o_O

Among the Yiddish words commonly used in American English, Miss Gokey's favorite is "kevetch." We were bantering back and forth today about the fact that Carl Azuz was lookin' good for his broadcast, and this word came up again.

This post is not kevetching, it's fishing for compliments.

6 a.m. Facebook mobile app allows me to receive, but not post, messages and status updates
7 a.m. Arrival to school
7:30 a.m. Structured teacher planning meeting
8 a.m. Advisory goal-setting
9 a.m.-12:20 "Why is Africa the Way it is Today?"
12:20-12:40 Lunch
12:40-2:16 more "Why is Africa the Way it is Today?"
2:16-2:41 o_O
2:41-6:42 Promethean training (including transport)

And now it is 6:42 and that's enough kevetching.

OH, and also 23 hours ago, I had my very first ever skype call. Thank you, Amanda Otradovec.

So you can see that because I am a total beast, I have survived this very challenging day, including a few gems left unmentioned in my itinerary, such as a seemingly-endless 4-minute conversation with a certain child whose good side it pays me to stay on. That's horrible grammar, but if you have followed my career this year, you know exactly what I mean.

The purpose of this page is to bring you skills that you will need and use. Therefore I will share with you, if you care to read onward, the final crowning achievement of my day: How to Effectively Insert Containers in a Flipchart Page.

Because I am going to spend some time with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ansel Adams to reaffirm my faith in all things good, I will give you these skills via a web link you could easily find yourself if you were inclined to google the above concept. Sadly, the most useful video of the several I've reviewed so you don't have to is Australian, and proudly waves their flag to prove it.

Before pasting the link, I would like to express my displeasure with my 2nd-least-favorite word after "just," which is, "simply." I encountered the demon word "simply" several times while setting up the skype equipment.

Ok, now I'm really finished with kevetching for the day.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=how+to+insert+containers+in+a+flipchart&view=detail&mid=D9D9DB829C91CE1B7484D9D9DB829C91CE1B7484&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR&qpvt=how+to+insert+containers+in+a+flipchart

A Week and a Half Later...Or, The "Cake"

Wow! Time flies when your internet browser, where your blogging page taunts you every time you log into it, cannibalizes itself and you are no longer faced with the Blogger logo because you now use GoogleChrome. Are you with me so far?

Time also flies when you accidentally assume that you told all twelve of your readers (but now you're down to 2 readers because you deprived the readers of your brilliance for 1.5 weeks) about the "cake" already, because you told them in your mind. Then crazy (non-blog-related) things happen like you guard the cash box for the multicultural club's talent show, you learn that someone died, the cops show up, there's a windstorm, and then you have to log 4 hours of at-home Promethean lesson design, and then...

According to the French proverb, "He who makes excuses accuses himself." I also found a good Aldous Huxley quote that goes like this: "Several excuses are always less convincing than one."

This will be my last post about the sometimes-brilliant, sometimes-dingbatty Emily Thacker. It is a call to action and a cry for help. You see, when I was in college, I attempted to make a souffle. It came out of the oven more a cracker than a souffle.

In The Vinegar Book, Emily Thacker includes recipes for flavored vinegars, stuffed peppers, and one for something called, "Cherry-Pineapple Vinegar Cake," which goes a little something like this:
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons vinegar
1 teaspoon soda
3/4 lb. flour
3/4 c. butter
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 tsp allspice
1/2 lb. candied cherries
1/2 lb. candied pineapple

Here are the directions, right?
"Stir the vinegar into the milk, add the soda and stir briskly. Cream butter, sugar, and flour together and add the fruit and allspice. Fold in the milk and beat well. Bake in well greased pan at 350 for 1 hour."

I made the mistake of following these directions in the order that they were printed.

I also made the mistake of attempting the stirring-soda-into-buttermilk (because everybody knows that milk+vinegar=homemade buttermilk) step...in a cereal bowl. Here's what happened:

*stir*stir*stir*
LARGE WHITECAP OF FROTHY FOAM PROPAGATES QUICKLY FROM CEREAL BOWL.
Me: AAAAAAARGH! [runs to the cabinet, pulls out LARGE mixing bowl, pours in fluffy goodness.]

Lalalala butter+sugar+flour *mix*mix*mix*

+fruit
+spices

Then, I look at the formerly-fluffy-frothy buttermilk mixture, and it's liquid. It was not at all fluffy or frothy anymore. I suspected that my "cake" would fail when the directions said "fold," but I no longer had anything to fold, so I poured.

Then I beat it like it was the proverbial redheaded stepchild.

I'm just not good at folding ingredients into other ingredients.

Result: cherry-pineapple-vinegar cracker.

Fail.

PLEASE try this at home. But save the whitecap step for last. And then tell me what happened. In the meantime, I will look around for some blog fodder for you for next time.

And Another Thing...

In my last post I told you about Emily Thacker's The Vinegar Book. While I was checking on the hyperlink for it, I came across another book by the same author: The Magic of Hydrogen Peroxide.

This was of interest to me due to the recent purchase at my local CVS of (drum roll) hydrogen peroxide in a spray bottle! WooHoo!

I therefore had The Magic of Hydrogen Peroxide whispernetted into my Kindle (what's this? Technology? Yeah, I use it...)

Here is what I gleaned from the booklet and thought might be of interest to my readers:

We all know that H.P. is miraculous for use on cuts and scrapes, but DID YOU KNOW that it must be used in moderation or it might actually slow the healing process by reversing blood flow to the capillaries? That's right...

