The Sins of the Mothers

I won't even begin to explain why it's been so long since I posted.  Not because there is a long, convoluted explanation, but because I am a lazy sack.

Anywho...

My mom is visiting for a couple of weeks.  Let me tell you about my mom.  She was born in Norway and moved here when she was 11, got sent back to Norway to live with her sister as a teen (I suspect discipline problems), and moved back here again a few years later.  Much of what she's accomplished, she's done on her own so I know she's functional.  She's had a career, bought and sold a few houses, raised two kids, and after she retired she became and EMT and a lab tech.  But.  She also has a tendency to end up in the restaurant kitchen when she means to go into the restroom (it's happened more than once), she once drove us through two or three darker than the darkest dark thing mountain tunnels with no lights because (we found out later) she thought the defroster button was the headlight switch, and she hit herself in the head with a hammer so hard that she had to call an ambulance for herself.  Another thing she does is mixes her idioms.  Some examples:  "I know you like a glove." and "She's a real piece of cake."  She claims that it's because English is not her first language but I'm somewhat skeptical since English has been her daily language for, oh, 50 years or so.

Anyone who has met my mom makes a comment about how similar we are.  That's fine since so far I've never gotten lost on my way to the bathroom I figure I must have inherited some of her other qualities instead.  Yeah.

Today I had to make some phone calls to track down a pond warmer because, as I told the person on the other end in all seriousness, my old pond warmer "kicked the dust".  Noooooooooooo!

Me, My Big Mouth, and I

Last week I only had class on Monday since I don't have Tuesday classes and the rest of the week was Thanksgiving Break.  Yes, it was pretty sweet.  Some of the the students in my last class of the day were debating whether they would attend their Tuesday classes or just head home for the break instead.  I pointed out that the vacation portion of the week didn't actually start until Wednesday and they run the risk of missing something relevant or at least graded.  Just call me Professor Buzzkill.  The students said that they wished their professors would just cancel classes which would let them off the hook.  I told them that doing this was kind of unprofessional.  As a bonus bit of wisdom, I gave them the advice that calling in sick after a long weekend looks pretty sketchy and should be avoided.

Not to sound arrogant or anything but I'm pretty sure the universe listens to me and thinks it's funny to mess with me.

Having said that, it should come as no surprise that at about 7 p.m. on the Sunday of Thanksgiving break I started to become sick.  So, eating my own words (and little else) I called in sick for Monday.

So, I'm going to try something:  I want you all to know that winning the lottery is really sketchy and should be avoided.

Reason #47 To Get LASIK

I wear glasses.  I wear them for every waking minute of my life.  I own contact lenses but only wear them when I am swimming or something similarly fraught with danger.  Glasses are a big part of what I look like when I imagine myself.  If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a fan.  Sure, there are downsides:  they slide down my nose at the first hint of perspiration (this translates as anywhere from 20 to 100 times a day depending on the season), they fog up when I come in from the cold, they get smudged even though I'm sure I'm not touching them, and then there's the haircut problem.

The first thing that happens when I sit down in the spinny chair to get a haircut is that they put a superhero cape on me but backwards.  That part is cool.  Then they make me take off my glasses.  This means that I never, ever get to see anything other than the Before and the After.  So, I must trust the person wielding the scissors completely - I have no chance of knowing after I've told them what I want if they've gone rogue.

Today I discovered a new reason why I wish I wasn't a Spectacled-American on haircut day.  I've been going to the same two people for haircuts for the last several years.  One of them is a hairdresser with an in-house chair massage person who is 2 hours away from my house and the other is a no-frills barber a mere 2 minutes away from my house.  I went to the barber today for probably the 10th time.  Thanks to this no-glasses-during-haircuts thing, it took until the 10th visit to realize that my barber is missing an entire finger.  Damn you, nearsightedness!  All this time I had a mental image of what was transpiring around my head and it was only 90% correct.

I might have to add haircuts to the list of contact-lens-necessary activities.  For all I know my other hairdresser might have an eye patch.  Or only one ear.  Or a mime performing in the background.  ANYTHING could be happening during my haircuts.

It's Elementary, Right? Right?

They are showing a new series on PBS called "Sherlock".  It's a re-imagining of the Sherlock Holmes stories that takes place in modern day London.  Sherlock is a self-admitted high-functioning sociopath and Dr. Watson is a veteran of Afghanistan with a psychosomatic limp.

