fat kid from Hairspray

Me: I just took a quiz on what Broadway star are you and I'm the fat kid from Hairspray.
Hal: What does that mean?!
Me: It means that I follow my heart and do what I want, or something.
Hal: Oh.
Me: The quiz said, "Are you fat?" I said "yes" and it said, "No further questions needed, you're the fat girl from Hairspray."
Hal: Are you serious? What kind of quiz is that?!
Me: hahahahahahahahahaha.

Hal and I are un-PC.

On the board

On Monday, my 510 class and I were very nervous to get back our first essays of the term. So nervous that some bad F dreams were reported.

I am always nervous about grades. I think this hit a fever pitch in law school, when grades were your entire life, but it was like that ever since I was a kid. Apparently the first time I got something "wrong" in kindergarten, I was traumatized and cried when I got home from school.

So by the time class rolled around, I was nervous.

Now, as a teacher, I understand the reasoning behind waiting until the end of class to distribute graded material. You want the kids to focus on learning rather than the grade. Also, if your kids are going to HATE you, you'd rather them be on their way out the door when they start to hate you than having to look at them for the next however long as they sit there and seethe. And not learn.

Still --- I have a hard time focusing when I know a grade is coming and I don't have it.

So class was long.

Then he handed out the papers. My grade was fine.

But then he started putting papers up on the overhead projector to show examples of things that were done well or poorly. First, he puts up a paper of a friend of mine who happened not to make it to class that day. Good things to say about her, and then commented on her organization/thesis paragraph.

To illustrate his point about the kind of thesis paragraph he was thinking of, he scrolls down the PDF.

To mine.

My name is on it. There are the two typos in the first paragraph. All of his suggestions and corrections.

"Oh," I say out loud. "It looks a lot worse when it's so big!" (I get a chuckle from the rest of the class.)

It's fine, and I don't really care. I don't get embarrassed easily (thank goodness). Perhaps someone else would have been mortified, so it's better that he used mine. :)

And so my friends teased me, but just a little. I gently reminded them that I taught English to high school freshmen, if there is ONE THING I should be able to do, it's write a thesis paragraph, for heaven's sake.

So that paper is down -- now we're waiting for word on the agenda setting proposal. And the more and more I think about it, the more and more I'm convinced it's a huge mess.

Sigh --- life of a student.

Tales from the Bus: Hurling through space and time

The bus was almost my undoing a couple of weeks ago.

I think I may have had a spot of an ear infection. I was dizzy and nauseous. I told Hal to go to work without me so I could stay in bed for a little while longer trying to right my world -- as I was listing to one side like sinking ship.

I left the house and made it to the bus stop.

There were approximately 2 million people waiting for the bus. I don't usually take the bus this early (it was before 9), so I was unprepared for the multitudes of people waiting for the bus.

Lucky for us, two busses pull up. 

Unlucky for me, there is no seat. Approximately 1 million of the 2 waiting joined the already full bus. I got on and was crammed somewhere in the aisle facing backwards. (Can you see where this is heading yet?)

So I do okay for a little while. Then, right as we entered campus (about 5 minutes or so into the ride), I start getting hot. At this point in time it was below zero with the wind chill. I figured there were just too many people on the bus.

I break out in a cold sweat.

Uh oh. 

I take off my gloves. No help.

Oh jeez -- just get to the library! (The library and the business school share a stop, and most of the people get off at that stop.)

Still sweating. I unzip my coat. Nothing.

Oh boy. This is not good

I realize that I'm not seeing very well. The sun had risen enough so that it was hitting the bus windows in such a way that made it hard to see. I was in a daze.

It hits me that I am going to puke on the bus.

With 2 million people pressed in next to me. 

I turn toward some girls sitting near me.

"Please pull the thing!" I croak out, desperate. They pull it for me. The bus starts to slow.

I spin around, smacking a girl sitting on the other side of the aisle upside the head. I apologize, I think. In any case, she tells me it's ok.

In the nick of time, the bus pulls to a stop and opens the door. I stumble through the group of people to the back door and am free!

I throw OFF my coat and sit down on a snow-covered wall. I stay there for about 10 minutes, enjoying the cold, which immediately helped the oh-no-gonna-puke feeling. 

I ended up walking most of the way home, after waiting for a long time for a bus that never did come. I emailed my teachers, crawled back into bed, and stayed horizontal for the rest of the day.

And that's the story of how I missed my only classes this year.

School stuff...

Well, the past week was a doozy.

First, there was the agenda setting presentation -- which went pretty well. I included graphics in my notes like a good high school teacher and got made fun of. 

Then, there was the media and society paper. The fate of that will be determined on Monday.

Finally, Tuesday brought the due date for my agenda setting proposal. I turned something in, which is good, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if it makes any sense to do the project in the way I proposed. Only time will tell, I guess!

Today I found myself a thesis adviser and figured out when I'm going to do my thesis. I will be working on it this summer, and signing up for the thesis "class" in the fall. Also in the fall, I'm going to try to take a content analysis class that is being held in the Telecom department. (Here, Telecom is a totally different school --- and they do awesome things like hook people up to electrodes to test their responses while they watch stuff on TV!) I also might try to take a video production class so I can gain another skill set for when I start applying for jobs in the far-off future.

Hal and I are enjoying the dueling Macbooks. I have never had a laptop, and I'm enjoying being able to sit downstairs on the comfy chair while working (or reading the net). Also, I was able to bring my computer to the dining room, pull up a recipe, and work off of it rather than write the whole thing down! That was very exciting. (Last night I made a recipe with Leeks in it. Have you ever SEEN a leek? It's like a MUTANT green onion!!!)

