i need a haircut.

oh, hey, daynapanda, how do you make aguas frescas? I had some delicious agua fresca de sandia, YUM, and some pretty good horchata, and my absolute favorite is agua de melon, but i don't exactly know which melon it is.

i've been pretty busy lately. there may be light at the end of the tunnel. perhaps.

i'm alive. and i'm reading your journals, even if i don't always comment!

ta for now!

i have been bitten more than 20 times by mosquitoes. At least 23 times that I can count without completely disrobing. 14 of those bites were on my feet, two in the inside part of the foot where the arch forms--one on each foot--and these bites in particular have swollen to a painful size for walking. And they're hot. I practically bathed in Off! but it didn't seem to faze them. I am going to start taking B12 every day--it's supposed to make you unappetizing. Charlie just got bitten a couple of times. But me? I was devoured.

( herein a recounting of the weekend, with a little ranting )

anyway, despite all these things, I had a pretty good time. Next time i'm wearing pants and knee socks though and bathing in Deet. Even though it will probably give me some sort of disease one day.

This weekend we are probably going to Alabama Adventure and maybe bowling. Carla really wants us to take her bowling because she goes with her daycare sometimes and she doesn't know how to bowl. So she wants us to go so that we can help her and she can practice. How cute is that?

I want to go to the beach. I would really really like to take Carla to DisneyWorld, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Or maybe it will. I don't know.

But I would like to take her to the beach--she's never been!

Where do you stay when you go? I was thinking Orange Beach, Gulf Shores area. I've looked all over and it's all a lot more than I really want to pay. We'd probably stay 3 days or so. I just need time to recharge mah batteries.

What do you think?

The one person here who would be most interested in these? lunarknightz. then followed perhaps by fireriven.

Mary Jane? Uh...that's just wrong.

Rules for Dating a SuperHero

OOOOH. I LIKE! X-Men 4 spoiler??

This is kind of scary.

The really didn't study. This is for Deborah.

Carla [coming in to the office/computer room]: You have to say 'ohmygosh that kitty is so cute!'
Me: Oh my gosh that kitty is so cute!
Carla: I just got her from the pet store, somethings fell on her that's why i'm taking her to the doctor.
Me: Oh...
Carla: yeah, she's allergic to unicorns. And CDs.
Me: Well you better take her out of her before she gets sick because there's a lot of CDs in here.
Carla: Well, she just gets sick, she doesn't throw up.
Me: Still, we don't want her to get sick do we?
Carla: Well, I've got a bop bag [read: barf bag] in case she throws up
Me: Oh--
Carla: [rapid fire something about wolves and dragons, and something trying to kill the cat]
Me: Uh HUH.

--She leaves--

--Comes back a few minutes later carrying a purple and white dog--
Carla: I know she's allergic to dogs, but not white and purple [ones]
Carla: You're supposed to go like this [makes astonished face] your doggy is so cute, you have the cutest doggies in the whole wide world did you get it from the pet store. [holds up cat] What's her name?
Me: I don't know.
Carla: Yes you do [whispers] her name is Lucinda Fairy-Tale Whale. And this doggy's name is Muffin, no Ginger.
[pauses and makes animal noises as if the animals are making them]
Carla: Well, what have you been doing?
Me: Not much, you?
Carla: My dog keeps eating. He keeps wanting to go to Walmart and take pictures--do all sorts of stuff. Isn't she a cute doggy? I actually don't know what I'm going to do with this cat. The dentist said i can't keep anymore cats around my house.
Me: You can't buy any more cats?
Carla: I can, but he just means i can't take anymore to the pet store.
Me: You mean, from the pet store?
Carla: NO TO THE PET STORE. I mean, to the dentist.

Carla: My dog can't actually walk. Somebody throwed a frisbee at her and it got sharp stuff, and i told her to duck--this is duck [showed me what it means to duck], but she couldn't and it hit her on her leg, and she bleeded.

[something about a cat and frisbee that turns into a cat, and some animal trying to duck, and it's mommy helping her ending with "and it really happened"]

this could go on and on. I'll stop there.

24*/50
( Booklist )

*not including the stuff that don't feel like including, like LKH or JR Ward. With those, it would make 29.

Can I just say that this is going to be an expensive month?

