Life and virtue

I've been slowly recovering myself and trying to get chores and cleaning done. My mom got me started going through some boxes when she was here visiting, and I've been trying to get up the discipline to continue the task. Last night, I went through one entire box. It was mostly full of Utah stuff-- binders, education manuals, notes for books I'd read or lectures I'd given, even some tracts that we wrote and published in 2000. I saved a bunch of stuff for archival purposes (maybe I'll actually organize and archive it!), and still was able to throw away or recycle c. 25% of the stuff in the box. If this keeps up, I'll be able to get rid of so much stuff, consolidate boxes, streamline and simplify our life... I feel so virtuous!

And speaking of virtue, I watched part of Ben-Hur while I cleaned and sorted last night. I haven't seen that movie since I was 10, and boy does it seem different now. I liked it back then, and I liked it last night, but the general impression was so different! I'm a lot more aware of things like historical context, scripts, acting, life in general... Ben-Hur won a truckload of Oscars in the Awards for 1959, and it really is a good film. The script, despite its Oscar nomination for best writing from previously published material, isn't that good. It contains few beautiful and memorable lines, lacks smoothness, and bears too much of the stiffness of its source material (which problems can be blamed on that material, the reverent novel by Wallace). Sometimes the actors seem to be playing bipedal platitudes, rather than passionate human beings. In my opinion, Charlton Heston, however, turned in a really good performance with the material he was given, even if he seemed too ruggedly old and jaded for his part in the beginning of the film. The direction, sets, costumes, all are very nice but somehow stuffy. It's a good epic, but I wouldn't buy that it is a better movie, qua movie, than other 1959 efforts such as Some Like It Hot.

One thing that caught my attention and made me realize how much my perceptions have changed since fifth grade, is the portrayal of the relationship between Judah and Massala in the early portion of the film. The two young men are so thrilled to see one another, and grasp and touch each other, and gaze into one another's eyes... "It will be just like old times!" It was all kind of... CREEPY. Just what DID they do in those old times? Yeesh. It was like Brokeback Mountain with togas. I wonder if director Wyler was intending to portray that subtext, or whether it was just played for innocence in '59 but seems less innocuous in these morally degenerate times.

Maybe I'll do another box and watch another old movie tonight. Or maybe I'll level my WoW character. The pursuit of virtue is a complicated path.

Another legend gone

Kitty Carlisle Hart, who made films and appeared on stage as Kitty Carlisle and then married playwright Moss Hart (of Kaufman and Hart fame), died on Tuesday, 17 April. My exposure to her work is mostly limited to the few musical films she made in the mid-1930s (the most popular being A Night at the Opera with the Marx brothers).

Sorry and my hair

Dear Internet,

Sorry I've neglected you again. I actually didn't mean to. I posted over the weekend, and thought everything was okay, but my mom sent me a note asking if I'd posted yet, and I looked, and apparently the post didn't publish. And Internet, I can't help thinking this is pretty much YOUR fault, because you dumped my post, and you really haven't been working to resolve your differences with my laptop. So get on that.

And internet readers, my big news is that last weekend, I cut my hair! It is a short, cute bob, sort of Louise Brooks without the bangs. I know, I know, it is sad if my biggest news is the fact that I chopped the dead tissue from my scalp... Well, the hair is now nice and easy to manage, as it is truly wash-and-go, with no need for gel, blow dryer, or curling iron, etc. On the minus side, however, is the unfortunate result that I now look several years younger. When one is 50 years old, I'm told, taking off 10 years with a haircut is a good thing. Not so when one is younger than 50, teaching middle schoolers, and looking barely older than one's students, to begin with. Ah, well, such is life. I guess I'll enjoy it when I'm 45 and still getting carded.

All the best,
Kiti

Alive

I'm feeling as though I'm coming to the end of a long dark tunnel, and there is, indeed, a light. I think I'll actually start cleaning my house, communicating with other human beings, and generally acting civilized.

Part of my cheery manner is probably derived from having spring vacation and not being around people for several days. I am also watching happy old movies and reading some books.

One of the movies I've watched is Hit the Deck. The score isn't altogether great, but the film reminds me of how much I loved to dance, and how much I'd like to take it up again. I am NOT too old. Here is a picture of one great dancer, Ann Miller:

Vacation

Well, I'm half way into my spring vacation, and it's been nice and lazy. I've played WoW and watched some movies and done quite a bit of sleeping in. I hope to watch some more movies and eat a lot of junk food. Booyah.

I'm feeling a bit of Bones withdrawal, since we recorded last week's episode, but didn't watch it yet, and there's ANOTHER ONE ON TONIGHT. We are falling behind! Can Brennan and Booth go on without our faithful viewership?

I've complained about it before, and I still don't understand:
How difficult is it to punctuate correctly when creating slides for the use of worship in the LORD's house?

One suspects that the Levites worshipping at the Temple avoided similar errors by (1) being conscientious and actually caring about things and (2) utilizing ancient Hebrew, which lacked, in its biblical forms, both vowels and written punctuation.

That's Good Satire

Or, Proof Positive That Gamers and Scientists Have Great Senses of Humor

Molecule of the Week archives from the American Chemical Society:
http://www.chemistry.org/portal/resources/?id=ec20b7786c5511d7e45f6ed9fe800100
http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/acsdisplay.html?DOC=HomeMolecule%5carchive%5cmotw_mithril_arch.html

And the introduction of a highly desirable new item in World of Warcraft:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/items/tinfoilhat.xml

Yes, it is the first of April.

Benign neglect

Dear faithful readers (if indeed I do have any),

I have neglected you. Shame on me!

So what's new in the life of Deb? Not much. Jeff and I have been going to work, coming home, playing World of Warcraft, watching a few TV shows, and in general, contributing as little as possible to the advancement of the human race (which doesn't bother me, as I don't much like people anyway).

I've been slowly reading my way through a few books: After the Ice (Yes, still--it's a long book.) and The Introvert Advantage (Aha! I knew there had to be at least one.). I'll be posting information and reviews.

I've watched a fair number of my dear old movies. Some were great, some good, some just barely decent:
Sunrise - great
Peter Ibbetson - good
Design for Living - good
If You Could Only Cook - good
More Than a Secretary - decent
The Rich Are Always With Us - decent
The Importance of Being Earnest - good, bordering on great
Designing Woman - good
Two Arabian Knights - good
Cattle Empire - decent, but it had Joel McCrea, so bordering on good
Elephant Walk - good
The Penguin Pool Murder - great
The Mating Season - great
Adventure in Manhattan - decent, but again, Joel McCrea...
I also watched a more modern movie:
Bride and Prejudice - good, bordering on great

Far from being completely lazy, however, I have been doing useful things like washing dishes and the laundry.

On a larger scale, Jeff and I are trying to figure out what to do with our lives , long-term as well as in the next year or so. My current favored occupations are:
Beach bum - Low start-up cost, but becomes increasingly difficult, the further one lives from a coast.
Film and/or art critic - I think it would be fabulous to get paid to say nasty things about other people's hard work and creative endeavors. Maybe I don't know art, but I know what I don't like.
Performance artist - I could put all those black clothes from my early twenties to good use.
Shock novelist - If you thought The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure were bad, wait till you read my next opus, wherein you'll discover that Rand McNally are behind a huge international conspiracy and their road maps contain coded information regarding the path to a planet near a star called Kolob...

Anyway, glad to hear from any of you, and drop by my blog any time.

All the best,
Kiti Fantastico

TGIF (or nearly)

I am ready for the weekend.

I was reflecting on things, recently, and realized that things have been rather dry on the amusing-notes-written-by-middle-schoolers front. Sorry, but I can't MAKE them be crazy and funny.

Things at work are better this week than last. I am generally enjoying myself throughout the day. I still don't think, however, that doing classroom intervention with poorly behaved adolescents is my calling in life.

At home, I am rather frustrated because I can't find the charger for my camera battery. I haven't used my camera much since Christmas, but when I wanted to use it over the last weekend, I couldn't because the battery was dead and the charger wasn't in the place where I habitually keep it. *sigh* So I guess this means that I'll have to spend some time this weekend cleaning and going through my stuff till I find it.

RIP, Betty Hutton

I kept thinking I had something about which to blog, but then kept forgetting about it. Finally, I remembered while at a computer.

Another great Hollywood legend has passed on.

Betty Hutton gave audiences a lot of laughs, and my personal favorite of her films is The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. She died on March 15, of colon cancer.

Let's see...

I've accomplished little in the past week. All I've managed to do is go to work each day. I'm tired.

Things have been kind of slow on the funny-notes-written-by-middle-schoolers front. I also don't have dramatic stories or anything.

The funniest thing that happened last week was when I was having a conversation with some of my young male students about such things as the function and significance of the grill. One young man insisted that a grill with good bling would attract girls. I responded that they are all too young to be worrying about girls so much.
Me: You should be enjoying your youth. You'll have plenty of time to be grown up, and worry about girls and romance and stuff, for the rest of your life. How old do you think I was when I had my first boyfriend?
Them: [various guesses] 12? 14? 16?
Me: No, no, I was 18. I was an adult before I had a boyfriend.
Young man: So before that, you only dated girls?