Best in Show

Today while on a break between classes, Layla and I watched a rerun of part of the Westminster Dog Show. As many of you probably saw, a Beagle named Uno was able to win the coveted Best of Show award.

Now Layla is a beagle/labrador mix, so I thought she might be interested in watching part of the show. In fact, she did sit in my lap and looked attentively at the TV for a good 45 minutes as the dogs paraded around the arena. (On a side note, it was funny to hear the old lady judge say, "Move that bitch in front of the mastiff.")

However, once we finished watching, I, like any parent, worried about the impact the show might have on Layla. Would she feel inadequate knowing that she has not the pedigree to join a dog show? Will she feel sad at her unsheared, unpoofy coat of fur? What a quandry! Hopefully, Layla will feel self-worth from the inside and not from society.

But to prove how cute she truly is, I will post a picture.

Tales from the Bus: Bro Love

Boy 1 (sitting down): Dude, that's a sweet sweater.
Boy 2 (standing) [looks down at his sweater]: You like that?
Boy 1: Yeah! Where did you get it?
Boy 2 [ponders for a moment]: My girl got it for me. It's from Urban Outfitters.
Boy 1 [snaps his fingers]: Darn, that's too expensive.
Boy 2: Thanks, man.

This is the conversation I witnessed on the bus about two weeks ago. It really felt as though I was in the twilight zone. After all, what boys talk to each other like this, randomly, on the bus, discussing clothes? It was so weird!

(I was sitting next to boy 1, and I'm afraid I looked like I was watching a tennis match, as this conversation was so amusing to me, I was looking back and forth from one boy to another while it went on.)

Several things

I've been missing for almost a week, and that's silly.

First, our Super Bowl party went swimmingly. The only incident occured when Layla got too excited and ran through our screen door. It is now fixed, and she wasn't hurt, so that's good.

Second, this week I have a presentation and a paper due, and a huge proposal is due on the 19th. Hal and I are getting ready to begin my priest abuse coding analysis (more on that later) -- and that study has to be done by April 1. So I've been working quite a bit on reading lots of things for my presentation and proposal.

Third, I have two fabulous Tales from the Bus stories to tell you. One of them involves me acting a fool, so it should be entertaining. (Also, I had a CONVERSATION on the bus this Thursday! Someone was reading one of the Ender's Game series books, and I asked him about it, because, as well all know, it's my favorite series ever. This was so exciting to me. I hope he didn't think I was hitting on him...)

Fourth -- the fabulous blogger at The_Dairi_Burger discovered Judy_Blume's_Blog. What a find! Actually, The Dairi Burger is also a find -- especially for those of you who read Sweet Valley High books -- that's her specialty. It's similar to BSC Headquarters on my blog roll, but does more book series (and updates more frequently).



Hal and I are waiting patiently for our new toys to show up. We finally bit the bullet and bought a Mac laptop for me. And, not to be outdone, Hal bought one for himself, too. Both of our computers are about 6 years old. His is running a lot worse than mine. We're still going to keep at least mine because it still works pretty well and has several things that Macs done have. Like Minesweeper. Anyway, if you are looking for a Macbook (and not the little skinny new one) -- we were able to secure a rather cheap one off the Apple website by buying a refurbished one. Every couple of days they have some more at the cheapest price of $750. So buying two was a little more expensive than buying 1 new one.

Anyway, we're looking forward to receiving mine (we bought them a couple of days apart). It was supposed to be here yesterday, but it's missing in action. Hopefully it isn't lost or strewn along a highway somewhere. Hal actually looked for FedEx accidents. There was one on Feb. 8, 2006, and, not noticing the date, Hal was very nervous our laptop was exploded somewhere in Colorado. That doesn't appear to be the case. I will keep you all updated.

Super Stuffed

Tomorrow, we are having our first gathering at our (tiny) townhouse.

I am very nervous.

When we moved to Bloomington, many of you know that we moved from a house to a townhouse. Our old home had 3 bedrooms and a loft -- this place has two bedrooms. Our old home had a large kitchen/breakfast nook -- this has a galley kitchen.

Suffice to say, we don't have the space we once did. But we still have the furniture. So we have strange things happening, such as a china cabinet in the living room (it doesn't fit in the dining room) and a hall closet filled to the brim with boxes of kitchen gadgets.

So tomorrow we are having some friends from my program and Hal's work over to eat lasagna and "watch" the Super Bowl. I say "watch" because some of my friends are not American and therefore had no idea when the Super Bowl was when I told them about this gathering. So I'm assuming that many might not exactly care about the outcome of the game. I myself will cheer for the Giants unless they put in Jared_Lorenzen -- who I am required to cheer against because he is a cake eater from Highlands High School, a public high school in Northern Kentucky.

Anyway, we are making a lot of family foods. My mom has a famous lasagna that we made for the first time (it's all put together, we just have to cook it), my grandmother has a tres bien chocolate eclair cake, which I made for the first time. Hal is going to be making breadsticks and some sort of cookie. We also might be trying out my cousin's famous bourbon slushes, but if not we have soft drinks, beer, and wine for the masses. And, of course, salad from a kit.

We will be crammed like sardines into my townhouse enjoying (hopefully!) food and football.

I just hope we all fit!

(Here's the interactive part -- should Hal and I move to a bigger townhouse? We can move to a 3 bedroom in our complex, or move outside of the complex to some other bigger townhouse. Many good things about this -- the only big bad thing is not knowing if I'm going to get into the PhD program, which could mean we could have no school related reason to stay after next December. What do you think?)