Why I Need a Chaperone

I went to the library today to get just one book (the next book club book). I checked the card catalog online to make sure they had it, and (yay!) they did. So off I went.

And I brought that book home with me. It's on the bottom of the stack.



The other ones just jumped into my arms as I walked through the stacks. Uncanny! I tried to put Drums of Autumn back, but it refused to go back on the shelf. I reasoned with it that I just wasn't sure I could read a million pages between now and next month when the books are due back, but it wouldn't budge. It whispered things like, "Well, if you don't get around to reading me, you can always just bring me back. Or better yet, call for an extension of the due date."

I was hypnotized into it, my friends.

And I couldn't just leave the library without checking for Ellen Hopkins books that I haven't read yet. That would have been a mistake. After all, they'll only take me a few hours each to read. (Seriously! She writes her books as if they're poetry, so there's lots of white space in the books. And they're just that good!)

As for the 100 or so books that I OWN and haven't read yet...they'll just have to wait. :)

I'd Remove my own Sinuses if it Wouldn't Result in Bigger Sinuses

Since I've gotten home from work tonight, I've had terrible sinus drainage. It's a pity that this coincided with choir rehearsal, but I fought through it.

Anyway, the other day, a friend told me about the free sample page on the Wal-Mart website and I clicked on over and requested a sample of Zyrtec. How timely that it should arrive in my mailbox today! I'll have to remember to check the site periodically to see if they've got anything I'm interested in.

Now I will commence with the downing of allergy medicine, the spraying of the sore throat spray, and the revival of the neti pot. It is a geriatric-ish evening, for sure.

Let's hope I can knock this out before it turns into bronchitis this time. I'm still wheezing from the last time.

Volunteerism is its Own Reward

For the past several months, I've been working in the church nursery. It started out as just a summer thing, but after summer was over there was a desperate need for teachers for fall, so I stayed with it.

There is a continued shortage of volunteers, and that's a little weird to me. I suppose it's a little inconvenient to have to stay at church from 8:45am - 12:20pm (if you volunteer in one service and go to church the other service), but it's really not that big of a deal when you're used to it.

I'm in the two year old class. Some of my friends have asked me why in the world I would work in a two year old class. Despite the whole "terrible twos" myth*, I think age two might be one of the most fun years. I've noticed this when I worked in a two year old class in another church and I'm just starting to notice it in my class now, but when the kids start out in the class, they're still babies. They might talk a little, but not much...and you don't really know how much they're understanding of what you're saying. But by the time they leave the class, they're mini-grown-ups...talking, singing, following directions, etc. It's fun to watch the transformation.

And although there is a little bit of tantrum throwing to deal with, it usually settles down pretty quickly after they realize it's not going to get them anywhere.

And there was that one time that I got peed on...but that's only one time out of all of these Sundays. :)

Anyway, they are great entertainment. There's one little boy in particular that's talking a lot now, and he says the funniest things.

One day he walked in and handed me 50 cents and said, "Dis is Gawd's money!"

Then there was the time he banged his sippy cup against another little boy's sippy cup and shouted, "Cheers!"

And just this Sunday, he crawled under the table with a couple of little girls in the class, lifted up his shirt, and proudly proclaimed, "I hab a belly but-ton!" The girls were delighted, but I had to put the nay no on it when they started pulling up their shirts to show him their belly button. I don't want the parents thinking I'm teaching their kids about Mardi Gras or anything.

He's also starting to repeat the prayers I say. That's pretty cool since the other kids pretty much stare at me like I'm a lunatic when I say, "Thank you, God, for the food." That's OK. They'll catch on one day. :)

*OK, so it's not entirely a myth, but I don't see much of it on Sunday mornings.

I will not, not, not...

beat someone with a blunt object. But just to be sure, someone should hide all the blunt objects. And probably the pointy ones too.

I have been busy busy busy at work, which is fine. I prefer being busy to being useless, so it's a good thing. Except that it doesn't leave me much time to do other people's jobs for them, and yet they persist in requiring it of me.

