My Love Cup Flow-eth Over...

Holy technology. I want a land line and a pencil and paper. I'm about to throw my phone and my computer over my balcony. Good thing I'm a rational, reasonable person (insert maniacal laughter here). Seriously, I made a phone call this evening and now I cannot get incoming calls nor make outgoing calls. I have researched Sprint's website and found the most unhelpful postings I have ever seen. For example, I thought I was onto something when I found this post regarding a similar issue, "I cannot receive incoming calls. The people on the other end can hear me but I cannot hear them. I can only DIAL out." Response: "Take your phone and throw it against the wall and then purchase a better one. Samsung = garbage." Seriously? This is what you have to offer me? Great. So, then, I thought I should check my email one more time and probably my facebook too. I was toying with the idea of making a post about my bum phone but then...wait for it...but then...my computer refused to load my facebook profile and home page. I was also denied access to check my email. This really could not get any better with technology tonight. What next? My microwave is going to blow out so I can't even eat! Just kidding. Don't be alarmed, I actually already ate. You know, it just makes me think, has technology really improved our lives? Has it? The whole premise of facebook is actually disturbing. Who needs to know where there "friends" are at every minute of the day? Do I really even care about the plethora of status messages I read everyday? I'm pretty sure I don't even know half of the people on my newsfeed. It's a sad state of affairs, people. I'm calling for a technology revolution. Let's scrap it all and go back to land lines and using a computer for word processing only! But, then again, I wouldn't have this here blog now would I?

Has anyone seen those Florida orange juice commercials? They are hysterical. Basically, it's a typical 'everyday' person sitting down to the breakfast table with his juice while being confronted by all of the terrible things that are bound to happen throughout the day. Mr. Everyday is not bothered by all of these obstacles but answers each situation with a sarcastic remark. That's how I've been feeling lately! Just imagine, I sit down with my Florida o.j. (even though I almost exclusively only drink Simply Orange - No pulp) and I'm confronted with one of my coworkers, a representative from Sprint and my trainer. This is how the conversation would go...
Coworker: Good morning! Today you're going to arrive at school, to a surly student who will correct every mistake you make, and disrupt the majority of your lessons with an argument clarifying how right he is and just how wrong you are.
Me: Wonderful. Can't wait!
Sprint Rep: Then, you're going to get off work and want to call your mom, but uh-oh, sorry, your phone's not working. She'll be able to hear you but you won't be able to hear her. Your phone will be out of service the rest of the night...possibly indefinitely.
Me: That sounds great! Super!
Trainer: After that, you'll meet me at the gym, whereupon I will yell at you and push you to work harder than you are ready to work. You will feel demoralized and like the past week's workouts were for nothing.
Me: Excellent...let's do this! Good thing I had my orange juice this morning...would anyone notice if I added a splash of vodka? No? Okay good. Even better!

My newest student is quite the little pill. I'm coming to the realization that he wasn't pushed too hard at his last placement, and my demands are getting a bit more than he is ready to handle. It all came to a head a couple weeks ago when he and I had a royally epic battle over vocabulary words. I had assigned him to look up each vocabulary word and write the first definition. Out of the six vocab. words he turned in, about half had the correct definition. The next day, I gave it back to him with the expectation that the incorrect definitions needed to be fixed. I watched him go over and pick up the dictionary and begin looking up each word. Great, I am feeling good about how well he just accepted feedback. This feel-good feeling lasted right up until I collected his assignment from my basket and noticed that instead of replacing the incorrect definitions he had, instead, taken the time to write down the page number of each definition, i.e. "Check page 574." Well, that really got the old blood boiling. The next three days resulted in many back and forths about how I had looked up the definitions, that is how I actually knew they were incorrect. Finally, by Friday he was able to turn in a very messy looking page with mostly correct definitions. This is just one of the highlights from my interactions with this little cherub. He loves the line, "But, I didn't hear you!" This has caught on like rapid fire in my class. Now, I have five kids, not one, claiming they did not hear the direction, as an excuse to not have to follow the direction. Two steps forward and five steps back I tell ya. Today, in fact, I attempted teaching him the difference between a centimeter, decimeter, and millimeter. I decided to start with the smallest measurement (that's a millimeter, people) and work my way up to the biggest measurement (decimeter). While I'm trying to talk, he continues to talk over me, "But, what is a decimeter? I just want to know what a decimeter is. I don't know what a decimeter is." Finally, I say, "Just listen. We are getting there, but you have to know this other information first." To which, he rolled his eyes. Awesome. So, I give him a reminder that that is disrespectful and he looks at me, and says, "What?" in a surly tone. Again, I repeat, "That is a reminder. It. is. disrespectful. to. roll. your. eyes. at. a. teacher." "Oh," he says. Thankfully, it didn't go much farther than that today. Tomorrow will be more of a challenge, we'll see how it goes. The rest of the kids are cute and continue to try making progress in their treatment.

