My Life and Your Life Too

And...done.

2011-09-07T00:39:00.002-04:00

I didn't post a single thing the entire last school year. Was it because I was busy? Maybe. Was it because I didn't have any funny stories to share? No.

So what was it? Facebook.

It's so easy to put a story in a Facebook status, knowing that soon people will be liking it and commenting. I've deliberately separated naming names on this site, so there's not much in the way of feedback.

So in the interest of brevity, conciseness, and being an attention whore, I'll keep posting new statuses on Facebook and officially stop making entries here.

It's not like I'll have any more teaching stories to tell in the coming months anyway. I managed to get laid off AGAIN. So I'm currently looking for a new job, whether it be teaching or not.

Forward on.

Before I move on...

2010-08-30T21:49:00.003-04:00

When I appeared on Jeopardy, my interview with Alex Trebek was about how places I'd worked at (summer jobs in retail and food service) kept closing. Unfortunately, this has extended into my teaching career. I've now worked in two districts where my position has been eliminated after two years of working there. Next week starts my fifth year of teaching in my third district.

I have two more adventures in teaching stories from kids in district #2. I am sure they will be followed by adventures from district #3.

Story #1:

A boy is receiving a cello lesson. I was on my prep and using the computer in the music room. I'd been reading an email from the school regarding a upcoming schedule change that was particularly inconvenient for the music classes. I called the strings teacher over to tell him about it, remarking that it was "baloney," since there was a kid in the room and I couldn't say "bullshit."

"You want to know what's baloney?" remarked the boy with the cello. "You should have seen my lunch!"

Add the fact that this kid has severe emotional disabilities and is rarely in a joking mood, and I almost fell out of my chair laughing.

Story #2:

Sixth grade choir. They were singing a version of the popular Spanish folk song "De Colores." Every kid in the school has to take Spanish, so I was trying to see which words they could recognize in the phrase "y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mi." They were stuck on "amores."

A lot of people in this district are of Italian descent (this is Jersey, after all) so I asked "Have you guys heard the song 'That's Amore?' It's pretty much the same..."

A lightbulb went on over a girl's head. She gasped.

"Amores means PIZZA!"

So that's all I got for now. And I'd like to say that since my new job is 7th-12th grade, the stories won't be like this, but we all know that's not true...they'll probably just be less adorable.

And now it's time for bad decisions in childcare.

2010-04-01T21:00:00.003-04:00

I saw two videos on YouTube this week that made we wonder why people do the things they do with their children.

First up, a dad tells his son that he could never be a single lady and therefore, cannot sing along with Beyonce. He bawls, inconsolable.

Second, some school thought it would be a good idea to have the elementary school play be Scarface. There are so many things wrong with this video, but I love the giant pile of popcorn on the desk.

COOOOOOLLEEEEEAAAAGES!!!

2010-03-27T11:40:00.003-04:00

I don't know why, but this is my new favorite commercial.

Adventures in Teaching, Part 562

2010-03-20T22:15:00.004-04:00

Two interesting stories from recent weeks.

Number 1:

There are many kids in my school on the autism spectrum, but are mainstreamed. One of them, when I had him last year, would prove to be extremely sensitive to loud noises. For example, if the class split into groups and played percussion instruments, he would retreat into a corner, rocking in place with his hands over his ears.

This year, when the kids first start in my cycle, I have them write down their favorite kinds of music. What did this same kid write?

"Anything but soft."

Number two:

I was telling my fourth graders a biography of Scott Joplin. The story mentioned that he had perfect pitch. I explained to the kids that I had it too, and it meant that I could play piano by ear really well. I'd told them that in a voice lesson I'd taught the day before, I'd picked out the Taylor Swift song "You Belong with Me" for the student, even though I'd never played it on piano before.

One kid, upon hearing that, exclaimed "Can you play 'Forever?'"

"Please," a girl chided him, "She's not that funky fresh."

I turned toward them, "The Drake song or the Chris Brown song?"

The girl gasped. "Maybe she is that funky fresh!"

Current Events through the Eyes of Sixth Graders

2010-01-06T18:21:00.003-05:00

It kind of interesting to see how what's going on in the world is viewed by my students. These two examples are from sixth grade students.

One:

In their language arts classes, the kids wrote poems using hyperbole. They'd pick an adjective, and write a bunch of hyperbole based on it. Example: "It was so loud babies across the world cried."

One wrote, "It was so happy the Iraq war ended."

Two:

A kid was having a conversation with a teacher about cell phones. The teacher mentioned that he is probably due for a new one, remarking "My phone needs change." The student looked confused for a second, and then said "Oh! You don't mean change like quarters and nickels. You mean like Obama change."

The Beatles, 2000s-Style

2010-01-02T14:08:00.002-05:00

I'm fully aware that I have owned Beatles Rock Band for almost four months, and the stereo remasters for almost two, and I haven't talked about them yet. I have been busy, obviously, and it's been hard to form what my thoughts are. But here goes.

I was weary of getting the remasters. I'm not much of an audiophile. What was I really going to get out of all of this? Was it really going to sound better to me?

I decided to listen from beginning to end, Please Please Me to Abbey Road. (I listen in chronological order of recording, not release.) I had it all in my iPod, and I connected it to my stepmom's car stereo as we drove into the city before the Yankees championship parade. The difference in sound was instantaneous. It was like I was in studio two at Abbey Road, it sounded that clear to me.

As I made my way through the catalog, I began to hear things that I'd never heard before. There's an extra guitar solo bleeding through in "I'm Down?" There's a piano doubling the brass at the beginning of "All You Need Is Love?" I heard them both for the first time, and I've been listening to these songs in headphones for years.

The mini-documentaries that came along with them were like icing on the cake. So yes, it was worth it, and I don't care if Jonathan says I should have gotten the mono instead.

Beatles Rock Band ended up being more of a delight. Most of the Beatles community that I follow online is just a bunch of older people who just don't get what all the fuss is about with the video game. So it was hard for me to explain how much fun it is. I mean, sure, I can learn how to play the music for real, but this is still a video game, after all. I have photos to collect and achievements to earn!

(By the way, after getting five stars on every song, and not gaining all the locked videos, I realized that to truly beat the game, not only do you have to five-star every song, you have to five-star every song twice. Oy. I was not happy when I found that one out.)

The game has its drawbacks, don't get me wrong. For one thing, you can't use the Xbox 360 headsets as microphones. The game makes you connect a separate microphone for each vocal line, and of course they only give you one to use. I don't have two extra USB microphones lying around.

Secondly, like I predicted, they can't accurately portray the instruments all the time. Many of the "guitar" parts are actually keyboard parts, or other stuff that's not guitar. These things are not meant to played with guitar technique, which makes playing some of them accurately impossible. For example, I downloaded every extra song you can get so far. The guitar part includes the random calliope tape loops in "Being for the Benefit for Mr. Kite!" How is that supposed to be played?! Or when you play the guitar part for "When I'm 64," you're actually playing the clarinet part. When the real guitar part starts, does it switch? Nope, stays on clarinet.

I'm fine with things not being historically accurate, like seeing George play the guitar solo on "Taxman" (It was Paul) or Paul playing bass on "She Came in through the Bathroom Window" (George) or Ringo on drums in "Back in the USSR" (Paul). They had to do that for the sake of the game. But being musically accurate is a different story.

It's just fun for me being able to physically react to these songs that I love so much. I love that you can sing any vocal line when it's set on "harmonies," even when you only have one microphone. I love that with the mixes created for the game, I'm hearing these lines of music like I never have before. I've been getting some of the lyrics wrong too!

And you know that I'll download the other albums when they become available. Can't wait to see how they'll deal with "Revolution 9."

Why I root for those Damn Yankees.

2009-11-04T19:27:00.003-05:00

In a few minutes, game six of the 2009 world series will start in the Bronx, with the New York Yankees up three games to two. They have a chance of winning their 27th title tonight.

Before the series started last week, the New York Times, on their website, asked readers who were diehard Yankees or Phillies fans to relate the time they decided that this was their team. By the time I saw this, and thought about what I would say, there were hundreds of responses up.

I decided to put it here instead. Here goes.

I'll start with a secret: In my 1995 elementary school yearbook, I said my favorite sports team was the Mets.

Yes. The Mets.

I didn't care about sports at all then. But I had a blank to fill in, and the last sports event I'd been to was a Mets game during summer camp.

The next year I went to my first Yankee game with my dad. (Actually, my dad was there for my first Yankee game that I ever went to, but he wasn't there with me. Long story.) We left in the seventh inning or so, with the Yankees leading, and came home to find out they'd lost. Made me realize that baseball was a game with interesting outcomes.

Later that year I happened to walk into my parents' room while the 9th inning of game six of the world series was on tv. Even I, who knew almost nothing about baseball, had predicted the Braves to win the series, and there I was watching Charlie Hayes catch that final out for a Yankee victory. I started jumping up and down and cheering. I found that yearbook, crossed out Mets and wrote in Yankees.

But this did not make me a diehard fan. I became one of those people who only started really caring when the team made the playoffs. And for this stretch, for a Yankee fan, that was really easy to do. The Yankees won the world series on my 14th birthday, and my cake that year looked like a baseball.

Then 2004 happened.

I watched the ALCS, game four, then five, then six, then seven, still believing that the Yankees were that team that could always come back and win. And they didn't. The Red Sox won the pennant just after midnight on my 20th birthday.

Somehow, this felt different than the end of the 2003 world series or the 2001 world series. It didn't make me sad, like Josh Beckett did in 2003, or numb with shock, as Luis Gonzales did in 2001. (Although the latter had some part to do with 9/11 I suspect. New York was supposed to win, dammit!) No, this made me angry.

I was going to stick with this team. They needed to beat other teams. And I needed to stick with them, even if sometimes they didn't accomplish said beating.

Starting with opening night 2005 (a win against the Red Sox, more incentive to watch), I've tried to watch every game since. And go to at least one game in person every year.

I have now a mental checklist of Yankee game events I'd like to see in person. One I accomplished this year was attending a playoff game. And I know that sometime in the future, I will check off attending a world series game on that list.

Speaking of, it's game time. Let's go Yankees!!!

New Jersey Crazy Is a Special Kind of Crazy.

2009-11-02T22:11:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow is Election Day, and New Jersey is actually one of the few states that people are giving a crap about this year. We are one of two states (Virginia being the other) with a gubernatorial election going on. Obama and Biden have visited the garden state quite frequently lately.

(Side note: My computer did not recognize the word “Obama” just now, and suggested that I replace it with “Osama.”)

Every candidate had to write a personal statement of 500 words that went out on the sample ballots we received last week. I read through them all, and let me say…there are some bat shit crazy people running for governor of New Jersey. The democratic and republican statements are at least coherent, make sense, and have no grammatical or typographical errors. The others? Not so much.

I’ll just give you the highlights, but I’d really like to see how many people actually cast their votes for these lunatics. You might not think people would support them, but as my stepdad said…”this is probably how Schwarzenegger ended up governor of California.”

Gregory Pason, Socialist: Supports raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour. Rejects “No Child Left Behind” mandates, despite the fact that it’s federally mandated and has nothing to do with state law.

Kenneth Kaplan, Libertarian: Wants to legalize marijuana, but is in favor of school vouchers. Recommends a website for you to take a quiz on which political party you belong to…because “you may have been a Libertarian all along!”

Alvin Lindsay, Independent: Wants to freeze taxes for the next four years, and increase the minimum wage to $10 an hour.

Gary T. Steele, Independent: Counts his six years as an accountant and his time as head coach of an ice hockey team as valid experience.

Jason Cullen, “People not Politics:” Wants to eliminate sales tax.

Gary Stein, JUST IN TIME: Calls himself an “idiot,” says “up theirs” to the “elite media.” Wants to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, and boycott Mexico. All in a plan to get illegals to stop coming. Also might want to eliminate the department of education. His is the most incoherent of them all, so I’m not exactly sure what he was trying to say. But it’s all kinds of crazy rambling.

Kostas Petris, Independent “For The People:” If you’re going to talk about not voting democrat or republican, don’t quote the part of the declaration of independence about abolishing government. Just saying.

David R. Meiswinkle, Middle Class Empowerment: Wants to conduct a “complete, thorough, and objective investigation of what happened” on 9/11.

Christopher J. Daggett, Independent: No wonder this guy came to the debates; he’s the only independent that doesn’t sound like he’ll put on a tinfoil hat any time soon.

Joshua Leinsdorf, Fair Election Party: Lieutenant Governor running mate owner of “Ultimate Car Care in Neptune.” Believes that the state economy will be fixed by making high schoolers take public buses to school, and starting school at a “reasonable hour.” (Never mind that school starts early because most parents go to work by nine.) By having high schoolers take public transit, you fight childhood obesity, and save enough money to buy each child a laptop. Kids with computers excel in school, and they will succeed and get jobs later on, which leads to paying more taxes. Oh, and he wants to get rid of county government entirely, among other things.

Happy voting, everybody!

Yankees/Twins. 10/9/09. ALDS Game 2. I was there.

2009-10-11T10:34:00.001-04:00

Two StubHub tickets to the upper deck: $100 each, plus 10% commission and a $5 "delivery fee" for an email.

Bus and subway fares from North Jersey to the Bronx: $19.

Seeing A-Rod hit a 2-run home run in the bottom of the 9th to the the game, having no runs score in the top of the 11th with the bases loaded and no one out, Mark Teixiera hitting a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 11th, and cheering with thousands of Yankees fans all the way down the ramp to the street? PRICELESS.

(Yes, I shot those videos.)

(Oh, and hearing a boy no older than seven pass me on my way out saying "Boston sucks ass"? AWESOME.)

School Days, School Daze

2009-10-03T20:03:00.003-04:00

I've been pretty busy lately, mainly because it's the start of a new school year. Here's the best classroom story I have so far.

An early lesson I had planned was for groups of students to draw three cards out of a bag. Each card would have the name of a common household item written on it (rubber bands, plastic bottle, etc.). Their task was to see what kind of instrument one could create with said items.

One group of eighth graders ended up with a plastic soda bottle, a paper bag, and a pencil. Here's what they came up with:

"The musical sounds would be from stabbing the plastic bottle with the pencil. You wear the paper bag on your head to hide the shame."

Sigh.

And since I teach a class where kids are frequently pulled out for one reason or another, leaving the majority of students not feeling accountable for their actions, I wanted to stand up and applaud when I saw this YouTube video. Too bad it's not real (it was recorded for a different school than the one mentioned in the video, but never used in the official school system), but I'm sure many teachers relate to this one.

End of Summer Wrapup

2009-09-01T21:29:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow morning I have to report to school. I actually don't have to be at school again until the kids arrive next Tuesday, but this is pretty much my last day of summer, even though I've been slowly lesson planning for the last month or so.

What did I do this summer? Mainly things baseball related or genealogy related. (Unless Jarret wants to point out something else.)

