"Miss, who invented Wite-Out?"
Never mind that I actually gave the wrong answer (which I'll sort out tomorrow), having heard "Wite-out," but thought "correction fluid in general." It's always a good day when some piece of trivia gets to jump out, probably shouting, "Ha! Thought you'd never see me again!"
The fact that there was also a student wearing a Cramps t-shirt just makes me wonder if Mike was right and we should've gone to the Strip tonight.
Except he wants to go for Wynn buffet, not to gamble. Since the Wynn is pricey, I asked what he thought we were celebrating. "The fact that you got ELEVEN hours of sleep!" Not a bad point. Smooches, again, to Tylenol PM. (Besides, it was closer to TWELVE hours, and I didn't even hear the alarm. Wow.)
About 30 minutes later, he conked out for a nap. We have free Brian Wilson tickets for tonight in Primm, but getting home at 11 p.m. on a school night no longer sounds as good as it did back in August. (So, what a bummer that the B-52s, another free show, will be playing on a Wednesday. We'll see.)
When I was eight, I loved the Monkees. I used to close the doors to the den and wail out to this song:
(With beseeching gestures, and probably while standing on the sofa.)
I confess: I started watching The Brady Bunch Movie again the other night just to see the Davy Jones bit.
And this is my fave B-52s song, which hopefully no one will remember me linking to before:
(Speaking of the B-52s, which means speaking of "Rock Lobster," which means...) I just realized the other day that the school where I work doesn't have dances. Oh, they have homecoming, prom, and Sadie Hawkins, and possibly some other winter dance, but that's it.
Okay, come to think of it, the high schools I attended didn't have many dances, either. I'm fuzzy on this because I only remember going to one dance, and that was the first one. I remember Jen and I doing the splits a lot. She also reenacted some scenes from a Morris Day and the Time video. In the bleachers. So everyone could see her better. I made a big deal out of it being Simon le Bon's birthday and how we should all celebrate that. Maybe some part of my brain devoted to self-preservation, some CIA-like cluster of neurons with a firm policy of denial, didn't even let me know about the other dances.
But we had soooo many dances in junior high! What was that about? They were held at least every month. Oh, so much drama... But, thanks to that recent visit to Classmates.com, I now know that my junior high principal is no longer with us. And he takes his Extreme Socializing theories with him.
Oh, yeah, so I mention yesterday or the day before or whenever that I'm annoyed by not knowing who is signing my guestbook on Classmates.com, right? And guess what happens yesterday? YEAH! Another notice from Classmates that "someone" has signed my guestbook! ("Upgrade now to find out who!") Grrrr.
I used to be sneaky and have my URL in my bio (you have to pay to link it properly), but then I decided to cut down on the number of students finding this site. (However, if ******** in 5th period or ***** in 6th period is reading this, I guess they now have the answer to the "Are you a blogger, Miss?" question.)
Speaking of Classmates and its ilk! So, today my Dad sends me an email with the subject "Small World." Inside, he writes (paraphrasing), "I was talking to Sara today. She has an Aussie friend who knows Mike."
Okay, Sara is a friend and former neighbour of my parents. She moved to Killeen, which is where Mike and I would probably be living now, if I hadn't been offered a job in Las Vegas. (Not because I care a pickle about Killeen, but because I wanted a teaching job ASAP and was a midyear graduate, and they were one of the few places in the state hiring and/or responding to my apps and feelers.)
I don't even know how this came up, but Sara has a friend at the paper named Tonya. I don't know if Sara mentioned that her friends' daughter married an Australian and did the thing we all do ("Hey, you're Australian, do you know him?"), but (I think?) Tonya said, "Oh, I know someone living in Las Vegas, working as a sub." Then they compare notes (I guess?) and it turns out that Tonya knows Mike.
Except! Mike hasn't spoken to her since 1989, when they were in high school, and even then she was more of an acquaintance than a friend. ("She wasn't a mean girl," Mike says with approval.) But I guess she saw his profile on the Oz-equivalent of Classmates and knew he was in the States?
I don't know. But it's hilarious. Mike's head exploded. I take it it's been a "what the hell?" moment from one end of the grapevine to other. He comes here, marries an American, and - basically - his father-in-law one day says, oh, hey, my friend has an Australian friend... who knows you."
Meaning, yes, they really do all know each other. All of this blustering about Perth being a city of a million-plus people is just so much smoke. YOU GUYS ALL KNOW EACH OTHER AND YOU KNOW IT. Stop putting on airs!
I yanked out the crock pot (meaning I painted the Stars and Stripes on the lid... no, sorry, still in lame cross-culture jokey mode) and am, for the first time, using the crock pot cookbook Mike gave me for my birthday last year. I don't know why it's only just being used now: I put plenty of sticky flags on it for Mike to reference.
I used the new (Australian) potato peeler. (It's nice. Whatever. I think it's my first potato peeler since I left home, so anything is better than a knife and a blind eye to waste.) The "Rustic Potatoes" recipe is just taters, onion, pepper ("for color"), and garlic thrown together. Doesn't it sound like it needs cheese? We'll see. I already threw a little cumin in. Cumin is my go-to spice. It's the coriander of my spice rack. (Except coriander is often in a person's spice rack. Also, I don't have a spice rack. And, cumin is an herb as well as a spice, so... this has all fallen apart. And do you ever find you find yourself saying, "faln apart"?)
I would've taken photos, but I was in a hurry. Except, then I spent 40 minutes on prep, so I guess long prep times are more about my shoddy cutting skills than about going click-whirr-snap. Now we know.
Which cues the Mitchell & Webb: (NSFW?)
Don't have a spice rack? Try the inventive SpiceStack Organizer. It'll organize your spice bottles from the grocery store in a snap. Happy Cooking!
Lauren Greenwood, President, SpiceStack Inc.
p.s. I love cumin too! I like to throw it on black beans with a squeeze of lime, let them marinate, and then incorporate into burritos. Yum!!!
Posted by: Lauren | 11 September 2008 at 08:23 AM