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March 31, 2007
Going somewhere sunny
Tucson, sunny, sunny Tucson. Warm, sunny cactus'y no snow no rain Tucson. Fish belly white transformation. Hairy chest synthesizing vitamin D.
I get into the city on Monday evening, head over to Prescott to see my grandma who turns 90 this week. She is having a big shindig later on, but because of my father's family, I'll be glad to miss that. I'll write more about this later. I'll head out of there on Wednesday morning to go find myself at Joshua Tree. I'll strike a U2 pose.
See Thursday, where it is slightly overcast? I'm relaxing with my friend David and his partner in Palm Springs. I've never been (Derrick went once), so it should be fun. I'll head out of there before the big White Party stuff happens. I was hoping to go to San Diego, but I weighed the driving time vs. relaxing time, and relaxing time won.
I'll drive back to Tucson on Friday to hang with sexy archaeologist/gogo boy Homer, doing the restful Tucson tourist thing, including his ultra fun non-denominational egg decorating night on Saturday.
After this last week, I am done with teaching. The week before break is always difficult, and this one was no different. I had a kid set off mace or pepper spray in my room, and I got a lungful. It is really hard to do the journal entry with the kids when everyone is coughing and gagging. Good times.
Teachers get vacations because they really need it.
Posted by G at 01:54 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
March 28, 2007
I don't want to be one of the tchotchke people
For some reason, people think that I like bacon. I have no idea why.
I have no idea why my old roommate Dave sent me this recipe for bacon-wrapped, cheese-filled, battered and fried hot dogs.
I eat other things, really. I just wrap them in bacon.
Posted by G at 10:32 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 27, 2007
Makin' the bacon
Here's the email I got from my aunt K, who knows me better than myself.
I love ice cream, I love bacon, I love brown sugar, and I love pecans. What's not to love?
Here are the ingredients.
Here's my cute assistant, Steve-O. He blogs.
We pulverized the pecans.
We heated all the other stuff- cream, eggs, sugar, all the yummy stuff. The crucial part of the whole thing was to make sure that the egg didn't turn into scrambled eggs, but Stephen was doing a really good whisking.
Here is where I HATE recipes. It told us to stop heating the cream when it coated the back of the spoon. What the heck does that mean? Is it wool or leather? Apparently, this is coating a spoon:
Of course, nobody wants to see me make ice cream. Everybody wants to see me make BACON ice cream. Here's the obvious ingredient: ONE POUND OF CRISPY BACON.
Finally, we poured the mixture into Stephen's kick-ass mixer. It had the niftiest ice cream attachment in the whole wide world. If Derrick and I had one of these things, I would be the fattest person in the history of mankind, rolling around in my bacon'y goodness. For any observant Jews out there (or any family members that believe EVERY bible verse is true), this concoction breaks all sorts of laws.
I was going to take a picture of myself enjoying it, but that kind of gluttonous rapturous look could get me in trouble. Plus, I have to admit, the recipe is a bit too much bacon.
Next time, only a half pound of bacon. Plus we'll mix the pecans into the mix earlier, as their flavor wasn't really infusing the mix.
Yes, there will be a next time. Be afraid.
Posted by G at 10:44 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack
Not dead yet
Just been really busy. I'll write about the making of the bacon ice cream, my upcoming trip to Tucson, and family drama this week.
Just busy, that's all.
Posted by G at 07:43 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
March 20, 2007
Be-where the ides of March?
I stumbled as it dawned on me what today's date is. The wonky sidewalk also contributed to the stumbling, but it really was more of my realization of the date. March for teachers is the cruelest month, with no days off. Every year before now, I was ready to pretty much kill myself, just praying for the break at the beginning of April.
Not this year. Not this school. Some days are bad, some kids can be less than lovely, but this is a functioning public school. It has been a tougher month than normal, but I'm with an amazing group of teachers that really care. At my old schools, there was a mix of teachers who cared/didn't care, and always administrators with craniums crammed tight into lower orifices. In the next few days, I'll finally tell my disaster story from my last school.
Until then, I'll have a good teaching time. Not perfect, sometimes quite imperfect, but still good.
Posted by G at 06:52 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
March 14, 2007
I was almost scammed!
My house in Texas was just vacated by two guys who seriously trashed the place, gave no notice, and left me hanging in the wind. After $1300 for cleaning the house and repairing it (no deposit from them), I posted on Craigslist. The AFTER photos are on the ad. Can I just mention how much I liked my redesign of my bathroom that I did? The narrow shelving really opened up the space.
The really fun part of the story is that I was contacted by a guy who claimed that he was doing a two year sabbatical funding by a large corporation. He wanted to move into the house within a week and would forward a cashiers check for the entire deposit, but that they would also attach an amount for his traveling expenses that I would have to wire to him. This seemed a bit odd, so I emailed more questions to clarify WHY he was going to Lubbock, that sort of thing. No response, then an email ignoring all my questions. I then searched.
