I'm getting too old for this

GAH! The Cowboys/Packers game is giving me heart palpitations, I swear. We all knew it would be a smashup game, but Lordy Lordy I'm going to have to take some extra blood pressure meds tonight.

This year's Door Decorating Contest

It was announced today -- they've never had one before, but this year Ballyhoo Hi-Skool is having a Christmas door decorating contest.

I had such good results from the one last year at North Ruralville that I'm going to go the Christmas-Card route again. In fact, I'm even going back to TriSanta.com to use one of the Surfin' Santa cards as the basis for my door. But in general, I can highly recommend the notion of using a Christmas card you like as a stepping-stone to an idea. I've never actually been good at original composition. No, I'm just a pretty decent cover band that is also pretty good at hiding her sources! But there's no use keeping a good idea to myself when so many could benefit from it.

Christmas cards. Get one you like, preferably one that's oriented in the portrait-direction rather than the landscape-direction, print it out onto an overhead cel, project it onto a larger piece of paper at the size it needs to be, trace around the basic outlines, then add fabric or lightweight polyfill or even shiny giftwrap cut into the necessary shapes. It's not a no-brainer, but it certainly takes the guesswork out of coming up with something to do.

I took down the other door decoration today, the one I've had up since the beginning. It was beginning to get a bit shabby anyway, so it was time.

Here we go again!

And I swear, my Google hits from last year's post are OUT THE ROOF. Last I checked, if you Google "Christmas door decorating contest," my blog comes up FIRST.

Just goes to show that you never know.

Miss World 2007

The Miss World competition will take place on Saturday, December 1st. China has chosen its contestant:

Meet Zhang Zi Lin, age 23, just shy of six feet tall (you read that right -- she's one of the tallest contestants in the competition), from Shi Jia Zhuang City in Bei Wei, China. She's a secretary who likes to travel, read, participate in track & field events, and likes folk music. Her favorite food is fruit, chocolate and ice cream.

All I can say is WOW.

The Religion of Peace strikes again

And Steve H. has done something about it.

And from where does this blog get the majority of its holiday-time hits?

From search engines... specifically, from people Googling "christmas door decorating contest" and landing on my post about last year's winning door decoration.

I mean, literally HALF of the hits on my blog for the past week have been from this one search.

I don't think they even have a door-decorating contest at Ballyhoo... but I'm rather tempted to decorate my door anyway. It was incredibly fun.

Hmmmm... pondering the possibilities...

Fashion fun

My favorite [cough] British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood has won an award for Outstanding Achievement in Fashion Design at the British Fashion Awards.



Here's Dame Westwood.

And here are a couple of designs from her Spring 2007 Ready-to-Wear collection:



What kind of award would YOU have given her for such breathtaking apparel?

I'm sleepy

Are YOU yawning yet? How 'bout some more?







If you're not already heading for your own bed by now, you must've gotten a nap today.






Nitey-nite, y'all.

Brief debrief

The line to get out of Kansas was at least five miles of stopped traffic:


And yet again, I have to say that I am OFFENDED that I have to PAY to drive through Kansas. They should be paying ME to drive through that godforsaken moonscape. Somebody explain to me why it is legal for a state to make a FEDERAL INTERSTATE HIGHWAY into a toll road? Five dollars and twenty-five cents just to drive from Emporia to the Oklahoma state line... and that's an increase over the last time I came through. I thought my tax dollars already went to that; why am I being double-taxed?

And as for Kansas, I do know that there are some lovely little places off the interstate, and some very nice people. But driving I-35 through there is just awful. It's as bad as the east-to-west stretch of I-80 through Iowa... gag a maggot. Nothing whatsoever to look at.


On a much more pleasant note, I got to enjoy some time with Blue and Red Fish:


Notice that Red is knitting. Actually, you'd probably notice if she WEREN'T knitting. She knits anytime she sits. Even during church. She claims it helps keep her awake. Makes sense to me. Maybe that's what I should take up. hehe


And on Black Friday, my BFF and I went shopping, of course:


Isn't she the most beautiful BFF in the whole wide world?

Thanksgiving was a tremendous success; my kids and hers were SO glad to see one another after such a long time. My BFF has three boys, and her youngest and Isaac are the same age. They were totally absorbed in Legos and DDR the entire time.

I can't believe I have to go back to school already tomorrow, though... I sure did need an extra day to unwind before jumping back into the thick of things, but I guess it's just not meant to be. Oh well... I'll manage.

