My eggroll misfortune carried straight over into this morning. I woke up today, frankly, pissed off at the world. Waking up at 5am everyday will do this to you. I even snapped at poor Todd (why does he put up with me?). I got to school, and of course children milled around for like twenty minutes after the bell rang, and then an administrator got on the intercom and said something about locking them all out, which just made things worse becuase they knew he didn't mean it.

Things got better though, as I imposed the order and structure of linear equations on my first period, which soothed me with algebra. We will see how third period goes. There are some boys in there who have started talking a lot of junk about Carolina-Dook basketball (they're dookies, but I think it's just to tick me off.) so that's good for some entertainment, at least.

I am going home to the BO this weekend, to sew with my mom. Wish me luck!

unmitigated kitchen disaster

I tried to make eggrolls tonight. I made a total rookie mistake, I stacked the egg rolls touching eachother. You can guess what happened next, that's right, egg roll wrapper glue! It all ripped and tore and turned into one giant egg roll! it was awful. I was dissapointed I actually stomped my feet a little bit and cussed. Fortunately, Todd was not here to see it. Oh well, better luck next time I suppose. There were 3-4 that turned out fairly edible, so I guess I'll have to rephrase the title to "mitigated" kitchen disaster.

you have got to be kidding me . . .

Total chaos at school today. Two assemblies on steroids that none of the teachers new about and were totally disorganized, getting in and out of the auditorium took twice as long as the actual assembly. I lost my planning period completely because they held first period, and now I"m totally grumpy. Is it June yet?

When you walk by the car and hear "pssssssss" it's not good.

So I took my car back on monday to have two new tires put on it so that the tires would match so that it would pass honda certification. Everything went fine, until I got home from work Tuesday afternoon. Mind you, I drive 36 miles each way down I-95 at about 75 mph (no, really) each day.

I got home Tuesday afternoon and my Front right tire was flat. Not only was it flat, I had clearly driven on it flat. I know that sounds totally idiotic. But when I leave for work it is dark outside, and when I leave for home I'm so frazzled I'm lucky I can start the car. I freaked out a little. I called Todd and made him come home from work, and I called the dealership and lost my temper a little bit when she kept telling me that I might have run over it and they wouldn't pay to have it towed until they looked at it. How are you going to look at it if you won't pay to have it towed??? Todd had to rescue the poor service specialist from me. Two hours later, after realizing the "not flat" front tire was only inflated to 13 psi, both the back tires were underinflated (about 25 psi) and the spare was flat, we finally limped the car in to the dealership. Turns out the valve stems were installed improperly and the tires were leaking, DUH.

I had to go back again yesterday to get a *new* tire put on (they just reinflated and put the flat tire back on until they could order me a new one) and my from left tire (the "non flat" one) was only at 20 psi. You have got to be joking. I haven't even put gas in this car yet and it's been in the shop three times.

Anyway, it's allegedly all fixed now, but you better believe I'll be checking the pressure before I leave to go home this afternoon.

lordy

there are 10 children absent from third period today. That's more than half.

ta-da!

isn't it cute??? tell me how cute it is.

speaking of cute, my favorite floridians (formerly known to most of you as my favorite math teacher) just had their second baby :) 8.5 lbs!!!

thinking is the same as doing . . .

Ok, so i got a new car. If you know me, you will not be shocked considering the earlier post. It's not a hybrid, but it is a civic coupe, and it's pretty hot if I say so myself. Pictures to follow.

want to kill some time?

this http://intelligence-test.net/part1/
and this http://intelligence-test.net/part2/

are garaunteed to drive you a little bit insane. I become rather obsessed over them.

In TV world, I am very excited to see a new season of slings and arrows is about to start on sundance channel. Elenor, I think you in particular would really like this show. It's about a lunatic Shakespeare company in Canadia and it's very smart and funny.

There has been no real resolution to the Jiffy Lube issues. I finally (after over a week) got a hold of someone in customer service, and he basically told me I was sol. So now I hate them forever.

I really want a Civic Hybrid. Mostly because I drive 360 miles a week, and gas is eating me out of house and home. It's like having a child. However, I can in no way afford a new car, so I soldier on.

Doggie

Todd and Beth watching the carolina game.

pets . . .

Clearly, the money I spent on a paper shredder was a total waste.

mmm, nascar

tonight was the budweiser shootout, the first race of the season (kind of a pre-season thing) and guess who won, DENNY HAMLIN. My fantasy rookie. This is after last year my rookie, Carl Edwards, almost won the championship. Can I pick em or what? I'm so proud.

This time, you've gone too far.

So we're all familiar with that spam mail where it shows up with someone's name in the "from" list to trick you into clicking on it. Well today, they went to far. They sent me an email from "mom." I mean, IS NOTHING SACRED? Leave my mother out of this. Below is the email, the wrong name is clearly a touch of realism.

Links and emails have been omitted so as not to be free advertising.

Mom
<>to Robert, me, kingston83, bilinc, jbarcellos ...
Feb 8 (2 days ago)

Heaps of my co-workers are ecstatic about this great shop-I\'m coming bytonight to show you.I think we all are discontent with not acquiring the medications we need.My buddy told me about one mitigation product shop supplying medicationsfor less and I just had to let you know.

Just buy me dinner

Mom

all's quiet

Things here are starting to get back to normal. The kids are settling in to the new semester, which, of course, means they're starting to act up again. One of the other math teachers and I were talking the other day about how our kids this semester seem better. They're normal, Which for this school says a lot. Even the problem kids are just the normal types of problem, talk too much, etc. No one in any of my classes has cussed at me even once. It's like a miracle. They may just not have gotten warmed up yet, though. I also still have a LOT of students absent, about 20-30 a day.

