Once upon a time, I was a Republican. I admit this now to offer hope to those who have not yet seen the light. I was not just a little Republican, either. I was a vote-the-ticket, Democrats-are-evil, hate-everything-about-Bill-Clinton 100 percent GOP voter. I did this because I was raised in a Republican household and because I was really a one or two issue voter--lower my taxes and quit giving my money to lazy people who use food stamps and welfare. All of this changed when I became a fan of reality tv...Survivor to be specific. An odd leap, you say? Well, yes. Yes it was, but I can say with absolute confidence that what turned my thinking around was the thoughtful and persuasive writing of some really smart Survivor watchers.

Many of my bloggy friends know what OT is because they have hung out there too, but for those who don't, it's the Off Topic board on Reality TV World. Like most off topic forums, a little bit of everything gets discussed and on OT, politics is somewhat of a bloodsport. I went in a staunch Republican and came away a moderate Democrat thanks in no small part to reading the postings--civil and not--from landru, tech noir, mistofleas, buggy, dave, history detective, wheezy and countless others. I was able, for the first time in my adult life, to really look at things from a different perspective. Over the course of a year or so, I found myself changing sides and now consider myself a Democrat, albeit a moderate to conservative one when it comes to taxes and money.

All of that is background to explain this: Rush Limbaugh is a big fat obnoxious dummy. Bill O'Reilly makes me want to scream. Sean Hannity scares me. And my parents watch nothing but Fox news...blech. I've been really disgusted to see how the talking nimrods have reacted to Obama's first week in office. It saddens me to see that some adults simply can't put away the childish things and work together to achieve a common good. Shame on them. Shame, shame, shame.

Labels: politics, rant, serious

Sarah Palin is as dumb as a box of rocks. There's just no.nice.way. to frame her. from suggesting that Putin is going to attack us via Alaska or that seeing Russia is adequate foreign policy education to not knowing a SINGLE Supreme Court case by name--let alone one that she disagrees with while railing against legislating from the bench--she is just to fucking stupid for words.

I have lost faith in our system. That she could even be CONSIDERED for president is just mind-numbing.

Labels: politics, rant

Random things about me:

1. I am a terrible speller.

2. I have had the worst spring ever. Just a lot of things combined to make it positively horrid. I'm hoping for a better summer, but it doesn't look promising. Some days there just aren't enough drugs to make things look better.

3. I hate blue eyeshadow. I try to wear it--navy, not baby--and it always looks like hell. Boo hiss on blue.

4. I just bought two new lispsticks--that long wear Cover Girl stuff-- and two new tubes of mascara--one regular Lash Blast and another waterproof Lash Something or Other. These are the only Cover Girl products I would ever buy. I have bad memories of everything CG smelling like Noxema, so I have an aversion. I wear a lot of L'Oreal and Milani lately with just a touch of Tarte.

5. I have a callous on the bottom of my foot that is driving me infuckingsane. How do I get rid of this? I've never had one before. I'm guessing it's from wearing high heels so much.

6. I have recently discovered how to email from my cell phone. How did I not know this was possible? I love it.

Am not tagging anyone yet---will go back and do that in a bit.

Labels: makeup, meme, narcotics, rant, who doesn't love a list

Then read about MY day yesterday--Thursday, June 4, which is evidently the day of Satan.
After staying up waaaay too late, I got up at 4 to get sarah and the girls off to Calgary. She stayed here with me because it's closer to the airport (I'm in Hixon at my parents' house). I went out to check my van because we were afraid that a light had been left on last night--it had not, but I left the keys in it like a dumbass. turned to the kill-the-battery-position and then left them there for close to an hour.

We get outside with the girls to leave and my fucking van wouldn't start. Igo tearing around the house and get dad's Jeep keys, start the jeep--thinking that surely he has jumper cables or we can drive it if we have to. I can't get the back doors unlocked for some reason, so i get out--with it running--and shut the door. as SOON as I shut it, I realised that I had locked it. so now the Jeep is running with the keys locked in it AND the van won't start. Sarah is starting to panic and the girls are getting freaked.

I had to call Daddy and wake him up---3.55 a.m. mountain time. He told me where to find more jeep keys AND that he doesn't have jumper cables here, so I can't jump it off. there are no backseats in the Jeep and it is loaded with tools and stuff. Well, if you know my parents, then you know that means there is only one vehicle left to choose from (techincally, there are three, but the VW Thing isn't running and there's no way in hell I'd drive the 64 1/2 Mustang....that leaves the 15 passenger white Dodge van affectionately known 'round these parts as Big Ugly. It's a leftover from my parents' antique show hauling days and they still use it for camping. I have never driven it before--for good reason.

Sarah and I unloaded her four lead-filled suitcases, along with the biggest jogging stroller on the planet, all the kids' stuff and piled into Big Ugly, which I then proceeded to drive to the airport. My parents' driveway isn't long, but it's got a weird curve, so I always turn around and drive out 'normal' in my own car. Given my luck of the day, I wasn't about to chance turning around--I'm sure I would have hit my van, the house or backed off the edge of the driveway, so with Sarah hanging out one door and me the other, I successfully made it out fhe drive in reverse.Yay for me! Once we got out of the driveway, it was a piece of cake, but my nerves were shot. Got to the airport in plenty of time.

