Things Not to Tell Your Pregnant Wife

1. Taking care of the baby will probably be a lot like taking care of a puppy.
   
   
2. You sure are eating a lot today.
   
   
3. You have been complaining a lot lately.
   
   
4. Babies feel like little monkeys when you hold them.
   
   
5. When are we going to have another one?

Is There Ever Such a Thing as Too Much Jewelry?

I was at my parents' house watching the MSU football game. They had this guy on during the game, and he used to play for the Spartans. Don't ask me what his name was because that's like asking me how many times I sneezed last week.

Anyway he had a giant diamond in both ears. My mom commented that the diamonds were so big that they had to be fake. I disagreed and told her that I bet they were real diamonds (we're talking at least 2 1/2 carats). She asked how he could afford such diamonds when he was still in college. My Dad reminded her that he wasn't in college anymore (they just told us that at the bottom of the screen, but she didn't see it). This guy now plays for the NFL, so he can afford big diamonds I guess.

So, then my mom changed strategies on us. She accepted the fact that the diamond earrings were probably real and that this guy could afford them. Now she wanted to know why someone would want such big diamond earrings. She suggested that they would look better in some sort of setting perhaps with other jewels. Even then, she said, they would still be quite gaudy. I mean, she's got a point. Unless you're the queen of England, it's a little pretentious to wear such big diamonds even if you can afford them. Somehow I don't think that this NFL player had considered any of this though.

It was at this point that my Dad got all frustrated and piped up with what may be the funniest comment ever to come out of his mouth. He simply said, "It's bling."
My mom looked confused. She said, "What?"
"Bling, that's what it's called. He's got bling on."
"Oh," she said.
That seemed to be the answer she had been looking for all along.

Next week we're going to teach my mom about crunk cups.

Ouch.

I went for my three hour glucose tolerance test today. They had to draw my blood four different times over the three hours. Needles to say, it was the very best part of my day.

Today made me realize that I would much rather work with teenagers than old people. During my first hour or so at the medical office where I had to go for the test I was secretly envying the people who worked there. It was so quiet, peaceful, and lovely. I started to think, "Now that...that...that is a real job. The workers are doing their work, but they don't even look like they want to cry."

About an hour later, I had to change my tune. The old people started to come in. I had to give the workers credit. They barely flinched even though I was going crazy in my own head from just being a bystander to it all. Here are some things that I just wouldn't be able to tolerate if I worked in a medical office and the old people came in like that:

1. Hearing everyone's life history and long lists of medical problems in great detail.
2. Having a lady explain to me why her insurance has changed in such great detail that it takes at least seven minutes.
3. Watching the old people refuse to sit down in the comfy waiting room chairs....They want to be next darn it!
4. Having the old people pretend that they are really at a restaurant instead of a medical testing facility. I'll explain.... See, the old people kept bugging the office help because they wanted to know exactly who would be next. Then, if they didn't like the answer, they would argue. "I am very sure that I was here before that man." One woman even came over to me wayyyy on the other side of the room from where she was standing to see what kind of paperwork I was filling out. Apparently she was trying to see which test I was in for so that she could be sure I wouldn't be cutting in front of her. She wasn't subtle about it either. She came and leaned way over my shoulder. Much to her great disappointment, however, I was only doing a crossword puzzle since I had already been there for two hours and was just waiting for the time when I could have my next blood draw. Let's just get something straight here. As far as I know, medical offices have never ever worked in the same manner as Bill Knapp's (nor should they). You aren't necessarily served in any discernible order. I can see getting upset if you've been waiting for a long time, but the old people started all that up as soon as they got there.

So, it made the old people pretty mad when I was called in at 10:15 and they were all gathered around the lab doorway thinking that they were next. You would think they might step aside for a big ol' pregnant lady, but they didn't. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if the one lady had the power to do so, she would have lit me on fire and sent me to hell using only her soul-piercing gaze. What they all didn't realize is that I was probably the only one out of all of the people there who HAD to get my blood drawn at a certain time. Boy, were they ever mad. I could still hear them arguing with the poor phelbotomist when I left.

