L’s Neighborhood

What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.) 

I'm one of those weird people that actually liked high school.  I got along with everyone, and tried not to cause too much trouble.  I also liked most of my classes (except for any type of math class...I'm a serious math phobe!)  It's hard to choose one, so I'm going to choose my two favorites.

The first choice would have to be tenth grade American Cultures.  I had an amazing teacher, Mr. Tubbs.  He was wild and crazy, and loved to teach.  He was the type of teacher that used to literally jump up on a desk and do a dance to make a point.  He was very passionate about what he taught, and he made us want to learn.  He had a great sense of humor, and loved to make jokes.  Another thing I remember about him was his cup....it was a white cup with a wonder woman handle.  You don't forget a cup like that!  That cup shows that he marched to the beat of his own drum, and didn't care what people thought of him. 

There are so many things I liked about Mr. Tubbs, and I actually try to model myself after him as a teacher now.  I often reflect on the teachers that I had that were terrible, and do everything within my power to not be like them.  Then I think about teachers like Mr. Tubbs and all of the great qualities that they have, and do my best to incorporate those qualities into my own teaching style.  The things that I remember most about him are his kindness, his humor, his interest in us as individuals, and the love that he had for his subject matter.  If at the end of my career a student remembers me as fondly as I remember Mr. Tubbs, I'll know that I was successful.

My second choice for a favorite class would have to be my AP English Lit course when I was a senior.  I didn't like the teacher as much as Mr. Tubbs.  She was OK, but not as exciting.  What I loved was the class itself.  I took three AP courses my senior year (Bio, Psychology, and English Lit.)  That was a pretty heavy course load on top of my regular classes, but it was good preparation for college.  Bio was nearly impossible for me, but I liked Psychology a lot.  English Lit was definitely the best fit for me, though (go figure....I ended up being a Reading specialist!)

A nice part of the class was the class size.  There were only five of us in the class....Mike, Brandy, Wendy, Ben, and myself.  It was so small that I can still remember everyone!  Ben and Wendy and I were really good friends, which made the class even more fun.  What I loved the most, though, were the books that we got to read.  This class really introduced me to the classics, and I fell in love with them.  I can remember picking apart The Crucible.  We read The Glass Menangerie and compared the play to the film.  We read Lord of the Flies and got to write our own concluding chapter.  The book I loved the best, though, was Wuthering Heights.  I found it confusing at first, since all of the characters have the same first name or last name, but once I understood the story I was hooked for life.  I actually own a very old, very fragile copy of Wuthering Heights that was printed in 1936.  I keep it right next to my very old copy of Edgar Allan Poe's works. 

As I think back to all of the wonderful literature we read in my AP English Lit class, I am reminded of a line from one of my all-time favorite children's books.  It is from the story Thank You, Mr. Falker, by Patricia Polacco.  This is a story about a girl (the author as a child) who was dyslexic.  She was also bullied, and had a rough time in school.  This went on for a long time until a teacher took a special interest in her and helped her to adapt to her disabilities.  Patricia Polacco wrote the book in honor of this wonderful teacher.  I often read the book to my older classes, and have never gotten through a reading without shedding a few tears.  I have seen so many students come through my room that could have been that little girl in the story.  It really breaks my heart sometimes.

In this story, the girl's grandfather puts a spoonful of honey on the cover of a book (she is quite young at this point).  He then asks her to taste the honey.  When he asks her how it tastes, she says, "Sweet".  Then he says the following:  "Yes, and so is knowldege, but knowledge is like the bee that made that honey, you have to chase it through the pages of a book!" I was more than willing to chase that knowledge through the pages of a book, and being in that class showed me that there was more out there than the teeny-bopper novels I was used to reading.  It opened my eyes to a bigger world of text, and I will be forever grateful for that.

Here's a link to a reading of the book by Jane Kaczmarek.  http://storylineonline.net/thankyou/fullscreen_xl.html  It takes about ten minutes, but it is so worth it...every time I read the story, I know without a doubt that being a teacher is what I was meant to do.

During the past 24 hours the following thoughts occurred to me:

• 13:24 First person who sends me their email address via DirectMessage gets a GoogleWave Nomination. (I need the email address for the nomination)
• 13:42 How to tell if you were adopted: bit.ly/babq3
• 14:35 The Google Wave nomination has been given out.

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After looking through old photos of myself and my sibs when we were kids, I have come to the conclusion that we must have worn the most ridiculous, daggy swimmers you could ever hope (not) to see.

Now I myself only saw my mother sew once, when she sewed my bridesmaid doll a dress and cape. But these definitely have a home sewn look to them. And we seemed to wear them for years.

Take me here for instance. Determined to get to the beach. And nothin', not even those baggy daggy swimmers is going to stop me. I mean mother, you could've taken in the legs a little. I bet if I keep looking I'll see one of my sisters wearing these before I got them. Probably both of them.