They'll probably be rather subdued and depressed tomorrow; Ballyhoo lost their second playoff game to Seymour, 28-13. Weeping and gnashing of teeth ensued, of course. But I am so proud of my guys anyway... it's a terrific accomplishment to make it that far.

Coincidence? I think not.

Bob (AKA The Lost Fart) wisely alerted me to the terrorist skwerl activity up in Michigan lately:

Squirrels Briefly Kill Power In Two Cities

The utility takes many preventive steps to keep the curious animals away from
lines, he said, but they are one of the leading causes of outages, trailing only
severe weather.
"We kind of liken it to anyone who's had a bird feeder and
tried to keep the squirrels out," he said. "They find a way."

Indeed. We MUST find a way to STOP these home-grown terizts. Our nation will fall from within if we don't.

Tell me again how people manage to stay ALIVE up here?

We arrived in Caucus-Land at about 12:30AM last night and nearly died crossing the driveway in the bitter Arctic Wind, ice and snow. Apparently yesterday, during the day, the blizzard had deposited lots of lovely frozen precip in celebration of our impending arrival. The kids were excited to see SNOW out the window on the drive up, but when we opened the door, I think they changed their minds.

ZOWEE it's cold.

But it's absolutely FABULOUS to see my BFF. It's been just over a year since we've seen one another in person. And her apartment is redolent with the aroma of pork roast.

Is this heaven?

Pretty darn close... if it could just be a bit warmer.

PS: Hey Brent, I'm in your town!!!

No bloggy tomorrow. You come back Thursday.

School's out tomorrow at halftime, at which time the kids and I are headed to the Great Frozen North Wasteland for some decent pork and some long-awaited face time with our bestest pals EVAR.

Yup, it's time once again for a Visit to the Land of Tall Corn. Except we won't see any of that... it most likely has descended once again into the eight-month gray permafrost of wintry wind-whippy I-Can't-Believe-I-Got-Rid-Of-All-My-Warm-Socks weather.

And actually, I did keep one pair of warm socks... the ones knitted for me by RedFish, who I hope to see sometime while we're there.

Catch y'all when we get to Caucus-Land.

My life as I know it

Not that any of you is even slightly interested, but this JV girls basketball game was smokin' hot and as intense as any bball game you could find on television. Our girls tied it up right at the buzzer and took the game into OT, then won it pulling away. It was beautiful.

And I'm getting REALLY tired of making the half-hour trip over to Ballyhoo. I'm ready to be living there so we don't have to get up so darn early and so I don't waste a TON of fuel getting back and forth.

[sigh] Instead of getting a second job so we can start to crawl our way out of horrendous debt (thanks in entirety to medical costs), he's applying for government assistance. Don't get me started. [scowl] I might say something rather uncharitable and unseemly.

Can someone explain to me why a full time teacher with the maximum offered health insurance coverage (along with exorbitant premiums exacted from my paycheck each month) is having to apply for government assistance and take out enormous loans just to get by because the insurance can't --or won't-- cover our costs? Something is wrong with this picture.

Okay, I said I wouldn't get started. I should get to bed, anyway.

Headin' to the next round!

Them's my boys!!! We play Seymour next Friday in Wichita Falls. I'm totally bummed that I can't be there, but I have major holiday plans which will necessitate my being hundreds of miles away from Wichita Falls, Texas. I'm hoping I can enlist a couple of my yearbook staff to fill in for me.

Elisson's a freekin' genius

Best. 100. Word. Story. Ever.

Hello, Dali, indeed. [snicker]

A roundup of stuff I thought was worth linking to...

What's the right sort of stoning? Frank Key's answers are forthcoming.

Plumcake tears into the idiots at the National Action Against Obesity group.

In case you needed a reason not to patronize bars in West Virginia... (don't read this while you're eating) (I mean it) (shudder)

Democrat governor caught on tape ADMITTING that the SCHIP bill really was a back-door effort to bring about universal health care...

LOLbaby

For explanation of my weak humor, you can go here.

All's well

Apparently the short-lived laptop crash we experienced yesterday was entirely the fault of a corrupted iTunes. Once I figured that out, left my frozen iPod off the charger to discharge completely and reset itself, then dl'd a new copy of iTunes, everything was hunky-dory.

Thank you, God. We did NOT need one more expensive something to deal with. We're already so far behind... well, we won't be "catching up" anytime soon.

