MORNING UPDATE -

Hi! So I'm doing NANOWRIMO.
What is that, you say? A very dumb endeavor.
NANOWRIMO stands for National Novel Writing in a Month.

All across the world, people sign up (for fun, no less!) and commit to write a 50,000 word manuscript during the month of November from scratch. That's 1667 words a day. It's November 13, and I'm at 12,000 words. Just a few, oh, THOUSAND behind schedule.

Here's the deal:
I'm naturally not that great of a writer, but I'm also very aware of it. It's like being a crazy person who knows you're crazy. Just makes you crazier! So in my head, I filter out the crap until the average pours forth. I can live with average. But the idea of spitting out whatever comes forth from my head (which is truly crap in its basest level) means that my crap would become a huge PILE of crap -- 50,000 words of it! And I might never write again!

So in an effort to compromise -- I am writing at the below average level. Not deplorable, but not high enough to be mediocre. I'm writing more than I normally would but less than I should. About a thousand a day. And I know I'm missing the whole point of NANOWRIMO, but this little kid needs baby steps when pride is involved.

So here I am today at a coffee shop writing in my blog instead of writing my novel. HAH! Typical.

I even wrote two book reviews today.


The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Too many lessons. Felt like the book was one long lecture from a parent about waiting for the right guy and why. Too in your face. But I do love Deb Caletti. Her writing is always entertaining.

She did a sort of "When Harry Met Sally" thing. You know how that movie stopped the movie to interview couples about their marriages and how they met? Well Caletti interrupted her story with diary/journal-ish monologues by various older women in the novel and their past non-Mr.-Perfects they dated. Cute. Different. But man, after a while, I just skipped the interludes because I felt like it pulled away from the flow of the story.

I thought the book could have been about 50 pages shorter and still been a great novel. Too much excess introspection. That being said, I still like Deb Caletti, and I'll still read another book by her. I love love loved HONEY, BABY, SWEETHEART so I know she has genius in her. It's just a matter of pulling it out at the right moments. :)




View all my reviews

REVIEW #2:
The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey




I feel like the style is kind of a gorier (is that a word?) version of Bram Stoker's DRACULA, but it doesn't quite hold a candle to DRACULA. There's at least one SAT word per page, and Yancey does work them in nicely without it feeling like it's an SAT-prep course, but...

The book is a labor of love. I make sure to read a minimum of one chapter before bed, so there must be some disconnect between me and the book if it's a discipline rather than a joy.

As I read, I find the language beautiful. His dialogue is brilliant at covertly conveying character (hey, nice alliteration, HB), but alas, I'm not riveted.




View all my reviews

A tribute to Periplaneta americana Linnaeus: THE COCKROACH

Moving to a new classroom this year.
Yesterday, I went in to organize.
Look at this lovely treat I found:

Yummy! Apparently cockroaches get stuck on duct tape (I tell you, duct tape can be used for ANYTHING!) I think one cockroach got stuck, and since cockroaches are attracted to dead cockroaches and excrement, the rest of them were like, "Yes! Lunch! Oh crap, I'm stuck."

Cockroaches are fascinating creatures. It is estimated that 2 cockroaches are enough to populate an average size home in one year with enough cockroaches to go one meter deep. Not even making this stuff up. There are at least 4000 species of cockroaches in the world. Only 70 in the United States. Most live in Florida, home of navel oranges, old people, crocs in swimming pools, and apparently 41 species of cockroaches.

They're resilient little creatures. Probably because all they need for food is their own excrement and each other. Yep, they're cannibals. And omnivores. They also love bread, stale beer, wine, alcohol, fatty acids, and peanut butter... can you blame them? They crave damp even temperatures (like my classroom) with great places to hide in the walls. They're survivors.

Because they survive and multiply like mad, they are the financial backbone of the pest control industry. Why do we want to exterminate them? Oh, I don't know. Maybe because they carry fungi, viruses, protozoa, and 40 kinds of bacteria (gross stuff) pathogenic (that can cause disease) to vertebrates (that's us). And they're middle-guy hosts to flatworms. Yippy.