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And one of my favourite photos. Emjay, the oldest, with our brother and sister. Sporting a very unfashionable blue suit with a matching home done fringe trim.

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And here she is again, what maybe a couple of years later, still wearing it.

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Move forward another couple of years and my other sister is now wearing it and Emjay has a much nicer, yet still loose fitting pair of swimmers on. As you can see I'm still wearing the same pair I had on in the beginning. Because I had penty of room to grow into.

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OMFG. And I was right. Even though I was only half joking. Here is Min, wearing my baggy pink swimmers. I wonder if I ever owned a new pair.

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I have this vision of my mother, searching through her wardrobe every year the day before we went on our summer holidays, pulling out a bag full of atrocious old faded swimmers and handing us each a pair. Mind you it wouldn't have been a very full bag. We seemed to last through our childhoods with three of four pairs between us.

Not for sale, but for a moderate donation to the Austin Humane Society, you could find a pair of these big beautiful eyes staring lovingly into yours.

Takeushome 1

Takeushome 2

Takeushome 3

Takeushome 4

Takeushome 5

Takeushome 6

Takeushome 7

So very much to do and never enough time in the day. Mostly because I am able and willing to sleep, to say good night, and wake up to say good morning, and pleasantly say 'Yes, I did sleep well. You?'

October's end was quite unexpected. And therefore unexpectedly busy. I regret none of it, but I am a wee bit saddened that nanowrimo is 9 days old and I haven't put pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboard if you like, in its employ even once.

Well, that's not true--I did resketch several chapters to incorporate some development that's been swirling in my head since my trip home, but alas 50,000 words seems a damn near impossibility now, even with my jump start from previous work on it. Sigh. I'm torn between setting a realistic goal of a couple of weeks later, OR desperately trying to make up the time. I still have so much left undone--around the house, at work, on my contract, that I just don't know what to do.

And then there are the animals. I am so very desperate to get them adopted out. I want to get on with the business of grieving their loss, of getting over their absence and believing that I've done the right thing by finding them better homes. I am tired of being practical and logical, tired of loving them and yet holding myself at the distance of a mere caretaker. Coming home is a reminder that they are my burden and my failure. If I had been stronger, I would have forced myself to recognize the unsustainability of this situation earlier, and adopted them out when they were younger, cuter, etc. Now they are older, less adoptable and I've only just recognized how little space exists between the rock and a hard place I've been occupying for two and a half years.

My biggest comfort, beyond the hope that I will find them better places, is my love and the new life that's waiting for me. That fate and luck have offered up such a sweet reward--a door opening just as I was prepared to walk out of the old one and shut it behind me--is yet another sign, I hope, that this has been the right direction all along.

I just wish I could run down the road and through that open door a bit faster. I want to get the crying over with, and I'd prefer to do it in the arms of the someone else I trust to help 'make everything better.'

The road, though, is a pages long to-do list. Time to get back to it.

Are you prepared in case of a natural disaster? What do your plan and preparations include?

Honestly, I had never really even thought of doing this until the other night.  I got hooked on a marathon of that new "Surviving Disaster" show on Spike TV this weekend.  It's hosted by some dude named Cade Courtly, and he's a rough-and-tough former Navy Seal.  For those of you that haven't heard of it before, he basically takes normal folks through horrific scenarios that they might encounter someday.  Even though it's made me a bit paranoid, I do like the show.  The things he shows you how to do make sense, and it's good info to tuck away (and hopefully never need to use!)

So far I have learned how to:

• Survive an earthquake, and all of the nasty stuff that goes along with it (power lines on a car, jacking up a fallen wall, etc.)
• Survive a mall shooting (and take out a terrorist with a suitcase and a clothes bar).  The most interesting fact I learned was that you should never keep your shoulder to a wall when there is shooting going on, because bullets like to travel six inches away from a wall until they encounter an object.
• Survive a home invasion (I fell asleep for part of this, and probably missed some good stuff)
• Survive a nuclear blast (that one kind of freaked me out a bit).  I learned a lot about the different kinds of radiation, and that you only have about 20 minutes to escape the fallout.  I also learned that any vehicle that is running during the blast will be electromagnetically fried, so they showed a crash course in hot-wiring a car.  Your best bet is to see where the wind is blowing, and drive perpendicular to the scary cloud
• Survive a high-rise fire.  I've always been scared to be trapped in a fire, so it was good to know that high-rise buildings have dedicated fire stairways in the middle of the building.  If those get compromised, I learned how to smash holes in thin interior walls to crawl through offices.  There aren't any high-rise buildings where we live, but if I ever get trapped in one, I feel like I'm better prepared!
• Survive while lost on a snowy mountain (digging a snow cave, making snow shoes out of evergreen branches, and what to do in an avalanche).  They even worked a grizzly bear attack into that episode.  Grizzly's have shoulder humps, and black bears don't.  You don't look a grizzly in the eye, and you play dead if it catches you.  You do look a black bear in the eye, and definitely don't play dead (or he will maul you for kicks).  This is good info, since I came two feet from a black bear a few years ago, and couldn't remember what to do.  I looked at him, which was the right thing to do (whew!)
• Survive in a hurricane (there is no real worry about dealing with that where we live, since we are surrounded by many mountain ranges.  I stopped watching after somebody got attacked by an alligator) 

