How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

Holiday Weekend Photo Montage! (subtitled: Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater, too lazy to write an actual post)

Did you have a good long weekend, everybody?  I did!  First there was the luau:

With fancy food

and the limbo!

Here I am with my soon-to-be-roommate Amy

Gee golly I look short next to her.  Always have.  And then Sunday night there was farewell drinking at a nearby pub.  See how Amy and I, responsible designated drivers, are finishing a night of responsible drinking with very responsible ice water?

And Monday, the Memorial Day party, where normally we shake our heads as the boys injure themselves on the slip 'n slide. 

This year, for some reason, it was quite enjoyable.

What else did I do this weekend?  Oh yeah.

That vacuum there is a piece of history, kids.  Genuine vintage stuff.  It still has the sticker that says Thrift Town - Tested, Works NO GUARANTEE.  Yes, it makes a squeaky noise and sometimes smells like burning, but it works better than either of the two twenty-first century vacuums in our household.  And right in front, you see the final two boxes, the ones marked "Random."  I really wasn't kidding about that.  Add to that massive pile two end tables, one ottoman, one red table, and an inherited bedroom set complete with the world's largest dresser, and there you have my rather outrageously large collection of stuff.  Thankfully, we found out today that we've been approved to rent the house for which we applied, so we're good to go and as of Saturday will be doing our part to keep Austin weird.  (As opposed to what I've been doing here, namely my part to keep San Antonio fat.  Because the last I knew, we were neck and neck with Houston for Nation's Fattest City honors.  If I had my own restaurant or bakery here I would absolutely have bumper stickers made with the name and the catch phrase "Keep San Antonio Fat."  And now if you'll pardon me, I have to go trademark that phrase, just in case.  Because did I already get a google hit for animatronic LBJ?  Yes, I did.)

Oh, and last night was meatloaf night at my parents' house, which, yes, Amy, Holly, and I drove over thirty minutes for.  Laugh if you want, but it's really excellent meatloaf.  Sadly, I have no photos of that to share.

The big move! Over! Finished! Done!

No, not that big move!  The company, for which I will be working for exactly one more week, moved to a new location as of yesterday.  Predictably it was fairly chaotic and everyone was tense and frustrated and complaining about everyone else.  Except me!  Because the new place is less than one and a half miles from my house!  AND I have my own room which does not also function as a conference room/lunch room/storage space so I haven't yet had to end a meeting, clean up other people's lunch trash, or try to keep a student's attention while multiple people saunter in to search for things.  AND the temperature does not hover around a consistent 32 degrees like it did in my old room.  My fingernails haven't turned blue once!  Yes, all of my stuff is still in boxes and I only have tiny plastic little kid chairs which don't work so well with my not-kid-sized hips and yes, I now share my desk and computer with five other people.  But I can get to work without dealing with this one spot where I had to exit and people were supposed to yield and instead would slow to the exact speed at which I was traveling so neither of us could get into the other's lane which we were both trying to do.  What will I do with all of my pent-up fist-shaking fury?

Steady progress seems to be happening on the other move.  The leasing agent has almost all of the information that she needs to approve us for house rentership, so it looks good for us to have a place to move into on our target move date of June 3.  We have a friend with truck and trailer lined up to transport our stuff and numerous helpful friends and relatives who will no doubt volunteer their time that day to actually move the stuff (hint, hint.) 

Oh, and I've packed things.  Many boxes of books, photo albums, and office- and kitchen-type stuff are packed and sitting in our front room awaiting more packed box friends.  For whatever reason, I always like packing.  At the beginning anyway.  I suppose it's the quick feeling of accomplishment.  The boxes stack up and you can stand back and behold the evidence of your labors.  I always start out so well, too.  Each box has a label indicating contents ("books") and location ("office") for I'd say, oh about the first ten or twelve boxes.  And then things get fuzzier, evidenced by a box from the last move labeled "lamps, pillows, and games" going downhill until the label becomes simply "random."

This whole starting packing two weeks in advance thing should not be construed to indicate that a) I am not a HUGE procrastinator or b) I do not know for a fact that I can pack up my every earthly belonging in 48 hours.  Because I can.  I think it's just the excitement of a whole new beginning that's motivating me to get on the packing stick.  Also it distracts me from thinking about how I don't have a new job yet.  Oh my goodness, I've managed to turn the act of packing into a form of procrastination!  Now that's procrastination genius, if I do say so myself.

Things that make you go RAT BASTARD!