My zod, he WANTED TO SCAM ME!. The scam basically works by sending a forged cashiers check to me with an excess amount that has to be forwarded to him by wire transfer. Banks are bound to show a deposit immediately, but the check bounces after a week or so. By then, I would have transferred money to him, and I would have been responsible for all the lost money. Glad I didn't do that.
Sucky, right?
Posted by G at 10:41 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
March 12, 2007
I swear bloody revenge upon thee
You know who you are. The bastard who subscribed me to all the latest clown events. Obviously someone did this to me, because spam can't be that inaccurate. Hahahaaa... No. Every email I unsuspectingly open, only to find a pic of a clown, doing... something.
Not funny. Not funny at all. Clowns do not occupy ANY of my happy places. I don't want to know about Slava's Snow Globes or whatever it was. It has clowns. I don't want to know about Spiegelword and clowns. I don't want to know about clown art, or clown shows, or clown classes. I'm relieved that someone I really like isn't becoming a clown. I would still love talking to him, but if he approached me as a clown, I'd run shrieking the other direction. I know that clowns can smell fear, but they can't run that fast in those giant shoes.
Clowns. Are. Not. Funny. At. All. I will find out who you are, and if you're one of my gay friends, I'm subscribing you to straight porn involving fat women with a fetish for halitosis. If you're one of my straight friends, I'm subscribing you to gay Amish porn. Dost thee want me to raise thine barn?
Posted by G at 08:59 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
March 08, 2007
Art Class
I really do love my teaching. Today was a good lesson day, and I particularly enjoyed getting back one of my transparencies with the following addition:
When I asked him what the various additions were, he said the star spot was actually the light shining off my head, and of course they know that my favorite DC hero is the Green Lantern. Duh!
Another student chimed in that he'd also drawn me some time ago, and gave me these.
I'm a little bit alarmed by my eyes' refusal to dilate, but I guess the kids view me differently pre/post coffee.
Posted by G at 10:29 PM | Comments (14) | TrackBack
March 07, 2007
Cartographilia
When I was a kid, I loved studying maps. Probably my favorite gift EVER was the 1981 National Geographic Atlas. I loved looking at the detail and multiple layers of complexity. I remember taking it on car trips. I would draw my own maps, extrapolating the growth of cities to predict what they would look like in 50 years. I was 10-11 years old. Yes, I was THAT NERDY.
My friend Allen just showed me this amazing website called Worldmapper.
Take the normal representation of the world:
Now, make it all stretchy and have it represent various data of the world.
This is GDP wealth for the world.
This is military spending.
Here's one where Africa figures prominently. What is the stat? War deaths in 2002.
Not all are wildly depressing. This one is tourist destinations.
I am SO using this in one of my classes.
Posted by G at 09:48 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
March 05, 2007
Tips on tipping
I've already done the collared shirt, and I think the rosette is next. When I was a waiter, I loved turning someone's take-home food into a swan, so this is just the other direction.
Quick note: a creatively folded dollar does NOT constitute a good tip. Just put it at the top of the pile of money.
Posted by G at 10:16 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
March 03, 2007
36=18x2.
I woke up with a start last night. Being a math teacher often means finding unpleasant math connections in life. This year, this last night, I realized that 18 years ago I was a senior in high school in Clovis, NM. After that, my dreams were weird links to old friends, one dream in particular of my car being trapped in between two buildings of my high school, some of the jocks rocking it back and forth.
I cracked out an old yearbook from a box under the bed today, that weird musty smell of old paper startling me, but not nearly as much as photos of myself, my old friends, my old life. Hair? I had hair? HSM (High School Me) wore 29 inch waist jeans loosely, weighed 130 pounds, and had a really big secret.
I was a pretty good guy. National Merit Finalist, Senior Class President, editor of the newspaper, friendly social church boy, proto-gay boy, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, I lived in a school straight from that horrible movie/tv show Friday Night Lights. Football is king in Clovis, NM. My school opened every football game with a prayer (usually for safety, but really for winning), coaches and players were gods, and my city worshipped every Friday night.
I can't watch that stupid show Friday Night Lights. Makes me too angry. All the characters are either jocks, cheerleaders, or support staff. No other person exists on that show, and that makes it the most realistic football show ever. Growing up in Clovis meant that no matter what you did, if it wasn't football, it just wasn't important. Of course I was in love with them just like everyone else. I would always surreptitiously look through the fence at the young gods practicing, always hoping that it was shirts vs. skins. I didn't realize that I was gay, I just knew that what I was doing was shameful and wrong. I was close friends with one football guy named Spicer Lewis. Real name, Samuel Spicer Lewis, named by his father after a war buddy.
One time, as class president, I had to go tell the coaches that I needed football players to escort the girls across the field at homecoming. I was walking through the locker room, trying not to look at the guys stripping around me. I didn't notice that I walked over the painted Wildcat mascot on the locker room floor, but my friend Spicer did. He told the rest of the team, and they all jumped up in their jock straps or less, grabbed me, and dragged me into the showers.
To be continued.
Posted by G at 11:31 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack