Christmas in July

My Favorite Movies I've Never Seen

2009-09-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a Facebook friend of a Facebook friend, I learned about KFJC 89.7 (in the San Francisco Bay Area) and its Saturday morning soundtrack show. The soundtracks can be instrumental or vocal, from movies, cartoons, television shows and even commercials. The host will play about three or four pieces in a row, and then generally tell what they were after they play. I enjoyed figuring out if I'd even heard each piece before, and then trying to place it, and, in rare instances, I could even name the composer. (Hint: if you listen this way, your default guess should always be Bernard Herrmann.

Although most of the pieces were unknown to me, I knew the first one played almost immediately (before it got to the familiar part with the horns that is very recognizable). So, here's what I said to myself: "That's from The Natural, composed by Randy Newman. Oh, I really like that movie." Then I realized that I've never seen the movie. I love the music, the actors, the costumes, the era that it depicts, the beautiful lighting used in the shots, but I've never seen it. And somehow, I've convinced myself that I have.

Most people have periods in their lives where movies were not a priority, and if you're old enough, there were no VCRs or DVDs to make up for what you missed when you missed it. Mine are the seventies, because I was in my early teens when most of the classics came out, and not allowed to see them, and the mid-eighties because I was raising small children, and the movies were kind of crappy then anyway. So most of my favorite movies I've never seen are from these periods, but not all. Some movies just kind of slip by.

The problem with movies like The Natural is that it's not something I want to turn to because I have nothing else to do. It is a sit down and give all your attention to movie (or I assume it is). So whenever it comes on television, I have to decide if I have a couple of hours to stop everything and watch a movie. And, apparently, that has never happened.

So, here are my reviews for other favorite movies I've never seen: Saving Private Ryan: Spielberg's done it again!; Nashville: Great ensemble; Taxi Driver: the first time I didn't see it, I found it too intense, but now I love it; Modern Times: The satire even holds up today.

I have a different list: Blade Runner, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Die Hard, Reds. These are movies that are liked or loved by many people I know. I haven't seen them, I should, but I haven't convinced myself I've seen them.

One day I hope to actually see my favorite unseen films and make an honest woman of myself. What is your favorite movie you've never seen?

Back to School Issue

2009-09-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

Good news! I just finished a time-sucking part of the quilt I've been working on for well over two years (or not working on, since that's the problem). This summer, I decided I would work on it a bit every day, and what-da-ya-know, it actually worked! Now, I get to move on to a new section, and a less time-consuming stitching pattern.

School's back in session, and since I started out braced for the worst, it isn't so terrible. Eventually, the parents of California will realize that 40 kids in a class is not in anyone's best interest, and decide they're willing to pay more taxes to make things change. Won't they? By the way, we were given $100 for supplies for almost 200 kids a day for 180 days, and that's $100 more than most teachers in the state received.

But in the spirit of school, here are a couple of lessons I learned today:

1. Something I just learned today and wish I could take the lesson back: The cinnamon currant loaf at Acme Bread is delicious--really delicious, and it comes in a size a little too big for one helping but too small to save much for later. I'll try to forget I know this.

2. Something I learned today that has made me giddy with power: My teacher look works on obnoxious adults. When I got out of the San Leandro BART station today, there was a woman in a car with windows rolled down listening to VERY LOUD music. Not that there's an age where it's appropriate, but she was well into her thirties, and should have known better. So, I gave her my teacher look, kind of without thinking. My teacher look involves making eye contact and not letting go of the eye contact, while making your face look completely without emotion. This was learned in a study on primates, and alpha male behavior. Even I was surprised when she turned down the music. Warning: I've had years of practice with the teacher look, and I definitely wouldn't suggest a man try it on another man, since it can be seen as a threat. Remember that as much as creationists would like to ignore it, we are, after all, primates.

3. Something I learned this week that I should have known all along: the entire country has not suddenly awakened from eight horrible years to renewed compassion and common sense. I thought that a sensible and compassionate call for compromise would do the trick on Health Care, but a lot of people seem determined to continue our run as the only industrialized nation to believe that health care is only for those who can afford it.

And why do I think people will soon be willing to pay more taxes for what they want?

Mad Men, part 2

2009-08-15T15:41:00.000-07:00

I saw Revolutionary Road recently. If you aren't sure what movie I'm talking about, I'm not too surprised, since it lasted about five minutes in the theaters. It was released right after Christmas, to a public thinking about the election and the economy--a preoccupied public. I think the people involved in it felt that it would get Academy Award nominations and get noticed then, but it was pretty much ignored. Too bad, because I thought it was an excellent movie.

Mick LaSalle, of the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote a review that captured some of my feelings about the film really well. In his review, he mentions that it is baffling and irritating to hear the film being compared to Mad Men because the former takes place around 1955 and the latter around 1960. In his mind, those 5 years make all the difference. In my mind, those 5 years don't make a big difference. Now, 1960 to 1965...that's five years that would make a difference. To me, Mad Men and Revolutionary Road could easily have taken place at the same time. In fact, on the surface, both have the same themes of unfulfilled people getting the message from everyone around them that they're supposed to be giddily happy with their lives and finding that they aren't. In Revolutionary Road there are no hints of coming changes; in Mad Men, there are some hints (beatniks, interracial dating), but they are few and far between.

So, at the risk of being baffling and irritating, I do feel the two can be compared in an interesting way. Revolutionary Road made me realize that Mad Men is very stylized. The clothing and the furniture and room decor definitely are some of the stars of the show. In fact, people write about these things more than they do about the stories. That's a shame, but it's also a compliment to the people who put the look together. I remember the first show I watched, I was so dazzled by how much it looked like 1960 that it was about 45 minutes in before I realized that it was also a really good show. Revolutionary Road looked like the mid-fifties, but the clothes and decor (except there's this one great dress that Kate Winslet wears) are not the stars. If I walked into a room on Mad Men, I would think I was in a museum display of 1960. If I walked into a room in Revolutionary Road, I would see a combination of styles and years that are more like a real room and less like a collection of museum pieces. If I dressed in any of the clothes from Mad Men or did my hair like one of the characters, people would think I was wearing a very cool costume. If I wore clothing from Revolutionary Road, people would either not notice or think I was kind of doing a retro thing. Don't get me wrong about Revolutionary Road. The set decorations and clothing were probably very carefully chosen. The main characters, who see themselves as different from others, have rooms that contain sleek furniture and some modern art; the other suburbanites have rooms that have furniture that was stylish at the time, but this furniture (think Lucy and Ricky when they moved to the suburbs) is considered out of date now.

What these differences did was cause me to look at my own reaction to the two shows. In Mad Men, the date is an antagonist. As I watch, I think about all that we have available now that could really change characters' lives. If Joan only could go about 18 years in the future, she would be running the company. Sal, a couple of decades later, could express his homosexuality. Betty might not need to go to the psychiatrist who reports everything she says to Don if she realized that a lot of women feel they need to do something besides keeping house. Don't get me wrong. Life is never really easy, but still.

You could watch Revolutionary Road and think time was the antagonist, too, but I didn't. I think that the clothing and sets were purposely chosen to allow us to easily see ourselves in the place of Winslet and DiCaprio. Feeling hopeless and soulless is not restricted to any one time period. Ending up with the wrong person as a life partner is not restricted to any one time period.

Mad Men, part 1

2009-08-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

A young woman I know, in her twenties (I’ll call her M) and I are both fans of Mad Men. We both enjoy the attention to period detail, the acting and character development, but M really surprised me when she told me how much she admired the clothing and wished we dressed like that now. She especially likes the look of Joan, the famously curvy secretary

I later mentioned this conversation to two friends, in two separate conversations. Both are in their fifties, like me, with a twenty-something daughter. And both had had the same conversation with their daughters. It went something like this:

What??? Do you realize how restrictive those clothes are?
Yes, but they look nice.
But they kept women from being able to achieve equality.
Huh?

And there lies the problem. To us, having been children during that era, they aren’t just clothes. To these young women, they aren’t either. In fact, it turns out that what they saw was that a woman who is more full figured could be admired, and that there wasn’t one body type that was considered attractive. To us, these clothes (I’m not talking about the pretty little “Mad Men” dresses that are showing up in the stores now) and their undergarments go hand in hand with a time and place that we never want to return to. So to one generation, they mean strangulation both literally and figuratively, and to another, freedom.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

2009-07-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

If you don't keep a blog, you may not realize that we bloggers are able to keep track of what search terms people use that end up sending them to our blogs. I love to find out how people find my blog. One recent search prompted the following conversation:

V: Some poor person was sent to my blog while searching for "middle aged woman back door doggie style movies"
M: What????? Middle aged?
V: I read you that string of words and middle aged woman is the part you comment on?

Among the other strange recent searches:

"Have you seen my tweezers?" and "Trimming pot-bellied pig whiskers." Perhaps those two searchers could get together.

But the most searches by far are from people with Christmas in July questions. When PJ first suggested the name for my blog, we were both thinking of several things, including my July birthday, stories about my family's Christmases and unexpected blessings. I don't think either of us realized that a lot of people like to celebrate Christmas in July. Let what I just said wash over you: people like to celebrate Christmas in July. Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas--the music (well, some of it), the lights, the candles, the food, even the shopping. But it is exhausting and that's why it comes once a year. Anyone can understand why QVC would be observing Christmas in July. I can even understand why Australians would have a celebration during their coldest month of the year. But a Christmas party during Summer in the northern hemisphere?

Anyway, searchers, even if I can't understand what on Earth would ever, ever make you want to have a Christmas in July party, at least I can help you with your search questions. So here goes:

I am having a Christmas in July what should I serve: I have to admit to being honestly intrigued by this search, which is the number one search that I get. So, here you have this event which doesn't actually exist. You can do what you want with it, and yet you want to know what the traditional Christmas in July foods are? They don't exist. I actually have given this thought. You could have a regular Christmas dinner, with roast beef, ham, or whatever. Let's face it: canned cream of mushroom soup and canned green beans are available year round!! However, I like the idea of not doing that, but serving foods with a red and green theme: tomatoes and basil; strawberry ice cream; spinach pizza. Nature has given us a lot of red and green in summer. You might as well take advantage.

Christmas in July with fake snow: Sure, go ahead. Try this from QVC. But in these tough economic times, I like to rip up paper and dump it on the ground. Kids love it. Just make sure that it is recycled white paper.

Christmas in July wedding: I absolutely love the idea of taking life's two most stressful joyful events and combining them. Just think about the fights you can have. Not just about red vs. green velvet bridesmaid gowns but red vs. green velvet halter top gowns vs. strapless gowns. And, "I know your mother wants my bouquet to have roses and gladioli, but those are summer flowers!" And, "I don't care if Father doesn't want to officiate in a Santa suit. It's MY wedding!"

Is anyone wanna go to Vegas for a Christmas in July?: Of course I am wanna go to the hottest place in the United States to celebrate Christmas in July. I'm pretty sure that's what God intended when he came up with Christmas in July.

Christmas in July consumer ridiculous: Yes, so true. Now Christmas in December consumer sensible--that would have been a good search.

Christmas in July Golf Cart: I'm speechless (or at least the typing equivalent of speechless).

Catchy phrase for Christmas in July: "It's hot and so are the traditional Brown n Serve rolls."

What else is Christmas in July known as: July 25th.

Merry Christmas in July to all!

Costa Rica: Home Again

2009-07-21T07:29:00.001-07:00

I was going to wait a day or two to write my last entry about the trip, wanting to make the trip last a bit longer in my head, but as I write this, I'm listening to news about California budget cuts to education, and I realize that this news is going to use up all my brain cells over the next few weeks, so I should end my writing about Costa Rica before it fades from memory.

I have already spent a lot of time writing about how much I dislike the "getting there" on vacation, so I won't bother any remaining readers with any major details. I will say that our taxi came just on time and our drivers (a father/son team) couldn't have been nicer. Marin's tip for taking taxis, honed from some bad experiences, is to get a clear idea of the fare before you even get into the car. This actually reduces stress greatly (Marin has had a couple of incidences where the driver stated a fare, but did not say whether he meant dollars or the local currency, only to charge the much greater and ridiculously large amount of the two at the destination). One nice thing about being a traveling American is that many people worldwide are more than happy to receive dollars. I ended up never trading dollars for colones the entire time I was there.

Oddly, it was in our final hours in Costa Rica that a couple of things went wrong for us. I slipped and fell in the shower. Our shower was tiled all around with no handles and no non-slip surfaces. Falls are always scary because you don't at first know how much you might have injured yourself. So, as I fell and hit the floor, here's what went through my head, in order: Oh, this is like how T recently fell in the shower; how is an ambulance going to get down that bumpy road; I don't want anyone to see me naked. It's amazing what can run through your head in one second. When I realized I hadn't broken anything, I was greatly relieved. Other than embarrassment, I only suffered some soreness and bruises.

As we were packing, Marin couldn't find her phone, which was also serving as her camera. We looked everywhere and it was nowhere. As the clock ticked away the minutes before our taxi arrived, the hotel staff was able to contact the driver of the van from our El Silencio tour the night before, and even though the driver had driven several people around after our tour ended, the phone was safely in the van. The hotel staff gave our taxi driver directions to the van driver's house, and the phone/camera was recovered with all of Marin's pictures safely still there.

I loved this trip, but I was ready to go home. I was missing dry California. I was running out of things to wear because everything felt wet, and I was tired of sweating all the time. I don't think I've ever showered so much in my life. I actually felt truly rested and ready to get back to repairing the wall in my living room that I left undone.

I know some people who return to Costa Rica time and time again. Teachers especially, because of our long vacation times, seem to find a place that they feel a longing to return to over and over again. For many people I know, this place is Tahoe. For my friend D, it is Yellowstone. I work with a couple of teachers whose place is Hawaii. My place is probably Alaska, though I've only been there once (it's okay though...the Redwoods of California work, too). I'm not sure I should return to Alaska because I felt such a strong pull when I was there, I was kind of scared. I suddenly understood how people can go away somewhere and not return. Craziness. Costa Rica--I loved the trip, but I don't feel that need to return.

A single trip to Costa Rica made me realize that a whole lot of Americans do go there and feel like they've found the place they want to keep returning to. That would be fine, but I can't stop thinking about the economic and social impacts of this decision on the citizens of Costa Rica. Everywhere I went along the coast, which is a lot of Costa Rica, there were For Sale signs in English. It felt like the whole place was on sale. While, as far as I could see, Costa Ricans live in homes like the one pictured in my previous post or in very small stucco homes, the homes being sold to Americans look like this. Even though Americans are helping the Costa Rican economy when they buy these places (though I would strongly argue that they could help it a lot more by staying at a hotel when they visit), how can this not lead to resentment in the near future? I can imagine how people here in San Leandro would feel if rich foreigners suddenly moved in, but not in the homes that are already here, but instead in a new development with homes much bigger and fancier than ours. And the resentment I'm imagining in Costa Rica isn't just about money. It's about resources. Costa Ricans are justly proud of their low energy use. The entire country's electricity load is handled by more than 90% clean and renewable resources (US electricity load has a long way to go: less than 10% clean and renewable). Huge homes and lots of appliances and air conditioning use a lot of energy. And then there's my observation that a lot of new places were being resold by the owners. That $700,000 dream house you bought two years ago that seemed like a good investment is probably the first thing to go when you realize that you've lost half of your investment money. So our money problems have become Costa Rica's money problems.

I'd like to encourage those who like to return to keep returning, though. The same dollars that I think will lead to resentment are also probably the reason that so many pristine beaches and forests exist there. Without our tourist dollars, people would need to make money in other ways that would no doubt put pressure on these places that tourists love so much. In a world in which thousands of acres of rain forest are destroyed every day, it's great to see a place where it is economically smart to not destroy rain forest.

A few years ago, when I returned from my trip to Alaska, I couldn't stand it for a couple of days. Alaska is really quiet and I had become tuned in to the quiet, even though most of the trip was on a ship--even that was quiet. BART and Amtrak, which run less than a quarter mile from my house were suddenly louder than I could stand. Every airplane, lawnmower and car stereo was more than my ears could handle. It was a sick feeling. I had never felt that way before, and I wondered how I would feel after Costa Rica. It turns out that it was a different experience, but it makes me sad. Costa Rica is noisy. The jungles are full of sounds: running water, birds, monkeys, and mostly cicadas. When walking around, my ears were listening to all of these sounds and especially for rustling leaves, which meant something was causing the rustling. At Arenal, add to all of those sounds an erupting volcano. Several times a day, the volcano would make a rumbling sound, followed by the sound of large rocks rolling down the mountain. You could hear them bumping into each other. The first thing I noticed on my return was that I was hearing BART too much because it sounds a little bit like the volcano rumbling. I also noticed that I heard all kinds of bird sounds, which made me happy because I hadn't noticed them before. But, alas, I was listening to too many sounds and it was overloading my senses, so I'm not hearing the birds anymore. So, this is a less painful return, but I wish I could tune in the birds and tune out everything else.

I guess there is no place like home because I'm glad to be back in this land of the IOU and bad economic news and healthcare fights. And don't even get me started about Michael Jackson.

Costa Rica: Days 5 and 6

2009-07-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

I’m putting days 5 and 6 together because they were very, very similar. That’s not a bad thing, since we felt in no hurry to do anything, and we didn’t even have to (get to) choose where to eat because any place but the lodge restaurant would have involved the 5 mile grueling drive down the mountain followed by another approximately 5 miles into town--$40 round trip, not including tip.

It rains a lot here in the middle of Costa Rica, up in the mountains, and unlike closer to the Pacific Ocean, where we could see the clouds coming in and feel the air thicken, there is no warning before it begins. Even the lodge’s “naturalist” can’t tell when it is going to rain, though he pointed out that the howler monkeys know. They do call to each other right before the rain.

On our first morning at this lodge, we took the free tour of the surrounding forest. This forced Marin to, if not overcome, confront her fear of hanging bridges (or at least the heights at which they are hung).

The forest is beautiful, and there’s even a small area of primary forest (this is a big deal because primary forest has never been logged and some animals, like spider monkeys, will only live in primary forest).

Even Costa Rica, which its strong commitment to the environment, doesn’t have much land that hasn’t been logged. Unfortunately, we didn’t see one single animal. But Eduardo, our guide, did tell us the story of the volcano, which was pretty interesting. In this story, you begin to realize how much of the landscape you’re looking at has only been there since 1968. A lot of the hilly land surrounding us was flat farmland until it got covered with tons of lava and ash. The area surrounding the volcano contains patches of primary forest, secondary forest, very new forest, rocky areas with few plants, and flat farmland. The old forest was pretty untouched by the volcanic eruption. Then there’s new forest that has tall plants. That’s where the ash fell, but not the lava. Ash is soft and mineral rich. Plants grew fast and well after the eruption. Where lava has flowed and hardened, some moss is growing, but it will take many years to break up the rock into soil that plants can really use. I found the farmland particularly interesting because it changes the landscape so much. The rainforest is wet and shady and full of animal sounds. The farmland, without the shade of the rainforest plants, is sunny and full of light.

Our lodge was built specifically for Smithsonian scientists (Eduardo says there wasn’t a single volcanologist in Costa Rica prior to 1968) to study the volcano up close out of harm’s way as much as possible. After a day here, you realize that you aren’t really out of harm’s way. For a fairly big lava flow, there’s a river gorge between us and the rim, but for a pyroclastic explosion (the kind that sends huge boulders far away), you can’t be out of harm’s way and be this close. The advantage of the placement of our lodge is that the land is pretty much as it was prior to the volcano, which means old forest. It also means old farms are nearby. On our walks, we walked past a dairy farm. This means there are a handful of cows grazing out in the fields, and from the looks of the milking shed, they are milked by hand. This was very interesting to me to see a small, seemingly sustainable farm. The small farm neighborhood consisted of about four houses that were very, very small and simple. It’s odd to visit a place where you, the tourist, live so differently than the people whose country you are visiting. Anything I can say about this would just be a cliché, but I do believe that I saw enough to understand that we probably would envy things about each other.

Our two full days here involved a lot of walks on our own and two with Eduardo. The second walk was a combination El Silencio walk, which involved not much silencio, and a volcano walk. We were driven to a spot where the lava is still apparent, where Eduardo sat us down and repeated the same stories about the volcanoes from the day before. I’m talking word for word, hand gesture for hand gesture. This tour was far from free. It also became clear that Eduardo was a good local guide but no naturalist. When he saw a bird, he’d pick up his bird guide and look for a picture, just like I would if I had a bird guide. What Eduardo was good at was spotting animals that were pretty well camouflaged by their surroundings. We saw a pair of howler monkeys in a tree and a two toed sloth (the meaner of the sloths). All three of these animals were not deep in the jungle, but were in trees found along the sides of a busy highway.

We also used the lodge pool, which is probably the nicest manmade thing here. It is huge, and very welcoming after a day of walking. Even though the temperatures here in the mountains are very pleasant, it is still humid and sticky.

I’d like to say that we saw a lot more of the volcano, but it was obscured by clouds at least half the time (and by obscured I actually mean rendered completely invisible), and at other times, it wasn’t doing much. However, there were periods where it was throwing out some hot rocks, which we could watch rolling down the side of the mountain and we could definitely hear as well. We never did feel the ground shake, as some visitors do, but I have felt the ground shake plenty in my life, living in California.

Costa Rica: Day 4, continued

2009-07-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

So, why did we go to Arenal? The main reason is that Arenal is an active volcano. An actual rumbling spewing out lava volcano. In 1968, no one had any idea it was a volcano, and one day it began shaking and making a rumbling noise, and a few days later, it erupted with enough force to throw large rocks a couple of miles and to cover an entire village and its 80 plus inhabitants under meters of rocks and ash. It still is active and has had a few major eruptions since 1968. Another reason to visit is that, due to the altitude, there is a different ecosystem than the rain forest we had just visited. It’s called a cloud forest. It still has many characteristics of the closer to sea level rain forests, but the plant life reminds me more of some of the redwood forests of California or the Hoh Rain Forest of Washington state.

We arrived at the lodge, which is 9 miles up a steep, rocky, horribly rutted hill. If you’ve ever been on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, where for about 30 seconds, you jeep throws you up and down, left and right, that’s what the ride up the hill is like, except it’s not 30 seconds. I felt as if my breasts were going to bounce out the window and go bouncing down the road. The lodge does not do any transportation of its own, but going down the hill for any reason and then back up again will cost $40 in a local taxi. This did not seem at all exorbitant after experiencing the road and realizing the wear and tear it must have on shocks, tires, and brakes. But it did make me realize that we were probably going to be at the lodge for all three nights without going anywhere else. Forty dollars is too much to spend for a casual shopping trip into town. I thought to myself that this lodge had better be really, really nice.

We checked in with a not very friendly receptionist. No one offered to show us to our room or to take a bag. (See, I did get used to great service after all). It was raining harder than I’ve ever experienced in my life. We rushed to our room, opened the door, and found a bed facing a large window, a small table (like a coffee table), another small table with a fan on top, a closet without doors, and a sink. The ancient mattress on the bed had no box springs. Behind a door, there was a bathroom that looked like it had had many repairs.

A message was posted on the front door to us “urbanites” to not get freaked out when “country guests” show up in our room. By that, they said they meant spiders and ants, but as we learned, it also meant lizards.

Marin wasn’t so bothered by the lack of television. She’s become accustomed to that while living in Russia. We were both bothered by the realization that we were out of luck as far as the internet was concerned. And then Marin pointed out that we couldn’t even see the volcano—the entire reason I got this room was the volcano view. On top of that, I was reading a book, The Master and Margarita, that I wasn’t liking too much. But there really was nothing to do but read. It was raining too hard to even attempt to look at the hotel grounds.

Then, the power went out, too. We heard a generator turn on, and about ten minutes later, the power was restored. The power went out a lot during our visit here.

The book I was reading was one of Marin’s favorite all time books, and that’s saying a lot. She was very amused at my not liking it because I had told her that the title had made me think that it was going to be about a rich guy and a servant falling in love or something like that. She said, “Do you even know me? That is never the kind of novel that would be a favorite of mine.” Since she was not liking the book she was reading much, she decided that she would write the story that I had expected The Master and Margarita to be, which she is letting me put here. She put her misery into creativity, and I decided that if I think of this as camping, we have a very, very nice tent, and I can live with that. Also, forced to read my book, I found that I got to a point where I couldn’t put it down, which unfortunately led to the realization that I hadn’t brought enough to read.

Around nine, we decided to call it a night and fell asleep. Sometime in the night, the rain stopped. I woke up, looked out our window, and saw the volcano very close by with red lava spurting out of the top and flowing down the sides. It turns out that we did have a view, but it was so obscured by the clouds that we couldn’t even see the mile or so to the rim of the crater. It was stunning.

Costa Rica: Day 4 Part 1

2009-07-19T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today was a traveling day, so it will not be so filled with the joys of vacation.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been on a vacation and didn’t want to leave a place, but I really didn’t want to leave the Gaia Hotel. I awoke extra early because we had to check out, be driven to a bus stop and catch our bus to Arenal, but I found that I had a little time, so I went back to the pool to see if the monkeys were there. Even though 6:30 is too early for squirrel monkeys, I was rewarded with the sight of many colorful birds (which must disappear when the monkeys show up) and the sound of the Howler Monkeys. They were far away, but their throaty roar can be heard for very long distances.

We were quickly thrown into the real world. The hotel van dropped us at the bus stop (which was just another hotel) in Quepos, the nearest “city.” We were left standing outside by a casino and an adult entertainment place. Luckily, we weren’t there for long. Our friendly bus driver came right on time and told me that our ride would be about three and a half hours. I was happy because that was a half hour less than the website said the trip would take.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet about how few women we’ve seen in Costa Rica (other than tourists, I mean). At our first hotel, there was a room maid and that was it. The receptionists, drivers and waiters were all men. At our second one, even the room cleaners were men. At Manuel Antonio, all men. I did see women. They would be at the sides of roads waiting for a bus with a child in their arms, or they would be working at some of the less fancy restaurants in town. Marin, who had visited Egypt recently, was no stranger to this observation.

I found the bus trip a little scary. Almost all roads are just two lane roads, so our driver did a lot of passing and, a few times, I was sure we were going to have a head-on collision. I would have worn my seatbelt, but it was broken.

