Bits

Tomorrow, Oprah is going to be on Ellen. This is must-see TV for Skye Xyan!

10 hours of sleep does a body good. I decided last night that I would watch Ellen's dancing this morning. So I did.

I went to the Spanish speaking group's monthly dinner last night. I had a lot of fun listening and did some speaking, though right now I am a much better listener. It's an interesting experience for me to be hesitant to speak. Makes me feel like a shy person again.

Untitled

I felt bad leaving my blog on a negative note. I did proceed to feed myself, watch TV, work in my Spanish workbook and talk on the phone. So I pulled out of my funk rather easily.

A positive-negative occurred this week: On Wednesday I went to my class and the wind blew my hat into a puddle. My soggy hat looked so pathetic and of course it's no fun to have a wet hat. However, yesterday it was all dry again, and it turns out that the water made it shrink a little and now it is the perfect size for my head! So as long as I never wash it, it will just be super. :)

Interesting factoid - I haven't eaten any animal products since Feb 4. For real. And it hasn't even been hard. OK, to be a little bit tedious and completely fair, I did eat a small chip that a student offered me on Tuesday night. It was not even a whole chip. It had some cheesey powder on it. Then yesterday I ate a small part of a Dorito that a different student offered. He offered me the rest of the bag, but I easily declined. So aside from the equivalent of ONE CHIP, I think I could get a gold star.

In case you wondered, my goal is not to be a vegan. My goal is to be mostly vegan.

I'm also thinking about emotional eating. I don't consider myself to be too much of an emotional eater, but I do have my comfort foods. I've been disappointed that one of my favorite comfort foods - The Starbucks Latte - no longer brings me joy. In fact, for the last maybe five times I've bought one, I haven't even liked it. Sometimes I haven't even finished it. But I still haven't killed the compulsion to go buy one - at least not completely. I bought one about two weeks ago. It had been several weeks, but the idea still lingered in my head. Even after that experience, it still lingers. So there's something to the IDEA that a food is comforting that seems to matter. Also, sushi has been a real comfort food and I was eating it two or three times a week. I put "Avoid sushi" down as one of my SparkPeople.com daily goals, and now I've avoided it since Feb 3. I was disillusioned that day when I read that there was high fructose corn syrup mixed in with the sushi rice. I looked up recipes online for sushi rice and they all had sugar in them. No wonder I like it so much! But, I was pleased to learn that plain old brown rice and avocado are almost as satisfying as an avocado roll.

I also think that I get that run down, let down feeling in the evening and then I like to EAT. Part of the problem does seem to be that it's time to eat, but also it seems to be that I am just tired. And when I am tired sometimes I think I need to eat.

OK, I am getting bored with my blog. Gotta go.

Update

So both colleges are closing today at 4. This means that I taught my class. Attendance was better than I expected, and now we're not going to be behind schedule. I was in a pretty upbeart mood earlier today, but now I'm feeling a little bummed. This seems to be happening to me a lot (at night) lately. Something about being condemned to a night alone in my apartment, with weather being the operative enforcer is depressing to me. But maybe I can shake my head out of it. A little food and entertainment might lift me out of this head space. It could also be sleepiness. Last night, going to bed was the best cure for my ills!

I'm Glad I'm Not a Mailman Today

The weather's been quite fun today. Earlier, nice, fat snowflakes were literally dancing in circles outside my window. That was the highlight of the weather antics. Other than that, it's been smaller flakes of snow and now it looks like freezing rain or something much less pleasant than snow.

I did venture out of the house earlier. It was more intense out there than I expected. It was fun to reminisce about all the places that water and slush like to pool near my house. I went to The Harvard Coop and bought a Spanish workbook. My high school one is all written in and it's just not the same trying to write stuff again. I like the blank book, it's much more motivating. However, I do like the walk down memory lane that all my doodles in the old book provide. I never cease to amuse myself. :)

The school I'm an adjunct at did not cancel classes, though my full-time school is closing at 3. I have my adjunct class in an hour, but it's only across the street, so I can't really complain. Several students have already emailed me with their decisions not to attend class. Can't say I blame 'em. I didn't have classes at my full-time institution today, so it's not exactly a snow day for me. However, I did have plans to attend a morning conference, so I got out of that. Of course, I kind of wanted to go, but, whatever.

This morning I was in snow-day mentality and found myself watching Ellen. She had me laughing out loud - I was literally delighted with the opening of her show. (Seriously, "delighted" is the word.) The interviews were fun too, but not as delightful. She had Drew Barrymore and "The Absolute Hunk" from Sex & the City on. (I forgot his name because I never knew it until today.) And Lionel Richie was singing some new stuff and some old stuff. I will admit that he brought a tear to my eye singing one of his sappy love songs from the 80s. You can roll your eyes at me, but I know Richard will understand!

I suppose I should get ready for my class that nobody is going to come to. Adios, friends.

Quiet

It is lonely in Cambridge when you think that everybody is in Minnesota.

New Vocab Word: Annual

Yesterday marked one year since I walked into Dirk's classroom in an endeavor to make myself a better teacher. I had forgotten all about that particular goal until last night, when Dirk gave me two books about becoming a better teacher. I actually had to ask how they applied to our one-year anniversary because in my haste to bag the teacher, I forgot all about why I met the teacher in the first place! (OK, that's not 100% true, but definitely partly true.)