Based on hearing good things about the show, I set up a series recording on the DVR.  The HD channel, of course.  When we started to watch the first episode, we noticed that the show had a weird feature in the form of a narrator.  Narration is not itself strange but this woman was thorough.  She told us everything that was going on to an exhaustive level of detail.  I thought it was a little annoying but, hey, I figured it was their schtick.  Huppy, on the other hand, couldn't stand it and stopped watching.  I started looking on message boards to see if anyone else found the narration to be a little overwhelming.  Apparently not because there was no mention of it anywhere.  I found this to be puzzling since anyone who has spent any time on the interwebs knows that everything is mentioned at least once.  Everything.  Since we definitely weren't hallucinating her, I realized that she must be a service provided for the visually impaired.  OK, cool.  I'm sure it was just a mixup but I recorded the next episode on both channels (HD and SD) just in case.  The narrator was present again when we started the show but when we switched to the SD version she was gone.  The episode was much easier to watch without all the extra nattering.

Now, I'm glad they have these services for the visually impaired, I really am.  But am I a total jerk to think maybe it's not necessary to for them to do so on the high definition version?

This Isn't What It Looks Like

So when I got out of class at 10:50 today I moseyed over to the caf to wait for lunch (they start serving at 11:15. At about 11:08 I go over to the sandwich making line and casually lean against the counter reading a book while the sandwich guy did all of his prep work. By the time he was ready there was a line of about 15 people but I was first. I triumphantly headed to my table with my sandwich and was happily eating when one of my students came up to me and we had the following interchange:


Her - "Um...I just wanted to let you know there's something brown all over the back of your pants"

Me - "Really."

Her - "Yeah, it's brown."

Me - "Was it there during class?" (Visions of three hours of teaching with brown stuff smeared on my butt flashing through my head)

Her - "No! No, I saw it when I was in the sandwich line but I didn't want to tell you in front of all those people but, yeah, um it's on the right hand side."

Me - "OK, thanks for letting me know"


I sidled to the bathroom and sure enough there is about a 1/4 cup of peanut butter smeared across my right ass cheek. As I'm sure you're aware, peanut butter looks an awful lot like SHIT so I was obviously really happy and not at all embarrassed. I cleaned it off as best I could, went back, and gave that student a thumbs up. I mouthed the words "peanut butter" at her lest she think I'm incontinent.


My current fear is that peanut butter is like toothpaste in that you can clean it up and it seems to be totally gone until the fabric dries and it gets miraculously resurrected in all its glory. Toothpaste is like the Easter Jesus of stains. I still have another class to teach so I'm going to go now and see if there's peanut butter leavin's on my bum.
 
Also, I stapled my sleeve to a test the other day.  If I get any more suave I'm going to need a permit.

I've Got The Moves, Baby

For the past few months Huppy and I have been working out once a week with a personal trainer.  Often when we meet in the basement of the Y, Shane (the trainer) has us do some ladder drills.  This week the Y was pretty crowded due to some renovations at the downtown Y so we went outside to play.  Shane put two ladders down side by side in the grass and we got started.  We soon learned that the ladder on grass is slightly elevated and it's very easy to catch it on your feet and yank it out of place.  This doesn't really happen inside on the floor so this new wrinkle took some adjustment.  In between ladder drills we would do some kettle bell activities and planks.  Somehow on one of my ladder drill segments I managed to get my foot caught in the ladder, spin around a few times hog-tying myself with the ladder, whirl even further out of orbit, then crash down to the gorund, roll over, and hit my head on a kettle bell that I swear had been 15 feet away from where all this started. 

After asking me if I was OK (which was nice of him considering how hard it must have been to actually talk with all the laughing he was doing), Shane said he really wished he had a camera.  I'm glad he enjoys our sessions as much as I do.

More Like PURRicane Earl

So we here in New England were recently under threat of a hurricane.  The news reports were full of hurricane tracking and helpful hints as to how to prepare for it.  School hasn't started yet so I took it on myself yesterday to do the hurricane preparations.  I moved a bunch of yard stuff into the garage and what I couldn't move I strapped down.  High on a sense of accomplishment, I next went to Target to get supplies in the event we lost power, water, or both.

When Huppy got home she looked through the Target bags to see what I'd gotten.  This is what she found:

2 two-gallon containers of water
1 package of toilet paper
1 box of chocolate chip Fiber One bars
1 Wii pistol
1 package Double Stuff Oreos
1 bag kitty litter

Based on her reaction, I don't think I'm in charge of emergency preparations anymore.