Sady Doyle

I heart Sady Doyle. And, I wish I could get every girl at the school I teach to read this article, Fight Like a Girl.

Three Things

1. I wish Revenge were on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays.
2. My cat is going to die from chewing on electrical cords.*
3. Project Gutenberg is awesome!

Go ahead, tell me three things.



*Not my actual cat.

Pain, It Sucks

I'm too old. I feel 75, but I'm not. I understand now a little better when my mom used to bitch about getting older. I've been having back problems for a while, and that doesn't help.

I went to my new GP, because I had to dump my old GP who didn't notice that my dad was yellow. And, who never ever x-rayed a man's lungs who had smoked for over 20 years. But anyway, my GP didn't want to help me. The new one. I had to whine and cajole the nurse over the phone. Then I had flashbacks to a bad relationship. It was ugly.

About.me

I now have an About.me page here. It seemed like a fun way of putting my various things all on one page. And by fun, I mean "a way to waste two or three hours picking a photo and resizing it several times and then changing the photoshop filter on it and then messing about with fonts and colors of fonts." As you do. Though I'm not the only one who does this, I swear.

We have a friend who, whenever we play Rock Band, we secretly hope that he doesn't get it in his head to make a new character because that will make it a good forty-five minutes before we can even start picking songs. I'm just saying, there is such a thing as too much choice.

Spy vs. Spy

I'm looking for a spy camera on Amazon for a project, when I click on this one. It's got several reviews, and one of those catches my eye. According to a comment, this person is a serial reviewer. I'm off now to see the rest.

Mark Reads Books

I think I saw it on Neil Gaiman's twitter. He tweeted or re-tweeted about someone (named Mark) reading American Gods chapter by chapter and posting his reactions. I have not read the posts on American Gods, but I did read his other series on The Hunger Games and Twilight.

If you only have time to read one or two things, I recommend the Twilight series.* Those are hilarious (only if you don't take the Twilight books seriously), not least because they sum up the plots of those books accurately. Be ready for some oft-repeated phrases like "You are not prepared."

Anyway, I am hooked, and I'm now reading along with The Book Thief. And Mark is right. It makes you "cry ALL OF THE TEARS."

And, speaking of Twilight, if you are not reading The Bloggess, though let's face it most people on the internet are already, you should read this post.


*Not literally one or two things, because you will get sucked in if you start, I'm warning you.

Review of Breaking Dawn

Comics Alliance's Chris Sims watches Breaking Dawn so you don't have to.

"...because, you know, you always want your necrophilia to be fully sanctioned in the eyes of the Lord."

How I Didn't Go to Comic Con

We stayed in a nice condo in Mission Beach, on the Bay side.

We went to Sea World and did the Behind the Scenes tour again. I liked our last tour guide much better than this one.

We went downtown to have lunch at Burger Lounge*, but FAILED in our quest for tickets for the Con next summer. Afterwards, we sat in the lounge of the Hyatt and contemplated the feasibility of camping out overnight. But only for about thirty seconds. We decided instead that the Niece will get famous and get us badges to work her table. I did meet Robin Thorsen and Amy Okuda, very briefly. They had to get to a panel. : (

We had dinner at World Famous and watched the sunset at dinner. Which sounds great unless the sun is DIRECTLY in your eyes.


























Then we said goodbye to the palm trees on the way to the airport and back to Texas heat and drought. We're still under water restrictions.


*If you go to San Diego and you like cheeseburgers, you MUST go to Burger Lounge. There won't be a place to sit, but you won't care because your mouth will be in heaven.

Three Things

1. Naps are awesome.
2. Mexican Coke is so much better than high fructose corn syrup Coke.
3. The Book Thief makes me cry.

RIP Anne McCaffrey

"Now he realized some measure of her indomitable character. She could not have been above ten Turns of age herself when Fax had murdered her family. Yet somehow, so young, she had set herself a goal and managed to survive both brutality and detection long enough to secure the usurper's death. What a Weyrwoman she would be!"

Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

Occupy Movement

I have been incredibly moved in the past week by two videos.

Non-violent student protesters getting pepper sprayed by police at UC Davis.
Chancellor Linda Katehi walking out of a press conference to the silent stares of UC Davis students.

The Newts of the world don't get it.

School Districts' HR Policies Suck

One of my co-workers needs an organ transplant. She's been on the list for years, and previous to that time has had to take sick days for her congenital illness. I'm leaving out specifics for privacy.

She told me today that not only does she no longer have sick days, but that though our district has what's called a "Sick Bank" where you can get extra days when other people donate them, she may not use any more because of the arbitrary number allowed in something called a "lifetime benefit."

 HR has told her that it creates too much of a "tax problem" if other teachers, friends of hers, were to donate days so that she doesn't get docked. This woman is wearing medical monitoring equipment to school. I don't even know what to say.

I have to do something about this. I'm going to do something about this. I don't know what, but with all the activism in the air, I can't not.

Teachers, Unprofessional Whiners

So a someone came by to vent about something I wrote in 2005. And I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but this is for 6thand6, I'm going to take it point by point.

"It is my opinion that teachers are the most unprofessional of all of the professions."

Yep, your opinion and you're entitled to it. You'd be ignorant and wrong, but that never stopped someone on the internet.

More about this, if you're so inclined, after the jump.

NaNoWriMo

Am I a writer? I used to think so. I wrote 50,000 (not very good) words for NaNoWriMo in 2004.

I am not working. I am not writing. It's a balmy 80 degrees outside and I sit inside, unable to work on my current project or to come up with an idea for a new one.

I've written approximately 600 words for NaNoWriMo since the 1st of November. I feel like someone looked at me and said that I HAVE to write, and my response to that is the perverse impulse to do the opposite.

I told my father once that I never thought of myself as ambitious. He then proceeded to tell me the story of my efforts to get a teaching degree. The way he told it, I had ambition when it mattered. I wish that I could talk to him, if only to have him remind me of the way he saw me.

Would I be able to push myself to write things were my dad around to encourage me? Maybe. He and my mother seemed to like reading some of my writing.

I am having an extended self-pity party, brought on by my perceived inability to write anything non-derivative. On the project before this one, I found myself copying the opening sequence of another author's story without knowing it. Though being ten years younger, female and a different nationality might have imparted some difference in approach.

If I had any ability to follow through on goals (other than that one time), I might make some. As it is, I just want to not be a teacher until I retire. That's a goal, I guess.