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

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

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

VaCaDay Last *sob*

Yes, it's back to work tomorrow, and as if to remind me, today is a raw, gray day. This past week has been spectacular, weather-wise, and although I'm not much of an outdoor person, I enjoyed every minute of it.

I never got around to writing yesterday. R came by after lunch and stayed through dinner, and then K and I watched The Goblet of Fire on TV, which prompted me to watch The Order of the Phoenix today. I watched some other strange things that happened to be on, I think two movies yesterday and one today, but I don't remember what they are. Hmm.

Earlier today, on our way to Target, K said something about now when I get stressed she's going to tell me to read my new tattoo and remember what it means. (What will be, will be.) Uh ... yes. That's one of the reasons I got, I told her, so that I would always see it and remember that things are just going to happen and I can't let myself get crazy over it. Yes, it's my tattoo. I picked it. I get it.

She is just the happiest little clam these days (despite a three-day stomach ache) over the new car coming on Tuesday. I just hope nothing happens to mess up the deal; I'm always afraid of something happening to mess up something good that's coming. She's out now for a drive, saying an extended farewell to her old car. It's a 1995 Chevy that she's had for seven years; it has well over 100k miles on it. Won't be missed, certainly by me, and I think not for long by her either.

Next Sunday we will be going to the ILs for the FIL's 80th birthday party. I talked to the SIL this morning (who just got back from DisneyWorld, yay for her!) and we discussed the gifts to get him. Oh yes, excellent gifts are expected, apparently. He would like a GPS system and a DVD recorder. Well, okay, love of gadgets and toys are something he and I have in common. But seriously. A GPS system? He can't drive anymore and he never goes anywhere. The DVD recorder I can see, a little -- I picked one up for him at Target this morning -- but it will take until his 90th birthday for him to figure out how to use it. (He was once incredibly slick with this kind of stuff.) I've got more to rant on with him, but I'll pass for today. He really is a sweetheart, and I'm very, very fond of him, but sometimes he could drive a person crazy. Hey, my own parents drove me crazy and I loved them a lot. So I guess I shouldn't complain (although you know I will.)

It's not going back to school I mind, as such, but I don't relish the thought of an alarm at 5.30 am -- ooh, gotta set that alarm -- and all the steps involved in getting myself out of the house. I took all that stuff at a very easy pace this week. As it is, I've already laid out my clothes and taken out my lunch bag, and gotten the coffee pot ready. I have a very busy day tomorrow: five classes starting my website/autobiography project, and I'm looking forward to that. I threw together another example for them last night, which I'll share with you when I work the bugs out of it. Basically, I realized that I connect to history with my choice of tattoos and what each one stands for, so that's it, but I don't have FrontPage on my Mac (my webpage authoring software of choice) so I had to use Word, and the pages don't link together properly. I did check the HTML and it looks right, it just doesn't work. Anyway, I have it on a flash drive and I think my first class isn't until second period, so I should get a chance to fix it and upload it.

Speaking of birthdays, my sister's 60th is coming up in a few weeks. (I keep seeing commercials on TV for people to visit Israel, to celebrate Israel's 60th birthday. Same day, same birthday. They heard Ben-Gurion's announcement of Israeli independence on the day my sister was born.) Anyway, I'm working on a little celebration for her, one that doesn't involve everyone in the free world, since her family has grown huge in the last few years between step-children and children's spouses. She also just recently woke up and realized -- hello -- that it's possible for a person to own DVDs -- is she really my sister? -- so I'm thinking about the big set of Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, but I have to make sure Wonderful Niece hasn't already gotten it.

Oh, okay, I guess I'm going to go watch Thursday's Lost now. Again. I hate it being on at 10. I'm not sure if I'm alert enough at that hour to catch everything.

WATCHING NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC :: ENTRY #1739

Good News, Less Than Good News

First, the less than good news. I believe that I am sinking into a depression. There are a variety of factors here, my illness, stress-inducing family, and so on. This morning, I was feeling very, very sad, and trying to get a handle on what to do about it. I think what I need is to go back to therapy, and I even looked up my old therapist on the Internet, but I don't think going back to her is an option. Although I'm sure she would see me, the group she's in is now specializing in treating eating disorders, and I think I would feel very out of place there. They had already started to move in this direction before I stopped going, and just sitting in the waiting room was sometimes awkward, and I was always concerned about running into a kid from my school there. (Not that I would have cared if anyone knew I went to therapy, but I thought it might be very stressful for the kid to think a teacher knew she was going there.)

Anyway, I was thinking about that, and how on earth to find a new therapist, and how I feel I am without someone to talk to, as I wrote yesterday, and then a very cool thing happened. The phone rang.

On the other end was my dear Colleague, she who was formerly the library secretary and who is now banished to another office in the school. (She's not actually banished; she got promoted away from me.) She called up to see how the girls liked their trip to Paris. And stuff just started to spill out of me. I realized that she is the person I'm missing in my life. She is the one I always talked to about anything, and she to me. We've gotten accustomed to being separated, but not really adjusted to it, if that means anything. As we were talking, I couldn't believe how much I was missing her -- yes, she's only in another part of the same building, but we rarely cross paths -- and it felt wonderful to talk to her. (We do talk on the phone, but not often enough, and then it's all we can do just to catch up with each other's lives.) And then I remembered something else: her daughter, married, in her thirties, goes to see someone for therapy, based mostly on my success and recommendation that it would be good for her. So, the upshot is, I got the name of someone to go to.