I think that's all of them so far.  I missed the airplane hiijacking episode that started the whole series.  I am also halfway through being lost at sea.  Then next episode is called Pandemic, and focuses on terrorists releasing a biological weapon into the population, and also what would happen during a catastrophic virus outbreak.  I'm sure that one will freak me out, given that I get sneezed on, snotted on, coughed on, (and sometimes bled on) during a typical day at school! 

Are you prepared in case of a natural disaster? What do your plan and preparations include?

lol, what a strange question! Are we expecting one then?

I'm obsessive compulsive enough thanks. If I start worrying about potential natural disasters I'll be a nervous wreck.

Although, we are going to Thailand at christmas time, and I must admit that the thought has crossed my mind as I run on the treadmill each morning, that'll I'll be right to run a long way up into the mountains if a tsunami hits. Maybe even carrying one small child on my back. Which rules out my kids because they're all much bigger than me. Which is good because I won't have to do the Sophies Choice thing.

Remember when everyone was freaking out about the Y2K thing? I said to Daz, maybe we should stock up on food. And when the year 2000 clicked over with no problems I looked in the laundry and we had stocked one bottle of water and a 4 pack of baked beans. It was a pretty piss poor effort really. We'd have lasted a morning.

I think to be prepared for a natural disaster the best thing you can do is forget about supplies and just stock up on weapons. Lots of guns and ammo. Thats your best bet, because you're going to have to kill a lot of crazy desperate people to get to the supermarket and the bottle shop. Maybe even zombies. I'm not sure what sort of disaster we're talking about. Oh yes,there they are,  I wasn't looking properly. No zombies, so that makes it a bit easier.

And nail polish. Stock up on nail polish. Because new nail polish always makes you feel better.

My new bottles arrived in the mail the other day.

I'm wearing blue at the moment. But I'm wishing I'd picked Calypso.

 

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During the past 24 hours the following thoughts occurred to me:

• 09:20 Apparently @Oprah said she doesn't like shorts. So some are making suggestions. How about Chekhov's Oysters #storyrecommendationsforoprah
• 09:24 Victor Hugo's Talleyrand could be classified as Flash NonFiction: gavroche.org/vhugo/talleyrand.gav #storyrecommendationsforoprah

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Supernatural was pretty good this week.  I really like how they spoofed a lot of popular TV shows.  I wasn't sure how that was all going to go down (the chance for it being corny was definitely there), but I think they did a good job.  I wasn't expecting them to tie it all together with the Apocalypse storyline at the end, which I thought was a nice touch.  I also wasn't expecting the twist at the end...that caught me by surprise.  Even though it was serious at the end, I absolutely loved the silly stuff.  Someone was nice enough to post some of it on Youtube, so I'm going to post a couple of clips. 

The opening credits were great (considering they never have an "official" beginning to the show, just a recap each week). Their characters are supposed to be these tough dudes that go around saving the world from demons and monsters.  To watch them riding a tandem bike or playing football was so funny!  I especially like the "ghost" in the closet:

  The commercial Sam had to act in was pretty funny, in an uncomfortable (no pun intended) sort of way:

And the CSI:Miami parody....Jackpot!

I admit to being a Denise Austin fan. Even though she never shuts up. And she always lies. But you get used to that. I now know that when she says

just one more

She doesn't really mean just one more. She means just that one more then a few more after that.

I've been doing the Fat Blasting Yoga dvd. Its pretty strenuous. And just when you think its over she brings out the stability ball and does another 15 minutes.

When I first started doing it a few weeks ago my legs would be wobbling and shaking from the effort but now I'm pretty good. My thighs feel like they're packed with cement actually. Jem was feeling them the other night and said I'll be able to crack coconuts with them. Which I guess could come in handy someday.

And I've lost 5 kilos which is also pretty handy. 4 more to go. But my aim is really firmness. I want to firm up all those bits that start going soft after 40. You know where they are. Triceps, back fat over the bra, thighs, well lots of places really.

And I made this magnet a couple of years ago when I was trying to lose weight and I think its time to put it back on the fridge to help the cause. Because she's 52 and looks pretty damn fine. And firm. Thats my aim. To be fitter at 50 than ever before. So I have 5 years up my sleeve.

Denise-austin