Dear Complaint Department

I wanted to resist the urge to write anything on here tonight because my mother always told me that if I didn't have anything good to say, I should say nothing at all. Unfortunately, I am currently fasting (doctor's orders) to get ready for my glucose test tomorrow, so it's pretty hard to resist anything besides food. Actually, I don't even want food. I just want a giant glass of water. Giant. I'm really thirsty. Sandpaper tongue thirsty. My directions from the hospital tell me that I can only have water in small quantities though. Probably a giant glass of water isn't a small quantity.

I guess I have some good news. The first day of school was pretty good. I only heard one kid say that they wanted to kill themselves because they had me as their teacher. It's funny, when I set out to become an English teacher, inducing suicidal thoughts was never one of my goals. Just an unanticipated perk I guess.

I kind of forgot how melodramatic teenagers can be though. They are pretty funny sometimes. The school has a new name badge ID policy where the kids and teachers have to wear these goofy IDs on lanyards all day long. Guess who gets to enforce the new policy? The teachers. As if we aren't busy with anything else....The excuses started right away. "The lanyard bothers my neck." "I forgot." "I'm just keeping mine on my desk." "Mine's in my pocket." "I didn't know we actually had to wear them." God help them all when they have jobs and have to wear a badge to work. God help them even more if they're me and they're responsible for a bunch of people who refuse to wear their IDs.

Yee Haw...A New Post

Well, I haven't posted in so long and I'd like to say that it's been because I've been so busy brewing up this baby, but I will admit that it's more because of myspace. Myspace is the teufel.

My pregnancy counter on myspace says that I will have been pregnant 200 days tomorrow. That's a lot of days to do anything. It's especially a lot of days to feel like crap. That's the price you pay for bringing new life into the world though.

People keep telling me that I won't be able to sleep all day when the baby comes. Are they for real? Maybe I can just add him to the bed along with the dogs and the cat. I think there's probably room.

No More Teachers' Dirty Looks

Oh, oh, oh....school's out. I don't know how, but somehow I survived this stupid, stupid year. For once, I am done on Friday and I don't have to go back next week to finish anything up. Knowing how this year has been though, I'll probably have to go to teacher court. My friend had to go to teacher court once. Teacher court is when some self-righteous parent wants to challenge a grade that you've give and you have to go explain how you arrived at the grade. I mean, I wouldn't expect to have any problems normally, but with this year, I've learned to expect the unexpected.

So, let's celebrate. Wait, I can't. Okay. You celebrate for me. Go ahead and have a nice cranberry vodka for me. That's my favorite drink (usually). I'll just sit here and drink my Snapple Iced Tea. No, that's sad, isn't it? I do need to celebrate somehow. Okay, I've got it. You can watch this video that combines two of my very favorite things into one.

China is Stealing All the Rain

Is it just me, or should China think this whole deal over a little bit more than they have??


China rolls out the big guns, aiming for a dry Olympics
Updated 6/29/2006 9:04 PM ET

By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

FRAGRANT HILLS, China — When he's not tending cherry orchards outside Beijing, Yu Yonggang can be found behind the twin barrels of a 37mm anti-aircraft gun, blasting shells at passing clouds.

Yu is one of 37,000 peasants enlisted by the Chinese government to help produce rain in parched areas. The 45-year-old farmer works with China's other trigger-happy rain men to water the crops, break up damaging hailstorms and put out forest fires. After a sandstorm blew through the capital in May, he lobbed shells and rockets skyward to coax rains that washed sand and grit from city streets.