Haha. Priceless! These kids are really quite narrow-minded and limited in their conception of the world.

I've been sick for the past several days. Why, oh why, must I be plagued with this body of death?

I've been watching old movies, playing WoW, and reading After the Ice.

Oscar

Apparently, the Academy Awards are upon us once again. For some reason, I'd forgotten that they would be so soon. I was thinking they'd be in March. Oh, well.

This year, I have no opinions about the nominees and prospective winners. I saw few films in the theatre this year, due to the fact that I can't afford to go to movies anymore, and they are usually not worth my time and money anyway. I just hope Pan's Labyrinth wins Best Foreign Film. Oh, and I wonder why Meryl Streep was nominated in the Best Actress category for her SUPPORTING role in The Devil Wears Prada.

In honor of the miniature golden man, however, I'll discuss some Oscar-winning (or nominated) films of the past.

The first Best Picture winner that I remember watching from start to finish was Ben-Hur. My teacher showed it to us when I was in fifth grade, because we were studying Ancient Rome in social studies and she thought it would be relevant. I was canny enough to realize that Judah was the same person as Moses in The Ten Commandments, which I'd also seen. [We didn't see a lot of movies where I grew up, and they were carefully monitored, but Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments were biblically-related, and so were deemed acceptable.]

The first Best Picture winner that I ever saw that really impacted me was My Fair Lady. I viewed it in the late 1980s. I was fascinated by the music, the dialogue, the elegant costumes and settings. I can still sing most of the songs in the score. However, I'd never even HEARD of the Academy Awards. And I didn't realize that movies had changed since 1964. Pretty much the only movies I had ever seen were musicals or Disney films. And Star Wars.

The film that really turned me on to classic old movies (and how!) was It Happened One Night. It changed my life. I had just moved to the US, didn't understand New Kids on the Block or Beverly Hills 90210. Experiencing the great writing, performances, and film-making of a blithe and witty romantic comedy... It injected sense and beauty into my life. I haunted the Beaverton Public Library section on film; I moved from there into the neighboring sections on theatre and music. My goal was simple: Learn as much about old movies as possible. My corollary goal was equally simple: See as many old movies as possible. I refined my tastes and developed lists of actors, actresses, directors, and movie genres that I preferred over others.
Example:
Likes - Screwball comedies. Musicals. Historical epics. War movies.
Dislikes - Movies about sports. [Gary Cooper was great, but Pride of the Yankees really didn't do much for me; ditto for James Stewart and The Stratton Story.] Some gangster movies. [I never finished either Public Enemy or Little Caesar. Not sure why I didn't care for them.]
Any person who has any interest in films, modern or historical, absolutely must see It Happened One Night. The cross-country buddy movie attains a new dimension, long before buddy movies even existed. Learn handy hitchhiking tips and understand the importance of the walls of Jericho. Figure out why sales of men's undershirts dropped following the release of this film.

It always seems a bit unfair when actors who originate a role onstage repeat it on film and win an Academy Award. It's like, they had WAY more time to practice than their direct-to-film competition. Nevertheless, those performances often deserve the award, as in the case of Judy Holliday and Born Yesterday. I would recommend this movie not only for Miss Holliday's heartwarming performance but as a fabulous (and only slightly fantastic) demonstration of the power of education to transform an individual's life.

I certainly don't always agree with the Academy's choices for awardees. The first Best Film winner that I actively disliked was Cimarron. I still can't figure out why it won, although the competition was pretty weak that year (1931). I've also loathed Forrest Gump, Terms of Endearment, and Shakespeare in Love.

How about some Oscar trivia?
First set of siblings to be Academy Award-winners? Norma Shearer and Douglas Shearer.
Second set of siblings to be Academy Award-winners? Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore.
Another set of Oscar-nominated siblings? Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty.
Sisters who were competing with one another for Best Actress awards? Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine for 1941 Awards; Lynn Redgrave and Vanessa Redgrave for 1967 Awards.
Complete nuclear family to have Oscar wins and nominations? Judy Garland (nominated for 1954 and 1961, won special juvenile Oscar for work in 1939), Vincente Minnelli (nominated for 1951, won for 1958), Liza Minnelli (nominated for 1969, won for 1972).
Multigenerational family of Oscar winners? Actor Walter Huston, director John Huston, actress Angelica Huston.
His and Hers trophies? Aside from Garland and Minnelli (mentioned above), several married couples have taken home awards: Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, won Oscars while married to each other. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones also have matching Oscars, though he won his before they were married. I'm not sure if even I can remember all the married couples who have been nominated for and/or won Oscars, whether married or not at the time. Off the top of my head: Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, Carole Lombard and William Powell, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner, Norma Shearer and Irving Thalberg, Joan Crawford and Franchot Tone, Mary Pickford and Charles Rogers, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Helen Hayes and Charles MacArthur, Ginger Rogers and Lew Ayres, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini, Annette Bening and Warren Beatty, Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet, Margaret Sullavan and William Wyler, Margaret Sullavan and Henry Fonda, Michael Todd and Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Todd and Joan Blondell, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall... I'm sure I missed someone, somewhere in there.

Sin in the World

As you may have guessed, faithful readers, my life is boring enough that I don't have a lot to say, and therefore my posts have dwindled. I will do better, I promise.

The thing that prompted me to post tonight is actually a very sad thing. I don't always have the easiest job, but I have begun to build relationships with a few of the young people placed under my care. I have several that I see every day, including my teaching aides. I inherited most of my TAs from the previous Transition teacher, but have lost a few and gained a few in my months in the position. The previous Transition person was also the football coach, and the majority of the TAs were on the football team. Coincidence? I think not. A few of the TAs were actually bad kids that had been placed with that teacher in the hopes that he could influence them for the better. Good plan? Well, I don't particularly think so. But some of the knuckleheads have grown, and others I have gotten rid of. The TAs I still have are good, solid kids. I have come to care a lot for them.

My first period TA is a sweet young man who is growing out of his knucklehead stage. We'll call him Carlos, which is not really his name, but works for our purposes here. Apparently, he was quite a little hellraiser in seventh grade, but as an eighth grader, he is better (not perfect, but better). I keep an eye on him, on his grades and general behavior in school, and I'm very honest and open with him.
If he is tardy, I'll come up to him and say, "Carlos! Get up earlier and get to school on time. Do I need to call your house at 6:30 every morning to make sure you get up? Because you know I will if I have to." And he grins sheepishly, ducks his head, and makes an effort to be on time for the next several days.
When he is sick, I tell him to drink hot tea with honey and lemon.
Last week, I took him aside and said, "I'm worried about you, Carlos. I looked at your grades, and you need to be doing better."
He's opened up a bit about his life and his family, and I've known that things are hard for him. I pray for him and some other students almost daily. But this morning just made me so sad. He had his head down on top of his notebook, and I asked him, half joking, if he hadn't slept much during the night.
"Well," he said, "I went to bed, but my dad came home at 3 and said he was leaving, and left around 4."
"So your dad works at night?"
"No."
I was utterly confused. "So where was he in the middle of the night?" I didn't mean to pry; I was just seeking information.
"I don't know. He just came and said he's leaving. I don't know where he's going. My mom is thinking about moving to Sacramento."
"Wait, your dad is leaving your family? Carlos, are your parents separating?"
"Yeah."
My heart just broke for him. He told me about how he didn't want to leave his friends, but he had to go with his mom if she moved, to take care of her and his younger siblings. He's been pulling himself together and staying (mostly) out of trouble this year, and now he's having to deal with too much sorrow and too much responsibility, when he's far too young.
*sigh*

Not all my stories from work are funny.

Sunday in the park with George

Or not, since I didn't go to the park or do anything with anyone named George today.

Jeff and I got up at a decent hour and went to the second service of our local Vanilla Protestant Church that Does Not Teach Heresy. We have decided to attend this church, basically because we have tried all the other likely candidates and this one was most acceptable to us. We are not crazy about it, but we know that there are good people there and we've really enjoyed the (non-heretical) preaching, so we're happy to attend.

I thought I was doing okay, but I was grumpy during the service's mandatory meet-and-greet time (I think it's inappropriate to force people to be falsely social during a worship service) and then the music contained lousy songs that I didn't know and didn't want to sing. Toward the end of the set of songs, I got the bright idea to count the number of slides that were correctly spelled/punctuated/etc. versus those who were not. This is because things in that respect are usually done so poorly in church, and it IRRITATES me. So, in honor of Poor Taste in Sacred Music, I present the following statistics:
The next-to-last song had banal lyrics, banal and repetitive tune. I started counting in the middle of the song, so this reflects only the BA section of a standard AABA setup.
-Incorrect slides: 6
-Correct slides: 4
The last song was also banal. It had 14 total slides.
-Incorrect slides: 14
-Correct slides: 0

Apparently, today was "Amazing Grace Sunday", but we did not sing that song. But only God's amazing grace is great enough to save someone who decides that focusing on punctuation errors is the way to pass time in His house.