This afternoon we were interviewed by a nearby newspaper about Alice being in the Neiman-Marcus/Adolphus Children's Medical Center Christmas Parade in Dallas in a couple of weeks. I don't trust journalists; they invariably screw it all up and get everything bass-ackwards. But it will be fun to see just what they do with Alice's story, since it's such a convoluted one. If we make it in, I'll post a link to the online version (assuming there will be one).

Today I had an official administrative observation during my sixth period Art class. Of course, I had diarrhea all morning beforehand. This appears to be a standard involuntary body response for me when I'm anxious about something. I don't know how it went, but my class was meek and submissive and cooperative (such angels!), so as far as I can tell, things are o-buh-kay-bee.

One of the other teachers, another newbie like myself, is giving me the heebie-jeebies. That's all I'm going to say about it right now, since I'm hoping it will pass. If it doesn't, though, expect more discussion of said heebie-jeebies.

Today

Aren't these beautiful? They came to school from my Aunty Ada today:

My Aunty Oh sent me several items from my Amazon Wish List. I think I probably have the coolest Aunties of anyone on the face of the planet.

JoeMama made me a big pot of lovely potato soup, and bought a scrUMPTIOUS carrot-cake that was so moist I could hardly get the knife through it. It was heavenly stuff.

I've been teaching my eighth-grade classes to macrame this week. They LOVE it:








Hey, BlueFish: I used several of your hemp chokers as the examples for the kids to look at. They really like your work.

I think that next we'll start on something a little more large-scale like a wall hanging or a wide lanyard. I wish we had looms to work on. Maybe someday. I suppose I could also teach them to knit, right RedFish?

Tomorrow is a nail-biter day again. This time I'm being evaluated by the principal. I'm probably going to have reactive diarrhea all day before he comes. I might oughta load up on cheese tonight before I go to bed.

And since I mentioned "bed," I'm awfully sleepy. Goodnight.

Photos

Here's what the sunset looked like in Ballyhoo this evening:



And here's what it looked like when I saw that same sky reflected in the windows of a school bus:

Bleary-eyed

I've been out to school events both evenings this week so far, which has severely curtailed any other activity (such as showering, breathing).

Last night the middle schoolers performed their One-Act Play. Tonight, the National Honor Society had its initiation banquet and ceremony.

The life of a high school yearbook adviser... is nonexistent.

That's not to say that I don't love it. I really do. But as much as it may surprise some people, I am not by nature a social person. It takes great mental effort to withstand group interaction, particularly with people I'm not often with or who I don't know well. And being forced to be at after-hours school events saps my mental energy.

When I am alone, I am able to recharge my mental batteries, so to speak.

I'd actually like to go to bed right now, even though it's only nine pm, but I can't. There are fifty-one pictures from today that need vetting. I'd do it at school, but I saved yesterday's pictures to do today at school and it literally took me ALL DAY to GIMP all of them (even though there weren't that many) because MY SCHOOL COMPUTER IS A PENTIUM THREE and it's, um, rather slow on the uptake when handling large images.

A PENTIUM THREE. Can you believe that? I'm pretty sure my computer was manufactured in the previous century. I'm also quite certain that the printer in my room is twice as old as the computer.

But, thank the Lord, the tech guy insists my new computers, printer and scanner are on order. It will be a relief beyond words to have something I can use to work on photos at school rather than bringing them all home every night to comb through, weed out the baddies and retouch the goodies.

And now, I am going to cease blogging in order to undertake the GIMPing of fifty-one photographs. G'nite.

Music for the road

No, literally. Someone finally got the bright idea to turn a highway into an enormous musical instrument.

Too bad it's in Japan, where I probably won't ever get the chance to play it.

(hat tip to one of my loyal readers for the link, which is uber-kewl)

Cue the music, maestro!

Squ-Early Dismissal

Iowa school dismissed by squirrel

Classes were canceled after a loud boom and an electrical fire prompted an evacuation in the Maquoketa Valley school.

They're even after our CHILDREN.

They are EVIL! EVIL, I say!

Atheist author backtracking?

LEFT: Golden Compass author Philip Pullman with lemur RIGHT: Movie poster

If you're like me, you've gotten the Golden Compass e-mail delineating the upcoming movie's solidly anti-Christian stance. I'm not particularly alarmed by this, since atheists come and go all the time and do their darnedest to somehow besmirch religion hard enough to break us all free of its surly bonds.