I returned home. Tried my van...it started. I was like, WTF?, but glad that I wouldn't have to bother anyone. Oh, silly Kim, if you'd only known.

I went back in and cleaned up, washed the sheets that we'd used, showered, dressed, packed, etc. Around 10.45 or so I went out and tried the car again--it started. Then, like a complete Simpleton, I turned off the van, plugged my cell phone into the car charger and left the motherfucking side door open. Didn't even cross my feeble mind that I should have left it running.

You can guess what happened next---the damn thing was deader than hell when I went back out. I gave it an hour. Still nothing, so I had to call Aunt Barbara to come jump me off. Bless her heart, she came right over and we managed to get it running. Whew. Off to home.

Or not.

After driving all around southeastern Tennessee, the Check Transmission message started blinking at me and my overdrive light began to flash as I drove down Amnicola Highway. Even a mechanical ignoramous such as myself knew that this was bad. I found a place to pull over, called W. in a panic. He said to check the trans. fluid and add some. (Sidenote--my van had been driving oddly all weekend, but I didn't really put it all together at the time). I made it to a Conoco, which didn't carry the fluid, but I checked my level there and I was almost totally out. Yikes.

Drove a little bit further, praying all the way that the transmission wouldn't just lock up on me. Made it to a Chevron. Bless the lovely man who worked there. He called me "Sunshine" and helped me put the fluid in, check everything. I felt confident that the worst was behind me.

I? am notorious for being inept at judging the future and this? was another example.

I start driving down Amnicola again and get to almost the same exact spot and the frigging transmission light comes on. Fuck me. I managed to pull over and drive up a block or so to an empty parking lot...this involved going up a hill and I wasn't entirely sure I was even going to make it, but I did. I got out and checked. Damn fluid was empty. I looked under the van for the obvious and yes, there where even I, Kim the Automotive Moron, could see it was transmission fluid flowing freely out and making an impressive puddle on the pavement. The black asphalt pavement. The black asphalt pavement that was super heated because it was about 95 degrees outside and there wasn't a lick of shade.

More panicked calls. Clearly I wasn't going anywhere in the van. I'm smart like that. After much, much cursing and such, I had to call Aunt Barbara yet again to come get me. As I waited for her, I got hotter and hotter. I swear I have never sweated so much in my whole entire life. I had sweat rolling down the backs of my legs. Nasty.

To make this incredibly long story a little shorter, I will spare you the details about trying to figure out where to take my car. I knew that the Ford dealership was my last resort because those folks are slow as Christmas and dumber than shit. After calling like a million people that live in and around Chatanooga, friend from high school, David Poe, found me a place to take it, but they didn't advertise transmission work. I was going to call them and see what they suggested, but then my dad remembered that the name of the place where he had the Mustang worked on is called Mr. Transmission. Needless to say, my search for a mechanic was over.

So here I sit in my parents' house with pretty much nothing to do. Car was towed today to Soddy Daisy and will hopefully be repaired cheaply and quickly. I'm just going to stay here until the weekend when the kids get back from their trip out West with Mom and Dad. And I'll probably be driving the Jeep home, which makes my back and knee hurt just thinking about it--stick shift, no frills, three hour trip. Ugh.

I have been to Walgreens and bought mascara and lipstick because they were on sale. Had a prescription for Tramadol transferred here so I won't be forced to go seek out drug dealers w/ Percocet or Demerol downtown. I'm going to ice and heat my back and just listen to the silence for a couple of days. And try not to go bonkers in the process.

So unless you ate accidentally live slug for breakfast or you peed yourself in public yesterday, consider your day much better than mine.

Labels: dumb shit I do, my life, pictures, ramble, rant, travel

1. I didn't get a snow day--damn weather people had me all jacked up thinking that we'd have freezing rain and sleet this morning and traffic would be a nightmare. Yeah, whatever. The roads were WET. Out in the country there was ice on some bridges, but the nimrods in charge don't drive outside of the city limits or off the state roads, so we were in school.

2. Homer 2.0 has appeared. Dandy. Just fucking dandy.

3. Fred Thompson dropped out of the Republican race...oh, wait, that's not a shit thing.

4. I'm freezing.

5. Heath Ledger is dead. I almost wrecked in the parking lot of Kroger when I heard it on the radio.

I just want to go to bed.

Labels: rant, sad

Homer is still very palpable. Dr. said two weeks...it's been two tomorrow and no signs of leaving any time soon. I'm so over this. I'm tired of not being able to walk normally or put weight on my knee with any certainty.

