How you know it was REALLY cold

How I know it is REALLY cold:

1. I can see my exhalations when I am in the house.

2. The guy who paints himself silver then poses downtown, as a live statue in front of the mall, stayed still all day because he was ACTUALLY frozen.

3. My cat's tongue stuck to the coat rack, and its not even metal.

4. The water in his cat dish was partially frozen.

5. My son wore pants to school. (If you know him you get it, but basically he almost always wears shorts)

6. The weather people referred to the day with superlative titles like "Coldest Day", "Record Winter Freeze of 2008," "Worst Winds Ever Seem on A Rampage!"

7. Even after over an hour of being under the covers in layers- like socks, leg warmers, sweatshirt... with a space heater aimed in my direction, I am still really cold. COLD!!!! Like, "where are my gloves, scarf and coat!" COLD. And I hate it.

My mom and several others have told me that "hate" is a strong word. I also know i should take my words seriously and think carefully before saying them... thinking... thinking...

I HATE THE COLD! HATE IT HATE IT HATE IT!!!

Another winter comes to my town and low and behold I am still not "adjusted" to the weather. It has been over a decade! If I am not used to it now, it is not gonna happen! That is all I am saying! Why does it have to be so fricken freezing! The sky was all sunny and beautiful, calling to me from the windows saying, "Hey! Come revel in me, I am your friend!" Then I go out into it and can't shake it off now that I am finally home.

I will be proactive!
Tomorrow I will finally use the fireplace, and I will sit right in front of it, It will be glorious! I will drink steaming mugs of hot apple cider. I will hang posters up of tropical islands surrounded by warm waters. I will turn on every light and wear sunglasses and pretend the flames are from the sun itself radiating in my living room!

Is it Spring yet?

Celebrating my Son's Birthday

The glaring music that plays during the beginning of almost every DVD, you know the one declaring the evil of downloading, is my current background music. Such compelling comparisons- "You wouldn't steal somebody's puppy! You wouldn't steal used underwear! You wouldn't steal a moldy sandwich! So don't pirate movies!" So dramatic, as if the world is coming to a swifter end because of the guy slangin' bootlegs on the block. I think there are much more important things going on...

but anyway- I just wanted to quickly say what an amazing time we had celebrating my son's 15th birthday! I don't want to advertise for any game system, but we played a video game that i love!!!! And honestly I haven't played a video game for 3 hours straight in ages. I didn't believe we played 3 hours! My children, their 2 friends and I were a band. There was a microphone, guitars, drums, it was AWESOME! We did a 2 and a a half hour set! WE ROCKED! Ok sometimes we messed up, but we tried to save each other, which i guess you can do by solo-ing and really going for it. Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi was definitely the crowd pleaser, and we did have a crowd. My favorite line: "I've seen a million faces, and I've rocked them all!" And I couldn't figure out if they thought we were all nuts or brilliant. I am going to go with brilliant. I totally want one of those at home! ! ! ! Maybe I can groom my family into a band... MWAH HA HA!!!

I wish you could add your own music in tho and get it to work! Of course they had a huge screen and a wide area- but with a disco ball and some lighting...the house wouldn't never be the same again! The walls would shake and the neighbors would start knocking. What I love most is that A. my daughter's good friend mentioned we need costumes next time! AWESOME!!!!!! I love that kid! BTW our band was called the Shimmy Shimmy Shu Shus, but we may or may not keep that.

So, I guess I should get to the DVD I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. The ads have long stopped and I do want to watch at least some of it. The other day I watched Office Space for the umpteenth time, I swear that movie gets more and more funny each time. I watched it with the subtitles for the first time and reading all the details, like the low background conversation and mumbling was an added twist.
Tonight's movie feature is Ong Bak with the astounding Tony Jaa. Did you see how he went under that truck?! And ran on those dudes shoulders?! Doing the splitz thru a hoop. Amazing. I wish I had stuck with Capoeira longer or gotten to a higher point with any physical body art form. I lacked that type of self discipline I guess. For now I will live vicariously through someone else.

Be good, and remember having fun is good! Try some, then have some more!
I might have to get out the Dance Dance Revolution tomorrow, I feel inspired!
Watch out world!
Here we come!

The Term Begins

I am teaching 3 classes this term.

That sentence seems simple and erases the intensity of my world. 3 classes at the university level is quite a bit. 2 of the classes are upper division and one is lower division. I have to re-re-read everything I make them read and be way ahead of the class. I am no longer reading for recreation, only for courses. There is so little time and so much research and gathering of info required, not to mention all the planning and being energetic and interesting and prepared.