And, in true self-centered fashion, it appears that Philip Pullman (author of the books on which the movie is based) may be re-thinking his motive of "killing God." Not because of some new stab of conscience or even an awakening awareness of the presence of God in his life.

No, it's the money.

On the "Today" show on Friday, Pullman denied to Al Roker that his books are anti-religious. "As for the atheism," he adds, "it doesn’t matter to me whether people believe in God or not, so I’m not promoting anything of that sort," he wrote in response to a question...

Hmmm... according to the above-linked NYMag article, Pullman himself declared four years ago that his books were much more subversive than Harry Potter, because his books were about "killing God."

Sounds to me like the guys at the movie studio called him up, having been made aware of these earlier statements, and read him the writing on the wall.

Maybe all of those guys are also getting the e-mail I got, and are now getting the runnies over the thought of the movie bombing out at the critical Christmastime crunch because all the right-wing loonies know what it's about and won't plunk down the $ to take their kids to it.

Whatever. It doesn't sound like a terribly original movie, and I wasn't that interested in seeing it or taking the kids to it anyway. This just guarantees we won't even be bothering to rent the DVD somewhere in the future. Blech.

Whaddya bet me this idiotic flick goes the way of The Last Temptation of Christ and becomes completely irrelevant, inane, and unwatched? I actually caught some of that movie on HBO once, years after it was released, and I thought it was bizarre and unwatchable. If you wanted to make money on a movie about Jesus, you'd market it to people who were actually interested in Jesus. That'd be Christians, and they're all going to be disgusted by that movie. The people who don't care about Jesus aren't going to be particularly enthralled about going to see a movie about him anyway.

41

It's not the magical "42," so does anyone know anything special about the number 41? It's how old I will be exactly one week from today.

And yes, I know the obvious ones, like "You're still alive" and stuff like that... I'm not ungrateful for 41 years, I'm just curious to know if there are any significances with the number 41. Is it a prime number? I think it might be... but is that all?

Deathplace Memorials

While I understand the sentiment behind such things, I tend toward the notion that they do not belong on public highways because they are enough of a distraction to then CAUSE more accidents like the one that killed whoever is memorialized there.

And I've made my BFF Cindy swear to me, on everything that is holy, that if I die in a car wreck somewhere, she will make sure NO-ONE puts one of these cloying tributes anywhere in the vicinity.

But a lady in southern Oklahoma wants to make her little roadside distractions PERMANENT.

While Raines and others who've placed items in the right-of-way support the highway expansion, she just doesn't want anyone to forget the lives lost... "We have the things that mean a lot to our hearts and this is things like the cross behind me. My husband built that cross the day after the McDougall accident and he had no idea he would build so many."

Umm, Althea, honestly -- if we knew the person, we're not likely to FORGET them... the rest of us who DIDN'T know them just aren't interested. Cold, yes, but it's a fact. Write a book or make a memorial at their gravesite, but can we please not "honor" the very spot where someone breathed their last? It's grisly. I'm sure your husband's crosses were very nicely made. But they don't belong on the side of a major highway.

Just my opinion.

Skwerl salad sandwiches

PHOTO ALERT: If you are disturbed by images of cooked critters, don't continue reading this post. Just wanted to throw that out there.

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Here's the skwerl after I braised it with freshly-ground sea salt and black pepper:



Then after I picked as much of the meat off as I could (there isn't much on one skwerl), I mixed it with some mayo (sorry, Kevin, I'm a mayo-girl, but no hard feelings, k?):



Isaac had a taste of it before I mixed it up and he liked it pretty well, but he's not much of a meat-eater, so he graciously allowed Alice to have it, since she had been hanging around the kitchen like a vulture, saying, "Mmmmmm, that smells GOOD!" every thirty seconds or so:



And this is what was left over:


A bit of skwerl broth and some bones. No giblets; Poppi removed all the objectionable bits before sending it home to us.

Yummy stuff!

A little ray of hope...

This morning was my first time to be observed in the classroom by one of the administrators. We had a pre-observation meeting last Friday in which she asked me some general stuff, and then she observed my first period class, then came back during my conference period to discuss what she saw.

She had absolutely nothing bad to say at all... in fact, she said she wished she could come take Art class herself. :)

I even had to de-fuse a verbal snit between two hot-headed teenage boys, which is quite unusual for my sedate-to-sleepy first period class. I took care of it in my usual manner without batting an eyelash (humor and firm insistence tends to get results for me) and remembered that it was probably a GOOD thing it happened while my administrator was in there, because she could get a good idea of how I handle problems.