Now Yu and the other rainmakers face their toughest challenge: making sure it stays dry for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. The idea is for the peasant gunners to work with meteorologists watching radar in the capital. Together, they will hunt pregnant rain clouds and pound them with rockets containing silver iodide. The hope is that any moisture will fall before the clouds can threaten the parade of athletes and lighting of the Olympic flame at the new National Stadium.

China's leaders want the Games to be a showcase for the country's astonishing economic development. The cloud-busting effort shows how far they will go to ensure that nothing interferes with the pageantry.

Yu, who wears a green military jacket and helmet in his gunner's seat, is already feeling pressure to perform. "The whole world will be watching the ceremony," he says. "We must guarantee its success."

In August, the Beijing Weather Modification Office will place the area's 20 firing sites on standby for a major test. In the Fragrant Hills west of Beijing, Yu and six others at the Man-Made Hail-Prevention and Rain-Increasing Work Station will be at the ready, manning four anti-aircraft batteries, which are army castoffs from the 1960s. Yu's wife will talk to Beijing by walkie-talkie, getting the all-clear from aviation authorities and relaying the firing order from the meteorologists. Yu says he hopes to dissipate any clouds completely, increasing the barrage and concentrating his fire if necessary.

Two summers from now, "if rain clouds are headed toward the Olympic stadium, we will intercept them," says Zhang Qiang, a "weather modifier" at the Beijing Meteorological Bureau who will issue the command. "But I can't guarantee the ceremony (will be dry). If there is a big rainstorm, I have no way to stop it."

The U.S. pioneered cloud-seeding in the 1940s and '50s, but the government has cooled on its effectiveness, leaving the field to specialist companies. In China, among the most water-poor nations, the state tries to squeeze every drop from above.

"China has the largest rainmaking (operation) in the world," ahead of Russia and Israel, says professor Wang Guanghe, a 20-year rainmaking veteran at China's Meteorological Sciences Academy. "Each province reports results to us of between 10% to 25%" additional rainfall.

The Chinese government rarely shirks nature's challenge. It recently completed the $25 billion Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, which was built despite the objections of environmentalists at home and abroad. Weather manipulation is an enthusiastic past-time for Beijing, possibly because so many of the country's Communist leaders are engineers.

The forecast calls for more rain. China's five-year plan urges an increase in man-made precipitation. Central planners want an additional 65 billion cubic yards a year — nearly enough to fill the Yellow River, the country's second-largest river.

China began cloud-busting in 1958. Now "it is increasing every year," says Wang, who cites the drought plaguing northern China as the main reason to fire rain-inducing shells or soar into the skies in cloud-seeding airplanes.

Any chemical fallout is negligible, Wang says. "We have found no evidence of pollution in the rain."

The need for rainwater has produced squabbles on the ground. Two years ago, five thirsty cities in Henan province accused each other of "cloud theft" for their efforts to trigger chemically induced showers.

Older generations of Chinese used to beat bells to pray for rain, Yu recalls. Today, he puts his faith in cigarette-sized sticks of chemicals loaded inside rockets and shells. "Every time we fire, it rains — lightly or heavily," says the farmer, who earns $125 a month during the May-to-September firing season. "At first, the other villagers didn't believe we could make it rain, but most accept it now."

In the Fragrant Hills, locals complain about noise from Yu's guns. He says he's had to fit the firing station with thicker glass because powerful shocks from his anti-aircraft barrages smashed windows.

Annual training programs and the use of licenses have curbed accidents among China's rainmakers, Wang says. Even so, a passerby in southwest Chongqing was killed by part of a rain cannon that flew off during firing in May.

Zhang, the Beijing meteorologist, says most farmers see the benefit of cloud-seeding and welcome chemically induced rains. Five years ago, a storm near the capital killed 139 ducks, crushing them with hailstones. Today, such incidents are rare, she says.

Rain won't be the only threat when the Olympics take place in 2008. Beijing's smog is as big a threat to China's image-makers as a few raindrops.

That's somebody else's problem, says weather guru Zhang: "I can't do anything about the air pollution."

