I see nog up ahead...
yes, it's that time of year again. not fall back we're out of daylight savings time, but the glorious two-and-a-half months when egg nog is in stores.
now i understand that egg nog is a love-it-or-hate-it "beverage" (i guess egg nog is a beverage, but that's akin to calling gravy a beverage, it's more a liquid dessert. as a dessert, it's one of those too rich desserts like grammas fudge, but i digress).
so love it or hate it, nog is back, and boy do i love it. perhaps too much. i once used egg nog on my breakfast cereal. not out of necessity, but out of wonton lust.
now before you puke, i realize that it must sound digusting, but it was the best bowl of cheerios ever.
well, off to find some cheerios!
Halloweeners
discussion overheard between two second-graders after school:
boy 1: what are you going to be?
boy2: i have the Darth Vadar with the voice transformer...
boy1: ohhhhhhhh...
boy2: basically i'm going to be all Darth Vadar it covers everything, everything except maybe my hands and the bottom of my shoes.
boy1: cool.
boy2: but, but there are shoe covers for the tops of my shoes, it's just the bottoms that won't be covered. and with the voice transformer i sound just like Darth Vadar. my voice is like Darth Vadar.
boy1: cool.
Clearly this little one has turned to the dark side.
"one year's salary please"
that's what I should have said the other day when i made the business deposit for my afternoon job... it was the equivalent of my entire year of teaching pay. unlike the public sector, the private business that i work for in the afternoons makes money. it wasn't distressing processing the large deposit, in fact, a few days earlier i had deposited 3-4 times what i will making teaching the next year. rather, the shock came standing in line looking at a single day's deposit thinking 'that's all i will make for spending 9 months with the future of america' nothing quite like seeing your student loans and countless hours of coursework and practica reduced to a few lines on a piece of watermarked paper.
don't get me wrong, i'm thankful for both jobs. when i deposit my school paycheck i'm laughing not just at the size, but that they pay me to do what i do. yes, i love that job and am waiting for the day that the district mustaches see through my smoke-and-mirrors.
now before any of you get on your "you-have-great-benefits-and-what-about-june-july-and-august?" high horse, how would you like to pay the $400/month to add my wife to my 'great benefits' package? yeah, i don't really want to either. but i digress, i really only wanted to laugh about seeing my entire year's salary as 1 line on a small business deposit. viva la entrepreneur!
why i use the drive through
fuzzy speaker and prerecorded "would you like to try our chilli-chahito-crunch-wrap-gordita-slap-grilled-stuffed-triplecheese-nacho-enchirito-burrito today?" message be damned, there are times that i realize the merit in putting up with the drive-thru shenanigans.
living in the triple duece, i should know better than setting foot
inside the taco bell (they may have slapped some paint on the walls, but it still is the meth capital of clackamas county), the one (ahem) restaurant where $1.57 will fill you up.
case in point occured last night when i walked in and stepped up to the sand/taupe/cinnamon colored counter where a middle aged nutjob (pun fully intended in about a paragraph) was standing, narrating as a teenage couple ate in a nearby booth.
NUTJOB: (in play-by-play voice) ...and she takes another BIG bite!
Girl nervously giggles as boyfriend looks on...
NUTJOB: (louder play-by-play voice) I didn't know she could take such a big bite!
At this boyfriend adjusts nervously in his chair.
I step to the counter where assistant night manager wants nothing to do with the wacko that is hanging out at the counter and looks at me as if there was no crackhead yapping in our faces.
ASS. MGR.: Can I help you?
ME: Yes, I'd like--
NUTJOB: Hey it's Lance Armstrong! (clearly pointing at me)
I assume that he is unable to think of any other bald guy and so now I'm a world cyclist.
NUTJOB: (to the ass.mgr.): Hey it's nice of Lance Armstrong to visit us. This guy looks just like Lance Armstrong.
ME: Yeah, but I have both of my testicles.
NUTJOB: (laughing hysterically) Oh my God! That is hilarious! Look at him (pointing to me) he says that with a straight face. Oh man, you're a stand up comedian. That was pretty fast, and with a straight face. Seriously, that is good, you are a freakin stand up comedian right? (as he is bent over laughing saying this he continually pounds my shoulder, letting me know how funny I am)
ME: No. I teach 6th grade. I guess you have to be witty.
