Why Having Pets Helps You Live Longer.....

Because you can just be sitting around and they will come up and snuggle into your lap like it is best place in the world.  

By the way, Mosey looks a lot bigger here than he really is.  I think it is the distance or something.  

Capers With a Mop and Other Things Worth Mentioning

Tonight we had company over so I ran a quick mop over the kitchen floor. It probably tells you something that Mosey was terrified of it. He hasn't had many opportunities to become acquainted with our mop. :] Here is a cute video of him trying to overcome his fear.

RJ, Katie, Jason, and I went frisbee golfing and then Jesse and Louisa joined all of us for dinner. Jason made some wonderful enchilizzas and RJ made an amazing pear pie.

Afterward we all went over to Jesse and Louisa's house to play rook since our table only fits four...  I won.  It was fun!

What Next?

Only at Pottery Barn. Bags of sand for $8.50. Do we not live 45 minutes from the beach? Come on!

September 11th

It has been 7 years today, since terrorists flew American planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Can you believe it has been that long?  What were you doing on that day?  

I was on a road trip with my friends Bob Renck and Jonathan Lundgrin.  Bob and I would be starting college soon so we all decided to take a road trip down to  Southern California (here) to go to amusement parks and the beach and whatnot.  I actually didn't have my license at the time so I sat in the back and watched Bob and Jonathan drive.  It was the first time I had visited Loma Linda, eaten a hot Krispie Kreme donut or gone on a road trip with just guys.  

On September 9, we went to Universal Studios and also to a filming of "Whose Line is it Anyway?".  There was an earthquake while we were waiting in line to get in to the studio.  On September 10, we went to Disneyland.  I bought "The Little Mermaid" soundtrack on CD.  That night we went to Bob's sister's house in LA to spend the night.  The next morning, I was woken up by the answering machine.  The guys were asleep in the other room and I was asleep on the Bob's sister's floor while she was in the shower.  The phone call was from her boyfriend (now husband) saying something about towers being attacked.  I was still pretty groggy but it was a such an unusual message.  I had to know what it meant.  I called my mom and she filled me in on what happened.  I ran and woke the guys up and told them something happened and we all turned on the TV to watch the news.  I believe the first tower had already fallen down and we watched the second tower fall live.  It was almost too much to take in.  I am sure you remember at the time how scary it was because no one knew what would happen next.  We didn't know if this was just the beginning of a more major attack or if that was extent of the terrorism.  We were going to leave in a couple hours but decided to leave immediately thinking that there would be a lot of cars on the road trying to get out of the city.  Eerily, there were almost NO cars.  We listened to the radio as long as we could stand it but then put on some happy music so we wouldn't think about it as much.  

That night, we stayed at my brother's apartment in Sacramento.  Actually, when we got there, my brother wasn't home so we broke in :] .  He came a couple hours later saying he was in class.  We watched the news for the rest of the evening and then went to bed.  

That was September 11, 2001 for me.  How about you?  

September 11, 2008 was less dramatic.  I taught a class, went to eat at Panera with Jason and created a Advanced Reading test.  Through all of it, I forgot to take a picture.  That is right, I missed a day.  But I guess in the grand scheme of things..... it really isn't a big deal.  

New Improv Players

Night Light Improv is adding some new players. These plucky folks auditioned tonight and made the team. I am very excited to begin working with

Jason


Scotty


and Diana

And it Continues....

My students are still complaining. It seems that there has been some frustration that has been bottled up. I guess I really shouldn't talk about it much but work is not very cool right now. It kind of sucks when the people you work most of your waking hours to please, let you know in very plain English (ironic!) that you have failed.

Humiliation 101

Today, I started class and asked my students to sign up for their placement tests next week. They take a placement test at the end of every semester to see if they can move up to the next level of ESL or into the nursing prep classes. So anyway, I innocently mentioned signing up to take the test and that is when all hell broke loose! Let's just make it simple by saying that they were upset that they had to take the test. And by 'they' I mean about 4 students who were very vocal. I started out well defending the rational behind taking the test. I was calm and collected and tried to steer the conversation back to the class at hand but they wouldn't have it. They went from the testing, to the curriculum, to my teaching style, shredding each to pieces in their scorn. I was a bit shocked, this tirade kinda came out of nowhere. After about 35 minutes of this, I hate to admit that I started crying and had to leave class. Thus the title of this post. I had to call a coworker downstairs to come take over my class. I thought she could get them to do their class work but it ended up that they just continued complaining about me to her. I went home for an extra long lunch break to bask in the indignant support of my husband and really didn't want to go back to face them. But I had to. One student came to apologize. But he wasn't one of the ones who said anything, but it still made me feel a little better.

Here is a picture of the papers I began grading tonight.


One of their complaints was how I was behind on grading which is one complaint that actually has some merit. So I swallowed my indignation and brought my grading home to do during my free-time. YUCK!

Pedicure

Today I met up with my friends Crystal and Ginger at Barnes and Noble. Ginger is on a cross country move to Boston. She stopped here for the weekend. Yay! I am excited because I really want to move to Boston for Jason's residency and now I will have a good friend there! Crystal is also planning to move there about the same time as Jason and I would be because she wants to go to a photography school there when her husband finished dental school. Anyway, just a dream right now, we will see in a couple years where we all end up and what we will do. We sat around talking about the future, traveling, politics, and money-making. So much fun! I find that I need more days like that. Girl friends are very important for sanity I think...

Then my mom and I went and got pedicures together. They were very nice spa pedicures and only cost $15! Ahh, felt so good!


Then it was out to eat at Red Robin. Jason was home watching the Bears/Colts game. Life was good today for us all.