Baseball stuff:

I went to three Yankees games during the summer. Their record while I was there was 2-2, and unfortunately, the 22-4 pwning they got from the Indians in April is the most interesting Yankees game I've been to all year.

The last Yankees game was on my dad's birthday, and it my family was going to surprise him with the tickets and have his name put on the screen saying happy birthday. Unfortunately, he figured it all out beforehand. If he hadn't figured it out before then, three cameras suddenly focusing on the scoreboard in the middle of the sixth inning would have.

In July the AA All-Star game was being held in Trenton, so Jarret got us tickets. We were seven seats away from winning a pair of old Yankee Stadium seats. Nuts.

Took my first trip to Citi Field with my dad to see the Mets play the Dodgers, days after Manny's suspension was lifted. We waited an hour for Shake Shack, missing the entire first inning, and yes, it was worth it.

Jarret and I spent a weekend in Baltimore to finally have Jarret see his Orioles at Camden Yards. They were playing the Red Sox, so we could both root against the other team. And this was days after David Ortiz's name got dropped in with the steroid issue, so there was some interesting heckling. This also meant that downtown Baltimore was crawling with New Englanders carting cases of Yuengling into their cars and yelling to each other "Are you going to the innah hahbah?" Since John Smoltz started the game, Baltimore actually almost won the game...but didn't.

I saw a Sportscenter #1 top play in person twice this summer. Neither were at Yankee Stadium.

Genealogy stuff:

Last summer, I managed to track down living descendants of my paternal grandmother's maternal uncle in Ireland. Though I obviously didn't expect to hit that big of a jackpot this year, I hoped I could uncover some interesting things.

I obtained a copy of my grandmother's other maternal uncle's (Patrick's) death certificate. It contained the information that we were looking for: where he's buried. Still haven't made the trip yet, even though it's less than an hour from my house. Not much reason to go other than to take a photo of the gravestone and send it to the cousins in the old country.

I didn't have as much luck obtaining my grandmother's father's birth certificate. He's the only one of my great-grandparents born in the US, and the city of New York can't find it. It's likely it was never registered; according to their website, birth certificates weren't required until 1910, and about 25% of births before then weren't recorded.

We wanted the birth certificate to see if it had any information about his parents, and to pin a date down on his birth year; I'd seen everything from 1865 to 1872. More searching within the census tried to find out if his parents were married in this country or in Ireland. It's likely that they came over because of the potato famine and married here, but their names are too common to do an accurate search. This is the same reason I can't find any of my great-grandmother's family on an Ellis Island record; everyone has the same name and lied about their ages.

The only way that I could track my great-grandfather down now would be to look for a baptismal certificate. And you'd think the New York diocese would have some sort of central database, but no. I'd have to ask every catholic church in town. So that side of the family has been put on hold for a while, and we turned to my dad's father's side.

I tracked down my grandfather's family in the 1930 and 1920 census, but not 1910. I knew they were in the country by this point, due to an older brother being born in 1907, but I couldn't find them in ancestry.com's search.

Dad and I decided to travel to the town where my grandfather was born: Lansford, Pennsylvania, about a two hour drive. There was a large mine there, which is now a museum. We decided to go on the tour and see if they had any information about the people who worked in the mine. They didn't have any, and were rather surprised that we'd asked. An hour in a 50-degree mine for nothing.

Dad and I drove around the town. The mine had brought in a lot of immigrants, so there seemed to be a church for every ethnicity. We eventually discovered that yes, there was a Slovak church, and it was old enough to have been there when my family was.

When we got home, I found that the church had a record of names that had recorded a birth, marriage, or death there. And there were my great-grandparents, with "birth" listed next to their names - my grandfather's. Next to that were the towns in Slovakia they came from! Score!

Later that night, I found them in the 1910 census, with the last name horribly misspelled. The father was listed as a coal breaker - he didn't work inside the mine, he just waited outside for the miners to bring it out! We definitely had toured the inside for nothing!

Last week, I started to enter information into the family tree program at ancestry.com. With the information you put in, they run searches for you. While some of what they turn up isn't your relative, we believe they found a big one: the manifest of the ship my great-grandmother came on. It was listed as Hungarian instead of Slovakian (which happened a lot in that time), but the age is about right, and it said she was going to meet her sister in Hoboken, and we knew she had a sister in Hudson county...it's very likely her. So that's cool.

I also did some research for my stepmom, and was able to track members of her family quite a ways, but I've already typed enough. And if you're wondering why I'm not researching my mom's side of the family...I am. I just can't find anything.

Well, now I've typed way more than I thought I would, and I must go to sleep now. I've got school in the morning!

D'oh, a deer

2009-08-17T18:53:00.002-04:00

While Jarret and I were driving to a movie on Saturday, I saw some deer grazing on the side of the road.

"Aw, look, baby deer! And they're with their mommy deer!" I gushed. Jarret nodded, keeping his eyes on the road.

A few seconds later I saw a large flock of birds congregated on the same side of the road. These were huge birds, birds-of prey size. As I wondered about why so many of these birds would be together on the ground, still babbling to Jarret how cute the doe and her fauns were, I realized what the birds were doing.

Eating a baby deer.

My subsequent freakout after that was considered hilarious by Jarret, since he didn't see anything.

Beatles Rock Band set list? For real this time?

2009-08-14T22:10:00.003-04:00

Lots of Beatles Rock Band news this week. First, a general description of the game here. It talks about how it doesn't do the parts of the regular Rock Band game that piss me off, which is good. It also talks about how you're going to hear studio chatter that's never been released, and you can unlock such rare things as the Beatles' 1963 Christmas record. (Which I found funny to read, as that's only rare to own, not to hear.)

Bu the big news was that Game Informer magazine supposedly has the game's final track listing. And yes, it's different than the one leaked two months ago. Mainly because they're still keeping one track a secret.

Once again, here's the list, and I'll compare it to the one I made. Even though I had the handicaps of not knowing about the three vocal lines (and that the Love album was fair game), I do realize that I made some mistakes in compiling my list. (How could I miss "While My Guitar Gently Weeps?" It's got the word guitar in the title!) But there are some things that are taken into consideration in this list, such as making sure tracks with George and Ringo on lead vocal are well represented. Little bit of revisionist history, there.

This is what Game Informer lists. Tracks that I predicted will be in bold. Tracks that made my short list but were cut at the last minute will be in italics.

Singles
I Want To Hold Your Hand
I Feel Fine
Day Tripper
Paperback Writer
Revolution
Don't Let Me Down

Please Please Me (1963)
I Saw Her Standing There
Boys
Do You Want To Know A Secret
Twist and Shout

With the Beatles (1963)
I Wanna Be Your Man

A Hard Day's Night (1964)
A Hard Day's Night
Can't Buy Me Love

Beatles For Sale (1964)
Eight Days a Week

Help! (1965)
Ticket To Ride

Rubber Soul (1965)
Drive My Car
I'm Looking Through You
If I Needed Someone

Revolver (1966)
Taxman
Yellow Submarine
And Your Bird Can Sing

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band/With a Little Help From My Friends
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Getting Better
Good Morning Good Morning

Magical Mystery Tour (1967)
I Am The Walrus
Hello Goodbye

The Beatles (White Album) (1968)
Back In the U.S.S.R.
Dear Prudence
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Birthday
Helter Skelter

Yellow Submarine (1969)
Hey Bulldog

Abbey Road (1969)
Come Together
Something
Octopus's Garden
I Want You (She's So Heavy)
Here Comes the Sun

Let It Be (1970)
Dig a Pony
I Me Mine
I Got a Feeling
Get Back

Love (2006)
Within You Without You/ Tomorrow Never Knows

26 out of 44, 31 if you count the italicized ones. Out of the ones I did not pick at all, four have Ringo on lead vocal, and three have George.

However, some of the ones I picked and are not on this list include "All My Loving," "Things We Said Today," "I'll Follow the Sun," "I've Just Seen A Face," "Michelle," "Girl," and "In My Life." Some big names there. I know we'll be able to download Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper and Rubber Soul right away, and probably the rest soon after, but come on, there's already much coin being dropped here.

This might be my new favorite PSA.

2009-08-09T20:49:00.002-04:00

Check this out.

It starts off like a sterotypical breakfast commercial, and then BAM! Johannes Brahms and his piano burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man!

I'd seen some of the other PSAs like this on TV, but I hadn't seen this one before. So when it turned up in a Hulu video I was watching, I was quite amused.

Slightly weird, but mostly adorable.

2009-07-29T20:06:00.002-04:00

Found via the mental_floss blog: A 5-year-old plays Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues."

Maybe if I'd praticed more as a kid...

2009-06-28T22:47:00.002-04:00

I'm a decent piano player, but more for function than actual performance. I blame it on my lack of drive to practice, especially when I was eight and supposed to be taking such things seriously. (Back then, I performed in a recital here, but other people in my studio were performing across the street.)

Anyway, here is a guy who arranged a bunch of 80s hits to be played in ragtime piano style. I can find no definitive evidence that the tape was sped up.

Maybe I could be like these two ladies instead and arrange the works of Bach for the giant piano at FAO Schwartz.

Nah...I'm way too much of a klutz to do that. Oh well.

FSA Fail

2009-06-20T15:09:00.002-04:00

What's the FSA, you ask? Family and School Association. It's a fancy modern term for the PTA.

In April, my school's FSA decided to hire photographers and take pictures of the kids, a la class picture day. Why class picture day in September wasn't enough, I don't know.

Anyway, a couple of weeks later, the photos were delivered and I was instructed to give the photos out to my homeroom. I couldn't remember collecting payment for these photos, so I remarked to another teacher that it was nice of the FSA to provide free portrait photos.

"Oh, they have to pay for them," the other teacher replied, "If they want to keep them. If they don't want to pay for them, they have to give them back."

Let's figure out what's wrong with this scenario.

These kids are 10-14 years old. Some will be reliable. Others will not. Some will turn in money for the photos and return the ones they haven't paid for. Others will throw the packet of photos to the bottom of their locker and forget about them.

The principal has been announcing every day for the last week for a return of the unpaid photos. Because "if you don't return them, the FSA will have to pay for them."

Notice how the principal is not teaching any sense of responsibility to these kids. He's basically telling them, "It doesn't matter if you are unreliable, someone else is going to cover your ass." (By the way, about 20% of the school didn't return anything. That's hundreds of dollars the FSA has to pay. Not the kids.)

Sorry Mr. Principal. Sorry parents. Sometimes, the teachers know the kids a lot better than you do.

Beatles Rock band Setlist Leaked?

2009-06-15T20:26:00.003-04:00

According to a website, this is the track list for Beatles Rock Band. (Love the cartoon at the top, by the way.)

Up against my list, I'm 32 for 45, not too bad considering I didn't know about the three microphone thing. There are some things that I'm glad the ones who chose the set list agree with me on ("Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and my Monkey!" That's going to be so much fun to play!) And then some where I'm looking at it and wondering how I could have thought they wouldn't be on there (I left off "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand?!")

But some neat points:

I was perfect on only one album; Revolver, three for three.
I was right about there being a lot of songs from Let It Be due to the simple instrumentation of the songs; however, I picked six and they picked four (and matched three).
I picked the same four songs from Abbey Road, but thought they would also include "The End" because of that bitchin' guitar solo. But I heard the whole album will be available for download.
Only one song there that made my shortlist that got cut: "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Of course, this might not be the correct list, as the game's rated T for tobacco references. Two Beatles songs refer to cigarettes or smoking, neither of which are on this list. So we'll see.

More Info about Beatles Rock Band

2009-06-01T19:06:00.002-04:00

The world premiere of the Beatles Rock Band game is today, even though it's not being released for another three months. I am so excited over what I'm seeing here.

This website includes a partial track list: ten out of the forty-five songs they said there will be in the game, not counting the songs available for download. There might be some differences from the list I came up with, since I didn't know that there will be three microphones for singing harmony (eeee!), but so far, I'm eight for ten.

College baseball. Rain Delay. What do you do?

2009-05-27T22:48:00.001-04:00

You have a dance off, of course. Until you decide to turn the tarp into a giant slip-n-slide. I don't know why I think this video is awesome. I just do.

Gah!

2009-05-24T23:51:00.003-04:00

I recently came upon the last photo taken by nature photographer Michio Hoshino, who was mauled to death by a bear thirteen years ago. Now I've seen many photos on the internet in my time, but none made me jump up in fright before. Until now.

This guy must have had nerves of steel to be able to take that photo. I personally would have probably crapped myself. I might go to sleep tonight with a light on.

(Edit) Fortunately, the photo's a hoax. Unfortunately, that guy really did get mauled to death by a bear.

Meet the new accident, same as the old accident

2009-05-19T17:51:00.002-04:00

Two weeks ago I zoned out for a second while driving to work.

I realized I was about to miss my turn and braked quickly. The person driving behind me also quickly braked, but it wasn't as effective for him on the wet pavement, and crashed into me.

I was sore for a day, but I was fine. My six month old car has a crack in the bumper and the trunk's popped up a tiny bit. Shows you how awesome my car is when I'm rear-ended by a giganimous old Bronco and that's all that happens.

The guy was cool about it, and his insurance is paying for my repairs. I didn't even have to call in late to work, because the police station was within eyesight of the accident and he was there and gone within minutes. It really sucks to get into an accident with a new car though, because when you tell people about it, they're more concerned with the damage to the car than to you.

Anyway, the only reason I'm mentioning that is because when I driving home from work today, and passing the same exact intersection, I saw a swarm of police vehicles and three cars pulled over on a side street, in what appeared to be almost the exact same situation I'd been in.

This post's title brought to you by a rephrasing of the song I heard on the radio while I drove by today's accident.

More Beatles Stuff

2009-05-15T20:35:00.003-04:00

A new photo has surfaced of the Quarrymen, the skiffle group John Lennon formed that eventually became the Beatles.

I took one look at the photo and got a little chuckle out of it. Can you tell which one of those guys is John Lennon? You might have trouble, since he's the one in the checked shirt. The only one whose face is completely turned away from the camera. Nice haircut, dude.

By the way, when Beatles Trivial Pursuit comes out, I challenge anyone to beat me. It will be on like Donkey Kong.

Just a post for funsies.

2009-05-09T16:28:00.002-04:00

The nifty blog Eye On Springfield, whose only mission is to provide screencaps from the golden years of The Simpsons, has made a gif of one of my favorite moments on the series.

Here's the scene in full on YouTube to explain the situation.

Car Commercial Fail

2009-04-18T00:13:00.002-04:00

I'm sure by now many of you have seen this commercial for the Honda Civic.

It took me at least two watchings of this commercial to realize that the musical road was supposed to be playing Rossini's William Tell overture. The pitches are very very wrong, and some of the rhythms are too.

Hilariously, many YouTube commenters have taken Honda to task over this one. Glad I don't have to.

Goat Button!

2009-04-16T18:45:00.001-04:00

I think I need something explained to me here.

