Not Too Late To Change The Name |
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Tuesday, July 22, 2008
You may not want to read this if you resent me for having two months off. I am finally, FINALLY, like as of just the last couple of days, feeling like a relaxed, well-rested, normal human being again. Another teacher friend of mine got there after just a couple of weeks. It took me a full month. Even as of last week, I had intermittent insomnia and wild mood swings. But I think I'm finally over the first-year teacher PTSD. People have been asking what I've been doing with myself. Well, when I don't have insomnia, I'm sleeping 8-10 hours a night. I have joined a gym again and am going 3 times a week, and trying to bump it up to 4. I've been reading books, watching dumb TV (5 hours of a telenovela last week...shh...), and actually having time to watch DVDs and Tivo with Rick when he gets home instead of hanging out for an hour and then falling asleep on the couch. I have uploaded and organized (though not fully captioned) about 2000 photos on Flickr. I have cooked lasagna and Thai food for the first time. Nothing fancy. I haven't really even gone anywhere. But it's good. My plan was to relax for ALL of July and then get to work putting last year's unfinished business to bed and setting up for next year. I can tell I'm going to be ready, because also in the last few days, I've thought of things I can do and have to stop myself from going and doing them. ("Oh, just go print out the state standards for Math 7. It'll only take a minute and then it'll be done." "No! It's JULY.") So, I'm actually starting to look forward (SLIGHTLY) to getting back to work. That's promising. In case you are doubting how much I have to do to put my teaching life in order, here is my impossible-to-ignore reminder that has been sitting in my bedroom all summer:  I showed my feet for some scale. Bear in mind that I do not have little, dainty girl feet -- I wear a size 10. There is also a box of geometry goods out of frame that I frankly probably won't get to until I have to teach geometry again. My goal it to take care of that pile, keeping what I need for BTSA or next year and recycling the rest, by the time I travel for a wedding the second week in August. Now, however, I'm going to go read a book. Labels: work 1 comments Sunday, July 20, 2008
Happy weekend. Have some funk Al Green, "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" [video] Watch it quick before the copyright police take it down, as they tend to with classic clips from this particular show. And if you see UB40, kick them up the arse for me. 0 comments Saturday, July 19, 2008
Wired reports: "California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California's 20 billion gallon gasoline and diesel habit is greater than China's! (Or Russia's. Or India's. Or Brazil's. Or Germany's.)" Whoa. (Source: California Energy Commission's State Alternative Fuels Plan.) Labels: business 0 comments Friday, July 18, 2008
Good on so, so many levels [video] Daily Show does it again. The current events commentary is excellent, as always, but I think my favorite part is the "pretty girl?" exchange. Labels: politics, pop culture, tv 0 comments Tuesday, July 15, 2008
I went to the Japanese supermarket Mitsuwa and happened to purchase a kit to make fish cake soup. Mmm, fish cake. I didn't fully read the ingredients in the store, which is kind of unusual for me. However, when I was preparing to cook it, I did read the ingredients, and noticed this:  (Click on the image to see it with a note pointing out what's wrong with this picture) Whoa! What? Waiter, there's Wikipedia in my soup! (Shut up, or everyone will want one.) Turns out this isn't an isolated incident. In December 2007, BoingBoing.net (which scrolls WAY too fast for me to read on a regular basis when I'm working for a living) posted about a Beijing restaurant with "Stir fried wikipedia" and "Steam eggs with wikipedia" on the menu. Apparently, in this context, it's a type of fungus. The comments on that post linked to a photo of a menu featuring "BBQ wikipedia", which turned out to be squid. A restaurant in Taiwan said "wikipedia" when they meant "cheesecake". A BoingBoing commenter offered this "I think i may have found a plausible explanation: Google "[some chinese characters that don't reproduce well on screen]". Scroll down a bit, and what word jumps out at you? The first search result* to have any English words in its title is "??- Wikipedia". It's easy to imagine a non-English speaker seeing this and mistaking it for a translation! "This also works for #24's cheesecake [...] Probably explains the other cases as well, since Wikipedia often comes up near the top in a Google search for a single word or common phrase." I know I couldn't do any better if I tried to translate a language that didn't even use the same characters as mine, but it's funny anyway. Labels: food 0 comments Monday, July 14, 2008
