Saturday, June 30, 2007

See, I'm not the only one who takes this stuff seriously!

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Posted by: DVE / 11:04 PM
1 comments
Geron and I have been having an eventful weekend down here in Klamath Falls. We went with Ashley over to Ashland for some shopping and sightseeing yesterday. We ate lunch and started browsing some shops down at the Plaza, and before long, a police officer came into our store and asked the shop owner to send everyone away--they were evacuating the whole Plaza area and Lithia Park because of a bomb threat! We left, of course, and started walking up the street away from the area, and eventually we found out that not only was there a threat, there was an actual bomb (or, as we found out today, something that looked enough like a bomb to keep the Oregon Bomb Squad engaged for four hours). Anyway, there was police tape everywhere and flashing lights, and eventually later in the afternoon, we heard a huge boom that echoed off all the buildings, and one of the police line bouncers told us that they were trying to destroy the bomb with a water cannon--meaning, I guess, that they were trying to set it off to get rid of it.

We just kept shopping all afternoon, since there were plenty more stores further away from the park. We couldn't leave because our car was in the area that had been sectioned off. Eventually, though, we managed to get to our car in a round-about way and left, just as they were taking the police tape down around 5pm. Then today, we looked for it on the news and learned that it ended up being a hoax, so you can read all about it here. Chalk that up to yet another unforgettable Ashland experience for me!

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Posted by: DVE / 6:19 PM
1 comments

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Time for memes 

1. Were you named after anyone? Not that I know of.

2. When was the last time you cried? Hmm, don't remember. Probably some movie.

3. Do you like your handwriting? Not really. If I take time to make it nice, it's ok, but most of the time, ick.

4. What is your favorite lunch meat? Roast beef. Or maybe tuna.

5. Do you have kids? Yup, about a hundred of them, from September to June.

6. If you were another person, would you be friends with you? Only if I ever got up the courage to speak to me. Or if we were in a situation where I was forced to get to know myself. Then I think I'd get along great with myself. I talked to myself more than anyone else as it is, so I envision some great conversations if was actually another person.

7. Do you use sarcasm? Under duress.

8. Do you still have your tonsils? I believe so... I haven't checked recently...

9. Would you bungee jump? Not for any price.

10. What is your favorite cereal? That new Nature Valley cereal, with the granola bar pieces in it.

11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Never. Sometimes I have to untie them to put them back on...

12. Do you think you are strong? Are you kidding? I've just painted for two weeks! I'm an Amazon!

13. What is your favorite ice cream? Birthday cake remix from ColdStone. Also Mandarin Chocolate from Prince Puckler's in Eugene. (But let's be honest, I've never met an ice cream flavor I didn't like.)

14. What is the first thing you notice about people? Hmm, I could be all respectable and say "their inner beauty" or something, but honestly? If it's a girl, her figure and her clothes. If it's a guy, his face structure (Kandice, read: chin), smile, and hair. I hardly ever really look at people's eyes. If I'm looking someone straight in the eyes (for more than a second or two), it's because they're talking and I'm trying to look like I'm listening but am actually thinking about something else. When I'm actually listening to people, I look at their mouths, or away from them entirely. I have no explanation for this...

15. Red or Pink? Pink. But I like red too.

16. What is the least favorite thing about yourself? I wish I had more courage.

17. Who do you miss the most? My friends in Nampa

18. What color pants and shoes are you wearing? No shoes. Black shorts with flecks of white paint on them.

19. What was the last thing you ate? Fresh cherries.

20. What are you listening to right now? Celtic Woman

21. If you where a crayon, what color would you be? If I where a crayon, I would... go look for it? And then use it to fill out an application for Writing 121.

22. What are your favorite smells? To quote from my 6/8/05 post, "A single favorite is simply not a possibility when scents are so varied. Of flowers: Lilac. Of food: Oranges. Of houses: Tammy’s. Of spices: Basil. Others: A dusty street when it has just begun to rain, new books, the window cleaner we used at Camp Kuratli, fresh bark dust, the room spray you [Steph] got me for my apartment."

23. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? My mom. It was a riveting conversation about unplugging network cords and plugging them back in.

24. Do you like the person who sent this to you? On Monday afternoons, I do, and before breakfast on Saturdays. I feel warm towards her between the hours of 10 and 11 am most days, and madly in love with her at dinnertime, but only on Tuesdays. At midnight, my feelings begin to cool, but I always revive the friendship by 2am or so.

25. Favorite sports to watch? [The author of this blog regretfully declines to answer this question, and requests that you continue on with the meme. --Management]

26. Hair color? Dark blond, for now.... (she said mysteriously)

27. Eye color? Geez, complete questions much? Blue.

28. Do you wear contacts? Nope.

29. Favorite food? The one I'm in the mood for.

30. Scary movies or happy endings? What, like those are the only two options? Sorry, but I pick C) Tragically romantic. Preferably ending with the death of the main character and his or her significant other, either by their own hands or by the machinations of malevolent fate.

31. Last movie you watched? Becket. Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole. 1964 portrayal of 15th century British king's murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, incidently his best friend. Mmm. (Refer to #30)

32. What color shirt are your wearing? Grass green. It's icky.

33. Summer or winter? Refer to blog title.

34. Hugs or kisses? I'll take anything I can get.

35. Favorite dessert? See answer to #34.

36. What books are you reading right now? See the sidebar. Also, Peter and the Starcatchers, and Latin Made Simple.

37. What is on your mousepad? Water droplets on an unidentifiable blue surface.

38. What did you watch on TV last night? A DVD of The Office: "Casino Night." *sighs in a swoony way*

39. Favorite sound? The first note of the Phantom's part in "The Phantom of the Opera" (not sung by Gerard Butler), anything played on the violin (not by me), silence.

40. Rolling Stones or Beatles? Who?

41. Where is the farthest you have been from home? London.

42. Do you have a special talent? I can balance things on my head--stacks of books, laundry baskets, etc.

43. Where were you born? Right here in Lebanon.

Well, wasn't that fun. I think I shall dub this the Summer of Memes. I shan't have much to blog about (at least while I'm painting...and until the Deathly Hallows comes out... *evil chuckle*), so if you come across a nice, interesting, unique meme that doesn't ask Truth-Or-Dare-type questions, send it on over.

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Posted by: DVE / 9:51 PM
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Well, I got the morning off from work today, and what did I do? Well, a little bit of sleepin' in, a little bit of used bookstore-in', and a little bit of talkin' to Sophie on a park bench in the sun. Very nice. I had a great haul at the bookstore too. I found another copy of I Capture the Castle, so I can have one for my classroom, a brand-new hardcover of Peter and the Star-Catchers for $4, a Tamora Pierce book, a Ray Bradbury, and a few other classroom books. I did discover, however, that this amazingly cheap used bookstore in my hometown, while wonderful for finding great deals, is really not the place to sell one's used books. Quite a brain-wave, I know--the thought that a bookstore that sells cheaply will also perhaps buy cheaply. So, yeah, I'm filing that away for the next time I have a book to sell.

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Posted by: DVE / 12:17 PM
1 comments

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Aaaannnd it's summer... Can you tell? 

Welcome to the summer blogging schedule, people! I promise I won't go all photo-bloggy on you this summer, but if I'm out in the sun rather than on the computer...welll, you really can't blame me, can you?