2009-04-16T12:57:00.003-04:00

Some cheerleaders at a high school in California get kicked off the team for skipping school.

Their parents find out that the cheerleading coach had posed for Playboy, make copies of the photos, and leave them on the principal's desk.

Cheerleading coach gets fired. (NSFW)

With parents like these, no wonder they raised such stupendous children who were dumb enough to get kicked off the team in the first place.

I realize that the coach probably would have been fired anyway, once the photos were found out. But as a teacher, I have too many times seen the awful actions done by parents in defense of their children's actions...when they kids usually deserved the punishment they received.

Musical Wit

2009-04-15T21:26:00.003-04:00

Go here.

The vertical boxes represent the pitches of an A pentatonic scale. The horizontal boxes represent beats.

By the time I figured this out and asked Jarret what we could do with it, he'd already had it set up to play the riff to "Under Pressure."

I heart him.

Beatles-Related Squee

2009-04-07T17:41:00.002-04:00

John Lennon considered the number 9 to be special, and The Beatles and the Apple Corps. have always tried to consider that. It just so happens that September 9th of this year (9/9/09) falls on a Tuesday - the weekday to release various forms of entertainment. A few months ago, The Beatles announced that on that day, they will release their version of Rock Band.

(And just to show you that the Tuesday thing is important in the business we call show...The Beatles didn't release anything on 9/9/99. They re-released Yellow Submarine into theatres the previous Friday (the 1st) and waited until the following Tuesday (the 14th) to release the Yellow Submarine songtrack and DVD.)

However, this week The Beatles announced something for release that day that's much better, and Beatles fans have been waiting for it a very long time.

The digital remastering of the entire original Beatles catalogue.

Complete with lots of little extra goodies that make me literally go "eeeeeee!" The official Beatles website has a nice little thing about it on the home page.

May I take the time to point out that 9/9/09 is only 42 days before my 25th birthday?

Random Stuff

2009-04-06T20:19:00.002-04:00

This website, Wanna Feel Old?, is not making me feel too good about myself today. Especially since I seem to be the same age as the site's creator.

However, this pic (originally taking during protests from last year's olympic torch relay, I think), never fails to make me smirk.

Opening Day is today! I got Yankees tickets for the 18th. I'm very excited.

I tried to get tickets to a concert at Radio City Music Hall last Saturday. It was a benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation, which seeks to teach Transcendental Meditation to a million students worldwide. I'm not much for the meditation stuff, but Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were set to perform. I couldn't get tickets in my price range, not for lack of trying. And I missed this. The Beatles fanatic in me is sad.

Must post link while anger still fresh.

2009-03-28T20:27:00.002-04:00

NJ girl, 14, arrested after posting nude pics

...of herself.

Granted, posting nude photos of yourself on your MySpace page is pretty retarded. Even more so when you're fourteen.

However, the getting arrested part is the worst part. This girl might have to register as a sex offender if she's convicted. Doesn't that mean that this fourteen year old girl's photo, name, and address will be placed online for anyone to look up? Where real sex offenders can find her?

(This girl lives in the same county I do. Sigh.)

Teaching highs and lows (with stolen pizazz)

2009-03-27T21:31:00.003-04:00

There are days I love helping students learn, and other days where I wonder what the point is.

There are projects from Spanish classes plastered all over my school right now. it's basic vocab stuff, "Me gusta" fill in the blank here and then draw a picture.

This was actually put up on a school building wall.

Not only does the poster say "I don't like school," but the kid misspelled "escuela."

However, the other day I was working with my fifth grade general music class. I'd given them a worksheet about Mozart's early life. The point of the worksheet was that some words in the story were written in musical notation, so they had to read the pitches to identify the missing words. Unfortunately, since there are only seven musical letters, there are limited choices for your word selection. We had been laughing over the sentence "No doubt, Wolfgang loved beef burgers for his feed" when one kid did the math and realized Mozart died at age 35.

Kid #1: What did he die of?

Me: We can't know for sure. It doesn't help that we don't know where he was buried, so they can't dig him up to do tests and find out.

All kids: Ew! Can they do that?

Me: Well, this is a bit off topic, but it was rumored that our 12th president, Zachary Taylor, was poisoned and murdered, but scientists dug him up about 20 years ago and proved he wasn't.

Kid #2: So what did he die of?

Me: Really, really bad food poisoning.

Kid #3: Aha! So he was poisoned!

Kid #4: Don't you mean feed poisoning?

Pretty sharp for fifth graders, I think. And just for fun, another fifth grader the next day:

Kid (whining to me about another kid): She stole my pizazz! (Upon noticing my puzzled look) I just wanted to say that.

Two Unrelated Links

2009-03-03T16:31:00.002-05:00

From the New York Daily News, we have custom made babies.

Gat-ta-ca! Gat-ta-ca! Gat-ta-ca!

And from the New York Times, the man who went about town in a Snuggie.

"She handed me a flier for the show, which I was able to take easily because Snuggie has sleeves. I did not have anywhere to put it, however, because Snuggie does not have pockets."

A neat commercial, but as a musician, I must rant.

2009-02-28T23:43:00.004-05:00

Watch this commercial for Loewe sound.

The piece they're performing is "Va pensiero" from Verdi's Nabucco. It's a choral work I've not only performed, but taught, so I know it fairly well. Well enough to say this, anyway.

1) Upping the bass on your tv will not make the basses sing an octave lower.

2) Upping the volume on your tv will not make the tenors sing an octave highter.

3) Upping the treble on your tv will not make the sopranos sing a new harmony. (Although they'll probably sing that dotted rhythm too early anyway, just like in the video. Heh)

That is all.

The New Hailing of the Chiefs

2009-02-19T20:05:00.002-05:00

C-SPAN recently came out with a ranking of all the US presidents, which is an updated version of the one the Wall Street Journal did in 2000. Presidential history is one of my minor hobbies, so I was very interested in the results. There are also separate rankings on various qualities.

Here is a link to the lists.

Voici...my commentary. Remember, there are only 42 men ranked as Grover Cleveland is counted twice in presidential order and Barack Obama's only been president a month.

The overall list: Not surprisingly, it's changed very little. Most of the presidents barely moved on the list. Only a few moved more than two spots, and only two would I consider big leaps. Those are:

Bill Clinton - Up six spots to #15. That makes sense I guess, since he's the most recent president to appear on the list twice.
Ulysses S. Grant - Up ten spots to #23. Can't really explain this, but he's still in the bottom half of the list, so it's still okay.

And where's George W. Bush? Coming in at #36. Beating out Fillmore, Harding, W.H.Harrison, Pierce, A. Johnson, and Buchanan. We're talking a low position here. Will he rank higher over time? I doubt it, based on his ranks on the other specific qualities.

Public persuasion - 36
Crisis leadership - 25 (A 9/11 bump, but it couldn't stand up to Katrina and a tanking economy)
Economic management - 40 (Just over Hoover and Buchanan. Clinton is #3 on this one.)
Moral authority - 35 (Clinton's 37. Heh.)
International relations - 41 (Only beating out William Henry Harrison, who spent the entirety of his month-long administration in bed dying of pneumonia)
Administrative skills - 37
Relations with congress - 36 (Dead last here is Andrew Johnson, who took his vice presidential oath drunk and basically told off all of congress afterward.)
Vision/Setting an agenda - 25 (It's one thing to have a vision and agenda, another to accomplish it. Remember a year ago when W pledged to have peace in the middle east by the time he left office?)
Pursuing justice for all - 24 (Why is Clinton, Mr. Don't Ask Don't Tell, at #4?)
Performance within context of the time - 36

There you go. Some of these still need more time to fully settle in history, but I don't think there's any way that the recently departed for Dallas can bubble up into the top half of anything.

Much lulz on this one.

2009-02-18T20:30:00.001-05:00

Come on, Jersey peeps. We know these people all too well.

69 Ways to Know You're A Douchebag

You were young and stupid, A-Rod? Well, I can believe the stupid part.

2009-02-17T14:17:00.003-05:00

I have the day off from school today, which means I can watch the A-Rod press conference live. it hasn't even ended yet, actually.

The main excuse for his actions seem to be that he was young and under pressure to perform, and therefore didn't know any better. He keeps saying that he was around 24, 25 years old. Apparently A-Rod can't do math: He admitted that he took steroids from 2001-2003, meaning he was 26 to 28 years old. Also, 2001 was his sixth full season in the majors. He just suddenly decided to start steroids after six years? Of course, during the press conference he also admitted to using stuff in Seattle that's currently a banned substance and taken off the shelves at GNC. Who knows what else he'll "remember" after the press conference is over?

All I can say for now is that he has no positive tests after 2003. The year that the MLB started punishing for positive tests was 2004. The US prohibits ex post facto laws, so until a positive test from 2004 on shows up, I don't think they can do anything. However, A-Rod is the only name that has popped up on something like 103 or 104 tests from 2003. Tests that were supposed to be anonymous. Release the other names, don't let A-Rod take all the blame for this.

I haven't really formed my own opinion on the whole legacy thing, the asterisks and whatnot on his career. But I think that having several of his teammates present at the press conference to support him means something.

My students do not belong to NARAS.

2009-02-10T15:41:00.004-05:00

Last Friday, I had my students, grades 5-8, vote for the big four awards in this year's Grammy awards: Song of the Year, Best New Artist, Record of the Year, and Album of the Year. Most of what they picked didn't win, mainly because they hadn't heard the Robert Plant and Alison Krauss album. Also, middle school kids have different tastes than the majority of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Here were those nominees, along with who the students voted for, and the real winners.

Best New Artist

Adele
Duffy
The Jonas Brothers
Lady Antebellum
Jazmine Sullivan

5th Grade: The Jonas Brothers
6th, 7th, and 8th Grade: Duffy
Real Winner: Adele

Song of the Year

American Boy (Estelle featuring Kanye West)
Chasing Pavements (Adele)
I'm Yours (Jason Mraz)
Love Song (Sara Bareilles)
Viva La Vida (Coldplay)

5th Grade: Tie, American Boy and I'm Yours
6th and 7th Grade: American Boy
8th Grade: Viva La Vida
Real Winner: Viva La Vida

Record of the Year

Chasing Pavements (Adele)
Viva La Vida (Coldplay)
Bleeding Love (Leona Lewis)
Paper Planes (M.I.A)
Please Read the Letter (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss)

5th Grade: Tie, Viva La Lida and Paper Planes
6th: Viva La Vida
7th, and 8th Grade: Paper Planes
Real Winner: Please Read the Letter

Album of the Year

Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (Coldplay)
Tha Carter III (Lil Wayne)
Year of the Gentleman (Ne-Yo)
Raising Sand (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss)
In Rainbows (Radiohead)

5th and 8th Grade: Tha Carter III
6th and 7th Grade: Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends
Real Winner: Raising Sand

More Reasons Why No Child Left Behind Needs an Overhaul

2009-01-27T18:14:00.002-05:00

My school failed to make it's AYP, or Adequate Yearly Progress, last year. It was the first time it did so, and was the only school in the district to do so. Needless to say, the administration is freaking out. The previous school I taught in has failed the last six years in a row, and they didn't freak out as much as my current school is.

You see, there's a certain way you have to qualify to be a "passing" school. Not only do a certain percentage of students have to pass the test, the same percentage of every subgroup has to pass the test. (This is to make sure that it's not just the privileged white kids passing.) Subgroups are determined by things like race, economic status, and if you're proficient in English. You have to have at least 30 kids categorized in one subgroup to have it count towards making your AYP.

My school only qualifies for these subgroups: White, female, male, non-economically disadvantaged, and special education. Guess which subgroup didn't pass. Guess which was the only reason the school failed.

A couple of months ago we had a faculty meeting with the assistant superintendent to try to figure out ways to get the special ed students to pass the test this year. Yes, the same percentage of them have to pass, but just like giving a English-as-a-second-language kid a dictionary, special ed kids will have modifiers, such as extra time or calculators. I can't even remember what really went on in the meeting, as I don't teach a subject that is directly related to the tests. (Earlier that very day I'd tried to used math to explain dotted quarter notes and the 8th grade students in the room collectively had a heart attack.)

Here's what's been happening lately.

All 7th grade students who failed the test last year are now getting pulled out of my class (or whichever cycle they're in) for test prep. If they failed one subject (language arts or math), it's one day a week. If they failed both, it's twice a week. This is only being done to 7th grade special ed students who failed. No 5th, 6th or 8th graders. No regular ed 7th graders who failed. This started at the beginning of January and will continue until test day, at the end of April. Two entire cycles will have passed by then. Out of five. Needless to say, many parents are furious that their child is being forced out of classes like music or art for this, and are pulling their kids out of the program.

Today, I found out that some eighth graders are getting pulled out of their core classes for testing. The testing is to evaluate if they should still be classified as special ed students or not. Believe me, these kids should stay classified, but I think they're trying to get the numbers down to below 30, so the subgroup won't count. This is an odd idea, as we have at least twice that many special ed kids in the school.

The worst part is, I still don't think a high enough percentage of special ed kids will pass the test this year.

No Child Left Behind right now only cares about the results. It just doesn't put any accountability on how to get them.

Just so you know...babies are like sandwiches.

2009-01-27T18:04:00.002-05:00

My brother, a nursing student, has started to do clinical work this year. Last semester, he did mainly general health courses (learning how to give a physical and whatnot), and this semester deals with more specifics, such as mental health, pediatrics, and pregnancy/childbirth. In the latter class, they recently learned how to bathe and swaddle a newborn.

Keep in mind, before entering the medical field, my brother's only work experience had been working the counter at Dunkin' Donuts. So upon observing how to fold a blanket around a baby, and hearing the professor comment that "it's almost like wrapping a sandwich," he was able to reply, "it's exactly like wrapping a sandwich."

Upon recounting this story to me (and after I stopped laughing), he sighed, hung his head, and remarked, "I'm going to break a baby, I just know it."

I need to stop listening to the Broadway channel on my satellite radio.

2009-01-12T19:32:00.002-05:00

Just when it finally leaves my head, they'll play "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top" again and the evil cycle will begin anew.

More student quotables

2009-01-08T21:03:00.002-05:00

A new cycle of general music classes started this week. To have the kids (and me) find out about their musical opinions and tastes, I have them do "musical conversations." I give them each a card with a question on it and they have to find the answer to it from several other people in class. These questions range from "What's your favorite radio station?" to "What kind of technology do you think will replace the iPod?"

One of the questions was "Do you play an instrument? If you don't, what would you like to learn to play?" One of the students' responses came from a classmate whom I knew had band lessons on Wednesdays, saxophone day. So what was written on the paper?

"He plays the tender sexaphone."

tee hee.

Taxation Without Scientific Representation

2008-12-30T14:39:00.002-05:00

Recently, the governor of New York, David Paterson, proposed an "obesity tax" on non-diet sodas. A can of regular soda will cost more than its diet equivalent.

