Thursday, March 30, 2006

Favorites...

Some of my new favorite things:

Wikipedia. Did you know you can edit the entries? Power is mine!

Engrish. www.engrish.com is hilarious, and I enjoy making my OWN Engrish and posting it in inconspicuous places around my work.

"Yahoo! ANSWERS". An unending wealth of ignorance, bad grammar, and suspicious activity. One person asked, "How do I kill a tree quickly (in 2 months) and make it look like it was diseased? It's my own tree." So many questions remain unanswered.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Join me!


I'm in!

They love me! I hadn't been in the interview for five minutes before they said, "You'll be great! We're very excited to have you here!"

I'll be starting school in June. My endorsements will be in Biology and Advanced Math, which they say is in such high demand that there are not enough teachers in Oregon qualified to fill all the jobs. (Calculus, I guess, isn't that exciting to teach.) I expressed interest in switching from Bio to Integrated Science (kind of a miscellaneous thing), and they said they'll try to work something out that I can get three endorsements, even though, they said, "It's never been done before." Um, whoa! That would mean I can teach all high school and junior high math, PLUS almost all the sciences. I am very very very excited. Very. Excited.

Please, celebrate with me!

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Virent Ova! Viret Perna!

Two things:

First, I had a dream last night that I was thrilled at the opportunity of watching a high school dress rehearsal for Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro." The costumes were terrific.

Second, Dr. Suess's editor bet him that he couldn't write a book using 50 different words. The result: Green Eggs and Ham. Number of different words: 50.

Check out this very scholarly summary:

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
There are two characters: one named Sam-I-am, and a second who is never named. Sam is filled with energy and enthusiasm; his opposite number is morose and irritable. The plot revolves around Sam-I-am's efforts to get his friend to try "green eggs and ham" (as described above). The friend refuses to eat the dish, and only wants to be left in peace. Sam-I-am goes through a variety of locations (house, car, tree) trying to persuade his friend to eat, but without success.

The triumphant conclusion of Seuss's tale occurs when Sam-I-am's friend, standing in shallow water after a train crash, surrounded by various people and beasts, finally agrees to try the dish and turns out to be a great enthusiast. The instant turnaround in the anonymous character's attitude is somewhat similar to that of the Grinch, whom Sam-I-am's friend physically resembles except in having floppy ears.


Also, the book is also available in Latin now. I want! I want!

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

thank you!

First: Thank you, my brilliant friend Blair (when have I ever called you brilliant? Cherish this moment! ha ha), for introducing me to the Chernobyl site. For those of you unfortunate enough to NOT know Blair and to have never visited his blog, I shall share with you the website to which I am referring. http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html
In five minutes of browsing Elena's travelogue, I learned more about Chernobyl than I ever knew before. Terribly interesting, terribly sad.

Also, thanks to those of you who helped James and I move... namely, Gage and Paul. You made our lives a little easier!

And finally, thank you, world, for giving me little gifts every day as I commute to and from work. Like the guy with the groceries and the clown nose, and the girl looking up at the tree, and the person with the huge pinwheel... I hope others see these things too!