After church, we went to lunch at Strings. I had minestrone soup, pizza bread, and spinach and cheese ravioli. Sometime in the past few years, I've started to enjoy eating again. There were a few years when I didn't care to eat much, because stress caused me to lose my appetite. I didn't even notice when food started to taste good again, but today, I suddenly realized, "Hey! I like food!" I was gratified, and celebrated by eating another piece of bread. I think low-carb diets must be one of the most horrific things of which I have ever heard.

We came home and played WoW, and I leveled my mage from 8 to 10.

We went to dinner at Debbie and Jerry's house, with Olaf and Rosalee and Rob and Candace in attendance. Apparently, Olaf (Jeff grandpa) is in poor health since he had heart trouble and was in the hospital last month. I guess there is some concern over him. He is 90, and has been such a go-getter since I've known him. Jeff's grandparents have always been very good to me, and they are the only semblance of grandparents I have left, so I hope he recovers his health and goes for another 10 years, at least.

It rained today, and was grey and chilly. I hope the sunshine returns soon.

Oh WoW!

Well, World of Warcraft has honestly been taking up a large amount my time, and I'm not sorry to say it. I'm enjoying learning some new skills and it's been nice to have an outlet during the past few weeks, when I've been pretty stressed. I've been neglecting my family and friends, though.

Not content to remain a Level 21 human rogue, I went and created a night elf hunter (now Level 29) and a human mage (now Level 10). I like different aspect of each character.

Below is my rogue at night, in Menethil Bay:

Belated

Happy (Belated) Birthday to two lovely people in my life, who both were born on February 14 and who both live, coincidentally enough, in Phoenix, AZ:
-My newest sister, the wonderful Jen Price. Despite the tales that people tell of fighting with in-laws, I've had only positive experiences with them. Sister-in-law Jen is fabulous in the way that she handles her life with order and dignity combined with a sense of humor. She also handles my brother, which is no small task: She has him sending hand-penned valentines to his siblings! That, dear readers, is the mark of a woman whose worth is far above rubies, whose deeds will bring her praise in the city gates, whose children (which she better start having soon) will rise up and call blessed.
-My high-spirited friend, Sam Guthrie the superhero. I've known Sam decently well for not even two years, but I just admire so much about him. He is a good husband and a supportive friend, who is always willing to help the helpless in questing in WoW or provide hospitality with open generosity.

Return of the Silver

My computer has been somewhat non-operational, at least from a blogging perspective, as our internet has been on the fritz.

But it's fixed. Yahoo!! [The exuberant expression of joy, not the dot com.] So I can now get back to my usual postability.

Pan's Labyrinth

Jeff observed that the proper name for this film is Labyrinth of the Faun, per the translation from the Spanish to the English.


We watched Pan's Labyrinth last Saturday night. I had read good reviews and was interested in seeing it, and when a friend from Bible study rang us up and proposed a trip to the theatre, Jeff and I agreed. I wasn't sure what to expect, even though I'm usually fond of artsy foreign movies, but I found myself completely blown away.

Yes, it was violent, although less so than many other films I've seen (*cough* Passion of the Christ *cough* or Braveheart *cough*), and the violence had a purpose: to highlight the horribleness of, well, senseless and cruel violence. And it demonstrated the truth of the scripture, "Greater love has no one than this, that he (or she) would lay down his life for another."

O Crappy Day

Pardon my French, but you know it hasn't been sunshine and roses when the question "How was your day?" can't be answered without phrases such as "gang fight", "police dogs", and "full lock-down".

My particular school site is the second-worst middle school in the district, as far as poverty/drugs/gangs/etc. are concerned. Even if it's not the very worst, it's pretty bad. A bit of background: There is gang affiliation among even 12-year-old children, and gang-related scuffles are not uncommon. Most of the gangs are ethnically segregated (Asian, Hispanic, and African-American gangs), and there is fighting among rival gangs within ethnic boundaries, as well. Basically, nobody can get along with anybody else. The Hispanic gangs in our area are primarily affiliated with either surenos (south/blue) or Bulldogs (initially connected to the nortenos, north/red, but now resisting association with the main nortenos; they want their own identity); these are prison gang affiliations, and they're kind of confusing. There is good evidence that Latino gangs throughout CA have started to engage in violent crimes against African-Americans, reflecting a larger power struggle between browns and blacks in the west coast's urban centers. And so, in the past few weeks, there have been several face-offs, sometimes coming to blows, between Hispanic and black youths. [Note: The Asians gangs are pretty cut-throat, but as with any Caucasians, the Asian population is small enough to make them a minor part of any equation.] Fun times. The Bulldog presence is very strong, and the students are not allowed to wear any red. We are always finding grafitti (tagging is usually ESF or BDS) on the property. I know some of my students who tag Bulldog stuff on their binders and papers. Not too bright.
Yesterday afternoon after school, African-American students were jumped by a group of Bulldogs, allegedly wielding crowbars or brass knuckles, just over the fence from the school. I wasn't on the scene, but I heard reports of the fight on my walkie-talkie, and then heard the siren and saw the ambulance. Not a happy scene. Naturally, tensions were high today, and I actually expected some fights. I did NOT expect to hear via walkie-talkie, during Period 3, that we were going into lock-down for an unspecified reason. I had just sent my TA on an errand, and I went to the door and called him back. The announcement came over the PA a few minutes later, and I had my smallish flock settle down to wait for who-knows-what. I was rather pleased that they stayed relatively calm, and I myself wasn't particularly nervous or frightened. Thanks to my walkie-talkie, I heard a lot of radio chatter, and there was police presence; they were bringing dogs around to check out every classroom. I don't know what exactly they were seeking, nor do I know what exactly they might have found. Even the radio traffic didn't give me that information. However, the standard teachers who didn't have walkie-talkies were even worse off, and I know (from talking with them later) that they were very confused and (in some cases) frightened indeed. We essentially stayed in lockdown till the end of the day, although students were allowed to go to lunch and then switch classes once, under heavy security. My students don't change classes, so we just stayed put and they brought lunches to my classroom. Someone finally came to relieve me, after 1:30 pm, when I'd been in there without bathroom or food since 8:00 am.
At the end of the day, there was no official police finding, so students were given an explanatory note for their parents and then dismissed. I was exhausted, because even though my class is small, it is very intense, since it consists of 100% poorly behaved, at-risk students. A few of them, being (1) illogical and (2) very naughty, actually tried to run out the door while we were in lock-down. Grrr. Being stuck in a room with them for more than three hours, with no outside contact except a walkie-talkie utilized by harried administrators, was not fun. Let me just say, however, that I truly appreciate my teacher aides, as they were beautifully behaved and supportive during the ordeal.
Anyway, that was my day. I feel as if I haven't related it very well at all, but it's the best I can do at present. So I am fine and healthy, if a rather tired, but I'm realizing that I actually DO work at a school where many students are violent and cruel, carry weapons, and probably won't live very long. As a teacher for at-risk students, how can I reach out to them? I've found that it doesn't work very well to take a logical approach and explain, using straight facts and basic reasoning, that gang involvement is a poor prospect indeed. I don't understand the appeal, and I don't know how to get into their brains and get them to really THINK about things before they make choices that will destroy them. Frankly, I'm the wrong person for the job.

Well

I am having a pretty interesting day. Not fun interesting. Just interesting. More later.

Treasures of Note-writing

Dear readers, I am coming to believe that featuring correspondence obtained from the grounds of a middle school will become a regular feature of the offerings of Kiti Fantastico. I find material here and there, and will share it as decency allows (I found one note last week that was so foul that I threw it away rather than putting it here to upset you, dear readers).

The latest: A young woman expresses interest in the workings of the criminal justice system, and asks her friend to let her fingers do the walking, so to speak.

Dear Jxxxxxx
Hey Gurl how u doing? Me ain't shit [sic] Just chiling? By myself and writing you dis letter... Well anyway forget about the big favor I told you about calling Rxxxx (scrap foo)... But there's another big favor that i want you to do for me and it's by calling the operater (411) and asked them if they know the new address to the new Julvie (the jail for young teenagers) You know what that is... Well also Just Give me call at xxx-xxxx right now not tomorrow right now i mean it ok so please... Well Just do this for me and i'll owe you one ok friend...
WRITE BACK NOW...
{hear} Lxxxx Exx
AKA
Lil Momma

I know I speak for all of us when I say, "Make your own stupid phone calls until you're old and important enough to have a secretary!" And also, "Search for juvenile hall on Google Maps if you want to know where it is." Sheesh! But at least this girl was smart enough to ditch the "scrap foo". [Note: A "scrap" is a slang term for a member of a certain local gang.]

I alluded to being ill in my last (list) post.

I have been fighting a cold for a week. It has been more annoying than anything, because it never gets serious enough to stay home from work or go to the doctor, but it has taken its time going away. I had a sore throat for most of last week and through the weekend, sneezed and sniffled on Sunday, and am slightly husky-voiced but recovering right now.

