Overdue NY Update

Ok so this post isn't really going to be worthy of our very adventurous trip to NYC (where we sat on the front row at Letterman, ahem) but I really couldn't go another day without sharing.

Here we are returning from a long day of sightseeing .... me (photographer not pictured), Ashley (not pictured), Dr. J and his new NY subway BFF.

I'm still laughing. I can't believe it took me a week to get this up!!!

New York, watch out!

As much as I'd love avoiding looking like a tourist, I'd much rather slap a backpack on Dr. J and have access to aleve, handiwipes, and a Nutrigrain bar if need be. So we are taking off on Thursday after work and returning on Tuesday. I'm so swamped trying to get caught up from the last day I was gone, and now I'll be out for two days. EEEEK!

So the awesome news is that Dr. J and I, along with our travel companions, all got tickets to the Late Show with David Letterman on Monday! And we are totally going to see The Today Show on Monday morning (7:00 a.m. EST, 11/3). Looks like my 15 minutes of fame are predictably around the corner! Hopefully I won't do anything to completely embarass myself, but then again, what good is a trip to New York if you're not gonna check your self respect at the state line!

Oh and Adam is running a marathon or something while we are there. Go Adam! I am so gonna watch that with a Soy Hazelnut Venti Latte and a giant croissant in hand.

This is a mind blowing quote

On my google homepage today ....


There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

- Richard Feynman

no words.

Things I'm not Really Proud of, but not so much that I'm willing to change

I sometimes drink from the milk jug.

I will eat food that I drop on the table / floor. No 3 second rule for me.

I haven't swept the house in over a month.

I like to make Professor McGonagall smell strong smelling objects because she makes a funny face and twitches.

When my students aren't around, I absolutely laugh at them.

I correct people's grammar in my head.

I'm a closet Gossip Girl addict. I love it.

Coulda been worse

I fell down at school today.  I immediately flashed to all the times that my mother has called to tell me that she fell down at school/walking/wherever.   Honestly I don't even bat an eyelash anymore because, let's face it, she's clumsy.  Sorry mom, but you fall a lot.  It's not normal.  Maybe it's all the soap you eat.

What made my tumble worse was that there was no one nearby that I knew.  Then we all could have laughed wildly.  Absolutely everyone that saw was a complete stranger.  And 18.  So they laughed after I left.  I'm probably on You Tube.  The custodians had just mopped and I was in my not-so-traction-saavy flip flops.  I hydroplaned in the hallway in front of my room and landed in a front herkie.  Except not so smiley and with less bows.  I popped right up like a champ, in fact ... now that I think about it, the onlookers probably thought I was break dancing.  I should have started singing some Flashdance.  Don't you hate you think of those things too late?

The wound count topped out with 3:  1)  the skin on the top of 4 toes on my left foot is gone. 2)  gash in my right fore-arm and blood (the worst).  Spiderman is currently taking care of that one.  3)  Pride, obviously.  *4) holding on to rights to add bruise to my arm / tailbone that is sure to surface by morning.

The up side is that I probably won't have to shave my left foot this weekend :)  That and I'm making my premier on You Tube.

Coughs and vomit

Enticing, no?

I have a cough as I do at least once a year.  It lasts forever and drives me nuts.  

On another note, I hosted a jewelry party at my house recently - something I was pretty sure I'd never do, but I thought, what the hey, let's go nuts.  A piece that I ordered from the collection came in broken so I wanted to order a different piece in it's place.  Everything is under warranty, so that should be simple enough, right?  

I'm sure it would be except when I went to hunt down the catalog I couldn't find it at first, but then I noticed some pureed looking catfood sitting atop the desk in our office.  Atop what appeared to be a few pages of what was once a magazine of some sort ... except that a good 30 pages had been eaten away in a ring like pattern.  Eaten away like only a strong acid can...

It appears The Professor seems to be having a little trouble with some hairballs.  Ones that may or may not have come up on the jewelry magazine.  

