isn't it such a gorgeous color?
Thursday, September 27, 2007
it's back..
I can see myself in them. And of course I'll have to bring out the superstar from last year, whitey the diva, after she's had a little altering I'm afraid. If I lived up north I would probably need a separate closet just for my coats because I would rock a different one everyday. Well maybe I should say that differently, if I lived up north and was a millionaire I would rock a different coat everyday, or at least every other day. It's bad, I know. Especially living in Texas, it's pretty ridiculous to have an obsession with coats, but I digress.
i've had it up to, well, my ears...
Okay here's the thing. I have really small ears. I'll admit it, next time you see me, feel free to check them out, they're tiny. The earbuds that come standard with most mp3 players - including my ipod - do not even fit inside my ear. They just sit there, so unless i'm sitting absolutely still they're of no use, I quickly abandoned them.
Then I found this pair that are "L" shaped that are great. These lasted for a long time, but not without their own frustrsting tendencies. See the grey cap things, those are interchangeable. The headphones come with different sized sets of those to adjust for size. Naturally I needed the smallest. Well about 2 weeks after I had them one of the caps came off so I had a medium and small then about once a month a cap would fall off somewhere never to be found again until eventually I had two large caps on that hurt my ears.
Since then the last of the caps have gone missing and I've tried a slew of headphones, even the ones that kind of wrap around your ear, but alas, those are much too big.
Anyone else have this problem or any suggestions? I bought a new pair recently that are the same structurally as the ones above but the cap things are different and seem to stay on much better, but we'll see.
Monday, September 24, 2007
high school musical
It's about a recent phenomena administrators are experimenting with in schools. I'm talking about the playing [read: blasting] of music over the intercom system during passing periods.
The high school I observe does this.
The first day it freaked me out a little when I heard, "ohhhhhh, oh, oh, for the longest time..." begin right after the bell rang. I asked the teacher, "Where is that music coming from?", thinking maybe students had taken to carrying around stereos, with amps? or something? How were they allowed to do this? And why were they playing Billy Joel? His response was, "Oh, yes, they play music in between classes and when it stops it means they have one minute to get to class before they are tardy."
Oh. It was still bizarre when second period ended and Blink 182 came blaring over the intercom. No joke, Blink 182! I'm pretty sure I haven't heard them since sophomore year of high school. So I quickly realized there was no rhyme or reason to the song selection, the only requirement is that the music should be so loud in the halls it is nearly impossible to have a conversation. Or yank out someone's weave.
I'm getting used to it now. However today the music player thing was a little off. The "Most Random Cycle Ever" option must have been disabled because first we heard, "Just Can't Wait to be King" from, The Lion King, seriously, almost the whole thing, it was really hard not to grab the eraser and karaoke out in the hall with accompanied dance moves. But then for the next period instead of KT Tunstall or Hootie and the Blowfish or the like, "Provincial Life" from Beauty and the Beast came on [I think is what it's called, you know the opening song when she's in the town and then she goes into the Library and has the dialogue with the Librarian - yeah we heard all of that]. Now if it was hard to supress my desire to be a college kid and bust a move and sing into an eraser before, it was as close to impossible as it gets this time, but I held out and tried to be mature, just mature with a silly grin on my face. Then for the last passing period as I was walking to the front office on my way out the Lion King song came on again so I've had that stuck in my head all day.
It's gonna be king simba's finest fling...
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
anti-wrinkle cream anyone?
1. I'm in bed before 10:30 every nite. Sometimes later on fridays, and special occaision saturdays.
2. The latest I've slept this whole semester is 9:30, and that was only once.
3. My new favorite thing has become getting into a made bed. I have found I love getting into a bed that is made verses a bed that is disheveled - I used to only made my bed about once a week, not anymore! So sometimes, if I didn't make it that morning I'll make my bed right before I go to bed just so I can have the feeling.
4. After seeing 1-3, apparently I value sleep a lot more than I did before.
5. I feel as if I can talk & care about today's "youth". I don't think I'm apart of that group anymore.
6. I appreciate a clean house much more than I used to.
7. I'm shopping now specifically for business casual, it's a little weird and a lot of fun.
8. I'm picturing furniture and decorating ideas in my head for a new hypothetical apartment I will have in 8-10 months.
9. I've been vaguely thinking about budgeting once I have a real job with real money.
10. .....
In other news, here are some things I found worthy of note.
NYTimes:
1. Michael Gates Gill, who once made about $160,000 a year as an advertising executive and who now earns around $10.50 an hour making coffee at Starbucks, has written a book called “How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else,” and it is so admiring of the firm, one fears he has drunk of the Grande Iced Kool-Aid.