After three and a half hours of travel, we pulled into a stop that seemed to have about 7 or 8 other Grayline buses just like ours. We were told we had 30 minutes, and I wondered why we weren’t at Arenal. The thirty minute place had one tourist shop with very tacky tourist wares and two little restaurants without posted prices. There were some red macaws to look at, but it was a long 30 minutes. I noticed that premade signs, like Open House signs you might see at a corner, started going up next to the buses and that our luggage was being removed. Our driver found us and told us that we were going to now transfer to another bus. He introduced me to the new driver and the new driver said that the trip would take about two and a half hours. Ahhh! This is so different than what the company website said. But of course, we are in the middle of nowhere, and all I could think was that I was going to find another way back to the airport in a few days.

Our new bus took off and the terrain got interesting as we got away from the ocean and started climbing to a higher elevation. It started to look like California, but greener. There’d be fields of grass with cattle grazing (Marin called them goat cows because they have long floppy ears) and an occasional tree that looked exactly like an oak tree.

As we climbed, the roads got worse and the rain started pouring down, and pouring and pouring. There were only two other people on the bus and they were going to a placed called Arenal Springs Resort. The bus dropped them off at the front door, which meant we had to climb up a very steep part dirt road in the rain. It was unnerving. And Marin said to me what I was thinking already: “If they won’t do drop-offs at our hotel, what is the road to there going to be like?”

Our driver got a bit lazy at that point, and tried to talk us into transferring to a cab that would take us to the Arenal Observatory Lodge. He might have been trying to help, but the cab’s proposed fare of $25 to take us down the road a bit was too high, so I told the driver we wanted to be dropped off in town, as we had already said. So, back down the steep hill we went, and into the town of La Fortuna. La Fortuna is a touristy little town that is set up mostly for people who come to see the volcano. Most of the shops are restaurants or places selling tours. But it did have a little central park and a church, so we were able to get some sense of a Costa Rica town. We tried to do a little shopping, but the rain was getting to us, and we were worried about how to get to our hotel.

We walked to the park, as our wonderful Frommer’s Guidebook had told us to do, and there was a taxi. The driver’s proposed fare of $20 seemed good because he was driving us further than the other cab would have. But this made us realize that we weren’t going to be taking little jaunts into town, either. I hoped that the lodge was really nice, and had some television reception and internet access, along with the best possible volcano views.

It turned out that the driver of our cab was really kind and friendly. He spoke almost no English, so my poor Spanish had to do. We have learned on this trip that Costa Ricans love you to try Spanish, no matter how bad. Our driver felt that we shouldn’t take the bus back to the airport and offered us a ride to the airport at a fair rate, so I took him up on that. We had a few funny moments there where he didn’t know if my request to be picked up at doce mean noon or midnight, and I couldn’t remember which word in Spanish meant noon and which meant midnight, but we figured it out. So, as I write this, I’m trusting that he will be here for us as planned.

Costa Rica: Day 3

2009-07-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

After just two nights in the same place, we were starting to feel more comfortable. We had figured out how to get around and we had come to realize that the heat and humidity called for a nice, slow pace. I’m used to rushing around a lot during vacations, but I quickly decided that the slow, relaxing resort pace could be a very nice one.

Marin had decided that she wanted to go snorkeling. It turns out she tries to snorkel wherever she goes, and as a result has now had the pleasure of seeing another part of Alaska, Egypt, and now Costa Rica. I almost went, but I wanted to see Manuel Antonio Park one more time and I actually had to think about Day 4, in which we had to travel to Arenal, an active volcano.

Our breakfast, like all hotel breakfasts I’ve had in the last several years, came free with the room. I’ve also noticed that the quality of these breakfasts really varies. So, from all I’ve said about the Gaia so far, it will come as no surprise that the breakfasts were really good. I think we liked the Huevos Rancheros Costa Rica Style breakfast the best. Two crunchy tortilla cups (about the size of a cupcake paper) had black beans in the bottom topped with some salsa, then a single poached egg in each, topped with a little melted cheese. It was very good. I think Marin most fell in love with the coffee. She stopped sweetening her coffee here because the flavor was so good it didn’t need the sugar. Later we found out that it wasn’t just Costa Rican coffee, but an especially good brand of Costa Rican Coffee called Milagro.

What made the Huevos Rancheros “Costa Rica style” was apparently the black beans. I tried to eat Costa Rican food as much as I could, but found a lot of it unsatisfying. While I could probably live pretty well on black beans and white rice, I was surprised by the blandness of the beans. When I cook black beans at home, I add some onions and garlic, and some cumin or coriander, and a little citrus. At one place, I ordered Costa Rican style chicken. I got a couple of pieces of chicken in a very bland gravy, a little salad, and mashed potatoes, and crowded onto this plate was a helping of black beans and a small pile of white rice. I guess we can think of it as their bread. There is fruit everywhere, but it doesn’t figure into the foods at all, except as a little thing on the side. And, where there’s coffee, there should be chocolate, but it seems to be found mostly in the imported Milky Way Bars. The crops we passed on the roads were pineapple, sugar cane, rice and coffee.

After Marin and I had breakfast, we parted, and I decided to take my laptop poolside and check out facebook and figure out how we could get to Arenal the next day. As soon as I got there, I realized I’d made a perfect choice. There was no one else around, and the forest right next to the pool was full of squirrel monkeys. There was one on top of the umbrella that was shading my table. I watched them play for a while, then, after making our reservations for the next day’s bus trip, I wrote a bit and read a bit and asked to be taken to the National Park.

I wanted to see if I could figure out how to find the animals the way that our guide did the day before. I couldn’t, but I was glad to go again. This time, I didn’t have William to protect me from people insisting I buy goods or tours from them. It wasn’t so bad though. People were a little pushy, but took no for an answer, and if the no was said with a smile, I got a smile back.

On this trip, I couldn’t find any howler monkeys, but I did see two sloths and a coatimundi, which looks like an elongated, pointier raccoon. I also got to enjoy the plant life more. The diversity is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. There are light greens, dark greens, huge leaves and small. There are many plants that I recognized as indoor houseplants back home. There are many plants that have found a home by growing high in the canopy on the side of a tree. It actually roots itself into the tree. My favorite thing is the vines that hang down from the tall trees—the Tarzan vines. I had always thought this was just a handy movie device. Nope. On top of that, there are plants that send roots down from high in the canopy, trying to root in the ground. One plant, rightly called a strangler fig, actually starts out by growing in a tree, sends roots down on all sides, and then eventually kills the tree that it was growing on, leaving behind what looks like a tree, but with a kind of hollow inside.

After I returned to the hotel, Marin returned from her trip, excited by the bottle nosed dolphins she had seen. She said that they even were jumping high out of the water. The snorkeling was just okay; the water was not too clear, but the dolphins were clearly the highlight for her. She had also been fed a nice lunch of grilled fish skewers on the boat. Marin followed her adventure with a long nap, I read and watched television. We went swimming. I went online and found many nice birthday wishes. We had a nice birthday dinner, though I missed Cameron and PJ. My birthdays are always nice, and this one was definitely no exception.

Costa Rica: Day 2

2009-07-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

A good sleep will cure a lot, so it shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did that I woke up feeling refreshed and happy and ready to explore. The afternoon before, I had had the sense to ask for a tour of Manuel Antonio National Park. I did this not so much because I wanted a tour. I like to explore on my own when possible. I couldn’t figure out how to get to the park. The cute little golf carts that took us up the hill were a sign that no taxi was going to drive right up to the front door of the hotel, so I figured buying a tour would be my way of ensuring transportation to the park.
Are all Americans this uncomfortable with great service? I have to describe more about what the Gaia was like. There were always two receptionists on duty, who stopped whatever they might be doing the moment I walked in. If I said, as I did on day 3, “I would like to go shopping outside of Manuel Antonio National Park,” one of the receptionists would get on the radio immediately and ask for a driver to be ready down the hill. Then a golf cart driver would show up right outside the reception area, whisk me down the hill, but stop to show me if there was an interesting animal in one of the trees on the way down the hill, and drive me right next to the van that would take me to the shopping area. Oh, and the golf cart driver would ask about my stay. When Marin was with me in the cart, there would be some friendly flirting as they tried to get her to speak some Spanish. The van driver would then take me to where I wanted to go, and ask what time I wished to be picked up. He spoke little English and was kind and grateful for the little Spanish I could speak. When I returned, there was the driver, waiting, and as we approached the hotel, he would radio that Senora Vicki was returning and the golf cart would be waiting. And what did I do? I felt uncomfortable because I didn’t know how to handle all this, and I especially didn’t know how, when, and how much to tip (I caught on after a while). It was probably good for us that the Gaia was pretty remote, so we had to learn how to negotiate all this great service.

What this brings me to is the National Park. Manuel Antonio is the smallest National Park in Costa Rica, and that’s saying a lot because this tiny country (put together New Hampshire and Vermont and you've got the size) has many National Parks (about 25% of the land). You can walk every trail in the park in one day, and that includes stopping to look. It is one of the most popular parks because it is relatively close to San Jose and easy to get to (by Costa Rica standards) and because it has a large diversity of plants and animals. William, the hotel’s favorite park guide, met us at the hotel. I noticed right away that he carried a large telescopic lens on a tripod. I thought it was a camera at first, but it turned out to be just for viewing.

In case the steamy weather and the tropical plants didn’t clue me in, I would have known immediately that I was not at home when we got to the entrance of the park. Before getting there, all the tourists are surrounded by guides who are dressed exactly like William and who are all carrying the same telephoto lens. The guides do not work for the park. They make a living by being hired by people to walk them through the park. Most people turn them down, but the guides keep following them all the way up to the place where you hand over your ticket and enter the park, saying, “You’ll have a much better visit if you hire me.” They are pushy. Worse than that, for most Americans, is that you have to negotiate the price of their services with them.

As soon as you’ve hired a guide, they back off. Since Marin and I showed up with William, we didn’t have to deal with them. William, probably in his mid-thirties, was older than most of the guides, and he probably is envied by them because he doesn’t have to stand out there and negotiate.

As soon as we got in the park, it was clear how necessary a guide was, and it was also clear that the very same guides who are hustling people outside the park really know what they are talking about. They become serious naturalists once inside.

This is what William would do: He’d take a few steps, look around, stop and look more carefully at what looked to me to be a sea of plants. Then he would place his telephoto lens on the tripod in the middle of the wide trail, look through his lens, make a few adjustments (the adjustments took all of about 10 seconds), and then invite us to look. There we would see a magnificent spider or bird or lizard. He would tell us about the animal—why it liked that plant, what its predators are, what its coloration did for it—and then show us how we could stick our cameras’ lenses onto the lens of his device and take pictures.

At first he was so good at this (and I couldn’t for the life of me see the real animal with my own eyes) that I wondered if he somehow had pictures loaded in the lens and was only making us believe that we were looking at animals, especially since the first animals stayed so still for us. Later, we got better at seeing the animal with our own eyes (but never at finding them ourselves).

In approximately two hours, we saw grasshoppers colored like none I’ve ever seen before, sloths (both the two toed and three toed species….did you know that the two toed ones are kind of mean?), Jesus Christ lizards, which run across water, spiders building webs, a toucan (that was really exciting), and two howler monkeys. One of the howler monkeys, asleep in a tree branch, had draped his bright white testicles over a smaller branch, so they were hanging there, kind of like laundry drying on a line. They (the testicles) are completely white. William, who exhibited absolutely no sense of humor, said, "Nature porn!" He was pretty amused with himself.

After a life of imagining steamy rainforest jungles as being way inland with a murky river nearby, it came as a surprise the the Pacific Ocean forms one of the borders of the park. As you are walking past the dense growth, you can hear it. Then suddenly, there it is. There’s maybe 100 feet of sand, then a stand of coconut trees, and then jungle.

We walked along the beach for a bit and then we exited the National Park. Immediately outside the exit gate, there are all kinds of people waiting to sell you things. Some of it looked poorly made (actually most of it looked that way), but much of it looked very nice. But it was such a shock to be suddenly thrust into the harsh light and heat and noise outside of the more shaded park, that I had very little time to think about all this. I did stop and buy some pottery and then William walked us back to our starting point, and there was Omar, our hotel driver, waiting to rush us back to the hotel.

Back in our room, I turned on the television. The day before, almost every channel was carrying Michael Jackson’s service, but today, Heaven. It was noon and All My Children was on. I decided that I was having a perfect day. Amazing natural wonders followed by a break in front of the television. Following that, Marin and I decided to try out the hotel pool. This is a terraced pool, built on a few levels going down the hill. I quickly realized that I should have used the pool the day before, too, to get the feeling of travel out of my system. After a swim, where we could stop often and look out over the land and the Pacific Ocean beyond, we went back to our room, where Marin took a nap and I finally figured out how to use their wireless internet system (it wasn’t functioning in our room, so we had to take the laptop somewhere else on the property). The dark clouds started to gather, the air felt oppressive (Marin had described it as walking through soup), and it started to rain.

After the rain, I went back outside with my computer and noticed that the trees were moving a lot. They were full of squirrel monkeys. I watched as they wrestled, tumbled, and jumped from tree to tree. There were babies, adults, and adolescents. I went and got Marin and we watched together for a very long time. At one point, I tried to count them, but they were jumping around so wildly that I couldn’t. There were a good two dozen of them, though, and many were not more than 15 feet from us. It seems hard to believe that these are an endangered species, but their habitat is getting smaller and smaller, and some groups have found homes right next to some of the hotels. Our hotel was built on a biological reserve that is no longer in use, but the builders made a commitment to preserve most of the reserve.

One thing that’s difficult to get used to is that, because we’re close to the equator, the summer days don’t lengthen here. At home right now, I have enough daylight for walking dogs until about 8:30, but the sun sets here at around 5 pm, and by 6 it is completely dark. I noticed that by day two, we were already kind of living by the light, feeling like the day was finished by 6. Before dark, we went to the hotel restaurant and had linner (or dunch). And thus ended a very happy day.

Costa Rica, Day 1

2009-07-09T14:37:00.000-07:00

First, you must understand that I am a horrible traveler. I dread leaving home. I worry about my dogs, my plants, whether or not I left anything unlocked or turned on. I worry about getting there…what if my luggage is lost, what if the hotel isn’t expecting us after all, what if people don’t understand English. I really envy people who thrive on such nervousness. People have said to me, “Running into problems is half the fun.” That’s nice for them. By the way, all of those things have happened to me more than once, and I’ve lived, but that doesn’t stop the worry. Then there’s the part I hate most: getting there. I don’t like flying. The emptier the flight, the more likely (I tell myself) it is to fall out of the sky. Nutty, I know.

This trip to Costa Rica hit on all of my travel woes. To get there took two flights with an almost four hour layover between. The second leg left Los Angeles at 2:15 a.m. The flight, on TACA airlines, was completely full. TACA, which oddly goes by different names depending on where you buy tickets, is a major Central American carrier. The airplane was medium sized with three seats, an aisle, then three seats. This created the narrowest aisle I’d ever seen. Even the drink carts were about half the width that they usually are. The attendants, who were very professional and polite, kept bumping into my shoulder and elbow. They couldn’t help it. I’m sure they were doing it to a lot of people. I slept a bit on the flight and then they fed us breakfast. I ate because I thought I should, but it was really horrible. I had pancakes, which were not fresh off the griddly and which oddly came with a croissant and a muffin, along with a fruit cup. I ate a pancake, realized it tasted awful, and then ate nothing else. Soon I was looking at Costa Rica out of the airplane window. I could see green everywhere, with houses clinging to hillsides, blue sky, and mountains beyond.

No luggage was lost, and the driver I’d asked the hotel to hire for us was there waiting for us. Unfortunately, we had a 3.5 hour drive ahead of us on rough roads. At first it was wonderful. When we got out of San Jose, the capitol city, we were surrounded everywhere by tropical plants. Then, I looked out the window and saw a bird of prey with a huge wingspan. I looked in my guidebook and realized it was an osprey. Soon, I saw many osprey, which are beautiful birds of prey, and because we were high above the forest floor, they were at eye level. However, looking out the windows was my second mistake (after the pancakes). With the exhaustion and the pancakes and all, I realized I was feeling really carsick. So I spent the rest of the trip worrying that I was going to vomit all over the nice SUV we were in.

About halfway there, our driver stopped at a bridge that was famous for being over a river with crocodiles in it. I was very glad to stop. My stomach settled some, and then there was the thrill of the crocodiles. They were huge. According to my guide book, then can get about 21 feet long. At least one of these must have been that long. At this stop, I also got to see one of the many restaurants we had passed on the road up close. They are called sodas, and they are basically a roof held up by posts with a few tables and a kitchen inside. It was dark and felt very inviting. And there was something very old movie-ish tropical feeling about it. I felt as if Humphrey Bogart was going to come out of the back and ask me when I got into town. Too bad I couldn’t eat anything.

Back in the car, more windy roads, and then, thankfully, we arrived. For our first three nights, I chose a hotel called Gaia that I’d read great reviews about. The car was met by two nice young men. One got on a walkie-talkie and announced our arrival to someone. The other shuttled us into the back seat of a golf cart and drove us up a steep hill. As we got about halfway up, he stopped the cart and pointed to a tree right next to the little road we were on. There was a sloth!

At the top of the hill, we were greeted by one of the receptionists, and another worker who brought us each a tropical fruity drink. It was cold, refreshing, and delicious. After they felt that we were ready, we were shown the grounds, including the pool and spa, and our lovely room with a DVD player, satellite television, and a Jacuzzi tub. Marin and I walked around a bit and then we had tapas at the hotel lounge, which is open air, like the sodas that we saw, except it was on top of a hill and clearly very designed. We could see osprey all over the place and we could see the rainclouds coming in from the Pacific Ocean.

The air just got more and more humid and the sky grew dark. We heard thunder. Then it started to rain. It was about 4:30. I was tired, but Marin said that we should stay awake. She’s the world traveler, so I listen to her. I turned on the television and Marin opened up her book. Five minutes later, the world traveler was fast asleep. I joined her and we woke up the next morning.

Get Thee to the Post Office

2009-05-27T11:17:00.000-07:00

BEST. STAMPS. EVER.

Really. They're even better in person.

Fun with Wikipedia

2009-05-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

While doing some research about Denali National Park this weekend, I ended up with a link to a wikipedia article about the Pizzly. Check it out. Move over, Ligers.

Two For One Memorial Day Special

2009-05-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

End of the school year activities have gotten in the way of my all important Groomer has it blogging job. So we’ve missed a couple of episodes, which, except for one, were boring. Don’t worry—there are plenty of crazy groomers remaining. We’re at the half-way point, so six groomers remain.

The groomers are told that they are going to a chicken farm. They are not excited. They get to the farm, where they get a lesson on hoof care of pot-bellied pigs. After one lesson, they pair up to try their hand at flipping over a pig, keeping it relaxed, and clipping and buffing its hooves. These are not those tiny, cute pot-bellied pigs that I once tried to bring home. These look to weigh more than a groomer.

I suppose you’re wondering why dog groomers have to work with pigs? Host Jai explains that “As a groomer, you have to increase your skill set.” You can believe that or you can think the real answer is “because making you look foolish makes the viewers happier, no matter how far we get from dog grooming.”

First, the groomers wash the pigs. Then they trim the whiskers. They do not trim the hooves, so I sat through a hoof trimming lesson for nothing! Oh well. You never know when an unclean hobo pig is going to show up looking for some work and a piece of pie and need its hooves trimmed.

I digress. No doubt you are wondering which team won the challenge. The winning team is the team of Marco and Lisa. The judge, a woman who seems to live for pot-bellied pigs, said, “I swear I could eat off that pig.” This viewer is left wondering if the judge wants to eat a meal that is served on the pig or eat the meat off of the pig. I have to say the latter sounds better (as long as it’s ethically killed, of course). BLT, BLT….

Marco and Lisa get a treat—a kick boxing lesson. Lisa has always wanted to kick box but has “never had the balls.” Lisa is able to kick a board in half by pretending the board is one of the judges, Xavier, whom she calls “a cross-eyed little man.” Ouch. True, but ouch.

The groomers are given overweight dogs to groom and make look thinner with “anatomical” grooming. Marco and Lisa each get to take fifteen minutes away from a groomer, thus giving each of them a time advantage. Marco chooses Cassandra, who sits in a corner and, you guessed it, pouts. Bill, perhaps revealing more of his thinking than he should, explains that he is going to make his dog look handsome and sexy.

I usually can’t tell a good cut from a bad one. But this time, I can see that Cassandra has done a very poor, choppy job. She now has a fat dog with a bad haircut. The judges agree with me. However, they really pick on Marco’s dog. I don’t see the problem, but Xavier says, “This is the Titanic!”

The judges send the groomers away and deliberate. Lisa gets Best in Show for making her fat dog look thinner. Marco and Cassandra are in the bottom two, which makes for a few good moments because they are sworn enemies. I would explain why, but it would bore you as much as it does me. Xavier is very disappointed in both of them.

Cut to commercial, and……Marco has been clipped. The sanest groomer has to leave, and the poutiest one gets to stay. Farewell, Marco.

We are down to five groomers: Cassandra, the pouter, Lisa, the experienced one, Hubert, the one with a foreign accent, Danielle, the possible dark horse, always under the radar, and Bill, the one who’ll make your dog sexy.

To Have and to Howl

2009-05-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

Like most viewers, I am a sucker for a wedding episode. How kind of Groomer Has It to throw a wedding show into its May sweeps schedule.

Who’s getting married? Why, dogs are!

But first, it’s time for the Pledge ™ Quick Sniff Challenge. The groomers have to put topknots on their dogs. And I learned something! Some breeds, when cut to standard, have hair that falls into their eyes. But some owners would actually like to see their doggies’ soulful eyes, so they ask the groomers to trim accordingly. However, the groomer usually wants to stick to the Breed standard, which often involves hair in the eyes. What’s a groomer to do? Rather than cut the hair shorter, the hair is rubber banded into a little pony tail, which is called a topknot. Artist, last year’s winner, is called upon to advise and judge. Here is his advice: “What you have to do is put a little creativity in it, make it look as close to AKC standards as possible.” Artist’s useful and helpful advice makes him the Paula Abdul of dog grooming judges.

The teams make topknots until Artist tells them they are perfect. The winning team was lead by Danielle. Her prize is that she can trade any of her teammates for other groomers on the other team for the wedding challenge. She swaps Marco for Bill and Cassandra for Hubert. Needless to say Marco and Cassandra are not happy. Marco, who earlier said that most dog groomers are crazy, actually takes it pretty well, but not Cassandra. She pouts. A lot.

Finally, we get to the challenge. One team gets the bride and her wedding party and the other gets the groom and his wedding party. The team with the “most unified bridal party” wins. I guess this means they all have to look alike rather than that they have to avoid drunken brawls at the rehearsal dinner.

Lots of scenes of grooming difficulties follow, but let’s cut to the wedding. Don’t think that I didn’t see the irony of this wedding taking place in California. The guests were assembled with their owners. Everyone was all dressed up. The bride had a wedding dress; the groom had a tux. The bride was a Scotty; the groom was a Westie. Mixed breed wedding. Let’s just be grateful that these dogs were of the opposite sex.

Here are some comments from the judges that you won’t hear at a regular wedding:
“You should have blended the skirt area.”
“I don’t think it was a smart move to give the bride to Hubert.”
“Why did she give the bride to Hubert when she knew Lisa had more experience?”
“Deal with what you’re given and do the best you can.”—Okay, maybe you will hear that at a wedding.

Oh, who won? Does it really matter? Aren’t they all winners by just putting “it out there,” whatever that might mean. Danielle’s strategy of trading her friends for a power team paid off, with the judges warning all four groomers on that team that they relied too much on Lisa (the no-nonsense, very experienced groomer). The person from the losing team that had to go home was Jessica. She was one of a handful of young, attractive groomers without enough experience to last long in the competitive world that is dog grooming.

Saturday, 9 p.m. What else is there to do?

2009-04-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

Well, we’re down to 10 groomers. Even writing that exhausts me.

The show begins with Krista returning to the doghouse after not being eliminated. The other 9 are noticeably unthrilled. Krista cries (remember she’s the one who doesn’t do that), and says to the confessional camera, “I’m not going to groom like I’m in a sorority house with a bunch of backstabbing witches. I need to groom like I’m sick of these people and I can’t stand them so I’m going to kill them off one at a time.” Since I’m watching this for all of you, you must imagine Pam on The Office, but with those words coming out of her mouth. Uh, pass the sharp grooming shears?

For the Pledge Quick Sniff Challenge, the groomers are told to pair up. They are taught how to massage a dog. Perhaps my cockapi love being handled more than most dogs, but I just don’t see this as a challenging task. Each pair is given a Jack Russell terrier to massage..

Sherri, the woman who has something to prove, tells the cameras several times that she is a massage practitioner. She figures she has an advantage, but the judge says that she and her partner talked to each other instead of to the dog. Marco (the guy who thinks groomers are weird) and Huber (with the accent) are superexcited to win and get a leg up and a treat…a trip to the dtox day spa. Marco talks about how sophisticated this massage was compared to the others he’s had. He did not share any details of these past massages.

Marco says, “Two people have gone home so far and that really worries me.” I don’t think he should be worried. I believe that’s how the show works.

For the elimination challenge, they are to groom the dogs of high maintenance clients. One claims that her dog needs to see a picture of her (the owner) at all times. One dog needs only filtered water and every ten minutes. One needs to be sung to. One owner needs his dog to attract women for him because a psychic told him so. He tells the groomers he hates his dog’s tail because it looks like someone put a firecracker in its butt. I wonder why such a charmer has trouble finding women.

The groomers don’t know that the clients are allowed to watch and listen to them on hidden cameras. The water woman thinks that they are using tap water. She’s angry. The singing groomers anger the owner, thinking that they are making fun of her by singing too loud and high (she is an opera singer and she demonstrated how to sing to the dog by singing loud and high).

Then the groomers of the dog of the man on the make take a big chance. They tip the dog’s tail with a bit of green coloring. Sherri says that she will take the fall if the owner doesn’t like it.

It’s judging time and the groomers are very shocked to find out that they were being watched. I wonder how they’ll react when they learn their actions are being filmed for a television show.

The judges are torn about the tail color. They agree it was a risk and they like risk-taking, but they are concerned that they should have checked with the owner first (though that would have removed the risk). Lisa and Bill win by doing a good job and constantly showing the owner’s photo to the dog. Sherri and Jessica lose because of the tail coloring. Sherri takes the fall and sobs because she doesn’t like to disappoint people. She can barely get the words out because of her crying. It actually is a little heartbreaking. Then she goes on about how she disappointed her family. I’m trying to picture her husband sitting at home, crushing his empty beer can with his bare hand and saying, “I told ya not to color those tails,” and her teenage daughter worrying that no one will ask her to the prom because of the humiliation of her mother being cut from Groomer Has It.