I try to be proactive and write up training manuals for people so that they can just copy and paste what I write into a job and make it work, but apparently the concept of copy and paste is lost on certain people, because they still get it wrong. Every. Time. In strange and illogical ways.

Send me an e-mail asking a question and I answer it -- at this point, it would be a good idea to do what I instruct you to do to fix your problem rather than doing the opposite of what I tell you so that you have to call me 10 minutes later and ask me what's wrong.

If a customer's specs say "do XYZ", and you don't follow the specs so the customer e-mails and asks you to "do XYZ", it is not necessary to e-mail me to ask if you should "do XYZ". All signs point to yes!

Ouch! I just pulled out a clump of my hair.

I have spent about 4 hours today doing work on stuff that I don't "own".

On the bright side, there was a baby shower today, so I got to eat cake. In every dark cloud, there's a piece of cake. Or at least there should be.

Which Serenity character are you?

Here are my results. Shepherd? Not so sure about that. I want to be Inara...but without all the icky prostitution stuff. I just like her fancy clothes.

Your results:
You are Derrial Book (Shepherd)

Derrial Book (Shepherd) 85% Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command) 50% River (Stowaway) 50% Inara Serra (Companion) 40% Wash (Ship Pilot) 35% Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic) 35% Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic) 35% Alliance 35% Malcolm Reynolds (Captain) 30% A Reaver (Cannibal) 10% Jayne Cobb (Mercenary) 0%

Even though you are holy you have a mysterious past.

Click here to take the "Which Serenity character are you?" quiz...

Good Times!

This weekend I had the opportunity to go hear David Sedaris read some of his stories and speak as a fundraiser for the Literary Festival. He is so stinkin' funny.

His books are kind of hit and miss. I'm particularly fond of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim ("Baby Einstein" from that book is one of the funniest things I've ever read) with Me Talk Pretty One Day taking a close second, but some of his books are so over the top that I'm pretty limited in regards to who I would recommend them to. Sometimes he takes offensive to a whole 'nother level--and that's a shame because when he's funny, he's REALLY funny.

The event was well attended, so yay! Maybe he will come back sometime.

It was a bit of an ordeal trying to find the auditorium where it was being held, but we weren't the only people who were lost. We actually parked across the street with cries of, "Ooh, check out this sweet parking spot!!!" and then walked around a building trying to figure out how to get in...only to find out it was the wrong building. There were other people doing the same thing. Then we saw a group of people across the street wandering around as if they were lost too...so we dashed across Rodney Parham Rd. -- my partner in crime nearly losing her one of her cute shoes in the process-- and confronted the group of stunned and confused people. Then one of them whipped out her Iphone and turned on the GPS function and before I knew what was happening, we were walking through some woods in the middle of tarantula season. No lie, there is a tarantula season here wherein they wander about doing nefarious things. I just kept saying "Jesus, help! Jesus, help!" and He did because I didn't see any creepy crawlies.

Luckily, the rest of our party got there early and saved us seats on the second row, so whoo hoo! We didn't miss a thing. Yay us!

As a parting gift, here's a video of Sedaris reading one of his essays on Letterman. This one doesn't even have any cursing in it.

Having My Head Examined

Today I get to go to the neurologist to see if he can put me on some kind of plan to get rid of these pesky headaches. I would also like for him to tell me why my neck feels out of whack (of course after a straight week of it being all crazy, I've almost got it popped back in place now...just in time for him to say, "I can't see what you're talking about.") I think the two things are somewhat related, but maybe he can do an x-ray and see it or something. I can't feel the knot anymore by touch.

I am almost completely off my other "preventative" (not so much, really) medicine, so we can try something new. Maybe something that doesn't make me so stupid. That would be a great bonus. A mind is a terrible thing to lose. Especially now that I've finally got some work to do and I actually need my mind a little bit.

Now I have to go give myself a pedicure. If I remember the last time I went to the neurologist correctly, he ran some kind of thing under my foot to test my nerves. I should have told him that people touching my feet gets on my nerves, but that's probably not what he was looking for. At any rate, nobody is so much as gazing upon these puppies until they have a fresh coat of toenail polish. There's no sense in waltzing up in there like some kind of troll.