Occupational Hazards

This is about the point in the year when I really start feeling sorry for myself and wonder why I ever thought it would be a good idea to try to teach English to teenagers.

I sometimes think about other people's jobs and how comparatively normal they must be. For example, unless you are also a teacher, you probably did not have to say the following things while you were at work this week:

1. Why are you throwing a medicine ball in the middle of the hallway?

2. Please take out your earphones while I'm talking to you.

3. Why did I kick you off the computer yesterday? I kicked you off the the computer because you were searching wikipedia for the word nipple. That's really not appropriate.

4. What are you spitting into your Gatorade bottle?

5. Twice and two times mean the same thing.

6. I don't think it's wise to compare immigration to the United States by illegal aliens to the vacation that you took to Mexico over spring break.

7. There is no movie version of Catcher in the Rye.

8. Why are you cutting your hair in the middle of class?

And...unless you are a teacher, you most certainly did not get an email like this one:

Between 1st and 2nd hour a student sprayed “super fart smell” from a can in the A building & the south breezeway to B building. It was very strong and we have opened doors to clear the air.

We have identified a suspect and will take care of that end.

Please DO NOT share the specifics with the students as that will only encourage future incidents.

Actually, I have to fess up. I was not actually a victim of the super fart smell incident. The email above was sent to all the teachers at the OTHER high school in the district and one of my friends from the other school forwarded the email to me to let me know what a good day she was having.

Only a few more weeks to go...

What the World Needs Now

I just got a cell phone. Stop laughing. I said stop. I can't believe how much that stupid little thing can do. I remember when we could program computers to draw a square on the screen and we thought it was genius. Nowadays, the kids wouldn't even be impressed by a hexagon. Times have changed.
Here's my point though.... If my cell phone can do all kinds of crazy crap, I would like technology to help me out in other areas of my life too. Here's what I want: a self-maintaining refrigerator. I want to be able to pull my car up to Meijers and have some guy run out of the store at full speed to load my trunk up with groceries to last me for the next week. Best of all, because technology will have advanced so much, I won't even have to get my credit card out. Nope, they'll just have like this little scanner thing in my trunk and the guy will scan it and say, "You're all set ma'am; have a good one." And I'll say, "See you next week Joseph." His name will be Joseph.
Then, if the poeple who come up with all this garbage get really good, I won't have to leave my house at all. Nope. You see, there will be a chute that is open up on the roof of my house. Helicopters or airplanes will fly over and drop food through the chute into my refrigerator. It will be excellent. There will have to be some kind of scanner type thing that knows what kind of food I am out of, but I assume that this will be no problem. Look at my cell phone for God's sake. And a refrigerator is a lot bigger than a cell phone.
What about all the technology dummies you say? You know, they won't like all this automated crap. Oh, you mean like the people who still write checks at the grocery store? Who writes checks anymore? I don't even know where my checks are half the time. I know it's very unsafe and all, but that's the truth. Well, anyway, we'll still have the store open for those losers. They can go fill up their carts and pay with a check and be real slow. They can also park their carts length-wise across the aisle so that all the other losers can't get by. They can also have 5 or 6 brats following them around the store bouncing a basketball going, "Mom, can we buy this? Can we get this?" It won't matter because I won't go in the store because Joseph will come out and fill up my trunk with all the necessities. Or the helicopter will fly over (nice, right?) No, I won't even know that there are losers in the world anymore because I won't have to associate with them any longer. Meijer will have to post new signs by the checkout. Instead of "Express Lane" and "Candy Free Lane", every lane will say, "If you are a loser, stand here."

Who Was the One Who Thought THIS Was a Good Idea???

By BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writer Fri Feb 16, 7:07 PM ET

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A mile offshore from this city's high-rise condos and spring-break bars lie as many as 2 million old tires, strewn across the ocean floor — a white-walled, steel-belted monument to good intentions gone awry.