I suppose one could look at this at a way to make people to stop drinking such sugary beverages and drink healthier alternatives, but just a few months ago, study results were released that showed that diet soda could make you just as fat as regular soda.

So it's not a health concern tax. It's a money grub tax. I'll keep drinking my sugary concoctions anyway.

Analysis: The Cherry Tree Carol

2008-12-24T12:01:00.004-05:00

At our winter concert, our school's orchestra performed a piece with a pretty melody that I'd never heard before, "The Cherry Tree Carol." A few days later, I heard the song with its words, and now I don't think can ever hear it again. I will give commentary on each verse.

When Joseph was an old man, an old man was he

He married virgin Mary, the queen of Galilee

(News to me that Joseph was a cradle robber and Mary was royalty, but then again, I don't read the bible too often. It was only recently that I found out that Joseph was a decendent of Abraham, too.)

And one day as they went walking, all in the garden green

There were berries and cherries as thick as may be seen

(Jesus was totally born in December. Right.)

Then Mary said to Joseph, so meek and so mild

Joseph, gather me some cherries for I am with child

(Pregnancy cravings, totally understandable.)

The Joseph flew in anger, in anger flew he

Let the father of the baby gather cherries for thee

(Bitch, I ain't yo baby's daddy!)

Then up spoke baby Jesus, from out Mary's womb

Bow down ye tallest tree that my mother might have some

(Let's summarize that one: The fetus was talking. Holy crap.)

So bent down the tallest tree to touch Mary's hand

Said she, oh look now Joseph, I have cherries at command

(Talking fetus Jesus uses telekinesis in order for him and Mary to have uber pwnage over Joseph.)

The End.

Two neat things (life update)

2008-12-24T11:48:00.002-05:00

1) We received a package from our Irish cousins, with many photos of my great-grandmother's brother and his children. We'd already sent them photos of several generations of our side, so we both got to see photos of relatives we'd never seen.

2) Last weekend's several inches of snow provided a perfect opportunity to try out the reason I sprung for the all wheel drive option on my new car. And it was awesome. I drove up hills with no struggle and no fear. I did not fishtail, nor did I slip and slide along the roads. And I was driving while the snow was still coming down! I am very very happy with the car.

Tis the season to be teaching

2008-12-24T11:36:00.002-05:00

I mainly teach at a 5th-8th grade middle school. However, there are so many classes at the elementary schools that the elementary teacher can't teach them all. So I teach a third grade class at one school and a pre-k class at another.

Last Thursday, the day I go see the 3rd grade class, the time I was there was the same time as the school's dress rehearsal for their winter concert. I arrived in the middle of the kindergarten's set. After they finished, I walked over to the other music teacher and the school principal to ask if I would still be there in time to see the third grade perform.

When I reached them, I realized they were gazing behind me. I turned and saw a custodian heading over to the risers with a mop...towards a puddle on the plastic. Guess one of the kindergarteners got nervous. The music teacher grinned at me. "Aren't you glad you teach in a middle school?"

I didn't have the heart to tell her that only hours earlier, the principal at the middle school had called an emergency faculty meeting five minutes before homeroom - to frantically remind the teachers that some children in the school still believe in Santa Claus.

And now it's time for madrigals with the Monkees.

2008-12-16T18:14:00.002-05:00

"Riu Riu Chiu" is a Spanish Christmas madrigal from the 15th century or so. Many groups have sung it, and even I taught it to my madrigal group last year. I think this version, sung by the Monkees in its full four-part a capella harmony, is pretty nifty.

This is some serious Jon Stewart pwnage omg.

2008-12-10T18:21:00.001-05:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Jon Stewart asks Mike Huckabee about gay marriage.

More adventures in teaching

2008-12-04T20:43:00.003-05:00

I teach my fifth grade class last period. All the fifth graders today went on a field trip to see Cirque du Soleil, and arrived in a slow trickle as their three buses returned and the kids went to their lockers and the bathroom and such.

For a while I had only a couple of kids in the room. While they were doodling on the dry-erase board, I asked them how the show was.

Girl: It was pretty cool, but there were some weird parts, like when these two women were crawling on each other.
Boy: That part was awesome.

Hee.

Two things in the news that are making me angry.

2008-12-04T06:01:00.003-05:00

The incumbent republican senator Saxby Chambliss won reelection in Georgia over the democratic challenger Jim Martin. I'm not mad that the republican won; I'm mad that only about half of the people in Georgia who voted on November 4th voted in this runoff election. It proves my opinion that many people simply do not give a shit about voting, but some of those people gave a shit about voting for Barack Obama.

Director Roman Polanski asks a judge in L.A to dismiss his case. He raped a 13-year-old thirty years ago, fled the country to avoid going to prison (and hasn't been back since), and now he wants this judge to dismiss his case on a technicality. Disgusting.

A farewell, and a greeting.

2008-11-23T18:08:00.003-05:00

A little while I ago I mentioned that I was car shopping.

About a week before Halloween, I was driving home from work and I noticed that my car was kind of rocking while idling. This had happened before, twice. It was usually followed by the check engine light coming on, taking in the car for servicing, having some filter get unclogged and me being a few hundred bucks poorer. Sure enough, I stopped at my dad's house to pick up something, and when I started the car up again, the check engine light came on. I abandoned my car in the driveway and drove my dad's car to the football game that night. (Leading a pep band of less than ten people, woo!)

A few days later, the car went into the shop, and yes, there was a clogged filter, but that wasn't all: The smog protection stuff was messed up and the transmission was leaking. Total cost for repair: $1700.

I'd always told myself that if it would be less expensive to make payments on a new car than pay for repairs on my old one, then I'd go buy a new car. I'd already put two grand into car repairs in the past year alone. Sadly, it was finally that time.

For the past seven years, I have been driving a 1995 Mercury Grand Marquis. My mom had bought it when I was in sixth grade, and it had been relatively unused at the time I got my driver's license. I started out driving it on weekends when my dad would need his bright yellow Caddy, the car I took my driver's test on and also a hand-me-down from my grandfather. (The '88 El Dorado died just after I started college. Dad bought another used Caddy to replace it, and after that, a Grand Marquis. We like familiarity around here.)

Within my first year driving "the boat," I saw it go over to 80,000 miles. This year, it passed 141,000. It survived three years going back and forth to college, and four years going back and forth to Jarret's house.

While I've driven it...

The windshield's been cracked by a rock once (adding to the crack that was already there)
The right back window had to be glued shut to keep it from falling down
The motors for both front windows have been fixed
A piece of plastic has been hanging off the side for a year and a half
The ignition column's been replaced
I backed it into a car parked across the street from my dad's house
I've scraped the sides against many trees, bushes, and a pole
(Still not as bad as my mom crashing the garage door on the hood, haha)
A lady backed into it thinking there was no one behind her at the intersection
The brakes have been replaced...twice
The shocks have been replaced...twice
The horn's been replaced...once
The master cylinder was replaced, after my brakes almost didn't work (remember, they cut out while I was slamming on them to avoid deer crossing the road!)
I ran over a nail and didn't even notice the tire was flat until people pointed it out to me (while driving on the turnpike)
The back window was replaced, after it randomly shattered into a thousand pieces
The front bumper got knocked off
The air bag light's been on for the better part of the last five years (started right after the front bumper was replaced)

And I'm sure I've forgotten stuff. Yeah, I've kinda just given an elegy to a car, but keep in mind it is something that has been an integral part of half my life.

When I went out to buy a new car, I only wanted these things for sure:

Something smaller, so I could park better (turns out, it wasn't the car's fault that I suck at parking, oh well).
It had to have all wheel drive. The boat only had rear wheel drive and couldn't drive normally on wet roads, and when it snowed, forget it.
Cloth seats. I hate leather.

And for the first three weeks of searching, I drove my dad's car and everything was fine, and then my brother Bryan got into a fender bender on route 17, and now he's borrowing my dad's car and I spent a week driving Jeff's Murano. Don't like the car too much, but heated seats are nice when it's cold.

I knew that this car buying excursion had been coming for a while, so I'd saved up quite a bit for this. I put most of the car's cost down and financed the rest only to build up my credit history. I'll spare the details of the test driving and absolute frustration the various parties involved gave me in actually getting this all done, but in the end, here it is.

It's a 2009 Ford Fusion. Loaded with lots of cool features. Loving it so far. The boat, after being left in the cold and not being used for a month, has started to make high pitched whining sounds when I start it. It's time for it to be donated. And I, for the first time in my life, will look forward to driving in the winter.

Wow, good thing I'm not applying for a job in President Obama's cabinet!

2008-11-13T18:38:00.003-05:00

This is the application questionnaire.

Holy crackers, that's detailed.

As I enter the not so lovely world of identity theft...

2008-11-09T14:57:00.003-05:00

Thursday was a day to spend with Jarret. (As NJ teachers, we were off Thursday and Friday. Teacher's convention? Puh-leez.) We went out to lunch, and I paid for it with my credit card.

Later, we were wandering around in a store and I wanted to buy something. I handed over my credit card...where it was declined. I found the cash in my wallet, and was on my cell to check my credit limit before I even got to the car. I was still well below the limit, as I thought, but Jarret assured me that it was a cloudy day, and there was probably a glitch in the store's computer system.

We then went to another store where my credit card got declined again. Time to call the credit card company again and get a real person on the line.

"Well, yes, we stopped transactions on that account," said the security person. "There was a $3000 charge at a Circuit City in Miami."

What?!

"And a $300 charge at a Home Depot in Miami. You did not make these purchases, correct?"

After I assured the woman that I was in New Jersey (as evidenced by the charge I'd made for lunch less than half an hour before the first one from Miami) we sorted out which purchases were mine, and which weren't, and now my credit card account is closed and I'm getting a new card in a few days.

Basically, someone in Miami got a hold of my credit card number, and proceeded to buy a really nice TV and installation equipment for it. Jarret wondered how a Circuit City employee could let anyone make a purchase for $3000 without checking ID, which leads us to believe it might have been an employee at that store, or just another reason why the chain's finances are currently in the toilet, because now that my account's closed, those stores don't get their money.

Luckily, I noticed something was wrong quickly, and my credit card company is very very good with security. Because the last thing I need right before I buy a new car would be for my credit score to tank. I would have had to buy a used sub-compact!

Um, yeah, more on the buying a new car thing later.

A letter to our president-elect.

2008-11-05T05:54:00.002-05:00

Dear Barack Obama,

Originally, I was a Hilary supporter, and it took me until August to convince myself I could vote for you. I am glad you won, and congratulations.

I just have one thing to day, on behalf of everyone who voted for you, those who believe in you and those who are counting on you.

Please do not fuck this up.

Love,

Me

I am wasting my Sunday afternoon academically pondering Beatles music. Because I can and want to.

2008-11-02T16:15:00.004-05:00

The other day, after many rumors and many denials from me insisting that it will never happen, Harmonix and Apple announced that there will be a version of Rock Band with Beatles songs.

Why was I denying it? Because most Beatles rumors are never true, no matter how plausible they may be. I mean, we still have no digital remastering of the Beatles catalogue. They're not even on iTunes, for pete's sakes! And even though I salivate for them, I still have never seen the Shea Stadium or the Let It Be films because they were out of print long before I was even born. There are so many things that Apple could be doing for Beatles fans, but since Apple doesn't want to give more money to Michael Jackson than it has to, it's barely done anything. So the video game actually being ready for stores by next Christmas? I still have doubts (the release date for the documentary DVD of the making of the Cirque du Soleil show keeps getting pushed back further and further), but I think this will happen.

Many older Beatles fans are actually mad about this, since they want Apple's priorities to be on more important things, such as the ones I listed above. But I disagree, and not just because I love playing games from the Guitar Hero and Rock band series. At the beginning of each cycle, I asked each of my students to write down some of their favorite bands and songs. Some of them wrote down things that I knew they were only aware of because of the music's presence in those video games. Only one student, out of almost 200 so far, wrote down the Beatles. Having this video game around will help them see the light, so to speak.

What I wanted to do, since I've obsessively listened to and studied the Beatles for about ten years now, is come of with a list of the songs that should be in this video game, to better complement the way the game works. The game has roles for vocals, guitar, bass and drums, so you'd have to pick songs that at least feature most of them in a challenging and interesting way. The press on the game has also said that there would be only 45 songs available in the game from the band's original catalogue from 1962-1969. I'm taking that to mean that the two songs on the Anthology are out, as well as any of the covers from the Live at the BBC set that weren't on the albums.

My picks are probably not what's going to be in the actual game, because I'm going to include tracks that aren't as well known to the casual fan. But this is my blog, and my opinion, so nyah.

Anyway, I went through the list of Beatles tracks and came up with an original list of 57 songs that would be playable in this game's format. That meant many tracks that didn't have things such as drum and bass parts (Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, Blackbird) were left out. Many songs were based off of piano riffs or orchestral accompaniments, so they were gone too. (Didn't pick a single track from the Magical Mystery Tour Album because of this.) Most of the cover versions were ignored because the Beatles stayed true to many of the the songs' original formats, and I wanted originality here. The notable exception is Twist and Shout, so I put it on the final list. I then whittled out 12 songs based on things like vocal difficulty (is there one part here, or three?) musical interest (sure, there's a guitar part, but it's potentially boring to play) and my personal preferences.

Here's the 12 that were on my list but I took out:

A Taste of Honey
Do You Want to Know a Secret
This Boy
If I Fell
I’ll Be Back
Eight Days a Week
You’re Going to Lose that Girl
Think for Yourself
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Dear Prudence
I Want You (She’s So Heavy)
Two of Us

And the ones that I decided on:

I Saw Her Standing There
Twist and Shout
All My Loving
A Hard Day’s Night
And I Love Her
Can’t Buy Me Love
Things We Said Today
You Can’t Do That
I Feel Fine
I’ll Follow the Sun
Help
Another Girl
Ticket to Ride
I’ve Just Seen a Face
Drive My Car
Michelle
Girl
In My Life
Day Tripper
Paperback Writer
Rain
Taxman
She Said She Said
And Your Bird Can Sing
Getting Better
Good Morning Good Morning
Revolution
Back in the USSR
Birthday
Yer Blues
Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
Helter Skelter
Hey Bulldog
The Ballad of John and Yoko
Come Together
Something
Octopus’s Garden
Here Comes the Sun
The End
Dig a Pony
I Me Mine
I’ve Got a Feeling
One After 909
For You Blue
Get Back

I have no idea when the official list comes out, but I hope it's something similar to this. That'd be cool.

Adventures in Teaching

2008-10-25T13:00:00.002-04:00

Most of my current teaching is in a middle school. If you ask anyone in the know about teaching, most of them, upon hearing you teach in a middle school, usually say some variant of "I'm sorry." And I've found that to be true. Many of these kids are sweet as can be, but many are evil, soulless, and miserable excuses for human beings.