It's a good decision to go to therapy, and good to have a name to start with. I don't feel like I need to dig as deep as I did last time, I just feel like I need some support for awhile. When I first got my diagnosis in January, even then I thought that I might want to go see someone after a couple of months. So that's the good news. (Being depressed is the less than good news.)

I also kind of traced back a little of what's irritating my stomach, so hopefully I will stop eating that -- edamame, which I love -- and it will clear up this little bit of a flare I seem to be having. So I felt good about figuring that out, too. I hope it's not the apples that I've started eating again, because I really like apples, and it's easier to give up the edamame. I think that's it, anyway.

(Crohn's, btw, is one of the two major inflammatory bowel diseases, the other being ulcerative colitis. The main difference between the two, as I understand it, is that U.C. occurs only in the colon, but Crohn's can affect any part of the entire digestive system, including *ahem* both ends, the mouth/tongue, and ... the other end. Also, because these are auto-immune diseases, they can also cause rheumatoid arthritis [the big auto-immune disease] reactions in the joints, particularly of the hands and feet. I could go on, but that's the basics, that's why I get sores on my tongue when it acts up. I didn't have the ankle and wrist swelling until I got very sick, but the tongue is apparently an early sign for me.)

I also undertook a pretty big library project this morning, one that we had started last year but had to put off due to the change in the library software over the summer. (I'm cataloging our video collection. We have about 900 videotapes.) So that was a good decision too, to immerse myself in work that needs to be done, is somewhat interesting, and just the right amount of challenging. I'm also weeding out old and/or never used videos while I'm at it. I'm up to about 480, which includes all the ones we got done last year, so I guess this should keep me busy until June, at least.

(Why do we still have so many VHS tapes, you wonder? For one thing, we've got them, and we don't have the budget to replace them all on DVD at once. For another, many of them won't be available on DVD, maybe ever. Not to mention that we have relatively few DVD players to go around in the building, but we still have VCR's in many rooms, and many VCR's on carts to move around. The newer or remodeled classrooms have computers connected to video projectors, so they can just show DVD's through that system, but it's not widespread enough to make our videotapes obsolete. Yet. Although anything new that we buy is on DVD.)

I do feel better than I did this morning. I can't say that what I was feeling was despair, but I felt very, very sad. Oddly, I slept very well last night, which surprised me, so that didn't contribute to the morning's mood, but I woke up feeling like I'd gotten to my last straw. Better now, some. Of course, I do still have to go home (whence I shall post this) and talk to the people who live there (or used to live there), and I do still have to spend some time in a car with them on Sunday so we can go have Easter dinner with the ILs -- mm boy, looking forward to that -- but there you go. You gotta do what you gotta do, n'est-ce pas?

(K did indeed bring me a copy of Harry Potter et le Prisonnier d'Azkaban, which I could even read, some. It made me giggle.)


WATCHING ----- :: ENTRY #1706

Juuust a Bit Better

And I have a Harry movie on and the creepy part is coming, so I thought I'd follow up on the insanity that was my earlier entry.

Even though my head is just a little loopy, which means that the med has kicked in and calmed the stomach ickies, and the Advil has kicked in so my back is hold-up-able. For however long it lasts. I even put all that pain-killing goo on my bad mouth places and ate some pop-tarts. I've been finding that it's very difficult to eat solid food without using your tongue.

Okay, so plan for tomorrow is to definitely talk to, if not see, a doctor, and to get more mouth goo and other little goodies. Although I don't generally scan the internet for details when I have a real disease -- only when I think I might have one -- I did do a little research, and dehydration does seem to be a big factor here. And if I put on enough mooth goo first, I can drink without much pain, for a while, at least. Anybody know if you can give Pedialyte to grownups? I'd rather walk around with a saline drip in my arm than drink water all day.

Anyway, putting up the tree today was happy and fun and I loved it. We have so many ornament themes: Disney (you knew that), rocking horses, racoons, glass balls, handmade ornaments, and the irreverent ornaments that my darling daughters have brought in recent years. I'll try to get pictures of those tomorrow.

I'm getting spacey now, so I'll finish up. After I posted before, the Hubs came and chatted awhile and got the full picture of my illness (during which I tearfully apologized to him for making him marry a mess, which, predictably, he said was hardly my fault and that I was not a mess anyway), and then K sat with me for the Simpsons, but we mostly talked. I felt very good then, but not in a teary way (and not physically at that point, although a little better now.)

Okay. People who are drugged up should not write on the Internet! Oughta be a law.

WATCHING HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE :: ENTRY #1650

So I Guess You Heard

Dumbledore is gay. How do you like that. Like it makes any difference in the character at all, which it doesn't, which is why I was so impressed with the way J.K. Rowling just kind of tossed it out there, like it was no big deal.

The thing is, homosexuality, or any number of other things that are often viewed as hot button issues, only are if you make them so. Otherwise, it's as significant as hair color, which is to say, not. Not that it isn't significant to the people it affects directly, but there's no reason it needs to be for anyone else.

I've mentioned this before, I think, and I'm not throwing this out there as an example of Hey, I was a terrific parent and here's the proof. It's just the way we handled something in our family and that it happened to work well for us. I didn't shield my children from any awareness of the gay, nor did I make a deal of it. If they heard the word and asked me what it meant, I gave them an age appropriate answer. (For example: it means a man who loves another man instead of a woman, or a woman who loves another woman.) I wouldn't give a small child a more detailed explanation any more than I would give them a detailed explanation of heterosexual sexuality. When a six year old asks why family friends Susie and Bob are getting married, you don't say Because they want to have sex with each other. You say it's because they love each other. That's what they need to know at that age.