Well, 9 groomers left. I think I can make it to the end. I’ll do it for you, loyal readers. I’ll bring it!

End of vacation round-up

2009-04-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

Gratuitous cute dog photo for no reason.

Well, what an interesting Spring Break it's been. Let's tally it all up. In the plus column: I slept, I shared meals with several friends, I enjoyed hosting Easter dinner at my house, I planted a little vegetable garden, I finished taxes, I took walks, I caught up on mail and bills and the need to cancel some subscriptions, I watched 5 movies, I blogged a lot, I finished reading In Defense of Food.

In the minus column: I had a dentist appointment in which the novacaine hadn't quite done its thing before the drilling began. I love my dentist, who felt worse than I did about the whole thing, but since this is one of my greatest fears, the memory stuck with me for several days. In related news, I found out that I can really jump right out of a seat when I need to. My tax bill was rather high, to put it mildly. I have a litter of kittens in my basement. In related news, dog doors to outside also can be cat doors to inside. Although I made real progress on parts of my yard, I made almost none on other parts. And I had the strangest Deja Vu experience ever. It still has me shaken. But it is actually too boring to go into.

About the kittens: The mother gave birth in an abandoned computer monitor. I didn't look there because I hadn't realized that Cameron had gutted the monitor. Marcel (my dog)found them and now he's obsessed with them. Their eyes are open, but they're not walking around, so I'm guessing they're about 3 weeks old. I went to take a picture tonight, only to be met with some very scary growling. Apparently, the mother (probably a victim of a foreclosure) is taking care of her babies.

This Post from V. Baker, NBCT

2009-04-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

We start out this week’s episode right after the last elimination. The groomers are as surprised as I was that Micheal had to go.

Time for the Pledge Quick Sniff Challenge! Nemo, the messenger dog, is dressed as a little construction worker to let the groomers know the theme. Inside the grooming salon, there are 25 common safety hazards that each team will have to find. The team that lost the last challenge wins this one. No one seems very happy for them.

Back at the Doghouse, the groomers have a big argument about whether or not certification is important. People seem to be very emotionally involved in the argument. How have I been kept in the dark about this controversy? I listen to NPR every day, for Heaven’s sake!

Lisa, the no-nonsense groomer, says to Huber, “You have already touched my life in a way that I’ll never forget, and it doesn’t matter to me that you don’t have letters after your name.” They hug and cry. Krista says that she’s not all weepy and huggy because she’s not wired that way, which makes her start sobbing uncontrollably. Huber, talking about Krista, says, “She has chosen to piss off the wrong people.” Huber has seen The Godfather one too many times.

Krista says (to camera) that she has decided she has to groom her ass off. Let’s just say that’s a bit of a tall order.

The elimination challenge arrives not a moment too soon. The groomers will be working individually to try and correct botched grooming jobs.

Jessica and Krista won the Quick Sniff Challenge, so they get to match botched dogs with groomers. They give Lisa the paralyzed dog, which actually doesn’t seem like a disadvantage to me. (Lisa explains why it is not an advantage later).

Chicken Joe was excited to get a Pomeranian, as he is the self-declared Queen of Pomeranians.

Two hours later, the groomers defend themselves to the judges. Cassandra talks about the problems she had working with her dog’s “poop canal.” One of the judges says that Cassandra should be absolutely enthralled with herself over the good job she did. From the looks of it, mission accomplished. Chicken Joe says that his dog left a paw print on his heart.

Cassandra gets Best in Show.

Krista and Chicken Joe are in the bottom two, which means one of the show’s major personalities will have to go. Will Chicken Joe and his eyeliner be sent back to his island to make bitchy comments to his animals? Or will Krista have to take her Vegas pizzazz and return to her Fur Academy, leaving the house much, much quieter?

Goodbye Chicken Joe. He’s been clipped. He tells the camera that he is very happy to get back to the island with his 24 dogs.

Krista returns to the house to what will no doubt be an unenthusiastic greeting. She is reminded that she needs to keep out of the back of the pack next time.

It's Back!

2009-04-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

Oh, loyal readers! Forget about my taxes and work problems. Groomer Has It, a reality show about dog groomers has returned for another season on Animal Planet. If you are surprised by this news, you are not alone. As far as I could tell, I was the only one on the planet watching (other than some of the writers of The Soup, who featured it quite often last year).
If you have not been dreaming for this day to arrive and have no recollection of last season, let me catch you up a bit. About a dozen groomers who think they’re Top Dogs (their pun, not mine) in the dog grooming industry gather in Los Angeles to compete for the honor of being the best of the best. They are judged by (of course) a panel of three judges, one kind of sweet, one haughty, and one who looks and acts like a character from the Sopranos. All three judges, along with Jai, the host, have returned this season.
That just leaves the groomers to introduce. What new and exciting people have the producers chosen for us this time? Last year, the groomers consisted of several types: a kind of bitchy guy who dropped names of his rich clients and was proud of his work with poodles, a very bitchy guy with a foreign accent, a middle-aged woman with a no nonsense attitude about being the best dog groomer in the country, a woman who claimed to be in psychic communication with dogs, and a Black guy.
Let’s meet this year’s group:
There is a no nonsense middle aged woman named Lisa. She has won many best in shows.
Cassandra is young, blonde, and loves to groom. She could just do it all day! She’s never been in any competition and here she is in the best she could ever be in! Whee!
Chicken Joe, who lives on an island, is 58 years old and has been grooming dogs for 52 years. We see him at home feeding lunchmeat to a tortoise. He tells us that he is going to put the “style back into doggie style.”
Sherri seems to turn on the waterworks at the drop of a hat. She sees herself as the underdog in this competition. Before she even touches the first dog, she’s already crying, saying, “I am doing this for my family so I can show them that you can accomplish anything.” Hang onto this moment, Sherri!
Bill sees himself as the poodle guru with “lots of tricks up my sleeve.”
There is Krista, who owns a grooming school, The Fur Institute. She seems to think she puts Pizzazz into dog grooming. She sees herself as a Las Vegas type of dog groomer. She looks like your third grade teacher. In the first shot, she is showing that pizzazz by wearing a feather boa with a color that exactly matches the top she’s wearing, rendering it almost invisible. She has a quiet pizzazz, I guess.
Vanessa communicates with animals telepathically.
Micheal (notice the spelling) seems sane, and he is the sole Black guy, like last year’s Artist. In fact, like last year’s Artist, he is the sole minority of any type, unless you count homosexuals, who seem to be plentiful both this season and last.
Marco, 24, says that most groomers don’t know how to make money because they can’t communicate with people and because they are “just weird.”
Huber is our groomer with a Spanish accent. He predicts that his Grandfather will come down from “wherever he is” and give him a big hug when he wins Groomer of the Year. Top that one, Survivor.

For the first quick sniff challenge—excuse me, the Pledge Quick Sniff Challenge-- they have to “beg, borrow or steal” their tools from the residents of the rich suburban neighbor they’re in. What an unexpected surprise for the residents, since they surely haven’t noticed the camera crews and lights in the middle of their street, and no doubt have not signed releases.

So, they groom their St. Bernards with the borrowed tools. Already, some contestants are complaining of having disadvantages. For example, Sherri just gave birth a few days before and she is a little slow going door to door, and her team grows tired of this. The red team, which includes no nonsense Lisa, wins and everyone decides that Lisa is the one to beat.

Next, they go to the Doghouse to get to know each other before the next challenge. Everyone seems to quickly dislike Krista, of the purple boa, because she won’t shut up. She’s not saying anything wrong necessarily; she’s just talking. A lot.

It’s time for the Elimination Challenge! The contestants are going to be grooming Standard Poodles. They are told to groom the dogs “not in Standard fashion.” The example they are shown is a poodle who has been groomed to look like a camel, including brown dye and a hump. It looks hideous. Why? Why? Why? That’s just me crying to the Heavens about how strange people are to do this to a dog.

Their designs are to consist of the cuts that they make in the fur and paint, which is air sprayed on. They can also use costumes, but this seems to be frowned upon as a lesser art. Each three member team has to pick someone to be in charge of cuts, cleanliness and creativity. It sounded like they were choosing diamonds.

The blue team decides to go for a Hollywood theme, and they get right to work.

The yellow team has some trouble deciding on their theme. There is some argument. One member suggests pants and a jacket. Very dignified, you know.

The red team decides to do the AIDS ribbon and the Breast Cancer ribbon because “this is what we’re here for.” Huh? They’re on a dog grooming reality show because they want to make people aware of AIDS and Breast Cancer?

Poor dogs. They look ridiculous in their strange cuts and paints. Let me describe:
1. The Wizard of Claws. The dog is wearing a hat and has a single pink heart painted on one back leg. That’s it.
2. The Red Team with the AIDs and Breast Cancer ribbons (let me point out that these ribbons are shaved into the dog and airbrushed).
3. The Hollywood dog. I’m not sure what the idea was there. You know those pictures you used to see at butcher shops with the side of the animal sectioned off so that you could see where your cut of meat came from? That’s what this poor dog looked like.
4. Devil Dog. The tail was a trident dyed red. The body was done in a mowhawk. The judges said they “captured the dog’s personality.”

The ribbon dog won. Tears.

The Hollywood Dog loses and the judges decide that Micheal has to go home because one of the other contestants scraped the dog’s leg, but he was in charge of cutting. Bummer for him. Jai, the host, tells him, “You’ve been clipped.”

I can’t wait for next week.

What Is Wrong With Me?

2009-04-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of a week of vacation. I am doing what I like best, and spending it at home. I knew that the first half would be busy. I help science teachers achieve National Board Certification and many of them had an April 15th deadline. I couldn't get too irritated with them for their procrastination, since I also had to file my taxes this week. I also like to set aside time for friends and family. I saw family on Easter; I have a couple of lunches with friends planned. I need to start a new book and I need to read up on Global warming, since I want to teach a unit on it.

For vacation, there were two jobs that I actually HAD to do. One was taxes (done) and the other was getting my garden to look presentable. I have a fairly small plot of land, so the task should be doable. Should be.

Yesterday, in the middle of doing taxes, I glanced over at a new copy of Sunset Magazine and I decided to see if there were any new recipes I should try (there were). While thumbing through, I couldn't help but notice articles on backyard farmers. One article was about a San Francisco resident who had a tiny backyard (so do I) that was covered in concrete (so is mine). Usually, these articles involve bringing in a designer who transforms the yard into a tiny Tuscan getaway. That's what I love about Sunset. Everything is just out of my grasp, so I can dream it but do nothing about it. This one was different, though. The San Francisco guy just put a bunch of pots and planters right on the concrete and on the fences and started to grow his own vegetables. Well, of course, I need to do that! That, I told myself, will give me the incentive to pull out those weeds! And even though I know this is crazy, I'm going to do it.

And speaking of crazy, there are my taxes. I ended up with a tax bill that was beyond my imagination. The money I sent to the IRS and to the state yesterday is what some people in this country live on in a year. If you know me, you know that I am a good saver (my children would say cheap, but they'd be wrong), so I'm lucky that I'm able to pay it (and lucky to have a job in the first place). But here's the strange thing: logic would tell you that this unexpected surprise would cause me to think that I have to save a little harder to build the money back up. But instead, it's like the floodgates opened, so let's let it all go. I spent part of yesterday evening looking at prices for Honda Fits and for energy saving windows. (I can even justify both..putting people to work, helping the economy, saving fossil fuels, etc.)

I'll be back at work on Monday, so how much damage can I really do in the next five days?

Life Imitates Art

2009-04-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Last week at work, as all of us slogged sleepily to what seemed like the latest Spring Break ever, I received an e-mail requesting that something my department had been working on be turned in the next day (two days before the original agreed upon deadline). I wondered why, and frankly, felt that I was suddenly shut out of a process that I had been a part of for years now. I sent out a polite e-mail to the supervisor making the request and was told, that it was a decision from above (she didn't say who made the decision or why). I sent out another polite e-mail to the person I originally set the deadline with asking if he could give me any information. The rest of this story could probably be predicted: the second e-mail was forwarded to the person from above who changed the time, who then took offense at my asking the question, and, in what I felt was a rude way, wondered what I was doing getting involved. And he forwarded my e-mail and his response to several people, stopping just short of the superintendent.

One of my favorite books is Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens. I read it in my early twenties, and then I saw a really good movie version of it about ten years later. Now, there's a new production on Masterpiece Classics, which I'm enjoying very much. When I first read the book, I was the same age as Amy Dorrit, the title character. I think that, at the time, I was aware that I loved the book because there were many parallels between Amy Dorrit's life and mine. I'm even more aware of them now, but the funny thing is, this time around, it's Amy's father I'm finding interesting.

Mr. Dorrit has been in Debtor's Prison for Amy's entire life and he sees himself as more important and dignified than anyone else there. He expects all new arrivals to pay their respects. As played by Tom Courtenay, he's beautifully brought to life and seen as the poignant blowhard that he is. Amy spends her life protecting her father from reality. He does not realize that the world has passed him by (or maybe he does--it's what makes him such a great character). In trying to hold onto his view of himself, he is not above hinting to guests that money is what they should give to such an important gentleman, or humiliating his daughter when her decisions do not result in more comfort for him.

So, this week, it became all too clear why Mr. Dorrit was the person I was finding so interesting. I'm just trying to hold onto my little piece of the world and want the respect I feel I deserve, and the set of e-mails, which, due to those wonderful cc and forward buttons, ended up involving four people in my department and five superiors, made my status public, and I'm much too self-aware to not find that embarrassing.

The story should just stop there, but the evening after the e-mail mess happened, I had a pleasant evening with PJ, and thought that I was done with the whole thing. But when I woke up the next morning, I felt angry and hurt all over again. Before school started, the supervisor who had sent the first e-mail (not the rude one) called and apologized. It was a real apology, not an "I'm sorry but you should have...." or a "now let me tell you how I feel" apology. It was kind and heartfelt. As soon as I got off the phone, I realized that an apology was all I had wanted all along. My bad feelings disappeared. Completely. Which, depending on your point of view, points out either the incredible power of a real apology or how petty my problem was in the first place. Or both.

I Don't Like Mondays

2009-04-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

For Lent, my daughter has chosen a difficult job. She is trying to understand people better. That definitely beats giving up chocolate.

This week, though, something has happened that feels beyond understanding. A former coworker has been arrested for lewd acts with a minor. The coworker is a woman; the minor is a boy (13 years old, according to the paper). The picture of her in the newspaper, which I assume is a mug shot, shows a haunted person, almost unrecognizable. I keep looking at it, wondering what she feels haunted by: guilt, lack of sleep, mental illness, upset that she got caught?

I saw that someone on a news website, responding to the story, said, "Predators everywhere." I was really taken aback by the use of the word predator. It's too simple, too dismissive. Declare her evil and move on.

From what I'm reading and hearing through the grapevine, my first hopes that this is all a horrible mix-up were in vain. Much is made of the dark humor of cops, who have to deal with very difficult situations. Teachers also have dark humor about their jobs (I still remember the look of amused shock on my brother's face when he visited my school one day and heard a coworker, talking about a difficult student, say, "See that rock on the ground. It's smarter than he is.") But there are feww jokes this weekend as we struggle to understand this.

The news is covering a mass murder in New York, a missile launch from North Korea, and the recession this weekend, so this story may not take off the way it normally would. If it does, though, we will read about the teacher's perfect family with several young children. There is the actual victim to think of, and his family. Then there's my hope that he is the only victim (I know conventional wisdom says there must be more, but conventional wisdom doesn't seem to work here). The press and the school district will respect the victim's privacy, as they should, but her children have no such protection, nor does her husband (the family is actively involved in their community. There is no hiding possible right now).

My impression of her? A little odd but with some loveliness to her. We all have things about ourselves that we take pride in. I think that she took pride in juggling a very busy life. When I would ask her how she was doing, and she would tell me about all the things keeping her busy, I would honestly tell her that I felt exhausted just listening to her. She clearly liked being seen as Supermom. A mean or maybe envious part of me would think that no one could possibly live with that much stress and be that happy. The last time I saw her was about a month ago. I had a non-student work day, and I took advantage of the freedom by indulging in a trip to In n Out, where I ran into her. After a friendly hello, I remember thinking, "So, the perfect wife and mother eats fast food. Good for her."

So, why? I doubt we'll ever get an answer, and I'm not sure it's even worth knowing. What may be more interesting is how desperately those of us who know her feel the need to understand, and how we'll all end up choosing an answer. If you read between the lines of what I've written, you can find my explanation, but it's no more valid than anyone else's.

Perpetual Astonishment

2009-03-31T20:35:00.000-07:00

There was only--spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind--rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.--Willa Cather, My Antonia

My garden and my blog have both been ignored for weeks. My jobs keep me busy and prevent me from doing things I like. Then, right about now, I emerge and am able to find a little free time.
I have a love-hate relationship with my garden, and I'm sure my neighbors do, too. Right now, the weeds are high and thick. Just when I'm thinking that I need to hire someone to help me start all over again, I go out and look past the weeds, and there is Spring, all at once.

Future Plans

2009-02-28T15:57:00.000-08:00

The other day, a student of mine showed up at break time. She had come to retrieve a key that she had left behind. She stayed for a few minutes to chat. Well, actually, she doesn't really chat so much as she just talks constantly. This is okay because she is charming. I don't remember how we ended up on the topic of our final wishes, but she said, "When I die I'm going to be cremated, and I want my sister to put my ashes right in front of the tv." Amused by this idea, I asked what shows she would like to have on the television. She looked at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question possible, and said, "It doesn't matter. I'm dead. I can't be picky." True enough.

Academy Awards Semi-Live Blog

2009-02-22T17:30:00.000-08:00

5:00: I’m already noticing that this is the year of the glamorous updo for hair.
5:05: We see Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker. Sarah Jessica Parker is wearing a dress that I’m afraid she is too old for. It is too prommy. She looks like Glinda the good witch.
5:06: Miley Cyrus needs some lessons in how to walk like a lady. And she didn’t get the message about the elegant updo, either.
5:25: Marissa Tomei may have the gown of the night, which is saying a lot because there are some stunning gowns. Metallic colors seem to be in: silvers, golds, even bronzes.
5:30: Show starts right on time!
5:35: Hugh Jackman looks great. He’s doing a pretty funny low budget version of all the films. And Anne Hathaway can sing. The audience even gave Jackman a standing ovation. Perhaps they didn’t know that he could sing.
5:45: I’m enjoying the interesting way they’re doing supporting actress. 5 past supporting actress award winners each give a speech about one of the nominated actresses. Penelope Cruz , looking lovely in her 60 year old vintage gown, wins.
5:47: PJ calls and says, “Was it a cruel joke to have Goldie Hawn do the presentation for Benjamin Button?” First commercial break and we have the line of the evening.
5:55: Tina Fey and Steve Martin present original and adapted script awards: Milk and Slumdog.
6:00: Jennifer Anniston is presenting. Is Oscar classy enough to not show Brad and Angelina? Unfortunately, Oscar is.
6:05: Wall-E wins for best animated feature. This is about the only 2008 movie I’ve seen, so I’m happy.
6:07: Oh, they just showed Brad and Angelina. But how clever. They were enjoying a quip by Jack Black, the co-presenter.
6:10: They just gave an award for animated short, but really, do you care who won? Didn’t think so.
6:10-6:30: Some technical awards given out. I make some soup and eat it. My mother calls. Milk, The Duchess, and Benjamin Button give them. So far, no clear winners popping up.
6:30: Ben Stiller and Natalie Portman are giving the cinematography awards. Ben Stiller is dressed as Joaquin Phoenix. He’s pretty funny, but not as funny as Sean Penn was doing the same thing at yesterday’s Independent Spirit Awards.
And the Oscar goes to: Slumdog.
6:45: A homage to marijuana use.
6:55: Hugh Jackman declares that the musical is back, which begins a huge musical number complete with kickline and Beyonce.
7:00: and for the last half hour we have been paying the price of having so few interruptions earlier in the show. I’m getting a lot done.
7:03: An hour after the last major award (writing) was given, we now get to supporting actor. Of course, this just brings us closer and closer to Jerry Lewis’s big moment, and I’m really in no hurry for that. Nope, no hurry at all.
7:10: Heath Ledger wins, of course, joining Peter Finch as the only posthumous winners of acting Oscars. And I understand that if you had bet $40 on that win in Vegas, you’d now be collecting $1.
7:15: In honor of Marin and my so-called obsession with teeth, I won’t mention what I’m watching right now. Man on a Wire wins the Documentary Award. I really want to see that one. It’s about the guy who tightrope walked the Twin Towers. But one of the nominees! I can't stop thinking about it.
7:27: Benjamin Button wins the Visual Effects award.
7:30: Sound Oscars to The Dark Knight and Slumdog. The Button/Slumdog split continues. Another Oscar to Slumdog. It’s pulling ahead.
7:45: Jerry Lewis time. Umm….I think I need to go check on something important.
7:46: Standing O for Jerry Lewis. Easy, easy crowd.
7:47: Lovely acceptance speech. Short and classy. Okay, now I want to give him a standing ovation for that. But then I remember any one of his unfunny movies and I get over it.
7:55: Score Oscar. Zac Efron again? This is the third time I’ve seen him tonight. It’s as if Disney owns ABC. Oh, Slumdog wins again. I sure hope I like that movie when I finally see it.
7:57: Now they’re doing the song nominees now. I am officially not paying attention to this category tonight because Bruce Springsteen was snubbed. However, there's a dance piece from Slumdog that looks a lot like an assembly at my middle school.
8:10: Dead people montage. I’m guessing academy award winner Heath Ledger gets the biggest applause. By the way, Queen Latifah is singing the beautiful “I’ll Be Seeing You.” She looks good in a lovely blue dress, too.
8:15: I take it back. Paul Newman got the biggest applause.
8:20: Reese Witherspoon looks good. The dress, a blue sparly one, is kind of so-so. What? They’re giving Director before Actor and Actress? I don’t think they usually do it that way. Slumdog Millionaire. Will the streak continue to Best Picture?
8:27: Actresses! Three of the former winners did a great job talking about the nominated actresses they were match with. Sophia Loren messed up a bit. We can blame language and age for that one. Nicole Kidman, though? How hard can it be to make a paragraph about an actress sound real? Especially when you yourself are a good actress? Anyway, the lovely and talented Kate Winslet won and I’m happy. She gave a nice acceptance speech.
8:37: Actors! Let’s see who messes up from this group. Michael Douglas—nice job on Frank Langella. Robert DeNiro—fair job on Sean Penn. He is funny, but it’s clear he’s reading a prompter. Adrian Brody—reading from a prompter. I hope he’s not going to kiss Richard Jenkins if he wins. Anthony Hopkins takes on Brad Pitt. Not such a good job. Brad Pitt’s pretty cute waiting to hear. Sir Ben Kingsley takes on Mickey Rourke. I can’t tell you if it was any good because I’m sitting here praying that is Rourke wins, he won’t mention his damn dead dog again.
Sean Penn won! Sweet shot of his wife crying. He’s pretty charming.
8:52: Stephen Spielberg hands the Best Picture award to Slumdog Millionaire. No surprise at this point. History, I suspect, will show that America, surfing on a wave of good feeling from their historic Presidential election, chose a feel-good movie that wasn’t in fact, the best film. But since I’ve seen none of them, I can’t really talk.
8:55: Hugh Jackman, who was a charming host, signs off, and 5 minutes early! Oh, wait, no. Twenty-five minutes late.

No Child Left Behind, Part 2

2009-02-21T17:07:00.000-08:00

Why teachers (and others in education) hate NCLB:

When No Child Left Behind became law, it was decided that it needed “accountability.” I have come to hate that word. In this case, that meant that each state had to develop a test. Then they had to develop a level that was “meeting standards.” And, of course, if your school does not meet standards there has to be a punishment. If you know any teachers, you may have heard them say, “My school is a P.I. school.” This means that they are under many threats because their school didn’t meet their adequate yearly progress (AYP). At first, it involves horrible amounts of paperwork, but in the end, the state can take over the school. Here is what this all means:

1. We lose about 5 days of school due to testing. At some schools, hours and hours are lost teaching kids testing skills before the test. Teachers have to take down any posters in the class that have information that might help students. My favorite is that I have to cover up my giant periodic table and hand out the official test periodic tables to students. Administrators then have to go room to room checking to make sure that nothing is left hanging that might help a student.
2. The test is multiple choice. Although multiple choice questions can be well written and test some deep thinking, these are not those kinds of questions. In fact, what is tested most are the most basic facts. These are easier to test and easier to teach, but not what most of us got into teaching to do.
3. However, some of the questions are good ones, and I’d love to discuss them with colleagues so that we can improve our teaching each year. I can’t, because we sign an affidavit, which says we will discuss the questions with no one.
4. A school can exhaust staff and students preparing for the test, get great scores, and then fail because one sub-population didn’t meet their AYP, even though all the rest did.
5. The tests are very stressful for younger kids. Many schools make sure they’re stressful for older kids by threatening to put them into remedial classes for low scores. I know a teacher who had to rebubble a second grade student’s test form because the child’s tears ruined the form.
6. Does your school have a large population of new immigrants? Not to worry! They have two whole years to learn English well enough to be judged against all other students. How would that work for you in a new country?
7. Many middle schools have disposed of all elective classes. This, when kids are at an age where they are trying to learn who they are and what they like. Electives have always given kids a chance to shine when they don’t do so academically. The thinking is that kids who have trouble with reading and math need to spend more time with those subjects, instead of spending time in classes that interest them in which reading and math are used for a reason.
8. It is not unusual these days to hear about a district deciding to close down schools to save money or because of declining enrollment. Then the decision about which schools to close down is made and (surprise) the P.I. schools just happen to be the ones that close down. The students don’t disappear, but the threats to take over the school does, and schools leave the neighborhoods where kids most need help.
9. Our state is in a financial crisis. The tests cost a fortune. And it’s not just the tests. Districts have paid for programs that are supposed to raise these scores and they have administration positions that never existed before that involve crunching data and suggesting new expensive ways to raise scores. Meanwhile, my biggest class size has gone from 32 last year to 38 this year.
10. We get scores and we are encouraged (actually commanded) to look at them and plan ways to raise our scores. However, we can’t compare our students this year to the same students the year before because an 8th grade test is not calibrated to a 7th grade test. We can’t compare state to state because standards and tests are different. We can compare school to school in the same state, but:
11. This is what I know from looking at test scores: if your school is in an area with people with lots of education and money, then your school will have high scores. It has nothing to do with the quality of teaching or if it is a “good school.” But this is so consistently true that if I were a real estate agent, I would throw out all statistics about home prices, income levels, crime, etc. and just look up school test scores to determine where the “good neighborhoods” are.