Case in point: I teach music as part of a set of cycle courses. I see a part of the school for eight weeks, then those kids move on and I get a new group. Yesterday was the last day of the first cycle. One kid slipped a note onto my cart (yep, I'm one of those teachers) before she left that said "You are the best mucie teacher ever." Awwww. In another class, some kids had these parting words for me: "You'll last here. We never made you cry!"

To change the subject slightly, I also spend a half hour each week with a handicapped pre-k class. This week, when the class was close to ending, I didn't turn off the CD of children's music I was using fast enough, and the song "Skinnamarink" came on. Instead of turning it off, I kept the kids in their circle and had them follow along in the song with me while I did the arm movements, which I don't think I've done in 20 years. If I did them wrong, I thought, I'll change it next week and the kids won't even remember. Imagine my surprise to go to YouTube and find out that I had them right. Woo!

Intentional or not?

2008-10-12T17:52:00.003-04:00

I watched the beginning of last night's hockey game between the New York Rangers and the Philadelphia Flyers at Jarret's house. Jarret lives in that part of New Jersey that gets New York and Philly stations, so the game was beign covered on two channels.

The interesting thing about this game, the Flyers' home opener of the season, was that the ceremonial first puck was going to be dropped by "America's favorite hockey mom," Sarah Palin. Jarret and I were eagerly glued to the tv, waiting for the crowd's reaction.

On the Philly station, there were no mics picking up crowd noise. You just heard the ceremonial music as she walked out. On the New York station, you heard what we were waiting for: Booing. Lots of it.

The question is - did Comcast (who owns the Flyers and the tv station that broadcasts their games) intentionally mean to block the sound?

It's official: The entire country's been RickRoll'D.

2008-10-07T20:36:00.002-04:00

Ever since the RickRoll meme has become popular, more radio stations have been adding the song to their rotation. At least the ones I listen to anyway. More people are becoming reacquainted with the two decades old Rick Astley pop tune, but I think we're feeling a little more exuberant about it this time around.

Last weekend, Jarret and I were wandering around CVS, waiting for the nearby Chinese takeout place to complete our order, when that familiar drum machine beat kicked in over the speakers. We turned to each other, giggling, whispering "hey, we're getting RickRoll'D." Then we looked around us and realized that everyone in the store, men and women of all ages, had stopped what they were doing to dance in the aisles. And I am not kidding.

A middle couple were undertaking some ballroom swing by the still-too-early-to-be-on-shelves Halloween candy, while some teenagers were bouncing up and down by the cash registers. My boyfriend and I stood by the tissue boxes, confused as hell.

(The second presidential debate is going to start in about fifteen minutes, in a town hall style format. If one of the questioners manages to start with "We're no strangers to love. You know the rules, and so do I," they'll be my new hero.)

Politics, Celebrity Style.

2008-09-10T17:38:00.002-04:00

Sometimes, you need to be clear and concise with your words for people to respect you and your opinions. Compare and contrast these two YouTube videos. The first is Matt Damon, the second is Diddy. Both have the same things to say about Sarah Palin, but I think one gets his point across a little better than the other. You be the judge.

Sorry Jerry. Sorry Bill. Your new commercial is creepy.

2008-09-07T17:09:00.002-04:00

Sigh. Will there ever be a Microsoft commercial that doesn't confuse me?

Short Updates

2008-09-03T22:16:00.002-04:00

Jonathan got rejected from Millionaire.

Jarret knows all the words to MacArthur Park.

And, um...I'm starting a new job in a new district tomorrow. It's a thing.

What I did on my summer vacation, part four

2008-09-01T11:03:00.003-04:00

So what did my dad and I do for our five remaining days?

On Saturday, we did a bus tour. We took the train from Dublin to Limerick, where we caught the bus. From there we toured Bunratty Castle, the Cliffs of Moher, and the Burren before ending up in Galway. We didn’t go back to Dublin with the tour, and stayed overnight in Galway before heading back to Dublin Sunday afternoon.

In short on that trip:

The tour guide talked about Angela’s Ashes the entire time we rode through Limerick, even though it was painfully obvious he hadn’t read the book. (“John” McCourt. Yeesh.)

While standing on top of Bunratty castle, my dad told me, “If we hung you upside down by your ankles over the edge, that’s what it’s like to kiss the Blarney stone.” (We never made it to Blarney castle.)

The Cliffs of Moher were so windy that I had to pull back my hair, pull up the hood on my sweatshirt, and knot the drawstrings tight. And no one told me that the parking lot was at the bottom and you had to walk up!

(This way to the castle...oh, what's that in the background?)

The Burren looks like a giant stone puzzle, and I hopped along between them humming the theme to Tetris.

Galway is mainly known as the origin of the Claddagh ring. My dad managed to go his entire life before that week not knowing what they were.Also in Galway was a “Spanish” arch, built to welcome the Spanish Armada in 1584, hoping that they would kick some British ass. Um…that didn’t work out too well.

On Monday, we took a half-hour flight to Liverpool.

Yes, you read that right. I made my pilgramage to Mecca. (Would that make my trip to Abbey Road studios in 1999 Medina?)

We were only going to be there until Tuesday morning, so this was going to be my all-out Beatles fangirl day. We landed in John Lennon airport and headed to check in at the Hard Day’s Night hotel. Filled to the brim with Beatles photos, paintings, and memorabilia. The not cool part: You couldn’t take pictures in the lobby. Too many tourist problems, I guess. But I still managed to get a photo of what I thought was the coolest thing there: George Martin’s hand-written string quartet score for “Yesterday.”

We signed up for another bus tour, the Magical Mystery Tour. Dad and I knew from our previous bus tour that we wanted to get on the bus early to secure window seats. We each took a side on the bus so we could get a shot of everything. Fortunately for me, most of the good stuff was on my side of the bus.

We didn’t get out of the bus often, but we got out for George Harrison’s and Paul McCartney’s childhood homes, Strawberry Fields, and Penny Lane. We passed many other things, including the childhood homes of John Lennon and Ringo Starr, and many other things that only a Beatles fangirl like me would be interested in. Just so you know, I won the tour guide’s Beatles trivia quiz. Well, it wasn’t really a game, but the guy was asking questions and I knew the most obscure ones. Getting a round of applause was enough of a win for me.

We were let off by our hotel, because it happened to be around the corner from the Cavern Club. Even though pretty much the whole place was reconstructed, I can still say I stood on its stage. Dad and I walked over to Albert Dock to The Beatles Story exhibition. There happened to be a huge tall ships race leaving the dock the same morning, so while thousands of people were trying to leave the dock, we were trying to enter!

By the way, there were these statues all over the city. Liverpool had been named Europe's capital of culture for 2008, and they decided to put these "Super Lamb Bananas" all over the place. Here's one outside The Beatles Story, dressed up like Ringo.

I cannot express how awesome Monday was.

Tuesday we took the train to Chester, because Dad wanted to visit the cathedral. In there I found a facsimile of Handel’s score for Messiah, which was cool. The town of Chester itself was a neat little place, with lots of Tudor architechture that was actually built while the Tudors reigned. From Chester we took a train through Wales, and caught the ferry in Holyhead to return to Dublin.

Built in 1571

This is the longest place name in the world...couldn't get it all in one shot!

Wednesday was spent walking around Dublin and taking a longer look at things we’d passed while on our way to the National Library or Archives. It’s weird, because I feel like I’ve typed so much, but I still didn’t mention everything we did in Ireland or England. Like, we saw a terrible production of The Three Sisters at the Abbey Theatre. I enjoyed seeing Hancock at the movie theater down the street from the hotel more. And the Cliffs of Moher had suicide prevention signs all over the place. And the famed River Mersey in Liverpool looks terrible from the air, it's brown. And did I mention all the sheep? And cows? And horses? And llamas? Hell, I even found Jesus in a box!

Oh, and did you know that Dublin has a big pointy pole in the middle of it?

When we returned I searched ancestry.com and found Patrick and Margaret in US censuses. Patrick came over in 1885, right after his mother died, leaving his 17-year old brother and two sisters to run the family farm. Margaret came over in 1888, Mary in 1896. If there were letters between her and Thomas, I don’t have them. There must have been, for my grandmother to know that he’d married twice (and have his address in her address book).

Eunice said she had pictures she could scan and send to us, but since she doesn’t have a computer at home (or even her own email address), we haven’t received them yet. We sent them copies of photos of Mary, Margaret and Patrick that my grandmother had had framed on her wall for decades. Dad also included a photo taken at a family gathering in 1995, as it most the only photo he could send with most of all the American cousins in it. There’s a wedding coming up in a few weeks, maybe we could take another one.

Anyway, that’s what I did for ten days in July. Thanks for bringing me with you, Dad. Kind of ironic that I managed to finish this just in time for the end of summer, isn't it?

What I did on my summer vacation, part three

2008-08-24T23:00:00.004-04:00

As with most counties in Ireland, the biggest town in the county has the same name as the county itself. So to get to County Carlow, we took a train to the town of Carlow.

We’re about an hour’s train ride out of Dublin, and it’s obvious that we’re not in the city anymore. Most New Jersey towns are busier than this. I don’t know whether that says something about Ireland or New Jersey.

We went to the Carlow library, which, unlike the National Library, put their parish records on a computer printout. It was there that one of our mysteries was solved – how Elizabeth could have started having kids at forty. Turns out the grave was wrong – She was born five years later, making her the same age at her first child’s birth as my father’s mother and my own mother. Weird.

Francis wasn’t in the book, which means he was born before the record keeping started in 1813. The grave inferred 1811, which fits. He married Elizabeth then at age 53. I have a theory that this might have been a second marriage, but I didn’t look for evidence.

Looking for similar parents in the book we found several siblings for Elizabeth – Timothy, Mary, Ellen, Catherine, and John. Siblings of Francis included Denis, Mary, Rose, and Maurice. The death and marriage records aren’t as detailed, so we found only one of these people later on, Maurice’s death in 1908. So for all we know, most of these people died as children.

Speaking of, the book revealed a great uncle my dad didn’t know he had – James, born in 1869. Obviously he had died as a child if we’d never heard of him, but to see that in there was a surprise. (When we returned to Dublin, we found out that he’d died of seizures, aged three days. The other children were four and one, so they probably didn’t remember it and the parents didn’t talk about it. Sad.)

This is where pure dumb luck comes into play.

My dad dragged me all over town, trying to find this one pub he’d eaten at three years ago. I was growing increasingly frustrated with him, since I wanted to go to another place in town to do research and he hadn’t wanted to. Dad couldn’t find the pub, so we settled into lunch at a hotel.

Where we’d wanted to go next was the cemetery that we now knew contained our ancestors. I’d written down the phone numbers of several local cab companies, but we exited the hotel to find two random cabs waiting outside. We climbed into one and showed the driver the directions to the church we’d found online.

“That’d take you 9 km out of the way!” He exclaimed. He drove up to the other cab. “Hey, Pat, can you believe these directions? They want you to take Castledermot Road!”

Turns out, the cab driver, Noel’s, son went to school at its church. He even lived in the town from where those 1940s letters came from. He had us at the cemetery within ten minutes, and told us to call his cell when we were ready to leave.

In the cemetery, Dad found the grave from the website. Finally seeing it in person solved the mystery of Thomas’s missing child. It did not say that he died in 1930 aged 31; he died in 1930 aged 3 ½. But more importantly, I found a grave with the family name that wasn’t on the website. In it were Patrick, Frank, and Luke; the three sons of Thomas mentioned in the letters. Also in that grave was a baby Padraic; this made another mystery baby, as the other grave had a baby John in it. Dad assumed they were the sons of one or two of Thomas’s sons. I mused over it. “There are three brothers here…where are their wives buried?”

Dad and I argued over where to go next. I wanted to go to the church where the actual book of parish records was kept (we’d gotten the priest’s phone number in Carlow), but Dad wanted to go to Rutland and try and track down where the farm was, even though all he had was a map from 1852. We were still debating this when the cab pulled up, but not with Noel; It was Pat, his partner. He asked about what we were looking for, and Dad happened to let the surname of the relatives slip.

“Hey, I know a Tom in Rutland!” Pat piped up. “I play football with him! He’s the only one in town, I’ll take you to his house!”

Um…what?

Sure, it was possible that he was named after who would have been his grandfather, but…was he really driving us to a stranger’s house right now?

Yes, he was, and soon we were pulling up in front of a small farmhouse. A redheaded woman came to the door when Pat knocked. Awkwardly, we named a bunch of names for her and asked if it was her family.

She said yes.

Let’s put that in perspective: My dad and I expected to find absolutely nothing about our family history when we came to Ireland and we’d managed to track down living relatives.

The woman at the door was Tom’s wife Eunice, and once realizing we were family instantly invited us in and made tea. Tom was at work. Once of her three kids managed to poke her head in the kitchen, the only blood relative I saw that day – my third cousin Ciara, the oldest at nine years old. Tom’s mother Nancy also lived with them. She was the wife of Luke, and the two babies buried in the cemetery were her children. (Like that wasn’t awkward when we found out that one.) Pat and Frank never married, we found out. Pat had died of a heart attack, and Frank in a boiler explosion accident. (Eep.)

We told them about their cousins over in America. They were obviously more interested in us, as there were a lot more of us than there were of them! But it was so weird to take out those old letters, read them out loud, and have someone sitting next to you know exactly who those people were! Yes, Thomas’s daughter Elizabeth had been a nun. Yes, the Keegan farm had been next door, but it had been sold long ago, that’s why the letters came from a different town. Marianne, Thomas’s first wife? She’d always been very sickly, that’s probably why they never had children. Yes, this is the same farm, but we had to build a new house because the old one was falling apart and full of asbestos. Would you like to see it?

Eunice walked us through their apple orchard (!!!) to reveal the house exactly as described in the census from a century ago. Of course, what do we ask first?

“Where’s the piggery?”

“Oh, we turned that into a milking station,” Eunice told us. “If it was still a piggery, you’d have smelled it from three km away!”

“Oh, so you still have cows then?”

“Yes, we have sixty cattle.”

“Um…I have a dog. Is that a cat over there?”

“Yes, we have nine of them.”

I kept asking questions of Eunice while Dad went around taking pictures of everything he could see. He picked up a clod of dirt from the ground, and announced that he was going to put it on Mary and Margaret’s grave in Queens. When Nancy saw what he had grabbed, she remarked that if he wanted weeds, there were plenty more of those he could take. Farmers, we are not.

Eunice drove us to the Tinryland church, where the priest showed us the original books. Then Noel picked us up and drove us back to Carlow, where from my Dad’s vague memories, he managed to find the pub he’d wanted to go to for lunch. Good thing he found it too, I had one of the best cheeseburgers I’d ever eaten in my life.

We were exhausted, amazed, and still slightly in shock. We’d found everything, solved all the mysteries. And we’d managed to find the one cab driver in the county at the right time to lead us to it all.

And we still had five more days in Europe!