Let's see, updates... I went to Ashland with my eighth-graders. I realized that I hate being in charge of things, but other than that it was a fun trip. (Okaaayyy, to be honest, I love being in charge of things, I hate being responsible for things.) The performance was excellent, and I was excited for some of my students to see a performance of the play they've been studying all quarter. Next year, it would be fun to take an entire class during the school year, I think, as long as I can make things a little more stream-lined. And possibly delegate more. Anyway, this trip has definitely confirmed what I've suspected for awhile--taking a group of kids to tour Europe is not going to be on my agenda anytime soon. I know a lot of teachers like to do it and find the whole free-ticket-to-Europe-thing to be a lucky bonus, but you could not pay me enough to take a bunch of kids (or parents for that matter) half-way across the world. Even if the West End were included. No thank you. I'd rather pay my own way and have my blissful solitude, thank you very much.

Anyway, things did go more or less smoothly, lest I make you think otherwise. It was just stressful. On Sunday afternoon, though, the kids all went home with their parents, and I stayed with my mom and watched Romeo and Juliet that night. Which was lovely. One thing in particular was done in quite a unique way. They cut together the two scenes in which Romeo and Juliet each talk about Romeo's banishment--Romeo with the Friar and Juliet with her Nurse. So all four were on the stage at once, on a sort of split-level set, with almost a call-and-response version of the lines. It was cool.

Anyway, since then I've started working at the nursery for a few weeks, doing--what else?--painting. So far I've only painted the upstairs and downstairs of the business office. But ahead on my painting list you'll find my dad's office in the shipping office, the tag building, the boy's bathroom in the house, both bathrooms in the business office, the stairwell, external trim, basement trim, and the maintenance building trim. Oh yes, I will be busy, my friends. I really wanted to go get a pair of those painter's coveralls, but I have no idea where to find them. And plus, it would only be fun if I were painting lots of cool colors so it could be all rainbow splattered, but I'm pretty much just painting white and various shades of tan.

So that's the first half of my summer plans (interspersed with various weekend trips, camping trips, etc), then of course we have the mid-summer madness of Harry Potter in--what?--oh yes, TWENTY-SIX DAYS! And, yes, I've heard rumors of various hackers and so on having downloaded/stolen/sneaked/peeked/blabbed the Deathly Hallows manuscript. And I so don't care. Don't tell me about it. I don't want to know. As long as no whisper of spoilers reach my ears for another twenty-six days, they can wreak havoc on the virgin ears of the rest of the world for all I care. I'll just be in my cave, blindfolded, with my ears full of cotton, thank you very much.

(By the way, the funnest thing I've seen in ages--click on over to The Leaky Cauldron, and in the upper right-hand corner of the screen is the Deathly Hallows book! You can spin it, flip it, watch it turn round and round and round and round... mmm, I could do this for hours...)

Anyway, after the book of books is here and I've breathed a giant sigh of relief, read it, and wept bitterly for a few days, then I'm off on a giant road trip to Chicago with my friend Sophie, with a few stop-offs in MN, ND, WY, and wherever else we carefree girls find ourselves. How's that for a summer??

Speaking of which, I'd better get on that... the paintbrush awaits...

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Posted by: DVE / 7:10 PM
4 comments

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Wow, I have just spent an embarrassing amount of time indexing all my old posts and putting up label links on the sidebar. So now, you can search the whole blog for a specific topic. For example, if you want to know how I feel about dentists, you can click on "dentists" for a list of posts dealing with that particular subject. Neat.

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Posted by: DVE / 10:23 PM
2 comments
Woo, I'm done! Done with students, that is. I still have some grading and cleaning and general Last Things to do. Still. Very exciting. To celebrate, I offer you a little video that includes the genesis of my blog's name, and also features my personal favorite stage actor, whom I may or may not have extoled on this blog before and whom I actually met, five years ago, at the stage door of a London theater on the night of my birthday. I have a picture and everything. :)

Keep in mind that this video was made in, like, the 80's, which makes his hair, if not acceptable, at least excusable. And let's be honest, I mean, I think he's cute, but his looks are an acquired taste, especially now, 20 years later. (No comment about the mid-song make-out.) Still, that voice... I hear it in my dreams...



