Ta da!

Ta da actually references the moment that I threw a champagne bottle at my laptop in my imagination.

After tinkering (wrestling) with blogger all afternoon, I finally got myself a blog. Blogblogblog. I'm still not sure how I feel about that word. Yes, it's nearly midnight here. No, I didn't spend the whole night trying to figure this out either.

Anyways, some thoughts that ocurred to me as I did this:

1) The big mushroom in the sky- for some reason, Len's farewell letter for our 11th grade English class that reminded us of the absurdity/profundity of the whole transcendentalist oversoul concept really stuck with me over the years, and popped into my head for... maybe no reason, as I berated my internet connection.

2) How bizarre it is that tomatoface.blogspot.com and all its punctuated variations is actually unavailable. Ok, so I actually just looked it up... dude's not even using it.

3) That the only unusual nickname I have is, in fact, "Tomato Face." And that I've grown attached to it over the years.

Currently, my ipod is behaving strangely.

Earlier, I made fried rice. It was the first from-scratch thing I've made since I got here. And it really sucked! Not sure what went wrong... although... perhaps the rice was too sticky (rather large rice cooker is of a different ilk than I'm used to), and perhaps the soy sauce wasn't salty enough. One thing I do know is that in my laziness, I convinced myself that it was unnecessary to salt the eggs. As trivial as that may seem, I wish I'd done so just so I'd know whether that was the crux or not.

I fried rice tonight because it never ocurred to me this afternoon to eat. I think it's something I meant to do before I went to teach my 7-9, but... I didn't? Not totally sure why. Also I didn't have a real lunch or breakfast, so...

What I did do today was make a powerpoint presentation about food and the home... implements, appliances, ingredients, fruits, veggies, place settings, and so on. I was working on adding photos around lunchtime, and coupled with the nice smells coming from my neighbors' apartments, they were making me really hungry. But I think I just ate some bread and peanut butter. And a pear.

This morning, I really had to force myself out of bed. I had to work on the presentation, because at that point I was still planning on using it in my high school class. This class was cancelled a few hours later, but I would have been done in time. And I still needed to use it for my class at the training center. So I got out of bed... sorta nauseous... sort of... emotional?... and the first thing I did after sitting still on the couch for a few minutes and all those hygiene things was to make myself a strong cup of coffee.

Later, I really regretted the coffee. I was so strung out that I didn't know what to do with myself. I was like, inches away from losing control of my body completely, but as it was, my eyes were really wide and stuff.

Then I had a scare when my computer started doing some really frightening shit, and I mean stuff it hasn't done since I had the motherboard repaired/replaced (I actually don't know exactly what they did with it). I think it might be ok now?

Also, Alice was gone all day, so not having my usual amount of human contact sort of skewed my perception a bit probably.

Anyways, class today went ok. I think actually maybe the powerpoint was boring. There was a lot of new stuff in it, and I guess maybe folks didn't pick up as much of it as I'd hoped they would. I sort of made it with high schoolers in mind, and expected to spice it up with many rousing activities (cough). But I did get to chat a few minutes with the students in small groups, which is my favorite part. It's more like hang-out time, and I'm not really sure what everyone else does when I'm with each group... haven't worked out those kinks yet (had a Mrs. Barber graduation flashback that would have been especially inappropriate here). But I like talking to them!

Returned Brokeback Mountain to the rental place having seen only about a minute of it before the VCD went all flaaaah. So they traded me Ant Bully. And one of my training center students found me there and offered to lend me Brokeback Mountain on Thursday, so that's pretty sweet.

Ok, had an observation but forgot it. These things happen, I suppose!