Then there are the long-term, more subtle results:
I have noticed improvements over the last seven years in students’ ability to perform simple math functions. But most of my 8th graders can’t use a calculator and most are afraid to come up with a way to test an idea and jump in and try it. They have been trained in simple calculations and facts, but creativity doesn’t get tested, so it is not being taught.

I have noticed improvements in the mechanics of writing. Spelling has improved, along with punctuation. But we’ve lost kids’ ability to express themselves in writing well. As an example, a student of mine, who is gifted in many ways, is applying for a special pre-college program at the high school. He has to write a three paragraph essay. This has totally thrown him. He only knows how to write a five paragraph essay. Before standards, almost all students in my school would be up to that task.

I work with a lot of newer, very hard-working teachers. Because of that, I become aware of their training, which will continue to affect kids long after NCLB is gone. I have to use another term I hate (due to overuse), but NCLB has taken away the empowerment that teachers used to have to make decisions in their own classrooms. After watching a lesson, I will ask a teacher what their goals were. Teachers who were trained before NCLB will say something like, “I wanted my students to understand differences among molecules because it will help them when we talk about global warming, which they are interested in. I wanted them to state their understanding because I have noticed that they have trouble speaking publicly.” Do you see what happened there? The teacher had given thought to why he was teaching the lesson and he knows his students’ interests and needs and incorporates them. Ask the same question of a post NCLB trained teacher, and you’ll get, “I’m going to teach molecules because that’s the next standard we’re covering.” It’s not that they care any less than the teachers from before. In fact, they probably know their students well, too, but they don’t feel that they have the power to make teaching decisions based on their students’ needs and interests.
By the way, I know that NCLB will go away soon, or at least undergo major revisions. This is why: It is mandated that, in 2014, all students will be proficient when tested. Let me repeat the funny part: ALL students will be proficient. You can look up your local school to see how many are proficient now: (http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2008/Viewreport.asp). At my school, for example, 31% of our students are not proficient in science. That group includes a lot of students who are fairly new to English and some who have learning disabilities. At a school in a neighboring lower income district, 77% are not proficient in science. In both cases, all kids will never be proficient. All kids can show growth; all kids can learn. But all kids are never going to be able to do well on a standardized test. Some have visual problems; some are new to English; some are late bloomers; some don’t care enough to try hard. That just isn’t realistic, and the fact that lawmakers made this decision strikes me as completely cynical. When they came up with this idea, they knew that it would never happen. Could they have predicted the pressure we would be under to make this unrealistic number happen? That administrators would be hired to make us set goals based on proficiency by 2014? Common sense has to come into play eventually.

And that is why I hate No Child Left Behind and the President who thought it was such a good idea.

No Child Left Behind, Part 1

2009-02-15T11:28:00.000-08:00

Education, like most professions, has its own language. But our use of acronyms and other abbreviations can get so ridiculous that we inadvertently leave parents out of the conversation (though sometimes I think it is on purpose). Imagine you are a parent and hear a teacher say the following: “In core, when responding to a prompt, your child writes with more confidence than the NWEA assessment would have you believe.” Now imagine that you are a parent who did not grow up speaking English. Do you ask the teachers to use words that you understand or do you just smile and nod because you are embarrassed that you don’t understand? After sitting through many such meetings, I have yet to see a parent ask a teacher to speak more plainly.

I have to laugh when our language moves so fast we leave our own colleagues out. When No Child Left Behind turned into NCLB, it took me a few minutes to catch on. It took me months, though, to realize that when administrators were suddenly talking about Nickelbee, they weren’t talking about a Charles Dickens novel, but were again talking about No Child Left Behind. I don’t know why these things morph so much. Is it because saying No Child Left Behind to a teacher is like showing garlic to a vampire? Or is it an educator’s way of letting everyone know that they are on top of the latest thinking?

I’ve been thinking a lot about NCLB lately. Before I rip it apart, I have to say that I understand why it came about. When I became a teacher in 1992, nine years before NCLB, I was handed a huge binder full of Xeroxed lessons from different places. There were so many lessons that I couldn’t possibly get through half of them in a year. There were no standards for what the average 8th grade student in our district should learn. There was not even a list of lessons they should definitely do. There was not a list of what all kids in the state should know, just a framework with ideas about what was appropriate to learn at different levels. There were national science standards, but those were more about big ideas without grade levels.

People in education weren’t being insane or lazy. The thinking was this: kids learn best when they are interested in what they are doing. To give kids a lifelong interest in science, don’t worry about teaching them simple facts. Instead, work on projects that get them excited and interested. They’ll learn science that way. And they did.

On the other hand, this way of learning science could not be standardized easily and could not be tested easily on a multiple choice test. Furthermore, I could not assure a high school science teachers that yes, all students in 8th grade in our district will come to you having learned this or that. This let a lot of bad teachers slip through the cracks. It is understandable, then, that a lot of people thought that standards, where every kid in the state is supposed to learn the same thing, were a good idea. It is also understandable that science teachers, who probably knew best what interested and challenged their students, were less than thrilled to be given a list of mostly uninteresting things to teach.

This was not all bad. I remember going to my first statewide conference after standards were written. It was kind of exhilarating to go into a room full of other 8th grade science teachers where every single one of us had the exact same problem: how do we make density interesting to 8th graders. Around the same time, the internet became a tool we all started using, so teachers were sharing their lessons and speaking the same language.
I and others have worked hard to still make science exciting and interested. At our school, we build hot air balloons to help understand density and we make ice cream to help understand phase changes. And, to make our chemistry unit more interesting, we are about to start a unit on global warming. It can be done with a lot of work.

Why do I join all (and I do mean all) of my colleagues in hating NCLB, then? That’ll be in part 2.

Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage

2009-02-10T06:12:00.000-08:00

I am at war and the mission is not accomplished. My house is populated by mice. Their weapon of mass destruction is their large birthrate.

You would think that my years and years of overseeing dissections would make dealing with mice easy, but such is not the case. In fact, my science teaching has actually worked against me. When I first noticed a mouse in the house several months ago, I didn't think much of it. My science background told me that we share our world with many different living things, so if a little mouse wants to run across my living room and then back out through a crack every once in awhile, then it could go right ahead. My science background seems to have taught me less about what mice might do when they meet mice of the opposite sex. I blame cartoons for this. They show mice occupying homes, running from cats, and borrowing thimbles and such for furniture. They seem like nice little fellows. Not once have I seen mating mice in a cartoon. So, life went on with the science teacher thinking that she was sharing a house with a bachelor mouse.

As time passed, I started to be aware that there were probably more mice than the one little guy. Signs of them started to appear in my bedroom, and I would hear noises coming from the dogs' food bowls when both dogs were on my lap in another room. It came to me (slowly--way too slowly) that I needed to get rid of these mice. The dogs were no help. I have actually seen them lazily watch the living room mouse run across the room. The pets had a pet of their own. I started my internet search for ways to rid myself of the mice.

I read about how inhumane the various traps were, and declaring myself the St. Francis of the mouse world, I decided that humane traps were the way to go. I bought little traps that don't hurt the mice at all. The mice go in and the door closes, safely trapping the mouse. Then my plan was to walk them to our local creek and wish them well.

I planted the traps and Madeline, one of my dogs, would wait for me to leave the room, grab a trap in her mouth, and run excitedly around the house. I would chase her and retrieve the trap, and she would do it all over again. Go figure. I finally found places to put them that Madeline couldn't get to, but the mice were too smart to go in.

Then I found two things that convinced me I had to go to war. I found some mouse droppings on my bed, and, horror of all horrors, they had eaten a Scharffen berger chocolate bar that I had on a shelf in my closet. It was time to stop being polite and start getting real.

There's a lot of help available on the internet. All seem to agree that the old-fashioned traps are cruel because they sometimes semi-kill the little rodents. Many sites suggest the sticky papers. They are somehow supposed to be less cruel. I'm not sure how ethical it is to have a living thing with awareness spend its last few hours stuck to a board. Does it starve to death or die of fear? I couldn't use poison because I was afraid of the dogs getting into it. How odd we are that one mammal is adored and needs to be protected from what is used to kill another. I bought some of the sticky traps that are inside of boxes (so that you don't have to look at the horrible suffering), but the mice just walked around them, laughing.

When I talked to Cameron, he told me about an episode of This American Life called "Building a Better Mousetrap." The title is a metaphor, but they began with a story about actual mousetraps, in which an expert says that the old fashioned spring action mousetrap is in fact the better mousetrap. So, off to the store I went and purchased eight mousetraps.

I set up four of them in various places. I put little bits of cheese on them. A day passed and nothing happened. Then, I decided that it would be just desserts to lure them with Sharffen berger chocolate. So I set the traps and went to work. When I got home and went to check the traps, one of them was gone. A quick look around told me that it wasn't really gone; it had caught a mouse and the quick spring action had made the trap flip over. This meant that I had to turn over the trap to see what had happened. Would the mouse be only half dead? Would it be beheaded? The truth is that it was a very clean kill and must have been an instant death. I still found the whole thing made me kind of queasy, but I set a new trap in the same space. This morning, as I was in that space between being awake and being asleep, I heard a snap. The same spot had produced another clean kill. This time, I didn't feel so queasy. In fact, I felt like I had accomplished something. And the scientist had to use logic to assume that where there are two mice, there were likely many more. I set another trap, and this time, when I got home from work, the trap was still set, but the chocolate was gone.

The war continues. Survival of the fittest. Happy 200th birthday, Charles Darwin.

This Post Brought to you by Campbell's

2009-02-08T23:20:00.000-08:00

The other day, I got home from a long day at work, checked my phone messages, and heard the following: “Hi Vicki. I was wondering if you happened to be watching One Life to Live on the day that Dorian and David had oral s_x?”* Who was asking that strange and shocking question? Why, my very own mother. I called her back to tell her that I had never expected to get that message left on my phone and that I had indeed seen the scene she was talking about. There was nothing pornographic about it. It was played for laughs, though it was clear what was going on.

I had not planned to post about television so soon. I was afraid I might give any new readers the right idea about my television viewing habits.

I need to go on a reality show diet. I normally keep up with about two reality shows at a time. This steady diet is not necessarily good for me, but it gives me something to look forward to, and usually something that I can do other things to. Right now, I’m watching American Idol (which I love, even though I know I shouldn’t), and Top Chef. However, next week Survivor and The Amazing Race are both starting up. Gluttony! You’d think I’d have other things to worry about, and I do, but I am actually spending time thinking about the pros and cons of dropping Survivor. I don’t even want to hear if Project Runway is starting soon.

I watch a lot of television, but I can only do so because TiVo allows me to rush through commercials and redundancies. This is especially true for soap operas like One Life to Live. But if I’m rushing through the commercials on One Life to Live, then they don’t have a chance to make me want to buy anything. I suppose what happened last week was inevitable. One day, David (apparently finished with his dirty business with Dorian), dropped by Viki’s house to ask her advice about whether or not he should marry Dorian. When Viki asked David if he wanted coffee, he turned it down because he has become a Buddhist and he doesn’t ingest caffeine. So Viki opened the refrigerator and there were three bottles of V8. She offered him a glass, making sure to mention the brand name and say something nice about it. The whole scene was bizarre, and I did wonder if it was being done for laughs.

A day or two later, though, we’re in the same kitchen again, with Viki’s daughter, Jessica and her cousin Starr. They’re shooting the breeze about the usual things. Starr, still grieving over the death of her baby, was telling Jessica about her father’s kidnapping trial, and the story was making Jessica have flashbacks in which she was starting to remember that she had actually switched her own dead baby for Starr’s living one. In the midst of this, Starr wished for some chicken noodle soup, joking that no one could just magically whip some up. Jessica opened the cupboard door and showed a shelf full of cans of Healthy Request Soup, and just whipped some up. The last time we saw Jessica cooking in that kitchen, she was making something from scratch. She was adding an insecticide to it to kill her sister, however.

Clearly, we’re watching a new way of advertising, much like the American Idol Coca-Cola product placements. It’s smart, but I hope they get better at it. The V8 and the soup scenes were jarring (so to speak). One doesn’t picture the very wealthy characters on One Life to Live serving cans of soup or discussing brands. If they do get better at it, they have a potential gold mine. Since soap operas bring you all aspects of characters’ lives, almost every character has a kitchen. We see them eating and drinking quite often, so showing labels or even naming brands may start to seem normal. And when I see such a scene coming on, I can zip right through it with my TiVo.

*My mother actually said the words. I didn’t write them because I don’t want to deal with all the searches that might find their way to me. Didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

Just the Facts

2009-01-23T17:46:00.000-08:00

From my Principal:

Effective immediately, spending is frozen. We will have to function for the rest of the year with what we have on site today. We will not be able to purchase things like printer cartridges and overhead transparencies for the rest of the year. This unprecedented crisis will call for unprecedented cooperation among ALL staff.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Assembly Republican leader Mike Villines of Clovis (Fresno County) disagreed that the budget impasse has been driven by ideology.

"We, as a policy matter, believe this state overspends money, that taxpayers are overtaxed, and we don't do a particularly good job of auditing and managing the darn money once it goes out," he said.

Inauguration with Class

2009-01-20T17:38:00.000-08:00

The Inauguration was during first and second period today, so I watched along with eighth graders. Well, I watched and some of them did, too, but there's those short attention spans. I made inauguration cupcakes for all of them, which made them happy. The funny thing about middle school students is they are so very young (they were in first grade on 9/11). Their last Presidential election was when they were in fourth grade, so they think that elections are always this exciting and interesting. They do realize the historic significance of today, but I don't think one of them ever thought that they'd never see the day. That thinking belongs to my generation. Good for them.

They probably think these things, though:
-that they will own a wardrobe of t-shirts with the face of the next Presidential candidate they support,
-that the next President will have an easily recognizable logo like Obama's circle with the wavy stripes and the blue and white sunrise,
-that they will one day, again, spontaneously break into chants of their favorite candidate's name.

The relief at the departure of the Bushes was palpable, with the sixth graders downstairs cheering when the helicopter lifted the ex-President away.

So, to my children, both working out of the country right now: yes, people really are feeling as good as they seem to on television. The end of our reign of terror combined with this historic election have caused a rash of kindness and happiness to break out. Yes We Can and Hope and Change are not just campaign slogans. People seem willing to live these ideas. And, though I know that one man can't possibly live up to these hopes, I'm willing to play along for a while, too. I was impressed with Obama's first act as President: a sobering rather than feel-good address to the country. I wish you had been here to share the day with me.

Flies instead of Chocolate Chips

2009-01-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

About a decade ago, I would occasionally go to an estate sale. Since I'm not much of a collector, I don't really know why I would go. I think I was hoping for some Arts and Crafts era treasure because, surely no other shopper had the same idea in mind. My estate sale days ended abruptly one day when I went to one that left me feeling depressed. I was unable to make any sense of this until I told PJ about it, in the following conversation:
Me: I feel really down after an estate sale I went to today. I actually saw some things I would have liked to buy, but I didn't really want to.
PJ: What was it like?
Me: The person who died was an old woman. Her grown children were selling all her things. She had been a schoolteacher and she must have liked the outdoors because there was some camping equipment and she liked to sew, too.
PJ: I know why you're feeling that way.
Me: Why?
PJ: She was you.

Typing this out, I realize how obvious this was, but I couldn't see it until it was pointed out to me. I've done this a few times (at least, I hope only a few times), and sometimes the correlation with my life is so clear, it's embarrassing.

On Tuesdays, I start my classes with Tuesday Twenty Questions, where I have my classes try and figure out something that I'm thinking of, often a scientist or an invention. I wrote Henry Mill, 1714, on the board and asked my students to figure out Mr. Mill's invention. After asking if the invention was a rocket or a computer or a mill, they finally narrowed it down to a typewriter. I explained how Mr. Mill was awarded the first typewriter patent. Then all the questions came.

"Is it true that they had no delete key?"
"How did they work?"
"Why don't people use them anymore?"

This last question was easy to answer. They don't use them anymore because they were replaced with something much better. I explained how one little mistake meant starting all over again. The last time I used one was about five years ago, when you occasionally would have to print out applications and type to fill in the blanks. Now, pretty much every form can be filled out on the computer and sent to where it needs to go.

As I was telling my kids about typewriters, I realized how long it had been since I had seen one. About twenty years ago, most homes had one and every office had several. But now, they're gone, almost completely. And even though they've been replaced by something better, I found myself feeling sorry for the typewriter.

At least this time, I understand why.

But I Do Know...

2009-01-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

You know how Maya Lin probably figured out how many 2x4's she needed for the artwork I talked about in the last entry? Math.
Recently, in San Francisco, I saw a woman sporting a t-shirt that said, "Too Pretty for Math." If there was such a thing as being too pretty for math, let me assure you that this woman was not it. To paraphrase PJ, the only people who should be wearing that t-shirt are men who would wear it ironically. This woman was not wearing it ironically. She looked like a grumpy middle aged mom. Hoping against all hope that this t-shirt was unique in the world, I went home and did an internet search. That worked out really well. Not only did I find the t-shirt for sale, I also found a purse (ironically, it was 80% off, but that would take math to figure out). I also found a blog with that title ( not ironic).

So, what is going on here? Have we come so far that we can now make jokes like this? In High School, my counselor, despite my straight A's in trig and calculus, had me sign up for typing because "Chevron and other companies are looking for people with good clerical skills." (By the way, I've never regretted taking typing, since it has been a very important lifelong skill. I can just remember wondering why my mad skills in math and science didn't make him think I could do other things as well.) I also can remember my calculus teacher giving us a speech about how we were all lower middle class and most of the boys were probably going to be engineers and the girls would become nurses. That was a strange speech and to this day, I don't exactly know what he was driving at. These experiences probably didn't keep me or anyone else from their dreams, but they have left me sensitive to attitudes about girls and math that are still around.

Time heals all. I almost had put the yucky t-shirt out of my head when I received the Signals catalog that sells Public Television and radio related things. Teachers who buy things from this catalog--you know who you are--please think before you buy something to wear across your chest. For example, the "Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can Do More, Teach" t-shirt is a fashion no-no. I'm pretty sure that a person who really believed this would not feel the need to wear the shirt. So, looking through the catalog, I came across a t-shirt that said, "I was promised there would be no math involved." Seriously.

Why is it okay to not be able to do math? Every time I hear a teacher charmingly say, "I'm no good at math," I wonder what they would think if I said, "I'm no good at reading."

By the way, a lot of math teachers seem to have this math phobia thing, too. Here's what's bugging me lately: I have almost 200 kids who won't use calculators, even when I insist that they do, because "using calculators is cheating."* Thanks, teachers (and No Child Left Behind). NASA, Macy's, H&R Block, plumbers and carpenters and mechanics looking for employees will really appreciate what we're doing to their future job force. Way to get them ready for the future.

I'm not asking everyone to suddenly be able to figure out tips (move the decimal once to the left and double the number you get) or determine how much carpet they need in a room, but we haven't progressed far enough with women in math to go all post-modern, so don't wear the stupid t-shirts and stop bragging about not being able to do math.

*I discovered a work-around on the not using calculators problem. What do middle school kids want to do more than anything else? Break rules! I let them use the calculators on their phones and the thrill of breaking a school rule overcomes all.

Into the Woods

2009-01-01T22:40:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! I've never sensed so much hope for a New Year as I do for 2009. Sadly, that is probably because 2008 has been so awful. I do not envy our new President. He can't possibly live up to our hopes. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure he can't make things worse.

So, how did my 2008 come to an end? Honestly, there was frustration and disappointment, but with hope for a better 2009. I have been on my much anticipated two week vacation. The first Monday, I made a doctor's appointment because I wasn't feeling good and it turned out I was so anemic that I was very close to needing a transfusion. I am currently taking 1,183% of the recommended daily requirement of iron. I think I need to stay away from magnets. Surprisingly, after only 10 days of taking the iron, I am feeling way, way better. I can walk upstairs without getting out of breath.

I wanted to have a memory of doing something outside of household chores, so I decided I would go to the new California Academy of Sciences, which was completely rebuilt and opened to the public in September. I had been looking forward to this trip because I love our Academy of Sciences, and a lot of expense was put into this revised museum. I chose a Tuesday and I went early, thinking that even though kids were out on vacation, it wouldn't be as crowded as a weekend. When I arrived, I saw two of the longest lines I'd ever seen. I've been to some of the world's great museums and to Disneyland, but I've still never seen lines like this. I stood in a long line of thousands of people, assuming that it was a ticket line. After about 10 minutes in line, I was told by a helpful woman that I was in the members' line. I couldn't believe that the members couldn't just walk right in. So I moved closer to the museum to find the ticket buying line. I saw another line of thousands of people, but that was the ticket holders' line. Then I heard an announcement that there were no other tickets available for the entire day. Those poor people in those lines had to wait for people to exit the museum so that they could have their turn. The lines were not moving at all. I was very disappointed, but also glad I hadn't purchased a ticket on the internet because I would have been stuck in the ticket holders' line.

I walked across the street to the De Young Museum. I went in, and for some reason, did not want to spend much time there. I had one destination in mind and nothing else seemed good enough. I did walk around a bit, though. It turns out that a lot of the museum can be seen for free. So, I was able to see the wonderful piece above by Maya Lin. It is hard to tell from the picture, but it is totally made of 2x4's. The landscape is determined by the length of each 2x4. I took a closeup photo of some of them:

This is a great model of calculus. I doubt if that is what Ms. Lin had in mind, but it was what excited me most about it. The volume of the sculpture can be determined by adding together the volume of every 2x4, which is simply length x width x height. Calculus was invented with the idea that you can determine the volume of something that seems impossible to measure by assuming that it is made up of an infinite amount of measurable shapes. Beautiful.

I am no Maya Lin, as you can see from my end of the year project. I built a small fence. The old one had rotted and had fallen down, so something had to be done. Cameron, my advisor, was available by phone to answer my questions, but I actually did build it myself. I can't understand why I'm not better at building things. I'm logical and mathematical. Carpentry is kind of like sewing with wood, and I can sew. But, alas, I am no carpenter. However, the fence is strong enough and there's beauty in that.

Coming to Town

2008-12-14T21:58:00.000-08:00

A lot of people must be throwing Holiday parties this week because the Ferry Building was very, very crowded. Lines were long, but people seemed to be having a good time, and I was able to buy some nice things for my foodie friends. Even though a much needed rainstorm is on its way to us tonight, the skies were a beautiful blue and so was the water. When I walked down Market Street, there was a group of about twenty Santas, along with a handful of elves and reindeer, waiting for a bus. I'm not sure what high jinx this group was up to, but they seemed to be having a great time and everyone who passed by broke into a smile. It reminded me of a David Letterman show from years ago where people in bear costumes walked, one by one, into a bagel shop, so that soon the shop was full of people dressed as bears, and the part that struck me the funniest was that the New Yorkers didn't even look up from their snacks. I hoped the Santas would get a bit more of a reaction, though I'm not sure San Franciscans are much different than New Yorkers.

Beneath the Pale Moonlight

2008-11-30T19:35:00.000-08:00

This entry is time sensitive. If you look up in the sky December 1st at around 5 p.m. until around 8 p.m., you will see Venus, Jupiter and the moon all in a line. Tonight and last night, Venus and Jupiter were aligned. It is a very pretty sight to see because they are both so bright. The brighter one on the bottom is Venus.

I believe those in far northern climates can see it also.

Tag, I'm It

2008-11-29T21:26:00.000-08:00

It has been a very long time since I’ve updated. That has a lot to do with being busy with work and very tired when I get home, but it has more to do with the things that occupy my mind when I’m back at work. Does anyone want to read my thoughts on teaching algebra to all eighth graders, or on whether or not the National Board for Professional Teachers is easier for teachers from rich schools to achieve, or should I or should I not get new cabinets for my kitchen (the answer turned out to be that I shouldn’t)? My mind has been much occupied, but not with anything interesting.
PJ sent me a meme in which I was supposed to tell seven things about myself—that’s it. I thought this was what I would start writing about, but even that has taken a long time because it was so open-ended. Most of the people who read this already know me well, so I don’t think I can say anything that people don’t already know, but here goes:

1. I have a horrible fear of slugs. People find this really funny, and so do I, when I’m nowhere near a slug. When I am near a slug, I will scream and run and hyperventilate. If I’m on a hike and I come across one, I will run. You know what’s funnier than this stupid fear? People who feel they can talk me out of it. Fellow science teachers have helpfully said, “But, Vicki, they can’t move faster than you.” Lately, I’ve been able to make some peace with the fear. A fairly large slug comes into my kitchen at night whenever it is warm outside and I have had to learn to go into the kitchen when he/she is there, and I do, though I stay very far away. Also, if I’m pulling weeds and I see one, I will just move far away instead of running back into the house for the rest of the day. Baby steps.

2. Fun with Irony: My favorite place to be is in the California redwoods. I love the smells, the quiet, the filtered light, and the dampness. I love everything about them, except for their most famous denizen. See number 1 above.

3. As much as I fear slugs, I fear losing self-control even more. I fear saying or doing something stupid. When I see movies where the characters decide to take a chance on…whatever, I am filled with awe and envy.

4. I have never been drunk (slightly tipsy twice) and I have never used drugs, even though I went to Berkeley in the ‘70’s. See number 3.

5. My life as a free-range chicken buying, Ferry Building shopping foodie is a fairly recent thing. My children, I’m sure, would gleefully tell you that they were raised on a diet that included Tater Tots, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and canned peas. I saw the light a bit late in life.

6. When I learned to sew in eighth grade, it was as if I’d finally learned the skill I’d been waiting all my life to attain. My parents could tell that sewing had won my heart and they surprised me with a Singer sewing machine for my birthday. That was my one and only machine for the next 30 years, when I bought my beloved Viking machine. But the Singer allowed me to attempt many, many things that I now, on looking back, find pretty funny. Not content to stick with making skirts and aprons when I was 13, I decided to make myself a two-piece suit, complete with skirt and jacket. Where I thought I would be wearing such a thing in eighth grade is beyond me…a job interview? Anyway, never one to have much taste, I went right ahead and made myself a pink stretch polyester suit and, yes, reader, I wore it.

7. I am fascinated by life-changing moments. For example, in 1977, my new friend PJ was sitting in our dorm lounge reading a novel from one of his classes. He was laughing out loud and I wanted to know about this book that he found so funny. I had already noticed that he read at a much higher level than I, but I asked him if he thought I would enjoy the book. He said he thought I definitely would and so I got myself a copy of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. I did love it, and thus began my great love of not just Austen, but Dickens, Trollope, and Burney as well. I’d like to think I would have found my way to these authors by some other path, but I don’t think I would have. That would have definitely been a less fulfilled life for me.