So, I have a free evening in front of me, and a bit of actual creative energy--wonder of wonders. What to write about... what to write about... Well, my sister and I went to see Waitress last night. Anyone seen it? I went because it starts Nathan Fillion from Firefly, but it's a pretty weird movie. Plot: waitress with stereotypical controlling jerk of a husband dreams of flying away and opening her own pie shop but doesn't have the guts to do it and instead starts an affair with her prenatal doctor (oh, yeah, she's pregnant and not so very happy about it). High jinks ensue. It's actually hilarious, but you have to be willing to put up with the cartoonish-ness of the whole thing (and the fact that it's necessary plot-wise for the doctor to also be married to a very nice person, which in the real world would make him as much of a jerk as the first guy for cheating on the aforementioned nice wife just to be with the also-nice-but-not-married-to-him waitress whom he's not willing to divorce his wife for or marry or make any promises about or even discuss the possibility of a future together with.) Right. So morally suspect and bizarre. That's my diagnosis. (Going with the whole doctor thing.) ...(But Nathan Fillion was darn cute.)

Aaaand, also went to two graduations this week. My friend Christin works for a newspaper and has to cover high school graduations, and I truly, deeply sympathize with her. The worst part, in my opinion, is the photo slide shows. OK, everyone? Let's just all get one thing straight right here and now. Slide shows are the equivalent of Grandma lugging her stacks of photo albums out of the basement, forcing you to sit down on the couch with a glass of weak lemonade and a Nabisco wafer, and showing you five thousand pictures of her basset hound, Ronald, and his hip replacement. Only without the Nabisco wafer.

And, no, adding a song by Natalie Grant doesn't help. If you absolutely cannot live without sharing your entire My Pictures folder full of toothy grins and contemplative poses with a (literally) captive audience, please, pleeeze follow the one-song rule. Limit yourself to one song (a normal-length song), and "bless" us with only as many pictures as you can flash through in those 3 or 4 minutes. The rest have to go. Kill your darlings. Seriously.

Anyway, other than the slide shows, the graduations were both very nice. Good speakers, good little valedictorian speeches, good cake and punch. Incidentally, the guy who gave the valedictorian address at my own graduation was back at this one as the commencement speaker... Interesting. (His speech-writing abilities have improved.)

And the summer stretches out before my with a hundred alluring possibilities (although the clouds overhead are vigorously denying the existence of summer at all). I foresee must rest and relaxation, much fun, a little work, and eventually (hopefully before September) a moment where I remember that I really do like teenagers after all.

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Posted by: DVE / 5:39 PM
2 comments

Monday, June 04, 2007

It's the last week of school!!!!!!!!
Posted by: DVE / 8:37 AM
1 comments

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Well, it's the beginning of June, and in our town that means Strawberry Festival time. We're talking a Strawberry Court, a Strawberry Parade, a Strawberry Carnival, and--oh, yes--the world's largest Strawberry Shortcake. Of course, these small town festivals are by definition a bit cheesy, but I do think Lebanon lucked out with it's theme. I mean, it could be like the Filbert Carnival or the Grass Seed Carnival or something. And who wouldn't rather be a Strawberry Princess than a Filbert Princess? (No, I was never a strawberry princess. One girl in my class was, though.)

So, I took Bren to the carnival and met up with all her little friends. I had heard rumors that several parents (I nearly wrote "other parents"--sad) were letting their kids go because they heard I would be there with her, so I felt a bit of responsibility for the whole brood--all 15 or so of them. However, after my lovely afternoon (described in the previous post) I was feeling a little tired for carnival rides, so I mostly just watched. ... And boy, was I glad I did. Throughout the evening, no less than five kids climbed off their rides covered in... well, let's just say it: puke. FIVE of them!