And with their crazy diet and all the diseases they carry, they still scurry around like they go to the gym every day. As much as I cringe and have a quick body spasm every time I come across one, I equally salute the little vermin.

What America can learn from cockroaches:
They're resilient.
They're adaptable.
They provide jobs.

Hi, Colorado

As you can tell, I tend to be a little inconsistent in life (AKA blogging every day and then stopping for no apparent reason). I have many days that I'M bored with myself, so I figure why make other people's lives more boring by making them read about it?

But a friend told me that I need to blog just to blog. So here I go. This one's for you, Sean. Blah.

Today, I'm in Colorado. I surprised my mom for her b-day by showing up to the parents' RV. It's one of the great things you can do when you're a non-breeder -- just pick up and go.

So I showed up at the doorstep of their camper, (Dad was still out fishing), and I said, "Hello? Anybody home?"

She responded, "Can I help you?"

Then she stared at me for a second as all the synapses were running amok in her, processing why her daughter was in the wrong geographic location... was she delusional, was I dead and swinging by on my way upwards, and then it hit her. I was here. For reals.

You'd think a bear was attacking her the way she screamed. Sadly, no one came to her rescue, which makes me think they need to revamp the Neighborhood Watch policy among retirees of Dolores River RV Campground.

She regrouped, cried, and then laughed, and then planned... the entire range of my mother in a 30 second interval.

Yesterday we drove to Telluride.

It's the weekend of the Jazz Festival, so the place is bumping. It's also home to the popular film festival most creatively named, "The Telluride Film Festival."


If you've never seen this cute little "tucked away like a tooth in your pillow" ski town, here are some pics.

Yep, that's a waterfall in the distance. Makes you catch your breath, doesn't it?

Telluride is one of those small towns who still have signs hanging from all the storefronts announcing what they are:

And houses with strict building codes to preserve that "historical look".
And in the backyard of the main street, you'll see the ski runs.


In the past 24 hours with the 'rents, I've noticed one of the quirky and beautiful things of a 40-year-old marriage. My parents have their own language.

Example:

MOM: (lying down for the night) Oh, I forgot to get a glass of water.
Translation: Husband, please get a glass of water for me.

And he does! Every time! He doesn't try to correct her the way our teachers did when we would ask, "Can I go to the restroom?"
TEACHER: I don't know, CAN you?
Didn't you always want to say back, "Seriously, you DON'T KNOW if I can go to the bathroom? Have they lowered the bar on what you have to know to become a teacher?"

Back to the parental units, Dad (on autopilot) translates in his head, gets up, and brings my mom a glass of water EVERY SINGLE TIME! Happily! It's crazy, I know. But love is a funny animal. And love each other, they do.

It happened all day:

I jotted this note on my iPhone --

-----------------------------------------------------------------
As we exit the campsite to head to Telluride, Dad is driving. Mom is talking on her cell phone. She actually says into her phone, "Oh, we never made my nail appointment. Oh well." She points to the left anyway.

My dad, fluent in the language of Mom, makes a left, (even though Telluride is to the RIGHT) because what she really means is, "Can we make the appointment before we head to Telluride?"
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I often stare wide-eyed and open-mouthed at their crazy non-communication communication, wondering how many sentences they have created that actually mean something else entirely. They have no problem with it. No one asks for clarification, or gets annoyed that they don't mean what they say. They know what they mean. And that is all that matters.

My thoughts on Obesity

There are many interesting things I could talk about on my blog today...

1) Why do they call it "walking pneumonia"? I don't feel like walking. I feel like "laying". Why don't they call it "Knock you on your ass pneumonia"? Much more accurate.
2) What do they put in that dog food? Seriously, my dog can evacuate a country with that flatulence. And why does she insist on laying down next to me before she starts evacuation procedures? I'm slowly being asphyxiated as I write this because of the "Knock you on your ass pneumonia" nailing me to the couch (see #1).
3) What's up with our fat country?

#3 wins.

