A scientific inquiry: If one eats an apple immediately after eating a few caramels, will it taste 1/16 as good as a caramel apple? Let’s find out!
Rainy days and Tuesday always get me down
Of course, now that it’s cold and rainy outside, there’s no hot water!
Mummy, my teeth don’t fit
There is something so delightfully trashy about The New York Post. The gratuitous puns, the overt bias, the crazy pictures… Today I was skimming it and ran across the Weird But True section. The following two blurbs had me shaking with laughter during a prep period:
Vocabulary lessons from my students
I knew teaching at an inner-city middle school in Harlem would always raise eyebrows. I kind of like when people look at me - a skinny, fair, white girl from Texas - and incredulously say, “You? In Harlem?” It’s like they’ve just found out I’m a secret agent or ninja or nutcase.
The meaty belch of opportunity
My employment luck has continued. You know that I have a new position at I.S. 666 where I teach three forty-five minute classes per week and otherwise work with students individually or in small groups. You know I got a tutoring job where I totally set my own hours for at least $30 an hour. I’ve now been hired for the prep academy job where I’ll be teaching five hours for nineteen Saturday sessions at $36.50 an hour. The tutoring and prep academy jobs haven’t started yet, but I’m excited about these recent opportunities. I get to teach something I love to more dedicated students and get paid well for it. My schedule is bound to change, and I’ll have to start waking up when the super bellows loudly on Saturday mornings, but this can work.
Prep
I’ve spent the last few days devouring Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. I read about the novel in The New York Times last year, and I must say it’s shaken up my confidence in my own writing in the best of ways. Some of Sittenfeld’s prose about boarding school outsiderdom is just perfect.
Right at home
I got home after walking around in the rain and cold yesterday to find that the radiator was working. Finally! It makes a fabulous wheezing noise and (I hope) will enable me to get out of bed with more enthusiasm. Each morning, I have to wake up, pull the covers over my head as I curl into a ball, and count at least three minutes one second at a time. I have to physically prepare for the cold startle when my bare feet touch the floor. In apartment buildings, the super controls when the radiator will come on. Some buildings have a system that turns them on once temperatures drop to a certain point. Mine depends on some rude guy named Pedro. I’m making this up. The super’s Dominican, I hear he’s rude, but I don’t know him or his name.
Leaf under heels
Sam was in Idaho last weekend for his sister’s wedding. Idaho is apparently beautiful and clean, but has few Democrats, independent movie theaters, and video stores. I’ll concede that that’s a huge downfall, but I won’t look down on the fact that unlike NYC, it’s already fall there.
Somebody call Dashboard Confessional
It’s an emo kid’s dream tonight. The chill of the air nips at sluggish Friday feet in the streets. Everyone should be going out tonight if not for any planned occasion, then merely to celebrate that tonight is a night one can go out and stay out late. Sleeping is a more flexible recreational activity, rather than a lacking necessity. But. The sun never came out, so all day has been a coma. One wants to just pull the plug and make the forecast rain start already. Go ahead. Totally hinder my day/night.