Old license plate anyone?

A friend of mine is trying to collect old license plates ... something about a gift, i dunno. I just got my new plates here in SC but destroyed my old one literally days before she asked. You guys are literally spread out all over the continental US so surely we can pull a few out.

She is missing quite a few states ... the list is below. If you can help, lemme know!

Alaska Arkansas Connecticut Delaware Florida Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Mississippi Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Wyoming

This should answer all of your questions about why I am so ... far from the norm

So I was talking on the phone to my mom the other day and in the middle of one of my stories, Mom starts making this, " pht phhhht bl phhhhhhht pleh pleh I though they plehh phhhht ... I thought they were giving ... phtttt pleh " sounds on the other end of the line.

Me: Mom? What are you doing? You thought they were giving you what?

Mom: Phhht, blpht pleh I thought they were pht pley giving me something to eat

Me: What? You thought who was giving you something to eat? What did they give you?

Mom: A bar of soap

[A full 45 seconds of guffawing laughter follows before I can muster the strength to continue. ]

Me: Where are you Mom?

Mom: I'm at the mall

My father then gets on the phone to clarify what happened. Dad says, "You know those Organic Salt of the Earth Kiosks that are always passing out lotions samples? We pass one and they have this tray full of two inch BLOCKS of soap, and your mother takes one and pops it in her mouth like candy."

Incidentally the people that work at those booths are always foreign. I can only imagine how impressed they were with the American way.

My mother will herein be referred to as the soapeater.

And as a side note, my dad wouldn't give my mom any money to go get something to eat (to get the taste out of her mouth) because she already ate.

But he got a sandwich.

There are days when i wish I could tell student stories

I stay away from this topic even though my kids make me really, really laugh. I just don't want to inadvertently offend anyone. But today, I read an essay "about me" that just cracked me up. Something about that she "no longer had any pets because they had all been murdered with rubbing alcohol or left in another country" and that in a list of her favorite things to do she included "spilling things".

she's like the daughter i never had. a divine force has brought us together.

Because obviously, this is the logical conclusion

A wonderful friend of mine here really makes me laugh. She makes me laugh, unlike I have probably laughed since I was 12 and we thought it was downright hilarious to make animal noises in the cafeteria. And after a year of Katie eating the cracker part of my ritz peanut butter sandwhich crackers, Emily pointed out to Katie that I had already licked the peanut butter off of the crackers. Now that really was funny. I'm not really all that clear on why we thought those animal noises were so great though. I think I did the monkey sound. It's all kinda fuzzy now. It is becoming more apparent by the day just why I was just so insecure.

Anyway, my friend and I were out walking the other day and this car was inching along behind us like it was going to pull into the driveway that we were about to cross. Isn't that always the case? Well, it didn't pull in there, and it continued to inch along behind us, so my friend turns her head 180 degrees around and immediately EXCLAIMS

and I do mean exclaims ...

"Hey there's a dog driv- !!!!

[Short pause]

... oh my God I'm so embarrassed!!!"

In the midst of my FITS of laughter I was able to see the dog. Sitting in their owner's lap. Not driving.

10 points and a pat on the back if you live in Columbia and you know who said this.

Keep quiet and no one gets hurt.

Yesterday a friend of mine offered to give me some hostas that her parents had brought her. We have a particularly shady backyard and have a hard time getting anything to grow well. Fortunately, hostas seem to like it. After church, Dr. J and I went to retrieve the hostas (because I was too lazy to go and pick them up on Saturday like I said I would and watched hours of Veronica Mars and the Olympics instead).

Returning home with 5 hostas riding in the backseat the conversation went something like this:

Dr J: So what are we going to do with the hostages?

Me: [bursting fit of laughter]

Dr J: Fine, alright, how do you pronounce it?

Me: Hossssss-tas. I think we outta tie em up, blindfoldem and put em in the garage.