His story — divorced, broke, entitled middle-aged white guy with brain tumor and no health insurance learns to respect persons of other races who did not go to Yale. article
2. Apparently if you wear Crocs on an escalator you will die. Or you will be sucked in up to your waist if you fail to make a clean exit from the machine. seriously? seriously.
and there's this,
The news on this has been out for awhile but if you haven't heard, Ben Stein has a documentary coming out in February called, "EXPELLED: No intelligence allowed." Synopsis: educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the “crime” of merely believing that there might be evidence of “design” in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance & Ben Stein decides to investigate. Check out the website here.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
you can call me ms. g
I would come in and I would sit at some table at the back/side of the room and quietly take notes, observing the students' behavior, social patterns, etc.
I got to the high school and checked in with the front desk, got my little 'observer' badge, and made my way to the classroom. I got there and my teacher's door was shut and the light was off. This struck me as odd since it was about 10 minutes before class was supposed to start. I walked into the classroom next door where a teacher was making preparations for the day and asked about where Teacher Smith might be. She said he was probably at a meeting or something and would be right back. Okay. I kind of stood around and we made small talk and then a student walked in, and asked,
"Do you have Lisa Frank in your 1st period?"
"Yes, I do, can I help you?"
"Well, I'm not in your class, but my friend Adam Jones wants to ask her to homecoming and so I was going to see if you could give her a note?"
"Oh, Lisa already has a date to homecoming, Carter Creek already asked her and she said yes."
"Oh."
This felt a little leave it to beaver-esque and I wondered if the rest of my epxerience would be as innocent.
Teacher Smith showed up and we made introductions and then handed me a sheet of paper with the lesson plans on it and asked me if I would write some things on the board since he was running late. I got a little excited at this, chalk! I get to write on the board! I did that and then he asked if I would cut some poster sized pieces from the roll of brown butcher paper. Sure, anything you need. Teacher Smith was very enthusiastic and happy to have me there in the classroom, it was encouraging. When the students started filing in, I was on my hands and knees cutting butcher paper, in my cute wrap dress, trying to make sure I wasn't giving anyone a view of anything. Class started and Smith introduced me and then started talking about the new unit they were starting: Rights & Liberties! Specifically today they were studying the Bill of Rights. After a warm up assignment, and a few minutes of lecture, they were split into groups of 3 and had to come to a concensus about 10 rights/freedoms they wanted to have if they were starting their own country. Afterwards they got to walk around and see everyone else's and star one's that they disagreed with, and then we had discussion. I was on my feet the whole time passing out markers, looking at student's work, etc., by the second class Smith was having me answer questions, and at the end of the 3rd period Smith asked me if I wanted to lead the discussion!
"Umm...sure!"
I was supposed to lead an open discussion about what the students thought about their own rights, other groups, and one's they disagreed with. I panicked for about 2 seconds. How did he start the discussions before, what were the exact questions he asked?
The discussion went off without a hitch. Out of some deep place came teacher mode and the questions and prompting came out automatically. It was like I had been mediating opinionated high schoolers arguing about religion, marijuana, taxes, and gay marriage for years!
It was amazing hearing [some] of them actually think about what they were saying and thinking deeply about the ramifications of their decisions and completely heart-wrenching to hear of others complete intolerance and hatred. After class I was talking to Smith and he was highly impressed with the job I did and I told him about my desire for the students is that they would just learn to THINK. They would go beyond superficial, ad hominem arguments. I told him I wanted to change the world one high school student at a time. I momentarily wondered if there was a teacher worth his salt that didn't start out that way. Smith smiled at me knowingly and told me of his desires for teaching. We bonded.
I got to my car and sat for the first time in 3 hours, welcoming the tiredness, I left, changed out of my superhero teacher's clothes into a t-shirt and jeans to go to class. For the rest of the day it felt as if it was meaningful, that somehow my day meant something to me because I was doing something not for myself, like somehow I contributed a small bread crumb to society, to those high school seniors. I think because not once during my 3 hours in Smith's class was I ever motivated by how much I would gain, but only how much could I help these students. For once I had a break in my day from revolving around me.
It was good. I'm going back tomorrow.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
help?
Anyone? Anyone? [Bueller?]
Friday, September 7, 2007
days 6, 7, & 8: Oiy!
d-day! I had been thinking of sunday as d-day for the past couple of days, I think because the name Dean starts with a 'd' and because of the reference to the invasion of normandy except instead of the allied forces against the nazi's, it was the graham family against the hurricane. And except instead of us [the good guys] doing the invading it was going to be dean. Oh well. So I woke up around 8 that morning and Mom told me the power was going to be shut off in two hours. I wondered for a minute what was of dire consequence and all I could conclude was to recharge my camera battery and straighten the front part and little frizzies of my hair. So I did.