Last week, my friend, Chrissy, and I decided to hire a personal trainer. This has proved interesting at best. Our trainer, whom we shall call, Devil Incarnate, is about 22 years old and fiesty. I have always found I packed a substantial amount of sass but this gal is on a whole other level. Yeah, I get it, it's her job to kick my booty, but it is not her job to think she is Jillian Michaels and that we're on the Biggest Loser. We're not. During our first session we had to perform a 'fit test' for her to sort of set some baseline data. Okay, I can understand this. She sets me up on the chest press and cranks the weights right up to 80 lbs. I flat out just started laughing. Seriously, D.I.? I look at her as if to say, you're joking right? And, in all seriousness, she looks back and yells, "Push it!" Okay, she means business. So, I said, well I'll give it the ol' college try...not even a hint of a smile, she was that un-amused. Yikes. I push as hard as I can and literally cannot even get the press to move. Next thing I know, she is yelling, "Well you have to try!" Oh! Oh, you want me to try? Good idea. Let's do this again. One more time, I push and I push and nothing. With a heavy sigh, and begrudging attitude, she reluctantly lessens the weight. I'm thinking, sorry, I'm not ripped, that's why I hired you, girl! Sheesh. The stuff she set us up with last week actually is pretty fun to do, so it's been easy to stick with.

For one of our requirements, Chrissy and I were ordered to take a group aerobics class together. Completely pleased with ourselves we gloated, "We already do. We go to water aerobics." Of course, Devil Incarnate could not be happy with that. She just looked at us blankly and said, "Okaaaaayyyyyy (implying this is not an actual workout) but I mean I want you to take one on the hardwood, in the cardio room." I volunteered right away to take Zumba because Lord knows, I don't want her putting me into any of that "cardio pump" or whatever those classes are. I don't even know what they mean. Needless to say, Chrissy and I didn't make it to Zumba this week. But, we did make it to water aerobics!

How about we are 25 years younger than the youngest person in our water aerobics class? I love it. Those ladies crack me up and regardless of what D.I. thinks the under-water weight portion of that class is tough! I love me some water aerobics!

Today's List: Events to look forward to in the next 5 days...
1. Session 2 with Devil Incarnate
2. Dinner with Sarah
3. Wicked!
4. Massage
5. Spring football game
6. Sun? Please?

Love,
Me

Rejoice!

I was thankful and blessed to be able to free up a weekend to head south for the Easter holiday.   As usual, it was great to see my family, and, as always, very entertaining to be with my nephews.  They are absolutely the most amusing children I have ever been around.  Joey turned 11 on Easter Sunday and he is more like an adult than a child.  Johnny continues to think he is the coolest thing on the planet, and it's legit, because he is pretty cool.  And, Jacoby remains completely un-amused by me.  His disgust is hard for me to digest because I was always around when the other boys were his age.  They did not really know life without me being there.  However, I only see Jacoby a few times per year and it's pretty clear he does not appreciate my presence.  It's pretty clear he is the boss around his house and my parents house.  I guess I disrupt his reign.

This year, we did not do the traditional egg hunt deal because Johnny was sick and Jacoby does not know what's going on.  I think Joey is mostly out of the egg hunting situation.  It was fun to go to mass with my parents and my brother and Joey.  My mom got up really early on Sunday and baked a "special" Easter casserole.  Joey was really taken with this.  He was going around informing everyone that today was a really special day because grandma made a special Easter casserole.  He came into my bedroom to tell me, "Aunt Judy, breakfast today is A-MAZING!"  I asked him what he had and he said, "Oh, I had pancakes and sausage but grandma made a special casserole.  Everyone else said it was really good."  At dinner, he commented this was the best birthday dinner ever!  All in all, a fun, quick trip, but definitely worth it!

Watching Joe Joe try out his new Kick-bike.

Johnny spilled the beans the morning of Joey's birthday, and told him he was getting a kick-bike.  Joey's anxiety spiked!  On the way to church, he said to his dad, "Daddy, I'm not really a bike guy.  I'm more of a scooter type guy."  At first we had no idea what would illicit such a comment but after Joey spilled the beans about Johnny spilling the beans, it all made sense.  He said he thought a kick bike was a bike with a kick stand.  Turns out, he loves his new kick bike!

Jacoby loves the kick bike too!  Good thing Joey shares well.

He loves his da-da!