Ms. Thacker recommends HP for use in the dishwasher, to wash vegetables, and in a tooth-whitening paste. A soak in a mix of one cup HP added to a foot path can also apparently cure stinky feet if done a couple of times a week.

She lists the products HP can replace: bleach, tub and shower cleaner, laundry pretreater, tile and grout cleaner, oven cleaner, antibacterial treater, antimicrobal sprays, toilet bowl cleaner, and window cleaner.

Apparently HP, when diluted with water, can help tomato plants succeed, and it can fluff up droopy house plants.

However.

Peroxide is also used as an ingredient in military fuels. Therefore, one must never. Ever. Drink it.

Unless of course commanded to do so by a trusted medical professional.

There you have it. Another item for your kit. May it serve you well.

Stalling Again

An update on the thorn which is still in my thumb: tonight it festered itself out of there, but when I tried to grab it with some tweezers, it burrowed back into the squishy soft bits of my thumb-flesh. This thorn will surely kill me.

In other news, back when I was obsessed with vinegar, my mother sent me The Vinegar Book. It arrived while my Granny was here, and I thought it was all 1970s, only to find out that it was published in 1994. I must have missed the vinegar boat while enjoying my junior year at HHS.

Apparently I was obsessed with the wrong kind of vinegar, after buying 5 gallons of the white stuff. The money vinegar is the apple cider variety according to author Emily Thacker. She basically claims that vinegar can heal everything, including the common cold. Get a load of this:

"To chase away a cold, soak an eight-inch square of brown paper (cut from a paper grocery bag) in apple cider vinegar. When the paper is saturated, sprinkle it with pepper and bind to the chest with cloth strips, pepper side of the paper next to the skin. After 20 minutes, remove the paper and wash the chest, being careful not to become chilled."

Seriously, if my mother had tried to bind a pepper-sprinkled vinegar-soaked grocery bag to me in 1994, I would have called the asylum on her, and possibly also DCFS.

Also olive oil + apple cider vinegar = sunscreen.

I don't know about Emily Thacker. She must have a really good agent. I don't have a cold, so I can't try the paper bag trick for you, and my face is oily enough without slathering E.V.O.O. on it, but I guarantee that I will try something from this book and report back to you before the month of April is out.

Until then, you know where to stock up.

Truancy

So, the last 48 hours have been unbelievably active.

I congratulated myself on all that I accomplished, created a memo in my Sidekick that included 11 new things to accomplish, did something that wasn't even on the list, which I'll tell you about briefly, played Plants vs. Zombies for an hour, then decided to take the rest of the night off.

You will notice that my amazon store, instead of containing 70 books and CDs, has been reduced to just two items.

You will also notice that my wish lists have been updated. I'm a big fan of lists. I like to check things off. In fact, I added cleaning out my amazon store to my list of things to do, just so I could check it off. I'm an INFJ, after all.

My friends, if you do not have wish lists, you should. Unless you are ESTP. Haha.

Good night. Look for an actual TOPIC the next time I post. ;)

See Below for Long Title

I have decided to post to the blog before doing anything else tonight, because there is a lot to cover and not a lot of time to cover it. Allow me to dump out the contents of my scrambled brain here. For absolute proof that my brain is scrambled, consider this:

I am doing laundry while still wearing pants and not pajamas. This is not supposed to happen. Pants are supposed to go into the washer immediately before pouring the detergent into the machine. So, I present to you: Mostly A Random Collection of Images, Multiple Shout-Outs, and the Inevitable Plug for my Cousin's Band.

First, a gift from Jodi's son, seen during their family trip to New York this week for his Spring Break:

If you look closely, you can see the two of them in the reflection. Thank you very much for that! 

Speaking of Spring Break, here's what we missed from the Disaster Preparedness Calendar during mine. The calendar stayed here, and I went traipsing around in my home state. 

For supplies, we needed to get sterile gauze pads and first aid tape. For planning, we were supposed to find a place for our families to shelter-in-place. Teachers are of course familiar with sheltering-in-place because occasionally gunmen run around in our neighborhoods and we have to lock down our students. I've inserted a handy hyperlink for you in case you don't know what to do. 

Next, while making our way to our gate at Midway, Miss Gokey and I ran into this image of McGruff the Crime Dog, whose website has some handy games to play to teach children how to defeat society's trendiest scapegoat, the omnipresent bully. I have made the image extra large so that hopefully you can read it. 

I should add "My iTunes Account is Playing with my Head" as an item in the long title of this post. In the immortal words of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, "When life seems like easy street, there is danger at your door." 

Speaking of bands (nice transition, huh?), I have noticed that Shiloh has a habit of playing shows a few days before I arrive into town, and then again a few days after I leave. I am therefore launching a campaign to get them to turn one of the frontmen's songs into a song for the band, so that if I ever see them, he can sing it for me. If you're up for it, please join me in my campaign by sending the title DE NADA to their twitter handle at @shilohchicago. 

With that, I must say that it has been nice procrastinating with you this evening. So, for the piece de resistance, I present to you THE CHAIN. You can't see it, because it's right where it is attached to the wall, but tomorrow's link reads, "Almost There!" Indeed. Returning to the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "...what I want to know is...where does the time go?" 

LITMB, 

geotrix/jane