Choosing Teams

Or "My Arts and Crafts Project this Weekend"


I just read a blog post that asked the all important question "Which team are you on?" and it reminded me to post these pictures of what I did this weekend in preparation for the New Moon midnight showing (in November, but I had to get a head start!).







That should answer the question nicely. :) I do not understand the Team Jacob people. In my opinion, Jacob is a manipulative twit. However, I suppose that if you base your "team" off of the movie and not off of the books, I can see how you can choose to be on Team Jacob. The movie version of Edward is not as handsome as my imagination's version of Edward. And the movie version of Jacob is quite the hottie. Young, young, young though....and not young in an Edward way (oh...well he's not really 16 --or whatever...who's counting?, he's 100 and something if you count how long he's been undead).



In the end, we cougars Twilight lovers may not agree on which is the best team, but we can agree that when it comes to Edward and Jacob, age ain't nothin' but a number.







Hit it Aaliyah! (RIP!)

Brain Candy

Rarely do I watch TV. For one thing, I just don't have the attention span. Maybe if I had Tivo, I could manage TV (I could watch for 5 minutes, get bored, pause it, and come back later), but I don't, so I say Bah Humbug to most TV shows. If a TV show could grab me in the first two and a half minutes and make me care, I might watch it...but that never happens. You know what I care about? Sleeping. Getting rid of the FLEA INFESTATION FROM HELL (thank goodness, I think they're on the way out). Going more than a day or two without a migraine...that would be nice. TV shows? Not big on the list.

Anyway, I decided to give Flash Forward a chance. The preview looked intriguing. In fact, if you're like me, just watch the preview in lieu of the first episode. It sums it up and it saves you time. The second episode was much better. I'm interested to see how the series pans out. If you like (non-religious) post-apocalyptic type shows, you might like it.

I also watched Hoarders for the first time this weekend. Wow. Just wow. I need to watch that every now and then just to feel better about the state of my own home. I mean I'm a terrible housekeeper, but at least things aren't that bad.

I watched several episodes of Firefly at a friend's house this weekend. I thought it was pretty good. I'm not really a sci-fi chick, so I was somewhat skeptical, but it's got so many good one-liners, and it's not Star-Trekky or anything, so I'm good with it. I think we're going to try to get together on a regular basis to finish up the series.

Do you have a TV obsession or do you eschew TV with a firm hand?

Whoops! It's Banned Books Week!

I almost let it get away from me this year, but thanks to reading a blog post, I was reminded about it.

ALA Banned Books Week is Sept. 26 - Oct. 3 2009

Even though my reading has really slowed down lately, I did read a book from this frequently challenged list.

Ever read Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene? Somehow I missed out on it in childhood, but when I came across it in adulthood and realized it's set in Arkansas and it's a frequently challenged book, I decided to give it a try. I really enjoyed it!

It's about a young girl who lives with parents who are neglectful at best and abusive at worst.

Nazi prisoners of war are sent to her small town in Arkansas to work at a prison camp and she's intrigued by one of them when he comes into her father's store to buy some straw hats to protect the prisoners from the Arkansas sun. This prisoner speaks English, so they are able to communicate and she finds that he's not this evil guy that everyone has made him out to be. He just went along with the regime because he would be killed if he didn't. Anyway, along the way, this "evil" guy is the only person who ever tells her that she's a person of value, and that sticks with her.

I wonder how many people out there are waiting for someone to tell them that they're a person of value and that all of the crap they've been told about themselves all of their lives has been false? It was thought-provoking for me.

The book is sad and it's full of irony and lots of good lessons. It was probably challenged/banned because it is set in a time when there was racial segregation and some of the language depicts racial slurs and religious discrimination -- but the book does not encourage that kind of behavior, it's just true to the setting.

That is my banned/challenged book recommendation for this year. :)

What is your favorite banned or challenged book?