What I did on my summer vacation, part two

2008-08-14T21:59:00.002-04:00

In July, Dublin is about 20 degrees cooler outside than in New Jersey. I’m told they make up for it in milder winters. Even so, that didn’t placate me as I frequently tightened my sweater around me to brace against the wind. We were lucky, though. It barely rained the entire time we were in Europe, and everywhere we went, we heard about the terrible storms that had deluged them the week before.

Dad and I had arrived at our hotel around 9:30 AM, and were told that we couldn’t check in until 3:00. Tired and icky from our overnight flight, we dropped off our luggage and headed straight for the National Library. There was research to be done!

We located the microfilm to church records of what we hoped was our ancestors’ parish. All marriages and baptisms between 1813 and 1890 were on the same roll. Just as I feared, many of the pages were in illegible handwriting. Many of the pages were almost too faded to read at all. The first half of the roll was just written in haphazardly until a form was created. And yes, it was all in Latin.

I scrolled to the birth records for March 1868. And there it was. “Thoma” and “Margherita,” parents “Francis” and “Elizabeth.” And a note at the end of the page – “Thoma et Margherita sunt gemini” – they were twins. It was the baptismal record for my great-grandmother’s older siblings. We’d pinned down the first names of their parents. That was going to be a great help.

Then I scrolled down to 1878, hoping to find Mary that easily. No dice. I searched all the way backwards over the previous ten years, back to the twins. I found another sibling in 1871, and the writing was so faded that I could only identify the names of the parents. I squinted, and the first name seemed to be some latinate form of Patrick, the other brother.

We had barely been in the country a few hours, and we had already found crucial information. We knew the church parish and parents’ first names. Time to check in to the hotel and take a nap.

Now that we were sure that the tombstone transcription we’d read online before we arrived was our family, we now knew that Francis had died in 1881, and Elizabeth in 1885. This raised some questions: It said Elizabeth had died aged 60. That meant she’d had her first child at 43. Not common for 19th century Irish catholics. Even more confusing, Francis died aged 70, which meant he’d had his first child at age 57!

The next day, we walked across the city center to the National Archives, which contained microfilms of the 1901 and 1911 censuses. We wanted to know what happened to Thomas after his siblings left for America.

(After this vacation, I am now an expert at microfilm machines. Just saying.)

He’d taken over the family farm with his wife Marianne. In 1901, they’d lived in a house with stone walls and a thatched roof, two rooms and three windows in front. They had a stable, a cow house, a calf house, a dairy, and a piggery. (Dad and I spent much time giggling at the word “piggery.”) By 1911, they’d added two sheds, a fowl house, a boiling house, and another piggery!

They had no children, but Marianne’s niece lived with them in 1911. Now we had yet another mystery: The tombstone transcription said that Thomas had a son that would have been born in 1899. He didn’t show up in either census. Marianne died a couple of years after the 1911 census. The couple was well into their forties. Another Irish catholic family with no kids?! ( Hey, it’s a stereotype, but it’s what we were going by!)

We walked back across the city to the General Register’s Office, where all the civil registries were kept. Here’s how they roll: Unlike the other buildings we’d been to, this one charged you for searches. There are large index books, one for each year of the registry since 1864. Red books were for births, green books were for marriages, and black ones were for deaths. To search a five year span of one kind of book, you had to pay four euros. To have someone in the back photocopy the entry you think might be one of your relatives, it costs two euros. Of course, there was only one copy of each index book, so if someone else was using it, you had to wait. Most of the workers behind the desk were pretty lenient and let you check any book you wanted, but one bitchy lady made me put the 1878 book away when I’d paid her for 1869-1873. Grr.

Thomas and Margaret’s birth was tracked down pretty quickly (“Two for the price of one!” The worker cried with glee when I turned in the photocopy form) and it was on that form that we discovered that my great-great grandparents were illiterate – they signed the certificate with an X. I thought of checking for Francis and Elizabeth’s marriage certificate. We were in luck – they got married in 1864, the first year of mandatory registry. On the form were the names of their fathers, which we hadn’t known before. We managed to find a birth record of a Mary registered in Carlow right before the place closed, and we turned in a photocopy form before we left.

After much anticipation overnight, we returned there the next morning to find out that we had the wrong person. We then decided to search for the death records of Francis and Elizabeth. The records gave cause of death. Francis had died of prostate cancer, which he’d had for a few years with no medical attention. (If he’d had no medical attention, how’d they know it was prostate cancer? Did they do autopsies in 19th century rural Ireland?) Elizabeth had died in a mental asylum, which she had been in for a year in a half, still in depression over the death of her husband. Eep.

I decided to do a methodical search to find Mary and Patrick’s birth certificates – I searched every birth book between 1868 and 1871 and wrote down everything I found and didn’t find. It was then that we found Mary’s birth record – the one piece of information my dad needed for the dual citizenship application. She was born in 1871. She was the faded record I’d seen in the church microfilm two days earlier. I’d found my great-grandmother’s real birth year within hours of arrival, and I’d missed it! Upon returning to the library later that day, that record definitely read “Maria.”

While I was back in the library, we searched for two other things. One was a birth record of Patrick. We couldn’t find him in the civil records, and it was easier to search for free in the one roll of church records than pay to search through giant books and wait for photocopies, as we had been doing. This time, I knew to start searching in 1864, and he turned up almost instantly. Patrick was born in 1865 – he was the oldest child, which was different than what we had thought. I also scrolled to the church records of Francis and Elizabeth’s wedding – which gave the names of their mothers as well as their fathers.

Across the hallway from where I was with the microfilm machines, my dad was in the genealogy room’s computers, checking out a record of Irish land value in 1852. (Apparently the survey was so time consuming they never did it again.) There he found that Francis and Elizabeth’s families each rented farmland in Rutland. Dad tracked down a map with the farm boundaries marked off – the farms were next to each other. So my great-great-grandparents were living next door to each other, and their parents probably married them off when they realized that they were getting older. How…depressing.

There were still some questions that needed to be answered. It was time to head to County Carlow.

What I did on my summer vacation, part one

2008-08-12T19:02:00.004-04:00

See this house?

My great-great-great-grandparents lived in it.

I'm just here to learn CPR, I swear!

2008-07-11T13:20:00.002-04:00

My brother Bryan is about to start his third year as a nursing major, and that means clinicals. He has to get CPR certification before he starts. I decided to take the class with him because hey, CPR is probably a good thing to know, especially as a teacher. We signed up for a class to be certified in adult, child, and infant CPR, as well as learning how to use an AED. (Though after taking the class, I realized it should be DFD - "Defibrillator for Dummies.")

The class was being held in a hospital, and Bryan and I hadn't realized that we'd walked into the wrong building of the hospital. We wandered for a few minutes before returning to the front desk and asked where room such-and-such was. She directed us to the correct building.

"It's right over there, the classrooms are upstairs," she said. "Are you here for the Lamaze class?"

I resisted my urge to turn purple.

"No, we're here for CPR." I said through gritted teeth. I waited until we were outside before I turned to Bryan and yelled "Do I look like I need a Lamaze class?"

I'll remind here that Bryan is about to go work as a nursing student in a hospital, beacuse at this point he asked me what Lamaze was. When I explained it to him, he first realized what the lady at the desk had assumed about us, and started gagging. Then he realized what she'd assumed about me, and started laughing.

We made it to the other building, and found our way upstairs. We were now a few minutes late for the class. I heard voices, found an open classroom, and walked in.

"Hi, is this the CPR class?" I asked.

"No, it's Lamaze!"

Dammit!

A Taste of Humility

2008-07-07T20:28:00.003-04:00

Maybe it tastes a little like this.

That's a bowl of cheese soup my brother Bryan ordered in Michigan. Yuck.

Anyway.

A month ago, I decided to try out for Who Wants to Be A Millionaire again. Last year, I tried out, passed the test, had a two minute interview and was out the door. I later received a postcard telling me that I was not selected to be in their contestant pool.

So I decided to do it again this year, and this time, I convinced my brother Jonathan to come with me. We took the bus into Manhattan and took the subway up to 59th street, where we walked to the ABC studios on 66th street. While on line to get in, we met a couple from Long Island. The husband was the one taking the test, while his wife would wait outside for him.

When you get inside, you realize that you're in the cafeteria. Everyone sits at the tables and takes the multiple choice scantron test there. As we sat down, the guy coordinating the whole thing announced that there were theme weeks that you could also try out for, just by writing them on our scantrons. If you wanted to complete with your fiance on "Play to Pay for Your Wedding" week, put down your fiance's name. If your name matched a famous person's name, write down "Famous names." (Jon and I glanced at each other at that one. He shares his name with a major well-known major league pitcher, but spells his first name differently. I share my name with a D-list actress. We didn't put famous names down.) The last one was for undergraduate college students. Jon wrote "college" on his scantron.

There were 30 questions on the test. I was unsure of 12 of my answers. Not good.

When the announced the results, Jon's number was called. Mine wasn't. Crap.

I went to wait outside for Jon to finish his interview. Out there I met up again with the woman behind me in line; her husband has passed too. We waited. And waited. And waited. People were coming out from their interviews. Other people were let inside for the next set of tests. Then the door closed. They still hasn't come out.

I walked up to a coordinator on the street and asked where they were. "Oh, they probably had a video interview," she said. "They get let out on 67th."

A second interview? A video interview? I didn't have one of those last year. No fair.

After almost an hour of waiting, we finally saw them coming down the street. They'd been led up to the studio, where they'd been interviewed on camera after the first interviewed in the cafeteria.

So in one try, my brother had done better in the Millionaire tryouts than I had in two. I can take comfort in the fact that there's a possibility that the college passing score was lower. Also, I've earned more money on a game show than he has...so far.

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

2008-06-30T19:11:00.003-04:00

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!

2008-06-25T15:17:00.003-04:00

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...

2008-06-11T05:43:00.004-04:00

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

2008-06-08T19:41:00.002-04:00

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.

Okay, let's try this again.

2008-05-26T16:47:00.003-04:00

Literally the day after I made my last post, my brother coincidentally mentioned to me that there's also a 1001 albums to hear before you die list. Now we're talking my language: music. But I'm going to do this one a little differently. If I have at least one song from the album in my iTunes library, I'll include it here. If I have the whole album, I'll star it.

And keep in mind, reading this list has caused me to want to make some additions to my iTunes collection, but I'll do that later. And there are several albums on here that I do own in their entirety, but don't want to put in their entirety in my iTunes, so they're not starred.

Elvis Presley – Elvis Presley
Fats Domino – This is Fats
The Crickets – The Chirping Crickets
Little Richard – Here’s Little Richard
Dave Brubeck – Time Out
Joan Baez – Joan Baez
The Everly Brothers – A Date with the Everly Brothers
Ray Charles - Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music
The Beatles – With the Beatles*
Bob Dylan – The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Sam Cooke – Live at the Harlem Square*
Stan Getz & João Gilberto – Getz/Gilberto
The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night*
Bob Dylan – Bringing it All Back Home*
The Beatles – Rubber Soul*
Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited
The Who – My Generation
The Beatles – Revolver*
The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Bob Dylan – Blonde on Blonde
The Mamas & the Papas – If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears*
The Rolling Stones – Aftermath
Simon & Garfunkel – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme*
The Beatles – Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band*
Cream – Disraeli Gears
The Who – Sell Out
Donovan – Sunshine Superman
Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced
Jimi Hendrix – Axis: Bold as Love
Aretha Franklin – I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You
The Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet
Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland
Simon & Garfunkel – Bookends*
The Band – Music from Big Pink
The Zombies – Odessey & Oracle
The Beatles – The Beatles [aka the White Album]*
Crosby, Stills & Nash – Crosby, Stills & Nash
The Beatles – Abbey Road*
The Rolling Stones – Let it Bleed
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin II
Sly & the Family Stone – Stand!
Derek & the Dominos – Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs
John Lennon – Plastic Ono Band*
Led Zeppelin – III
Van Morrison – Moondance
George Harrison – All Things Must Pass*
Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water*
Paul McCartney – McCartney
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On
John Lennon – Imagine*
Don McLean – American Pie
Led Zeppelin – IV
Rod Stewart – Every Picture Tells a Story
Nilsson, Harry – Nilsson Schmilsson
Neil Young – Harvest
Stevie Wonder – Talking Book
Paul Simon – Paul Simon
The Temptations – All Directions
Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Stevie Wonder – Innervisions
Paul McCartney & Wings – Band on the Run
Queen – Sheer Heart Attack
Bob Marley & the Wailers – Natty Dread
Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti
Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run
Dion – Born to Be With You
Queen – A Night at the Opera
Billy Joel – The Stranger
Electric Light Orchestra – Out of the Blue
Peter Gabriel – Peter Gabriel
Elvis Costello – My Aim is True
Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
Elvis Costello – This Year’s Model
B52s – B52s
The Clash – London Calling
Michael Jackson – Off the Wall
AC/DC – Back in Black
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five – The Message
Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA
Paul Simon – Graceland
Michael Jackson – Bad
NWA – Straight Outta Compton
Black Crowes – Shake Your Money Maker
Nirvana – Nevermind
Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
Liz Phair – Exile in Guyville
Nirvana – In Utero
Sheryl Crow – Tuesday Night Music Club
Portishead – Dummy
Beastie Boys – Ill Communication
TLC – CrazySexyCool
Offspring – Smash
Blur – Parklife
Notorious BIG – Ready to Die
Jeff Buckley – Grace
Nirvana – MTV Unplugged in New York
Nine Inch Nails – Downward Spiral
Green Day – Dookie
Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters
Garbage – Garbage
Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness
Elastica – Elastica
Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?
Beck – Odelay
The Eels – Beautiful Freak
Fiona Apple – Tidal
Fugees – The Score
Ash – 1977
Blur – Blur
Radiohead – OK Computer
System of a Down - System of a Down
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication
Coldplay – Parachutes
Eminem – Marshall Mathers LP
Gorillaz – Gorillaz
The Strokes – Is This It
The White Stripes – White Blood Cells
Norah Jones – Come Away with Me
Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head
Johnny Cash – American IV: Man Comes Around
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Beck – Sea Change
Justin Timberlake – Justified
The Vines – Highly Evolved
Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
The White Stripes – Elephant
OutKast – Speakerboxxx/Love Below
Rufus Wainwright – Want One
Brian Wilson – SMiLE
Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand*
Kanye West – College Dropout
Rufus Wainwright – Want Two
The Killers – Hot Fuss
The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan

Only 134?! Well, that's better than the other two, at least. And I've heard of a lot of the stuff on the list, but it's just not on my iTunes. Sigh. Where's the "1001 pieces of renaissance choral music to hear before you die" list? I'd rock that one.

Listy goodness to prove my lack of pop culture immersion

2008-05-14T17:19:00.002-04:00

Through Kottke I found a list of 1001 movies to see before you die. I decided to make a list of my own of these movies, of what I'd seen. I also added some from the alterations of the list here. And like Kottke, I starred my favorites. It's only 1000 movies, right? Surely I must have seen at least 100 of them, right?

Wrong.

