Merry Christmas to Me

I previously mentioned that I am reading The Garden of Last Days, which I am. However, the copy I have is a huge hardback library edition and at the last minute (around 4:30 am yesterday) I decided to leave it in the car at the airport as the scene at said Seattle airport was one of mayhem and madness. Utter madness, literally. No, seriously, it was a miracle of God that we got on our flight--we had to run Home Alone-style through the terminal to our gate, and we got there 2.5 hours before we were scheduled to leave. Anyway, I left the book, not having room for it in my purse or carry-on and I was left to forge through a long-forgotten book shelf for something to read today while my son took a nap and I tried to relax. What I found is amazing and I can't keep it a secret from you--Janet Evanovich's The Rocky Road to Romance.

Evanovich writes in a short introduction to the book that it is a rip-roaring romance, and true to the genre it is just that. Almost no character development, a very shallow plot, and a whole lot of lovin'. It is fantastic, and I am not kidding you. Merry Christmas to me.

And Merry Christmas to you--may your day (and night) be merry and bright! ;)

Christmas Reading

My Christmas Break reading list--please keep up.

1. The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III. This novel was inspired by some of the events leading up to 9/11. I am about 1/3 of the way through--pretty interesting, though a bit raunchy in a terribly sad sort of way. The background is that one of the men involved in the 9/11 attacks visited a strip club days before and spent thousands of dollars on strippers and booze, making some interesting comments (obviously). This story is told from the perspective of one of the girls, as she observes and works for this man. This is not your average action/thriller, but a deeply terrifying and tragic story. And so far, it is a page-turner.

2. Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. I haven't started reading this one yet, but I am pretty fascinated by the concept. I'm not an avid reader of non-fiction text, but I've had this book for a while and just recently read the description, which reeled me in. A journalist decides to work and live on minimum wage jobs in four different regions of America. I am convinced that I need to go back to college already.

You can try and avoid fate, but then you will get hit with ten inches of snow

It is, as my son has been telling me for two days, snowing rain. Yes son, it is snowing a crapload of rain.  Ironically I have spent the last few weeks counting the days until Christmas break, yet when school is canceled, I am completely disappointed. The reason for this being that I love the last few days before break, as they offer my students a time to reflect on our time with Romeo and Juliet. Specifically, it is a time when I like to show them some great videos--such as The Reduced Shakespeare Company's abridged version of the play and Baz Luhrmann's campy 1996 film--which I love more with each viewing. 

If you have never experienced RSC--take 13 minutes out of your day and watch these two clips from YouTube. I love these guys.

Part 1

Part 2

My prayer for the day: Dear God, please make it stop snowing so that I can wear my crazy sequined Christmas sweater and gold bow hair clip to school tomorrow. 

Shop Online Fridays

A common and never tired joke around our English Department is that we organize our schedules to have tests or movies on Fridays, and therefore we get a day to shop online. Though this is a nice idea in theory, of course it leaves us (me) with a mountain of essays to grade on the weekends--so usually I end up frantically grading while my students work away or enjoy some sort of media-based text. 

All this to say, I spent the better part of my day writing the aforementioned sonnet and therefore did not grade any papers. This leaves me, at home on a Friday night grading essays while my son watches Go Diego Go! and we wait for the pizza to get here. I blame Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting (whom, my students brought to my attention, bares a striking resemblance to Zac Effron) for allowing me to get off-task today. Tsk Tsk.

"Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books"...a tribute to R&J in sonnet

Review: A sonnet is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter (5 unstressed syllables each followed by a stressed syllable, making a total of 10 syllables per line). In a sonnet, every other line rhymes, and the last two lines are a couplet.

It is also referred to (as per a quiz answer yesterday) as iambic petermeter. But, I am getting off subject. Here you go:

The yearly time hath come, when lovers swoon
And high school students giggle at the sound
Of Romeo dear and his spritely tune--
About his love for women, girls, and hounds.
On and on he goes of love that's stronger
Than a thousand arrows from Cupid's bow.
Girls' looks do baffle this heart-led monger
Who seems to eas'ly fall before he knows
A lick about the girl he sees so bright
That stars and moons and suns would scarcely see
Her face for fear of paling in her sight.
Alas!--it seems wise to from this rogue flee.
Yes, Romeo, I'll admit oft looks daft--
The constant victim of a blind bow-boy's butt shaft!

Facebook, the Revolution

Well, it's a good thing I took the day off from work today so that I could adequately address the mania that is Facebook. I have received about a million friend requests and confirmations--from people I haven't seen in years! It is crazy. I have accepted the concept of social networking, and watched a very helpful instructional tool on the internet. You can find it at: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc

Before you get all huffy and like, "wow, it sure would be nice to take a day off just to work on my Facebook account" you should know that I have also been cleaning up 2-year-old vomit all morning (the vomiter is 2-yrs-old, not the actual vomit; that would make me a really terrible housekeeper and I am only moderately terrible). Trust me, I would much rather be cleaning up the verbal vomit spewed forth by adolescents that is my usual day job. 

The expansion of the realm of literacy that has reached out across the world wide web has, indeed, changed the way we think about reading. Sometimes I forget this, but not for too long, as I often receive final draft essays with any combination of the following: "b/c"; "caus"; "OMG"; "BTW"; and "j/k" (really? yes). Maybe being a part of Facebook will help me to become more in tune with current trends in literacy and word de-coding. 

Facebook Freaks Me Out

A friend of mine recently sent me an invitation to join Facebook, so I signed up because I wanted to look at her pictures. You fill in your info, and all of a sudden--boom! It pops up with a list of people who I know suggesting that I may be interested in requesting their friendship (what a fascinating concept, when I was a kid we rarely formally requested people's friendship, we just made fun of them until they thought we were cool). We are talking like 100 people! That I know! How does Facebook know that I know these people?--they are from all walks of my life: high school, college, post-college. It completely freaked me out. It's like this weird voyeuristic universe where people can find out about other people's lives without actually having to talk to them. It makes me think about when you get your yearbook at the end of the school year, and you spend hours looking at every picture, trying desperately to identify flaws in people. 

I'm just not sure I'm ready for Facebook.