ITEM ONE: Let's say that you are finally getting around to hooking up the printer/copier/scanner/fax that you got for Christmas.  Things are going along swimmingly until you get to instruction #19, "Connect the USB cable to the computer and to the All-In-One."  But where is the USB cable?  It is not on the shelf where you unpacked all of the stuff.  It is not in the box in the garage.  You begin to assume that you have somehow lost it despite the fact that you have never carried any piece or part of the All-In-One anywhere except those two places.  Then you call the number on the instructions and wait several hours on hold before being told that no, the All-In-One does not come with a USB cable.  So instruction #19 really ought to read "Connect A USB cable" not "THE USB cable" and instruction #1 really ought to be "Get in your car and drive back to the store to shell out an additional $10-20 for a USB cable since the All-In-One is not compatible with any of the USB cables currently in your possession.  Sucker!"  (Item One, part B: the shoddy velcro on the Dell notebook carrying case which does not in fact hold together, allowing your  external CD-ROM drive to fall out and break such that when you finally get the All-In-One assembled and connected to your computer, it will not read the CD anyway.)

ITEM TWO: If you have recently found yourself, between the hours of midnight and one a.m., angrily scrawling a note reading "if you use the toilet and it doesn't flush, please plunge it or at least warn me so I can do it before I am trying to go to bed" you deserve a) a nap since clearly you've had a bit of a rough evening, and b) a big pat on the back for the rather remarkable restraint you showed by not using any foul language at all or including the phrase, "especially when you're the one who has most likely caused the clog by flushing the hair from the shower drain, or more accurately by throwing the hair from the shower drain into the toilet and leaving it floating there so that your roommate will encounter it first thing in the morning and assume every single time that it is instead a large bug."  You do realize, 11 hours later, that perhaps the angry note was ill-advised since you fervently hope that your roommate somehow did not notice either by sight or hearing that the toilet had not flushed because you'd rather think you weren't living with the sort of person who would knowingly put you in the situation of having to surprise plunge a clog that was not of your own making, but writing it sure was cathartic at the time.

On the other hand, in Things that make you go WHEW or possibly even YAY! news, we found a house in Austin that we like a lot and have applied for the opportunity to rent it and, should we be approved, we will go and sign a lease on it sometime soon!  And then we will move in less than two weeks!  So I'd better go pack things now.

The Lion King: Now with Flying Sex!

We'll get to that in a minute.

Melissa called me yesterday morning (woke me up as a matter of fact, which I didn't end up minding since it turned out not to be Work calling to say "you have a student here waiting and despite the fact that no one told you that you had to come in early for a new student that we put on your schedule without telling you we are wondering why you are not here.") to ask me if I wanted a free ticket to see the Lion King with her.  And I said, "heck yes!" or the just-woke-up equivalent of "mmmmmm hmmmmm."  Turned out that she had also asked my sister Lisa and so we all convened at Melissa's at 7pm for our night at the theater (to be pronounced THEATAH!)

There we all were in our lovely black dresses or skirt ensembles.  Despite lugging my camera around all night, I took not one single picture, so you have no visual representation of the awesomeness that was my hair or of my skirt, which I used to wear to work at Ann Taylor and was constantly asked whether we had it in stock and I restrained myself from saying, "HECK NO!  I got this at SEARS on CLEARANCE for SEVENTEEN DOLLARS!"  Take that Ann Taylor and your $90 skirts!  (I don't mean it Ann Taylor!  You know I love you and your pretty pretty things that I can no longer afford without your rather generous employee discount!)

Anyway, we were all prettified and classed up for our big night out at the theatah which we proved by hitting up the concession stand at intermission for margaritas and peanut M&Ms.  Well, Melissa hit the concession stand while I stood in the never-ending line of eternal waiting for the ladies' room.  And to no avail because they started playing the warning mini-xylophone before I was even within sight of the entrance and so I gave up and went back to my seat to conduct my traditional scanning of the playbill to see what percentage of the actors list any franchise of Law & Order among their credits.  As usual, the answer was "most of them."

Before I get on with the mocking, I will say that yes, the Lion King is everything that you have heard: visually stunning, amazing costumes, excellent actors (including the kids playing young Nala and Simba) , and incredible music including the new songs added to the stage show.  Although there was one new song that the hyenas sang titled Chow Down which I believe Elton John probably wrote in about three minutes while waiting in the drive-thru at Burger King and jonesing for a Whopper.  All in all though, it's a thing to behold and you should go.

But yes, there were Chippendale hyenas dancing around with bare chests and several interestingly placed rips in their leotards.  Which seemed a little scandalous until the Can You Feel the Love Tonight scene in which three couples in exceedingly scanty outfits (as in bare butt cheeks, etc.) with strategically placed flowers or ribbons floated around and generally looked as if they were...you know.  Which I thought was a little distracting from the whole lion story.  However, the baboon was excellent throughout.