In other news, I now have heat in my van--I'd been driving around under a down throw and a fleece while bundled up like Nanook of the North's older, grumpier sister with a military fettish (I don't own a coat, so I wore W.'s Army jacket and I don't have decent gloves, so I snagged Jay's black and white camo fleeces). Oh, and the only way to keep the windshield clear was to run the A/C. It was 29 degrees or so the past two days.

I'm ready for a snow day, dammit.

Labels: ramble, rant

1. i have one of THOSE zits that hurts like a mofo and is just sitting there, taunting me as it causes most of the left side of my face to throb. i'm 38. i should not be having zits still. it's not fair, dammit.

2. i've started running on the treadmill at the Y. i am so NOT graceful that it is ridiculous. these wee, lithe women sprint effortlessly and silently along on their treadmills while i give the impression that a herd of small african animals are charging toward the watering hole. maybe i need new shoes??? yes, that must be it.

3. my kids have a puking virus. sam started it and passed it to jay and then five. and of the three kids--sam is the super puker. he woke from a dead sleep and went straight to the bathroom, puked, got a drink, and went back to sleep. no huge drama, no vomit onthe floor. just did his thing. he's 6. jay? puked all over the sunroom carpet, which required us to rent a carpet cleaner. he's 8. five? he threw up in a bucket and then proceeded to bring the bucket outside to show me and w. while we were at the neighbors. and then, later, after he'd thrown up again and made such a ruckus i was sure an internal organ had been regurgitated, begged me to take him to the doctor because he 'obviously' had a life-threatening illness. yeah, whatever buddy. he's 14.

4. if i get the puke virus, i'm going to be pissed off if for no other reason because i ate a protein bar today (EAS Advant Edge carb control chocolate creme) which was 1.79 and i'll be pissed off if i throw it up without getting the 21g of protein.

5. today is five's birthday. i am simply not old enough to have a 14-year-old child. i have acne, for god's sake. where did the time go?

6. i wanted some sugar-free ice cream last night and my kroger didn't have any. wtf? i can get edy's sf butter pecan at walgreen's--everyone's source for ice cream products-- but KROGER doesn't carry it? so now i get to pay walgreen's prices if i want to eat it.

7. my classroom is the biggest wreck you can imagine. it is going to take days to straighten thanks to blind, illiterate prisoners who put our stuff back in our rooms after the floors were cleaned.

8. where are all of my socks? where, where, where.

9. i have yet another skort with hidden, mystery shorts. it's very comfy--goodwill, thank you, a liz claiborne. this one has a much more complicated entry, but it looks like a cute wrap around skirt when on. i need a tan t-shirt. i've been wearing white, but tan would look better.

10. jay is the whiniest child in the western hemisphere--8-year-olds annoy me.

Labels: all the cool kids like Dweeze have blogs, inquiring minds, physical exertion, rant, vomit, who doesn't love a list, work stuff

why the fucking fuck will fucking blogroller not fucking update my fucking blogroll like it is fucking supposed to so i don't fucking have to fucking check the fucking blogs individually and infuckingvariably skip someone's fucking blog or miss some fucking important bit of news or a useless fucking meme that i might have fucking wanted to fuck around with.

Labels: bitchy, rant

tonight we ate chinese and at the end of the meal, the highlight was, of course, the fortune cookie. even though i don't actually eat the cookie anymore, i still read the fortune because you never know when they might stick in a coupon for a free buffet or something. so, my little scrap of paper contained this view of my future:

a friend is a present which you give yourself

that is NOT a fucking fortune--it's a cheesy, proverby, homily, so WHY was it in my fortune cookie? i guess on an amusing note, i could use my friend kelly's trick of adding 'in bed' at the end of my so-called fortune and it would at least be interesting...assuming the friend had batteries, of course, and not like a real person because that would be, well weird.

a friend is a present which you give yourself in bed

Labels: food, rant

nothing infuriates me more than being talked to as if i am stupid child in need of enlightenment. ESPECIALLY on matters of teaching.

back the fuck off.

Labels: rant, stupid normal people

The word of the day is BERATE--to scold angrily. So, who would you like to berate? My list:

1. Blogrolling--WHY can I not see which blogs in my Blog Roll have been updated? This is how I keep up.

2. The weather--RAIN, dammit. I want some rain. Am tired of all this dry, dusty ickiness.

3. Bubblehead--Making teachers direct traffic with a homemade stop sign attached to a paint-stirring stick is just about the dumbest thing you've ever asked us to do and I am tired of it. Thank you for retiring.

4. Stupid people--Get the hell off the internet. You're just making it harder for those of us with the capactiy for rational thought and logical debate by forcing us to wade through your abject stupidity.

5. The fuckwit with the horn--Stop honking every time you drive by my house, moron. I don't care if you do see someone you know sitting on the porch across the street. You're wimpy, squeaky little "beep beep" is about to send me over the fricking edge.

Labels: rant, who doesn't love a list

• I do not like it when folks clap and wave their arms in church.
  
• I do not like it when folks shout out "amen" and cheer in church.
  
• I do not like it when hymns turn into jazz numbers.
  
• I do not like it when I have to watch a powerpoint/media presentation for the message.
  