Nothing fabulously fun and interesting at present. I am trying to feel better, talk to friends and family on the phone, get together with Merina, and pull together motivation for life in general.

Weekend To-Do

Laundry - Mostly done
Dishes
Clean Kitchen
Watch Veronica Mars - Done
Finish and delete two items from DVR
Go to gym - Cancelled due to ill health
Write two pages of project
Compile list of frequent students for work - Done
Post on blog - Done
Go to church - Cancelled due to ill health
Meet w/ Merina and family after church [tent] - Cancelled due to ill health
Burn CD of favorite songs
Finish Dead Mines quest with group - Done!

More treasures from work

My relationship with my job is a funny thing. It has been my impression that many of the teachers at my school are very gifted, and they are passionate about what they do; they work hard and make sacrifices because they feel that they are called to work with middle school students in a tough area. They really like the kids and like working with them. For my part, I have been passionate about many things, and feel that I have a calling, but it really isn't to work with troubled adolescents in southeast Fresno. Nevertheless, that is what I do, and by all accounts, I'm pretty good at it. And I think some of my giftedness in that area comes from the fact that I don't really like the kids. I don't like kids in general, and these in particular are rude, ill-mannered, and often poorly groomed. Don't get me wrong: I love the children as God's creatures, and there a few of whom I am secretly very fond-- their antics keep me amused all day long. But I don't suffer from the illusion that I am buddy-buddy with the students, or that they want any sort of real relationship with me. I don't care if they hate me. So my combination of tough love and unconcern makes me a stern taskmistress and thoroughly unsympathetic, though actually very empathetic and concerned for their well-being (they just don't see it, being focused on the whine of the moment).
They say, "I hate you!" I reply, "Okay" and smile.
They cry, "You're mean!!" My answer is always a smile, accompanied by some comment such as, "It warms my small, shriveled heart to hear you say that".
They complain, "Transition sucks!" And I smile and say, "I'm so happy that you think so. It means I'm doing my job well."
Any comment from them about boredom, lack of supplies, or pretty much anything is met with, "I don't care" or "I don't need to hear it". Followed by reminders such as "Remember, it's your responsibility, not mine, to _____________" and "Make better choices, and you won't end up here again".

That's it, all day long: "Make better choices, Horacio!" "What kind of choices have you been making today, Jose?" "You need to focus on making good choices, Jakeerah."
Maybe, some day, it will sink into some student's head. I'm waiting for that day.

My students teach me a lot, too. Some of them, at 12 or 13, know more about life behind bars than I do, even after having watched many episodes of Law & Order. I learn plenty about drugs, gangs, and juvie, by sitting around and listening to them talk at lunchtime in the cafeteria. Sometimes they remember that I'm sitting there, and clam up, but other times, they just don't care, and plunge right ahead. I am finding out tidbits regarding which students are "bulldogs" and "scraps", who may be planning to fight after school, and whose family members allegedly sell drugs.

Interestingly, a few of my young people have made observations about my appearance. They all seem to focus on the fact that I am slender, though they utilize the less-flattering term "skinny".
"I'm going to eat my lunch so I don't grow up to be skinny like you."
"How come you're so skinny, Mrs. Felix?" [Oh, yes, and there is this one student who is, for some reason, convinced that my last name is Felix.]
I think it's odd, since I am slim-to-average, and not particularly thin at this point in my life. However, I try not to react too much to their remarks, choosing instead to instruct them in etiquette: "It's not polite to make comments about people's appearance. You should not talk about whether they are fat or skinny, because it may be a sensitive subject for them."
Ah, body image, the great equalizer.

Out of the Mouths

Commentary on sociological demographics, as presented by an adolescent in southeast Fresno.

[Context: Eighth graders are currently doing pre-registration for next year, in high schools throughout the area. Last week, one of my students was doing just that, and we ended up discussing high school options and such.]
HIM: Did you go to Clovis High School?
ME: No.
HIM: Oh. You didn't go to Clovis?
ME: No. I've hardly ever been in Clovis, except maybe once or twice.
HIM: What?!? I thought you were from Clovis. There are a lot of white people in Clovis.
ME: ...staring at him, dumbfounded...

Wow. I can see how, in his mind, it would make sense. But, really... wow.

This brings to mind a story about someone who did go to Clovis High School. Back in the old days (2002, in fact), when I worked at the HATC , there was a summer intern who shared my office. His name was Trevor, he was from Clovis, and he actually went to college with my younger brother, at the Supersmart Yuppie School. Anyway. Trevor had diabetes, and I'd see him stabbing himself with either a lancet or a needle on a fairly regular basis. Trevor also had a poorly planned internship assignment that left him with long periods of down time, when he'd read, play around on his computer, or even take a nap. This led to me walking into my office and seeing him with his head down on his desk or keyboard. Knowing he was diabetic, I'd panic and cry out, "Trevor, are you all right? Speak to me!" Because having someone die of insulin deprivation (or whatever) in my office? Not high on my list of things I'd like to experience in this lifetime. And then Trevor would lift his head and stare at me balefully and resentfully, dragged from sweet slumber back to interminable ennui by the blast of my voice. *snicker* As far as I can tell, Trevor never much liked me.

Okay, well, the Trevor thing was funny, but I guess you had to be there.

A-questing we will go!

Poor, dear, faithful readers!

I know I haven't been posting much... In truth, I lack much of substance to offer.

I've been spending my time either doing housework IRL or battling beasts in WoW. I'm working hard to level up, but everyone with whom I play is at a higher level, and it's discouraging. I go on quests with them, since I don't want to be by myself, but I tend to die a lot. *sigh*

If I can, I'll try to figure out a way to post a picture of what I look like as my character: I'm a Level 17 Human Rogue, for what it's worth.

What's to say? I'm not having anything interesting going on right now, other than life-as-usual.

I'm sure there are things going on in my life, but can't think of aught at all.

Some Trick

I know there must be some trick to it, but it looks awfully fishy to me!!
http://www.glumbert.com/media/cyril

Reality, Part ii

You know you are a LOSER when you start getting carpal tunnel syndrome from playing WORLD OF WARCRAFT. During the same weekend that you forgot to return your mother's phone call (seriously, I remember to reply to e-mails better than returning phone calls).

On the plus side, Jeff and I visited our local church for another Sunday morning service, and decided that it is acceptable. And as a bonus, I walked into the worship center and immediately recognized an old friend from Biola that I haven't seen for years, who is now living in Visalia with her husband and 1-year-old child.

And I did my second part of a two-part series on Mormonism for our Bible study on Sunday evening. Everyone seemed to think it went well.

Adieu

http://www.nyobserver.com/20070108/20070108_Rex_Reed_culture_rexreed.asp

Rex Reed lists the great cultural figures that died in 2006.

I was aware of most of them, but how did it escape my notice that Robert Sterling had died?

More from the Trenches

Ah, the fabulous world of middle school note-writing. This latest one is from a repentant ex-boyfriend, who decides to try and get his spurned girlfriend back.

Hey
What ↑ Well just righting back to tell u that I love u 2 and I am going to give us a second change I just said no this morning cause I was confused & I'm sorry really mean it. I'm sorry I mad u cry I don't have a house phone so u can't call me sorry my mom & dad have cell phones well later
See u later

Love,
Sxxxxx

Well, Sxxxxx, your sentiments are understood and appreciated, but since I picked up your note from the ground in my classroom, it's anybody's guess as to whether or not your lady love received it and read it. Maybe she did, and cast it away in scorn. Or maybe she didn't, and your young love is forever lost. *sniff sniff* And just a bit of advice, Sxxxxx: You'll be smoother and more successful if you end on a positive note (e.g. "I think communication in writing is so much more sophisticated and meaningful than talking on the telephone, don't you? Let's keep doing this.") rather than a pathetically negative one ("You can't call me because we don't have a house phone."), because that implies that your phone got shut off or something, because mom and dad didn't pay the bill, and it's likely that the car will be repossessed pretty soon, and with no phone AND no car, you can kiss any potential future high school popularity GOOD-BYE.

Reality

The thing about working for the school district is that I'm learning a lot about public education, and sure enough, I've discovered that it's so screwed up that it's a miracle that anybody learns anything at all. Actual education is a priority far below either political agenda or political correctness. The mandates and standards set at a national, state, or district level are completely unrelated to anything that can and does happen in a classroom. This is Reality. Teachers are resigned to this fact, and if students learn anything, anything, it is because schools are filled with dedicated, altruistic people who truly believe in what they are doing, and accomplish great things despite all the ridiculous requirements and political nonsense that they must endure on a daily basis.

Technical glitch

I've been informed that my blog doesn't come out very well when viewed in Internet Explorer; apparently, the posts only show up below all the sidebars. I've been using Mozilla Firefox, so I wasn't aware of the problems until Melissa pointed them out to me. I am unsure how to fix them, so we might have to bear with.

