And I would ride 500 miles in a car and I would ride 500 more...

Seriously. It's almost exactly 500 miles from my house to my aunt's in Michigan.

Had a nice time at the wedding. Saw lots of relatives, stuffed myself with food, even caught the bouquet. But for some reason, my favorite part of the trip to Michigan was while I was at the Detroit Science Center with my uncle and cousin Saturday morning.

Written on the back of a sign leading to a display was this.

"While you are reading this, I am eating your samich"

I am so easily amused.

Summer's Here!

And the time is right, for....driving hundreds of miles to my cousin's wedding this weekend. Not exactly dancing in the streets here over the long car ride. Time to load lots of video into the iPod.

So that squeaky noise in my car? The one I asked to have checked out when I took it in to get my horn replaced? It was some of the joints about to collapse. Yes, the front end of my car was about to fall off, and no one at the inspection station noticed.

Twelve hundred dollars later, my car is all better, and my checkbook cried a little. But this is still cheaper than paying for a new car.

Before I go back to sleep...

It's 5:43 in the morning. I've just gotten out of the shower. Final exams start today.

Or maybe not.

I just got two calls telling me that the town I work in has no power due to last night's thunderstorms, and school is canceled.

This completely throws off my schedule, as I needed to take tomorrow off for an appointment, and they might schedule the two finals I had to give today for tomorrow.

On the other hand, I just realized I managed to schedule two things for this afternoon at around the same time, and now that I'm free the whole day, I can hopefully move one of those things up.

That one thing would be my annual eye exam (woo myopia!), which I set two months ago because I wanted an after school appointment. The other thing? Taking my car into the shop, which I set yesterday and didn't realize that they were at the same time.

Why is my car going into the shop? Because it failed inspection. It did not fail for having the emissions of a thirteen year old car. It did not fail because of the squeaking sounds that emit from under the car when I turn the wheel. (Although I'm going to ask to have that checked out.) No, it failed because the horn doesn't work. And because the oil change sticker on my windshield was a "visual obstruction." That's just being dicky, in my distinguished opinion. But the car's going in for a new horn now, so I don't have to physically yell "beep!" whenever someone cuts me off on the highway.

Hopefully I can manage to get back to sleep now, since my town has power (although parts of it had no water yesterday, apparently), and I have an air conditioner.

Heading for the home stretch

Teachers get excited for the end of the school year too, you know. We also have a lot of hard work coming to an end that we're happy for. On a similar note, we are also happy for school cancellations, as evidenced by my jumping up and down at a phone call I received this evening, telling me that schools in my district will be closed tomorrow, due to the expected 100-degree heat. This brings the number of school days left on my calendar to eight. And I've had that countdown going for over a month now.

I have another vignette to share to end this post.

A month or so ago a fundraising company sent us two of their cookies in the hopes that we'd do our fundraising with them. We already do, but whatever, free cookies! Even though my colleague and I were wary of cookies sent through the mail with fairly flimsy packaging, we each took one, bit into them....and spat them out. They tasted like old dusty dirt.

Last Friday, I found another package from that company in my mailbox. I went back to the choir room and tossed the package of cookies to some students that were hanging out in there, warning them that it might not taste so good. Then I noticed a pink piece of paper still in the envelope.

"OOPS!" was written in big block letters on top. The note went on to say that a newly-printed brochure likely affected the taste of the cookies in the last package, and enjoy a new batch. My laughter at this attracted the attention of the students happily eating the new cookies, and I had to explain to them that their dumb teachers had eaten the old cookies. Oops indeed.