My son is turning 15 this week.
My daughter will be 13 in a 3 weeks.

My point being, I may not have time to blog regularly.

Sports Pub Adventure

Way back in the day, (August 2007), I was at summer camp. While I was there I worked with children of course, teaching them about the lovely art of writing, facilitating discussions around gender, and playing games like capture the flag. But, I also found time to grow friendships as well. See a group of us staff made time to hang out everyday. We went into the small closest town and bought blingy rings that sparkled in the sun, crazy glasses that made us look like stars, face paint, boas, pizza pockets, you name it- the strangest things become fascinating when you are away from the bustle of the metropolis and in small town america. It seems like so long ago...

But today was a glorious day where we gathered together again. And even thought the sports pub was smoky to the point of making me nauseous, I had a great time! I watched the playoff game with the Steelers and the Jaguars. Most of the pub was rooting for the Steelers, so we were a little on the outs in regards to that one. (I don't even really like watching football, but it was a fine game to sit and watch.) Then, and here is the best part, we played pool. I am just ok at pool. Every once in awhile I get a lucky shot, but mostly I just move stuff around on the green with no clear intention. This isn't even about winning or losing (although my team did win the 4 out of 7 match- however 3 of those wins were because the other team scratched), its about being with friends and realizing that how blessed I am.

This was a perfect way to play before starting back to the grind on Monday. Even though I am coming down with a cold and feeling kinda crappy physically, it was great to laugh and joke and be competitive. So to my NCC pool peeps- thanks for the fun night out, maybe by the next time we hit the town they will have enacted the no smoking indoors rule : ) cause there were some chain smoking chimney stack people up in there! To all my other peeps- hope that the new year is treating you well and that you are enjoying 2008 so far!

What I Should Be Doing vs. What I Am Doing

Classes will start at the university next week.
I am teaching 3 courses Winter term.
So- there is a lot of stuff I need to do between now and then.
For example:
- Finish up the syllabi for 2 of the 3 classes
- Read through a stack of articles and book chapters on the "to possibly include" list
- photocopy a grip of articles and chapters
- take those photocopies and then scan them so they are electronic files I can put on line so students can read them
- set up the on-line course pages where students can access the articles
- watch documentaries I think will have clips that will be great for class

Mind you each of the items listed above require a lot of steps and time and energy. I am a professional, I teach all the time, and in some ways I am much more prepared than usual at this point. I say that to explain this isn't a mission impossible or anything, just a mission that I need to get focused on today and the next few days.

BUT, all these other things come up and distract me from the previously mentioned mission. So here is the list of things I've been doing this past week instead, this list is so much longer I think I will divide it into a couple of subtopics!

CLEANING: My bedroom and office needed cleaning: This task alone included
- rearranging furniture
- doing laundry
- vacuuming (also taking apart the vaacuum so it would work better)
- reorganizing my bookshelves
- cleaning out boxes of old stuff in my closet
- making my bed and of course changing the sheets and pillow cases which i hadn't bothered to do the many other recent times i made my bed, but felt was imperative under procrastination circumstances
- my walls looked bare after moving my shelves around, so I had to put up pictures, which required looking through pictures, finding frames, etc...
- a week ago, I even went through all of my dresser drawers and cleaned them out
- the living room needed tidying up
- I went through several piles of old papers and mail which means I had to do the next two items
- shredding papers
- recycling
- I even started cleaning off my desk! (which is the most related to the work I had to do, hence the thing I started on towards the end)

TV VIEWING and RECREATION
- finishing the DVD's for the last season of "24"
- starting a new series on DVD called "4400", luckily there are only 3 seasons on DVD and they only have about 12 episodes each. I only have the last two episodes for season 3 left- but netflix hasn't sent them yet
- working on an IQ test with my kitten (Contrary to our previous beliefs, he is actually above average, we were however ready for the worst)
- doing astrological charts on-line for friends of friends
- meetings with friends that aren't "necessary" but since it is break and classes are about to start I won't have time to do it later

All this proves a theory that I have contemplated for many years-
The need to finish work related to school is the best motivator to get everything else on your to do list that is unrelated to that schoolwork done. On top of that it makes all that other work even more fun and interesting!

Signed,
Yours truly sitting in a much cleaner and organized space, trying to decide what to do next other than continuing to plan for classes