Anyway, I knew I would have to explain it to them somehow at some point because my OldFriend is gay, and they saw her a lot when they were little. So, when R was seven or eight, she asked me once why OldFriend didn't have a husband, and I said, Oh, she's gay, so she likes women instead of men. And that was all she needed to know, and she was happy with it.

It's only a big deal if people turn it into one. You only have to explain it if they've never heard of it before.

So, Dumbledore. To tell the truth, I always thought JKR was using Lupin's outcast/werewolf status as a metaphor for the gay, which maybe she was to some extent, but the whole fanfic world who fervently hoped that Lupin and Sirius Black were an item was crushed when Lupin and Tonks got together. (Oh, spoiler alert. Sorry. Hey, that book came out years ago.) But I like that there is some character in there who is randomly gay, like people in the real world.

And ... on to other things.

We had that in-service today, and my sessions went very well, but I was exhausted by the time I was done, giving the same lesson six times at top speed since we only had a half hour for each one. And yes, my feet are killing me because the supports I tried today were extremely suckful and I had to take them off mid-day. (I have something else to try for tomorrow.) But here's the cute thing I have to show you:



One of the other teachers who was presenting, a former graphic artist, made up the evaluation sheet for the end of the day, and put a little caricature of each of us presenters at the bottom, and this, of course, is moi. Don't be surprised if it replaces my Disney 1960 photo after my trip; I think this is the cutest little cartoon of me ever. (And yes, I've seen other cartoon/characters/whatevers of me, so I have what to compare it to.)

And now I think I'll give my oldest nephew a call to make sure he isn't anywhere near the fires in San Diego. The Hubs has a cousin who lives there, too, but his job is such that he's probably helping with the evacuations, so we're sure he's okay. And my nephew -- let's go with JJ for him -- lives practically right on the beach, and I haven't heard of any fires there. But it would be nice to hear his voice anyway.

WATCHING LAW AND ORDER :: ENTRY #1611

Signs

Watch the watch.



Anyway, so if the video works, that's my cool watch that I've had since I was ... twelve, I think, maybe thirteen, that I wrote about the other day.

In other news. K says that wearing headphones is the universal sign for "don't talk to me," and while I think this should be correct, her lament, and mine, is that wearing headphone actually seems to be the sign to every idiot who crosses your path to start a pointless conversation with in which the most significant words spoken are the first three, forcing you to say "Wait a minute, wait a minute; I have headphones on," and then fumble at your ears and in your pockets for the pause button. Guess how my day started?

Actually, I walked to school again since K's car was in the shop, and listened to the UK audiobook of The Prisoner of Azkaban, and the school nurse started talking to me the minute I put my foot in the building, interfering with Stephen Fry's dulcet tones. But the car is good now, the Hubs and I just picked it up (K has gone to class with my car); the mechanic had to replace the alternator he put in last week and so there was no charge to us. That's my kind of pricing.

Aren't TV commercials idiotic? One caught my attention just before; it was for wipes for kids to use who are learning to use the toilet. I don't know what they're called, but the tagline that caught my attention was "xx wipes make wiping fun!" Uh ... excuse me. Under what circumstances does wiping one's ass need to be fun?

Okay, got to eat something.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1585

Randomly Catching Up

I am getting the "new" car tomorrow, so it appears. (I like to hedge my bets until things are definite.) Here's the picture from the website ad:



Let me see if I can fit in some of the stuff from the other day, not that any of it is important. Oh, tomorrow is the last day of my vacation, btw. Woop de doo. Monday doesn't count, since everyone has Labor Day off.

I finished listening to the Harry audiobook last night. I like Jim Dale's reading very much. And the book, of course.

Oh, the medical report. It seems that I have avoided the need for surgery, but no final decision yet. I am to continue the current treatment and see him again in a month, and he thinks at that point I'll be fine. So that's good. Not surgery that I was looking forward to.

I have an evil headache, and have had every afternoon this week. I'm just saying.

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I run into former students wherever I go. Once I went for a massage, and was lying undressed under the sheet, and the masseuse came in and said "Oh, do you work at XX High School?" Uh, yeah. The assistant at the doctor's office -- that would be the colo-rectal surgeon's office -- asked the same thing. I've said that the day I go to a new gynecologist and the conversation begins with "Didn't you used to work at ... ?" I'm moving to Alaska.

However, this was odd. I got a new exercise video (pause, insert your laughter here) called (keep laughing) Maui Pilates, which as it turns out is actually do-able by a potato like me, but as it started up and the young woman launched into her introduction and gave her name, I thought "Damn! She graduated about 10 years ago!" Anyway, it's not like I have to see her face to face, but it was weird. And she lives in Maui now, apparently. Good deal for her.

Both of my travelers are home, K with a bit of snotty attitude during the final phone call when I was trying to find out when her train was coming in so I could drop everything and pick her up (now who's got the attitude?) on Tuesday, and R when we picked her up at the airport last night. Wonderful trips for both. So that's nice.