• I do not like it when there are glaring, terrible comma errors in said presentations.
  
• I do not like it when there is a fricking hard-sell, join-Jesus commercial at the end of church.
  
• I do not like it when I feel as if I am in a new scene from The Blues Brothers at church.
  
• I do not like it when I go to the Southern Baptist Church.
  
  Happy Easter.

Labels: rant, religion

If you have any fucking idea where the fucking remote to my ficking DVR/cable is, could you please fucking tell me where the fuck I might look because I've fucking turned the fucking sunroom the fuck upside down and I can't fucking find the fucker anyfuckingwhere. Needless to say, I'm fucking pissed because I just had it in my own fucking hand last night when I fucking recorded Mean Girls to fucking watch tofuckingday and now I can't because the fucker has disappeared into the fucking black hole that is our fucking mess of a fucking house.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Labels: inquiring minds, rant, white trash

I've gotten rather lax on the blogging thing lately. Not exactly sure why--I just can't seem to focus long enough to type something out that makes sense. Probably because things in real life are rather hectic. My list:

1. School--spring break is upon us and that means that kids are in antsy mode. It's always fun to try and pound sentence structure and comma splices into the heads of vacation-minded 15-year-old boys.

2. School pt. 2--it has suddenly turned into summer, despite the impending SPRING break and we've been treated to high temps ranging from 82-88 this week. Sounds great? Well, it might if we were in an air conditioned building during the day. As we are not, it is like some form of torture. There has been no discernible breeze, no relief of any kind from my ancient fan, and no hint of artifical coolant. My room is on the west side of the building with 6-foot windows to let in loads and loads of blistering heat just in time for my class of 35 juniors and seniors. Sweltering doesn't even come close to describing it--actually, if we could just swelter, we'd be happy.

3. School pt. 3--because it's the end of the year and I teach seniors, it's also field trip time. Normally this happens in April-May, but we've started early this year. The new quarter started March 9. Since that day, I have not yet had all of my students in my 4th block Theatre Arts class (the one with 35 kids) at school and in class at the same time. Not one day. My attendance book looks like some sort of weird modern heiroglyphics with all the absents, tardies, field trips, doctor's notes and other sundry markings. It's a nightmare. Today was our last day of class because we have an assembly tomorrow. On the day before Spring Break. Good thing I don't give grades on written work in there or I'd never get the make-ups done.

4. School pt. 4--I'm on the retirement-party-planning committees for TWO different teachers this spring. I've also agreed to plan a little something for another teacher's 50th birthday on Friday. I also have to sort out three days' worth of lesson plans before I leave on Friday. I also have to clean off my desk. I also have to turn in my grade verifications. I also have to stay at school until seven again tomorrow night for inservice and then spend all day Friday in meetings that are stupid and boring and useless to anything that I do for a living.

5. Vacation--I leave for London on April 9. Wooohooo! That's a good thing. I'll be back on April 19.

6. Vacation pt. 2--Before I leave I have to pack up clothes for the kids to take to my parents' house for a week. I also need to clean my house because it is gross.

7. Vacation pt. 3--I haven't even thought about starting to pack for myself yet and I don't have any decent walking shoes. Oh, and London is insane expensive and I have not saved one penny toward spending money. Not one red cent.

8. Life in general--all I seem to have time for is wake up, work, home to eat, Y, home to put kids to bed, read online for an hour, go to bed. Something has to give.

9. Stupid things--oh, I also have time to go to the tanning bed. Skin cancer is a terrible thing and some day I'm going to really be pissed off at myself; however, I have no plans to quit going until I am suitably browned. I usually don't mind being fashionably pale, but for some reason this year, it has bugged me. Maybe because summer started in March.

10. Pets--we have a chick named Austin. Sam brought it home from school--they kept eggs in an incubator. If Austin survives chickhood, it will be a miracle. A bloody miracle. Sam has picked him up two dozen times a day, he's carried him around the house and he's taken him out to play in the front yard. Poor Austin has been a trooper through it al. I'll be most relieved when he goes to live at the farm--which shouldn't be much longer because he's got an incredible vertical jump and he's going to leap out of his box any minute. He bangs his head on the books we have covering him for every so often.

I think that's it for now. I'm going to attempt to catch up on blog reading. I don't have much faith that I will get far, though.

Labels: my life, ramble, rant, teaching, whine, work stuff

It's been a strange day, this, my 38th birthday. Good God, that looks really old. Anyway, my morning started off fairly well--got up on time, was ready for work early, no rush. Nice. Then I get to school and the first thing up is an exam for my British Lit class. One of the students happend to come up to me just before the class started and ask me a question about a worksheet that she had. At first I answered her without really thinking, then it dawned on me--the sheet she was showing me was an old copy of the exam. WHAT THE HELL? After a couple of questions, I quickly discovered that no student foul-play had occurred. What HAD occurred?