A Night With Friends...

This morning Mosey desperately wanted to go to church with us.  He was even willing to wear a tie! 

 Only to be with us...  

This evening we went to Katherine's house.  She is my good friend Bob's fiance.  We sang some songs, then ate some excellent garden pizza that Katherine made, the watched some ABBA music videos.....yes really.  Did you know that they were one of the first groups that really popularized music videos?  Anyway, I had just seen Mamma Mia! so it was more fun to watch the videos.  Then we watched Firefly.  It was a TV show that was a mixture of a western, a sci-fi and Chinese genres.  Pretty good!  Here are all the friends that were over.  I didn't get a picture of Bob and Katherine because they were doing such a good job at being hosts that they were in the kitchen when I was taking these pictures.  

RJ and Katie!

Ryan and Kristen!

Emily and I!  I hadn't seen her since my birthday!!

And no, it wasn't a kegger, Jason just doesn't know that to get a normal picture, he needs to stop talking when the camera is on us.  

Wonderful New Neighbors!

Recently our neighbors moved away.  They had some really cute little boys who I liked to listen to when they played outside.  "Ahmed!  I won!"  "Hi-ya!  I got you Amouri!"  Every once in awhile, I would find a tonka truck or soccer ball in our back yard and I would toss it back over the fence so they wouldn't miss their favorite toys.  

A few days ago, we got some new neighbors.  This morning at about 6am, I walked outside not to find a match box car but a few beer cans.....  

Mosey was very upset by it and imitated a hyena hoping to intimidate the intruders.  I threw the cans noisily back over their fence hoping to wake the neighbors from their alcohol induced coma.  Oh Ahmed and Amouri, please come back....

Spanish Class

I am auditing a Spanish class.  It is the first time I have ever studied Spanish. Instead of having a language lab on the computer, our teacher is making us hang out with an assigned Spanish speaking family for 1 hour per week.  Today, I met my family.  Actually, it is funny.  I got the address and realized her house is literally right behind mine.  I can walk to it in 30 seconds.  That is convenient.  We talked for a solid hour in Spanish.  I was really worried because I had only had two Spanish classes so far.  I mean, we haven't even learned verbs.  What am I going to do, say "Buenos dias!" all night?  But I didn't realize how much my Italian would come in handy.  A lot of the verbs are the same.  Like cambiar and cambiare (to change) for example.  Anyway, I was able to get pretty far with just my Italian knowledge. So it was a lot more successful than I thought.  The family is really nice and I look forward to talking to them again.  My Spanish teacher gave us each the Bible and 'Steps to Christ' in Spanish.  I guess we will start reading them in class.  

Here Comes Sarah!

I am very excited by this new development!  Someone who is unapologetically conservative but a good speaker too.  Finally....

Improv Practice

Yes, it is true.  You do practice improv.  Why?  Well, many people don't realize how much improv is about being part of a team.  To create good improv, you need to know that you have the support of your team.  There are also a lot of rules to improv to make sure that you maintain the spirit of improv, so we have to practice keeping those rules.  Some rules are things like, always accept the reality that your teammates create.  Don't tell jokes.  Try not to ask questions that don't answer themselves.  Etc, etc.  Anyway, improv is fun and here is a picture of us practicing it tonight.  

Relaxing

There is nothing like not laboring on Labor Day.....

A Day at the Beach

Some of Jason's classmates/friends wanted to go the the beach today.  So we headed to San Clemente beach with our boogie boards and books.  I mostly read all day under the shade of an umbrella.  I finished up Eat, Pray, Love and will be writing a review for you soon.  I had a really nice and relaxing time.  

I think that laying under an umbrella is my new thing!  It is great for reading because you don't have to squint all the time.  Plus, you don't bake so much.  I also went boogie boarding for awhile.  The waves were great but I didn't go out into the big waves, I just rode the wash because last time I was at San Clemente I got tossed by several huge waves and water intermittently poured out of my nose for the rest of the day.  

Anyway, after that we went to Venice beach.  We finally went into the freak show.  They had a lot of two headed animals but they were mostly all dead which was disappointing. They had a five legged dog and a couple cyclops pigs.  For the most part, I would usually shy away from even the idea of a freak show.  But my resistance has been slowly worn down over many visits to venice beach where the proprietor always stands out in the crowd with a sample weird animal and honestly just seems like a nice guy.  Speaking of weird animals, have you even heard of Mike the headless chicken?  I just ran across an article about him the other day.  Turns out that there was a chicken that had his head chopped off for dinner and proceeded 

to run around like a chicken with its head cut off...... for 18 months.  If you want to learn more about this strange but true story you can look here.   (don't forget to look at the photos!)

Then we went off to have dinner at a great place that we had visited with Danelle about a year ago.  Pitfire Pizza Co is a great restaurant in Westwood.  You can get a special where you pick 3 pizzas, 1 pasta, 1 salad, and 1 dessert for $65.  These are all high quality items as well.  We got that special and split it between the 5 of us.  You should have seen the size of the pasta.  Each person had a healthy serving and we still took home enough leftovers for lunch the next day.  Here we are waiting for our food. 

 

A nice lady offered to take a picture of us.  Actually, speaking of nice ladies, I was trying to change in the corner of the bathroom at the beach while holding a towel to cover myself (good thing too because the cleaning guy decided to stick his head in the door without warning) when a nice older lady offered to hold the towel up for me.  That made things much easier.  AND, she was the second person who offered!  I enjoy how nice people are around here.

By the way, I realize that we are wearing the same shirts as in our picture yesterday. But rest assured that we only wore them for two hours last night so I hardly think we are gross people.  :]