superfluous6's Xanga

the one in which she sets the oven on fire

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:18:49 GMT

so my first "wifely" task (before i officially become a wife, of course) has failed...yesterday was aaron's birthday, and i went through the trouble of getting the exact recipe of cheesecake from his mother that he loves love loves. it was quite the labor of love to crush the graham cracker, mix butter, and whip cream cheese, all without an electric mixer! but it finally ended up in the cheesecake pans and in the oven...

...and then the flames started.

i'm not exactly sure when the flames started, really. we heard a sizzling and realized that my brand-new spring form pan (thanks, mom) was leaking some of the 1 pound worth of butter in the cheesecake--we put a cookie sheet under the pan to hold the dripping so it could continue baking. then the oven started smoking, but my roommate and i decided this might be normal, so we turned the oven fan on and continued watching gilmore girls (what else?).

about fifty minutes in, i saw the first flames. well, not the first ones, i'm sure, but the first ones that we happened to notice. catherine opened all the windows in the apartment and turned on some extra fans, and just as we were calling emergency maintenance, the flames stopped.

i'm sort of afraid to try the cheesecake. i'm sure it probably has a lovely half-burnt smell to it, although the flames never actually touched the food.

oh, and our apartment smells like campfire.

with grading papers, there's always an adventure waiting.

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 22:25:21 GMT

(excerpts, verbatim, from my 7th- and 8th-grade homework assignment last night. let's all keep in mind that my children are my children precisely because they cannot read, write, or process at a normal level.)

Question: Journal (from "The Outsiders"). Write a journal entry from the perspective of either Ponyboy or Johnny. Include three details of things that have happened to the character recently and how he feels about it. Write at least 8 sentences.

passage #1:
Johnny was so sared that He kill one of the soc. he haed to help his frinde Johnny or he cud did. I tanck they are going to go to jill. They hade run away and the have a gun. so they wont get jump or get in traboul. If I was Johnny I would be so scaer because I have kill somewon. I thanck they mat worck were there going to live and wand the get pay they pabley going to bay a house and there going to live likc the soc.

translation #1:
Johnny was so scared that he killed one of the Socs. He had to help his friend Johnny or he could die. I think they are going to go to jail. They had run away and they have a gun, so they won't get jumped or get in trouble. If I was Johnny, I would be so scared because I killed someone. I think they might work where they are going to live and when they get paid, they are probably going to buy a house and they're going to live like the Socs.

passage #2:
I would be Johnny because he is more intiresting. I would hve left to if I was him. Ponyboy do you think it was smart to lave. I think the Soda would be mad. He mite kill us. I think we should go back. No that is a bed wew! Il go to jail. We will nead more more money 50 will not be unufe.

translation #2:
I would be Johnny because he is more interesting. I would have left, too, if I was him.
"Ponyboy, do you think it was smart to leave? I think Soda would be mad. He might kill us. I think we should go back."
"No! That is a bad [wew]! I'll go to jail!"
"We will need more money. Fifty [dollars] will not be enough."

passage #3:
If I was in Johnny's plase. I would de shocked if I killed somedody. I wud do mut he did. ask dall for help. I wolb take a tran. out of the stat. I wald de happey to have a frand with me. I wold shared tow

translation #3:
If I was in Johnny's place, I would be shocked if I killed somebody. I would do what he did - ask Dally for help. I would take a train out of the state. I would be happy to have a friend with me. I would [shared tow...yeah, no idea what that one means]

um....how exactly am i expected to get these kids to pass a state test in the spring?

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 23:54:30 GMT

i'm engaged!

i'll post the whole story at some point in time, whenever i get the energy. but i'm not posting pictures of the ring, because the ring is way too pretty and the pictures don't do it justice. :)

words don't express. really.

i have a job!

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 19:32:28 GMT

so, i am officially (well, unofficially, since i haven't actually filled out the paperwork yet) employed at Hilliard City Schools! i'll be working at Memorial Middle School in the resource room as a teaching assistant. basically, it's a teaching position, since it requires a teaching license, but it doesn't have any of the planning/grading/outside work and it doesn't have as good a salary. i'm pretty excited about it, because it will give me a full-time job where i know where i'm going to work every day (it's monday-thursday, but i can choose whether or not to work each friday in the building) and a steady income. i can take a three-day weekend anytime i choose, i don't have to do any planning for lessons, and basically i run crowd control and small-group tutoring during the day. for what my options were, this is definitely the best deal i could think of.