What else can I tell you? It looks like I'm moving on to Husband #3, which would be the same human, according to the DNA, that I married 30 years ago, but he's having his second mid-life crisis, for lack of a better word, so he's morphing into someone new, as he did about 20 years ago. Not a mid-life crisis, really, since the numbers don't fit. This time, he seems to be shifting into someone interested in pursuing actual human relationships, which is nice, of course, but which is going to take a lot of adjusting on my part, since by now, I'm used to the work-obsessed, oddly-focused maniac I've had for the last 20 years. This is better, certainly, but you know, just because he's changing by the day, it doesn't mean that I automatically have the psychic connection to what's going on. If he's going to tell me that he's interested in different things -- the new one, if I understand him correctly, is cuddling -- he's really going to have to let me work on it. Not that these are bad changes, but you know, I have to change, too, and it doesn't happen in a minute.

Now that sounds ungrateful. Bottom line: men are just not like normal people. Male or female among you, you can take that however you want to. It's been proven in my experience, that's all I'm saying.

Okay, car tomorrow. Maybe.

WATCHING ELLEN :: ENTRY #1570

Finally!

A day that I would consider a good summer vacation day. I had energy, I cleaned, I got things done, I sat around, and I talked a bit of Harry here and there. And I have plans for tomorrow.

I started in on the living room after I was up and dressed, and hauled all the rugs -- one in the middle of the room, two runners, and two little ones -- outside to shake them out and air them. At which point I decided not to put them back, if I could help it. So after I got the room dusted and the floor cleaned, and the kitchen floor, I was ready to go out and look for replacements. Except the plumber was coming.

I have an old house, and get this. All up and down my street, the houses are the same. Each one has a big pipe that connects the house to the sewer, each in the same place on each house. And when the development was built, and all finished, the town came around and donated one tree to each house. Where did they plant the trees? Right over the sewer lines, of course. So, one by one, most of the houses have had to replace their sewer lines, which get cracked by the tree roots. Ours has never been replaced, but it's only a matter of time. We actually have one of the few remaining "town" trees. (The development was built in 1949.) So, several times a year, everything backs up and the plumber has to come and snake out that sewer line. At least we caught it early this time.

He was done by 2.15 or so, and out I went. I went to my various places, and got a big rug for $25.00. Then I went to Kohl's, and saw a really nice runner -- looks like a Persian-type rug, feels very nice -- for $100. Well, I wasn't spending that much, especially when I needed two. And then I saw the sign: all rugs, buy one, get one free. Wow. When I paid for the two rugs -- $100 -- the cashier said "Have I nice day" and I said "I think I just did."

So the rugs are good, and even though there was apparently a power failure while I was out, it was okay by the time I got home.

I got a very funny email today while I was waiting for the plumber. It was from someone R works with, so I don't know her of course, but she wrote that R suggested she write to me, because this girl has finished her Harry and none of her friends have yet, and she was dying to talk to someone about it! So we emailed back and forth for an hour or so. In the midst of it, I got email from R saying that she hoped I didn't mind, but she was pretty sure I wouldn't. Ya think?

And then the Sibs called -- she's very hard to get hold of sometimes; I'd tried her twice earlier -- and suggested that we do some outlet shopping tomorrow. So that's cool.

And now to see if the dryer's done.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1534

And ... Done.

Finished. And no more details from me, at least not about the book.

We got our books at 12.15 last night this morning, which was pretty good. The "party" was more like a happy crowd in a bookstore; we spent most of it sitting in the cafe with the Other Chai. Once we had our books, we were on our way, and were home about 12:40. I changed, got comfortable, settled in on the couch, and said

"Eeuuw. What is that smell?"

It was cat shit, of course, which was liberally sprinkled over the half dozen or so towels spread out over the furniture in the family room for this very purpose. So I put my book down, picked up the icky towels, put down clean ones, and put the icky towels in the wash. Sat down again, all cozy, and said

"Eeuuw. What is that smell?"

Only to realize that it was all over the cat as well. Put down the book, reached for the wipes and the cat, and went to work. Poor Boo. Poor me.

I started reading at 1.00 and read until 4.00, but was getting up from time to time to put towels in the dryer, put more towels in the wash, etc. etc. Not a good night for Boo. And I was up and down myself, only I have the sense to go to the appropriate room and not on towels on the furniture (as one would hope.) But really, for the four hours that I was awake and reading, the bathroom was the busiest room in the house, and not just for me. I never knew there was that much night-time activity going on here.

At four, I put the book down and fell asleep on the couch. I approached consciousness around 5.30, but willed myself back to sleep. I was up, washed, and armed with coffee when I started reading again at eight. K slept until 10 -- she had also dropped off to sleep at four -- and we finished our books within an hour of each other early in the afternoon.

Now? Now we are both zombies. I tried to sleep a bit later in the afternoon, but no luck.

I caught up a bit on the phone with the Sibs, who got back from California late last night, but we could use an afternoon together. She was away for 10 days and we only had one real conversation during that time, which is not enough for us.

Well, I am just exhausted. I need to go move some cat towels to the dryer, and then collapse. I know, TMI, the whole cat thing is TMI. This is my exciting life, folks.

WATCHING VH1 :: ENTRY #1529

I'm Waiting ...

I'm not really good at waiting.

So I went to the relevant Borders store this morning, early as usual, because I was up and I was ready and why not? I stopped briefly at the ShopRite in the mall there to pick up a couple of things before driving over to the far end of the mall where the bookstore is. It was about 8.35.

There was a line outside the store. This is the line of people waiting to pick up their bracelets, mind you. The bracelet you get (color, group-letter) determines how early or late in the evening you will get Your Book.