Alas, I have no one to tag, so I'll have to be a dead end.

I am not a demographic; I am a human being!

2008-09-27T11:51:00.000-07:00

Today at the Ferry Building, some enthusiastic people were handing out Obama/Biden stickers. The young man who handed me my sticker said, "Stick it on your bag, so you always have it." This seemed like sensible advice, so I followed it, which led me to imagine all the people I passed, who must have been thinking, "If that middle aged woman with graying hair and jeans and sandals who has been shopping from local farmers in San Francisco and putting her purchases in canvas bags which tell us that she is a teacher is voting for Obama, maybe I should, too." Glad I could do my part.

For some reason, this got me to thinking about "San Francisco values." You know, like tolerance and saving resources for the next generation, which actually are the values of most Americans. It got me wondering why it's okay to declare I "shop locally," but not that I "buy American." I'm sure there's some nuance here, but it's just one of those stupid ways we've decided to separate ourselves.

Speaking of tolerance, I can't help but be fascinated by the Sarah Palin hatred (check out factcheck.org for which stories are actually true). Women I know who have formerly been calm and accepting are just livid. I know part of it has to do with the insult they feel McCain has laid upon them in thinking that we would just switch our vote because there was a woman on the ticket. The other part has to do with the idea that this woman who seems like someone down the street who just won the lottery and ended up on television for no other reason than luck, can actually think that she could be the President (and, really, why shouldn't she think that? Look who is in the office now). I had to admit that I had my own, very non-PC reason for being bothered that she was running for Vice-President, which I confessed to a friend (whose name I will protect because she felt the same way). I'm not sure that it's a good idea for a mother of five, including a special needs infant, should have any job other than being a mother (if she can afford it). I will defend with my life her right to work if she chooses, but it does affect my opinion of her. But like buy locally, buy American, I suppose you can look at this as naive and old-fashioned or as post-feminism.

Amazing Predictions

2008-09-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

I don't have it in print anywhere that I predicted how Harry Potter would end after reading the first book (okay, not everything, but who would end up with whom and who would not be evil after all).

I also don't have it in print that I predicted, after the pilot episode, that Barney and Robin would end up together on How I Met Your Mother. They haven't yet, but are moving toward it slowly.

Since I don't talk in movies, no one got to hear me shout out that I figured out the surprise ending in Sixth Sense just a short time into the movie.

So, I'm putting it in print that I think I have figured out who Rex's father is on One Life to Live. For non-fans, this is one of the great mysteries of the show. Most fans seem to be torn between Mitch and Bo, but I think it is David Vickers. Here is my thinking: Roxy (Rex's mother) is ashamed of who the father is, both David and Roxy have old ties to Atlantic City, Rex is drawn to and loves Bo as if he's his father, David Vickers has Buchanan DNA. Everyone thinks David is Asa's son, but in the 1968 scenes, Bo slept with David's mother before he went to Viet Nam. If I'm right, then Bo is Rex's grandfather, which would allow them to continue their nice relationship. If I'm wrong, then we can blame wishful thinking, because this would put David Vickers back into the show and in a major front burner story.

Okay, back to important things like grading papers, taking out garbage and doing laundry. Hmmm...why do I let my mind wander to television show plots?

Summer Resolutions Revisited, Part I

2008-08-31T08:18:00.000-07:00

In June, I wrote an entry with my summer resolutions, meaning things I wanted to accomplish over summer break. I had planned to write a quick update, but some of the resolutions deserve a little more time, either because they got done or didn't get done and the story of why and how is interesting to me. Today, I'm tackling #5 and #6: Walk two miles a day and work on strength and balance. This resolution was supposed to be about buying a Wii Fit, but I felt that that was going to be impossible since the Wii and the Wii Fit were nowhere to be found.

So, I'll start with walking two miles a day. I did this with a handful of exceptions. Having dogs to keep healthy makes this one pretty easy. One of the joys of having a dog is how easy it is to make them happy and excited, and all I have to do is get up every morning, throw on some clothes and say, "Let's go for a walk!" and Marcel's tail starts wagging and he starts jumping all over the place. Madeline, being the more sensible of the two, would rather sleep longer, but she comes along anyway. My neighborhood dead ends at a creek, so we walk to the creek and back and that is one mile. We do it in the morning and in the evening and that's my two miles. The nice thing is that a lot of people walk along the same path and I get to know my neighbors (actually my neighbors' dogs--it is a strange phenomenon that dog owners can name most of the dogs in the neighborhood but not their owners). The not so nice thing is that I had fooled myself into thinking that this was making me more fit. About a month ago, my friend D invited me to go along on her dog walk, which is about three quarters of a mile up a hill. I went, feeling that my daily walk surely had prepared me for this. Uphill walking is a whole different thing, it turns out. I was literally gulping for air. I tried again a week later. The next time was easier, and I plan to continue trying.

Thanks to kind friends and family, I did get the Wii Fit. My friend E, who loves shopping as much as I hate shopping, called me from a Walmart in late June. She had just found two Wii's. Walmart would only allow her to buy one, which was for her sister, but she called her son, who kindly drove down and bought the other for me. The Wii has some fun games on it, but it was the Fit software and balance board that I wanted. That's when Cameron went into action. He found a site that tracked where popular electronics could be found. He began checking it every morning until, one morning, in early July, he found one for me and ordered it right away. Soon I was ready to become fit!

When you first turn on the Wii, you are asked to make a Mii. This is an avatar that is supposed to look like you. You work with a menu that offers you many choices in eye types and colors, skin color, face shape, etc. It's kind of creepy how close you can come to making a copy of yourself. Aging is a problem. In real life, there are so many indicators of age: hair loss or loss of hair shininess, loss of skin tone, weight gain, great wisdom. The Wii has no such indicators, so men can add facial hair, if they have grown any, but women and men without facial hair are stuck adding wrinkles to keep from looking twelve. You can also change your avatar to reflect changes in you. I cut my hair this summer and I noticed I was depending upon my glasses more and more, so now my avatar has a haircut and wears glasses. So my Mii ages along with me, which is absolutely delightful.

Imagine getting up in the morning before the sun is up. Bleary-eyed, you walk down to the room that contains your Wii Fit. You turn it on and happy music fills the room. You are told to turn on the Balance Board, which is a white plastic board (about 12 x 18 inches) that remotely talks to the Wii console. The board's avatar comes on the screen, standing on end and tells you to step on. You do and the board says, "Oh!" In English, the word "oh" must have a hundred meanings and we can interpret all of them. The meaning of this "oh" is quite clear: I did not expect anything quite this heavy to step on me. Then music that I can only describe as robot thinking music comes on while the Wii calculates your weight. Then, in a voice that sounds like Shirley Temple doing an impression of Mickey Mouse, it says, "That's Obese!"

If your BMI puts you in the obese category, as mine does, it's not a bad thing to face reality, though I wish I could turn off reality every once in awhile. But, in case, after five minute or so of exercising, you forget you're obese, the Wii kindly helps you out. As soon as it measures you as obese, it makes your Mii swell up to a larger size.

The activities are fun, and I've been going strong with them for more than 55 days now. I don't think I'd recommend the Wii Fit to someone who already has a workout routine. I don't think it would be challenging enough. In fact, I'm finding the aerobic menu to be kind of easy, but still very enjoyable. But there's also a strength, a balance and a yoga menu and I find all of these still very challenging. I also am guessing that there will soon be a Wii Fit part 2, which I will buy immediately. I love the rhythm boxing option, where I do ten minutes of boxing the air, while my Mii is hitting a bag. It's a great stress reliever. The running in place option is boring because, well, you're running in place, but at least you get to see your Mii run past waterfalls and cliffs. It's also fun that all the other Mii's you've made are running past you, sometimes falling down, other times encouraging you. So, when I'm running in place, I see my mother, Cameron, Marin, Marin's boyfriend, PJ, and Marcel and Madeline.

The funniest one is a balance game in which you suddenly appear on the screen dressed in a penguin outfit while standing on an ice floe. You need to shift your weight on the balance board to make your Mii slide left and right on its belly. Why? Well, so you can watch a copy of yourself in a penguin suit catch fish that are jumping out of the ocean in its mouth.

The best thing is that being able to complete some of the Wii challenges has made me gain confidence in trying other activities. For example, I have started to look for more difficult workouts on the television's On Demand Menu. I look forward to exercising. Eventually the fun of the Fit will probably wear off, but I am hoping that it will be replaced with the fun of other ways of being active.

But I still wake up to the same two words every morning, and changes are slow, but instead of big losses, I have to try to be satisfied with slightly better fitting clothes, and a little more energy. The other day, I was sitting in a chair that I have sat in often and I went to stand up. Only after standing did I realize that I had always grabbed the arms of the chair to get up, and I didn't this time. Small changes, but at least in the right direction.

Thou Hast Thy Music Too

2008-08-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

Except for Earth, Wind and Fire's "September," I don't think there are any upbeat songs about autumn. There's September Song, which I hate, and California Dreaming, which I like, but both are pretty depressing, wishing away autumn. Then there's the equally depressing genre of songs about the ending of summer. These, like Boys of Summer and 4th of July, Asbury Park (I know, but read the lyrics) are really about the end of youth, so they tend to be kind of meaty, and I like them a lot. A few years ago, I went to Alaska in early August and it seems that everywhere I went, the residents were talking about autumn coming. It's not a date on the calendar there. You really could feel it in the air, in the angles of the sun, etc. But, for perhaps the first time in my life, I wanted a vacation to last longer and summer in Alaska was so pleasant (beautiful fruits and vegetables, salmon, blue skies, wonderful smells, all without horrible heat or humidity), that I actually felt that end of summer depression.

But Alaska was an anomaly for me. Autumn is by far my favorite season. I love everything about it: the quick change in the length of day, the smells (in my case, the smell I associate most with the start of autumn is the overripe grapes on my grapevine, which is accompanied by the sight of the birds that come for the feast), the colors of the leaves, the end of the last heat waves, and the evening chill. I love that it is also the best time to plant new things in the garden. This is definitely not the end of youth, but the beginning of something.

Autumn is still a few weeks off and we're going through a heat wave, but today at the Farmer's Market, its signs were unmistakably there. I walked over to the corn booth, where the owner told me that this was their last week until next July. I stuff myself with corn every year for two months, so that last week leaves me feeling bittersweet. I bought eight ears and vowed to appreciate every bite. But then, I turned a corner and there were apples! I hadn't seen an apple (a locally grown one) in months. I bought a couple of pounds of them and reminded myself that the foods of autumn are on their way and that peaches and melons and berries will still soon make way for apples and pears and brussels sprouts. One of the great things about September is that you will find all of these things together for a short period.

I'm such a pragmatic person in most ways that it surprises and amuses me (and probably those who know me) that, for me, going to Farmer's Market is not just about getting nutrition so I can live another week. It's more like a religious experience. I feel like I'm doing the right thing shopping there, I enjoy its cyclical nature, and I revel in the smells, the colors, the tastes and the textures of the various foods. One time, PJ saw me choosing some produce and told me that I was putting on my Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa) face.

The reader may notice that I did not say that I enjoy the sounds of the Farmer's Market. No, I did not because I do not. A recent trip to the Farmer's Market involved a woman who was getting on in years and a head shorter than me (I'm 5 foot 1 inch) repeatedly asking a vendor where the bananas are in a kind of bullying way. The man clearly didn't speak much English, so I smiled at her and said, "You won't find bananas here. They're not grown in this area." To which she narrowed her eyes and angrily said, "I have bought them here before!" I apparently hadn't made a dent in this woman's resolve because she continued to bother the vendor for a couple more rounds of questions until she gave up and went away. No doubt she's still searching for that papaya, mango, pineapple and banana booth.

I know that in many, many countries people are used to bargaining over prices. I realize that this comes as naturally as breating for the people from these places and that I shouldn't find this behavior as offensive as I do at Farmer's Markets, but it just seems that these farmers aren't exactly getting rich off of their produce and that we should all be happy to help them out. I am trying to get used to people who try to bargain in a non-insulting way, but I really hate it when people insult the produce when they don't get their way: "You are charging two dollars for THIS? Look at it! No good!" And then there are the customers who need to take Economics 101. A couple of years ago, I was waiting my turn at the blueberry booth. For only a handful of Saturdays every summer, these women show up with their mountain blueberries. They are delicious beyond words, and pretty expensive. Right now, they're charging six dollars a pint, but on this day when I was waiting my turn they were four dollars. It was about 10 in the morning and the Farmer's Market still had two hours to go. There were only two pints left and I was standing behind this woman who was rather aggressively trying to get these women to lower their price. She even had them weigh the pint of berries, and when they came in less than a pound, she declared triumphantly that they were charging four dollars for less than a pound. I wanted to scream at this woman. How could it not be obvious that these women were going to be able to sell their blueberries at the price they were asking long before the market ended? I got my turn when the customer gave up in disgust. By the way, I have accidentally found out that there are nice ways to get Farmer's Market bargains. I only bring so much cash, and I will often go to a booth with my last two dollars in hand and say, "Can you give me two dollars' worth of those?" The vendors are often very generous, especially if it is close to closing time.

Back to music. I appreciate artists, really I do. They put themselves out there in a way that I can only dream of. A good singer/musician can even enhance a shopping experience, and I have heard some good ones. I have a friend who has played at our local Farmer's Market to much crowd enjoyment. Recently, I was pleasantly surprised by the talents of a Beatles tribute duo, and found myself reluctant to finish shopping, enjoying the bright sunny day and the boppy tunes that seemed to fit well. Today's experience was more typical, though. There is a woman who has a decent voice who sings mostly covers of Brenda Lee songs. That type of music just doesn't seem to fit a Farmer's Market. She clearly has created an entire lounge show in her head. If you're listening as you shop, before you see her, you imagine that she's wearing a long sequined dress and she's being accompanied by a jazz combo. She does a little talking between songs and in the middle of songs, she'll stop singing and say, "C'mon, play it, boys." When you actually make your way over to where she's singing, you'll see a woman standing alone with a microphone and a boom box. Instead of that sequined dress, she's wearing a pair of polyester pants and an oversized print top and she's saying, "Play it, boys" to a CD. Although, in another setting I might enjoy her show, in this setting I feel uncomfortable as I pass her. But at least she can sing. Sometimes the musicians do not have that talent. The music does not drown out the bargain hunters, but just gives me something that I have to try and filter out along with the voices of the shoppers.

Four out of five senses aren't bad, so I'll keep returning, trying to listen to the sounds in my own head, like the voice that keeps telling me that autumn is coming.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

2008-08-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

My summer break has ended, though it never feels totally over until the students show up, and that happens in a few days. Of course, the end of summer break means the beginning of hot weather. We have been told to prepare for 40 students in a classroom this year, as opposed to our usual 32. The idea of 40 adolescents being packed into our rooms (fingers crossed about the air conditioning, which often doesn't work when we first return) on a hot day after they have made it through a day that included P.E....well, you get the picture. In California, we're still waiting for the budget to pass, which means that we can't get things we need, like teachers to relieve the class size problem. In addition to all this, we have no network at our school right now, which means no television, printer or internet. It's hard to feel positive, and yet I know that all of our staff will be welcoming and positive on the first day of school. We realize that it is not the fault of children that California makes such a low priority of meeting their needs.

For those of you who don't live in California, or those of you who do live in California but have not visited a school in a bit, let me take you on a tour of a typical classroom at my school. Let me add that my classroom is, luckily, not typical. A few years ago, there was a plan to bring ninth graders to our school, so money was obtained to build them a beautiful new science building, complete with lab facilities. Never mind why it was not considered necessary to have facilities for sixth to eighth graders. The building was built, and the plan to move ninth grade was nixed for many sensible reasons that should have been obvious on the day the plan was hatched. So, we ended up with the type of room that all children should have for a classroom. But, let's visit a more typical room. It has one door and no windows. That's right. Right here in the Bay Area, near the Hayward fault, which could relieve its pressure at any time, we pack up to 42 people into a classroom that has only one exit. Don't worry, though. Every room has a little crowbar and a single gallon of water in case of emergency. The classrooms were pretty small and crowded with 32 desks, but now there are 36, and teachers are having to arrange these desks so that everyone can see the board. Additionally, all of our new students (one of the middle schools in our district was closed at the end of last year due to shrinking enrollment) have created the realization that sixth graders cannot have lockers this year. So, a sixth grade classroom with one door, no windows, 36 desks, and possibly 40 students, will have 40 backpacks packed with books, binders and other things to add to the fun.

It's hard to say who is to blame for this lack of planning and foresight. Anyone you ask will blame it on someone else. The school board, superintendent, state, Democrats, Republicans, foreclosures. The list goes on.

Our school has only three rules, which we spend the entire first week on:
Be Safe
Be Respectful
Be Responsible
It occurs to me that it may be hard to tell kids to follow these rules when they are forced into a system that does not follow the rules. A crowded school is not safe; the situation shows little respect for teachers and other staff or students. Most importantly, the mess I'm walking into was mostly avoidable. In fact, most people at our school who have little power to make decisions (secretaries, custodians, teachers, technicians) can recall at least one time (for most of us, several times) where we made it clear to someone who could make decisions that we were worried about safety, space, technology. Someone needed to be responsible and make the responsible decision. Instead, we got:
"I know it's difficult, but we know that you can make it work."
"Our hands are tied until the budget passes."
"There's a chain of command in this district. Have you gone through it?"

So, here lies the moral dilemma. Society entrusts us with the important job of educating the next generation of adults. Parents trust us to not only educate their children but to keep them safe. What happens when we feel that we can't do both?

Would You Like to Borrow my Tweezers, Ms. Kahlo?

2008-08-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

I had a lovely afternoon in San Francisco today, though it started a little less than lovely. I have been enjoying a very quiet summer in the suburbs and I had forgotten how loud a city can be. The difference was pretty jarring. I felt like an aging Southern Belle who needed her "tonic" to soothe her nerves. It was a reminder that I'd better become accustomed to noise again because in two weeks I'm back to seeing 180 adolescents a day. They have city noise beat by many decibels.

PJ and I had a nice lunch and then he very kindly walked me to the Museum of Modern Art and used his membership to get me in, specifically to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit. I often have a love/hate relationship with modern art. Just when I think that I am really enjoying the pieces I'm looking at, I'll turn the corner and be confronted with a giant canvas covered only in white paint and then, instead of thinking that I don't like it or that I don't find it interesting, I get upset because I feel like I should be "getting" some understanding from the piece. I feel like everyone else in the room is thinking about how the white canvas makes you contemplate only texture without figure and color and if they could read my empty thoughts, they would shake their heads sadly and move on to look at the single black box on the floor. So I was grateful to PJ for this quote in his blog from The Cutting Ball Theater's artistic director. Referring to his avant garde festival, the director, Rob Melrose, wrote in the program: "Sit back, enjoy and let your mind be washed over with these beautiful words and images." I decided I would let the art just wash over me and forgive myself for not understanding.

It turns out that this is a much more enjoyable way to see modern art. Don't like the urinal on a pedestal? That's okay; just move on. Leave it to someone else to contemplate the beauty of this common object. Drawn to the giant curtain made of pieces of silk flowers sewn together in a cascade? Excellent! Do not worry that you do not see how the curtain reminds us that negative space is an important aspect of art, as the card on the wall tells us. (By the way, I loved the silk flower curtain for its gigantic size and because someone actually came up with this insane idea, and made me want to go home and make one).

This does make me wonder about modern art. If much of it is made not to be understood but to just wash over you, that makes it very different from any art that came before, in which the point seems to have been either to communicate or to decorate a practical object. Does that make modern artists more self-centered? Should they care whether or not the viewer understands what they are trying to convey?

I saw much that I liked today. I was mesmerized by an area that was painted to appear to be the light and shadow caused by the sun streaming in a window in autumn. The artist had painted the shadows, but it seemed so real. Three different seasons through the same window were depicted in different rooms of the museum. I also loved that an artist had taken simple white shirts and folded them in several different ways. My favorite piece in the museum's permanent collection is Diego Rivera's The Flower Seller . I love it for its spectacular colors and touching depiction of the two workers who must load and carry the flowers, and because most artists paint a picture and then frame it, but Rivera seems to have decided that he had a canvas in a frame and that the figures in the painting would just have to fold and bend their bodies to fill the frame.

And from Diego Rivera we segue into Frida Kahlo. This is an incredibly popular show. The crowds were large, which is a shame because there is definitely an intimacy to Kahlo's work. In fact, I found myself wondering if she ever meant for thousands of people to have this kind of access into her life. The paintings are almost all autobiographical, which is part of what has been responsible for the cult that has grown up around Kahlo. Many different groups of people who see themselves as underrepresented or underserved have seen a fellow sufferer. Add to this that she was completely overshadowed by her more famous husband (who cheated on her with HER SISTER!!!) and you have a bona fide symbol for many causes. Make no mistake. Frida Kahlo did suffer. She was in pretty constant physical pain, she was disappointed in love, and she longed for a child. And this suffering is made palpable in her paintings. I found the most affecting to be one that she painted after learning of one of her husband's affairs. She is lying naked on a bed, her body covered with stab marks and blood. Her husband, fully dressed, looks on. The blood is even smeared onto the frame of the painting.

I felt almost shamed for looking at the paintings. They seemed way too personal to share. And here I was confronted by the opposite of what makes me uncomfortable about modern art. Here I was, being moved but made uncomfortable for the sake of an artist who is long gone. I found myself wondering if maybe she should have not included herself in the paintings. Couldn't she depict her emotional pain using another subject or some abstract figures? So, I stood there in the museum, realizing that maybe I don't want to know so obviously what the painting is about. Maybe I like and understand those canvases with nothing but squares of different colors better than I thought. Still, the paintings were very, very moving, and in many ways as jarring as the outside noise.

If you go, don't miss the photographs or the short film of Kahlo and Rivera. It became clear to me that my image of Frida Kahlo as a shy, simple woman who quietly painted was very wrong. First of all, she was very attractive by today's standards. Her looks were probably pretty exotic for the 1930's, though. I'm pretty sure she knew exactly what she was doing with her famous elegant peasant look. It suited her looks, it made her stand out, and it was easy to accessorize with great earrings and bracelets, along with flowers for her hair. Okay, she should have plucked her eyebrows, but everything else looked good. After viewing these, I came to the conclusion that she probably would have enjoyed her cult status.

Me? I would have hated it.

I left the museum with my new attitude still intact. I let the outside noise wash over me. Thanks to the strong Euro, I heard many different European languages being spoken by tourists. I looked around me to see what they must be seeing for the first time. San Francisco is a great city for tourists. I walked with the stream of tourists to the ferry building, where I always now feel at home. I bought two chickens and some rustic bread and I went home.

A nice way to almost end my summer vacation.

A Weekend in the Country

2008-07-06T19:36:00.001-07:00

When I saw the front porch and the redwoods on the website, I was intrigued, but then I saw the hammock and that was that.

When I was young, a vacation was a given. I was well into my late teens before I realized that not every family took annual vacations. On Mansfield Drive, where I grew up, lots of families did not take annual vacations, but they were living paycheck to paycheck. I did understand that there were things that people couldn't afford, but it came as a surprise that every family that could afford it didn't pile into a car once every year and go somewhere for a few days. My best friend in elementary school, Sandy, lived the most exotic life because she sometimes went to Hawaii to visit relatives. The rest of us, though, went to visit closer relatives or went camping. Because I grew up in the fog belt, it didn't take much travel to get somewhere that felt like it was "away" and vacation-y. If the daily temperature rose past 70 and if swimming was available, we were very happy. Every few years, we would go to Disneyland, which was the most exciting trip of all. One year, we even took a long road trip, driving all the way to the Washington/Oregon border. I was thrilled with Crater Lake, which we saw along the way. We had learned a little about volcanoes in school, and here I was looking into the mouth of an old volcano, which had filled with the bluest water I'd ever seen. I also learned that my family probably wasn't very well suited to taking long road trips.

I mostly loved our vacations, which made me want to give my children annual vacations. I also wanted for all of us to see more. Our annual vacations became pretty interesting trips: Washington D.C., Seattle, Alaska, Yellowstone, London. In addition, there was some camping and, of course, Disneyland. We saw a lot, but it was the trip to Alaska that opened my eyes to what was missing. In Alaska, we did a few days of road trips. It seemed wrong to travel that far to only see the state from the water. I also didn't think I'd really like the cruise part too much. I'm not a cruise person, I told myself. I was very wrong. There is no such thing as a cruise person. The ships are huge and they offer so much that I can't imagine anyone not having a good time. Mostly, you could find me on deck somewhere in a chair, reading. When we pulled into port, we would walk around town for a few hours. The thing was that I wasn't in charge. Someone else was doing all the driving. And it was so quiet out on the ocean. When I came home, I felt more relaxed than I had in my entire adult life.

I understood, for the first time, why people go to places like resorts. I also understood the beauty of my family's close to home camping vacations. Forced relaxation can be a good thing. So, this year, I wanted to go somewhere that smelled of trees, and that was quiet. My brother and sister-in-law and mother joined me for a few days at a house in Cazadero, near the Russian River. It was very nice and, when I came home, I forced myself to slow down my pace. Some of my summer resolutions may not happen and that's okay.

By the way, the little country markets where one buys food....well, let's just say this is not The Waltons. I was hoping for baskets of berries picked that morning by local people which I would cover with lightly sweetened cream that had been milked from a dairy cow that very morning. Instead, I got something akin to an inner city 7-11. But that's another story.

The BS is as High as an Elephant's Eye

2008-06-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

Rant alert!

The Corn Refiner's Association is taking out full page ads in many of today's newspapers (thanks, PJ, for the heads-up), running some television commercials, and giving us a website, sweet surprise, to inform us about many different kinds of sweeteners. Why, you may ask, would a group that makes High Fructose Corn Syrup want you to learn about sugar, honey and aspartame? This information allows one to create an interesting division between nutritive and non-nutritive sweeteners. The corn refiners kindly give you information on those non-nutritive (in other words, non-caloric, sweeteners), but one suspects that the real goal is for the reader to lump HFCS, sugar and honey into the same wholesome category. In this case, nutritive means calories only, not vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, or fiber.