The tires were unloaded there in 1972 to create an artificial reef that could attract a rich variety of marine life, and to free up space in clogged landfills. But decades later, the idea has proved a huge ecological blunder.

Little sea life has formed on the tires. Some of the tires that were bundled together with nylon and steel have broken loose and are scouring the ocean floor across a swath the size of 31 football fields. Tires are washing up on beaches. Thousands have wedged up against a nearby natural reef, blocking coral growth and devastating marine life.

"The really good idea was to provide habitat for marine critters so we could double or triple marine life in the area. It just didn't work that way," said Ray McAllister, a professor of ocean engineering at Florida Atlantic University who was instrumental in organizing the project. "I look back now and see it was a bad idea."

In fact, similar problems have been reported at tire reefs worldwide.

"They're a constantly killing coral-destruction machine," said William Nuckols, coordinator for Coastal America, a federal group involved in organizing a cleanup effort that includes Broward County biologists, state scientists and Army and Navy salvage divers.

Gov. Charlie Crist's proposed budget includes $2 million to help gather up and remove the tires. The military divers would do their share of the work at no cost to the state by making it part of their training.

A monthlong pilot project is set for June. The full-scale salvage operation is expected to run through 2010 at a cost to the state of about $3.4 million.

McAllister helped put together the ill-fated reef project with the approval of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He helped raise several thousand dollars (the county also chipped in), organized hundreds of volunteers with boats and barges, and got tires from Goodyear.

Goodyear also donated equipment to bind and compress the tires, and the Goodyear blimp even dropped a gold-painted tire into the ocean in a ceremonial start to the project.

The tire company issued a press release at the time that proclaimed the reef would "provide a haven for fish and other aquatic species," and noted the "excellent properties of scrap tires as reef material."

It was a disappointment, just like other tire reefs created off coastal states and around the world in recent decades.

"We've literally dumped millions of tires in our oceans," said Jack Sobel, an Ocean Conservancy scientist. "I believe that people who were behind the artificial tire reef promotions actually were well-intentioned and thought they were doing the right thing. In hindsight, we now realize that we made a mistake."

No one can say with certainty why the idea doesn't work, but one problem is that, unlike large ships that have been sunk for reefs, tires are too light. They can be swept away by the tides and powerful storms before marine life has a chance to attach. Some scientists also believe the rubber leaches toxins.

Virginia tried it several decades ago. But Hurricane Bonnie in 1998 ripped the tires loose, and they washed up in North Carolina.

New Jersey scientists thought they had a solution to the weight problem. In 1986, the state began a small reef project with about 1,000 tires split in half, bound together and weighted with concrete. It didn't work. Pieces of rubber broke loose and floated free.

"We had to go up and down the coast of New Jersey and collect 50 to 100 of those pieces that were all along the beaches," said Hugh Carberry of New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection.

The state then tried stacking tires 10-high and filling the cylindrical center with concrete. Each stack weighed about a ton. While the tires stayed in place, scientists soon learned they did not have enough surface area for marine life to attach, so they switched to using concrete balls.

Indonesia and Malaysia mounted enormous tire reef programs back in the 1980s and are just now seeing the consequences in littered beaches and reef damage, Sobel said.

Most states have stopped using tires to create reefs, but they continue to wash up worldwide. In 2005, volunteers for the Ocean Conservancy's annual international coastal cleanup removed more than 11,000 tires.

The tires retrieved from the waters off Fort Lauderdale will be ground up for use in road projects and burned for fuel, among other uses.

"It's going to be a huge job bringing them all up," said Michael Sole, chief of the state Department of Environmental Protection. "It's vigorous work. You have to dig the tires out of the sand."

My New Favorite Video

Watch all the way til the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oOz4q-QP08

Work then Pedi then MEXICO!

Here's the equation:
Work
(except my school doesn't have turrets).

















Then


(Except there will probably be some Asian guy by my feet instead of flowers)



















Then

Mexico.....