Dr J: It must be my Colombian nature

Hostas crying in high pitched squeals from the back: Let us go! You have no right to keep us here! You'll be sorry!!

Not to be missed

Sometimes I just get on my knees and thank God for local officials.

Check it.

I particularly am fond of the third paragraph from the end wherein they list other names that have been restricted from usage by other crack-head parents.

No up-down! Go side-side! Oh that we could all have Mr. Miyagi's wisdom

The first half of 2008 has turned out to be quite eventful for us, not so much in a good way and mostly through no fault of our own. Sure, I could have eaten more green vegetables when I was a lass, but I always thought I could make do just with the minimum required bites. In any case, much of the turmoil of this year has been rather financially straining, and we've mananged, but now I'm thinking I may need to revive the Misfit Fund (you know, the money most people set aside for a rainy day but that I keep in reserve for when I make bad decisions).

I will say that the Typical Me stories have died down a bit since I've gotten married. Maybe I actually don't leave the house as much, leaving less room for public embarrassment. Mom came in town this week and since Dr. J won't let me get a tatoo (another story, another day), I am in need of some other sort of change and decided it would be a great time to color my hair. I've always had the attitude of It's Just Hair so we opted just to go the highlights-in-a-box route. The mere fact that I am blogging about this should be some indication of how wise was this decision.

Our selection: Clairol's Herbal Essences- Shade on Shade Highlights. Check out the deceptively menacing pink plastic comb in the picture. A lesser man would have shyed away from such an applicator, but not us. We were undaunted even by the 10 very detailed "hints to great highlights" (aka ways we think you will probably screw up). We danced around at least a few of those. But a little dancing goes a long way, and in the end, it's just you and the spoils of your labor.

Looking back it really could have been much worse. My hair could have fallen out, I could have gotten third degrees burns on my scalp, the excess could have spilled onto my cat, each possibility more horrific than the one before. To only be left with a patchwork of gold/orange, complete with 3-inch diameter solid gold discs of hair just above each of my ears ... well, someone upstairs was just plain watching over me.

And then, just to kick me while I was already down, I got hit by the meter maid with a parking ticket while I was at the stylist today "recovering".

Thuggery in the Shrubbery

I would have blogged about this sooner ... but, well, you'll see...



Monday was the beginning of my two weeks of summer completely free of committment. I was so excited! I had my week planned full of things like do some reading for school (that never ends), have lunch with friends, you know ... things I never have time for. The only thing I needed to do was go to the dentist Monday morning. I left at 11:35 a.m. and returned about 12:20 p.m.

As soon as I pulled into the drivewayI could tell the door was ajar, the door frame was broken (this is where I did something stupid) so I took off running into the house. I know. Really, really dumb. Breathe easy, the thugs had already come and gone ... leaving the absence of our home computer, my work computer, and our bedroom tv. Pretty much the ONLY things of value we even own. I hope they fully appreciate the HOURS AND MONTHS AND YEARS of my life they now have in their possession in the form of everything I have ever created for my classroom. Please, dear thieves, let it not go to waste.

That's where I almost vomited. Fortunately, I backed up my work computer during spring break, but since my burner wasn't working at the end of the year, I lost a few months. Dr. J had our music, photos and home computer backed up on the external hard drive. I beg of all of you to do the same if you haven't already.

The fallout and drama isn't completely over, but we're working on it.

Irritating? Yes. Devastating? No.

Another year better

I called my mom to tell her that her youngest daugher is thirty years old. Because that makes someone else sound old, not me. She replies, "I think of it more like my friend is closer to my age".

If you know me, you know I'm not much for sappy lines. But ... AWWWWWWWWWWW!

My mom rocks.

What do you want for your 30th birthday?

A few years ago, I decided to embrace the fact that the, or at least a, major summer blockbuster released on or within a few days of my birthday. Since then, I've had a Spiderman party, Superman party, (see releases on or near 6.30 since 2002) last year the theme practically wrote itself with the release of the 4th in the DH series, Live Free or Die Hard ... into 29.