This weekend we're going to see Spiderman 3 on Saturday. Next weekend we're driving down to my parents' house for the weekend for mother's day. The next weekend we're going to see Shrek 3. Then the weekend after we're going to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

I would also like to see 28 Weeks Later, but I don't know if that's going to happen. We'd have to get a babysitter. Which would make it more expensive. It might be one of those movies that I just wait until it's out on video. Besides, the last few movies i've been to have been too loud. Sometimes I want earplugs. We take earplugs for the munchkin anyway.

Anyway. Last night we watched Flags of Our Fathers and i liked it. I am a sucker for anything WWII. I will admit, without too much embarassment, that I liked Pearl Harbor and I don't quite understand what all the fuss was about when it came out. No one complained when Titanic came out. As i was saying though, I do have a soft spot for WWII movies (but not really the old ones from the 50s and 60s--i would prefer something a little less, oh, propagandist, or downright jingoistic. I do own Tora! Tora! Tora! though. I don't really know why.

I read Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance last year, and even though it's sort of dated and is a work of fiction, it's remarkably well-researched and gave me a good view of the strengths and weaknesses of all the major players in the war. Reading that book, I came to realize how incredibly close we came to losing the war, and how basically we only won because of a series of accidents, bad judgments, and foolish mistakes. I love that book.

Anyway. Flags of Our Fathers. I already knew the story of Iwo Jima (at least the story of the flag raising), but it was interesting to see it, and I thought the narrative structure of the movie was interesting.

( cut in case of spoilers )

HAHAHAHAHA.



palomita buena onda. ha. hahaha.

i am grading the worst papers i've ever graded before. of course, they're from my lazy class, so i'm not entirely surprised. out of about 8 papers that i've graded so far, 1 of those 8 knew how to quote and cite quoted material. also, she is the only one who knew how to format and integrate quotes.

one of my students made up whole paragraphs from different quotes. and i don't know how, since they're from Beowulf, and not exactly in order. so the paragraph doesn't make any sense.

oh well. that's why i saved the other class for the end. maybe they're better (i suspect they are). oh the difference an hour makes.

i have to go to get my tires aligned now. i have to stop by the gasolinera before i go so that i will have a drink and a snack for the 1.5 hours it will take them to align all four wheels on my car. pray for me, no?

mkay, so what's the deal with this "Live Green, Go Yellow" ad campaign?

it's too good to be completely true, so i know there's a catch...anybody know what it is?

"In Response to Executive Order 9066"


All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers


Dear Sirs:
Of course I'll come. I've packed my galoshes
and three packets of tomato seeds. Janet calls them
"love apples." My father says where we're going
they won't grow.


I am a fourteen-year-old girl with bad spelling
and a messy room. If it helps any, I will tell you
I have always felt funny using chopsticks
and my favorite food is hot dogs.
My best friend is a white girl named Denise--
we look at boys together. She sat in front of me
all through grade school because of our names:
O'Connor, Ozawa. I know the back of Denise's head very well.
I tell her she's going bald. She tells me I copy on tests.
We're best friends.


I saw Denise today in Geography class.
She was sitting on the other side of the room.
"You're trying to start a war," she said, "giving secrets away
to the Enemy, Why can't you keep your big mouth shut?"
I didn't know what to say.
I gave her a packet of tomato seeds
and asked her to plant them for me, told her
when the first tomato ripens
to miss me

ummm. Stephen Greenblatt?

Jews for Jesus.

Highfalutin reading

crisis in the classroom, but not quite.

so LJ upgraded the free accounts to 6 icons.

so i've been looking around, but i've discovered that i don't know the etiquette for icons.

i don't really understand the terminology? Noms? Bases? Credit? Comment?

i get the hotlinking stuff.

so where do i credit?

also, where are some good places to look for cool icons?

go here:

http://www.eathufu.com/home.asp

but not while eating.


but this is interesting, i think:

http://food.oregonstate.edu/ref/culture/taboo_allen.html

i'm married. doesn't feel much different. i cried (rawr! i didn't want to be THAT girl). we ate barbecue, we went on a short honeymoon. we're leaving for Tuscaloosa in a few minutes.

i'll talk about it all later.

but, yep. I'm a married woman now.

and my grandmother is dying.

my mom says she won't go before the wedding (they're doing all they can to prevent that), but they don't expect she'll see November.