It was kind of cloudy but not too bad, you would never guess a hurricane was coming later that day, so since we knew we were going to be couped up for a while later with no electricity we decided to go our driving and walking around. We walked around for awhile, the streets of Ocho Rios virtually empty where they were usually packed with people and cars.
So after we took some more pictuers, particularly one Dad wanted with us all in front of a street sign "Graham St.". We got in the car and started driving to no real destination. We drove around a gated community that was being developed about 15 minutes west of Ocho Rios. We drove up some random hill. We drove around to where the local hospital was supposed to be, just in case, and never found it. We just drove and drove and then came back around lunch time kind of dreading the rest of the day. We got back and surprisingly the electricity was still on so we watched the the Weather Channel and Law & Order [USA and TNT were the 2 major American channels we had and they both play Law & Order like it's going out of style].
Dad had told us to make sure our bags were completely packed and ready to go, in case we had to suddenly leave, the night before, so there wasn't even any cleaning or organizing to do. I'm still not sure where we would have gone, the hills? I'm sure Dad knew though, he always knows everything, I'm sure he had some hidden cave in the side of the mountains already staked out and camouflaged with foliage ready in case the water was about to engulf our car or something. I saw it in my head, Dad calmly saying, "It's too late to pray when the devil comes." [his favorite, most used expression] and us loading up the car easily, as half our stuff was already in there and Dad driving up to the cave and it would be a perfect fit for our car and us as if he had a contractor ready it just for us. We would just ride out the hurricane in our cave playing gin rummy by a fire. I could see it. That's probably the real reason I wasn't worried about the hurricane because Dad wasn't worried. Dad always works everything out, he can dodge bullets, he's Dad. And I was with Dad so therefore there was no reason to worry.
Well they turned off the power at 2:00. After about 30 minutes it started to drizzle and the wind picked up a little bit. We left all the windows open and played cards. That got old kind of quick, sadly. Kaitlin and I played Operation on a coconut we found, only to be disappointed in the result, our coconut had clearly flat-lined a long time ago. Around 5 the wind and rain got pretty severe, for a thunderstorm, NOT for a hurricane. It stayed about the same for the next 3ish hours. I was disappointed. Dad and I had the videocamera all ready for some action. We got none. I went to bed at 9, later that I probaly would have if we had not had a little visitor. We left our front door open the whole time to let the breeze through and around 5 an older woman, gnawing viciously on a chicken leg, just walked in, crossed the living room to the open window saying, "OOOooh Rooobert! Look at doze waves, looks at da sea! Oh my my my!" Mom and I were sitting on the couch and Dad was upstairs doing something when she came in and Mom and I exchanged looks. Dad came down and introduced her, this was Miss Patricia Perkins, whom he had met earlier while she was preaching to someone on her cell phone.
Patricia Perkins is 64, a native Jamaican, and lived in one of the condos in our complex. Well, she stayed around for the next 4 hours and talked for almost as long. As the hurricane was disappointing, her stories and insight made the time go by faster. We talked quite a bit about Jamaican politics and the state of the island, the people, and development. She told us if the opposition party won the elections she would most likely lose her job [she is the top management of Dunn's River Falls, government owned - where thousands of people go a day, including us the day before - has been with the Parks & Recreation Department for 32 years] and would move to Florida and look for work. We asked her what she would do. She said she would probably be a greeter at Wal-Mart for awhile while she looked but it would be hard to find a comprable job in the U.S. We were a little taken back. That would be like going from the head of the San Diego Zoo or a Colorado ski resort to Wal-Mart greeter to put it in perspective. She wasn't bitter about it, not wanting it to happen of course, but just understood that was the way it would be. The opposition party won this past week and I wonder if she really will lose her job.