NUTJOB: No kidding. 6th grade, no you really are a comedian. You just made my night man.
I did manage to finish placing my order and after Nutjob received his he passed me a final time with a final shoulder punch.
NUTJOB: Thanks for makin my night man. Seriously, that made my night.
I never imagined that talking about my testicles would make a complete stranger's night. Next time, I'll use the drive thru...
plucked from the web...
today's quote comes from a dorky forum that i frequent. this could not be any more Fruedian...
"First off, this is my first post, so bare with me ..."Wow, only their first post and they want to get naked. i wish i had that kind of restraint.
easiest post ever
i wanted a turnkey blog post and this one sure does the trick. now if only i can find those gold diapers...
(in case my sarcasm doesn't come through, the mere presence of a pre-made cowbell sketch picture for your blog should mean that we can put this thing to rest now.)
i may be bitter or just sick of people mentioning that something needs more cowbell. if we're going to beat a musical snl skit to death, why not make it the bass off between jack black and will ferrel? now that was funny. or was i just up late at night?
reading, writing, and L mix R
so in my
classroom i play music during study hall or anytime that the little kids decide to be quiet for two to three sequential minutes. every month or so i have the kids fill out a personal interest survey and we chart a billboard style top 10 list of hit songs, artists, tv shows and movies. i haven't figured out how i'm going to tie that back into the Oregon state standards yet, but i'm sure there's a way to squeeze it between math statistics and current events.
so most of the kids are hell bent for classic rock (ac/dc, G&R, led zep to name a few), country (you're on your own for examples here), z100 pop (any girl named simpson, ciara, or clarkson) and there's one kid who is a classical buff (who knew?). so i thought that today while the choir kids were in choir, i'd see what my
band kids thought of portland's own L mix R.
prefacing the track only by saying that i was going to play a song that they had never heard by a band that they had never heard of, i asked them to play music critics and critique the song. i have only played L mix R once before and that's because " ghosts & whores" came on at random (to which the kids said, "we like this hippie music") so on a scale of 1-10, 1 out of 9 students rated L mix R's "god bless you portland" as a 5. There were 4 voting the track as 4 out of 5 stars, two voting 1 out of four stars, and two found that on a scale of 1 to 5, L mix R earned a zero (someone needs to teach these guys some math).
for kicks i asked them to explain their answers. One of the zeros simply said that the song "stunk." The fours were in the "pretty good" camp due to the
guitars. The lone rating of 5 was due to the fact that the student's step dad "listens to this band all the time, so i hear it so much that i kinda like it." not likely i imagine.
the best response of all was from the student who simply asked me to press "stop! stop! stop! stop! stop!"
bigotry, hatred, and ignorance--the roadtrip!
Is it just me or are the
protestors from Topeka, Kansas completely taking their bigotry and hatred a few steps to far? It's one thing to drive into your own town to spread your ignorance, perhaps even spew it onto the internet (check out their home page
godhatesfags.com). It's a far cry though to ask your boss for time off, pay for tickets to Portland, rent a car to drive to Beaverton all to protest a high school production of a
play based on Matthew Sheppard's brutal murder.
Watching the coverage of these cross-contry haters really started to bother me until I checked out the
webpage that they were wearing on their shirts. Evidently not only are these bigots spending their time attempting to shut down a high school play, they are busy thanking their god for Hurrican Rita's "Direct & Immediate Visitation of the Wrath of God Upon Sinful, Sodomite America - Avenging America's Abuse of WBC!" WBC being Westboro Baptist Church, the church that loves god enough to dedicate their time and money to maintaining a webpage devoted to his hatred for homosexuals. Reading a few of these articles put my mind at ease that these are simply ignorant bigots who mask their hatred in their religion.
"There is no voice in this town to speak for God," says one of the roadtripping protestors. She's right in that there is no voice in Portland insane enough to put words of anger in God's mouth. I guess what bothers me is these people bring God into their bigotry. The God I believe in loves ALL of his people, but when you are thanking your God for killing thousands in the gulf coast, you are clearly praying to another deity.
I agree with the Southridge student who called these protestors "the real terrorists."