And after the show, we walked up six flights of stairs (in heels!) at the parking garage in order to avoid spending the night in line for the elevator.  (Which reminds me that a guy in my college screenwriting class was writing a movie script entitled "Line People" about the group of people waiting in line for a concert or something.  Sounds riveting, right?  Mine, on the other hand, was pure cinematic gold!  Unfortunately, we only had to write the first act for the class, so of course I never finished it.)

Which brings me to a completely unrelated topic and a question that I have for you, the Internet.  I am applying for a writing-related job for which I need to send an essay in lieu of resume.  This essay must be 500 words or less.  Let's say that I feel I have completed the essay in a mere 224 words.  Will this appear "terse" and "efficient" or "lazy" and "half-assed" do you think?  Little help here?

Note: credit for the title of this post goes to Lisa, from whom I can rip these things off since she has no blog of her own.

GA: It's not just an acronym anymore.

That's Grey's Anatomy, hereafter known as GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!  Spoiler alert: if you have not yet watched the season finale, stop reading now.  Because I am just about to give away every last thing that happened.  In rant form.

Before I even get started, I feel you should know that I really tried to hate this show.  I attempted to loathe it for it's theme-intensive breathy voice-over a la Scrubs but with more sex and melodrama.  But of course I failed and became completely and hopelessly hooked.  Now on to the recap.

First of all: poor Denny, but you had to see that coming.  From the moment he and Izzy started their thing, he seemed like a goner, but as soon as she accepted his proposal, you knew he was toast.  And from the moment that crazy Izzy refused to remove herself from Denny's corpse, you knew it would be Alex to gently lift her up and carry her away.  And somehow, despite her confession and subsequent resignation, we will have Izzy back at Seattle Grace next year.  But how?  We'll have to stay tuned, won't we?

Second: Meredith and McDreamy.  She just couldn't be content with Chris O'Donnell, could she?  And what now, are we supposed to think that she's going to leave with McDreamy instead of McVet?  And where is Addison in this triangle of leaving the prom scenario?  Poor Addison.  Unknowing.  Untrusting.  Unlove...ed.

Third: God love him, George has gone for the fuller-figured gal.  As much as she's kind of pushy and a little bit "I live in the hospital" crazy, I have to root for the girl who would not blow over in a strong wind.

And finally: Christina and Burke.  Awwwwww at the end there.  That was quite a little flip-out she was having there for a little while though, wasn't it?  (Confession: I only just learned either of her names tonight.  I've previously been referring to her as Sandra Oh.  Also it seems as though no one likes Christina except for me, which is a position that I can totally live with, but not understand.  I, for one, would prefer that my surgeon be somewhat cold and an overachiever than tragically beautiful and distracted by starcrossed love.)

To sum up: Denny predictably dead, Izzy wildly insane, Alex predictably redeemed, Meredith predictably stupid, McDreamy mcbadhusband, Addison beat poet fodder, George refreshingly attracted to non-stick-figure, Christina not a robot, long summer hiatus looming.

You may have your knife back now that I have finished removing it FROM MY HEART.

I told her last week that I was leaving.  She acted a little bummed but not like it was any kind of really big deal.  Then, a week later, I heard this from my eleven year-old student who I have been teaching for almost two years now and who always plays it cool as if she really couldn't care about anything one way or the other: 

But why are you leaving me?  Why do you have to move to Austin?

And there was just no good answer to that.  So I told her that I would miss her and then some crap about how she'd be starting a new school next year and making new friends and would do so well because she had been working hard and how she probably wouldn't even remember me, which I'm sure was the exact wrong thing to say. 

I know that it would really be best for her at this point to be working with someone else anyway because we get along so well and have been working together so long that she's started to see me more as a big sister figure so she has a hard time doing the work I'm telling her to do instead of chatting with me and telling me about the boy in her class.  But still. 

And there is one more little girl who will, I assume, understand even less.  The little girl who painted "polka bots" on a mug for me for Christmas and is so proud of reading chapter books that she carries around whatever book we're reading to show off.  (Because of Winn Dixie, people!  I am reading it!  By MYSELF!)  She is completely lacking in guile much more child-like than her peers and therefore, I suspect, has few friends at school.  So the people she has in her life, namely her parents, brother, baby sister, and teachers, are very important.  And this one is deserting her.

Of course I know that I can't stay here for the benefit of two kids that aren't even mine, but it doesn't make it feel any less crappy.

Now with even more plagiarism!