At work, I've moved classrooms two times in two days. I'm so tired from hauling and organizing all my books (both textbooks and reading books). My first new classroom (the one I occupied yesterday) had neither telephone nor internet. Considering the fact that part of my job is to call parents/guardians, and another part is my extremely detailed logging of entries in an online database, it was difficult to get things done yesterday. Today, in my second new classroom, I had a phone, but no computer. Brilliant. I finally obtained a computer after school, so tomorrow, I should be back on track. I must confess, I get pretty frustrated with the administrators at times. I try to be gracious, though.

Not much to tell. Kind of a boring day, though I worked hard and am tired.

I need to clean my house and get organized. I'm developing my own system, as other people's systems often don't work for me.

But now, it's bed time.

The return to work wasn't quite as horrible as I might have feared. I am moving to a new classroom, which is basically a portable/modular that has been installed next to a permanent wing of the school; it will be nice, as long as all the dirt and drywall is cleaned and vacuumed out. I'll have temperature control, and unlike the old classroom, it's not a converted weight room with weight machines in the corners. I am not, however, looking forward to hauling all my books over.

*sigh*

I have to go back to work tomorrow. Now, I don't really mind my job. It's not as if I'll be going back to a situation I hate. However, it would be nice to be independently wealthy.

Jeff and I went to visit a church today. It was okay.

Funny work stuff

Or, Why the Chinese and Japanese are totally winning in the education-of-children battle.

Melissa voted for having more funny work stories in my blog. Now, seeing as how I work with juvenile delinquents in a region populated by a lot of illegal immigrants and other fun people, humor is always just around the corner if I know where to look. I haven't been to work for three weeks, so I have no new stories, but I do have the transcript of a real, genuine note that I found on the ground outside my classroom and haven't found time yet to post. I am not making this up; I am actually reproducing the hand-penned (pink) note exactly as written, aside from disguising the name and the fact that I can't reproduce the hearts and smileys dotted here and there.

To: My Babe
4rm: Me

My bad 4 write n pink. When he see you play football, I didn't no u waz dat good. I though football waz over. I waz gona buy yo holiday gram 2 day, datz y I waz on da stage. How can I forget to call you, nobody can forget about Kxxxxxx oh yea nigga I herd dat u threw som den at yo teacher head, if anything I need to get dat class wit U. Ya'll niggaz is hella crazy
ANYWAYZ
Im a get ma cell phone in January, den I'm give u dat #, I'll talk 2 you 2nite so answer yo phone Yadidi

Kxxxxxx Babe

I know, I know! I can handle slang and abbreviations (kids have been using 4 in place of "for" and 2 in place of "to" or "too" for decades), but the grammar and punctuation are so spotty as to be frightening. And I thought the point of writing things like abbreviations was to abbreviate. Writing "was" as "waz" accomplishes nothing. The offering of antecedents for pronouns is spurious at best (Who is the "he" referenced in the first line? Never made clear.). Even the penmanship was lacking (though you wouldn't know that, as I typed it up). Obviously, the youth of today have created their own method of communication, safe from comprehension by adults, but thank God that their lack of organizational or cooperational skills prevents them from going further and actually taking over the world... The use of the hitherto questionable word "nigga" is something I will allow as culturally appropriate affectionate slang within this particular context, but still: At this point, I make the impassioned plea to disallow students from listening to gangsta rap and hip-hop until they graduate from high school with competency in the English language.

The Black Parade

Jeff's birthday present was a copy of My Chemical Romance's newly released album, The Black Parade. We both like it a lot. I have been aware of MCR for a few years, but neither Jeff nor I were particularly impressed by them (although I must confess to having been fascinated by the music video for "Helena"). I dismissed them as moderately talented musicians who were trying too hard to be goth-punk. Before holiday, however, we happened to catch a show on Fuse, chronicling the making of the video for "Welcome to the Black Parade", and were both of us struck by the sound and ideas of MCR's latest work. Jeff decided he wanted to check out the album, which is a "concept" album, in which the artists seek to have a unified theme that pulls all of the songs together, and possibly even tells a story. [See Green Day, American Idiot.] In this case, My Chemical Romance adopts the persona of a fictional band, The Black Parade, and records all the music of the album as The Black Parade (which basically is what Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band would have been like if they'd done heroin instead of LSD). Jeff likes the idea of concept albums; I find them intriguing, but somehow against the grain of how I think popular music should be done: On a strong song-by-song basis, with maybe a book to tie songs together if necessary; if it was good enough for Irving Berlin, it's good enough for me! Jeff sees the value of single shots in pop music, but pointed out that most of my preferred singers recorded in the days of 45 records, each of which was released with a single on each side; collections and extended-play albums were comparatively rare. Now, however, people have the option of just purchasing a single from iTunes or buying an entire album, and if artists want people to shell out for that whole album, they have to make it worth the consumers' while. Hence, the emphasis on coherence within an entire album. Get it? Got it. Good.

View "Welcome to the Black Parade" below.


I am not the sort to gush about totally hot rock stars or anything, but I also observed (aloud, to Jeff, in case you were wondering) that My Chemical Romance is one of the few punk bands out there that has a majority of good-looking guys, and is the only one I can call to mind at the moment. Generally, a punk band is lucky to have one hottie, if any (which is why they get all tattoed and pierced: to distract you from how actually unattractive they are). See, for example, Green Day (again), Fallout Boy, All American Rejects, Blink-182, etc. etc. ad nauseum. By contrast, none of the guys in MCR happens to be dog-ugly, and the ones that aren't immediately good-looking really mostly need a better haircut (*ahem* guitarist Ray Toro).
See? Don't they look all ironically detached and counter-cultural? It's adorable, really.


I thought lead singer Gerard Way was scary in the past, but he ditched the emo hair and went blonde, and now he looks much better (by which I mean not only pretty, but non-consumptive as well).
Old Gerard

New Gerard


Furthermore, My Chemical Romance had the good sense to utilize the talents of a legendary entertainer in The Black Parade. She sings a few lines as the title character in the song "Mama". Can you guess who it might be? [Hint: It's not Madonna.]

Keep up the good work, My Chemical Romance! I suspect that you still have a few years of solid music left in you (unless you pull a Blink-182 and disband before really reaching maturity as a band--yes, I'm still scarred, thank you). And remember that you're free to continue experimenting with your style and performance, as after a certain point, artistic pretentions pass out of the realm of pretentiousness and enter the dimension of "so pretentious, it's adorable!". [See Picasso, Pablo, or Eliot, T.S.] And also, people will forgive you for a lot of things, if you're really hot. A few more of you might want to look into that hair-changing thing, okay? Okay.

Disaster!

Jeff alluded to a problem with domain controllers and accounts, which translates to me losing a month and a half worth of documents and data from my laptop. I didn't understand what actually happened, but when he told me about it, I recognized the words "cache" and "back up". I do have backups through November 19, 2006, but don't understand how anything could have been deleted from my hard drive when Jeff supposedly just made a profile or account for me on my computer. But my files are gone, gone, GONE!! Wah!! Fortunately, it was not a crushing blow, and I'll recover from it, but I've done some writing, particularly things related to my lists (I'm a mad list-keeper) and movie reviews, and I don't know if I'll be able to reconstruct some of it.

Woe is me.

Happy Birthday, Jane Wyman!

Jane Wyman was a decent actress who achieved some measure of popularity in the 1940s, and won an Oscar for her performance as a deaf girl in Johnny Belinda (proving that the Academy's bias toward rewarding actors who portray characters with physical infirmities is nothing new under the sun, but Wyman is actually pretty good and more subdued than most actresses might have played). Anyway, I'm embarrassed to say that I thought Jane Wyman was dead, until she showed up on IMDB's front page as the birthday girl. She is now 93 years of age!!!

And she was now-dead US President Ronald Reagan's first wife. I can just imagine her chatting it up in the 1980s. "Yeah, I totally slept with the president. But it was legit at the time!"
Her son Michael Reagan spoke at Torrey Convocation my first year in Torrey. But I didn't go. Haha. Sorry, Jane, I didn't mean to diss your boy.

Home Again, Home Again

We made it from Phoenix to Visalia in less than 9 hours.

Little introverted Kiti is happy to be home. She will spend the next several days holed up in the house: reading After the Ice, blogging, writing other stuff, watching Veronica Mars, and generally avoiding people.

Took the plunge

Moved over to the new Google-compatible Blogger.

Bigger and better? We shall see.

Happy Birthday, Jeff!

To celebrate, we went to the Arizona Science Center-- Yes, we go to science museums for fun. We then went to get my hair cut (it's not too different, just shorter and with layers) and THEN to Islands for dinner with Sam and Melissa and Dan and Jen.

Is it a problem that I think Family Guy is just hilarious? I mean, it's vulgar and crosses all kinds of lines of human decency. Yet, it's utterly funny, quotable, and tied into the cultural zeitgeist. The tidbit in this most recent season with the terrorist messing up while recording a video for Al-Jazeera was some of the funniest television I have ever seen; if you saw it, you know what I'm talking about.