Labels: celebration, hair stuff, my life, ramble, rant

I'm sitting here on my substantial posterior doing absolutley nothing today. W. is on a trip for the weekend, so it's just me and the boys. Well, not all of them--Five went to a church retreat last night and won't be home until Sunday, so it's just me and the little guys, but only until 4:00. At 4:00, they'll both be leaving--one to spend the night with MIL and the other to go to a Predators game, so it will be just me, myself and I for six or seven hours.

For some reason, perhapsin part because I'm just giddy at the prospect of being all alone this evening, I've been rendered immobile because I cannot seem to get up and do diddly today. It isn't the engaging content on the internet that's distracting me because I appear to be one of five people online today. It's not the television programming because right now its one of Court TVs true-crime shows and I have no clue what's going on. It isn't a lack of sleep because I went to bed at 10 and didn't wake until 8. I suppose it can only be one thing--I'm a lazy slug. *sigh*

Eventually I'm going to have to drag myself from my bed and supervise the showering and dressing of the two kiddos and make myself presentable. Then, I'll drop them where they need to be and proceed to my favorite steak place and get something takeout for dinner ( steak and chicken combo that is to die for...rib-eye and marinated chicken breast, both of which just melt in your mouth), eat in front of something on my DVR backlog, and at 7, treat myself to the movies-Music and Lyrics. I really SHOULD be cleaning something, sorting something or doing sme sort of household improvements or at the very least going to the Y and using some sort of equipment, but that just seems so very daunting right now. I really am a lazy slug, it seems.

Labels: food, going to watch video on Dweeze's blog, my life, physical exertion, ramble, rant

Since I've been pissy, might as well continue:

1. If your only argument to a debate about the Ten Commandments in public is showing an outdated website with pictures of various buildings that have all been proven to actually counter your argument, then shut the fuck up.

2. If you have nothing to add to a discussion other than smack-downs for people who are smarter than you, can write in complete sentences or disagree with you, then shut the fuck up.

3. If you are an elected official in a mid-sized Tennessee county and you think it makes sense to build a new elementary school and then not approve a tax increase to fund the additional expenses thereby ensuring that the teachers will get no raise, but the county employees get a 4.07% raise AND longevity pay that we don't get, then shut the fuck up.

4. If you are an official in that same county and you paid a quarter of a million dollars to have an outiside firm of experts spend months analyzing every department and making suggestions on how to run more efficiently and inexpensively and you think you know more than them with your high school diploma and your vast business experience as a line-worker in a factory or a farmer that's gone bankrupts, then shut the fuck up.

5. If you were responsible for the horrible fashion experiement of lilac trimmed with black, shut the fuck up.

6. If you are responsible for creating, designing, voicing, directing or producing Xiolin Showdown shut the fuck up and then spontaneously combust.

7. If you are on the Fashion Police on E! and you think that ever man that wore a tux was "safe" and thus, only had a guy with a dickie or a soul patch left to praise, then shut the fuck up.

8. If you have anything to do with Max Factor mascara only being available at Wal Mart shut the fuck up, too. You are the anti-christ.

I feel better now.

Labels: rant

I've been in a real snit at work lately, so I've not felt like blogging much when I get home. The oppressive nature of shitty administration, fuckwits in local government and a complete and total breakdown of all professional-style communication has just beaten me into submission for the time being.

I swore I was going to be a "happy" person this school year--really, I was, but there has been NOTHING to generate even the slightest inspiration that would lead me to a sunnier outlook, so I've been a bitch. The role as the bitch suits me, I realize, and it is ever-so-much more rewarding to be able to call bullshit when I see it instead of meekly going along with the status quo and hoping that change is going to just fall out of the sky.

The downside is that I'm probably slitting my own throat professionally, but these days, I don't think i even care. I suppose it has to do with being true to onself....I don't actually think that I'm a bitch, per se, but I'm sure that the name has been thrown my way and I'll do nothing to deny it. I'm happy to be considered that if it means that I'm standing up for what I believe in and questioning stupidity when ever possible. There is no "i" in team, but there is in bitch and I'm only just now discovering how powerful that can be.

Labels: bitchy, my life, rant

No Child Left Behind, while it sounds admirable, is the dumbest damn thing I've ever encountered as a teacher. I would post more, but we're on a target list, so I'll be busy trying to figure out how to help special ed students get regular diplomas so that the education higher ups will stop counting them as drop outs...of course, those same higher ups wouldn't actually want to come down and try to TEACH a child who can't memorize something how to pass an Algebra I exam. Nah, that would be too easy. It's easier to just say, "Teachers suck" and make the kids feel like crap.

Labels: my life, rant, serious

Am under threat of deletion from bookmark list and favorites by various individuals, so am forced to update blog in manner of favorite movie/book and merely blog out thoughts quickly so as to avoid said tragedy.

Life is most bothersome lately with the work and family and home and health things all converging upon my head at once, which should come as no suprise since this is about the 10th or 11th time that I've endured a back-to-school routine, but this one is particularly brutal thanks to the introduction of a foriegn element to my work habitat--water.

