Wow. So...that was a bit of a break, wasn't it? Sadly, it was back to The Rock for me today, and while I was busily mining the grey matter of my sophomores for the fine distinctions of indirect objects and objects of prepositions--not to mention the obligatory simple subjects and action verbs, of course--it brought to mind the Miners Extraordinaire themselves and, thus, a Theme for this post was born!
Dopey: For Christmas I received The Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson. Not only is this book filled with fascinating trivia that disproves conventionally believed trivia (no, Thomas Crapper did NOT invent the flush toilet and a rhinoceros horn is NOT actually made of hair), but the writing is delightful. One of my favorite sentences: When surprised, rhinos urinate and defecate prodigiously. What a smart way to say an alarmed rhino poops and pees a lot.
Grumpy: I am increasingly irritated by the number of diet plan, low-fat food, exercise equipment, and other "health"-oriented ads now on television since The New Year. What a load of guilt-driven bullshit. These are the same people who hawked nothing but food and booze for the entire two Holiday Months previous. Leave everyone alone! If the consumer wants to lose weight, he will. He knows what's out there, believe me. Shut the hell up and go back to advertising the Gas-Guzzling Trucks Sold By Obnoxious Country Music Singers even though gasoline is sky-high and our carbon footprint is the size of Sasquatch's. Sigh.
Doc: Would all of You Sick People stop coming to school and work and contaminating me and my work space? You are not heroes, my darlings, really. You are Sick. You need to stay home with your viruses and your bacterials and get better with rest, megadoses of vitamin C, lots of liquids (not sherry or JB), chicken soup (add a knob of fresh ginger; trust me, it is delicious and helps break up that hideous mucus), and lots of lovely movies on the DVD player. We can--we must try--to get along without you. It will be okay. Come back when you feel better and are not contagious and icky.
Bashful: Are you kidding? ME? I haven't been bashful since my last mammogram, and since I'm flat as a board, that wasn't very.
Sneezy: Every morning in the lounge, I have the urge to sneeze and I can't get it to come out. Oh yes, I look at the light, I breathe in real slow through my nose, yadda yadda dah dah dah. It never happens...until my third period class. Then I sneeze. When I am in school, I do NOT sneeze "for real." I have a tiny, little, peep of a sneeze because I am afraid a huge snotful thing will fly out, so when I sneeze in school, it sounds like Tweety Bird is saying "tyoo." It is ridiculous. But...it is better than a huge snotful thing flying out.
Sleepy: Yesterday, I discovered how pathetic I really am. How I am at the mercy of the Caffeine Monkey On My Back. I did not have my usual mug o' coffee, and by 2:45 PM, I was dragging my ass around like it was a toddler in a backpack. But, of course, if I had a cup then, it would keep me up all night, and I had school the next day, so I didn't dare. By 7:00PM, I fell asleep sitting up on the couch, waking up 15 minutes later, totally disgusted with myself. With an enormous banging headache. I WAS IN CAFFEINE WITHDRAWAL. FROM ONE CUP A DAY! HOW SAD AM I?!
Happy: Over break, we discovered that we were down to our last bottle of Cattail Creek Off-Dry Reisling. This is the wine we fell in love with from our last jaunt to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Rick said, "Let's go to Canada the weekend after Christmas and get some more!" So we did! We hurriedly called an inn there for a room, Rick got home from work early that Friday, and we spent the weekend there having a lovely time visiting wineries and relaxing. We snagged two cases of our favorite wine to last us for a while until we can get back there again. If you are ever in the mood for a lovely trip to Ontario and can visit N-o-t-L, please go visit Rosi at Cattail Creek. Their wines are incredible and will make you happy, too.
Speaking of happy...Happy 2008, everyone, from the Dept. of Nance. I'm ever hopeful.
Dopey: For Christmas I received The Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson. Not only is this book filled with fascinating trivia that disproves conventionally believed trivia (no, Thomas Crapper did NOT invent the flush toilet and a rhinoceros horn is NOT actually made of hair), but the writing is delightful. One of my favorite sentences: When surprised, rhinos urinate and defecate prodigiously. What a smart way to say an alarmed rhino poops and pees a lot.