Ok, yes I am writing yet another post based on an idea ripped off from someone else's blog.  This time, I got the idea here.  That post came to my mind as I was driving back to the office after having picked up some nutritious lunch at Chick-fil-A and then eaten every last fry in the bag during the five minute drive back to work.  I thus present my list of things that clearly contain trace amounts of crack:

1. Chick-fil-A waffle fries
2. Peanut M&M's
3. Diet Dr. Pepper
4. Mayonnaise (particularly dangerous when applied to Chick-Fil-A waffle fries)
5. Starbucks coffee drinks and pastry items
6. Ben & Jerry's ice cream (most notably Half Baked and Phish Food)
7. Cheese.  All cheese.
8. Blistex
9. Janet Evanovich novels
10. Supertarget
11. Grey's Anatomy - I haven't yet worked out how they get the crack to you via television, but this show may be the most addictive substance I have ever encountered.

I was going to include my mom's oven fries, but I hate to implicate my own mother for drug pushing so close to Mother's Day.  Of course this list is by no means comprehensive.  So, what did I miss?

I rolled the mark of the beast, now give me my prize.

On Friday, I attended a mother-daughter salad night/Bunco tournament at my parents' church.  I thus fulfilled my yearly recommended allowance of Miracle Whip and learned a new game, which turned out to be easy enough since there are very few rules and no skill whatsoever involved with Bunco.  Which, of course, did not stop some of the women from treating it as if it were the International Championships of Chess and from letting me know that they forgave me if I had a bad roll of the dice as if I had any control over it at all.

Bunco, for those of you who don't know is a dice game in which a point is earned every time you roll a six.  You roll three dice and if at least one is a six, you get to keep rolling.  When you and your partner have earned a combined total of 21 points, you win.  You can earn six points in one roll by rolling a Bunco, which is three sixes.  That's right.  The ultimate goal of the game is to roll 6-6-6.  And here we were, a bunch of Lutherans, earning prizes for doing just that.  Even the children!

I'll have you know that I indicated my strong disapproval by doing very badly, and yet I was rewarded for being one of the least-winning participants.  In fact, I won a very nice set of wine glasses (yay Lutherans!) for rolling just one Bunco and winning a mere four games of, I don't know, 80 or 90 played.

And apparently, this goes way beyond the Lutherans!  My sister played this same devil game at her Evangelical Free church!  And my mom plays at her senior citizen subdivision!  I'm pretty sure that Bunco appears in Revelation or, at the very least, one of the Left Behind novels.  Can the apocalypse be far behind?

So don't say I didn't warn you.  But if you do decide to risk your eternal soul, make sure to scope out the prizes ahead of time so you can make a beeline for the wine glasses before another player or perhaps the Whore of Babylon scoops them up.

And in case of rapture, this blog will be unmanned.

Confidential to Idiots

When driving in pouring rain, TURN YOUR HEADLIGHTS ON.

Thank you,

The Management

Resume

Objective

To obtain a position paying enough to cover rent, bills, shoe purchases, overseas travel and to finally get an iPod.

Education

Earned a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in English - Writing Emphasis.  Demonstrated finely honed ability to produce A quality essays containing no actual information.  Successfully completed rigorous coursework including: Survey of American Jazz, Exercise Walking, Social Dance, and four credits of Marching Band.

Professional Experience

Customer Relations Coordinator

• As a result of two-hour parking restrictions on streets surrounding office, acquired expert-level parallel parking skills.
• Developed ability to convincingly pretend to remember who Mr. Eldridge is and to what call from last week he is referring while simultaneously inventing elaborate explanation for why his problem has not yet been resolved.

Non-profit Civics Instructor*

• Overcame difficulty with remembering 22 new student names every week by using strategies such as name games, mnemonics, visualization, and calling students "you" or "Ashley" (which had a one in four chance of being correct on any given week.)
• Discovered body's ability to survive on four hours of sleep and all French fry diet, provided caffeinated beverage consumption exceeded body weight.
• Singlehandedly created such educational (and fun!) games as Colonial Freezetag, Conference Committee Telephone Game, and Suspicion to Conviction: Search, Seizure, the Supreme Court, and You.

*I realize that this phrasing makes it sound like it was me who didn't profit!  Well, I didn't.

Reading Instructor

• Memorized such crucial phonics rules as, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and says its name!"
• Maintained consistent level of mediocrity to avoid the "curse of competence" in which the highest-performing instructors' schedules were loaded with the most challenging and potentially violent students.

Office Temp

• Learned to slow typing speed enough to use entire allotted time to complete data entry projects.  Because when you finish early, you don't get paid anymore.
• Cultivated ability to remember complex coffee orders for seven attorneys during up to a three block walk to Starbucks.