Last year, whilst I was strolling along the banks of the Thames, I knew that sheer and utter madness awaited me upon my return to the workplace due to a very unfortunate contrusction fuckery which is now known as "the middle school wing" but should, by all rights, purposes and intent be, in fact the high school wing, but I'm not one to carry a grudge a year or more later. Oh, no, not me. This fuckery, however, did cause major mishaps in my classroom in the manner of a plague of dust and construction destruction that no one bothered to clean up whilst I was taking said strolls, so I spent the better part of a semester, nay, three quarters, cleaning up grit and grime from the various intrusions into my domain in order to hook various bits and pieces to the "middle school wing". Finally, sometime in late January, the wing was at least opened and they stopped using my room as a vehicle for abstract pipe art and weird metal boxy coverings and I was able to at least enjoy the project for what I now consider its true purpose...a $900K bathroom and teacher's lunch roomy place to benefit me. The rest of it? I couldn't give less of a rat's ass if I had a mangy rat that I hated.

Why dredge this up now? Because I'm me, of course, but also because that sets the stage for the unbridled clusterfuckery of THIS school year's start: the failure of the roof. This actually started late last year, and one would think that some sort of repair process would be good seeing as my work environment is loaded with papery things and all manner of bookishness, but that would be assuming that anyone with any power has his, her or its head out of the ass to which it belongs. Really. All summer long, instead of just letting the classrooms sit and mellow sans children, a few choice ones (mine in particular--you don't really care about the others) were allowed to fester in their own Tennessee Rain Forest. Sadly, there was no cafe added--in fact, the cafe was gutted and students and adults alike have been sentenced to sack lunch hell, but that's a rant for another day. Instead, we have a smelly, wet, bucket-filled swamp with nary an animatronic gorilla or elephant in sight.

So, that essentially pissed me off (and I made a few calls to those who don't have heads in asses--all anonymous like, of course, and brought the enlightment that was so desperately needed to the situation). Little did I know that I could be more pissed off, but when it actually, literally rains into your workspace? And soaks your furniture in a puddle of water about .25 inches deep and then leaves a malingering odor that is, as God is my witness, beyond any and all description even by the msot talented wordsmith? Well, that just tops it all and puts one in a most foul mood, although now I am awaiting the collapse of a very bulgy, nasty, sodden piece of tile that just happens to be located directly over my podium because when it falls, I plan to take off for the rest of the day at someone else's expense.

Plagues, I suppose, one could consider these. Two years ago there were mice, then came the grit, and now the water. If bugs are next, I'm officially going into early retirement. No questions asked, no debate.

Must now go prepare to face another day in my own little terrarium--if you're in the area, stop by. I'm easy to find. My classroom is the one with the duct-tape repairing the window which was broken in 1993...I wish I was joking.

Labels: ramble, rant, work stuff

If you list them, they might go away...at the very list, they are flushed from your brain for a while:

1. Ignorant people. I seem to be surrounded by them on message boards where debating is involved lately (research is apparently a dirty word as are logic, tolerance, reason and compromise). I can understand not knowing everything about all things...well, at least I can relate to the concept ;-)... but I cannot and will not every understand why some people are perfectly happy with being willfully ignorant about the most basic things about their fellow man and then not only being stubborn about that, but also being flauntingly, defiantly PROUD of the fact that they don't know shit from shinola about diddly for whatever zealot, xenophobic, homophobic, edcuationophobic, politophobic, vaccineophoibic, fill-in-your-phobic, conspricacy-threorist, bad science reason. Oh, and then, just for shits and giggles, they like to insult those who think by calling them names because that's what those who are intelligent do, I suppose.
2. Humidity. Seriously. Fuck global warming. I'm tired of hearing about that--global humidity is the more serious problem.
3. Political ads. When I'm rich, I am going to spend scads of money running policital parody ads to offer some relief for those like me who are tired of seeing these grinning chimps blather on about how they are going wrap themselves in barbed wire, kill all the turrists, stop abortions, pay all the teachers a gazillion dollars, eliminate taxes and make big bidness pay for it all while they protect "real families" and the flag from the bums who've been running the state or the country so far.
4. Dumbass ammendments. I think that the next ammendment should be to preserve the sanctity of Apple Pie. They've screwed baseball up, we have unwed mothers *gasp*, but I think we can all get behind Apple Pie and quit putting g.d. artificial sweetner in it.
5. Fat chicks in skimpy clothes . I get to rant about this because I can talk about my own kind--you? are not allowed if you wear clothes that don't have double digits in the size, of course, but I can say this with complete and total freedom: Put your fat ass inside your shorts--the top of them AND the bottom of them. Pack your boobs in a bra that fits (and by God, you better have on a bra). Get some sleeves that cover your arms and all parts of them that hang out and all around--that means NO tank tops and NO cap sleeves and have enough length on your shirt that we don't see anything that the top of those shorts might have missed when you are standing still OR when you raise your arms. If your shirt is acting, in any way, as a girdle or method of contrstaining, then you have bought it too small and it has to be tossed. If you lean over and anything larger than a baseball could be dropped down the cleavage opening, then the shirt is too low cut. I don't care how cute your tatoos are--no one wants to see them if they are undulating along rapids of fat on the river of pudge, so either tone it up or cover it up.
6. Summer television. I cannot remember when anything comes on, I hate almost all of it anyway, save The Closer and Project Runway (must set DVR for PR). I think it's a sign that I'm getting old, maybe. Who knows.
7. Purple fur. Another sign that I'm getting old--Wal Mart was chock frigging full of it. Who the hell would decorate with purple fur?
8. Tunics. I think it's time this look was over, but I have a feeling we're going to be in full-tunic this fall. I'm sure that I won't be since a would be most hideous on me.
9. Legos. This one isn't new, but I've stepped on so many more of them lately that I just had to add them .
10. Star Jones. Already posted, but I saw her in a magazine or two while I was waiting for Sam's surgery to be over (it went well--it's on his webpage), and her arrogance/spin/total divaness just pisses me off to no end. Why is she famous and I'm not? How the hell does this happen? Is it the legal degree, the ethnicity or the name? I'd be willing to change my name to something more cheezy if needed and I have a nice advanced degree even if it isn't quite as glitzy....I'm screwed on the race, but I do have a varied and interesting heritage, albeit Anglo-European as all get out, but there are Pilgrims and even a wee bit of royalty...surely that makes me somewhat marketable if Star Jones can be famous.
11. Dirt. My house is full of it and unless a tornado comes along and sweeps it and the junk that is damming it up, I've no choice but to go deal with it because a week from today, my blessed summer vacation ends. Forget what I said about wanting to go back to work. I wasn't properly medicated or something. I'm not.