If you didn't see the Carolina-Duke game on Tuesday, you missed a good one. I did have to mentally re-write the ending, but that's all I want to say about it.

Oh Happy Day

Beth went to the vet today. A couple of thousand dollars later, she is officially heartworm free! Yay!

FOOTBALL!

Judging by the division finals, today is going to be one heck of a football game. But, I know my audience, and I know ya'll don't care, so that's all I'm going to say about it.

Todd can't drink beer right now because it gives him a headache (headache is an understatement) and he's been debating for days what to do during the super bowl. He had made up his mind, for awhile, to just drink one anyway. FORTUNATELY, he changed his mind. Which is good, because he would only be able to get through about two sips before it ruined his whole day. What we did do, is go to the store and buy O'douls. I've never bought O'Douls before. And yes, just so you know, they do ID you when you buy it. It was embarassing to be seen with it. He hasn't had one yet, I'll let you know what it's like.

To echo Martha, we need a sixth person for our nascar fantasy league. I know you are making a face right now, but even if you don't like nascar normally this can be fun. Think about it.

I hate you Duane!

Ok, I admit it. I take my car to Jiffy Lube. When I used to drive the Jetta, I ALWAYS took it to the dealership to have the oil changed. Keep in mind, I ended up getting rid of that car because it was too expensive. Now, I usually just take my CRV to jiffy lube, and it usually goes really well. Almost all of the Jiffy Lubes I've been to the people have been competent and friendly. One in Durham even let me go down into the pit to look at the underside of my car. It was cool.

Anyway, the Jiffy Lube I went to today (#2690, 3820 Stillman Pkwy, Richmond, VA, 23233, 804-346-1888) was NOT a satisfying experience, because of one person, DUANE.

Duane was like the mini-manager, you know, the guy who runs the computer and stuff, and he was an idiot. First, I had to wait FOREVER, over and hour and a half, while several people came and left while I waited. For the last half hour I watched my car in the parking lot as I waited for someone to come check me out. I mean really. Finally, Duane comes in the room and I'm like "can I please pay?" So he checks me out, I go outside and get in my car and it WON'T START. Keep in mind, I've NEVER had a problem with this car before.

So I go inside, and I tell DUANE, "My car won't start." Duane ARGUES with me. "I pulled it out of the bay myself, it was fine" "are you sure the clutch is in all the way?" LIKE I DON'T KNOW HOW TO START MY OWN CAR. Finally he comes outside and tries to start it, does something under the hood, and then pronounces the battery dead. Then he walks away.

Another technician comes up and asks me what's wrong, I say the car wont' start, he also pronounces the battery dead, asks me if I have cables, I do, jumps off the guy parked next to me, has it started again in 5 minutes. Duane comes back a while later with some random van, at which point my car is already started.

So I thank all the very POLITE and HELPFUL people who got my car started, and ask the technician to tell Duane I want to talk to him before I go. If you know me you can imagine what kind of state I was in. Duane comes out, I explain how I thought he was very rude, and that I had a right to be upset given how long I waited and how my car was messed up, and he shouldn't have told me to calm down. Duane proceeded to ARGUE with me and blame it on everyone else. He never once apologized to me for my inconvenience, he was just very rude. Eventually I realize Duane's an idiot and tell him I want a phone number where I can reach his supervisor.

He comes back out with a piece of paper where in his stupid third grade handwriting he's written a 1800 number, I go home, I call it, IT'S FAKE. He gave me a FAKE NUMBER. Like I'm to stupid to go to jiffylube.com and find customer service!!! ARGH!

On top of that, I go thome and found out they put the WRONG TYPE OF OIL in my car.

I have contacted Jiffy lube corporate, who is going to contact the corporate office of that particular jiffy lube and get back to me. i will let you know how it turns out. Apparently my battery needs to be replaced now that it's gone dead (re Todd) and my warranty may be voided because they put in 5w30 instead of 5w20 (re honda) and my automatic window sdon't work right anymore (re me) so we shall see.

nextel is ticking me off.

I love nextel. I really do. I love my new phone, really. It can do all kinds of cool things. It can even play mp3 ringtones. It's awesome. EXCEPT, nextel has managed to take all the fun out of it.

I would LOVE to just buy ringtones from Nextel. Really. I think 1.99 is not too much to pay for a couple of cool ringtones. Unfortunately, all of Nextel's STINK. I mean BAD. They're like 1 second long and horribly distorted. Therefore, this option has been eliminated for me. So, as I've been stuck at school all day babysitting and hanging out ONE report card, I have been trying everyway I can think of too get new ringtones onto my phone.

I bought a cable, hooks your phone up to your computer via USB, won't work with macs. I tried Multimedia messaging my phone, that kind of worked, I got the ringtone onto my phone as a wav file, but I CAN'T SET IT AS A RINGTONE. Now really, there's no cause for that, Nextel is just being petty. If it's there, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to use it as a ringtone. I tried a service called meomo, which is very cool, where you upload tones to a website and then point your phone to that site and download them, except my phone wont' download things, only"view" them, so it won't work.

It's the combination of events here that's really bugging me. I could understand Nextel cutting off every possible avenue of adding free ringtones to your phone, seeing as how they're trying to make money and all, if there's were so awful. The situation is really starting to tick me off.