A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Seven Chances (1925)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Triumph of the Will (1934)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Gone With the Wind (1939)
West Side Story (1961)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)*
The Sound of Music (1965)
The Jungle Book (1967)
Woodstock (1970)
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
The Godfather (1972)
Sleeper (1973)
The Godfather Part II (1974)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Star Wars (1977)*
Grease (1978)
The Muppet Movie (1979)
Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)*
Airplane! (1980)
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
A Christmas Story (1983)
Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)*
Amadeus (1984)
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Ghostbusters (1984)
Back to the Future (1985)
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
The Naked Gun (1988)
Big (1988)
Rain Man (1988)
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Glory (1989)
Goodfellas (1990)
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Philadelphia (1993)
Forrest Gump (1994)*
Clerks (1994)*
The Lion King (1994)*
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Babe (1995)
Toy Story (1995)
Clueless (1995)
Independence Day (1996)
Scream (1996)
Titanic (1997)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Being John Malkovich (1999)
American Beauty (1999)
The Sixth Sense (1999)
The Matrix (1999)
Gladiator (2000)
Meet the Parents (2000)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)*
Amelie (2001)*
Moulin Rouge (2001)*
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Adaptation (2002)
Chicago (2002)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Sideways (2004)
Brokeback Mountain (2005)

That's 73. And the problem with that is I don't even remember if I've seen some of these in their entirety. See, most of these were not seen by me by a distinct desire to go see that specific movie. I half-watched them when they appeared on cable or I watched them for a class (like I would watch Triumph of the Will voluntarily. come on). I'm just not a movie person, I guess. I don't have the attention span to sit through them. Speaking of, there's at least three movies on that list where I definitely have not seen the ending, due to my falling asleep beforehand.

Surely the number I've read on the 1001 books to read before you die will be better, right?

Beloved – Toni Morrison
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.*
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.*
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov*
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Candide – Voltaire
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

Crap. Only 25, and all of them books I've read for a class for read with the intention on writing a paper on them for a class. At least I've reread many of them willingly. I shall blame this on that I either read more non-fiction, or more crappier books. (There's probably about five books on that list that I was supposed to read for a class and then didn't. Heh.)

I guess I shall be spending my summer watching movies and reading books. But it will probably end up being movies I've already seen and books I've already read. Oh well. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that I have seen and read bits and pieces of many more on the lists, and probably know the general story of even more. This is the trick to making yourself seem smart: Know a little about a lot, and everyone will think you know what you're talking about, even when you haven't read the book, or seen the movie, or seen the movie based on the book.

A Lack of Truth in Advertising

2008-05-11T21:07:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, Jarret and I were wandering around one of those stores that have clothes in the front and an odd assortment of housewares in the back. We were in the housewares section when I spotted an item called a "cube shelf" - I suppose it was for displaying your special stuff a little higher than your crappy stuff.

"Hey Jarret, do you want your very own cube?" I handed one to him. He peered at it.

"It doesn't look very cubey."

"Well, maybe the packaging makes it look funny."

Jarret then turned the box over and found this.

The "cube shelf" was, by definition, not a cube.

I feel so cheated.

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

2008-05-08T20:35:00.003-04:00

It's teacher appreciation week, and Tuesday was teacher appreciation day. My school's key club celebrated by making ice cream sundaes for all the teachers.

It tasted better because it was free.

(Update) And the national honors society provided us with brownies. Oh yeah.

Stuff You Can Find in Stores These Days

2008-04-25T22:12:00.004-04:00

I went to the supermarket specifically searching for it, even though I thought I would be too late to find it on the shelves. But there it was, in abundance.

What makes these two-liter bottles of Coke so special, you ask? The yellow cap indicates something. Coke bottles with yellow caps are only out in stores in the US for one week per year: They are kosher for Passover. The difference between regular coke and kosher coke is this:

The second ingredient is honest to god sugar, instead of high fructose corn syrup. You know, like it's made in the rest of the world that doesn't have to use corn as its main sweetener. It's not as sticky, and tastes better, and most people in the know raid the stores for them the second they appear on shelves, which was why I was shocked to find them toward the end of Passover. Hooray!

The second thing I spotted was in my local comic book store, which has a large display of sports figurines from McFarlane Toys. I spotted this one of Andy Pettite.

Can you see that someone wrote "HGH" on the price tag?

I shall end this with something Jarret spotted while we were in his local CVS.

"Love dolphins, but not condoms? Problem solved by being smart like our friends of the sea. Dolphin condoms are the perfect mix of fun to play with and safe to ride. Be confident and enjoy knowing you're protected and secure in the most beautiful-shaped condom ever."

I don't know what horrifies me more: That this product exists or that someone got paid to write that paragraph about it.

The Hypochondriac's Best Friend

2008-04-06T16:16:00.002-04:00

I've been sick the last couple of days. Sick enough to actually take off from work on Friday. I should probably take off Monday, too, but I'm probably not going to. My brother Bryan has been sick lately as well, and this weekend we had fun diagnosing ourselves with WebMD's symptom checker.

The problem with this thing is that it can take your vague symptoms and turn them into serious illnesses. For example, my symptoms probably mean I have a touch of the flu, which I am not happy about since I had my flu shot in November and I was almost in the clear for flu season. However, according to WebMD, I might have Legionnaire's disease. Or possibly West Nile Virus. Okay. Right.

Bryan (who will turn 20 at the end of this month, by the way) became obsessed with the fact that "foul smelling stools" was a symptom you could look up. He decided that he himself had foul smelling stools, and decided to see what he could have. Included on the list of things he could be suffering from were Crohn's disease or cystic fibrosis. Well there you go, people. If you have foul smelling poo, don't just light a match and spray some Lysol. Check yourself for cystic fibrosis.

Vignette

2008-04-01T19:42:00.003-04:00

I'm sitting on the concrete steps in front of the school with the one student whose ride hasn't arrived yet. Two guys walk down the street past us.

"Hello, how ya ladies doin' tonight?" One says to us. I sarcastically say "hi," obviously not interested.

As they walk away, his friend claps his shoulder, laughing. "Yo, man, she don't give a shit about you!"

I turned to my student. "You know what?" I whispered. "I don't!"

(And...............scene.)

Can't make this stuff up if I tried.

2008-03-24T12:56:00.003-04:00

Jarret and I happened to be wandering through a Sports Authority when this was spotted.

Yep. All Roger Clemens jerseys were half off. Priced to move. Get them out before opening day, I suppose. (Of course, that hasn't stopped my local Marshalls from having Randy Johnson jerseys still on the shelves, but whatever.) Notice how the display is still full of shirts? Yeah, me too.

What made this display even funnier to us was right after I took this picture, a father and his young son walked by. The young buy asked "but why are they half off, Daddy?" Unfortunately, we were too far away to hear the reply.

My dork moment of the day

2008-02-14T20:10:00.002-05:00

I got my Choral Journal today (you get it if you're a member of the American Choral Director's Association) and this was on the cover:

"Instrumentation of the Basso Continuo in Early Seventeenth-Century Vocal Music"

This is something I'm actually very interested in learning about. Off to read!

News flash: My boyfriend is a stereotype.

2008-02-12T17:36:00.000-05:00

If you've been in my area over the last week or so, you have had, or know someone who has had, a pretty bad head cold or a really bad stomach virus. I had the cold. Jarret had the stomach virus. Jarret was out of work for a week. I went into work only to have my boss tell me "those sick days don't carry over, you know." And I still didn't stay home. I am a glutton for punishment, apparently.

Anyway, Jarret was so weak last week that he couldn't even talk to me over the phone, we just texted. On Friday, I was over at my dad's house, where a brand new flat screen hd-tv was just installed. My dad turned on the tv, and there was no sound. I happened to text Jarret asking him if he knew what could be wrong.

My cell phone rang. It was him!

I picked it up. "Baby, how are you feeling?"

A hoarse, almost nonhuman voice answered. "Did you check the wires in the cable box..."

Your girlfriend doesn't talk to you for a week and misses you terribly. But if an hd-tv is in trouble...

Is our children leaarning?

2008-02-06T17:21:00.000-05:00

I saw this on the cover of my copy of the NJEA Review magazine.

NJEA stands for New Jersey Education Association.

Oops.

I'm on hold again. This easy listening music sucks.

2008-01-31T17:07:00.001-05:00

Once again, I'm on hold with my health insurance company. Fortunately, it's not about this. I've heard a prerecorded message twice now telling me that if I didn't get a letter from them, my identity wasn't compromised. And I didn't get a letter, so hopefully some thief doesn't have my social security number right now.

The reason I'm calling now is that I just received a $1900 bill in the mail for services that my insurance company last month said I only had to pay $136 of. And I did. Okay, someone just came on the line.

*time passes*

Okay, first they couldn't find the claim in their computer. They insisted that I saw some doctor named Rodriguez that day when I hadn't, and the amount billed was wrong. Finally, they checked something else and found it. After confirming everything that I already knew, I asked about the $1900 and why I was being billed for it. They told me that the $1900 exceeds the maximum amount allowed within a time period for this service. I asked then why would they say on the form that I don't have to pay any of it. And now I'm on hold again.

*time passes*

Whew. Unlike the unhelpfulness of last Monday, I just got told that there was no reason for them to have denied paying the $1900, and they were going to adjust it.

In other news, my refund from Amazon showed up in my credit card account. Glad that's over with.

Why I'm confused today

2008-01-28T17:00:00.000-05:00

Currently on hold with my health insurance company. More on that later.

Spent most of my day grading student essays. I can understand why my school's implemented a program where every student has to write one essay per class per marking period. Some of these kids don't know how to write a formal essay.

For one thing, it can't just be any old type of essay. It has to be a response to an article they've read. I didn't know I actually would have to circle the sentence "this author sucks" and comment that you couldn't write that in a formal paper. Also, spell check is not your friend when you want to write "et cetera" and end up with "excreta." But I'm happy that many of my students have a grasp on the english language. Then again, I haven't looked at all of them yet.

With my colleague insisting that I should leave school and deal with the rest of the essays tomorrow, I decided I'd read one more before I left for the day. (Actually, that's not true, I'm leaving in an hour to go back there for a rehearsal.) When I realized that I was reading the word "giraffe" instead of "girlfriend" on that last paper, I grabbed my coat and walked out the door.

I got home to find my sample ballot for super Tuesday in the mail. I'm happy that we're a super Tuesday state now; for the 2004 NJ primary, I went and saw that the only people on the ballot were Kerry and Kucinich. So while I feel that my vote is more important now, I noticed some mistakes were on the sample ballot I just received. Namely, that the names of Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Fred Thompson were on it. These people have all dropped out already. I can understand if they dropped out recently (like Kucinich), after they'd printed the ballots, but come on, Biden's been out for almost a month now.

Which brings me to my final confusion. I finally got in touch with a health insurance rep a few paragraphs up. I was calling because I'd filed an appeal on a claim. I'd accidentally gone out of network for some bloodwork (long story), and I was trying to see if they'd let the mistake slide (and I wouldn't have to pay $300). Three weeks ago, I got a redone claim with my responsibility changed to $0. I rejoiced. A week after that, I got a letter saying the appeal was rejected. I...pondered. I was busy for another week. And then finally called the company this afternoon.

Here was the customer service representative's profound answer: "I don't know."

According to his computer, my appeal hadn't been processed yet, and I need to wait another week and call back to see if anything had happened by then. Great. Thanks for the help.

On the plus side, I got an email from Amazon today saying that they were granting me a refund. Hooray!

My rant at part of the school's system ,and how I'd change it for the better.

2008-01-21T11:18:00.000-05:00

A few things you need to know to understand this:

1) My school just finished a five year long construction project. To have less kids in the building during construction, they instituted "senior privilege:" All seniors have the option of not having a class first or last period, therefore coming in late or leaving early, and having a couple hundred kids gone from the building. When the construction ended this year, they considered getting rid of senior privilege entirely, but the entire student population almost rioted, since they "worked hard" to have the credits available to be able to take off for one period a day their senior year. (I never had this program in high school, and in fact I lament that there were classes I wanted to take but never had the time, such as theatre arts and tv production. So behind the back of my students that think this way, I call them lazy brats. But that's another story.) In the end, they kept senior privilege, but only for first period. Parents complained because some kids used senior privilege to get to their after-school jobs early, but I'm sorry, most of the kids don't consider this program as a jump start on getting into the work force.

2) Because part of the student population doesn't get here until second period, that's when official school attendance is taken. Attendance is taken by filling in a bubble next to a name on a scantron sheet. The folder with the scantron sheet is left outside the classroom door. A woman walks around the entire school collecting these folders to be brought to the attendance office.

3) Here's how second period works in my school, attendance-wise, in the music department. All of the upperclassman groups meet second period. Everyone who enrolled in more than one ensemble (say, band and choir) is not in one room every day. We switch off. Yes, it's quite a bitch to lose 30% of your ensemble for half the week, every week. But the kids don't have room in their schedule for a second elective. But the attendance lists are not the same lists as the class lists for second period. That would be too easy. Official attendance for people enrolled in just band are assigned to the band director. Ditto for orchestra. But I co-teach choir, so everyone who's just in choir is split up between my list and my colleague's. Everyone in band and choir is listed under the band director. Almost all the orchestra/choir people are under the orchestra director. Except for two or three people who are under the choir lists. I don't know why. So how does the one teacher take attendace when some people on the lists are supposed to be in a different room that day? Have kids take attendance and have them duck into the other rooms to check if they're here.

4) The kids don't have homeroom on a regular basis. When they do, it's a 20 minute period between second and third period. They get these 20 minutes by making first, second and third periods seven minutes shorter. None of the other classes are affected. As someone whose major classes are first, second and third period, it pisses me off sometimes.

All of these amount to major problems. Here's another list why.

1) The seniors in my second period class do not arrive on time. They'll arrive anywhere from five to forty minutes late.

2) The kids that have been taking my attendance have been marking them present, in anticipation that they'll show up. I told them to mark them absent until they show up. They did the first part, and not the second. The attendance office calls these girls' houses and their parents freak beacuse they think they're not in school. The attendance office has been yelling at me for weeks over this. The last straw was telling me that they've never had any problems with the band and orchestra attendance. The kids who take attendace there are either a) not stupid, and actually do things correctly, or b)marking kids present when they're actually absent.

Now I have to waste class time grabbing the attendance folders out of my kids' hands to do them myself, and most likely call security to take the kids who show up late to the attendance office. We can't let the kids in late if the attendance folders have been taken away, and most of them refuse to go to the office for an admit slip. I don't want to call security - they don't have an extention, so I have no idea who I'm even supposed to call.

Here's what I would do to revamp the entire attendance system. Actually, what I'd want is to be able to enter in into a computer, but since the school's too poor to put a computer in every classroom, let alone have a fast enough network connection to have everyone enter attendance at the same time, I don't think it will happen any time soon.

1) Get rid of senior privilege. Lazy bastards. That way everyone will have to be here when school starts.