I'm kind of sick of hearing about gas prices. Yeah, they're higher than they used to be, and if you're a low-wage worker that does suck. Most of the people who are complaining moved too far away from work or, more often, drive WAY too big a vehicle. (I'm guilty of this to a certain extent because I live 13 miles from work. However, Rick lives 4 miles away and takes the bus, and I drive a small car, so it all works out fine.) Recently, an SUV owner admitted in the New York Times that she regrets buying the monster. Mmm, schadenfreude. "Why on earth did we buy a car like this? "Well, a lot of people once did. In fact, until late 2004, a lot of people went out of their way to buy precisely these monsters because -– if you can believe it -– the government actually offered a tax break for buying a car that weighed over 6,000 pounds if you were self-employed and needed it to transport heavy work machinery. Like farm equipment. Or a laptop. "But that’s not why we bought ours. "We bought our Land Rover because our friends had one." It goes on about how they felt so adventurous and cool driving their urban tank. Now, if you are really transporting heavy work equipment -- like if you are a construction worker or similar -- I've got no problem with you getting a gas subsidy for your pick-up truck since it's a legit work expense. (People who really haul heavy equipment don't do so in an SUV.) But if you bought something huge just to keep up with the imaginary Joneses or your real neighbors, or to feel like you were having an adventure on your way to the supermarket, I'm going to laugh at you for a good few years. Labels: business 2 comments Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Small rant based on something I just read that I don't feel like stirring up with the people who wrote it: Los Feliz is NOT "East Los Angeles." For you Bostonians, that's like some transplanted yuppie idiot calling the Back Bay "south Boston" because it's south of downtown and he has no concept that there is an actual neighborhood called South Boston (that has poor people, so he will never go there). Los Feliz is not east of downtown, the 110 freeway, or the LA River -- all disputed boundaries of what constitutes "the eastside." It is merely east of all the predominantly white neighborhoods. That doesn't make it East Los Angeles. Someone smack these people upside the head with a bottle of Jarritos. Rant #2: Most of the people who'd agree with me on the above point think I'm a douchebag solely because I live on the west side of town and did not grow up in this area. Also because (insert one or both based on demographics of Angeleno) a) I am white and/or b) I do not own a bicycle or listen to NPR, and I eat meat. I'm so sick of this place, from every possible angle. 1 comments Friday, July 04, 2008
I'm celebrating July 4th with a great piece of American history, the first episode of Saturday Night Live. I've tried to watch it twice and fallen asleep both times (no reflection on the quality of the show, it's just what I do). NBC reran it in honor of Carlin, because he was the host. There are many things to comment on, but one of the funnier things in retrospect was the spoof commercial for the Triple Track razor. Sadly, I can't find a clip online, but it advertises a three-blade razor, AS A JOKE, complete with an animation of how the three blades attack one hapless piece of stubble. The SNL tagline for it was: "Because you'll believe anything." Later, when the three-blade razor actually existed, The Onion ran the piece, Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades. Of course, that product now exists, too. What's next? 16 blades! [video] Labels: consumerism, stupid humor, tv 0 comments Tuesday, July 01, 2008
For the edification of the three people who did not know what Steak-umms are: The are frozen, processed strips of beef that one fries up like bacon. I thought they were a bygone schlocky food of the 80s, but it turns out they still exist. They have 10 grams of fat per strip. They are supposed to pay homage to Philly cheesesteaks, but somehow I doubt there's much resemblance. (No, I've never had a genuine Philly cheesesteak in Philly. And I lived/crashed in Philly for two whole weeks once, in 1995. I KNOW. I wasn't always a foodie.) [video] I recall Steak-umm night being a big deal when I was a kid in the 80s. Not as big a deal as a trip to McDonalds -- that was huge -- but a treat nonetheless. I ponder, once again, how processed, fatty foodstuffs used to be a rare indulgence in this country and are now breakfast, lunch, and dinner for most. PS, you're made of corn. [video] 1 comments Thursday, June 26, 2008
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