Labels: bitchy, rant

They um, pretty much suck.

Never let it be said that I am without profound insight into life.

Labels: announcements, my life, rant

My template is totally screwed. I use Firefox (as you should be doing--go clink that little icon in my sidebar or where ever it is if you're not) and it has looked okay there, but suddenly, my image is gone. "Poof!". The rest of the page was there, but the background was white. However, when I clicked over to check out the page in IE, I like to have died. It was like Picasso's blog on crack.

So, if you're looking at this in IE (and really, why are you? Get Firefox already), then I'm sorry. I'm not as inept as that makes me look. If you're looking at this in Firefox, you may or may not see images. Who the hell knows. I'll be addressing that shortly. I didn't really like the whole look of the thing anyway, but I was working on the Rambling one. Guess I'll get this one fixed and then go to that one again.

Oh, and some people can't comment. Buggy emailed me that she couldn't and I don't know if anyone else is having trouble. If you are, please email me...kim at kimmah.net (two Ms, not three like the gmail thingy). The comments are through Halo Scan, so I'm not sure why some are blocked and some aren't, but I'll see if I can figure it out.

Blogger hates me. It's clear. I can't see my own images that I host on my own frigging server, but other people can. I don't know what is really missing and what's just not showing up here and what just is in the infamous Blogger lag, so I'm done for now. I'll try to sort it out tomorrow or something.

Good thing I don't have a job, eh?

Labels: blogger, buggy, rant

I've never claimed to be anything that I'm not, well, other than allowing folks to think I'm a redhead and not really correcting people who assume that I'm essentially perfect, but on the really core things, I'm pretty good at admitting my own shortcomings. As such, I'm submitting the following statement:


Seriously. And I'm not even giving to hyperbole as is my natural tendency. I swear on Pythagoras, Newton and even the beloved Aristotle that I'm just about two steps over incompetent when it comes to anthing that involves "computations" or "figuring" or "forumlas". For some of you, this is probably incomprehensible because I have some very smart friends--some of whom even make their living doing all sorts of bizarre things with numbers that I can't even fathom (hello, Cary and Tonya)--but for me, math might as well be presented in Russian pig Latin because I'm totally and completely bumfuzzled by pretty much all of it.

There are those who would be embarrassed to admit this. Me? Not so much. You see, I've come to embrace my complete lack of mathmatical comprehension. Really, there's no sense in fighting it--one might as well try to make a lefty thread a needle with their right-hand as make me figure algebra. It's against my nature, you see. I'm a word person, not a number person--or I should say an abstract and concept person, not a concrete and application person, since I do very much enjoy a nice Suduko-- and it's time that those who are of my ilk stand tall and be proud.

We Englishy types have a tremendous skill set that should be embraced; we create something from nothing. We dissect the written word and add to the breadth and depth of the human experience...or at least give folks something to read in the bathroom or on the subway and I think there's a universal appreciation of either one of those contributions. The fact that we can't figure out percentages without a calculator, a forumla and a quizzical look is really irrevelavant in the grand scheme of life because, honestly, when is one NOT going to be able to find some sort of calculator-things on the Internet or a little cheat sheet for your wallet to help you with that? Ratios? I mean, really? Ditto on that one. Area, volume, blah, blah, blah...in this day and age, one can buy any mannner of little gizmos to measure and calculate the stuff for you. All one has to do is point and click and make the laser stand straight and then hit enter. Trained chimps are capable of that...but can they craft a poem? Are they able to make someone cry from laughing or yell at their computer monitor simply by writing a paragraph? I think not. They can fling poo, swing around on ropes, play with toys and solve puzzles and puzzles=math when you get right down to it, so, well, you see the correlation, don't you? I mean, I took statistics for my doctorate program (and actually made a B) and I'm sure that I could make that work given the time and the effort and the right little computer program with which to run some sort of T-test or whatnot.