I guess there were 40 or 50 people ahead of me in the line, so we'll be getting our books relatively early, I would imagine between 12.15 and 12.30. And then home.

I had hoped to sleep some during the day, but that didn't quite work out. I did fall asleep this afternoon, but the phone rang after about 20 minutes. I popped up, disoriented, and answered. Someone with an accented voice offered me a wonderful telecommunications deal. Wha? I said "Take me off your call list and never call me back." And the guy continues, something about $39.95, and I said

"There is a law in the United States that says if I say the words 'Take me off your call list', you must hang up and never call me back. You are breaking the law." Click.

Wide awake.

I tried it again around six, but although I rested for nearly an hour with my eyes closed, no sleep.

Now it's nearly 7.30, and I'm thinking, the book is already out in the U.K., so I have to be careful where I go on the Internet, and I can't watch any TV channel with news. I know this is all silly, but I've come this far, and I'd like to read it for myself.

But I don't know how long I'll be able to stay up tonight. I'll see how I feel when we get home; maybe I'll be pumped. Not to mention slightly caffeinated. If not, I'll fall asleep, wake up around six, brush my teeth, feed the cat, make a cup of coffee, and settle in.

I'm sorry, my brain is really only in Harry mode tonight. I'll be back in the real world Sunday -- possibly tomorrow.

WATCHING SVU :: ENTRY #1528

Countdown

One countdown is almost over, and another one is beginning.

Tomorrow night, Harry! At this point, I agree with K: I just want to know what happens already. Not enough to read any of the so-called spoilers that are out there, but just to read the real thing and find out. She and I are going to a Harry Potter party -- really -- tomorrow night; the Other Chai is probably going to meet us there, so we'll hang with her. What adults do at a HPP, I cannot imagine, other than get a decent place to park by getting there early and getting our books at midnight or shortly thereafter. And then home to read. Don't be surprised if my brain is too fried to post an entry on Saturday.

On the other hand, I called the reservations people at DisneyWorld this morning to ask some questions. I got good answers, and reserved a tentative booking, pending talking to the other people involved. So that's starting to feel more and more real every day. It turns out that the solution to the three adults/two beds problem is that there are two hotels that are deluxe, but not super-deluxe, that offer some rooms with one queen-sized bed and a bunk bed. So there you go, three people, three beds. The price was pretty good too, considering that these are the nicer hotels. All I need is a final check of the dates with the Other Chai, and then I can turn on my DW countdown widget. (On my desktop, although maybe I can find one for my site, too. Because I am 9 years old.)

K spoke to the other professor today, and it looks like everything is lined up, hopefully. At which point, it is my understanding, that the school will send me a refund check for the 2007-2008 tuition I've already sent them, four or five months worth. Yum. Just in time to send a check to the Mouse. See how everything works out?

Speaking of which, K finally got to go on that date that was canceled a few weeks ago, while the Hubs and I were away, and he was apparently a pleasant human and she had a good time and it turns out that he went to college (undergrad) and is best buds with a girl who was K's best friend from ages 0 to about 6. (They were born four days apart.) Sometimes the universe works in strange ways.

Potterization, Phase I

First, let me just say that people my age shouldn't even take vacations. Why? Because. (And is it embarrassing that one of my kids sent her parents the link to this article? Although I had already seen it myself.)

Okay, so, Potter, Phase I. K and I saw the movie (HP and the Order of the Phoenix) this afternoon. Did I like yet? Yes and no. It looks great, parts of it look incredible. The acting, very good. It's the same with any book that you know really well that gets made into a movie: you tend to notice what's missing almost more than what's there. I need to see the movie again, which no doubt I will, before I'm truly comfortable with it. In the meantime, now I feel like picking up The Half-Blood Prince before the new book comes out on Friday, even though I just read it again a few weeks ago. I'm just wild about Harry.

So it seems that I am making these plans to go to DisneyWorld with the Other Chai, right? Which I mentioned in an email to the Chum, who lives in Maine for the summer. I mentioned it in passing (as in my surprise that the Other Chai appears to be going through with it), although I had mentioned to her before that we were talking about going. She says, maybe she'll join us there.

Now, tell me: should I be pleased or annoyed? Who is the one person outside of my family I have been trying to get to DisneyWorld with for years? The Chum. It's come up several times over the years we've known each other. Finally, maybe five years ago, after her husband had bypass surgery, she said that she could never go, because she would never leave him for that long. Seemed pretty much a closed case to me.

But now, and for the last year, maybe year and a half, she goes to Florida every six to eight weeks because her mother lives there and has been having health issues. So she goes. She's even going once in the middle of the summer from Maine. Anyway, she figures she's going to Florida in November anyway, so she would join us in Orlando from wherever it is she goes to her mother. (Not far from Miami, I think.)

Well. I would have preferred going with just the Chum, since the Other Chai can be a challenge, but I'm not sure how it will be with the three of us. (Although the two of them go way back as well, but not as far as I go with either one of them.) I can't book the trip for three when we book, but I don't know if they'll let us add another person to our room at a later time. And if three of us are going, I think we need to get a better (i.e., bigger) room so that it's not just two double beds. Oy. Complications. Can't anything ever be easy?