Hmm, what else? What should I do to spice up my blog? Political commentary? Book, film, and music reviews? Increasingly ridiculous stories from work? Let's see what 2007 will bring to the blogging table.

Well, the first day of 2007 has come and gone. It was pretty uneventful. Dan woke me up at 8:45 am, calling me to see if I wanted to spend some time with Mom and Dad (who were visiting Dan and Jen in order to watch all three LOTR films on New Year's Eve) before they returned to LA. I did, and after a bit of misdirection (Phoenix has numbered streets, in which 10th Avenue is VERY DIFFERENT from 10th Street), I enjoyed my time at Starbucks with the other four. When I got back to the apartment, the other three had gotten up.

We spent some time at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, talking about origin theory and art, and chatted more in the evening. We also went to the hot tub and ended up swimming around in the pool. It felt good to get a little exercise.

Happy New Year

A happy New Year to all of you. Let's all look to bigger and better things in 2007.

We're celebrating New Year's Eve by watching brainless movies. A great tradition.

2 is the new 4, 0 is the new 2

And I'd do well to remember it.

We are visiting Sam and Melissa right now, and we've been having fun. We're watching Family Guy right now.

Melissa asked Jeff and me if we are going to have New Year's Resolutions. Neither of us is inclined to do that sort of thing, but Jeff said he'd like to lose weight.

I don't have any New Year's Resolution, but if I did, it would be something along the lines of:
-Get a healthy, balanced lifestyle that involves nutritious food, regular exercise, and plenty of alone time and fulfilling activites.
-Become competent at the guitar and improve my flute skills.
-Watch 20 Academy Award-winning films.
-Be accepted to graduate school.
-Learn to sew, and improve knitting skills.
-Achieve competency in another language, to be determined.

Detailed, step-by-step plans to accomplish above to follow.

Weird

I tried to switch to the new Blogger, but my blogs didn't show up. I'll try again later when I haven't had a green apple Smirnoff.

AZ update

My ability to post has been hindered by the fact that Jeff and I have been on the road for several days now, and I don't always have reliable internet access. =(

We made it to Arizona yesterday, and spent a few hours in the afternoon with Dan and his guest K-W (who just happened to be passing through AZ at the same time as us). We chatted about theology and our planned takeover of the academic world.

We headed out to Claim Jumper to meet Jen and Todd, and we enjoyed chatting with them, but the restaurant took almost an hour and a half to get us our food, and when it came, it was cold, so the manager ended up giving us free meals, plus a slice of the motherlode cake to take home. Bravo, Claim Jumper! They may win back our business with that shrewd move.

Then we went on over to Sharon Campbell's house, where we were to spend the night. I had a great time chatting with Sharon until late in the night. Then I crashed into bed and slept soundly.

Dear Readers, I know that you have been neglected for the past two days. I have been so good about posting daily through December so far, and then on the most exciting days of the month (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day), I fail. Tragic flaw, indeed.

Well, what do you want to know? During the day on Christmas Eve, I spent a lot of the time cleaning and doing laundry, in preparation for going out of town for several days. In the evening, Jeff and I went over to Debbie and Jerry's house, where we had Christmas celebration with the Feely family. It was a nice and tasty dinner, as well as a fun time with the relatives (Rob and Candace and Olaf and Rosalee were there, of course). I was excited, in particular, about the Hello Kitty tote bag that Debbie MADE for me, as well as a precious pastel blue Hello Kitty lanyard. I'll be sporting the Hello Kitty bling when I go back to the classroom in January!!!

Christmas morning, we did stocking with Debbie and Jerry, and then sped south to LA area to see my family, stopping in Gorman along the way to exchange gifts and Christmas greetings with Josh and Laurel. [Shout out to Laurel, just because I love her!!!] We arrived at my parents house, where the whole clan was assembled: Mom and Dad, Dan and Jen, Mike, Mia and Tim. We stood about for a while, then opened presents. A few highlights:
-Dad cried when Mia and Tim gave him a guitar.
-Mike and I gave each other identical presents: copies of After the Ice, by Steve Mithen. My adik and I are birds of a feather.
-Mike received a book on Egyptian hieroglyphics, but was unable to explain how he was planning to fit Egyptology into his current plans of shrimp farming and market analysis.
-Jeff received duplicates of Halo novels and the fourth season of Family Guy. That's the result of posting his wish list on his blog.
-Mum gave all the girls handmade felted purses. Authentic Willow's Cottage merchandise. Order yours now, deliverable some time in the summer!!!
The we had a family dinner, with a guest named Dorothy, and it was tasty and involved all sorts of questionable dinner-table topics, including politics and tapeworms. Mike, true to form, nabbed and hid the salmon before dinner even started. Bless his heart.

Today, it was lowkey. We had a late breakfast at IHOP, went to Borders (to spent those gift certificates) and Best Buy in Manhattan Beach, ate at Red Sesame, then moseyed to Pier 1 and Barnes and Noble, still in Manhattan Beach. It was nice to see a lot of the family. We are obviously addicted to books.

Taste

I think I'm an undertaster. I eat more than I should because I crave taste. I need to add lots of flavor to my food, so I add salt and hot sauce. I can't handle bland food!

Sad

Our shopping is pretty much done, and our holiday plans are good. But I'm still not in a holiday mood. Not festive. Certainly not ready to deal with people.

Ack! I am a prisoner in my own home! There are a lot of young men at my house, playing Halo, as part of Rob's birthday party. I am happy to celebrate Rob's birthday, but feel compelled to point out that I was not consulted on either the generals or the particulars of this party, until after they had been planned. I didn't have to cook, so that was nice. The thing about me is that I don't feel obligated to be nice to people merely to fulfill the narrow requirements of propriety, so I mostly ignored the people around me and read my book. Now I am ignoring them and posting on my blog.
Note: There have now been TWO young men who have come into my house and neglected to remove their hats. This pisses me off so much. Odd that men removing their hats indoors is a requirement of propriety that I actually DO wish to be observed. Chalk it up to eccentricity, I suppose. But seriously, guys, just take off your hats when you enter a building, especially a home or a church. It's a mark of respect and good breeding.

Note to self

When I become an evil superpower, I need to remember to breed lots of goblins and trolls to do my hard labor and dirty work. They seem to ask little satisfaction other than gratuitous violence and gore, and as for feeding them, well, all indications are that they eat each other, so they'd be fairly easy to maintain.
On the minus side, they are volatile and appetite-driven, and tend to turn on one another with little or no provocation. Labor relations will be key. But they're none-too-bright, so keeping them somewhat motivated should be a cinch (further note to self: collect tips on crowd-pleasing yet non-commital rhetoric from liberal Democrats), and, in-fighting aside, they do not generally question or rebel against their superiors to whom they own allegiance.
When outsourcing even to India becomes prohibitively expensive, outsourcing to Mordor could be our next alternative.

Understanding engineers

I read somewhere that there are three kinds of people in the world: men, women, and engineers. I left my engineering post at the Humungous Anonymous Technical Company, but as my dad would say, "Once an engineer, always an engineer". It's an INTJ thing, too. I find engineering humor and geek humor to be irresistible.

For example, the following tidbit is funny because it's TRUE.

Engineers have different objectives when it comes to social interaction. "Normal" people expect to accomplish several unrealistic things from social interaction:
1. Stimulating and thought-provoking conversations
2. Important social contacts
3. A feeling of connectedness with other humans
In contrast to "normal" people, engineers have rational objectives for social interactions:
1. Get it over with as soon as possible.
2. Avoid getting invited to something unpleasant.
3. Demonstrate mental superiority and mastery of all subjects.

Not idly do the pants of Lorien fall

We are watching The Two Towers. A few years ago, when the LOTR films came out, there was a little word game that I heard a few times: the "pants" game. Take a line from the books or films, and replace one of the nouns in the quote with the word "pants". Much hilarity ensues.

For example, the real quote from which the title is drawn is, "Not idly do the leaves of Lorien fall". See? Hilarious!

I make it a point of pride to know that I have been a Tolkien fan for more than 20 years. I was obsessed with Tolkien and Middle-Earth long before it was fashionable to be so. I read the Silmarillion when I was in fourth grade. I studied Elvish scripts and languages. Oh, dear, I've been a geek since childhood. Oh, well, I'll just embrace my destiny.

Vacay

I'm still working on switching over to the new Google-compatible Blogger. It's just so hard to commit.

I started my official vacation time today. I spent it cleaning the lower part of my house, as well as cooking lentil soup and biscuits. Whee.

Now, Jeff and I are watching Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, as he wanted to do something relaxing while he does important computer-type stuff on his laptop. I'm always torn between enjoying the pure visual spectacle of these films and disliking them because I love the books so much. I especially dislike the casting of Liv Tyler. Ugh!

I think I'll be shopping tomorrow, as well as doing more cleaning. Such excitement.

A good Sam Cooke fan is hard to find

Sam Cooke was a seminal artist in the early rock-n-roul/soul music scene, but he is hardly remembered today, it would seem. I am a fan, and have been since high school. My dad is also a fan. Anyone else out there?