i knew this was coming. she broke her hip about a month ago, and you know what they say about that. now the doctors are saying she has some kind of anemia in which her blood destroys itself? it will cause a heart attack, or kidney problems or something. my mom has decided not to go to extreme measures to keep her alive.

she had given me a necklace a few years ago. it was the last piece of jewelry her husband had given her. i lost it about five-six months ago. or maybe a year. i felt really guilty about it, but i couldn't find it anywhere, not even when we moved.

charlie found it yesterday, the day we found out just how bad it is, in a box with some of his mother's jewelry.

my family members like to die around important days. my other grandmother died on christmas morning, my grandfather died three days before my prom, and my aunt died few days before an honors banquet at my school.

i'm not really processing much right now. i'm getting married in 6 days. i still can't comprehend that. nothing will change, yet EVERYTHING will change. how weird is that?

bah. i'm going to write a midterm.

or maybe it's eleven.

i don't know. anyway. i'm getting married the first of October, and i'm not excited yet. i'm also not completely freaked out yet. so that's good.

we got our first wedding present yesterday (from Brenda K.). It made it all seem real, i guess.

I also reserved our honeymoon room yesterday. I called this B&B in Columbus, GA, and they didn't have either of their honeymoon suites ($195/night) open (at first, they told me they did), so she gave us the Golden suite which is $265 a night for $195 a night. YAY. here's how their website describes it: This suite takes up the entire front of the second floor of the main house. It has beautiful heart pine floors, 12 ft. ceilings, and a working fireplace in the bedroom. The bedroom also has a four poster heart pine bed. And the bedroom is lined with windows on two sides. The separate sitting room has a sofa and chairs, television and fax. There is also a balcony off of the sitting room, complete with rocking chairs. The Bathroom has a jacuzzi bathtub and separate shower. There is a separate room for the double sinks and a private water closet.

we're also getting champagne, chocolates, strawberries, rose petals and candles in the room, all there for our arrival. As it is a B&B (but not the gilmore-ridiculed kind), breakfast in bed comes with the room, as do cocktails and horsdoerves or howeverthehellitsspelled. i'm excited.

Here are some pictures:

Here's the bedroom


And the Jacuzzi!


i'm going to lunch now.

This is a test post from Photobucket.com

so, i'm working on my course policy for the fall. I realize that I need to check the academic calendar so that i can make out my syllabus. so i go on over to the website and lo! there's a day that i've never seen before: Constitution Day. Now, I've been around a while. Like 24 years. And i've Never. heard. of. this. day. And it's like, two days. September 16th, National Celebration of Constitution Day and September 17th Constitution Day. So i'm thinking, what, do we get it off or something (which would be Sweet)?

So, i look it up on google and find a really crappy official page www.constitutionday.com or www.constitutionday.org.

the whole idea is to, all across the united states, recite the PREAMBLE of the constitution simultaneously--and they've developed a VIDEO (eg. "for the common defense" is illustrated by tanks and stuff). it's to be celebrated at 1 pm CST. Um. No? I'll be in the middle of teaching BRITISH literature (irony of ironies), and i'm supposed to stop and say the preamble? No.

at first i thought, no, you're probably overreacting. But the university doesn't have Arbor day on the academic calendar. Or flag day. the only holidays, hitherto, worth mentioning on the academic calendar were those we had off. memorial day--no school. same with labor day, christmas etc. halloween is not on the academic calendar. so the mere presence of this on the calendar is tacit agreement and involvement. Bells are supposed to chime for three minutes or something. Denny chimes anyone? Right outside my building. and if i don't do it, i know i'll have some patriotic asshole demanding to participate. I hate. this idea.

and gen tommy franks is reading it with president bush. Good god y'all.

Now, I don't hate the military. But i believe: Support the military by BRINGING THEM HOME.

but as for bush...well, let's just say he's not on my christmas card list.

I know it's supposed to be non-partisan and not about the war at all, but about the constitution (which irritates me in that certain members of congress have NO PROBLEM AT ALL forgetting the constitution when it suits them). but it just reeks of propagandist attempts to make us all FEEL good and i hate that kind of manipulation.

i'll love the constitution on my own, thanks!

just a short entry...i'm alive.

i have so much to say, but carla's going stircrazy, so we're going to walmart.

more later.