Speaking of which, R is all embroiled with complicated friend plans for the weekend, the upshot of which is that she's coming here after work and staying over for the night. I just paused to discuss this with K and got another detail or two, but neither one of us knows what's going on, it turns out. At some point, R will be here. She will show up in her car or we will pick her up at the train. She will have dinner with us or she will have eaten before she arrives, or she and K will go out for sushi.

Boo is on the new food and is getting his medicine more or less, and seems pretty much exactly the way he was before. Which is okay, actually, since he didn't seem sick before, he just needed to be checked out. Whatever.

I need to pack tomorrow. Or at least sometime before we leave in Sunday, I think. I have no idea what the weather is supposed to be there, although I imagine I could look that up pretty easily. You know, most trips I go on, I plan obsessively before I go. (See all references to DisneyWorld, for example.) But other than making the hotel reservation, I'm not planning anything here. The Hubs will figure out how to get there, and pretty much, what to do there. He has a friend who is a Lincoln impersonator -- I kid you not -- who's giving him all kinds of tips and advice. Hey, he oughta know, right?

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1523

Bliss!

I got a haircut today, and when I came out and got into my car at 1.22 pm and turned on the radio ....

Ahhhhhhhh.

There it was. The wonderful oldies station had come back, as promised, at 1.01 pm. The afternoon deejay is one of the familiar old-timers, and I knew all the songs. All of their promos are very cute, too, referring to the station being missed and now it's back. I listened to it at home later, too, while I was *ahem* cleaning. When K got home from class, she said that she had listened to it, too, on the way to and from school. The funny thing is that she said the oldies may be the music of my childhood, but it's the music of her childhood, too, since it's the radio station I listened to as she was growing up.

Other news ... hmm. I haven't packed a thing, but I did start making a list. So that's something. I guess I'll start tomorrow. But the big plans for tomorrow involve going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Really looking forward to it, and to the book next week. (Okay, really looking forward to the book next week.)

The vet called last night with the results of Boo's bloodwork, which are either good or bad, depending, I guess, on your point of view. Or depending on where things go from here. His kidneys are stable. He shows a slight infection. But he is extremely anemic. If the anemia is being caused by his gastrointestinal ailment, well, he's on new food and a strong antibiotic, so that should help. If it's caused by something else, then it will probably continue to decline. The vet said that most cats would not live with the level of anemia he has, but it's clearly come on him gradually, so he's adjusted to it. Much lower, though, and it would not "be compatible with life." Let me just say how fond I am of this particular vet. He is also very personal and compassionate. A lovely man.

So my only concern now, really, is that the cat could take a sudden turn while the Hubs and I are away. I think this is unlikely, given the fact that Boo has had the "expect-the-end-soon" diagnosis more than once over the last five years, but it's a possibility, and one that I am not sharing with K before we go. I may share a bit with R, though, so she knows to be on call for her sister if something happens. And we'll only be a few hours away, and in our own car, so getting home in an emergency is not a problem. But I don't really think it's coming that soon. Possibly by the end of the summer, but I don't think before that. And then again, you never know.

My sister is away now, for about 10 days I think, which leaves me without my main source of outside conversation. It's always weird when she goes away. I'll hear from her a few times while she's gone -- she's in California visiting her firstborn -- but those are just "Hey, I'm still alive" phone calls, not real conversations. But her middle son is away too, out of the country, in fact, which must be leaving Wonderful Niece feeling pretty deserted by everyone (except her husband, of course.) I just wrote myself a note to call her tomorrow; it'll be good for both of us.

So that's it, then.

WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1522

All I Meant Was

I never meant to imply that teachers have it rough. I was only comparing different ways teachers use their in school/out of school time between what I know and what boxx writes about. Although, people who say that teachers have it easy are a real hot button thing for me; I'll leave that rant for another day. People who think that teachers have it easy, though, should try it for a couple of days and see how they like it. As for the pay, teachers are just your basic middle class people with jobs, no more, no less. The pay is compartable to police officers and firefighters, in most places, although if you ask me, firefighters should be paid more than corporate CEO's or anyone else in society, for that matter.

Well, then.

R was supposed to work today, but it got cancelled (unfortunately, after she and all her co-workers had already commuted into the office in the city), so she got here by 1.00 and we went out to pick up a few things for the new apartment. She got a chair, but was unsuccesful with the hunt for a futon frame, or for that matter, anything to put her mattress on. So we need to keep looking for that. No idea of tomorrow's plans yet, although her new chair, in its box, is in the back of my car, so I'm definitely bringing that over tomorrow. We'll see whether she decides to pack more when she gets home or go to the new place and start assembling her shelves into a place to hold her TV as well. (She saw a picture of a new configuration at The Container Store and is anxious to give it a try.)

I finished The Half-Blood Prince a few minutes ago, and now I want more Harry. I'm just saying. I have to wait along with everybody else. Haven't decided what to read next; I have the newest Traveling Pants book and a biography of Ingrid Bergman. Hmm.

It's a gray drizzly day today, was yesterday, and will be for another day or two. Bummer. It's cold, too. I had to wear a jacket when I went out the morning. I don't like that. It's May.

My desk is a mess here, and I've got a couple of bills to pay, so I guess I'd better sort that all out. Good weekend, all.

watching Top Model :: entry #1469

Life in the Ivory Tower

boxx commented about the extra hours she puts in at school, uncompensated, and I know this is so because it's often in her entries: that she'll go in and work in her classroom on a Sunday afternoon, for example, to get things ready for the coming week.

No one does that here.