2) Get the attendance office to actually understand how the music department runs. At the beginning of the year, they'd assigned my attendance folder and my colleague's to separate classrooms (for the same class) and spent a week calling an empty room to ask me where my attendance folder was.

3) Have a 20 minute homeroom at the start of each and every day. If you show up to school late and homeroom's over, you're going to the attendance office. That's it. No gambling on going to second period and hoping that the lady hasn't taken away the folder yet. Our classes are already 48 minutes long, I think it'll be okay to take a few minutes out of each one.

4) This way, I can just mark down who's here and who's not, and have the attendance office change some of my absences to tardies if need be.

I know this is a long rant, but it's been making me really mad at work lately. I'm sick of having people in the attendance office blame me for stuff when it's really their faulty system to blame.

Happy New Year

2008-01-14T16:51:00.000-05:00

I didn't even need to watch the Giants/Cowboys gane last night. I was able to tell what was happening by the way my neighbors were shouting. If I heard "WOOOOOOOOOOOO!" the Giants had scored. If I heard "Ahhhh, motherfucker!" the Cowboys had scored. And in the end, there were more woooos then motherfuckers. Go Giants.

Spent most of yesterday procrastinating from writing my music theory midterm, as I was so sure that there would be several inches of snow on the ground today and a day off from school. But my brother Bryan kept saying that it was too warm outside to get much snow, and for once, he was actually right about something. It's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer correctly predicts that the comet heading towards Springfield will burn up in the atmosphere. "I know, kids. I'm scared too."

I don't have my usual Monday night rehearsal tonight, because most of the kids in my madrigal group are in band, and the dress rehearsal for their concert is tonight. There was no point in having a rehearsal with more than half the group gone. MLK day is next Monday, meaning no school, and no rehearsal for two weeks. Add on the fact that most of the kids in the group are also involved with the musical, and are in choreography rehearsals every afternoon, some of them cutting into my rehearsal start time - at 7:00 pm. What kind of high school decides to put on Cats anyway? The one I work at, that's what kind.

My colleague and I were supposed to spend today writing our choir midterm, so of course this has to be the day she gets sick and takes off work. (I think she wanted that snow day too.) So I spent two hours by myself in the choir room writing out what will hopefully be most of the midterm. Left alone to my own devices, I ended up with questions like this:

If you see the term accelerando in your music, you should sing
a) harder
b) better
c) faster
d) stronger

If my colleague comes back and complains about anything I worked on, I might have to smack her. I haven't taken a day off all year.

As to my ongoing battle over the incorrectly shipped Christmas present...no, I still don't have the CD set, and I got a form from my credit card company to file a dispute and get the charge removed. For some reason, they wanted a letter from another reputable merchant to support my claim, so I emailed Amazon to see what they could get me. They basically sent me an email that said "Um...you know that we can take care of that refund stuff for you, right? We filed a claim on your behalf, so this should be resolved in a week or too. And here is a step by step guide on how to track your claim status online!" Awesome. If that goes through, Amazon is totally forgiven with all the grief it gave me over obtaining the last Harry Potter book.

I jinxed myself with my last post, didn't I. Rar.

2007-12-29T18:47:00.001-05:00

I bought all of my Christmas gifts on December 9th. One still hasn't arrived yet. Yep, it's December 29th.

I'd ordered a CD set of Charlie Parker's complete recordings on Verve. This was going to be a gift from my brothers and I to our father, as it's a $150 set. I looked on Amazon, and there was a seller through Amazon's marketplace thingy offering it new and factory sealed for $108. They had a 99% positive feedback, so I ordered it from them.

Ten days later, the package arrived. However, it had a CD set of folk songs in it, as well as the receipt for the order of someone in California. I immediately emailed the company, and this is all I got:

Thank you for the email. We will provide you with a prepaid return label, so that you may send back the mis-shipped order.

Great. Because I really give a crap on whether you get your stuff back or not. I emailed a reply asked when I'd get my CD set, and...I haven't heard from them since. The company is based out of chain of stores in New England, so I figured they were extreme dumbasses and had everyone take off for Christmas, but by December 27th, I hadn't heard anything from them, and I hadn't even received the prepaid return label they'd promised.

My mom tracked down a phone number for the company. I got a busy signal every time I tried calling. I tried to fill out their customer service form on their website. There's a bug in it that won't let me submit my complaint. So I sent them another email to their "customer service" address rather than their "orders" address, threatening to cancel the purchase on my credit card if I didn't hear anything.

Well, I didn't hear anything. I called my credit card company this morning, and started the process for a charge dispute. Hopefully that'll get the company off their assess and mail me my dad's gift. If anything, I buy it somewhere else and I have a $74 set of folk songs. Looking at the website where I first found this, I notice that their price for the Charlie Parker set has gone up to $115 and their positive feedback has dropped to 98%. Let's see if I can make it lower.

Season's Greetings

2007-12-16T15:21:00.000-05:00

I love the holiday season, I really do. I love the lights and songs and yes, even the schmaltzy sentimentality. The only thing I don't like about it is agonizing over what to give as gifts. This year I think I set a personal best by managing to start and finish the entirety of my holiday shopping in one day - December 9th, to be exact.

Most of the shopping was done that night on Amazon, but the trip actually started the night before. I'd gone into Manhattan with my dad to go to Central Park, and the annual gathering that goes with the anniversary of the death of John Lennon. This was my fourth time going since 2000, and it might be the hundreds of people and even more candles, but I've never felt really cold there, despite the December weather.

I stayed over at my dad and stepmom's apartment that night, and in the morning went to Union Square, which has holiday gift vendors set up. On my way there, I passed hundreds of people marching down 3rd avenue yelling to free Tibet, and on 14th street I passed a gift store, which is where I ended up buying most of my gifts.

Anyway, I still spent almost two hours wandering through the vendors' booths, and here was my favorite item from my favorite booth.

Here's what it says, in case you can't read it: "Lookin' good for Jesus. Virtuous vanilla spf 18 lip balm. Be worthy, be noticed. Get tight with Christ!"

In case you're worried about the nature of the booth's merchandise, what I ended up buying there were a box of bandages that looked like strips of bacon.

This last photo is actually not from Union Square, but my local CVS.

Yes, that is a Christmas ornament. Look at the shape of it again if you didn't catch it the first time. That would be a magen David. I should have bought it. It's the perfect ornament for me, someone who celebrates both Chanukah and Christmas.

This coming week is the most stressful of the year, what with four performances and two night rehearsals. Coordinating all the kids this week is something that I like to refer to as the giant Tetris game, and that's just the start of everything that needs to be pulled off. But then I get to relax, get presents, and gorge myself on food. It's a nice trade-off.

How old am I, and how old do I want to be?

2007-11-21T20:55:00.001-05:00

During my first year as a teacher, I kept being mistaken for a student. Not surprising, since I was only 3 1/2 years older than the oldest person I was teaching. But to be a first year teacher, and have your colleagues give you that look of confusion every time you try to associate with them, can grow from annoying to upsetting after a while, and I actually longed to be a little older, just so I can feel like I belonged in the right place.

It's now my second year of teaching, and since now I'm known in the building, and the other teachers have realized that I don't dress like a student (aka like a ho, but that's a separate issue), I have that feeling now. And when a new security guard asks me to sign in at night (the sign in's for students only), after I'd just told him all the directions for the rehearsal I was holding later that evening, I get to make him look like a dumbass when I pull out my keys and faculty ID.

Anyway, here's the point I'm trying to make. Today we had a half day at school, and I left work and drove straight to Rutgers to pick up my brother for Thanksgiving. I walk into his dorm in my work clothes, and my brother's roommate looks at him and says "that's your mom?" I wanted to look older and all, but not old enough so that I have a kid that's a sophomore in college! Geez!

I am high and low brow all at the same time!

2007-11-14T17:52:00.000-05:00

I found this website where you can put in the url of your blog and they'll tell you the reading level required to understand your writing. Here's what happened when I put in this site:

Here's what happened when I put in the blogging I did over at Wordpress:

Some photos with some not-so-serious commentary.

2007-11-08T12:07:00.000-05:00

This is the bottom of a bag of some delicious Stacy's pita chips.

Look at the phrase on the right. I can't have been the only person to read it the first time as "OMG cholesterol!" Stupid internet has altered my critical thinking skillz. Skills. Dammit.

The second photo comes courtesy of some political signage I spotted while visiting Jarret last weekend.

This could have been the best political ticket ever, but that guy Malone had to ruin it. (Too bad it's a republican ticket. They won.)

I need this week to go better than the last one.

2007-10-28T21:47:00.000-04:00

This past week, I'd hoped that the worst thing that could happen would that I'd have no team to root for in the world series. (I still don't.) It's against my nature to root for the Red Sox, as Rudy should have known, and then I found out that it's impossible for me to root for the Rockies either. Sigh.

However, Wednesday morning, a whole period's worth of class time was shot when a kid decided to keel over and throw up on some chairs about five minutes after the class started (he's fine). On Friday morning, we lost most of rehearsal for another class when we had an evacuation after a bomb score.

But that was just at work. Thursday evening, my brother returned home to find that the house had been broken into. Our glass back door had been smashed in, the golf club used to do it (found lying around on our porch) left stranded on a chair. Bits of glass extended to all corners of the family room. We can't use the top lock to our front door anymore, since they'd originally tried to jimmy that open with a knife and got the tip stuck inside. The aforementioned glass smasher had apparently cut themselves while trying to open the door, as evidenced by this person staggering around drunk and leaving blood stains on the walls.

(The stickers on the door were so we wouldn't walk into clear glass. The sticker on the wall is from the police.)

How do we know they were drunk? How do I know to say "they?" Because the only thing missing in the entire house was almost every drop of alcohol we had, and there were no blood stains found by the liquor cabinet. Most of what was taken was hard liquor brought over from my grandmother's house in our search to sort out her things after her death, so it's more of a odd sentimental loss than material.

The worst part is, we know who was involved with this, the police agree with us, but no one can pin any evidence to convict anyone (yet...hopefully), and there's nothing we can do right now to make sure something like this doesn't happen again with worse things missing than alcohol.

This coming week actually has the potential to be worse for me, believe it or not, and I just don't want it to be. I just can't do it.

Hmm. Connecticut might want to read this.

2007-10-20T13:55:00.000-04:00

Jonathan is home this weekend for my birthday, and he was being a jerk and randomly saying things to me, than randomly naming bible verses that they're from. I actually looked one of them up to prove him wrong. Here's what I found instead. It's, Amos 4:1-3. I didn't even know there was a book of Amos until now. (I claim Jew.)

1 Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria,
you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy
and say to your husbands, "Bring us some drinks!"

2 The Sovereign LORD has sworn by his holiness:
"The time will surely come
when you will be taken away with hooks,
the last of you with fishhooks.

3 You will each go straight out
through breaks in the wall,
and you will be cast out toward Harmon,"
declares the LORD.

See that? All drunken waspish housewives who don't care about poor people will be carried out of their houses by hooks! The bible said so, it must be true!

Fictional characters coming out brings out the nerd in me.

2007-10-20T13:47:00.000-04:00

J.K Rowling Reveals that Dumbledore was Gay

This obviously makes some story lines of book 7 viewed from a different perspective. Now, when I imagine the duel between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in my head, it's like the end of Revenge of the Sith. Just imagine:

"You were the chosen one! You were supposed to bring balance to the Deathly Hallows, not leave it in darkness! I loved you, Grindelwald!"

All the news that's fit to put on tv.

2007-10-14T17:56:00.000-04:00

I've been a fan of Bob Harris since he first appeared on Jeopardy almost ten years ago, although I hadn't really remembered it was him until I read his first book. Anyway, he's finished his second book, Who Hates Whom:Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,and Various Things Blowing Up:A Woefully Incomplete Guide™, and here's an animated version of something that he pondered while writing it. It's a good point.

A story

2007-09-30T14:45:00.000-04:00

The other day I was waiting for my food at a diner when I decided to use the restroom. It's a very small restroom, two stalls, hardly anyone is ever in it.

Except for this time, both stalls were taken, one of them by a mother with two toddler daughters, with her not bothering to close the stall door to hoist the younger girl over the toilet seat. As I entered the room, she was yelling "Why are you wearing a diaper? I thought you were wearing pull-ups today..." The occupant of the other stall came out and informed me that it didn't have any toilet paper left, and I'd have to take some from the other stall.

Of course, the harried mother hadn't even noticed I was there. As I pondered for a second whether to ask her for toilet paper, the other daughter tugged on her mother's sleeve. "Mommy, hurry up! I have to pee too!" Mommy turned her head around and yelled at her, "You'll have to wait! She's going poopies!"

I didn't have to go that badly. I waited until I got home.

Busy! But here's a life update.

2007-09-23T16:55:00.000-04:00

School started three weeks ago. I've either been too busy or too tired to post anything.

School is definitely starting more smoothly than last year, but that doesn't mean it's all good, either. A lot of new stuff got thrown at us that we're trying to sort out, from a new schedule to work lessons around to little things like dripping pipes and holes in the wall.

Jarret got a teaching job as well, a leave replacement position, which means he's a certified substitute, writing up his own lessons and teaching, but still getting paid like a substitute teacher, only with more money than a regular sub gets. The place where he's teaching is a lot closer to my house than his, so he's staying with me a few nights a week now. It's a happy thing.

Some of my electronics are getting hand me down upgrades. My five year old computer is running out of space, so I'm upgrading to my mom's old computer, which is only a couple of years younger, but has a lot more space and a tv tuner/recorder in it. A good thing for when I have school functions at night. (Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy, and ER premiere this Thursday, and I have Back-to-School Night! Gah!) Mom and Jeff spent like an entire afternoon bringing that comp back from the dead, so I'm grateful. Also, to solve the problem of a broken tv at my mom's, we moved my grandma's tv to my dad's house, and my tv at dad's to my mom's. Zero dollars spent for me. Maybe I inherited this trait from my dad, who fixed the computer in his house by switching power supplies with another computer from his office. Keep in mind he acquired this computer from work for free when they upgraded their computers.

I shall leave this post with something about my brother Bryan, who has become a gym rat and eating pretty much nothing but turkey sandwiches, yogurt, and hard boiled eggs these past few months. On Friday, I came home from work, and Bryan said to me "hide the snacks next time." You see, Jarret and I had gone grocery shopping for when he stays over. One of things I had bought was a pack of Double-Stuf Oreos, which I'd had a craving for since my dream about them a while back. I'd eaten two of them. Bryan had eaten the rest. In one sitting. Holy crap.

Nifty.

2007-08-12T21:23:00.000-04:00

My car is old enough that I can catch this on the odometer.

Cool.

Awesome dream!

2007-07-30T11:51:00.000-04:00

I dreamt last night that there was such a thing as Triple-Stuf Oreos.

WANT.

This can be done. I just need a pack of Double-Stuf Oreos and a pack of regular Oreos....