10.26.06
I am a nerd.
You can bet I’ll be spending a lot of time at this site. Ah, the joys of domesticity!
10.24.06
Where we have been
A joint post (well, as much as I will let Jamie interject)
We have been lots of places recently. Most interestingly (bananas! says Jamie), we went to Chinatown for dim sum. It was lots of fun, except for the finding parking part (I done good with a stick shift!). Dim sum is an interesting experience. It’s kind of like a buffet on wheels. We had six people in our group (7!), so we were at a big table. People walk around with rolling carts hawking their wares in Chinese. We would stop them and ask them what they had, and they would calmly tell us what they had again in Chinese. No helpy! Anyway, if it looked palatable (or even sometimes if it didn’t), we would say yes and they would put a dish of it on our table (Jamie liked the curried squid). A good time was had by all, except the squid.
School has been crazy busy as usual. I’ve over committed myself to after school activities this year, even after I promised I wouldn’t, and will be teaching knitting three times a week. Hey, at least I get paid to knit! I’m also teaching the Battle of the Books, where we read 20 books then go to a city-wide competition and answer questions about said books.
Oh! My birthday dinner! Jamie and I intended to go to a restaurant called Jilly’s Cafe, but it was closed on Mondays, so we ended up at Jacky’s Bistro instead. Funny. We spent a large part of the meal trying to decide if the waiter’s French accent was genuine or not. I had scallops with polenta and tiramisu for dessert. So wonderful! It was almost as good as Jamie spending the whole weekend spoiling me… 
I think that’s all I have to say for now, and Jamie is reading the paper, so I don’t think he will be interjecting anymore. Good night, all.
10.14.06
Lack of focus
This post will reflect a severe lack of focus. Get ready.
For starters, I highly recommend this article. Very thought provoking, and, well, who doesn’t want to be more like the Amish?
Last week seemed really long, even though it was only four days. One day I felt on top of my game and competent, the next day I felt like I was barely keeping my head above water. So much so that I started writing sentences completely riddled with cliches. Then I started writing fragments. Rough week.
On Wednesday I was leading my class in “Brain Gym” exercises. One kid’s too-baggy pants fell down. Luckily he joined in the whole class gigglefest instead of being mortified.
Jamie started the birthday celebrations early by filling up our giant vase with flowers, running the dishwasher, cleaning the kitchen, hiding cookies in the kitchen (for me to find, not away from me), and in general being a great hubby. Yay!
Our cats do weird things. They put eachother in headlocks and lick and kick eachother. They are definitely girls because they always go to the bathroom together–one will be in the litter box, and the other will sit outside the door waiting. Weird.
I think that’s all the news from Lake Michigan… time to put grades in the gradebook! Good thing that’s why I went into teaching in the first place…
10.06.06
South America AND Africa…
So a friend got some guys together, and tonight we played a 5-person game of Risk. The dice-rolling one takes with a certain resignedness, but man that game can be a lot of political and psychological fun. I mean when else do you get to be deceiving, manipulative, and outsmart other people when all the facts are right there on the board in front of everyone? All in good fun, of course.
The placement phase happened to land me in South America. Two guys had split their forces between Africa and Australia, one guys was in North America, and the last guy was in North America and Europe. I was already cackling with glee inside the scheming part of my brain. Sure enough, one guy took Africa, and the other took Australia, but both were severely weakened. Making a pact with North America (Thus leaving Europe/NA to fend him off from taking that huge continent, I expanded into Africa and kept those first two guys fighting in Asia, building up my forces and territory. The fight in N.A. didn’t go as I expected: He didn’t manage to take the continent at all, and the Europe guys eventually became the threat as he pushed down through America.
At this point, I underestimated the threat from the one massive (Europe-guy’s) army sitting in N.A. I was clearly in the dominant position at this point, and since Australia had taken out the Asian remnants of the Africa guy, I sent a few armies over to sabotage Australia. I felt I was due to be ganged up upon all too soon, but perhaps in retrospect I should have built up a few more turns. No, I still think people would have united against me from the effect of seeing all those troops.
Anyway, the Europe guy never tried for a continent the whole game, and at that point he made a quite nice spear down through N.A., right through my South America, and into the tip of Africa as well. I managed to regain Africa and take most of Australia, but Australia still had most of Asia at this point. And by “this point”, I now mean the end of the game, as we ran out of time. We looked at the board, and no one had any power advantage that we could see - it was a bloody (plastic) mess. I don’t know if this narrative conveys the experience. But even if the world (and all my plans and schemes) was in chaos, I still felt a little more alive for it.
writing
I haven’t been writing much. For a while. And I’ve been busy, but I’ve been not-busy too. I just haven’t feel any enthusiasm. There’s intimidation there, too, balancing the desire to tell the world a story. I’ve been reading through a couple technical blogs (when it’s all about programming (or any one topic), is it a blog or a column?) at work lately, and I came across this good nudge:
And that’s exactly why people who are afraid they can’t write should be blogging. It’s like exercise. No matter how out of shape you are, if you exercise a few times a week, you’ll inevitably get fitter. And if you write a small blog entry a few times every week, you’re bound to become a better writer. If you’re not writing because you’re intimidated by writing, well, you’re likely to stay that way forever.
Jeff Atwood
And neither is my desire just to entertain the world, it’s to stay in contact with you. I know the feeling of saying “Hey, so-and-so is alive!” upon seeing someone’s new post. So yeah, that’s me waving at you. Still here.
Man, I need a fresh page now.