Monday
We slept with our windows open all nite as it drizzled outside. It wasn't too bad without A/C. When we got up we ate a hodge podge of leftovers for breakfast and then decided to go out driving again, mainly to look for a beach since the weather was gorgeous again and ours was closed so they could, "clean it up". We set off to survey the damage which was minimal, a power line down, palm tree branches and other foliage on lightly covering the roads. While we drove down the coast looking at the beach we didn't see an immediate access point. About 20 minutes west of Ochi, Dad decided to turn down a random road to see where it went. We passed a farm and made it to the beach where an American looking guy was leaning against his truck smoking a cigarette. Dad got out and talked to him. He soon signaled for us to get out. This clearly wasn't a public, well-kept, beach, you could tell even after the hurricane. But we got out and walked around. I heard my sister shout gleefully, "Crabs!" I looked down and saw little holes all over the beach and then saw a little crab the size of a dime, maybe a little smaller crawling furiously toward the water. He was so cute. We trod carefully along looking at the reef, grass, and debris that had been washed up by the tide during the hurricane. We saw a few more little crabs and then Kaitlin and I went crab-hole wrecking with sticks looking for more. We soon found a much bigger one about the size of a post-it, but more rectangular and compact in shape than typical crab. And he was like a yellowy-brown color. I immediately donned him Lester. Lester the "probabaly a molester" crab. He was definitely a molester crab if I ever saw one. And he was stinkin T.O.'ed! Kaitlin and I were chasing him around - he was faster than us, and he runs sideways! - and then Dad walked up and just caught him like it was nothing. He held him for a couple minutes and then after telling Kaitlin how to hold to hold him, passed him off. Kalitlin immediately dropped him after he pinched her, and Lester hightailed it the remaining 5 feet to the ocean. That was the end of our track star pet crab. Luckily we only knew him for about 5 minutes so there wasn't a strong attachment. And he was molester anyway.
We went excursioning a little more then came back to the house to see if the beach was open yet. Nope, they hadn't done a thing. Nothing else was open in town either except for a couple of gas stations that I suppose had generators, because the electricity was still out. We didn't want to waste the day so we went to the pool, where a lot of other people were and got some last rays of Jamaican sun. Dad and I played in the pool with some super cute black kids from 'South Jersey'. Then we came back up the room and pondered ways we could make a fake hurricane dean video that was really cool, like with boats flying through the air and us standing on the beach with fake rain, shivering, hair blowing wildly, with someone shaking a scrap piece of tin roof in the background for appropriate noise. Then we realized we need electricity for a lot of the effects we wanted to do. Defeated in our quest, we packed up the rest of our stuff and went to bed fairly early since there wasn't much left to do. It was a good day.
Tuesday
It was the smoothest and quickest exit we've ever made from any trip ever since we had already had everything packed and half of it in the car. It was a little melodramatic. No last checks, or multiple trips to the car, no "Wait! I forgot ______!"'s, we were in the car and leaving Ocho Rios by 8 a.m.
We got to the airport around 10 and where you check in is the same for everyone, its a ginormous lobby with airline decals on the wall representing where appropriate lines should form. Now, the airport had been closed since Saturday night and had only just re-opened that morning. The lobby was packed with people, you couldnt tell where lines were supposed to form, or where they started or ended, just thousands of people all over the place. We see the Continental area but had no idea where the line for it was. So we got in a line and Dad set off to figure things out. A few minutes later Mom, Kaitlin, and I heard a distinct, loud, Dad whistle. The lobby got a little quieter and we set off in search of Dad, we quickly saw him right by the Continental counter. We made our way through the sea of people with our luggage and got in a line with about 6 people in it and asked Dad what was going on. Apparently Continental only flies to 2 cities from Jamaica, Houston and Newark! So our line was uber short and quick, it was amazing! I cannot vouch for Continental's domestic flights and service [I think Courtney can though...] BUT if you ever go to Jamaica, fly Continental! I mean only flying to 2 cities [non-stop, I might add] verses the other carriers flying to a long list of multi-stop destinations, I mean it really couldn't get any better. I felt really bad though for all the people on standby, because there were a ton.
Our flight left on time and we arrived in Houston a little early, and on top of that from the time we landed, 5:01, to the time we had gotten through customs and gotten our bags it had been only 20 minutes!! I was getting a mocha light frappacino at 5:23 people! Amazing! I'm fairly certain it will never again happen in my lifetime.
That brings my little vacation story to an end. Hope you enjoyed!
Thursday, September 6, 2007
days 4 & 5: more beach and river.
Monday, September 3, 2007
day 3: indescribable.
We then went into Port Antonio to look around and go visit the Blue Lagoon - the real one - and where the movie Return to the Blue Lagoon was filmed. Basically the Blue Lagoon is an insanely deep cove type area - it flows into the ocean - which is fed by a natural spring. Because of it's depth it is a brilliant blue color. It was also really cold, I didn't get in. Here's some pictures.
It was almost 6 o'clock and we decided to go ahead and drive back to Ocho Rios even though it would be late getting back and we were exhausted. It was going a little quicker since we didn't have to stop this time for directions and there was a bit less traffic. Well, scratch that there was less traffic until we got to Port Maria, a little more than half way home, when we were suddenly in a huge line a traffic going at a crawl.