Ringing Out the...

Raccoon!

I just had a close encounter with Rocky Ring-tail in the trash enclosure of our complex. He was fearless, clambering along the closed cans to get to the one that was too full to shut tightly. When I tossed a cardboard box his way, he simply dodged it and kept on coming. "Really?" I said, looking him right in the mask. "Really?" I repeated when he ignored me and tore into the top bag.

He wished me no harm; I could tell. We parted with no ill will between us-- he, gorging on garbage, and I, relieved I hadn't run into a rat.

Concussion Suits May Be Test for Football

I saw this headline on the NYTimes website this morning and wondered just what these suits might look like and how they could possibly protect players from those prevalent football injuries. I studied the accompanying photo for clues, but they looked like the same old uniforms to me. It wasn't until I read the thumbnail that I realized they were referring to law suits.

Duh!

Slow News Week

We listened to a lot of news radio on the road trip home from Buffalo today. (Attention! New record: 7 hours flat!). It was mostly NPR, but there were some extremely right wing call-ins scattered here and there. Even though they call it "news", there really wasn't a whole lot new, so I tried to amuse myself by processing the information in novel ways.

Along the way, I decided that Romney should choose Santorum as a running mate, (Okay, we were driving through Pennsylvania, but you have to admit it's a shrewd pairing), and also that people with British accents shouldn't question President Obama's citizenship, especially in first person plural as in, "He's not qualified to be our president... We should arrest him for treason." It just doesn't sound convincing.

As the trip wore on, though, I started noticing more and more misspoken idioms. For example, some people feel that the voters in Iowa often skewer the national primary results, and that the diplomats trying to repair the U.S.'s relationship with Pakistan have a tough road to hoe.

Agreed, especially if it's paid with good intentions.

I'm so glad to be home!

The "Duh" Was Implied

Since Tangled was released in 2010, there's been a lot of publicity about how Rapunzel rounds out the Disney princesses to an even ten. In fact you can watch a little countdown of them in order of popularity on YouTube, should you be so inclined. This particular clip also includes some interesting facts and history about the ten. For example, who knew that Sleeping Beauty nearly killed the franchise at three? In fact it was 30 years before Ariel, the Little Mermaid, revived the princess business and put it on the road to the phenomenal success it enjoys today. Jasmine was the first non-caucasian princess, Pocohantas the sole princess based on a real person, and so also the only one without a happy ending, and Tiana the lone princess to hold down a job. Of course Cinderella is the most popular.

This morning, my four-year-old niece and I watched the countdown together, and to be honest, I was enjoying the whole girl power groove of the thing. "That was pretty good," I said to her when it was over. "Do you think you would want to be the eleventh princess someday?"

She looked at me a little dismissively, as if I was missing something, and then shook her head. "I already am a princess," she said.

Oh right. Silly me.

Over the Weight Limit

It's already been a week that I've been off from school, and I must say that I've been more than able to let it all go this time-- there's nothing happening that can't wait until the first Tuesday of 2012. Oh, January 3 will be a rocking day-- I predict that we will hit the ground running and continue non-stop, until, March? Unless there is a blizzard, Spring Break will be the next break; until then we will rocket along with planning and grading, on to the end of the quarter, then science fair, early release, professional development, spring conferences, standardized tests, field trips, meetings, conferences, referrals, tolerance clubs, writing clubs, homework clubs, literary magazine, and on and on.

It seems counter-intuitive that the busier we are, the easier it seems to leave our professional baggage behind at school on breaks like this, but the truth is that some things are just too heavy to bring along.

Maybe Tomorrow?

I think it's important as a teacher of writing to engage as a writer every day myself... At least that's what I said tonight at dinner when someone I'd just met asked me how and why I started blogging.

Yeah... and some days I'm more engaged than others.

Confounded No More

I am a casual blogger, but like any writer, when I send my message out into the universe, it's with hope that someone will read what I have to say. Fortunately, in this day and age, along with this new electronic medium comes some nifty e-gadgets, too, that let a blogger track how many hits and where they are coming from to get an interesting overall picture of readership.

Most days, my readers are my mom, my brother, my sister, and my friend Mary (thanks guys!). I have a few other more sporadic, but still regular readers (thanks guys!), too, but 20 hits is a busy day for me. You can imagine then, what an early Christmas gift it was for me to see over a hundred visitors to my blog, yesterday. Curiously, although they were from all over the world, they seemed to be clustered by time zone.

I clicked around my stats page a little more and discovered that most of my readers had come in search of a single term, and it was all clear to me what was happening. Last year at this time I posted about Christmas Crackers and a particularly unfathomable joke we got, What do ghosts wear in the rain? The punchline was "Khagouls", which it turned out was a pun on the equally unfamiliar word "kagools", which is a sort of English anorak.(Thanks again, Mary!)

Yesterday, all over the world, from one Christmas Eve dinner to another and another, as crackers were snapped, and crowns were donned, along with the merriment, confusion spread from table to table. What does this joke mean? they asked. And their solution? Google of course! And what did they find? Walking the Dog!