Cupid (Draw Back Your Bow) and (That's the Sound of the Men Working on the) Chain Gang are two of his best-known tunes, but he did some great gospel and catchy songs such as Everybody Love to Cha-Cha-Cha and Another Saturday Night.

Cooke just had a unique voice. My dad identifies it as achieving its tone by somehow resonating air in his sinuses a certain way; listen for it when he does long, drawn-out vowel tones, such as when he sings:
"Cupid, draw back your bo-o-ow, and let your arrow flo-o-ow,
Straight to my lover's heart for me-e-e..."
Had he lived longer, I suspect that Cooke would have become one of the great singers of the 20th century, and his memory would not reside in semi-obscurity.

The weather here in the Valley has been getting colder, and the sky is often grey. I hate cold and grey. The saving grace is, it doesn't rain a lot. Oh, well. Perhaps some day, I will move back to the equator and live on the coast of a tropical island. I can dream.

Anyhoo.

We did our usual Saturday thing of sleeping in, and I made eggs and pancakes for breakfast. Then Jeff cleaned his computer nook and I did some dishes and several loads of laundry. And then Jeff taught me how to play Magic the Gathering. And then we went to the gym and exercised. And finally, we came home and watched a movie or two while I folded laundry.

Jeff has gone to bed, and I am just waiting for one last load to finish in the dryer. And watching F List on Fuse TV.

Saturday, in a nutshell.

Par-tay!!!

NO MORE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS UNTIL JANUARY 8!!!!
Have I mentioned that "vacation time" is a good reason to work for a school district?

Hypothetically, I am moving into a new classroom for the next quarter(s), but we'll see if that becomes reality.

Meanwhile, I'm working on figuring out goals for the next semester and year.
More grad school?
Learn a new skill?
Lose some weight?

Best. Clip. Ever.

Ginger Rogers dancing the Charleston.

Chipmunk-face Zellweger, eat your heart out! You are not Roxie Hart.

[By the way, I'd like to embed the videos in my posts, but for some reason, the coding is not working. So, please, please click on my links.]

I still need to switch to the updated Blogger. Maybe I'll figure that out this weekend.

Meanwhile, I'm discovering the treasures of Youtube.

Vintage live performances:
Marlene Dietrich singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?".

A link Jeff shared with me a while ago, that I found again: Halo footage set to a nonsensical yet catchy tune about a kitty cat.

Open your Christmas present early:
The great Eartha Kitt and the original Santa Baby.

Moving backward

Well, now that my laptop is mostly resurrected, I will resume some of the wedding narratives. Here's a morsel to whet your appetite.

Christina's wedding was at the end of October. I was concerned about the strapless bridesmaid dresses (hey, for many years, I might not have been able to keep the top up), but mine turned out to be okay. In fact, it was more than okay: I ended up liking it a lot, and Christina gave her bridesmaids very lovely jewelry (a silver brooch) to accent the dresses.

Here I am with super-beautiful Sharon Campbell and Kristin Nassau. We had fun partying it up together, bonded by joyful spirits and a love for Christina.

School Daze

I haven't blogged about work/school for a while. It's sad, because I have all kinds of funny stories. Honestly, juvenile delinquents (especially the less-than-intelligent ones) can be hilarious.
Names have been changed to protect the underaged-but-far-from-innocent.

Let's talk about "Andrew". I know which students are supposed to be in my Transition class on any given day. If the students don't show up, I call their first period classes to ascertain whether they've gone to class instead, and if so, I have them sent over to me and proceed with business as usual. Andrew has a problem with attending school regularly, which is one of the reasons why he got sent to Transition in the first place. One morning, I called Andrew's Period 1 teacher, and he had indeed gone to his class. His teacher (who is a very good teacher, by the way) promptly sent him over to my room, except... somehow, he never arrived... How stupid is it to ditch school when both your regular teacher AND your Transition teacher know that you are ditching? Exactly.

Now let's talk about "Robert". Robert also has a problem with chronic ditching of school. On another fine morning, he wasn't in Transition as scheduled, so I checked in with his first period teacher. No Robert. Following my established routine, I then called his home to see if he was there, or at least to discover what his mom or dad would have to say.
Me: Good morning. I'm calling from xxxxxxxx Middle School, and I'm trying to located Robert xxxxxxxxx.
Dad: Oh, he should be in class by now.
Me: Well, he's supposed to be with me in Transition, but he failed to show. I called his first period class, and he is not there, either.
Dad: I don't understand. We sent him to school more than an hour ago.
Me: Let me explain. Your son is ditching school.
Uh-huh. There's our problem right there, folks. Robert gets away with everything short of felonies because Dad is totally clueless... Robert was SO BUSTED this time, though. Aside from his attendance problem, of course, he is unpleasant, disrespectful, and had the gall to start a food fight in the cafeteria when I was standing RIGHT THERE. Of course, he didn't get to have any real fun with the food, since I put an immediate stop to it. I have it on good authority (i.e., some middle school kid told me all about it) that Robert just hates me. Mwahaha. [No, Mom, I don't think he will bring a gun to school and try to off me; he's not that organized.]

And "Leonardo"? He's my Tracking Anklet Boy. Yes, he's on parole. No, I don't know why. That's police business. But I think the whole thing is extremely funny, even though I know I shouldn't. Teehee.

Never a dull moment in Transition, I swear.

It's a great day for America

I'm still on the thing where I watch Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show on Youtube.

Example. Even if it's old news.
"I think Michael Jackson may be gettin' a bit weird."

Awesome.
"If OJ won't admit, you must cancel It!"
"He's right, yet... curse you, Spielberg!"

I've been watching a few films with Constance Bennett. Gotta love the husky-voiced queen of the pre-Code screen!

Today, I drove down to Bakersfield with Debbie to meet my parents and pick up a sheet music stand from them. I had a good time, and after getting lost in Bakersfield on the way home, she and I decided to do some impromptu Christmas shopping at the Tulare outlet mall. We also ran over to Pier 1 to look at coffee tables. Unfortunately, I thought that I had communicated to Jeff that we would be stopping to shop, but he had been expecting me home a few hours before I arrived, so he was really worried and upset when I finally came in. Oops!

I wish I were better at shopping. I feel so inadequate, as I struggle with identifying gifts that my loved ones will really want.

My computer seems to be acting strangely again. Very odd. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that water was probably spilled on it while I was gone today.

New version of Blogger?

I guess I will be switching over. Using my Google login. Finally, Google is unifying their products.

Anyway, more happy gifts. I wear size small. But I don't actually expect to get any of these. And I don't actually condone purchasing via the internet. Heh.

-More Hello Kitty. A shirt.
-Canvas tote bag, perfect for a teacher, who's hip enough to know what it means to be Bored Now.
-UC Sunnydale t-shirt.
-Wear the Bronze.
-Even law firms have a t-shirt.
-Hostile 17 gets his revenge.
-Budget nostalgia. Welcome to Sunnydale sticker. Bad Miss Edith sticker.

Who knew there was so much STUFF in the world?

Christmas cheer

I can't say that I'm really looking forward to the holiday season (or rather, enjoying it now that it's here). I have a lot of people interaction on a daily basis, so I'd really just prefer to have a few weeks of hermithood. I love my family and friends, butI just don't feel festive. This despite the fact that 2006 will be the first Christmas in twenty-something years that I haven't had to worry about school, and final exams, final papers, etc., during the Christmas season.

Continuing with a haphazard Christmas wish list:
-Cute clothes. I can always use more of those.

Not a sound from the pavement

Jeff and I watch Farscape. The episode we're watching right now involves some kind of clone thingie in the plot. It triggered a long-forgotten (repressed???) memory.

Despite the fact that I've never watched a soap opera in my life, when in high school, I used to love to read the daily soap opera synopses in the paper. Why? The plots were all so farfetched that I found them hilarious, and couldn't believe that anyone would take them seriously enough to put them in TV series. Heehee. In the early 1990s, there was some soap opera (I forget which one) that had a plotline involving some character's scheming clone. This in addition to the usual adultery, murder, and blackmail plots. My 11th grade year, I was homeschooled, and every morning, Mike and I would read the paper, do the crossword and word jumble, and snicker over the soaps. Totally educational. Ah, memories. Heeheehee.

Anybody else have a long-buried oddity to confess?

Not familiar with this guy, but he's funny.

"Killer whale". He's right, that is a hilarious name for an animal.

Depressed

Well, I am not one of those people who obsess about numbers on the scale. I know that muscle weighs more than fat, and how you feel is more important than how you look, anyway.

But it was still depressing to hop on a scale, on a whim, at the gym, and discover that instead of losing weight over the past few months, I've gained. I was 131 pounds in July, and now I tip the same scale at 137. My clothes don't fit any differently, so I haven't gotten fatter, but it is certainly odd.

I guess I ought to start cutting back on the M&Ms and ice cream.

Successfully accomplished:

Performance of Ave Maria (Aquilanti), Regina Coeli (Mozart), Magnificat (Bach), and several Christmas carols.