For those who don't already know about this, meaning you haven't had a conversation with me in the last twelve months, high fructose corn syrup is a sweetener that was so inexpensive when it was introduced in a big way in the early 80s, it soon became a major part of most Americans' diets. After reading about it in The Omnivore's Dilemma, I put myself on a HFCS free diet. Like many people, I try to eat as many natural, non-processed foods as possible, so it wasn't all that difficult to keep high fructose corn syrup out of my diet in a big way, but it was difficult to keep it out of the shopping cart. This is because it shows up almost everywhere. So, while I might be planning a simple meal of barbecued chicken, potatoes and fresh vegetables, I would have to pass on a jar of barbecue sauce and on a premade salad dressing. Needless to say, most sodas are out of the question. Now that I've made a concerted effort to not buy anything with HFCS for an entire year, I thought I'd survey my kitchen:

I found it in Honeymade Graham Crackers, Greek Salad Dressing, corn syrup (even though corn syrup is different from HFCS, even corn syrup uses it as a sweetener) and a barbecue sauce. Check your own kitchen out. It's amazing where it turns up. PJ found some in dried fruit!

So, how bad is the website? I couldn't find any outright lies. It's kind of the Fox News of websites in that it just leaves out important details that would give you a fair and balanced view of things. Here are some examples:

The body metabolizes all sugars the same. Maybe. The jury is still kind of out on this one. Some studies suggest that the higher fructose to sucrose ratio of HFCS causes difficulty for the body when it is processed by the body. This information is left completely out.
High Fructose Corn Syrup won't make you obese. It is true that if you only ate HFCS and nothing else, you would die before you became obese, but the site fails to mention that there are much better ways to get nutrition, and that this country's obesity problem completely coincides with the introduction of HFCS into our diets.
(My favorite) HFCS is not less natural than sugar and honey because they all need processing. Yes, they are all processed. Honey is poured through a filter to remove impurities. Sugar has some lime (not the fruit) added to the cane or beet juice in order to pull out some impurities and then it is filtered and solidified (this process goes back hundreds of years). High Fructose Corn Syrup? Too many steps to write about here, but it involves corn to cornstarch, then treatment with several enzymes, then carbon absorption and several evaporation steps.
U.S. Food Manufacturers continued use of HFCS is based on the benefits it provides rather than its price relative to sugar. Oh my! This is probably as close as this site comes to a lie. It is true that HFCS, because it is a liquid does keep foods moister and has some other benefits. However, this is not why it is used in sodas, for example. Up until very recently, farmers grew far, far more corn than the world needed. The government would buy the excess and sometimes just let it rot. At the same time, the government put tariffs on imported sugar. So, HFCS was an answer to everyone's prayers. Ignore the plight of the sugar growers (which is another sad story in itself), ignore that we could have used that excess corn land to grow other things (if you want to get sick, read the part in The Omnivore's Dilemma about how we are forcing the nation's cattle to eat corn when their stomachs are evolved to eat grass). Ignore what growing nothing but corn in huge quantities does to the nation's farmland.

Why this ad campaign now? Well, I'm guessing that the high price of corn due to its use in ethanol is making HFCS rather close to sugar in price. (And here is our next big ethical dilemma: do we really want our farmland being used to literally fuel our cars instead of feeding the world?) This, coupled with consumer interest in getting away from HFCS is probably making a lot of food manufacturers think twice about what they should be using to sweeten their foods, if they need to sweeten them at all. Do we really need salad dressing to be sweet?

By the way, lest you feel sympathy for the Corn Refiner's Association: as far as I can tell, it consists of seven companies, not individuals, and those companies are involved in making cornstarch, dextrose and ethanol along with high fructose corn syrup. I think if we all stop eating HFCS, they're going to be okay.

If You Can't Stand the Heat

2008-06-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

So, my summer resolutions were kind of slowed down by two days of work and a horrible heat wave. I was complaining about the heat to my sister, who asked what the temperature was. I complained, "90s!" This was followed by a moment of silence where I realized that my sister, who lives in St. Louis, was probably less than sympathetic. Seriously, though, it was very uncomfortable and the state is burning up, which it's not supposed to do until September/October. This is going to be a tough year.

Yesterday, I had a day off and I decided to not try and work through the heat. Instead, I spent the entire day reading Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. If you like Hollywood movies from the 1930s (and if you don't, I don't want to hear about it), I think you'll love this book, which reads like a screwball comedy. It was charming and funny and a very quick read. But I think that there's more to it than that, too. I think it was a look into the inner life of a woman who has been invisible her entire life, but who finds that she has skills that give her some power. And though we only see the other main character through Miss Pettigrew's eyes, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that the beautiful blonde young woman with pretty loose morals was actually very intelligent and kind.

This morning when I woke up, it was at least twenty degrees cooler than it had been for several days, meaning that I could get back to my cleaning frenzy. It was time to work on the room I most dreaded...the kitchen. Here is a before and after of the worst cupboard:

A clean cupboard does something to my soul. Sad, but true. There's a sense of peace that comes to me when I look at it, and the hope that I can keep it that neat (though I've had my own kitchen to take care of for twenty-nine years now, so the odds are against me that I will change). Anyway, I can enjoy it for a while, and I can enjoy my orderly kitchen for an even shorter while. If you know my kitchen, you can have fun listing what I changed. And I've been saving for some changes in my kitchen. Feel free to weigh in on what you would change.

Now, back to my cleaning frenzy.

Everything but the Glass Slipper

2008-06-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

I haven’t blogged Groomer Has It for a bit, so I have missed telling about the insane and scary and tight skinned dog psychic and the grooming van challenge, in which the groomers were judged on their driving skills and told that a van accident is unacceptable at “this point in the competition.”

We begin with Kathleen’s exit. She did not tell her client about cutting the dog’s nails too short. Jorge really wished for her departure, which could be foreshadowing of what will happen to him this week. This week’s Quick Sniff begins with a message to meet Jai, the host, at the Dog Park. Each groomer is given a booth, which looks hilariously like Lucy’s Psychiatrist Booth in Peanuts. They have to decorate it themselves and prove their business savvy by getting customers and grooming, setting their own prices.

And, as they begin to decorate, their booths look quite a bit more like Lucy’s booth with hand-written signs and prices. Artist’s booth, “Doggie Depo,” is in the worst location, so his strategy is to lure customers over by undercutting Jonathan’s prices, which Jonathan says are “Manhattan prices.” If it was about anything but dogs, I would probably applaud Artist’s business savvy, but I’m not sure that having low, low prices is the right strategy for dog lovers. Why isn’t he undercutting Jorge’s prices? Jorge has no prices. Jorge has a very smart strategy. He tells the clients that it’s a competition and they should pay what they think is right.

Everyone seems to be busy the entire time. At one point, Jorge has a lull, but it doesn’t seem to last long. Jorge’s strategy seems to be working well. We see him getting $20 bills for nail trims, while Jonathan is only charging $4 and Artist, $2. Later, it seems that people are paying less and less. While the suspense builds as we wait to see who has made the most money, Jonathan makes fun of Artist’s sign because it is not centered. He doesn’t mention the spelling of Depo. Artist tells the confessional camera that Jonathan is an “arrogant prick.”

Jonathan ends up winning. He pumps his fists into the air, yelling, “New York prices!” Catchy.

The actual challenge for this week is to hand-strip Wire Haired Terriers. Apparently, Wire Haired Terriers need their hair pulled out by the follicle or else the follicle can become infected.

Artist says that he has never stripped. Jorge hand strips a lot. Jonathan says that hand stripping is one of his favorite things to do.

Artist is at a large disadvantage because he is the only groomer who has never stripped. So, he should be eliminated, but it is starting to look like the producers are turning this show into a Cinderella story, with our guy from the streets being the most deserving winner. The edits are showing Artist as kinder and kinder and his competitors as, well, arrogant pricks.

Though Jonathan is not one of the judges, he tells us that he did an amazing job and that he should win. Jorge, master of stating the obvious, tells us that this could be the grooming that makes you or breaks you. Artist is asked what he could have improved upon and he, following in Jorge’s footsteps, says that he could improve upon his technique.

I realize watching the judges’ discussion that the judges have started to talk about Artist as if he is one of their pets. Xavier says, “He learns quickly, he catches on, and he’s attentive.” I’m surprised they’re not petting him, other than figuratively.

Speaking of which, Artist is named this week’s Best of Show because he did the best job for someone who has never done this job before. Jonathan will compete against him in the finals. Jorge has to take his ego and go home.

Summer Resolutions

2008-06-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

It seems fitting to change my blog colors with this post.

I doubt that I'm the only teacher who makes summer resolutions instead of New Year's resolutions. My summer resolutions tend to get done, unlike New Year's resolutions. I think there are several reasons for this. I am just coming down from an exhausting schedule, especially at the end of the year. Teachers, who quickly become accustomed to having more days off than anyone but firefighters, become exhausted by the two long, vacationless periods in the year: from September to November and from Spring Break (which was very early this year) to mid-June. The end of the year involves cleaning and often packing up classrooms, entering final grades, end of the year awards and ceremonies, and goodbyes for students, retirees, and those let go. I have several side jobs, too, and many of them end at the same time as the school year. Paperwork needs to be done, reports filed, letters of recommendation for colleagues written. This is my long-winded way of saying that one of the reasons that summer resolutions get done is that it takes some time to come down from that feeling of constant rushing, so I take advantage of it at first.

There's a weather component, too. Here in San Leandro, near the San Francisco Bay, summers are often mild, causing me to feel like doing things. Those who know me know that as soon as the thermometer hits 80, all bets are off. I am not fit for human company, unless that company doesn't mind spending time with an incoherent, sweaty and miserable lump. But as long as we stay in the 70's (or even better, 60's), I like working. Western culture, with its January 1 New Year, sets us up for failure. Who wants to start exercising or quit bad habits when days are dark and you are feeling like hibernating?

But I think the main reason that summer resolutions can get done is that summer vacation ends, so summer resolutions must end, too. So, the resolutions have to have reachable goals. The typical New Year's resolution is a rest of your life resolution. Too long. Too scary.

This is a rare summer for me, where I'm not spending much of the summer working. So far, I have eleven working days planned. That will increase as we get closer to August 19th, when all of this comes to an end, but for right now, I feel like the possibilities are infinite.

So, here are my summer resolutions. They won't all get done because it isn't possible, but my first summer resolution is to revisit this list of resolutions in late August and blog about how I did (perhaps there will be pictures!)

1. A thorough cleaning of every room in the house (including drawers and closets) along with needed repairs in each room.
2. Start the new school year with a well-tended garden that does not embarrass me.
3. Finish the quilt I've been working on for several years now (there will be a photo if I finish). It has been a long time since I've started a new one, and I'd really like to. And, PJ, I will help you start yours, too.
4. Get my backyard fence rebuilt. Parts of it fell down in a storm this year, mostly because they had rotted.
5. Walk at least two miles every day.
6. Find an activity to do that helps with strength and balance. This was going to say "buy a wii fit," but it appears that the market will keep this from happening. Our sinking economy causes Nintendo to prefer to sell them in Europe instead of here.
7. Paint my bedroom and make it feel less cluttered.
8. Go through my curriculum unit by unit, and attempt to make it more interesting to all my students.
9. Read a lot (this one is purposely left vague because I haven't picked out all my summer books yet, so I haven't decided if I'll spend several weeks on a meaty book, or read shorter books).
10. The one I'm most excited about: Build a Stickley-style trestle coffee table (N, another teacher, is kindly going to help me with this)

We'll see what happens. And I do mean "we" because another resolution is to blog at least twice a week until August 19th.

Won't Get Fooled Again

2008-06-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

So, Groomer Has It is down to the final four: Artist, Kathleen, Jonathan and Jorge. So far, this show has not had any big surprises or upsets. If that pattern continues, then Artist should be saying goodbye on today's episode.

The episode begins with Jonathan and Kathleen telling the camera how much they are disliking each other. Perhaps my guess about today's elimination is wrong since every episode tends to begin with foreshadowing about who is being eliminated.

The Quick Sniff takes place at a dog rescue organization, or so we are led to believe. But, surprise, there is no Quick Sniff this week. This is the elimination challenge. Jorge is a bit upset about there being no Quick Sniff because, he tells us, "I was hoping to play with something today." Oh, Jorge. I suppose you can do that later.

So, I'm starting to think that I'm right about either Jonathan or Kathleen going home because there is no formal judging. This week is about that giving back part that was discussed in episode one. Four dogs will be groomed and hopefully adopted. The groomer of the last one to get adopted is the one who will go home.

There are four dogs to choose from. Kathleen, as last week's winner, goes first and falls in love with Teddy, who is the male breeding dog from a puppy mill. He is in the worst shape and was treated horribly. He is so matted that he feels pain when walking. But she doesn't pick him because "it is a competition." Now, readers, remember this moment because it will come back to haunt Kathleen over and over again in the episode. Let's explore this decision: there are only four dogs to choose from. There are four groomers. So, each dog will get special treatment from a groomer who will do his/her best to get the dog adopted. Kathleen didn't choose Teddy, but that doesn't mean that he just received a death sentence.

Artist comes next and picks Teddy, even though he and the other groomers think he just committed competition suicide. And sure enough, Teddy is so matted that he has to be shaved completely, which reveals his sores. It is not a pretty sight. The other groomers are in awe of Artist for making such an unselfish choice, and it seems to bring out the best of some of them. Jorge finishes his dog and Jorge helps Artist with scissoring.

Jonathan has a very pretty black Pomeranian and Kathleen has a white dog that looks like a cockapoo. Jorge has the female breeding dog that was rescued from the puppy mill. All the groomers are shown actually caring that all the dogs, especially Teddy, find homes.

All the groomers are sent out with their newly groomed dogs to try to talk people into attending the adoption fair. Artist seems to be the most charming of the four. People seem to be drawn in by him and his enthusiasm. Teddy, despite being a bit unattractive, is a very friendly dog. Jorge realizes that telling the story of his dog, the breeding female from the puppy mill, draws people in. Plus, the dog is really cuddly. Kathleen is seen trying to steal away Jorge's customers. Jonathan seems to be having no luck getting anyone interested in his dog. He might want to rethink calling potential customers evil. More foreshadowing?

Later, at home, Jonathan says that he will be mad if he gets sent home due to a challenge that has nothing to do with grooming. Can't blame him, but only one of these competitions has been completely fair (the wire dog challenge). They all have had randomness as a factor.

All four groomers are showing their best sides, truly caring about adopting all the dogs. As if Artist wasn't saintly enough in this episode, he actually is responsible for Jorge winning the challenge when a client doesn't want Teddy. Artist realizes that Jorge's dog might be a good match. All of the groomers are in awe of Artist's kindness.

Jonathan is next to adopt his dog out to a cute little girl who keeps saying that she wants to take the dog home.

Now, it's down to Kathleen and Artist, and there really is some suspense. We have Kathleen, who got first choice and who chose what seemed to be an easy to adopt dog, and we have Artist who did the right thing and everyone knows it.

The next client to come in is a guy whose girlfriend sent him because she liked Kathleen's dog. It seems like it'll be a slam-dunk, but the dog doesn't seem to like the guy very much, instead preferring Kathleen. Artist, waiting for clients, looks dejected. Kathleen, at this point, really should have suggested Artist's dog, but she doesn't. The guy signs adoption papers.

I'm feeling pretty bad for Artist, though he did a good thing and should be proud. The judges show up to, I think, say goodbye, but no! Artist is not being sent home after all. I'm pretty sure that the producers of the show decided that they didn't want to receive hate mail the rest of their lives.

So, a kind of sweet episode.

Next week looks funny again. The groomers are paired up and sent out in big grooming vans to make house calls. It looks like lack of driving skill becomes an issue.

Hey! I just realized that they must have planned to not eliminate someone this week all along. Otherwise, they couldn't do the grooming van episode the following week. When will I learn not to trust reality television, even on Animal Planet?

Best Elimination Ever

2008-05-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

My next post was supposed to be about Groomer Has It, but I couldn't resist mentioning what I'm watching right now. I just arrived home, zombie-like, from a twelve hour workday. Before getting down to the business of correcting today's tests, I turned on the television, and there was Farmer Wants a Wife, a show that I watched once but rejected because it was really, really boring. I won't describe the show's premise because, well, it's pretty much there in the title. Apparently, the show has embraced its boringness. In tonight's episode, nine young women were told that they were going to find out who was eliminated by watching the local quilting bee lady embroider the eliminated woman's name. Yup. You heard right. They gathered around her on the steps of the house and watched as she slowly hand embroidered one letter at a time. Time moves slow on the farm.

A Truth Universally Acknowledged

2008-05-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

When I was a child I came up with The Rule of Television Weddings, which stated: If you see the wedding gown before the wedding takes place, the wedding is not going to happen. Since I was a child when I developed this rule, I assumed that everyone knew this. Also, let's face it, there was no outlet for such preternatural brilliance. You don't exactly share with others that you have already spent so much of your life watching television, and that weddings especially are fascinating to you, that you've noticed something that probably interests no one but you. It was PJ, who many years ago, pointed out to me that not everyone knew this at all. So there you have it in a nutshell: my single contribution to society.

But my rule, which held for years, is not quite true anymore. Let's explore:

Thursday and Friday on All My Children (take note those of you who have spoken of the slow pace of the soap opera): Angie and Jesse can be found at Zach's casino getting ready for their wedding, a very special event in Pine Valley, since the residents all saw Jesse die 20 years ago. Recently, he returned from the dead to resume his life with his family. Meanwhile, ex-FBI agent Rob Gardner, the reason that Jesse was believed to be dead, realizes that the diamond he's been searching for is safely hidden in Angie's daughter's stuffed elephant, which is at the casino, too. Side note: this child has carried the elephant with her everywhere for almost all of her 18 years and the elephant is very soft. The diamond is in its rough form and is the size of my palm. Strange no one ever noticed. Anyway: The wedding guests gather, including the ghost of Dixie, who knows that something terrible is going to happen on this day. Of all the things that might happen on this day, I know that the wedding is, without a doubt going to take place (more about this later). The guests include Tad, Dixie's great love, who is longing to find the five year old daughter that Dixie gave up for adoption without telling Tad. They also include Aidan and Greenlee and Zach and Kendall (the daughter of the famous Erica Kane, played by Susan Lucci). Also there are Colby and JR, the grown children of Adam, who is being haunted by Dixie's ghost. Adam is in a hospital for the mentally ill because he has been talking to Dixie and no one believes him. Dixie is haunting Adam because he is the only living person who knows that five year old Kathy, the adopted daughter of Julia, is actually the daughter that Tad is searching for. As Anna Russell would say, "I'm not making any of this up."

Vows are said, people start dancing, and happiness reigns for a few minutes. Rob Gardner uses his FBI badge to get access to the room where the stuffed elephant can be found. But the diamond is not there because Jesse was one step ahead of him. When Gardner realizes this, Angie just happens to walk into the room, and she becomes Rob Gardner's hostage. Meanwhile, Adam gets out of the hospital and shows up at the wedding ranting and raving about needing to take his children home. The ghost of Dixie keeps saying, "Adam, the future is already in motion. You can't change it." Oddly, Dixie seems able to change things herself. She knocks over chairs to get people to stop walking, which changes their paths, and to some extent, their futures, but she can't change the story from moving along. Adam has one more chance to tell Tad the truth, but doesn't. Rob Gardner and his hostage show up at the wedding reception, where Aidan pulls out his gun. Rob starts shooting and hits a couple of people, including Julia, Kathy's mother. Perhaps Aidan isn't quite as quick on the draw as usual because a few moments before, his fiance, Greenlee, learned that Aidan and her best friend Kendall had had sex the night before Zach and Greenlee were finally rescued from their month of being trapped in an old bomb shelter (they were presumed dead). Aidan and Kendall had given up and turned to each other for comfort on that very night. While they were comforting each other on the hardwood floor, Kendall spotted the map (under the bed, which was unoccupied) that showed the bomb shelter and led to the rescue. Tad had hired a helicopter to whisk Angie and Jesse to their honeymoon. Rob Gardner decides to use the helicopter to escape with the diamond and with Angie. As he is taking off, he shoots and hits Tad. Jesse jumps for the helicopter's runners and the episode ends with Jesse in mid-air. I'm leaving a lot out here, like Rob locking Opal in a supply closet after making her think they were going to have sex in there, or Angie's daughter starting to fall for the federal attorney's son, or Aidan telling Greenlee that he understood that she didn't want to have children, or Tad fighting with his wife over her feelings for Adam, or JR getting shot at and his ex-wife realizing how important JR was to her.

Television weddings are very expensive things, so producers tend to cram a lot of surprises into them. I've seen tornadoes and earthquakes happen during weddings, along with murders and kidnappings. But the most common thing that happens during television weddings is that the wedding is stopped, usually by the man the bride really loves.

I knew that Angie and Jesse were actually going to become man and wife because when Angie went dress shopping, and found the perfect dress, her friends were seen gasping at how great she looked and she was only shown from the neck up. On the morning of the wedding, Angie was only seen in her nightgown, not in the gown. So, even though I had no idea who was going to be shot, taken hostage, etc., I knew absolutely that I do's were going to be said before all of this happened.

When I was young, I absolutely knew that when I saw the dress before the wedding, the wedding would not happen. But in my teens, there was one exception. On the old Rhoda show, Rhoda married Joe in one of the most watched television episodes of the 1970's. The story centered around lots of things going wrong as she tried desperately to get to the wedding. The humor was in the idea that she was running through the streets of New York in a fairy tale type wedding gown. So here is the Rhoda exception: if the story centers around the difficulties of getting to the wedding, the dress can be shown and the wedding will still take place. This rule stood for years. But.

Last week, there was another exception, and I'm not sure what to make of it.

On One Life to Live, which has been really good lately, a wedding was about to take place and I really had no idea if it would happen or not. Up until the wedding day, I did not see the dress. That's a sign that it would take place. The groom, Rex, does not know that his fiance, Adriana, has been scheming to make sure the wedding takes place. Gigi, Rex's first love, has shown up in town with her son, who is the result of a night between Rex and Gigi in high school. Rex left town soon after conceiving the child, and has no idea that he has a son. Meanwhile Adriana, and pretty much anybody who thinks, has figured out that this is the case. Adriana has gone to great lengths to make sure that Rex doesn't know that he has a son, since he seems to have feelings for Gigi and this news would put him over the edge. So, even though we don't see the dress, we do see Rex showing up late to his wedding because he is helping his son, who is at the hospital with an asthma attack and we see Gigi show up at the wedding and announce mid-ceremony that she loves Rex. Here's the strange part: I did see the dress before the wedding. Adriana had it on in the dressing room in the church before she entered the chapel. And, despite everything, the wedding did take place.

What gives? I have four possible explanations. Have weddings become anticlimactic? Couples live together now and a wedding in the old days supposedly meant that the couple was hours away from having sex for the first time, which was a pretty important step. Does the internet mean that it is easy to find out the designer of the wedding dress and that the more time the dress is on the air, the more perks the producers can get? (I can't find the name of the designer on-line, so I think this one might be wrong). Or, have the writers become aware of this television convention after 50 years of television (we can call this a post-Vicki's rule of television weddings world) and are they turning the convention in on itself? Or, if the bride is a liar who doesn't deserve to be married, do we not care about the moment of the reveal? This would add a second exception.

Luckily, I have been educated in the rules of logic, so my rule can be saved. My new rule: If you don't see the dress before the wedding, the wedding will take place. As far as I know, there is no exception to this rule, but there are actually many shows I've never seen, believe it or not, so I'm open to the possibility that there are exceptions out there. Go ahead, ruin my single contribution to the world's great body of knowledge.

Iron Chef, Doggie Style

2008-05-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

The title of this week’s entry comes from Jonathan. Not because it made me laugh, which it did, but because he was kind and good humored enough to post a very nice comment last week. I should probably be all nonchalant about it, but I’m actually pretty thrilled by his comment. So, this is for you, Jonathan. (By the way, Jonathan even got a clip on The Soup this week).

This episode begins with most of the groomers being very happy that Malissa is gone. Jessica starts crying because Malissa is “all I had here.” I can’t blame her for crying. It’s pretty clear that they’re all ready to see her follow Malissa out the door. And, well, I’m kind of ready for Jessica’s exit myself. There’s a pretty funny scene of Jessica confiding in Will and being touched at how kind he was to listen to her, followed by Will telling the cameras how much he wants Jessica to go.

The groomers seem exhausted by the show. When the doggie mail arrives, as it does every week, with Nemo dressed up in one of his little doggie outfits, they seem less than thrilled. When they learn that their challenge is to make a treat for a dog, they become even less enthusiastic. Several brag about how they don’t know how to cook (pet peeve of mine—I hate it when people brag that they are incapable of meeting a basic human need).

The groomers are taken to a gourmet dog treat bakery and shown to a table laden with things that dogs like: carob, apples, and many other things. Kathleen’s leg up from winning last week is that she is the only one who can use peanuts.

Noting Kathleen’s good fortune, Jonathan tells all of us that he “goes crazy for nuts.” He adds that this is like “Iron Chef, doggie style.” Suddenly, I’m picturing Emeril and Paula Deen and…oh, make it stop.

The owner of the dog treat shop chooses Jessica the winner for her treat, which he declares to be the only committed treat. This is because she based her cookie on one ingredient instead of a lot of things that dogs like, all mixed together. I guess my cockapoos are indiscriminate eaters because they don’t care if their food is committed or not.

Today’s challenge is to groom a Chow Chow. Kathleen hasn’t groomed one in 15-20 years because she has been attacked by them. Jorge has the same story. Jonathan says that he doesn’t groom them, either. Apparently, Chows become very attached to their owners, and that’s it. But Jasper grooms them a lot, and Artist tells how he can’t afford to be picky about the dog that he grooms. In his job, he needs to groom ten dogs a day to pay his bills.

Most of the dogs turn out to be pretty sweet. Kathleen’s isn’t, but most of the groomers think she made a mistake showing her fear and muzzling her dog. For the first time, I become aware of how dangerous dog grooming can be. After a dog bite, I wouldn’t want to go back again.

Much is made of Artist doing a good job grooming his Chow. The judges are thrilled because they talked to him about his lack of confidence last week. They seem to be taking credit for Artist’s amazing turn-around.

While the groomers wait for the judges to make their decision, the groomers who are usually confident (Jorge, Jonathan, Kathleen) are unusually quiet. They realize that they could go on the chopping block. But they may be safe because Will went crazy with his scissoring, and then tries to cover it by saying that there is no AKC standard for grooming Chows. One of the judges, Xavier, points out that this is not true. Whoops.

Jasper and Artist are the two best groomers this week. Artist wins best in show, maybe because he was the best, or maybe because the judges seem to think that he is their Pygmalion.