Now I've been to a few carnivals and state fairs, and this has never happened to me. Or anyone I've been with. So this seems to me an unusually high percentage. Granted, carnivals seemed designed to create that particular reaction: lots of unbelievably fatty and sugar-laden foods combined with fear-inducing and equilibrium-upsetting rides on a very hot day. And then there's the fact that one such "incident" has the potential to shower an entire ride's worth of kids. But seriously! Five!

So, yeah, I went on the ferris wheel, and that was it. And I had three bites of cotton candy. Rather a pathetic excuse for a trip to the carnival. But I don't do puke.

However... there was one redeeming factor to my evening: I bought a violin. Now, to those of you who are shaking your heads or rolling your eyes at the idea of buying a musical instrument that is not a kazoo, ukelele, or recorder at a carnival, let me explain. There were also booths by local craftsmen--sort of like a Saturday market--and one of them was a guy who makes violins for a non-profit organization. He had a newspaper article and everything. :) Anyway, the price was almost as low as half what I paid to rent a violin last year for nine months, so I figured, even if I wasn't getting a great instrument, it was still a pretty good deal. And the bow and case were included. Of course, my students were all cracking up at the sight of me carrying a violin around the fairgrounds--but I'm sure you can guess how much that upset me. So, when I'm fabulous, I'll start playing for my friends and family--in the meantime, you'll just have to use your imaginations.

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Posted by: DVE / 7:22 PM
2 comments

Friday, June 01, 2007

I just now pre-ordered my new Harry Potter book over at good ol' guaranteed-release-date-delivery Amazon. For those of you who are surprised it has taken this long, understand that I have been deliberating over whether to buy the book at a release party or get it shipped to me. See, the excitement and communal frenzy over the final release is half of what makes Harry Potter so fun, but as you know (and are probably sick of hearing about) I'm desperately afraid of having the ending spoiled by some punk who's standing in line before me, flips to the end and blurts out, "Harry dies," or "Ginny dies," or "Snape's helping Voldemort," or something equally horrible. But it seems a shame to miss a release party because of that. But on the other hand, if I get the book at midnight, I will have no choice but to stay up all night reading it, and I hate staying up all night. So, my final decision is to go to a release party, stay until they start handing out the books, then go home, go to bed, and pace my house in the morning until the book is delivered around noon. Mmm, sounds good.

Sounds especially good at the moment, since I've been spending the afternoon babysitting the one class that didn't participate enough in the most recent fundraiser to warrant a class party at the lake. Imagine if you will, a beautiful sunny day and an empty school, save for one sweltering classroom filled with sweaty, self-righteously angry sophomores and one tired teacher who's heard just a bit too much whining for one day. The lawn mower buzzes out on the soccer field and the room hums with murmurs of "unfair" and "just can't believe" and "typical." I, as the only tangible representative of the oh-so-biased-and-tyrannical authorities who are responsible for their confinement, have become the locus for complaints and general lashing out, as expressed in such impotent crimes as leaving-for-the-bathroom-without-asking and deviating-from-the-seating-chart. I would find all this hilarious if I wasn't so annoyed, but all I can manage is a sort of sardonic sarcasm. Not my best attitude, I grant.

However, reminding myself that there are only four and a half days left in the school year is considerably heartening, and I suspect that a trip to the Strawberry Carnival tonight--to include some cotton candy and a ride on the ferris wheel with my wonderful sister--will be sufficient to cure me of this mood.

Finally, lest you think me a hateful teacher--say, of Ms. Trunchbull's ilk--I'll share with you a poem I wrote about one of my students today (per her request) for a yearbook insert. (And, yes, she was in my math class, not English)

For C.

Little locus of big questions
Life exasperates
X minus A may
Or may not calculate
And not everything is real
Or rational
Or even natural
Which leaves plenty of room
In this world of squares and integers
For you, one bright radical
Never coming out even
Your infinitely extending ellipses
Have a place in the Pattern
So contend and amend
Til your pen finds the Great Solution

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Posted by: DVE / 1:34 PM
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