Two-Year College Adjunct Professor

• Instituted fifteen minute "journal time" at beginning of class, giving self time to figure out what in heck we'd be doing in class that day.
• Created what can only have been the least math-intensive grade calculating system in all of academia.

Non-Profit Civic Education Program Supervisor

• Discovered innate ability to crack suspects in underage drinking/marijuana possession interrogations.
• Earned Most Favorite Boss honors by streamlining staff meetings to a succinct "Good job this week.  Any questions?  Now let's order pizza so we don't have to eat this crappy hotel chicken again."

Ann Taylor Sales Associate

• Forced reluctant self to use such pretentious terms as client, wardrobing room, and cash wrap.
• Transitioned seamlessly from caustic backroom conversation to sales floor fakey smile and exuberance over new line of linen coordinates.

Learning Institute Coordinator

• Obtained complete knowledge of whether each letter appears on a fish, crab, or mermaid in preschool alphabet game A-B-Seas.
• Gained ability to judge 25 pennies (within 2) by weight alone due to several hundred games of Vowel and Consonant Bingo played using pennies as markers.

With mad skillz like these, who wouldn't want to hire me?

It's time for a few small repairs, she said.

This was the song lyric which inspired my college friend Marissa to chop off her long hair into a very short pixie thing, much to the chagrin of her then-boyfriend now-husband/baby daddy.  We all thought that it was sort of odd, given the fact that that Sheryl Crow song about a change doing you good was really big at the time and seemed more likely to inspire a relationship-threatening haircut than, say, a song about arson.  And yet it is what popped into my own head during my own recent impuslive change-o-rama.

There I was, a week ago Saturday just watching some TLC.  The night before, Melissa and I had done some looking at some new bedding, mostly just to kill some time, with the result that I decided everything was far too expensive and I would definitely wait until after the move and a new job.  After all, I had been perfectly content with my college graduation gift quilt for over seven years now.  I could wait another month.  And then on Saturday I realized that I MUST have new bedding.  Immediately.

Before I could even get out of the house to commence shopping, I had another revelation.  I NEEDED to cut my hair.  Off.  As soon as possible.  I should mention that I was under the influence of several episodes of What Not to Wear and deep in the realization that Nick Arrojo would SO not approve of my current hair.  (Not that I think Clinton and Stacy would approve of my vast collection of Old Navy plain-colored t-shirts, but until they arrive at my door with a $5,000 debit card, there's not much to be done about that.  And if they didn't think that I would spend all $5,000 in H&M on day 1 and require two cabs just to cart all of that inexpensive goodness back to my hotel, they would be sorely mistaken.)

Anyway, I called the salon and made an appointment with Melissa's stylist for today (10 days later!) and then called Amy to go shopping with me to help me pick out the new coverlet.  Actually 2 different coverlets, which we bought, brought here, and put on the bed.  And the winner was:

The rest of the bedroom isn't all matchy since I'm moving next month and frankly, I didn't want to mess with trying to make the bed look all pretty and pillow-shammed for you people, so this is the picture you get.  (I should mention that this is a shot of one of the many small paisleys lest you think that my new coverlet consists of one giant paisley as that photo seems to imply.)

On to the hair, which is a little shorter than I had intended, but still good.

I realize that there really ought to be a Before shot here with me in my glasses and no make-up looking shiny and sad.  And yet, you're getting the shine in the After picture because I couldn't be bothered to touch up after the "5 minutes to get dressed, brush teeth, put on make-up and leave" routine.

And those are my small repairs.  (You know, aside from the whole quitting my job to move to a place where I know no one and hopefully getting a job in an entirely new field.)  Also, we are having a garage sale this Saturday so I'll be repairing the state of my overstuffed drawers, closet, and shoe rack.

In unrelated news, the Global Night Commute was a success, at least here in San Antonio with many, many people sleeping out in the grass at UTSA. 

We wrote letters to the President and our Senators and completed art projects for possible inclusion in a future book.  I don't hold out a lot of hope for mine since it was completed entirely using two flipchart markers accidentally pilfered from a former employer.  And we had to use our pillows as our work surfaces, which really doesn't result in impressive art.  And if, when the book comes out, some of the entries look really awesome, then I will assume that those people cheated and did their art at home.  Here is a picture of our little group, hard at work:

If you want to help out, you can still go here and donate or purchase a hand-made bracelet.  I'd also like to mention for plugging purposes that just before the GNC, I attended a release party for a CD that I highly recommend.  Plus I just think the phrase I attended a CD release party makes me sound cool.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and mess with my new hair while listening to my new CD in my new green bedroom.