Now, lest we think that all the teachers in New Jersey are uncaring, I shall explain. I have never known any teacher here, at any level K-12, to go in and work on a weekend, at least, not in their classrooms. I'm sure that in my school district, for example, classrooms aren't accesible to teachers on weekends. The elementary and middle schools are locked up tight, and the high school is only open for the sports activities, i.e., the locker rooms and gyms may be open, but nothing else is. Or for certain activities, like the drama club, which rehearses on Saturday mornings, and the auditorium is accesible to them. Otherwise, there are heavy gates pulled down to block off other corridors and areas of the school. So that's one thing.

But every time boxx says something about working weekends, it makes me think. Certainly, most teachers do not work according to their agreed upon, contracted hours; anyone who says that teachers have easy hours really doesn't get it. No teachers do that. Here at my school, where the first class starts at 7.55, many people come in early. The SCM gets in most days around 6.45, and his isn't the only car in the parking lot. Yes, some people rush into the building at 7.54, and just make it to their classrooms. These are the people who are more likely to stay until 5.00 in the afternoon or so. (The last class ends at 2.35.) Here's part of the difference, I think:

Elementary school teachers often use the extra time in their rooms to work on the room itself (putting up bulletin boards and displays, arranging work stations for the next day's lesson), and I routinely see teachers' cars parked at the elementary schools around town until five or six. (Their day of classes ends at 3.00.) They don't spend the extra time with kids because little kids go home (or to an after-school program) right after school because of safety concerns. And in a lot of places -- not here in B-Town, though -- kids are bussed, and so of course they have to leave when the busses come.

It's different when you're in a high school. Teachers who are staying late are less likely to be preparing for the next day's class, or grading papers, than they are to be giving kids extra help, or working with a club or a sports team. (Most teachers I know do their preparation and paper grading at home.) When I was the junior class advisor, I met with my officers one morning a week at 7.30, with the full class council one afternoon a week from 2.45 to 3.30 or so, and one night a week to work on whatever project was at hand, either preparing for the big Spirit Week pep rally, or for the junior prom. When we put up the decorations for the junior prom, we worked for two days, a Thursday and a Friday, from 8.00 am until we were done, which was often 10.00 pm or later, and then came in Saturday morning to check them and then back Saturday night for the actual prom. (The kids working on it were released from classes to put up the decorations.) And coaches, in season, work with their teams every day after school for hours.

Some of this, though, is compensated. A coach gets good money, outside of a regular salary. I got, I think, $1500 a year for junior class, which came to something like 25 cents an hour. I didn't do it for the money, nobody does. Teaching is a solid job and career, but nobody is doing it for the money, other than the survival aspect. It's not the road to big-ticket success.

Anyway, I don't know where I was going with this, just showing a difference, I guess, between different places and how things are done, no value judgments. Oh, and I think we have very strong teachers' unions here in New Jersey, so that may account for something. We've had years when the Board of Ed wasn't willing to negotiate a new contract with us, and our union put us on "job action" status, which means, among other things, that no one works outside of contracted hours. This sucked for elementary teachers, who normally went in during the last couple weeks of the summer to set things up, and others as well, but you do what you have to. I've always come in and done certain things during the summer, but I always did them while hanging out with the Colleague, so I don't know what I'll do this year.

Back in the real world

I've been thinking of going to a chiropracter, but I'm still too chicken to pull the trigger and go. The only one I know of is the one K goes to sometimes, whom I've met and he's very very nice, but also chatty, and his kids go to the high school. Hmmm. But I've had this ache in my shoulder/neck, and I'm thinking I should go, but ..... still not so sure how I feel about chiropracters; I had a weird experience years back. Not sure if I'm ready yet.

Okay, time for more Harry. Tomorrow.

watching Raymond :: entry #1468

Still *yawn* Here

I'm having the kind of day where everyone who looks at me says "Gee, you look tired!" Thankyou. Thankyouvermuch.

So things have been quiet. K has been in school all week until 9 or so, and the Hubs was out the last two nights, first a business dinner and last night teaching a class. K is actually home early today, having skipped her second class because she has the terrible cold I had a couple of weeks ago, and getting caught between classes in last night's deluge didn't do her any good. And she's already booked to sub tomorrow, so she wanted an early night.

So. Had a busy day at school, which was was good, and probably a busy day tomorrow. This weekend isn't coming fast enough for me, but next weekend is a three-day (or more?) weekend, which should be really nice, even though R is moving on that Friday and the ILs are coming up for dinner on Saturday.

We are embroiled in the controversy over the extra snow day that we didn't use in our school district. Now, why we didn't use it is a mystery, since we had one snowy day and one horrible rainy day when every other school district in north Jersey was closed, but we were open, so we should have used all our days. But we have one unused day in the calendar, and there are those who feel we should "get it back." Not that I wouldn't like a day off, but honestly? I don't think it was ours to start with, let alone to get back. Although most of the other nearby districts do give back their unused days. Last year, they gave us back the last day of school, which is to say, the last day for staff, the day after the kids' last day. This did not sit well with most people, since it left them no time to clean up their classrooms for the summer and many people ended up coming in anyway, just on their own time. What people want back is the day before or the day after Memorial Day weekend. So far, they claim that they are generously giving us back ... the last day of school for staff, like last year. Doesn't matter to me, since I just leave the library as it is for the summer, so for me it is a day off, but it used to be a day when we had a staff barbecue and softball game and it was nice to hang out together. Anyway, the powers that be could yet be prevailed upon for next weekend. I doubt it, but it could happen.