Watching Joe Joe

The typical look of disgust when he sees me.  Notice he's not looking at the camera...because he's ignoring me.

My brother couldn't resist.

Jacoby with his 'bop-bop' (grandpa) and so, of course, he's so happy!

Finally, he is warming up to me.  My little monkey man!

This was a short and sweet one! Enjoy! I'll be back later this week!

Loves!

Today's List: Things accomplished today:

1. Cleaned the fridge

2. Unpacked

3. Slept

4. Wrote

5. Blogged

So productive!

Me.

Holy frustration.

Where does it go?  Where does all of your work go, when a button is mistakenly pushed and it disappears in to cyberspace?  I'm just about in tears right now.  I was about 10 paragraphs in to tonight's blog when, with the stroke of a key, everything was gone.  It is not going on 10 o'clock and I'm afraid I just can't redo it all right now.  Further, I am boggled by the fact that my computer says it is perpetually saving the drafts of my blog when the clock it is using is five minutes faster than the clock on my computer.  That, I just don't understand.  Here's the trouble, last night, I ended up staying up until midnight (gasp, I NEVER stay up that late on school nights) to help my roomie's friend out with a paper.  I forgot how much I love proofreading and fixing other people's work.  I got wayyyyyy too invested in the topic of animal cruelty and veganism vs. the meat eating lifestyle.  But, for some reason, I was compelled to do this.  But, since I can't update right now, since my peepers are about to glue themselves shut (magical, I know), I will give you some pictures...and some brief snippets of what's goin on around this place.

About 2 days into living with me, Randy is greeted by my, what shall we say, creative problem solving.  My students are working on a science unit called Land and Water.  Inside the box is a mixture of soil components, and the kids get to model stream beds.  However, there isn't enough time for the stream beds to dry between investigations so I was left with no choice but to blow dry the dirt so it would be ready the next day.  Randy, befuddled at this sight, calls his mother to see what she's up to, because clearly I'm nuts.  His mom inquires, "What's Jude doing?"  Response, "Blowin' drying dirt."  His mom, "What?  Go help her!"  In comes Randy, "Do you have another hair dryer?"  Awww, thanks friend, no I don't, but I do have a camera and this ridiculousness needs to be documented.  Thank you.  

The almost finished product!  I've been working on this frame for several weeks.  And by working on it, I mean, it's been sitting in my room and I've been thinking about colors, and design and when I'll actually be able to get to the pottery place to finish it.  The best opportunity presented itself when two of my girlfriends wanted to meet up one dreary, rainy Saturday.  It was a great afternoon with the girls and, as it turns out, productive!  I pick up the finished piece tomorrow!  I'm excited.  This could be the inspiration for my bedroom redecoration this summer.

Hello, lover.  I did not know such a thing existed until a bit of mania kicked in Monday night, when I had to make a run to Borders.  Every few years, I like to complete a book called "All About Me" I can't remember the last time I worked on one, but it seemed like time to do another one.  Of course, Borders did not have what I was looking for, and I say 'of course' because I had a gift card there.  So next on to the next best place, Barnes and Noble.  Barnes and Noble had EVERYTHING!  They had everything; including Listography which is literally a book devoted entirely to list making.  Nothing gives me such joy.  If you are ever in the market for a gift for yours truly, there are two other editions of Listography - a Romance version, and a Future version.  I will, I promise you, I will own all three and complete them.  Ahhhhhhhh....what comfort lies in a list!

Tonight's List:
What I wrote about in my previous blog that got deleted:
A Florida orange juice commercial
One absurd student
A new gym membership and my trainer, Satan
A plethora of contradictory feelings

I need to write about these things!  I will attempt it again tomorrow night.  Hope this entry is sufficient for now....
peace.

Believe it.

Hello?  Is this thing on?  Does this thing even still exist?  I know, I've been keeping a list of things to write about and I've noticed it's started gathering dust.  Actually, there are some things I had planned to write about that are so passe (the e is supposed to have a little accent mark over it, but I don't know how to do that on my computer) that I had to cancel them off my list.  So, here's what's happening in my world, as we speak...and what has happened in the past oh, say, three weeks…

You may have heard a few weeks ago that Oregon men's basketball won the CBI.  Oh, what's the CBI, you ask?  I have no clue, really.  From what I gathered, it seemed like a tournament developed for teams not good enough for the NCAA tournament, nor the NIT?  I haven't actually heard too many good things about the CBI in general, but that is neither here nor there.  The point is, we won it!  I've discovered winning is pretty cool under any circumstance.  Luckily, my good friend Sarah is totally in with the bball crowd and she was on top of getting tickets and drug me along to the final 2 CBI games.  I guess that'd be the semifinals, and the finals.  The night of the finals we were pretty pumped to see how all would play out against the Creighton Bluejays.  We met at my house and walked to Autzen to catch the shuttle to the new arena.  Turns out, this night had many a strange incident in store for us.  

