Midnight rambling

I had strep throat this week.  It sucked, because I also just sent out progress reports and my little 5th graders have gone crazy, and the resulting drop in grades has left me with several parent conferences that need attending to.  And it's the rare parent who asks "what can I do to help my kid get their shit together," instead of saying "you need to be doing more to help them be successful."  I have to admit that I do actually have many parents who are supportive and who I just love. But the few who inevitably go into hysterics and start talking about how much they spend, and blah blah blah, really test my patience.  I am NOT very diplomatic when I'm sick.  In fact, I get kind of bitchy, and have little patience for emotional loonies, especially when the simple truth is that I take incredibly good care of their kids and if they'd put a little effort into actually parenting their children instead of trying to make them happy all the time, the world would literally change.

Did I mention that the filter between my brain and my mouth doesn't work well when I am sick?

I am about to start back to school for my doctorate on Monday.  I took a semester off because of my health issues, but I am as ready as I'll ever be to get back at it.

Nick made his HS swimteam, and his coach loves him.  He's leaps and bounds ahead of the other freshmen, and he likes his teammates. I think the exercise is making him feel better too, which is great.  He's a really good swimmer, and I'm really happy for him.

Erin is hopelessly addicted to Civ IV.  Seriously, she played it for over 5 hours today.  She gets all snitty when you try to talk to her while she's playing.  She's as bad about Civ as I was about poker at my worst.  Someone should do an intervention.

We just finished watching Rome again, and if you've never seen it, you should; it's awesome.

Our kittens have doubled in size, and are too cute.  There are a few pics at the bottom of the post.

Gran Torino is a great movie.  Clint is The Man.

I hit 20 year sober two weeks ago.  I'll be 38 two weeks from now.

No one I hung out with in HS or in college is on Facebook.  I keep trying to find something I like about Facebook, but I can't.  Like the movie History of Violence, Facebook is a stupid piece of crap, and I am right about this despite  the 99 percent of you who think Facebook (and History of Violence) is awesome. It's not.  You all have been victims of clever marketing and mob mentality if you believe something so incredibly mediocre and clunky is actually cool. 

I know I'm at least a litttle hypocritical about the Facebook thing because I still occasionally use it, but for me it's kind of like re-trying foods I don't like; every so often I try things again just to confirm that they still   suck.

 And finally, I was watching Armageddon tonight (I can't believe that with 500 plus channels this is what I have to settle with) and there was a character who looked so familiar I had to look him up because I thought he looks just like Hurley from Lost.  It turns out it's not him, but check out how much alike they look!

And here are the kittens.

Fifteen

Nick turns 15 today.
Fif-teen!
We're taking him out to the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, then one of his fav restaurants, Bucca Di Beppo, for dinner, followed by getting comfy on the couch and watching last night's episode of Heroes.
Fifteen. Jesus.
Life starts out so slow, like you'll never grow old, and the next thing you know it's racing by like telephone poles from the window of a train.
I'm kind of dumbstruck at the moment, but happy... as well as excited for Nick's youth and the possibilities for his future.
Happy birthday Boy!@

Maybe She read my Blog?

About an hour after my last post, Erin noticed that the cat had her kittens. It's funny, because we set up three possible nesting sights for her in our 10 x 12 spare room; one in the cleaned out closet, one in a specially constructed box, and one in a converted cat-carrier... and she decided that she must have her kittens in my best (and most expensive) suitcase, which I bought for my trip to Switzerland a few summers ago. Normally, I'd never spend so much money on something functional I could get at Target for around $30, but this is truly the best suitcase out there, especially for the kind of travel I was doing (and hope to do again).
Anyway, it was balanced haphazardly on top of some old computer gear in the corner near the bookcase, as we had cleared out the closet, expecting the kitty to have her babies in there, like a normal cat. I don't know what we were thinking.
Friggin' cats...

The town trollop's in a family way; and I'm a dragon-making genius!

So we rescued this little hoochie of a mom-cat from the SPCA.



Erin wanted to have a kitten and I figured this would be a good way to get her one. The mamma we adopted, they said, should have her babies within a few days.
Well, that was 17 days ago. Personally, I am beginning to think they just gave us a really fat cat. If she doesn't have babies soon, her ass will be tossed back out on the street.
In other news, we had a Chinese NY parade at our school to "honor" the three new Chinese exchange students we got after the holiday break. Coincidentally, this celebration just happened to be scheduled when the big-wigs of the corporation would be visiting our campus. The prep-time we were given to come up with a dragon for the parade? 9 days....
Keep in mind that this requirement was handed down well after lesson plans had been made for that week, so we either had to scrap our lessons, or somehow fit the dragon-making process into an already tightly scheduled work day.
So I'm not a big fan of these last minute projects, especially when we run the risk of minimizing an entire culture by expecting students to do projects like this without any context. So I scrapped my English instruction for 2 weeks, and we learned a little about Chinese myths, their NY celebrations, and why they have some of the traditions during this holiday that they do. The lessons went off better than I expected, and my students were really into it.
Meanwhile, I was fretting over the actual dragon. With no guidlines from anywhere (we were told to figure it out ourselves and 'be creative') I was naturally concerned, as I can hardly draw a straight line, and am one of the least artistic people I know.
On the other hand, I am also one of the most creative people I know, especially when it comes to problem solving, so it was with mixed feelings that I designed a model for my students to construct.
I started by watching several Chinese NY parades. Seeing how intricate the dragons were, I was more than a little concerned about making a hideous failure of a project, but I figured if I could just get the head right, the rest would fall into place.
Other teachers were using paper, sheets, boxes, etc., but none of their ideas seemed to me to be something I could do well, and besides, I`didn't want to copy anyone. They were ALL doing projects which the students would wear, which is really more traditional for the Lion dance, not the NY's parade. In NY's parades, the dragon is traditionally held up on sticks, chasing a ball that symbolizes the sun. So I decided to build ours using only traditional colors for luck and Spring (red, yellow, orange) and to make it with PVC and foam board. The head I built from foam coreboard and balloons, and the students did the rest. I was amazed (and very pleased) by the results. We had senior art students asking if we'd bought our dragon, and it was by far the best one. The president of the company took a picture of our class to put on the corporate website, and in general we got lots of kudos, which was great. Here are a few pictures of our dragon:










So besides the trollop and the dragon, not much else is happening here lately.
Well, except for the fact that Nick is going to be FIFTEEN on Tuesday, and I'll have TWENTY years sobriety on Sunday. It's crazytimes, indeed.

Damn the KGB!

Normally I am very good at finding things on the internet. However, tonight I looked around for about 3 hours (I even texted KGB, but they came up short) trying to find reference to one of the funniest commercials ever: a car commercial which featured a couple of LA hipsters getting in their car and heading to Vegas, with "Viva Las Vegas" blaring on the radio. They were all stoked, doing the head-bobbing finger snapping thing in tune to the music, as they came up on the Vegas welcome sign.



Then the commercial cut to a shot of them driving away from the city in near silence, looking very depressed. The only sound was the hum of the engine, and there was a caption that said something like "4 hours, 37 minutes and 800 dollars later." The idea was that at least the car (whatever kind it was) was a good deal, in spite of the otherwise very disappointing events of the evening.
If anyone remembers what car company this commercial was for, or better yet, can find the commercial on youtube or some such, let me know... It's driving me nuts!