Click it.

For Tania

I started to feel bad about posting this, but then I remembered that Fergie's stupid song is like number one on the charts and she makes millions of dollars, so now I don't feel so bad. So, here goes.
How does someone so un-photogenic end up so famous? How are you allowed to sing on TV, the radio, and everywhere else when you just really can't? It's these kinds of questions that make the universe so confusing. I guess recording studios with their fancy overlaying can make anyone a singer. And make-up can make anyone look halfway decent.
Here's the problem though. Eventually, people will realize that you can't sing, Ferg. They will. Won't they? Eventually all the background dancers in the world and additional non-singers won't be able to cover up your non-talent.
Tasty! Tasty!

Let's Hear Some Good News

I just got done reading what was possibly the most depressing article ever. The first few lines are:
"It would be a lot easier to enjoy your life if there weren't so many things trying to kill you every day. The problems start even before you're fully awake."
The article is called "How Americans are Living Dangerously." Here's a link in case you want to be totally depressed on purpose.

I also looked at CNN. It appears that dork of a country--China--has blown up a satellite--on purpose. Apparently it was bothering them being up above the earth so high that they just had to knock it down so that the idea of a useless satellite in space wouldn't keep them up at night. Well, that would be quite all right with me except that CNN/Time says, "The James Bond-style exercise left a several-hundred- meter-wide cloud of scrap metal floating around in space. Some of the debris could pose a threat to spacecraft passing through the region, scientists say, and will remain a problem for hundreds of years to come. And there will be repercussions on Earth, too." So, really, they didn't get rid of the satellite completely. They just broke it up into a million little pieces much like James Frey or Mike Teavee from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Here's something else that's ticks me off: the article never says what the repercussions on Earth will be. Is this going to affect the weather? Really, we don't need to be shooting things out of the sky. Just let them stay up there, China.

Same Blog, Different Colors

Do you like the new color scheme? Well, it doesn't really matter if you do or not because I'm not changing it back. I figure that this way the writing stretches all the way across the page. What a novel idea, huh?

Time to Vote

You know those songs that you hear and it makes you think of the good ol' days? Like Johnny Holden parties and such. Well, I guess it probably only makes you think of Johnny Holden parties if you are Kelly, Amanda, Chip, or me. But anywho, you know what I mean. So, what are your favorite good ol' days party songs? I'm going to tell you right now that I'm putting No Diggety on the list. I'm sure Kelly will second that motion.

Oh No!

OH NO! Poor Southern California. They don't know what to do with themselves. They are SO cold. Wah. Wah.
What are they going to do? They can't even wear their bikinis around today! Oh NO! Get out your winter coats! What? You don't have any? All you own are bikinis and beach wear? Oh, my bad.

Crippling Ice Storm

Well, I was just on The Weather Channel's website. It seems that we're in for a CRIPPLING ICE STORM!!!! It would be bad enough if I saw that there was an ice storm headed our way. I think it's rather unnecessary to add the word CRIPPLING. Watch out, Texas! It seems that you are getting the worst of it. DAMAGING ICING!!! This sounds like one apocalyptic ice storm if you ask me.
Wow. In other news, scientists are moving the doomsday clock forward this week.

I Knew There Was a Secret!

Now that I've read this article, I think I could be well on my way to infamy if I wanted to....

How to become "teacher of the year" article.

Calling All Ladies

Danger! Danger! Brad Pitt is beginning to look OLD! AHHH!!!! What is going on?
Oh, wait. I know. Stupid Angelina J. What is wrong with your big lips that you're making Brad Pitt look so old?







He's starting to look like...dare I say it? Arnie!! Egad.















Let's take a stroll down memory lane and remember what good ol' BP looked like in the good ol' days.




















Even when he wore a dress and thought he was a space monkey, he looked better than now with stupid AJ. What's wrong with you Brad Pitt? Geez.