We arrived to the game prior to tip off and we quickly found our seats.  Not long after finding these seats, we were soon alerted to the fact that they were not actually our seats.  The people who legitimately had claim to the seats were quick to point this out.  By that point, however, the game had just begun and we could not find it within ourselves to climb over the row of people we would need to, to get to our seats.  So, in looking around at the nearly 3,000 empty seats we picked another pair and sat down to settle in for the game.  Not long after...you already know...someone came to inform us that we were in their seats.  Okay, we decided, we should just suck it up and get to our seats that we actually bought and paid for.  As we were nearing our seats, we lost heart, and just thought, well, we can probably sit in these seats.  There was a set of 3 on the aisle and the man sitting with his children behind these seats encouraged us to sit there by saying, "These aren't our seats either, and we've been here the whole game, so it's probably fine."  That was good enough reason for us.  We hunkered down and settled in for the first half of the game.  Nearing the end of the first half, a man-child looking thing (there’s no way I can possibly do his description justice, I will not even try) approached the aisle closest to where I was sitting.  I did not want to make eye contact with this person fearing that if I did, he would, yet again, inform us that we were in his seats.  Sadly, I made the mistake of glancing up and true to prediction he informed us that these were his seats.  Quickly, he noticed the empty seat next to Sarah and assured us, that we could stay, he would just sit in the middle.  This statement was accompanied with a vague gesture towards the open seat next to Sarah.  Happy to oblige the man-child, we stood up to let him pass through to the available chair.  Only now, awkwardly, none of us were moving.  Sarah and I are stealing sideways glances at each other trying to figure out what's going on, when, you know who, informs Sarah she might want to pick up her Bingo cards which were under her seat.  In a confused manner, she did as such, and again, we all stood paused, awkwardly, waiting for someone to make a move.  Finally, Sarah, not knowing what else to do, thought, OH!  I see, we're just going to move down one.  As she stepped toward the seat next to her, the man-child took a step right in between Sarah and I.  He.  Literally.  Wanted.  To.  Sit.  In.  The.  Middle....of US!   I absolutely couldn't believe what had just occurred.  Immediately, upon sitting, let it be noted that I actually tried to flee the scene, but was given a withering look from Sarah so I begrudgingly returned to my seat.  The man-child instantly introduced himself, “Hi!  My name is Jimmy Love. (Aaaaannnd…I’m ready to call B.S. that that is his real name. No way. Unreal.)  I work at a print shop on West 11^th, and I volunteer my time at an animal shelter.  Here, look, I made this hat today (he rips off his hat to show us the front) See?  It says ‘peace ninja.’” (That would have been helpful if I did not know how to read, I don’t know how he would have gotten the impression that Sarah, nor I, knew how to read, but anyway there we were.) He goes on, “You know, because I’m a ninja…for peace.”  Great.  Next up, he tells us how he has some camo hats that he printed 541 on the front.  He predicted, “They are gonna be huge.  They’re really going to take off.”  I assured him, I’d keep my eye out. 

Later, after the game, Sarah and I headed off to get on the shuttle.  The shuttles to and from Matt Arena are typical yellow school buses.  The man in front of us, apparently, had a really big problem with this.  His major complaint was that it is unsafe for people to be standing in the middle when they have no handles to hang onto.  From the minute we got seated behind him, he was off and running on this topic.  Clearly, he was agitated.  His diatribe did not cease when the bus began filling up, either.  In fact, it got worse.  Much, much worse.  He went on to say, these buses were just a lawsuit waiting to happen.  Just wait, watch what happens when one of these buses crashes.  Finally, the woman who was standing in the aisle next to him, says, “Would you just quit?”  He adamantly says he will not and that he can say whatever he wants.  She gives him a surly look, and says, “Enough!” in that disgusted, mothering tone.  Of course, he is relentless, and now he is really getting geared up.  He goes on to wave his hand in front of his face, and starts commenting on the bad smell that is now enveloping him (yes, he’s alluding to the fact that this woman had some sort of heinous body odor).  So what does this woman do?  She hauls off and slaps across the head!  Again, could not believe what just occurred.  The man states, “Well that was rude!”  And she argues, “It was rude for you to say that I smell!”  Unfortunately, the bus hadn’t even pulled out of the Matt Arena parking area.  It was going to be a LONG ride home.  And, it was.  The man made sure to snap a few identifying photographs of this woman with his iphone, unbeknownst to her.  Awkward.  I seriously think he may have tried to pursue assault charges.  I don’t know if it was Sarah, or me, that had the crazy energy that was drawing these incidents towards us.  It was wholly bizarre! 

