my mom is the toughest person i have ever known. ever.

nice

i'm amazed by university libraries. they have such a system going. i can pretty much get every reference i need sitting in my jammies at home. it's awesome. there's the interlibrary loan thingy which the nice people use to scan in articles that i need and then they just put them on their server til i get online and pick them up. then there's the gamecock search (i'm referring to the usc library obviously) and it searches what feels like a gazillion databases, tho i always end up using the jstor articles the most, but it's still nice to know that it searches these extraneous databases. then there's pascal delivers. when the library doesn't have a book, they'll just get it for you from another university site's library and you just do it all with the click of a button. i do have to drive to pick that one up, but still it was requested from home at least. and then there's chat with a librarian which sounds so nerdy but sometimes you need a librarian to answer a question and instead of driving over, you can just chat. i love it. when will they make up some button that writes the article for you? you know, you put all the data you've collected in, list your references, and then you get an email with your article within 3-5 days...nice.

on driving

in a previous life, dump trucks bothered me. they were always in my way on the road going slowly because their gears cannot shift quickly enough. well in my current life, the dump trucks have been replaced with all other cars. today on the way to work, i got behind a truck, one of those short sport trucks, pulling this huge trailer, the kind that's a ramp. it could have held 5 cars easily. of course a little truck with a big long trailer like that cannot turn corners promptly, instead taking the entire course of the green light to make a right hand turn onto a 2 lane back road which means that the truck and trailer can't drive the normal speed, which means that it took me 10 minutes to get down a road that normally takes about 2 minutes of my time. this is so annoying. once i finally escaped that truck and picked up my pace, a van, one of the vans with the ladders on top because it's a repair man, cable man, ac/heating man type of van, pulls out in front of me and proceeds to go the same speed as the original truck/trailer. 20 mph. this van gets to the light which is green, slows to a stop, and makes a right hand turn slower than my grandma, so by the time he's finally completed his turn and gotten out of my way, the light is red. i think he thought he would lose his ladders if he went too fast. then i get on the road that is actually the school road and end up behind yet another huge pickup truck that is also too big to make turns at a speed higher than 1 mph. in front of the pickup was by golly a dump truck and we know how i feel about dump trucks. so yea the modes of transportation in the area where i work and especially how the drivers drive them really got to me today. on the way home, i was stopped at a light behind a little car with tinted windows. i could see the silhouette of a bird sitting on the driver's shoulder. makes me wonder if the driver thinks he's a pirate and his car his ship.

and we're off...

sometimes i just want to sit down and cross my arms over my chest and shut my eyes and pretend that the person talking to me isn't there anymore.

work is driving me crazy. it's not really work it's like life. i have so many things to take care of (papers and reading and presentations on the reading and the research and teaching and trying to still breathe) before certain dates and it's all just so crazy that my little calendar can't handle the pressure and i really can't either which is why i want to act like a major child and just sit down and pretend the world out there isn't real which is how i access my alternaworld.

here are things that are not driving me crazy.
1. it finally feels like fall in cola, even if it is for only a couple more days.
2. my dogs are going to be wearing halloween costumes. lily will be princess laya ( i think i spelled that wrong, oh well) and daisy will be darth vader.
3. counting crows is putting out a NEW cd in november (new, not a re-release)
4.in october i'm going to see george carlin which will make me laugh
5. next week is premier week on tv. i have no time to watch any of it, but i do have dvr so that's good.
6. i can still run 3 miles or more
7. one day far far away i'll have another degree and maybe make a little more money

topic: nalgene

i want to do a poll. here's the question: how often do you wash your nalgene bottle?

there was a time when i never washed mine. never. i took it with me everywhere, let it sit in all kind of dirty places, roll around in the dirt, fall out of my bag into a puddle, and still never washed it. apparently i'm changing b/c now when i go to fill up my 2 nalgenes every morning for the trip to schoolio, i think, "ewww, i should wash this," nevermind the fact that it sat no where except my office and well it does go to the gym with me which is a disgusting place, but still i don't roll the mouth part around on the floor or anything. so now i'm constantly washing it out or cramming it in the dishwasher and i want to know...how often do you wash your nalgene? b/c am i weird, did i grow up to be a germ-a-phobe?

whatty-up kids?

so i've been back at work for 6 days. i'm tired. i dont even have my own class of students and i'm tired. i have 2 things i'm wondering about. 1. i don't have my own class. it's been a whole year without my own little people to teach. this year i'm co-teaching with a pal. i listen to her talk to the kids and then i talk to the kids and it's just so different. we started teaching at the same time so she's been in the classroom for 3 and i've been in for 2 and out for 1. so i'm wondering how would i talk to kids if i had had my own kids last year. this isn't an interesting wonder. sorry.

2. the AC in my office has to be turned down by a custodian every morning. custodians get busy especially at the beginning of the year. i was really hot today at work and when you're wearing work clothes and your hair was actually fixed before you entered your office, being really hot is obnoxious. i think we could grow some rare orchids or violets or something because the humidity in there is about 100%. or maybe if i had pneumonia it would get better. don't they put you in tents with moisture when you have pneumonia? so i'm considering working on my green thumb or finding an ill person and experimenting.

work is fun.

more on being weird

today while running and listening to my ipod i wanted to just stop and start dancing or keep running and dance at the same time. that would be like phoebe running from friends. you know how the perfect song comes on because the shuffle feature on the ipod is actually not sucking and is choosing the perfect wake up and run songs? and it just makes you run faster and smile at the same time? so it just makes you want to stop and pretend you're in an ipod commercial. am i the only one who has this occasional urge to be OK with looking like an idiot?