the principal pretty much told me that if i do a great job for them this year, they'll do everything they can to get me hooked up with a fulltime teaching position in the building next year.

oh, and i'm going to be an assistant tennis coach for the tennis team! i'm pretty excited about that, too. the principal (also the head coach) told me that the boys' team may be looking for a new head coach this spring, so that might be an avenue i choose to pursue down the road.

school starts tomorrow....that's ok. getting hired more than 24 hours before school starts is overrated, i think. :)

life in columbus

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:49:33 GMT

i realize that i rarely update anymore, and possibly it is because there is both so much and so little happening, i'm not sure what to say.

catherine and i are more or less settled in columbus. we're still waiting on a few pieces of furniture and there are no wall decorations gracing our walls, but we managed to program the tv remote to include all of our separate pieces of technology, so i suppose that's a step in the right direction. i am writing a list of things that haphazardly got left at home during my hectic 12-hours of unpacking and repacking my life, so eventually everything forgotten will end up in columbus as well.

so far, both of us are still jobless, more or less. catherine has an interview monday for Pier One (she's a shoe-in) and i have meetings to fill out paperwork for several school districts early next week. still, the prospect of subbing looms relatively far away on the horizon, since school doesn't start for another two weeks and not many teachers need subs at the beginning of the school year. so i'm hoping another job at Barnes and Noble pulls through soon to give me something to do over the next month.

it's wonderful to live so close to aaron. we're about 15 minutes away from each other, which means that we more or less still maintain separate lives. however, it's close enough (sort of) to zip down the street for an hour or two in the evening if we want to see each other in person. the first few days felt frenzied--we were nearby, so we had to spend every moment together, because we're used to having that time limited to only a few hours. as the week progresses, it's settling into a more relaxed feeling. we can sit and talk for as long as we feel like it, but it is significantly easier to say good night at the end of the evening, knowing that our next encounter is hours or days away, instead of weeks.

i am surprised at the pace of our relationship as well. if someone would have told me four months ago that i would be dating someone this seriously and considering a future together, i'm not sure i would have believed it. things are almost frighteningly fast and yet surprisingly comfortable, because aaron is not a stranger; he is a man who has grown from a boy who has loved me forever, and it is enlightening to see his patience in waiting for me to reciprocate....surprisingly enough, reciprocating is the only thing that comes naturally to me right now, and i cannot imagine not wanting to.

enough sappy introspection. until next time.

and this is how i know that i'm a reader:

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 12:21:03 GMT

i am one hour away from finishing the last of the Harry Potter books. before, i was afraid to begin, because i knew without a doubt that the last installment could never live up to my expectations. now, i am irreversibly convinced that J.K. Rowling has created the best children's book series in history (past, present, and quite possibly future).

still, with each page that i turn, a part of me dies inside, because i know that i will never again run across literature quite like this.

i am not disappointed. i am, however, grieving its completion: mourning the end of the story that i have discovered, bit by bit, collectively with the rest of the world and yet very personally and privately.

it is quite possibly the most thrilling, and yet saddest, encounter that i will ever have with the not-quite-imaginary world of printed text on paper.

"of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Monday, July 16, 2007

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:59:49 GMT

my boyfriend and my roommate are out shopping for apartments right now (for catherine and i--aaron isn't included in the deal!)... this will be the first major time they spend together, so it's somewhat odd, especially since i don't get to be a fly on the wall and listen to the conversation.

catherine and i might be signing a lease today. the first place she went to looked okay, and they offered us a sweet deal if we sign today. they're doing some construction right now, so some parts look a little grungy at the moment, but we have an appointment at 2:00 to look at the actual apartment they have available...who knows!

it's a little frightening to be thinking about signing a lease before actually getting a job (or seeing the apartment in person). although i have the money, so i'm not necessarily worried about spending a month or so looking for a job, once i get to columbus. i'd rather have a place to live and look for a job than have a job and be frantically searching for a place to live.

*edit: we (they) found an apartment. i'm getting faxed the application. our lease will start august 4, the day after i'm done in chicago.

another HP spoiler (happy, sara?)

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 20:04:08 GMT

i found this article in the daily newspaper at Northwestern, and i'm copying it word for word because it says what i think better than i can say it right now.