This is actually a great summer for movies and I've missed them all so far, including Get Smart which I've been anticipating since I was about 7 years old. It couldn't truly be a birthday movie because they released it too early, curses!! Gettin Smart in my 30s, could've been great, alas, it was not to be.

The choices for this weekend are two-fold, Wall-E and Wanted. Which makes the possible themes "Wanted: Decade 3" or "Up Against a Wall-E: 30 and Counting". Darn them for putting James McAvoy in one of them and making the choice practically select itself; I'm so glad to know he'll have a happier ending than Atonement. Dang, I just teared up again over that movie.

And I always get popcorn at the birthday movie. It's in the by-laws.

What would you vote for?

Exhausted

To gear up for one of my two weeks of works this summer, I went to Colombia for 12 days, came home, had a houseguest for 4 days during which time we went to Asheville and toured Biltmore, and made a chocolate cake for J's thirty third birthday. Saturday morning, Dr. J and I got up about 3 a.m. for a 6 a.m. flight out of Charlotte (it seemed like a good idea at the time!). I barely remember either flight to Pittsburgh. After we got here, we checked into the hotel downtown and noticed there was an arts festival going on a few blocks away. After unpacking, we visited there and because we are such cool and hip young folk, we opted to go visit the Science Museum rather than hit a Pirates game (even though we are only a few blocks from the stadium).

Jealous much? You didn't get to use hands-on activities to determine the most effecient airfoil shape, now did you? hmm???? HMMMM???? that's what I thought.

After all that good fun, I slept almost 15 hours last night. That's more than twice what I usually get. Poor Dr. J decided to work this morning while waiting on me to wake up instead of going to get breakfast. And he waited. And waited.

Incidentally, I LOVED my darling houseguest and we had a blast! Please come back someday!!!

You know how parents will worry about you no matter how old you are?

Not mine!!!!!! Guess how many emails / blog posts / phone calls / any-form-of-modern-or-otherwise-communication I have recieved from my parents?? Let's count 'em ...

NADA. That's Na. Da.

I'm sure the concern for my safety is buried deep, deep within them, which falls under We Have Our Own Lives Now That Our Children Are Grown, Category 9b: We Have a Dog Now.

Yes I know today is father's day. I hope the puppy gets Daddy something nice.

Mosquitos

I have so many mosquito bites on my feet / legs / arms that one of my ankles has entirely disappeared into swell. I have cankles from the mosquitos. Not to mention cankles covered in red circles with a dot in the middle.

This was the result of the asado (BBQ) yesterday, which was great and we taught lots of colombian women to play Nertz. And man can those ladies CHEAT! Within minutes of telling them the "one hand" rule, they had family members - multiple - backing them up four and five hands all playing for them. But they can suck it because I still won!! HAH! I would have shown mercy if it weren't for all the flagrant cheating.

On vacation day 1. I was only conscious for a total of 7 hours yesterday

Sleeping in, the two hour nap, and early to bed just doesn't leave much time for being awake.

I'm back in ColOmbia; the origins of this here blog. You either join the alzheimer-like pace here or you go nuts trying not to. Hey, if you can't beat em ...

Two of our adventurous friends are joining us tonight. This is the first time to bring an outsider into our little foreign fog. Kinda scary for us, but probably moreso for them. They get mad props for braving the Other America; it's certainly going to be an experience, one way or the other.

Things I have missed since my last visit; the food here is so good and all so fresh. Also, the culture here always keeps at least one servant in the house to cook all the meals and clean up after you, clean the house, do your laundry, make your bed, bring you coffee in the afternoon. The first time I came I felt a huge amount of guilt about it. That passed because, really, who doesn't want to be waited on hand and foot. For vacation purposes it so SO relaxing!! And, thankfully, it opens up more time for important things like the 2 hour nap i took yesterday. Don't blame me for being lazy, it's exhausting pretending to speak spanish all the time. I'm such a poser.