Strangely, as I'm finally getting around to grading old essays, the topic most on my mind today is obesity. One of the units we discuss every year in English class has to do with the alarming increase in childhood obesity in our nation. Here are some crazy facts:

According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control)

2-5 year olds (percentage who are obese)
1980 - 5%
2008 - 10.4%

6-11 year olds
1980 - 6.5%
2008 - 19.6%

12-18 year olds
1980 - 5%
2008 - 18.1%

Crazy, huh? So there are many articles written by extremely intelligent people who differ on their opinions of who is to blame. The parents? The lack of nutritional content offered to make an informed decision? The lack of alternatives to fast food for kids in low-income neighborhoods? (The obesity rate is higher for inner city kids. You can't exactly tell that kid to go outside and ride his bike.) Is it the marketing that combines cute cartoon characters with junk food? The lack of physical exercise in schools? Maybe it's the super-sizing and portion distortion that's making America's waistlines pop at the seams. It's a crazy debate, and not an easy solution.

Nor is this blog a platform for me to rant to you about my political position on this topic; I have none. I can only read the articles and help kids write organized essays about them!

But I find these facts fascinating so I'm going to share.


On the portion distortion topic:

Do you ever wonder why they call the small size at starbucks a "Tall" and why the medium is called "grande"? How annoyed do you get when you say on accident, "Can I have a medium?" only to have the Starbucks barista correct you and say, "A grande?" And you have to say yes, even though everything in your logical mind knows that grande means "large" in every freaking language.

It's because Starbucks hopped on the super-sizing band wagon when they realized it worked. The sizes used to be "Short", "Tall", and "Grande", which totally makes sense. But who wants a 12 ounce nowadays, really? They discontinued the "short" and introduced the "Venti" -- 20 ounces of your sipping pleasure.

They did this case study at Cornell University with some movie-goers watching Mel Gibson's movie "Payback". They gave half of the audience each a large bucket of popcorn, and the other half each received an extra-large bucket. Nobody finished off their bucket, but when the researchers weighed all the leftover popcorn, the group with the extra-large buckets ate 45% more. CRAZY! Therefore proving if you put more in front of us, we're gonna eat more.

And not that our country needs any more financial problems, but between 1987 and 2001, diseases associated with obesity accounted for 27 percent of the increases in medical costs. I won't bore you with all the statistics about how much diseases related to Type 2 Diabetes are currently costing our nation, but do a google search if you're curious.

I have no conclusion to this, no great finale to send you off to the gym, and I'm only writing about this because I went to the movies the other night (saw DATE NIGHT - totally recommend it). While I was there, I noticed they now post the calorie content of your "movie meal".
I love the range of soda calories: oh, between 2.8 and 444.

In case you wanted to add some cheese and bread accessories to your popcorn, coke, and twizzlers, here are some more fat-free numbers:


I guess there are people out there who need clarification that water does in fact contain zero calories. Did anybody else's jaw drop to the floor when you read that nachos are 1400 calories? Whaaa?

In case you're going into hibernation, here's your one stop shop for getting an entire season's worth of calories in one meal.

P.S. I totally almost got kicked out of the movie theater by a 16-year-old concession stand girl who was indignant at me taking pictures of the prices. She made me erase them from my camera... which of course I did, as you can tell.

In the Classroom: Lessons in Irony

Written on my board by my student My'Jina about another student, Scoey:

"Scoey is a dumby"

Shouted across the room by my student Traysha at another student, Ronald:

"What do you mean, 'can I spell grateful?' If you go to church, you know how to spell fuckin grateful!"

Yelled at no one in particular by my student Jilvonnie about CST's (California State Testing):

"Why do they give us these tests if we don't know the any of the answers?"

Africa: Snakes

Sorry, folks. Grades are due tomorrow, and so I've been a little bad about writing this week. And if you saw the sad sack of papers in front of me (still yet to be graded), you'd wonder why I even opened my blog today. Here's why:
You may be asking yourself, "What's so great about this kid, Heather?" Well, this kid happened to save my life last summer. It's true.

Meet Jimmy.