Grumpy: I am increasingly irritated by the number of diet plan, low-fat food, exercise equipment, and other "health"-oriented ads now on television since The New Year. What a load of guilt-driven bullshit. These are the same people who hawked nothing but food and booze for the entire two Holiday Months previous. Leave everyone alone! If the consumer wants to lose weight, he will. He knows what's out there, believe me. Shut the hell up and go back to advertising the Gas-Guzzling Trucks Sold By Obnoxious Country Music Singers even though gasoline is sky-high and our carbon footprint is the size of Sasquatch's. Sigh.
Doc: Would all of You Sick People stop coming to school and work and contaminating me and my work space? You are not heroes, my darlings, really. You are Sick. You need to stay home with your viruses and your bacterials and get better with rest, megadoses of vitamin C, lots of liquids (not sherry or JB), chicken soup (add a knob of fresh ginger; trust me, it is delicious and helps break up that hideous mucus), and lots of lovely movies on the DVD player. We can--we must try--to get along without you. It will be okay. Come back when you feel better and are not contagious and icky.
Bashful: Are you kidding? ME? I haven't been bashful since my last mammogram, and since I'm flat as a board, that wasn't very.
Sneezy: Every morning in the lounge, I have the urge to sneeze and I can't get it to come out. Oh yes, I look at the light, I breathe in real slow through my nose, yadda yadda dah dah dah. It never happens...until my third period class. Then I sneeze. When I am in school, I do NOT sneeze "for real." I have a tiny, little, peep of a sneeze because I am afraid a huge snotful thing will fly out, so when I sneeze in school, it sounds like Tweety Bird is saying "tyoo." It is ridiculous. But...it is better than a huge snotful thing flying out.
Sleepy: Yesterday, I discovered how pathetic I really am. How I am at the mercy of the Caffeine Monkey On My Back. I did not have my usual mug o' coffee, and by 2:45 PM, I was dragging my ass around like it was a toddler in a backpack. But, of course, if I had a cup then, it would keep me up all night, and I had school the next day, so I didn't dare. By 7:00PM, I fell asleep sitting up on the couch, waking up 15 minutes later, totally disgusted with myself. With an enormous banging headache. I WAS IN CAFFEINE WITHDRAWAL. FROM ONE CUP A DAY! HOW SAD AM I?!
Happy: Over break, we discovered that we were down to our last bottle of Cattail Creek Off-Dry Reisling. This is the wine we fell in love with from our last jaunt to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Rick said, "Let's go to Canada the weekend after Christmas and get some more!" So we did! We hurriedly called an inn there for a room, Rick got home from work early that Friday, and we spent the weekend there having a lovely time visiting wineries and relaxing. We snagged two cases of our favorite wine to last us for a while until we can get back there again. If you are ever in the mood for a lovely trip to Ontario and can visit N-o-t-L, please go visit Rosi at Cattail Creek. Their wines are incredible and will make you happy, too.
Speaking of happy...Happy 2008, everyone, from the Dept. of Nance. I'm ever hopeful.
And here I thought you'd run away and you were just on a mini holiday. Can we call it a holiday?
ReplyDeleteI always hated all that proposition stuff...yuck! How dare you do that on the first day back. Shameful!!!
Happy New Year!
Hey, great post, Nance! And I'm so proud of you, using some racy language! I'd definitely give you an "R" rating on this one! :-) Inspired trip to Niagara - I'm envious. Happy New Year!!
ReplyDeleteWell, go figure. I did NOT know that "dwarves" was the correct spelling. I think there are a lot of us out here who are under that impression. So... is it also "rooves"? No, probably not.
ReplyDeleteI so agree with you on all the diet and exercise B.S. flying through the airways and cyberwaves. And the fact that, as I predicted, Walmart put out their grotesque Valentines crap the day after Christmas.
I started school again today, too. *sigh.* Just in-service, the kids aren't there until Monday. Tryin' to breathe nice and slow...
Never ever anger the caffeine monster that lives inside you. Just feed it and be happy it lives there. ;)
ReplyDeleteGreat post! Happy New Year to you, love!
Starting the new year off with grammar! I'm sure your students just love it!
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll enlighten us with more trivia from the Johns.
Happy New Year to you and yours!
Dragging your ass around like a toddler in a backpack. Yeah...I hear you.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year! This post was just too good...I loved it! You and I are SO on the same page with the "health"-oriented commercials! I must have seen a million of them (of course the same 3 played over and over) in the past few days!
ReplyDeleteWith regards to the sick people, I concur...and hey your vitamin C advice was great...especially if they get the kind with Echinacea and Zinc!