Phoenix doesn't live up to hype
by Christian Blauvelt
"That's not in the book!" A girl sitting behind me must have said that about 25 times at the midnight screening of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." But at least they tried...slavishly. The fifth installment of the hugely successful series about the young wizard crams as much of the story as humanly possible into its 138-minute running time. It probably wasn't wise to do so. Turning a 900 page novel into the shortest movie of the series results in a rushed, superficial movie that falls terribly short of the perfect combination of whimsy and menage that previously defined the series. The magic is gone.
There are still fleeting moments of wonderment in "Order of the Phoenix." The wizands flying over London on their broomsticks at the beginning is a sight to behold. And nobody will ever be able to separate Imelda Staunton from Dolores Umbridge. The "Vera Drake" Oscar nominee perfectly captured the cloying, pastel tyranny of perhaps the most loathsome character from the books. And Helena Bonham Carter provides some of the only genuine menace in the movie with her completely unhinged performance as the brilliantly frayed Bellatrix Lestrange...but with only about two lines of dialogue.
The movie tries to cover so much ground in such a short time, though, that is all feels superficial. Rowling has created such unforgettable characters that it's sad to see them get such shallow treatment: Nymphadora Tonks, Kreacher, and Bellatrix Lestrange (although brilliant in her few moments to shine) are woefully underutilized.
This is probably the best British cast ever assembled for any film, but great actors like Maggie SMith, Michael Gordon, Alan Rickman, and Robbie Coltrane turn in little more than cameo appearances.
"Order of the Phoenix" needs either more wimsy or more menace, because it feels emotionally distancing. Certainly the absence of Voldemort from the story until the very end undermines the sense of omnipresent villainy we're led to believe the Dark Lord represents. Even his showdown duel with Dumbledore falls flat, as director David Yates never found compelling fight choreography for the wand battles. The final duel is five films in the making, and yet it wasn't even as interesting as when Yoda and Count Dooku crossed lightsabers at the end of "Star Wars."
Worst of all, when Harry suffers a major tragedy at the end of the film, he hardly even reacts compared to his emotional devastation when Cedric Diggory died. His acting in "Order of the Phoenix" seems only capable of expressing frustration or determination.
"Order of the Phoenix" isn't a bad movie by any means, but it just isn't as good as what we're used to. In the end, it feels like a dutiful exercise to slog through before we get to the good stuff. Let's hope the good stuff's coming.

okay, so i don't feel as strongly against the movie as the reviewer does, but i agree with most of it. tell me what you think.

harry potter #5

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:53:40 GMT

i saw the new Harry Potter movie last night at a midnight showing. as usual, it's taking me awhile to process...i can't decide if i like the movie as a whole. i like the cinematography and the music/lack of music. i dislike the cheesiness of the added lines. i dislike the added subplots. i like the deliberate cohesiveness of this movie to the others. i dislike the way sirius died (avada kedavra? really?) and other lot adaptations.

looking for other opinions...you should leave yours.

[note: i generally *hate* these movies the first time i see them, appreciate them the second time, and then eventually learn to love them. i'm a little confused that i'm so confused now, and i'm not sure if it's because i like it more or less than the other movies]

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 23:04:56 GMT

you know it was a hot day when it's 10:00 at night and 87 degrees outside, and it feels refreshingly cool. possibly even cool enough to put on more clothing.

the olympics were a success. my girls (and the boys who like them) think that i'm one of the coolest RAs on the planet. tomorrow is my night off. all in all, it's been a very good weekend.

highlight of my weekend: being pulled onto the dance floor by my girls into their elite inner circle and dancing to insane music. when the song "Hot in Herre" came on, i excused myself...i just couldn't bring myself to sing the words "so take off all your clothes" in front of a bunch of 15-year-olds. :)

~~~~~~
Rest of My Life
Blessid Union of Souls

I know you've heard the excuses before
So I won't waste your time and I'll keep this short
I've bound my emotions cause I can't afford to be wrong
I know we've talked about being good friends
So we've been real careful of the signals we've sent
But all of your glances they came and they went to my head

And I'm not about to throw words to the wind
When I said I love you that's what I meant
And I plan to show you if it takes me the rest of my life
The rest of my life
The rest of my life

I don't want to rush this 'cause my greatest fear
Is taking for granted what's taken us years
To build from the ground up with all of the tears that we cried
We've taken our time and for this I'm so glad
Now we can be sure that this moment will last
We've traveled a road of mistakes in our past to get here

And I'm not about to throw words to the wind
When I said I love you that's what I meant
And I plan to show you if it takes me the rest of my life
The rest of my life
The rest of my life