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

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

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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!