Tomorrow is Monday, and we return to work and all those other regularly scheduled items. I don't really feel ready to get back to work. I am sooooo tired, and I'm not sure why. I guess I'm just more in the mood to fool around, rather than be productive.

If I could eliminate the need to sleep and eat, my life would be better, also.

Hated

I'm no luddite. Really. I like technology, and appreciate its many contributions to my lifestyle. [This is possibly a result of having spent a significant portion of my childhood sans electricity and plumbing, but I can't be sure, since I know a lot of people who like technology who always possessed in-home running water and working light switches.] However, my love of technology is definitely unrequited. It is true. Technology hates me.

I now refuse to buy anything on the internet. Aside from the normal security concerns regarding the transmission of information such as credit card numbers and PINs, there is the simple fact that every one of the few internet transactions I've ever completed has gone wrong. Once upon a time, some years ago, I attempted to buy a textbook from Amazon. I put in my order, paid, and received e-mail confirmation that I would receive my product. Several weeks later, I received another e-mail, stating that my desired book was no longer available. So I didn't get the book, and Amazon never gave me my money back. They claimed they returned it via electronic transfer, but I never got it. Long story ensues, involving me getting married and setting up a new credit union account with my husband in the weeks between ordering the book and getting the notice that the book was no longer available. I spent so many hours communicating with their customer service and finance people, trying to clear up the situation and get either my money or the book that I had orginally been promised, that I finally realized that on a per-hour basis, it was no longer worth my time. It's only thirty-something dollars, I told myself. But now I absolutely will not buy from Amazon. DO YOU HEAR THAT, AMAZON?!? You lost a lifetime of my business due to thirty dollars and change for a book about Old Testament prophecy. For shame, Amazon! Dot com? More like DOT CON!

There is another tiresome story regarding a pen light that I ordered online as a gift for Jeff, a few years after the Amazon fiasco. I received a confirmation e-mail, as a matter of course. But the pen light never arrived. I called the customer service number in the e-mail, and while it was the right number for the right company, they claimed to have no record of my order. They never charged me for the light, though, so at least in this case, it was a wash. But that was the end of it. E-commerce is just not for me, because e-commerce hates me.

The above are just a few examples. There are many more. I am always having issues with my computer. And cel phone. And PDA. And various TVs and stereos. They respond magically to Jeff's commands, even if he just does exactly the same things I've tried to do previously. Jeff is mystified by the problem, and agrees that "Technology hates me" is probably the best and simplest explanation for the phenomenon. And that is why I am reluctant to embrace technology. It makes me sad, but I avoid it because I must. I mean, it's not like I NEED more frustration in my life.

I'm thinking about joining Holidailies. I'd have to post daily for one whole month. Quite the commitment.

Stuff

If anyone is wondering why I haven't continued in posting my "wedding round-ups", with photos and commentary, it's because my laptop DIED and my pictures are all on my hard drive. =( But it turned out that my laptop was not dead, but only comatose, for my wonderful computer wiz husband was able to get it started again and back up all of my photos and other files. That's a temporary solution, and we're figuring out how to fully resuscitate my poor darling laptop (possibly reinstalling Windows, or getting a new hard drive). I'll get the wedding stuff going again, ASAP.

Meanwhile, I'll do something useful, though unimaginative: a few suggestions for Christmas gifts for the poor bereaved Kiti.
-Hello Kitty laptop bag: Not only do I refuse to consider that I won't have my laptop back, I am actively planning to involve it even more in my life, via appropriate accessorization.
-Hello Kitty handbag: I'm seeking to add variety to my tote life, as I currently have only boring black or serviceable brown for everyday purses, and I don't want to carry fancy purses around. What better way to express my classic fearless Kitiness than to sport another famous Kitty.
Cute red design
Grey and blue tote, perfect for school
Brown and pink messenger bag, also perfect for school or perhaps a small laptop
Brown suede, classic purse design. Jeff is always wanting me to move away from depressing black.

More later. I need to go to bed.

Annoy, tiny blonde one! Annoy like the wind!

Elizabeth left mid-morning today. I spent the afternoon doing laundry and watching an old Gregory Peck/Sophia Loren movie, Arabesque. I didn't finish it yet, though.

Sometimes, it's hard to be me. It is especially hard to be me in relation to other people. If I'm rude and prickly at times, maybe it's just a bad time for me to be around people. They should create a system of warnings and threat levels for INTJs.
"Today's Short-tempered Kiti Threat Level: Orange. Do not make any sudden moves or discuss politics. Force her to have at least one hour of alone time. We also strongly advise against suggesting the viewing of modern romantic comedies."

We had Bible study this evening. Once again, it was demonstrated that it is difficult to have a study with people of such varying experience in the Word. One person stated that she has not been fed in Bible study, for a while, and she wants to go to a more topical approach that will give her ways to apply the Bible to her life (and she suggested that we should do the 40 Days of Purpose thing in January). I reminded her that it is each person's responsibility to figure out how to live the Bible in one's life, but to no avail: I think she wants to be spoon-fed. And, then, why not? She is sort of a toddler Christian, so getting milky nourishment is not a bad thing for her. I guess it is just hard for me to see it for myself.

I called my mom and talked for a long while. It was nice.

Just Like Kevin

I recorded Just Like Heaven on the DVR a while back, and when I mentioned it to Jeff, he thought I called it Just Like Kevin, and didn't understand what I was talking about. It was funny, but I guess you had to be there. Anyway, some of my friends really liked this movie, so I recorded it on the off chance I might be able to tolerate a recently-made romantic comedy.

Elizabeth is here, so romantic comedy is the game of the day. We're watching Just Like Heaven. And doing some laundry. And because my laptop is currently matih, I don't have access to my "movie reviews" document file and therefore must write my insightful movie reviews online. You lucky people, you.

Just Like Heaven isn't quite like heaven, actually, but it is really not bad. It is improbable, but Elizabeth told me not to overanalyze it. For some reason, I really like Reese Witherspoon's work, despite some of my more critical functions telling me I shouldn't. The only one I haven't liked was Sweet Home Alabama, and I just put that out of my mind.

Anyway... It's sort of like While You Were Sleeping, only not. It speaks against terminating human life for any reason, which is very family-friendly. Interesting perspective. If you have a few hours to kill, and have run out of Academy Award-winners and quirky Wes Anderson films, Just Like Heaven is a fairly innocuous way to blow time.

We have been vegging and watching a lot of movies. We craftily subverted Elizabeth into a Harry Potter fan, by watching films 2-4 (she'd already seen the first HP movie, though she hadn't read any of the books). Then, today, we went to see Happy Feet (meh).

More Paris Hilton

Could there be any reason why a person would declare a desire for more Paris Hilton? Faint ye not, faithful readers! I have found a setting in which our much-despised Ms. Hilton is not only tolerable but beneficial. To whit:

I recently began watching Veronica Mars. Sara started watching during Season 1 a few years ago, and recommended it to me early on as something that I would probably really enjoy. I didn't jump on the bandwagon, as I was already deeply committed to some other TV shows (e.g. Buffy and The Simpsons, to name a few), and to be honest, I don't always share Sara's taste in entertainment (let's just say that it is due to her influence that I've suffered through many an hour of rom-com dreck: for instance, Miss Congeniality 2). But Jeff and I recently finished watching all of Angel, via Netflix, and I decided to try at least one disk of Veronica Mars' Season 1, as my heart was ready to give Sara's recommendation a chance, and if I didn't like it, I didn't have to watch any more. Well, beginning with the first moment of the first episode, I was hooked. A good many Buffy aficianados are commenting on the similarities between the protagonists of the two shows, and no less a person than Joss Whedon has put his stamp of approval on VM (up to and including appearing as a guest star in an episode).

For myself, I really like it. I identify with Veronica in many ways, I appreciate her relationships and the plot situations, and the realism with which some of them are handled, and the obvious theatricality in others (after all, it's television; if I want completely real reality, I'll videotape my own life). I think the writing is decent, and it has been getting stronger as Season 1 progresses. I wait eagerly for my disk to arrive in the mail, and watch it as soon as possible when it does come. I am in the middle of a cliffhanger right now, and am angry that the holiday weekend will interrupt mail service. Will Veronica ever find Lilly's true killer? What, oh what, will happen with Logan and his mother?!? Ah, the suspense!

Anyway, Paris Hilton had a role as a guest star (playing a spoiled rich girl who engages in inappropriate sexual relationships... hmmm...) in one of the first episodes, and while she is no kind of actress, she was believable in her role, and I think it would have benefitted the series to maintain her character as something like tragicomic relief. I found it jarring to have lack of continuity: characters appear in one episode, and then are never seen again, even though they supposedly live within the community or go to school with Veronica. They should keep some of the one-shot characters around, even if they just serve as extras in the background, to keep that crucial sense of realism and continuity.

My one dark spot is that Jeff refuses to watch "teen angst TV" with me, so I have to go it alone. I suspect that he would get hooked, too, just as he did with Buffy, but he won't give it a chance.