We celebrated the day by being very lazy, taking a long walk to the grocery store, making heart-shaped sugar cookies (to commemorate our first date, which actually took place a week after we met) and watching five episodes of Six Feet Under. We also had Indian food and popcorn. I dug up our first week of email correspondence, and we read those for awhile. Reading those emails put a giddy smile on my face. We also got into long discussions of some of our favorite controversial issues while on our walk. Kudos to us for not starting a fight on our anniversary. Later, Dirk did suggest that we dredge up topics C, D & E just to complete "The Best of Dirk and Skye 2006-07." I elected not to go there, and of course, he was kidding. Ironically, one of our discussions involved me saying that I had decided that Dirk had won a particular long-standing debate and he let me know that I was not allowed to decide this, that my side still had merit and we would have to make a final decision later, together. So nobody say that Dirk isn't fair!

A lot can happen in a year, and a year sure can go by fast. I wish I had something more meaningful to say here, but that's all I've got. It was a good year, that is for certain.

Sudden Realization

One day back in third grade, I was leaving for home with all the other kids. We had exited the school, and were walking, en masse, towards the playground. I happened to spot a lone magazine page scuttling along the sidewalk and, being ever vigilant about trash, I picked it up.

To my surprise, it was a centerfold! The story goes on to document my quest to get rid of the centerfold. It involves me keeping it in a box under my bed as I contemplated how on earth I would smuggle it out of the house. The trash clearly was not an option, and, as I later told my mother, I wanted to make sure my dad didn't see it. I guess I thought I had to protect him. I was sincerely shocked when my mom said, "Your daddy's seen things like that before." The story ends with my neighbor friend, Jenny, and I putting the page in one of her yellow socks, climbing high up into the neigbor's pine tree and tying the sock up there.

Yes, that is clearly the way you get rid of a centerfold.

But that is not the point of my story today. The centerfold model posed a great mystery to my eight-year-old mind. She had something blossoming, or opening, on the outer side of her thigh. Literally, I think it was a mouth, but can't be sure. For the life of me, I could not figure out what it was and was hard-pressed to believe that I might grow one of these someday. As an adult, I have wondered what on earth that was. I can't really remember what it looked like, perhaps it looked like another pair of lips, or a flower.

This morning, I think I have my answer. Oprah did a little blip on Bodies and Souls: The Century Project. There were four pictures chosen by O Magazine, one of which is the very last one on that link of a 94-year old woman, which I think is fabulous. However, the one that opened my eyes today is of a 45-year-old, not shown on that webpage. She has a tatoo of a flower on her breast, and it kept confusing me for just an instant when I saw the picture. It hit me this morning that the centerfold model must have had a tatoo on her thigh! It sounds silly, but I can imagine that at eight years old, I had no idea what a tatoo was and it would only pose a mystery to me.

I love it when I can finally, finally wrap up a mystery of years gone by.

Road Trip

I was just over at Lesley University grading papers in the student center. The TV was on, and TBS was playing Road Trip. I'd never seen the film before and it just struck me as so funny today. I didn't get to see the beginning, so I will have to rent it or something. It was silly humor, but it was really pulling me in. I was amazed at how many faces were in it that I recognized, but could not place. Major faces were identified later in IMDB and include:

Breckin Meyer (I looked at all his credits and have no idea what I know him from.)

Seann William Scott (I guess he always plays a cocky frat boy because he was also in American Pie.)

Amy Smart (TCW on Scrubs)

Paulo Costanzo (He was one of the few that I could actually place. He was on "Joey.")

DJ Qualls (This kid was driving me crazy. Turns out he was JD's student on Scrubs and Hugo's work buddy on LOST.)

Anthony Rapp (This is a big one because the ONLY thing I have ever seen him in, and always remembered him from, was Adventures in Babysitting. Turns out it the first item on his IMDB list. I could not place his grown-up face though.)

And finally, I caught a very short appearance of Earl's brother. I had no trouble recognizing him, even though he had more hair. It doesn't hurt that he's a really large guy. The actor's name is Ethan Suplee.

So, to swerve the topic in a slightly different direction, I think I'm the only person I know who seems to have been highly affected by Adventures in Babysitting. I actually remember being in the theater watching the opening scene with Elizabeth Shue dancing around her room. Her dress was SO cute and she was SO pretty. I thought being a teenager like her would be fantastic. [I think I use the word "fantastic" a lot more now due to Dirk's influence.] This was 1987, so I was 13 or 14. Also, I was there with a friend, which was probably a big deal - being somewhere without my mother. I think we stayed and watched the opening scene again before we left. Anyhoo, one actor that will always scream "Adventures in Babysitting" to me is Bradley Whitford. He plays Dirk's favorite West Wing character, Josh Lyman. Thanks to the West Wing and Studio 60, I am finally getting over the idea that he is a pompous jerk who cheats on Elizabeth Shue. I also thought Anthony Rapp was pretty adorable back then.

Now, thanks to IMDB I have learned that the major love interest in this movie, George Newburn, was also the groom in Father of the Bride and had the "inappropriate sister" on Friends. I never once caught that. And I might actually have seen this movie ten times. And I think that guy is cute! I'm disappointed with myself. Clearly, slimey guy made a bigger impression that romantic, cute guy (who was cute in three separate shows). That makes no sense. I can only conclude that Josh Lyman was really good at playing creepy guys, and he deserves all the acting success he has had. IMDB also just told me that Keith Coogan (the insipid brother) was in many episodes of The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie.

My whole world is coming together.

Global Warning?

Today I saw a fat, red-breasted robin hopping around in the freezing wind.