I see by the clock on the .... editing page, that I started writing this entry at 4.46, and it is now about 6.44. How did that happen? Oh, I did go out and pick up dinner at the deli so K could have chicken soup .... and I talked to the Sibs .... and R ... and the Hubs came home and K told him a joke from her Economics class; how lame is that?

I'm going to post and get back to Harry before the Ugly Betty season finale in a little over an hour. Tomorrow.

watching VH1 :: entry #1467

Reaching Critical Mass

I don't believe I can eat any more broccoli. Ever. I have reached the end of my rope with broccoli.

You know, I've got these strange eating habits. As it is, I have exactly the same thing every day for breakfast, and exactly the same thing every day for lunch. We had Chinese food on Saturday, which we do nearly every Saturday, and I had steamed shrimp and lobster -- very low points, good protein and fiber -- and I decided that it was good, and that I would have steamed shrimp and broccoli every day for dinner from then on.

I made it through four days. Tomorrow, on to other things.

So, K was indeed offered the opportunity to be a graduate assistant, and she was going to accept today, but the next step is submitting her resume (which she did today) and waiting to see if a professor or two picks her. So it's not a done deal, but I can't imagine why they wouldn't. She's got a great background in doing research, if they need a research assistant (which wouldn't be her first choice) and if they want her to help teach, that would be great experience for her, and she's up to it. I think, though, that she'll probably be grading papers and stuff like that. Which is also good experience. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

So I went to see Harry Katz the Sinus Man today, and to avoid my horrible long-wait experience of last week, I arrived prepared to wait, and armed with The Half-Blood Prince. But today, I was in and out in a flash, first to see the doctor, then to get a hearing test, and then to see the doctor for the results. I don't think I finished a page during any wait, and, not surprisingly, Harry Katz turned out to be a huge Harry Potter geek, and we discussed previous books, the upcoming book, and all that, at great length. He used to be a huge Star Trek geek, too (as am I); I was talking to him in his office once (as opposed to an examining room) and he had a micro-machine Enterprise and a micro-machine Borg cube on his desk. (Yeah, well, I had them on my desk at school too. Takes a geek to know a geek.) Anyway, he gave me a rx for prednisone to have on hand if my ears go weird again, and said to keep taking the zyrtec for allergies, instead of allegra. So, I'm there.

This also meant that I took the afternoon as a half sick day, and you know what? I could totally get used to working half days. (It's not an option.) I could work another ten years if I only had to work in the mornings. It was very pleasant. Of course, it was a beautiful day today, so, no hardship being out and about in the afternoon.

I'm going to spend a little more quality time with Harry now.

watching Reba :: entry #1466

Too Excited to Shut Up

It is incredibly premature for me to say anything -- not that it matters, really -- but I'm excited and the Hubs isn't home yet and the Sibs is out with her brood for a birthday dinner (hers), and this is so cool.

K called before, between classes, to say that she's been offered a graduate assistantship for the coming year. Do you know what that is?

IT'S A JOB.

Okay, it's not a high-paying job, but it would provide her spending money and even better, it would pay her tuition for the year. !!!!!!!! The only drawback, she said, and it was a quick conversation, is that it would delay her student teaching, and thus, her entry into the world of Real Job. And she has to decide tonight, and give her answer tomorrow. She won't be home from class until about 9.30. I have a feeling that I'll be watching the end of Heroes off the recording tonight.

Anyway, I guess I'll have the results tomorrow, but she sounded very excited, and I think it's an honor to be asked. Stay tuned.

I was pretty busy at work today, which was fine by me. I'm only going in for the morning tomorrow, as I have an appointment with Harry Katz the Sinus Man at 1.45, and may or may not be seeing the audiologist before that (for a change.)

Change of subject: I picked up Q's ashes at the vet's before. I have no idea what to do with them. For now, it's a little box on the back seat of my car. I only opted for what they called "private cremation" because I wanted to make sure ... well ... that the right thing was done, if you know what I mean. You hear stories about animal crematoria that just ... don't do what they're supposed to; I really don't want to put any nasty images in anybody's head, but I just didn't want that for little Q, so I figured if I did it this way, I'd know that everything was done properly. (I don't know why I think I know that now, but I guess I do.) *sigh* So now I've got a box. I don't think any of us are looking for ceremony here, but I don't want to just spread it on the ground where the Hubs is planting his tomatoes, either. I knew this would happen. Ah, maybe around the base of the Japanese maples out front. Yeah, that's it. Now I just have to decide whether I should just do it, or tell everyone or what. Eh, I'll see what the Hubs says. Outside the house is his domain anyway.

Speaking of the Hubs, he's going to Minneapolis for a few days on Sunday. He does hate to travel, but I think it's better for him now that there's someone else in his office, his protege of sorts, who goes along, too. He'll be gone for two nights, I think, leaving Sunday and coming home Tuesday. And now for these three weeks, K is in class four days a week from 1.00 to 9.00, so it looks like I'll be on my own a lot. As long as I don't eat; I eat when I'm bored. But I seem to be losing again a bit after gaining when I was sick, so that's self-motivating. I was thinking of walking to and from school today, but I had too much stuff to bring in; maybe Wednesday. I'll have to check the weather.

Back to Harry. I have about 150 pages to go in The Order of the Phoenix, and then The Half-Blood Prince.

watching Reba :: entry #1465