There we were, our group traipsing along in the darkness back to camp one night. It was dark. I mean, DARK dark. There was no street lamp saying, "Hey, Heather, look. There's the ground." There was no light from the city creating, oh, I don't know, silhouettes. There was just Brooke's hand holding mine, reminding me she was there, and a flashlight. Now Brooke had been screaming when a leaf would brush up against her, so maybe she wasn't the best choice for a companion through the dark, but she also happened to be a NINJA, which I discovered as she suddenly leapt onto me screaming, "Snake! Snake!"

I was like, "Really, Brooke?" expecting to see a twig on the ground. But as I shined my flashlight down where Brooke's foot SHOULD HAVE stepped, there was a little teeny snake wriggling across our dirt path. We recoiled, and out of the darkness, Jimmy appeared, asking, "Where?" Brooke screamed and pointed and screamed some more. Jimmy ran after it, I kid you not. He charged at it and started stomping madly, kicking up dust and jumping down on that thing like he wanted to create an African Grand Canyon.

He stopped, and then gave one more stomp for good measure. Then he took the flashlight out of Brooke's hand and shone it down on the limp snake. He said, calmly and quietly with his thick accent, "Ohh. Baby Cobra. Very deadly."

I was like, "OMG, Jimmy! You just killed a COBRAAAAAA! We need a pic!"
Brooke was giggling and screaming, "WHAT? What did you say, Jimmy? What do you MEAN, very deadly! What do you MEAN, cobra! You said that we didn't have to worry if we stayed on the dirt paths! You said the snakes don't like the dirt roads because it scrapes their bellies. What was it doing there? What was it DOING there?"

Jimmy shrugged his shoulders and responded, "It wanted to get to the other side."
Amazing that that little critter packs so much in his punch. They are dangerous as babies because they don't control their venom. Some of the venom attacks the nervous system, which causes paralysis. Then the other part of the venom, the cardiotoxins, shut down your heart. Awesome. And knowing all that, if we're bit, we're supposed to remain calm. Riiiiight.

There is a lot of debate about what is the deadliest snake in the world. Some people think the Cobra; others say The Black Mamba; and still others, "The Fierce Snake" of Australia. Okay, so The Fierce Snake wins when it comes to venom.
This little guy is 50 times as toxic as a cobra, and a cobra's pretty darn toxic! It's 400 times as toxic as a rattlesnake. But the good news about this one is he's shy. He says, "Hey guys, leave me alone and I won't kill you. In fact, if I see you, I will wriggle in the other direction. I can't help it if I'm deadly. It came with my teeth."

The cobra is also deadly, but we have plenty of antivenom out there for a person who is bit. Notice our little baby cobra above -- he wasn't out to get us. He was wriggling along. The Black Cobras aren't aggressive by nature. Tick them off, though, and they can stand up tall and get face-to-face before attacking you.

And then there is the Black Mamba. There is also the Green Mamba, which disappears into the trees, but the Black Mamba is much more aggressive. They've been known to chase their victims and bite them repeatedly.
Notice how he's gray, not black. He's named after his mouth. If you were to peer inside, you'd see it was black. And then you'd be dead. Don't peer into his mouth. That's dumb.

So to recap, here's what we've learned:

COBRA: longest
FIERCE SNAKE: most venomous
BLACK MAMBA: most aggressive
GREEN MAMBA: ha ha, you can't see me. I'm a tree, I'm a leaf.

I will never forget that night in Africa when Brooke actually wasn't crying wolf! It sounds dramatic. Maybe it is. But come on! The guy stomped a Cobra to death not five feet from me.

It IS dramatic!

I made Jimmy reenact it all the following morning.

In the Classroom: Free Time

If you are reading this from Facebook, you absolutely need to click on this: THAT RIDICULOUS GIRL.

Otherwise you will miss out on priceless footage in my classroom.

I went back to my desk for TWO minutes while I helped a student print an essay from my computer. In the meantime, another student pulled his camera out and video-taped what happens in my classroom when I turn my back for ONE SECOND...

And you thought this craziness only happened in the movies! Yes, they are free-styling (making it up as they go), and yes, it is a good thing you can't discern every word out of their mouths.

Ohhhh, fifth period...