I. Need. That. Wine. If it compels you to go to Canada to get more, then it must be good!
P.S. I should have refrained from reading your first paragraph until my brain woke up...it made me dizzy.
tera--i just re-read the first paragraph and you're right--yikes. sorry! LOL.
ReplyDeleteab--don't you hate that? and my toddler days are so very over. thank goodness.
jenomena--actually, our grammar unit is continuing from before break and will end the semester. i cannot stop until they can completely parse a sentence for all its parts. that's how evil i am.
ck--i'll never eff around with the caffeine monster again. i submit. and thanks for the ny wishes. back at ya!
ortizzle--sigh. the english language is hideous. the plurals do not remain constant, as you know. roofs is the plural of roof. but dwarves and scarves are the plurals of dwarf and scarf. and i will refrain from admonishing you about shopping at the hideous, soul-sucking republican machine that is wal*mart. because i love you.
cactus flower--as i admitted to in at least one previous post, my spoken language is horribly profane. i try to tone it down in deference to my readers most times. but once in a while, i must bow to the necessity of expression. i tried to go to your blog, but found it is not yet in existence. waiting for inspiration, darling?
nina, dearest--you know, if i wait until the little poppets are "ready" to be back, i won't get a damn thing done until...well, EVER. it's best to hit them immediately, and you know it. and you may term my "jaunts" whatever you like. as a proud democrat, I support free speech. and your right to engage in it. LOL.
oops. make that Democrat. sigh.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know Wal*mart was Republican. What it IS... is a very new and shiny store that happens to be a 2-minute drive from my home. It has pineapples and tea towels and size 23A batteries at 11 p.m., when I most need those things. I consider it no more soul-sucking than any other stores, but then I am vastly ignorant of 25 years of history in this country. I also buy food at Fiesta Mart, La Michoacana, etc. Convenience, price, and whether they have the products I need are what drive me. And well... I am more concerned with the money going OUT of my pocket rather than whose pocket it goes INTO, they are all money-grabbing devils. Especially a chain of supermarkets here called Tom Thumb, where you have to have a REWARD card to get discounts. Discounts amount to only slightly higher prices than other places, but never any lower. I am sometimes forced to shop there when nothing else is open and I have to buy wine, because another wonderful feature about where I live is that certain parts of the city are dry and others are not, and I often have to go miles out of the way to buy such luxuries if the liquor stores are closed. The ones in my neighborhood where all the lushes live, of course. Not 5 blocks down the road, where it is Bible Belt again. And so it goes.
ReplyDeleteGeez. I didn't mean to go on. I was just trying to justify my (food) shopping habits. Anyway, I'm open to non soul-sucking supermarkets that have signs posted everywhere saying "Bush sucks."
Happy New Year Nance! Great post to start the year! I only drink one cup of coffee a day too usually and if I miss it, I really feel it.
ReplyDeleteOrtizzle you made me think of Jon Stewart's riff:"Walmart is bad but, OH MY GOD, A refridgerator for 3 dollars!!!!" :)
ReplyDeleteNance, I thought I was the only one that got irritated by the Disney dwarf thing. I keep nagging my sister in law, a lawyer employed by Disney about it. And, if they are going to show us fitness commercials, why don't they put normal looking, saggy waisted moms and dads in them with children messing around with the bow flex bars as they try to work out. Or, better yet, a bowflex doing what it was meant for, being a rack for freshly ironed shirts and stuff.
laura--oooh! your sister is a lawyer for disney? i bet she earns her bucks. those guys are on top of it, boy. if anyone, even in podunk, arkansas, even THINKS about using a disney character without paying eleventy billion dollars up front, the disney legals are all OVER it. wow. and hey--my idea of exercise is looking for the remote. i mean, come ON already.
ReplyDeleteanali--and don't tea drinkers really irritate you? they are very condescending, i think.
ortizzle--i am working very hard right now, restraining myself from sending you copious emails about the evils of wal*mart. i promise i am done RIGHT NOW. xxooxxoo
nance--i forgive your capitalization mistake. i know you only repudiate republicans by purposely refusing to capitalize that affiliation.
i too measure my mammos in grams
ReplyDeletesadly, i've forgotten all about direct objects and indirect objects and obtuse objects and falling objects and capitalization
im losing my punctuation too
maybe my religion
definitely all my stuff
and yeah my mind too
v--have another margarita.
ReplyDelete