Englishy people are entirely too creative and nuturing to be worried with the constraints of something like a formula. Mathy folks like to do things in a certain order and if you screw up and multiply before you've added your dear Aunt Sally or whatever, then nothing you do after that will be correct. Or, if you've been asked to create some sort of statistical analysis, half a page of work can be for naught simply because you accidently forgot that 2x2 was 4 and not, say, 2 and then you'd have to erase an entire page of work and start all over again with a ridiculous table of numbers and you'd be worrying about running out of time on your exam, so you'd start to stress...well, uh, you get the picture. Math is very structured and confining--one could almost compare it to a jail of the mind, I think.

English? It's free and flowing. We let you put subjects and verbs just about anywhere you please. Want a sentence with one word? Fine. How about a sentence that has two hundred words? Go right ahead. If you can't think of just the right word, then by all means, just make one up. We're not elitist. You don't have to be some dead Greek in order to have control with the Englishy...even if we do pay an inordinate amount of attention to commas and Shakespeare, we're really very flexy on just about anything when you get right down to it. Some where along the way, we realized that we could have rules just like the Mathy folks, but we could also adapt those rules so that more people could play and, to be perfectly honest, so that we wouldn't all have to do the detail thing that some of us aren't really so great at. Voila! If you're an Englishy type, you may create your own style. Doesn't that sound divine? How very dashing and all, and there's just no way in the world that a Mathy person could ever get away with creating a new style for doing calculus. How dreary is that? The one time that anyone really tried to be adventurous in math was when the idea of New Math came along and, while I'm not even sure to this day what that was, it was pretty much roundly criticized by whom? Mathy types, of course. They're very proprietary, methinks.

My real estate class has served to highlight what I already knew--I'm not so much of a detail person. One has to be to be a Mathy person. I'm forever forgetting a decimal here or a zero there and, unlike a rough draft, it actually, uh, matters in figuring out interest rates or market values. There isn't a Math Check, which is just a damn shame, because it would really make things easier.

I'd like to be able to have a calculator that allowed me to choose a task, say, "Capitalization Rate" (I know, you don't really give a damn about a Cap Rate, either, but play along, just don't ask me to explain it because, frankly, I can't) and then be presented with a screen. Sort of like Word does when I choose New Document. Then when I enter totally stupid figures that don't have a chance in hell of computing correctly, I'd like a nice squiggly green or red line and some text to alert me. For example, if I'm supposed to figure out the value of a property with a cap rate of 25% and a net yearly income of $15,000 per month, there's a myriad of problems that can arise.

You divided the percentage rate by the income a property generates. Note that the number you have could not possibly, in any currency, be converted to a value of any kind. The forumula is Rate/Income=Value.

See, how helpful that would be? Instead, I get this:

.0000192

And no helpful hint, no suggestions, nothing. For those of us who are more literal and, I'll admit it, spastic when using a calculator, there is now a conundrum of sorts.

1. Did I enter the numbers wrong?
2. Should this convert to something and if so, what?
3. Was I supposed to divide or multiply?
4. Damn, how do you move the decimal again? Did I put a decimal in the percent?
5. What was the question again?

So, we have to start all over. Obviously, even I can't make .00092 turn into a number that is even remotely representative of value, so if you flip the two, you can get this:

60000

Which at least could be a value, but it's wrong.

In order to figure Cap Rate, you should use the Net Yearly Income, not the Net Monthly Income, which anyone with a basic understanding of simple accounting or who had read the book would know.

Ha! Screw you, pretend real estate calculator and math and logical thinking and Mr. Pythagoras and Texas Instruments and even that stupid little pi. Phfffft. The fact that I'm not one with my algebraic self is of no consequence to me. My inability to string together long sets of numbers and come up with numbers that don't make my calculator go EEEE is irritating, yes, but look at all the words I can string along. So what if the most important Mathy thing that I really care about is Word Count or my PIN number? That's why God made bankers and CPAs and all those other Mathy people--to serve at the will of the Englishy, who will in turn, entertain the masses and shape culture and history for years to come with our finely crafted words and painstakingly edited bits of literary goodness.

Disclaimer: Of course, when I get my real estate license, I will pretend to be pseudo Mathy and turn all actual mathmatical stuff over to W. or some fine assistant if one of the numerous gadgets that I'll be purchasing should fail me. I do like that other numbery-thing--money--after all.

Labels: English, my life, rant, real estate, work stuff