Kathleen and Will don’t make the standard this week, for showing fear in one case and for overcutting in the other. Will has to leave the doghouse. Kathleen is told that the “groomer of the year” can’t say, “but I don’t do Chows.” I’m kind of thinking that the groomer of the year can say pretty much anything she wants to say.

Two for the Price of One

2008-05-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

You’d think I could, once in two weeks, sit down and write a recap. You’d think. But did I mention that I am a busy educator? So, here’s a mini recap of last week on Groomer Has It and a longer recap of this week’s. I must apologize to my regular readers for not getting the last one in within a decent period of time. I have been taking some time to learn more about you. Here are some statistics about you: 42.9% of you don’t have access to Animal Planet, so you depend upon this site for all of your Groomer news; 14.3% of you are related to one of the groomers; 14.3% of you live in Europe; 14.3% of you have an intense, strange hatred for mayonnaise.

So, last week was fashion show week. Will, who won the leg up, gets to divide the remaining groomers into three teams of three. They will have to design a fashion line and then groom the dogs for Groomer Has It’s first fashion show. The catch is that the losing team will decide which of the three groomers goes home, instead of the judges.

There will be a surprise judge, who is “infamous when it comes to fashion critique.”

All the groomers find it a bit hard to believe that Will chooses Jessica and Amber for his team instead of Jonathan and Kathleen, who probably would have assured him a win. His team does end up losing after Will disses his teammates by claiming it was a bad decision to choose them for his team. And then, they don’t even team up and vote him out. Jessica, who gets the deciding vote, chooses Amber to go home. I guess it was a strategic vote because Amber is the better groomer of the two.

Jonathan, who must always assert himself as the groomer to beat in each episode, tells the camera that he is “tired of being nice for the sake of being nice.” That leaves me wondering what reasons there are for being nice.

I think my favorite moment occurs when Jonathan is feeling very confident about his team not losing and Artist agrees, but mentions, in passing, the possibility that his teammates, realizing that Jonathan is the biggest threat to everyone, could throw the challenge on purpose and then, as the losing team, vote Jonathan out. Jonathan’s face is priceless. It reminds me of the dramatic prarie dog.

Jasper, Jorge and Artist end up winning, much to their surprise. Jasper gets “Best in Show.”

Oh, and the infamous judge? None other than Melissa Rivers. What more could I ask for?

So on to this week:

We begin with Kathleen and Jonathan arguing with Malissa about the last challenge. Malissa wants to talk about how she feels about Kathleen taking away her dog. Malissa, as usual, gives us golden drops of wisdom, “I have a heart, I have a soul, I have a brain, I have a mind,” and “What are the judges going to say? Like I am incompetent of grooming?”

The groomers find out that their quick sniff challenge involves dog CPR. They are to be instructed by a woman named Denise Fleck. Jorge declares himself “super interested.” The groomers then have to give first aid to three stuffed dogs. Malissa lets the viewers know that she knows the difference between a real dog and a stuffed animal. Moments later, she messes up and tells the camera, “I forgot to pretend it was a real dog. My bad.”

Jasper, who seems to be a sweet, big guy, wins the challenge because he remembers that you don’t have to bandage up a hurt leg if an empty toilet paper roll will do. He beat Artist’s time, and Artist seemed genuinely happy for Jasper.

It’s dinner time. Jessica mentions that she misses her cat. Jorge says he doesn’t like cats. Foreshadowing!!! Malissa talks about how Kathleen owes her an apology, and Artist tells the camera that they all have to watch out for Kathleen because the quiet ones are the ones who will put cyanide in your coffee in the morning. The camera cuts to Kathleen, who is sitting in a corner in a pink bathrobe, reading a book.

The groomers are told that their elimination challenge will involve a breed that will be new to them as groomers. One groomer feels that there are few breeds he hasn’t groomed. Malissa hopes for monkeys and Artist hopes for raccoons. But, alas, it is cats. Why are wet cats so hilarious?

In addition to seeing funny wet cats, we get to see funny injured groomers. Artist gets bitten on his knuckles, plus his cat wets itself and “left chocolate truffles on the groomer’s table three times.”

Malissa needs to invoke her seventh sense, but it doesn’t seem to be working the way it has so many times before. Alas, hearing does not seem to be one of her senses because she apparently did not hear that you should not scissor cats’ faces. The other groomers wonder if she scissored the cat’s whiskers, which would be a horrible error. Jonathan says, “I hope she did scissor her cat’s face.” I would comment on the cruelty of that remark, but I was thinking the same thing. I’ve grown weary of Malissa.

It’s time for the judges’ decision, and it is in this scene that I notice that Jorge must have borrowed Jonathan’s white belt. Am I missing some scary new fashion trend?

Kathleen wins because she really seems to know cats and Will is the runner up. The fact that they call it runner up cracks me up. I keep expecting Jai to say, “Will, if Kathleen is unable to fulfill her duties as this week’s winner…” Will was chosen because he was able to deal well with the most matted of the cats. I hope this doesn’t mean we have to listen to information about the cat’s vulva.

Malissa has to leave the doghouse. She is beside herself with grief. Artist tries to calm her, but she’ll have none of it. Later, as she’s packing, she’s calmer. Her parting words: “Eventually someone had to go home and so it was me.” Then she says, “Wait! I think there are only five senses: breathing, seeing, touching, tasting and hearing. I can’t think of the sixth one.” Comedy gold. We’ll miss you, Malissa.

I Should be Correcting Quizzes

2008-04-28T20:33:00.000-07:00

My friend PJ (Blogger of Reverberate Hills) sent me a meme, thus teaching me a new fascinating term, along with giving me something to do instead of what I should be doing. A meme is any piece of information that passes through social networks, and is likened to a gene or a virus. I'm all over this, because memes have parallels in microbiology.

For example, many viruses are passed by vectors, such as a mosquito, which can pass viruses and other human pathogens from human to human without becoming infected itself. The internet is an amazing meme vector, which can allow memes to pass around the world in hours. Another interesting thing about viruses is how many of them can mutate quite easily. People wonder why you generally don't catch chicken pox twice, while you can catch the cold over and over. This is because the cold mutates so quickly that, by the time it makes it around the world once, it is mutated enough to infect you again the next year without your antibodies recognizing it. The interesting thing about the internet is that, due to cut and paste, forward and "include message in reply," memes do not mutate anywhere near as quickly as they do when passed verbally.

So, here is the meme in the original form:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Here's mine, from Earth Science by Tarbuck and Lutgens.

The end moraine marking the farthest advance of the glacier is called the terminal moraine, and those moraines formed as the ice front periodically became stationary during retreat are termed recessional moraines. As the glacier recedes, a layer of till is laid down, forming a gently undulating surface of ground moraine. Ground moraine has a leveling effect, filiing in low spots and clogging old stream channels, often leading to a disruption of drainage.

I am very disappointed in mine, especially after reading PJ's beautiful passages, so like a mad scientist, I'm going to mutate the meme:

Pick up a book that you and many other people have enjoyed:
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Invite readers to guess the book (or at least the author).

So, readers, I invite you to guess the book:

Sabina could not understand why the dead would want to have imitation palaces built over them. The cemetery was vanity transmogrified into stone. Instead of growing more sensible in death, the inhabitants of the cemetery were sillier than they had been in life.

So a Fool Returns to Her Folly

2008-04-26T18:04:00.000-07:00

I didn't plan to write about Groomer Has It again, but I enjoyed writing about the first episode so much, and I enjoyed how much people enjoyed it that I decided to continue. Episode 2 was not fun enough for me to write a lot about, but non-viewers need to know these two things: Will had a difficult time combing matting out of his dog's vulva. I know this because he repeated it several times and also because the dog cried in pain while he did this. I also know this because the other thing of note is that Malissa, one of the young blondes, used her seventh sense for the third time in two episodes, and this time it told her that the screaming dog was uncomfortable. Dear reader, you may wonder, as anyone would, what Malissa's sixth sense is. I can tell you that it is not common sense. Other than that, I have no idea. The producers know comedy gold when they hit it and they dare not ask, fearing that Malissa may realize that she has skipped over a sense.

So, on to episode three, which starts with Will returning to the Dog House after almost getting eliminated. The groomers are less than thrilled to see him and Will wonders aloud what they would have done about his dog's matted vulva. The other groomers don't seem to want to discuss it. Jorge says, "I hate to beat a dead dog, but Will has to go."

Next we go to this week's quick sniff challenge. This is a great quick sniff challenge because it allows us to meet people even more strange than our groomers. The groomers are taken to an exclusive doggy daycare place where they are to meet with five very particular clients and try to make these clients choose them as someone they would hire to groom their dogs. And, they are told that one is a celebrity!

Jorge is not intimidated by a celebrity client because, "I consider myself a celebrity. I mean, I have Academy Award winners texting ME because they cannot get an appointment." After seeing him with one of the picky clients, I can see why he's in so much demand. A lady comes in with two Pomeranians, and this causes Jorge to tell the cameras (and the tens of people watching the show), "that lady was funny. Her breasts were twice the size of each one of the dogs." The woman says, "These are my babies. Do you put them in that noose thing to groom them?" It is clear from her tone that she does not want want her babies in the noose. So, Jorge answers, "Of course." Later to the camera, he says, "They were humongous!"

The celebrity is Danny Bonaduce, famous for his arrest for brutally beating a transvestite. I hope everyone got autographs! Artist tells the camera that Mr. Bonaduce is a space cadet from the constellation Qzar.

Jonathan instantly bonded with the woman with the pink dog because he has dyed his Maltese pink, too. He tells the client, "Pink is cotton candy." Hmmm...seems to be a theme. The client says, "Love him!"

One of the picky clients has a fat old dog and he is very particular about the cut. Artist actually did make me laugh, when he tells the camera, "When the older dude came in with the fat mutt, he's actling like this is a best in show breeder's choice and he goes, 'what can you do for my dog,' and I'm like, wash him?"

Will says he has extreme talent with German Shepherds. When the client asks him what he can do for his dog, he says that he would put him in a tub and wash him. Whoa! Sign me up. As if this isn't funny enough, he does all of this in a Southern accent, which was not very apparent before. The show's editors add some country music in the background to go along with this aw shucks accent.

Jonathan wins my heart, almost making up for wearing a white belt last week, by handling Danny Bonaduce's harassment with great intelligence. Danny Bonaduce asks Jonathan questions about whether or not he dresses his dogs. It is quite clear what Mr. Bonaduce is driving at. It reminded me of high school, where there were bully bullies, whom no one liked, and the boys who thought they were oh so clever because they would harass without using labels. They didn't see themselves as bullies, and, now that these boys are in their late 40's/early 50's, I sincerely hope that they have put that bullying behind them. But there are those who never grow up, and Danny Bonaduce is one of them. Anyway, in answer to the question, Jonathan says that he dresses his dogs in plain sweaters. This is clearly not the kind of fun that our celebrity was looking for, and Jonathan further puts him in his place by saying, "poodles' coats don't offer enough protection and they can get very cold in New York winters and they need the extra warmth of a sweater." Later, to the camera, he says, "I just told Danny Bonaduce what he wanted to hear. The truth is my dogs wear fancy sweaters and coats and rhinestone necklaces and I dye my dogs." Yuck! But good for Jonathan.

The lady with the all pink Maltese is dressed all in solid pink (sweater, blouse, pants). Artist, who had no problem sniffing a dog's behind, complains on camera of the lady's bad breath. That ought to bring in the clients.

Everybody loved Jonathan, who wishes to finally win a quick sniff challenge. After all, it is the third episode, and the poor guy has only managed to already win both elimination challenges. But Kathleen, a kind of no nonsense middle aged groomer, ends up winning. I was kind of happy for her because she was sure she would lose this challenge. As she said, "I'm the groomer they send in the back room when the picky clients come in."

The elimination challenge is puppy's first haircut. I, of course, will remain your faithful unemotional reporter, but Oh! They are sooooo cute! Those ears! Those eyes! That fluffy, fluffy fur!

The groomers are told that puppies will be nervous and that their job is to make the puppies and their clients comfortable.

Will makes sure that the camera sees him making out with his puppy constantly. He is never shown grooming the dog. This could be foreshadowing.

Malissa gets too much powder in her dog's ear, blocking the ear canal. I guess when you have seven senses, you can ignore the importance of hearing.

Poor Johnny B, a nice guy who has missed my notice, got a huge fluffy dog instead of the little ones that most other groomers got. He had the same ninety minutes that everyone else got and he had to leave the dog house because there was some hindquarter matting and Johnny seemed really stressed while grooming him (probably because he had ninety minutes to groom a big puppy with matting). The runner up was Malissa, and I'm glad she's staying because I can get to hear more of her wisdom.

Jonathan and Will are this week's top two. I was right about the foreshadowing, but wrong about why. Instead of getting kicked off for not grooming his dog, Will earns "a leg up" in next week's challenge. Get it?

Next week, there is a doggie fashion show in which the groomers must design and make clothes for the dogs that they groom. I'm guessing it will be a Jonathan/Amber (the Paris Hilton of dog groomers) showdown.

Going to the Dogs

2008-04-12T21:36:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I wrote about a hilarious reality show parody, Operation Kitten Calendar. There's a new reality show on Animal Planet called Groomer Has It. It seems to be serious (but without taking itself seriously), but it comes off as a parody of the parody. It is one entertaining hour of television.
There are the usual contestants. In this case they are all dog groomers. There is a woman who suffered from breast cancer and found that dog grooming makes her happy. There's another that calls herself the "Paris Hilton of Dog Groomers." There are two who call themselves "Celebrity Dog Groomers." They don't seem to like each other much. And of course, there is an "urban" groomer, an African American man from South Central L.A., whose dream is to open a grooming school in the 'hood. His name is Artist. Naturally, because he's from the 'hood and African American, his job is to be funny in the confessional interviews. He isn't. But he's keeping it real for us viewers.
Most reality shows that involve "skilled" competitors begin with a short challenge. In this show, it is called the Quick Sniff Challenge. The host, Jai Rodriguez from Queer Eye manages to say this with a straight face. This week's Quick Sniff Challenge involved the contestants being blindfolded and trying to identify the breed of nine different dogs. Artist was having trouble identifying one, so he smelled its hindquarters. He guessed wrong.
Then, we went to the actual challenge. The contestants were surprised that their first challenge did not involve an actual dog, but one made of wire and yarn. Apparently, this is a new thing in the dog grooming world and used as a tool to practice. The contestants were told that, since these medium sized white yarn dogs were not a specific breed, they did not have to conform to any specific kind of cut and that they could create a "creative but functional cut." I was left wondering what exactly a functional cut would be. And what is a non-functional cut?
The judges are introduced. Of course, there are three. One is a nice woman who is the head vet for the Los Angeles SPCA. She said, "I think that the Top Groomer needs to be someone who wants to give back." Give back what? Unless I have missed something, dog grooming isn't exactly a glamorous, lucrative profession. The next judge is a no nonsense middle aged man who looks like he could be part of Tony Soprano's crew. He claims to be the best dog groomer in the world. The third judge is the Simon, because there has to be a Simon. He says useless things like (to a groomer who painted his yarn dog pink), "I don't like color on a dog, but you used an appropriate amount," or, "I think your dog looks horrible."
While the groomers are working on the yarn dogs, we are treated with confessional clips. The ever-witty Artist says, "They are having us groom stuffed animals. If I had known that, I would have just brought a stuffed animal from home!"
One groomer, Jasper, brushed (his claim) or cut his dog's leg off (I am left wondering if a poor camera person lost his job over missing the moment of leg removal), which caused the female judge to say, in a very calm voice, "You cut your dog's leg off and I have a problem with that."
The groomers had to name their yarn dogs before judging. As a particularly funny touch, we were treated to the usual before and after shots of the dogs. All of the befores were exactly the same. The three legged dog was shown lying on its side onthe table.
The moment of truth came. The celebrity dog groomers came in first and second. Jorge, with his yarn dog, Stiffy, was the runner up. A judge said, "I love your relationship with Stiffy." Careful readers will recall that Stiffy was made of wire and yarn.
Jonathan, who seems to see himself as the alpha celebrity dog groomer, seems to be fairly masculine for a dog groomer, but apparently is not because he names his dog, "Jonathan's Candyland Surprise."
Of course, there has to be a loser and a catch phrase for the loser. Lisa, the cancer survivor, is the first to go. The judges did not like her dog, Flower, and his purple and pink painted face. I suspect that the female judge would not have liked Lisa's relationship with Flower, since the style involved spraying paint directly onto the face, which would involve eyes and nose. Jai tells her, "Every dog has his day, and Lisa, today is not your day." Not much of a catch phrase. The runner up gets a better one. The owner of Tripod is told, "You can return to the doghouse with your tail between your legs."
There's the obligatory goodbye confessional with the loser. Lisa tells us, "Some days you get to be the dog and some days, you're the hydrant. Today, I'm the hydrant."
Clips from future shows reveal a somewhat hysterically tearful man saying, "Ninety minutes to groom a dog that has never been groomed before is impossible." The judges are bothered by a contestant brushing a dog's privates with a wire brush. Yow!
I can't wait for the next episode.

P.S. During the show, a commercial break had a car commercial in which a woman with two children tells the factory workers putting her car together that she will be taking her children on an eight hour drive. They suggest that they equip her large SUV with two DVD players. She thinks this would be a good idea. Am I more bothered by people still buying SUVs or by it being okay to buy not one, but two DVD players for your kids? Why in my day, we used to fight with each other on long car journeys, and we liked it!

I am soooo White

2008-03-26T22:49:00.000-07:00

One nice thing about Spring Break is a little bit of leisure time. No matter how busy I am, I check my friend PJ's blog every day. It's just that good. But when I have extra time, I like to check out a couple of the blogs that he links to. One that I've particularly enjoyed is The Standing Room, which featured a touching remembrance of the blogger's twenty year old cat. While I was reading it, I noticed a funny quote on the side of the page, and went to find out more about that link. I ended up on a very funny and wildly popular blog called Stuff White People Like, which reads like an anthropological study of White People in their natural habitats, complete with hints about how to talk to them. As you will see, an embarrassing amount of the descriptions hit a bit too close to home.

Today, when I woke up, I listened to NPR (#44 on the list of things white people like) like I do every morning. I had one of my two daily cups of tea (#13) and made my son Cameron (#16) an angel food cake using my favorite kitchen gadget (#54). The cake was a housewarming gift because Cameron has purchased his own home, an Oakland Bungalow that needs a lot of work, but will be beautiful if he sticks to his six year plan for renovating it (#37). I then checked (#40) to see if my daughter Marin (#16, #78) who lives in Russia had added to her blog. After taking the dogs (#53) for a walk, it was time to go out for the day.

I first went to see Cameron's house. I'm very excited for him. He has a lot of exciting plans for the house, but right now, there is just the overwhelming task of moving in. Here are some photos:

Then, I went to San Francisco (#91), where I was going to meet PJ for a Wednesday dinner in a different venue. I walked from the Embarcadero Bart Station all the way to Pacific Heights. It was a beautiful day and I walked slowly, noticing all the different ways that architects (#34) worked steep hills into their designs. I had never really walked around Nob Hill before. It just so happened that John McCain was speaking at the Ritz-Carlton, so I saw some protesters, who were outnumbered by reporters.

I took a little break from my walk to stop in at Whole Foods (#48) and check out their beautiful seafood counter and produce (#6).

When I finally met up with PJ, we had a lovely dinner (#45). I had a noodle dish and he had Kung Pao chicken. We shared Spring Rolls as appetizers. I went home and watched a little television before going to sleep (#35).

Sublime to Ridiculous

2008-03-25T20:24:00.000-07:00

Happy 70th birthday to my mother, whose energy would lead you to believe that she is much younger. When talking about older people, we all run the risk of sounding as if we are talking about circus freaks, but i feel that I must mention that my mother is a good and helpful friend to many people, she's generous, and she still does all her own yardwork. In her free time, she glides across the internet like a kid; she plays games and buys things from ebay. Hitting a milestone birthday put her in a retrospective type of mood, and she found her life to be satisfying with few regrets. I found myself wondering if any of us could ask for more than that, and I was happy for her.

Now for the ridiculous. Yesterday, while waiting to meet Cameron at his house, I walked along Piedmont Avenue. Realizing I was very hungry, I stepped into one of those little pizza places that sells slices to lunch crowds. Even though it was almost 2 p.m., the place was still full of working people, which seemed like a good sign. I ordered a slice of spinach/mushroom pizza, paid for it, and sat down to wait. After about 30 minutes of waiting, it dawned on me that everyone who was in there when I entered had eaten and left and the next wave of people were happily eating. I walked up to the counter and the following conversation took place:
Me: I have been waiting a really long time for my pizza and I just want to check if something went wrong.
Counter person: Let me see. (She starts checking everywhere. There are two slices that have been cooling on top of oven that haven't been claimed, but neither is mine. She asks the owner, who starts looking for the paper on which he wrote down my order). No. We can't find it. One of these unclaimed ones is sausage/mushroom/spinach. Would you like that?
Me: Actually, I'm really, really hungry and I will take it.
Counter Person: Okay. No charge for the extra topping.

Strudel and Sauerkraut

2008-03-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write about two great experiences with arts and literature that I've had recently and I realize that, totally coincidentally (I assume) they both take place in Germany, a place I've never visited and know very little about. Unfortunately, my knowledge pretty much extends to two wars and a wall and some really hefty female swimmers and a few foods. Neither film really extended my knowledge, but now that I think about it, I don't think that either was really about Germany so much as what happens to people when they are pushed to extremes: bravery and cowardice, murderous cruelty and suicidal generosity.

The first is a novel, The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, which is marketed in the US as a young adult novel. I am far from the first person to say this, but it really is a shame that books and other art forms get put into categories. The Book Thief is appropriate for teens and adults, and can be approached from different levels. The writing style is really interesting and poetic. It is written by Death, who is just as haunted by us as we are by him. It takes place in a poor neighborhood in Germany during WWII, and follows the story of an adolescent girl and the people around her. It is far from sentimental, but that didn't stop it from making me sob on BART not once, but two times. It took me months to read it, even though I could have read it all in one weekend, because you just know that a book that takes place among poor people in Nazi Germany is not going to be about happy times, and it was wrenching at times, and stunningly beautiful at others.

The second is a movie, The Lives of Others. The funny thing about this movie is that I tried to watch it with a cold heart because I loved Pan's Labyrinth so much that I couldn't imagine Academy Award voters giving this movie the Oscar for Best Foreign Film over that one. Not only was I won over, but I would have had to join the majority of voters on this one. This time the setting is East Germany in the 1980s. The Lives of Others is about a man who so believes that what his government does is right, when to the viewer it is so clearly wrong, that it is easy to see him as evil at first. He is sent to spy on a playwright who lives a pretty satisfying life in a place where few people do. Both men have to face their own beliefs head-on as the story continues. It brings up so many questions, like what does it mean to be a good man? My favorite scene in the movie is about the transformative power of art, which manages to move a man who was unable to be moved at the start of the film.

I'm not sure I'd see the movie or read the book based on my recommendations, so let me add this: the book has a great story that moves the reader along and is most definitely not without humor and the movie is actually a really good cold war thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat at times.

I Believe in the Church of MyHeritage.com

2008-03-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

On the way home from work Friday, one of my fellow carpoolers mentioned a site called My Heritage, which is mostly involved with genealogy, but has added a face recognition program that matches you up with celebrities who are supposedly your look-a-likes. This sounded like too much fun to pass up on (but only when done in the privacy of one's own home).

The site said that you get best results with a full-on, face-front, non-smiling photo. It just so happened that the one picture of me that I have in my vast iphoto library is just that (except for a slight smile). And, since it was not an attractive photo, I thought all the better because I could blame the celebrities that I got on the bad photo I submitted. Also, scientifically speaking, you really can't find your look-alike from one view. Profiles are important, too.

So, I went to the site, which is easy to use if you can upload a photo, and in seconds I had my results. Hello, have you met my twin, Susan Sarandon? What an intelligent program with unbelievable accuracy. They even have this feature where you can watch your face morph into your celebrity look-alike's face, so I watched my face morph into Susan Sarandon's. This, of course, took very little morphing because...have I mentioned...she is my look-alike.

In case you're wondering, if I have a photo of you, I went ahead and gave it a try, but many of the photos were not good enough to get decent results. I also began to notice that hair style has something to do with who it picks, which doesn't seem right. I would like to try another photo of me, but I'm afraid I'll get more realistic results and who wants that?

Don't Tell Me the Lights are Shining Anywhere But There

2008-02-29T18:25:00.000-08:00

Different times of the year really do have their colors. My blog, which looked kitschy-colorful to me in December and January, suddenly became too vibrant for me. Why, when the Earth is about to bless us with all kinds of natural colors, my blog colors became too much, is beyond me, but there you have it. I am giving our eyes a rest for a few months. I wish I could change the colors in my house this easily. Another reason to love the internet. But that's not what I wanted to write about today. The warming weather turns our thoughts to romance.

My beautiful little sister is getting married in May in St. Louis. It is going to be a small ceremony followed by a dinner, and, knowing my sister, it will be thoroughly planned to the last detail. While I applaud her tasteful venue, I can't help but be disappointed that she is missing out on a golden opportunity. Her failure to ask for my advice on where she should marry means that my dream of visiting the Precious Moments Chapel will have to remain just that. Yes, yes, my sister is a grown woman with many responsibilities who can make her own decisions, but when it comes to the big decisions of life, I think I am the go-to girl. After all, why get married in a breakable, finger-printable glass conservatory of flowers in Spring when you can speak your vows in a chapel that is "inspired by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel." I have been fascinated with the place ever since I first heard of it a few years ago. There are Precious Moments figurines everywhere, including in the many, many awe-inspiring murals. Only Jesus seems to be depicted as a normal-headed human. Everyone else is a huge headed doll, including paintings of famous Old and New Testament figures. There is also a mural of children who were "taken too soon." Words will have to fail me since I have never visited and my sister selfishly refuses to give in to my desires.

So we will miss Wedding Island, which along with the famous fountain, was a money making part of the chapel grounds. Apparently we would miss it anyway, since it is closed down now due to a local casino taking the tourists away. But the chapel is still there waiting for any of you (you know who YOU are, MBB and CMB) to make me happy. In the meantime, I will have to make do with this excellent description.

Oscar Semi-Live Blog

2008-02-24T17:29:00.000-08:00

PJ suggested I do an Oscar Live-blog, so I'm giving it a try. I have my velour sweat pants on, so I'm ready for the ceremony. They're black. I'm wearing QVC tonight.

I just heard Regis talk to a man he called Xavier Bardem.

