asking her is she was really her, her name, her parents' names, and so on, and just as I was about to ask her to look up the real me and find out if it was actually Yvonne, I woke up.

I went out and got coffee, and then went out again to get wrapping paper for the FIL's gift for tomorrow as well as the Sibs', which is in two weeks, but the DVDs came in already, so I might as well wrap 'em up. Then K and I went for an 11.00 appointment at the Apple Store. They not only took us early, the guy said the computer was out of warranty (because no one told us I had to register the warranty when I bought it), but he replaced the power supply at no charge anyway because the cord was frayed and it was a fire hazard. Sweet. And I looked at the iPod Touches, and I think I will have to get that when my Palm dies. Right now, it doesn't do everything I need, like read and write Office documents or have an ebook reader, but I think it will soon. And it's very pretty and thin and looks like magic.

Then R and K and I went out for lunch, and afterwards, they went to a movie. So here's what I did all afternoon: I listened to Harry and the Hallows on the computer while I moved everything over from my Palm calendar and contacts programs into the Mac equivalents, and then I figured out how to sync the Palm with the Mac apps instead. It took two or three hours, but I was happy as a little clam, listening to Harry and doing mindless computer work. The addresses were easy; I just had to delete ones I don't really need anymore, add some categories, and make a few minor corrections. The calendar was the big deal, because the transfer created a lot of duplicate items, and I had to assign everything to a new category. I had to go back through the end of 2005, since I figure one of the reason to have a computer-based calendar is to keep a record of when you did things, or when things happened to you. (August 5, 2005: Appendectomy.) But it's all nice and tidy now, and even though I read warnings on the Palm website that the sync might not work, it went smoothly, not a single glitch.

And that's my day in not so small a nutshell. Tomorrow it's down the shore for the bitg gala. (Just kidding; it's the regular ten of us -- the ILs, the SIL, her hubs and two kids, and the four of us -- plus the FIL's sister and her husband.) Nothing fancy, just at the ILs' house.

Okay. All I still need to do is get the Sibs on the phone and get her kids' spouses' birthdays for my obsessive calendar.

WATCHING VH1 :: ENTRY #1745

Ever So Briefly

I am most exhausted, and obsessing over copying my calendar into iCal, so, in brief, I did not get my new tattoo today. I got there a little early for my appointment and they said my guy was still working on someone else, so I happily went back to my car and listened to some more Harry, but when I went back in to check ten minutes after my appointment time, they said he was nowhere near done. (And they make appointments because ... ) So I rescheduled for three weeks from today, i.e., the day after my next pedicure.

And there ya go. More tomorrow, I would hope.


WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1744

Hello!

Hello! My eldest nephew, JJ, answers the phone and says Hello! and sounds just like the MovieFone guy and when he does it I can't answer him because I can only laugh. I'm just sharing.

I am just soooooo tired today and there's no reason for it at all. I fell asleep around 9.30 last night, cracked open an eye at 10 and again at 11 to change the channel, and again at 3 to turn the TV off, but I never got out of bed that I can recall (or, as it were, off the couch) and I woke up with the alarm, which is maybe the third or fourth time that's happened this school year.

Ooh, I just had fun. It's first lunch in the library, so I'm here -- the SCM is at lunch -- and in the last few minutes I was asked for stuff on the Beatles and hippies, anything we had on the Salem which trials, and a basic summary of Andrew Jackson. And that's where the fun is, if you're a dork, I guess. This is the fun part of being a school librarian, jumping from one topic to another, seeing what it is they're looking for. As I've said many times, I don't like my job, but I love my work. So there ya go.

Okay, back to the exhaustion. I have had three cups of coffee today, although sadly, my experiment to see if I could have a cup of real (aka, caffeinated) coffee for my second cup was a failure. (Which means I had three cups of decaf today, but hey, it's got some.) I thought I could have just one cup of caf a day, hours after my blood pressure med, and it wouldn't interfere. And it didn't. No shakes, no feeling quivery or anything. But the heartburn! And it only took me two weeks to make the connection! So I'm back to just decaf, and as little chocolate as I can get away with, including no chocolate at all at night because that will just kill me. Really, I'm going to be a joy one day in the little old tattooed ladies' home when they have to cope with all my special diet needs, not to mention my plaid blanket problem. (Although, I've recently realized that I don't sleep under a plaid blanket in the family room, so what's up with that? I've justified it in my mind by deciding that the family room is two steps down from the rest of the house and it's a well-known fact that *ahem* serpents cannot go down stairs. SHUT UP! Leave me alone with my fantasy rationalizations!)

Today is pedi day which means that tomorrow is tattoo day. I have already said that this is my last one, but god help me, I'm reconsidering. Wonderful Niece expressed her amazement that not one of my tattoos is Mickey related, and you know .....

My day continues to amuse. Here it is, almost time to leave and a boy came in and asked for a book by title. I looked it up and asked him "The one about the siege of Stalingrad?" and he pumped his fist in the air and said "YES!" and ran to the shelves to get it. He was very cute.

And now, home after the pedi, and listen: I know what I want for Mother's Day. The Sibs and I have been getting our pedis here forever and until today, neither one of us thought to turn on the massage in the massage chair. Ohhhhhh ..... heaven. It was wunderful. Well, they're always asking me to tell them what I want, and now I've got something to say.

However will I stay up for Lost tonight?

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1743