Then, wouldn’t you know it, at Lewis Black last week, more crazies.  Of course.  Turns out two men had seats right next to us.  Typically, I’d be stoked, but one of these men started the conversation that night with, “Evenin!”  That’s a dead giveaway that dude has no swag.  One of the men, was sort of a bigger guy and he apparently needed a lot of room.  I felt I was a superbly good sport for letting his leg basically rest against mine all night.  Awk-ward.  During the first act, he falls asleep AND he falls asleep again during Lewis Black!  I’m thinking, does this man have a mild form of narcolepsy?  Surely, if I’m awake and kickin’ I would expect everyone else in the world would be the same.  So, the show comes to a close and it’s clear that Black isn’t coming out to any sort of addendum to his show, so the theatre starts clearing.  Excuse me, the theatre starts clearing out everywhere except in our row.  Literally, the entire upper balcony was cleared out, save for the two men to the left of us and the three really-old-people-who-didn’t-crack-a-smile-the-entire- show to the right of us.  Sarah and I were completely trapped.  I’m looking at her, as if to say, what do we do?  Climb over the seats?  This is bizarre.  I’m guessing the old people were waiting for us to move so that they could get out, but these guys were just not moving next to us.  Creepy, a bit?  Yeah, I think so.  Finally, Sarah whispers, “movement, I see movement.”  Whew.  So, we get up and these men are clearly loitering trying to get our attention, which we aren’t giving to them, so randomly, the man that was sitting next to me hollers (literally) “Karaoke at The Old Pad!”  I fought every urge to say, “Um, sir, you fell asleep twice in that hilarious performance.  I think you should probably hit the hay.”  These men, continued to try to walk near us, and we continued to try to avoid them.  It was a narrow escape, but we managed.  

This blog is getting ridiculously long.  I am going to have to start wrapping things up, or else no one will ever read this again.  I’ll talk about one more topic, and I’ll finish the rest tomorrow.  Believe me, they can wait.

I’ve recently acquired a new roommate.  I think most people knew this was coming, but Randy Denson (aw, Ame’s li’l bro) has moved in with me.  I’m not even kidding when I say he has probably the best energy I’ve ever been around.  I don’t think I’ve stopped laughing since he moved in.  He is hysterical.  Between him and his friends, I am constantly entertained.  The first day I came home, he had dried my laundry and ran the dishwasher AND emptied it.  WHOA!  When I walked in, he right away, said, I put your laundry on your bed, oh, and can you show me where these dishes go?  I wasn’t so sure.  I was blown away.  Yeah, I can show you!  What a novel idea…to learn where things go in the kitchen!  I was thoroughly impressed.  Then, we attempted to make our first meal together, which went really well, despite that we almost burned the apartment down.  I forgot to turn the fan on above the stove and when we started cooking the steaks on the grill pan the entire apartment literally filled with smoke.  The smoke alarm sounded and Randy got the ever so important job of standing below the smoke alarm waving a towel to keep it from sounding over and over.  We could go stand on our front porch and look toward the sliding glass door in the kitchen and just see smoke billowing out of the kitchen.  So far, Randy has at least tried everything I cook, which is very kind.  I will probably never forget the moment Randy came home from the store and gave me the low down on what he bought.  “Oh yeah, and I got some oatmeal for breakfast, but you’ll have to show me how to make it.”  Tonight, I said I was thinking of making breakfast for dinner, and he said, “Do you know how to make eggs like that?”  and pointed to the packaging on one of my grill pans.  “Over easy?” I asked.  Yeah!  Yes, I know how.  So, he excitedly says, “Count me in!”  I just laugh and laugh.  Oh and don’t forget about the time, his friend used my towel last weekend.  I just thought this the strangest, yet, hilarious thing.  Some of his friends crashed here Saturday night and when I woke up to go into the bathroom the next morning I noticed all these water droplets on the floor.  I thought oh, someone must have taken a shower, so when I came out I looked at Randy and clearly he hadn’t showered.  Once again, I went into the bathroom to investigate and found my towel was sopping wet.  That’s strange, so I said, Randy, did you use my towel?  He was like, you know I did not use your towel.  And, I just started busting up.  Randy was laughing at his friend…the culprit.  Super funny.  Welp, that towel went right into the wash. 

Today’s List:  Topics to write about tomorrow:

1.    Students

2.    General frustrations

3.    Water aerobics

4.  Misc.