My nominee for line of the night so far: Jon Stewart about Norbit's nomination: "Too often the Academy ignores movies that aren't good."

My first dress: Jennifer Garner looks beautiful in her tight black sleeveless gown. Quite a necklace, too.

So, Anne Hathaway and Katherine Heigl have just shown up, one after the other, with a red dress with a sleeveless right shoulder and some strange fabric thing on their left shoulders. They look lovely in them, but it seems a strange coincidence. A sweep of the audience reveals many red dresses, too. I guess I should have worn my red velour sweat pants.

Amy Adams is singing Happy Working Song from Enchanted, which, outside of the context of the movie, seems like a really dumb song. I keep hoping the rats and cockroaches are going to show up and help, but no luck.

I was going to go all Joan Rivers on Cate Blanchett's gown, but then I noticed that she is very pregnant, so I guess she is allowed to look like she's going to the beach.

I'm happy about Javier Bardem, who seems far less scary than his character. I guess that's why he just won an award for acting.

Keri Russell looks lovely from the waist down and from the neck up. In between, there's some weird shelf action going on with her dress and her breasts.

I'm counting the third red dress on stage now. It's on the woman who won for animated shorts.

Tilda Swinton has decided to do red hair and a black dress instead of vice-versa. The dress, well, is guaranteed to get her lots of press tomorrow. I'm sorry that the designer was unable to finish it.

Miley Cyrus was wearing...red, and Jennifer Garner's hairstyle.

Tally at 90 minutes in: 3 black dresses, 5 red (if you count Jessica Alba's dark red one)

Okay, my pick for best song is on..Falling Slowly

Rene Zellweger did not wear red, but did wear lots of botox.

Nicole Kidman's dress is nice (and not red), but I'm not sure why she wore Christmas Tree tinsel with it.

Wow. Big production numbers for Enchanted tonight. It's almost as if Disney and ABC have some kind of a partnership.

Love Cameron Diaz's dress, but not a fan of the hair. Everyone seems to be doing this thing with a single curled bang in their face, which I do every day, but not on purpose. But really, the dress is great.

They just had soldiers in Iraq announce the documentary winners. Nice touch. Eat that, Fox News.

Helen Mirren looks gorgeous as always. Daniel Day-Lewis was downright sweet.

So, if they're supposed to end this after 3 hours, why do they still run ads after 8:30? Shouldn't they just give out the last two awards commercial free? This could make me turn cynical.

Woo hoo. I saw the winning movie!

So, in conclusion, mostly nice dresses, but some strange hair. Too much red. All four acting awards went to foreigners. We need to build a fence around Hollywood. The Republicans need to get right on that.

I'll have Polar Bear Tartare with Clay Pot Vegetables Cooked with A Ton of Mint

2008-02-16T15:23:00.000-08:00

I stopped watching The Grammys and The Emmys years ago. I will sometimes sneak a peak at the Tonys before bed so that I can see the musical numbers, but I often totally forget they are on. I can't understand how anyone can sit through the entire Super Bowl without lots and lots of breaks. But I love the Academy Awards and I sit through them every year, missing as few moments as possible. I don't know why the Oscars have never fallen by the wayside for me. I'm sure that there's a lot of nostalgia involved. I was raised on a steady diet of awards shows, and even to this day, my mother and sister and I will spend a large fraction of the Oscars on the phone with each other during the broadcast. After all, we can't have other people deciding who looks good and who doesn't for us. And even though this year I've only seen one movie, which is about all I usually have seen since they made the broadcast date in February instead of March, I'm sure that I will have strong opinions about the many movies that I haven't even seen.

A couple of years ago, I got HDTV, which I actually don't make good use of, but I definitely watch the Oscars on it. I get no thrill seeing wrinkles on aging actresses' faces, but I do enjoy seeing details on their gowns that regular television can't pick up.

For a few years, I made dinners where each dish had to have a name (or occasionally a theme) that matched a nominated movie. So, in the past, we have had to endure my Gosford Pork and Million Dollar Baby Back Ribs and Buttermilk Seabiscuits.

I don't think I'll be doing any big cooking this year, but I still like to make a virtual menu. This year's nominees seem to be taxing my limited talents. So, have at it. What should I serve for my imaginary meal? Here are the nominees:

No Country for Old Men
There will be Blood
Juno
Michael Clayton
Atonement

I promise that I will bring the imaginary Pepto-Bismol.

Left Behind

2008-02-14T19:52:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I was feeling torn about my primary vote, but very excited about the great choices we had. But something has changed since then, and I'm not having fun anymore. I'm not sure why, but I think the reason might have to do with my age and I'm less than thrilled with that prospect.

I ended up voting for Clinton. I carefully weighed both candidates and found both to be wanting in some areas and strong in others and I couldn't decide. I finally thought to myself, "What is my number one issue?" and I realized it was health care. It came down to Clinton's stronger health care policy. Fair enough, I thought, and cast my vote.

I think I could already feel the groundswell for Obama the morning I cast my vote. I realized that I didn't want to tell anyone who I voted for. I was a little embarrassed. Obama was the cool candidate. I am aware of his charisma, but I am suspicious of charisma. Reagan had charisma and I hated him. Reagan also was the candidate for change. Remember: It's morning in America. Or perhaps you don't remember and that's the problem.

The Clinton voters don't have anything against Obama. They acknowledge the charisma, the caring, the left of center politics. We tend to think more experience might be a good idea, but we like Obama and wish him well. Really we do. The Obama voters LOVE their candidate. They hate Clinton. They didn't seem to at first, but their increasing numbers have made them brave and they've become quite vocal about it to the point that I don't think the double bill I've wished for will happen.

Everytime there's a primary, I hear about the Black/White/Hispanic vote and the man/woman vote, but I haven't heard about any kind of an age gap, and yet my gut tells me that that is exactly what's going on here. I think my suspicion of charisma probably comes from age and experience. There's a part of me that wishes I could join the party, but most of me knows that I can't. Maybe I never could have.

So I'll just get my shawl and wait for the convention.

I'm just not into you, KitchenAid

2008-02-09T07:34:00.000-08:00

In the previous post, I chose my beautiful KitchenAid mixer as my number three most important recent invention, but some soul searching has forced me to face an ugly truth: given a choice of life without my mixer or life without my ATM card, I would chose life without my mixer.

Kids, I don't want to frighten you with this story, but there was once a time when you had to decide by 6 p.m. Friday how much money you needed for the weekend. The banks closed at 6 on Fridays (3 o'clock other days) and you had to go in and (usually) deposit your paycheck and take out the cash you thought you needed. The banks were closed on the weekends, and though, by the early 1980s, credit cards were pretty common (though not taken at every store), they didn't give you cash back. Yes, grocery stores and most other stores allowed you to write checks, but restaurants and movies and other places you might want to go on a weekend did not. Sorry, KitchenAid, I just don't want to go back to that. But you'll always be my number four. Until I think of something else.

I will also add another category--the invention I think I would most not want to live without if I got one, so I'm avoiding getting one: GPS for my car.

Thank you, Mr. Edison

2008-02-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

My friend Tracey was home last week when her family smelled something burning. They thought it was some musical equipment, and while everyone was investigating the equipment, Tracey saw flames leaping up behind them. The dishwasher was on fire! The fire was quickly put out and everyone was fine. I have been jokingly telling Tracey that she has ruined my life because I now won't leave the house with the dishwasher running. How is it possible that something I didn't even own until about ten years ago has become so necessary to me that just using it slightly differently has caused me discomfort?

That got me thinking about inventions I wouldn't want to be without. This list could probably go on, so I'm looking for three. I'm making it even easier. You can have anything that was normal in homes thirty years ago: television, radio, stove, refrigerator, washer/dryer, lighting. So, that being said, here (I think) are my three:

1. Dishwasher: maybe it is because I went without for so many years, but I love my dishwasher. I've never been a fan of washing dishes, except on cold winter days when the hot water feels good. I love that it makes the dishes look so clean and that it's a place to store them when they're dirty. They're now making dishwashers in the standard size that have two drawers that you can pull out and load with dishes. That way you can wash half your dishes while you are loading the other half with dirty dishes. Genius.

2. My computer: the internet has opened up the world in such a life-changing way that I can barely remember a time when you couldn't answer pretty much every question you ever had. Not too long ago, when someone said, "What was the name of that movie with Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn?" you would either know it or have to call your best trivia-minded friend. Now, a quick trip to IMDB and all questions are answered.

3. My Kitchen Aid stand mixer: this great love took me by surprise about twenty-eight years ago when my mother-in-law bought it for me as a thank you for doing her taxes. She was wise enough to know that we were too cheap to buy one for ourselves and that I would really use it. I have used it ever since and would replace it in a heartbeat if it ever broke.

Things that almost made the list: TiVo! My CD player, my DVD player, my microwave, digital camera.

Things that I have managed to live without so far: Cell phone, iPod

Something that I wish I could manage without: my car

So, what are your three inventions?

Wednesday Sunday Dinner

2008-01-15T20:15:00.000-08:00

When I was a child, my Grandmother would cook a special meal every Sunday and invite her three children, their spouses, and her nine grandchildren. Her house seemed huge, though I now realize it was only two bedrooms/one bathroom with a tiny front yard and an even smaller (off-limits to us because of Bodo, the hunting dog) backyard. We cousins had the run of the front yard, the long driveway where Grandma planted sweet peas every summer, the living room and the guest bedroom, where I would be the teacher when we played school. The kitchen was where the women would hang out and help Grandma. The den is where the men would sit and yell at the football games on television. The meals were simple and predictable (I mostly remember fried chicken and pot roast, mashed potatoes and green salad). I loved going and was sorry when we missed a Sunday (my father was a firefighter who often worked Sundays). I didn't understand until I was older how amazing it was that my Grandmother did this. She had a full time Monday to Friday job with Kraft foods. The morning after having dinner for as many as seventeen people, she would get up and take the train into San Francisco.

Every Wednesday, PJ comes over for dinner. Like my Grandmother's Sunday dinners, this routine means a lot to me and I have a lot of memories to go along with it. I'm not quite Grandma, though. My numbers have sometimes swelled to six. My food is not so predictable, and my guests have had to endure a few fads) and a few disasters. Every once in a while, I'm too tired and we get pizza instead of the planned meal. Best of all, PJ buys us a special meal four times a year (Chinese New Year, Shakespeare's birthday, my birthday, and back to school). When we started doing this, about fifteen years ago, Marin and Cameron were in middle and elementary school. Now they are college graduates who have moved away, but Cameron is back in the Bay Area and joins us once again. Over the years, we have missed a surprisingly small number of these Wednesdays. We sometimes have work obligations, or are sick or on vacation. The day after 9/11, we were too sad and exhausted.

Here's what happens when the same thing is done with such regularity: when I sit down at that table on Wednesday, all of the other Wednesdays are there with me. Marin and Cameron are small again, sneaking Brussels Sprouts back on my plate, PJ is reading us Psalms or a sonnet, Cameron is happy because I made tacos, Cameron is sad because I made a pasta dish, Marin is entertaining us with one of her lists.

I love my quiet, lonely Sundays, and still am in awe of my Grandmother for giving hers up, but I think I understand why she did it because I wouldn't change Wednesdays for the world.

Choo-Choo-Choose Me

2008-01-12T22:16:00.000-08:00

I owe apologies to Marin and PJ for all those times I felt that their blogs should be updated more often. Of course, they understand that it came from a place of love. Now that I'm back at work, I wonder how anyone can keep up a blog at all.
It's not just the lack of time, either. I'm too tired to be creative.

But my one day weekend has begun! I spent the first couple of hours catching up with All My Children, and all I can say is that the writer's strike really, really needs to end. The story lines continue, but there are some major lapses of logic, like a character in an insane asylum who has unrestricted access to a phone on the wall (he used it to arrange a murder), and the woman who, knowing she is the target of a sniper, spends time in front of a huge picture window.

My other job for the weekend is to try and pick a candidate for President. This is so strange. I've been voting for Presidents since 1976 and I've never had a real choice before. For better or for worse, the Democrat has been a foregone conclusion by the time California had a choice. Oddly, everyone I know, save one person, is not talking about their choices. All these years, I took it for granted that everyone declared their choices out loud, but that was because we had no choices.

In my liberal Bay Area circle, it seems that it is okay to declare yourself for Obama without being judged. However, a vote for Clinton may mean any of the following: you have fallen prey to the idea of a Clinton dynasty, or you have fallen for an emotional outburst, or strangest of all (from friends born after 1970), you are only voting for her because she's a woman. A vote for Edwards means that you are afraid to back a President who is a woman or who is African-American. It means that you are mainstream and conventional.

I've been spending some time on the three candidates' websites reading about their take on issues. Clinton plans to get everyone out of Iraq, starting immediately, and she has a well thought out plan for Health Care for all. Obama plans to get everyone out of Iraq, starting immediately, and he has a really nice education plan. He's clearly been talking to teachers. There is a nice, hopeful feeling to what he says. Edwards surprised me with his extremely thorough take on pretty much every issue you can think of, and I couldn't find anything I disagreed with. He even had the guts to say that he supports civil unions for homosexuals.

So, what's a liberal Bay Area girl to do? Edwards seems to embody most of what I believe in. But. If I live to my full life expectancy, I've got about 7 more Presidential elections left, and I really have hoped to see a woman and an African-American in the White House in my lifetime. Will there ever be as good a chance as this?

I guess I'm not quite ready to decide yet. I will sit back for a couple more weeks and enjoy this very, very rare occasion of having three candidates that I would be perfectly happy with.

Attend the Tale

2008-01-06T17:09:00.001-08:00

No spoilers here. I'm just back from seeing Sweeney Todd, and I surprised myself with how much I liked it. It managed to have quite an emotional punch due to excellent acting by everyone. I found some of the song changes jarring, since I know them so well. I just have one complaint. I think Mr. Burton is deafened by love and should have considered using Marnie Nixon. I also have new respect for Angela Lansbury for somehow staying in tune while playing a character who sounds like she can't sing in tune.

Cockapoos and Tigers and Giraffes. Oh My!

2008-01-04T11:13:00.000-08:00

It occurs to me that I'm writing an awful lot about animals, mostly of the food variety. So, of course, I'll add more!

My friend, Patrick, whose blog, The Reverberate Hills (link on the left), is both beautifully written and really funny, kindly linked to me yesterday, promising his readers cockapoo pictures. So, here goes:

That's Madeline on the left and Marcel on the right. I'm crazy about them in a way that is really embarrassing to me. I had not owned a dog since childhood, and after an entire year of researching dog breeds, I settled on cockapoos because they are friendly, long-lived, and good walkers. I pictured that I would have a loyal dog by my side. I did not picture that I would feel so maternal, and I definitely did not picture that my adoration would be amusing to everyone I know. But there you have it. Even I can't always be sensible.

Speaking of sensible, the SF Zoo tiger case is absolutely fascinating to me. Not the tragedy itself, but the reaction to it. I just listened to 90 minutes about it on The Ronn Owens Show and, well, let's put it this way--the lawyer for the young men had better settle out of court. The callers were unanimously sympathetic to the zoo and the tiger. Personally, I think there's plenty of blame to go around, but public opinion is very much against people old enough to know better who possibly visited the zoo with the purpose of taunting a caged animal, possibly with slingshots.

In November, I took our school's ecology club on an overnight trip to the zoo. We had a wonderful time, and I hope those trips can continue after the improvements are made. It does kind of give me the creeps to remember our night walk with very, very dim overhead lights and no flashlights.

As for giraffes, my Winter Break was full of excellent, memorable moments. One was M's annual Christmas cookie exchange, where she makes dozens and dozens of sugar cookies and pastry bags full of icings in beautiful colors. She invites friends and family over and we get to eat, meet, and decorate cookies. I'm not sure how long this party has been going on, but I know it's at least a decade and something I always look forward to. This year, my son Cameron was able to join us, and charmed us all with his beautiful giraffe cookies. I, on the other hand, am incapable of making a giraffe cookie or any animal cookie in anything but its natural colors. Too sensible. I'm glad that my children and friends are not like me.

Excuse me while I return to talking baby talk to my fluffy dogs.

Dilemma of the Ten Dollar Chicken

2008-01-03T18:54:00.000-08:00

An organic, free-range local chicken costs at least $10 and is smaller than a supermarket chicken, which can cost as little as $4. I have to go far, spend transportation money and spend extra time to buy the local chicken; I live a 5 minute drive from at least four places where I can buy the supermarket chicken. In addition to this, you really can't be sure exactly what you're getting when you buy the organic chicken. The ideal would be that a chicken labeled "free range" would be wandering around, having a decent life until it is killed humanely as possible. The reality is that you would have to visit the farm to find out. Many "free range" chickens are free to roam but don't because their food is brought to them in their cages. Chickens aren't too bright, but they're smart enough to go to where the food is.

The reality is that the "decision" about which type of chicken to buy is only a decision for people of some means. My household of one can now afford a once a week $10 chicken. My household of five years ago (three people with lower income) probably couldn't have afforded this chicken.

I'm kind of cheap and I love a good sale. Yet I love buying the expensive chicken. A $10 chicken is an important chicken. It needs to be valued, cooked carefully, served to company. Additionally, all of the leftovers need to be used. It seems right that something that lived, had some thoughts and a warm, beating heart should be valued. I get a meal or two out of the chicken before I make it into soup stock, which then gives me at least five more meals. This forces me to eat more fruits and vegetables and more whole grains, so my diet is improved. The truly free-range chicken tastes better. I've read that it tastes more chickeny and I thought that was a silly description until I tasted one myself, and sure enough, it's more chickeny. I'm really torn here. For the reasons listed, I kind of like the idea of the chicken being so expensive. But I also would like more people to be able to enjoy the same (including me 5 years ago). And, right now, it takes me about two and a half hours to buy one of the good chickens. That's a lot of time for anyone.

Right now, I'm hoping that local eating catches on. The price will go up. Local farmers will notice this and start raising more chickens. The price will go back down, but the chickens will be available to all of us in local Farmers' Markets. And maybe, just maybe, the price will go down even more and local eating will not have to be a choice of too few.

Sarah, You're Stumped

2008-01-01T22:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I viewed multiple commercials for upcoming reality shows. In My Favorite Brady, some middle aged former child star, past his prime, which happened when he was about twelve, married to a much, much younger model, past her prime, which happened when she was about twenty, contemplates the possibility of fatherhood. His bride seems to be worried that she has a choice between her beloved breasts and motherhood. In Rock of Love 2, a very, very former rock star searches for love amongst not-so-young ladies who appear to be in need of some lessons in manners. Worst of all, there was Celebrity Rehab, which seems to be exactly what the title says. No doubt the Baldwin that I spied in the ad will be joined by others in justifying doing something so private so publicly. "My being here, sharing this way, will help the regular, less pretty people to seek the help that they need." These shows are all coming up on VH1, the network that used to play videos that were meant for people past 20, but now is the sleaziest network on the air. So, why, you may ask, was I watching such a sleazy network? Well, I was watching a reality show. I was watching America's Next Top Model. This is the reality show that I'm most embarrassed to admit I enjoy.

Friends, I come not to bury reality shows, but to praise them. My shameful secret is that I love reality shows. It's not that much of a secret since everyone who is likely to read this already knows this all too well. I don't love them all. In fact, because I do love some, I really hate others because they stain the genre. I have been trying to figure out why I love some, hate others, and can't be bothered with many.

I really hate all shows in which washed up celebrities want to get on television at any cost. I hate shows that make people seem so much more hideous than they probably are in real life (I Love New York), especially those that justify their existence by acting as if they are helping people (Wife Swap, Cheaters).

There are shows that I never watched in the first place because I was afraid I might like them and knew that I really shouldn't, like Kid Nation and Biggest Loser.

There are shows that I loved the first season of. Those shows I have watched, using my biology background to make observations to myself and anyone unlucky enough to innocently ask me if I watched the show. In the first season of The Bachelor, I watched women compete for one man, and they actually behaved in very interesting ways to get his attention, trying to make themselves the most attractive to him while realizing that they had to still be part of the herd. In the first season of Big Brother, I also watched, fascinated, as people decided how much of their personal lives to air in these very crowded conditions, where, in order to win money, they had to be liked by their housemates and by the American public. Americans, as a group, don't really like or trust people who are too private, but don't like people who are too out there. In the case of these shows, by season 2, the "real people" have decided what character they will play, and there is very little reality left (I'm going to be the virgin, I'm going to have the drinking problem, I'm the bitch). They lose my interest.

Why do I love others? For one thing, some are very well done. In the case of my favorite, Amazing Race, I have literally been on the edge of my seat, cheering for my favorites to get to the check-in point first. I'm smart enough to know that editing and music are responsible for much of my reaction. The best ones are also actually real. In fictional television, which I also love, you know that the shy girl with glasses is going to eventually be noticed by that good looking playboy, who will realize how shallow his life has been up to now, and that the character who coughs in the first episode is going to be dead of tuberculosis by the last episode (there's a lot of Masterpiece Theater watching in my past). I'll never forget how bad I felt at the end of one season of Amazing Race, when the pair that won was not the pair that was supposed to win. They had no obstacles to overcome, they weren't particularly kind to others, they didn't really appreciate the cultures they were rushing through. I like reality shows like some people like sports. There are no sure outcomes in the best ones.

I have memories of nice moments shared with loved ones over reality shows. D and I have shared meals while watching episodes of Project Runway, discussing the good and bad of clothing we would never buy, as if we were critics at Fashion Week (a week I didn't even know existed before I started watching Project Runway). When Marin came home from Russia, I told her that I knew she'd love Project Runway. She didn't seem interested, and then a couple of days later, she disappeared for a few hours, and when she finally emerged to eat, it turned out that she was downstairs watching a Project Runway marathon and loving it. I love watching American Idol with PJ, even though I'm sure he would never watch it on his own (thank you, PJ, for indulging me). I only watched Dancing with the Stars because he enjoyed it so much (and made excellent points about how the judges were actually giving good advice most of the time), and I enjoyed talking about my favorite dancers with my mother. Cameron dislikes most reality shows, but he and I both enjoy Top Chef and we used to both watch Amazing Race together.

This brings me back to America's Next Top Model, and another thing that most of my favorite shows have in common. America's Next Top Model is not a great reality show. I don't watch it during its regular season. I hate seeing young girls fighting with each other over little things. But I love the last twenty minutes. It is there that the girls have to face their photo shoot pictures and that the truly bizarre panel of judges (more than three of them!) gives them good advice. It is here that the girls, who spent their teen lives being told that they should model only because they are skinny, join with young people who have been told they can sing, and artistic people who think they can design or cook, in learning that these jobs actually involve skills. And here are the moments that I love because I, too, do something that everyone thinks is easy or fun. I'm a schoolteacher, and I have to spend my days hearing either condescending remarks about how little I make (people, go to any school district's website and find the teachers' salary chart in the employment section before you say that again), unthinking remarks about my hours (you try being "on stage" for about five hours a day, followed by meetings, parent conferences, tutoring or clubs, duty at dances or sporting events, and then go home for assessment time), or most insulting of all, listening to people who think they'd like to try teaching because they have a lot of knowledge to share or because they'd like to "give back." Modeling is not easy, even if you are tall, skinny and pretty. Singing to an audience is not easy, even if you can carry a tune (which, strangely, many AI finalists can't do). And my job is a profession that takes a lot of work to do it well.

All that being said, I know that there's a lot to make fun of in reality television. This brings me to the origin of today's entry title. If you haven't seen Operation Kitten Calendar, please do so. The more actual reality shows you watch, the funnier it is. Be sure you check out all the episodes (each 5 minutes long), including the obligatory reunion show.

Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka

2007-12-31T18:49:00.000-08:00

When I was a child, I longed for a white Christmas. I felt so cheated living in the Bay Area. I also longed to be poor so that I could make everyone dolls and quilts out of rags and they would be grateful for these gifts from my heart. I've grown out of my sad, sad poverty fantasies, but I really would like to see snow. However, closer attention to seasonal changes has allowed me to appreciate the Bay Area winter. I love how low the Sun hangs in the sky at around 3 p.m. and I especially love nights like tonight. The wind was blowing all day, leaving the sky especially clear and bright, and the air especially cold. So, tonight, while wallking the dogs, it felt like I had the neighborhood to myself. People were warm inside their homes. It was silent, except for one BART train and a far off siren. I could see and recognize Orion and Mars. I wished for such nice moments this winter for everyone, near and far, and then I went home before the New Year's Eve gunfire began.
Happy New Year.

Of Humane Kindness

2007-12-30T23:45:00.000-08:00

Aren't they beautiful? When I first saw them, I thought that I had gone back in time to when I was a little girl and there were milkmen who left milk bottles in bumpy metal boxes on the front porch. That was the early 60's and only a handful of people on my block were still getting their bottled milk from the milkman. Everyone had already found the supermarket more convenient. Still, the bottles were and are pretty. Better than that, they get returned to the dairy and sterilized and reused. But best of all is how this milk tastes. It really is noticeably better than any other milk I've had. It tastes sweet and creamy, and did I mention it comes in a beautiful bottle? Thanks to my friend N for telling me about the Strauss Creamery.
Speaking of friends, thank you, PJ, for giving me several ideas for first blog entries. Thanks to you, I'm about to start my second month (not consecutive) of local eating. After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma this Summer, I realized that I needed to change some of my eating habits. The first change was pretty easy--no more high fructose corn syrup. That was easy, it turns out, because I don't buy too many prepackaged foods. Then came the hard part. After reading about how animals were treated, even at many organic farms...well, once you know you can't not know. So, on my search for humanely treated animals, I came across localvore sites and thought I should just go all the way and try to eat as locally as possible. The thing I expected to be hardest, protein, was surprisingly easy. There are several local farms and ranches that raise beef and chickens. Dairy products were a little harder, but not impossible, thanks to places like Strauss. But there are many foods that can't be found in the San Francisco Bay Area. So, decisions had to be made. What did I not want to live without for a month? For me, the answers were flour, sugar and tea. Clearly, I'm not too hardcore about this. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the month. I learned a lot about local farms. I was surprised by the foods I missed the most. I missed chocolate, but I expected to. But the first thing I ate on October 1 was oatmeal and the second was a banana. I found that I made some changes that I've stuck too, but I also found that I kind of liked the discipline of local eating.
So, I'm back to trying it again but January should be harder than September. It was easier when tomatoes were in abundance. Doing this gives me lots to write about, too: the economic feasibility of eating locally, food finds, the time involved in shopping.
So the New Year begins with my first blog and healthier, more ethical eating. I hope to share both with whoever happens along.