In another couple of weeks I'll have my second observation, by my own campus principal. He's a bit on the stern side, more so than the one this morning, so we shall see. I'm going to go about my usual business, though. No dog-and-pony-show for the principal; the kids know it's different and they don't always know how to respond to it. He might as well get an accurate picture of everyday life in Art class.

The class he'll be observing is a small one, populated mostly by upperclassmen on the football team. Surprisingly, however, they're a fun bunch to work with and seem to enjoy exploring their artistic sides. I introduced charcoal pencils and tortillons to them today, and the varsity quarterback absolutely LOVED working with them -- "I'm really good at this, miss. I *own* the coal, man!" as he busily smudged the black carbon dust into the brown kraft paper.

Already, this year is as different from last year as night is to day. I have made friends with the entire staff (I don't think I knew everyone's name in North Ruralville even by the end of the year, they were all so stiff and unfriendly) and I love going to work every morning. It feels like I'm walking in a dream sometimes.

A happy one, for sure.

blech

I know I haven't posted much this weekend. If you've been following my Twitter updates, you know that it's because I'm SICK.

I've still mustered up the oomph to sit at the 'puter and process all of Friday's photographs (there were over 400 of them), and I've updated Twitter, but I haven't found the inspiration or just the mental wherewithal to write a coherent blog post.

There's really nothing going on in my grey matter this weekend, other than Oh no here comes another cough and it's a big one WHOA I'm glad I bought those Poise pads.

It's quite miserable. I know that was too much information. Sorry.

[hack][breathe][wheeze][HACK HACK HACK HACK HACK]

Hall's Mentho-Lyptus honey-lemon flavored thingies are rather nasty-tasting, but amazingly, they work. In fact, putting one in my mouth and then going to sleep is the only way I *can* sleep. Don't lecture me about the dangers of choking; I know. But somehow I have GOT to sleep. Or sleep with the fishes. At this point, either would be welcome.

Leave me some encouraging "Get Well" comments, would you?

A hunting we will go...

Yesterday evening, Pop came and picked up Isaac and the two of them went to the cabin together. This morning they woke up early and Pop took Isaac on his very first skwerl hunt.

[beaming] That's mah BOY.



Ah reckon we'll have a little skwerl stew tonight.

Heh

Watch the pen-twirler, but keep your eye on the lamp in the upper right corner.

NASCAR race day

When I called Mom to tell her I wasn't bringing the girls over because I was sick and had to cancel my appointment this morning, she told me that it was probably a Very Good Thing. Then she reminded me that there's a Big NASCAR Race today at the Texas Motor Speedway, which just happens to be right on I-35W, which I would need to travel on to get to my appointment. The likelihood that I could manage to negotiate that stretch of freeway in the usual time frame is ZERO.

Couple that with how absolutely NASTY I feel this morning and how tubercular my cough sounds, and you get an automatic STAY AT HOME card.

I'm going back to bed now. I might get around to processing all of last night's football pictures. I might not. I have to go fight some germs.

More convincing evidence that skwerls are EVIL

From The Daily at the University of Washington:

Today, I saw a grey bushy thing hanging out of a garbage can. Funny, right? It’s just a squirrel looking in the garbage for food, nothing really out of the ordinary.

As soon as I take notice, the squirrel jumps out of the garbage can on top and scurries around. Then it glared at me. And it bared its teeth.

Hey man, I don’t want your garbage. You can keep it.

No kidding. I keep trying to convince people: The things LOOK cute, but they're just fooling you. They hate us; they'll use us for birdseed and corncobs, but would turn on us in a nanosecond.

Vermin.

Tomfoolery

By request, here are a couple of pix from Spirit Days.

This week, we play our nearest neighbor. Since they're seven miles away, we call this matchup the "Seven Mile War" and the Spirit Day for this week is always Camo Day.

I didn't have any "war" camo, but I knew that my dad had lots of hunting gear, so I borrowed his camo overalls and camo shirt. I borrowed the hat from Rick and used camo-colored ducktape to stick twigs and leaves onto it. Then I used some of my green eye-shadow to create a camo-ish pattern on my face:



The kids always get a kick out of coming to my room to see how I'm dressed each Thursday for Spirit Day. Last Thursday was Pajama Day:


That's me with Mr. Gourley, one of the English teachers.

There. Now that I've humiliated myself on the internet YET AGAIN... [sigh]