Good intentions...

Despite yesterday's good intentions, I woke up with the migraine from hell this morning and after I finally dragged out of bed, sat staring comatose at my computer most of the day until just about an hour ago when the drugs finally kicked in. Even so, I've talked to Bert a number of times, got the vet records scanned and emailed, and finally printed out the fire escape route floor plans we have to hang on the wall. I also remembered that our agency has discussion forums, and chatted in there a bit.

More updated info on the adoption blog, again.

Just a bit ago, I checked my school communication thing in my classroom to discover that my instructor has actually been adding comments to all my papers throughout the term, in additional text boxes in blue text down the right margin, but none of them have been showing up in my returned graded papers. So all this time I've been upset that she never comments, and she actually has been. But because she started all my papers with a note across the top, I didn't realize I was missing something. So we're going to find a way to get my comments to me, hopefully, and we'll hope that I wasn't supposed to be building on things she said. My grade seems to say that I'm doing fine, which is a relief. I just wish I hadn't felt so annoyed about her not doing her job as a prof, since apparently she was and it was the technology that failed me.

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Random thoughts...

Jungle Spook

• I've never understood having to memorize names of people. I talked to someone who took the teacher certification test recently and she said all you really need to know (here in SC) are the people, who defined what theory, and write a bunch of practical application essays. But seriously, how many classroom teachers are going to be in the middle of a situation in which she needs to implement a theory she learned, and finds it absolutely necessary to know whether it was Locke or Plato or Addams? Names of theorists matter squat in the classroom when you're in a position to care about educational theory in a hurry. If you don't know the techniques, you can't apply anything you've learned.
  

• It is December 28, and it's 72 degrees. I'm on the porch with my laptop, sitting on my chaise lounge with Spook, and my right arm is starting to sunburn. I really wish I could get used to this, but I just can't seem to manage yet.
  

• Fireplace logs, of the pressed rectangle clean-burning kind, are fun because they're fast and easy, but is still missing the same elements we find missing in a gas fire: no crackle, no chasing down the embers that spit out onto the carpet, no pile of writhing coals to watch, no wood smoke smell. However, it also doesn't have the release of molds and allergens into the house or the potential to burn down the house quite as easily. I'm trying to decide if it's an acceptable compromise in light of those things.

• I don't know if I ever mentioned, but the corn casserole worked great in the crock pot! I also had to make up my own green bean casserole recipe, since the can of mushroom soup was nasty. I think in the end it tasted great.

• I hate shoes. And jeans. Above all, I hate popular fashion. The one pair of shoes whose shape looked like they really might have worked, I didn't even try on since someone in production had decided that plastering them with plastic Miley Cyrus faces was a good idea.

• No news on the adoption front yet. Still haven't gotten a call for inspection scheduling. I emailed Bert yesterday and we'll see if she can't start making some waves.

• My brother came down with Mono and stayed in bed over Christmas. At the same time, Kaylee got some sort of fungal infection rash all over her body that he calls Jungle Rot, and so far the only thing that's helping her feel better is smearing her with athlete's foot cream. But at least they're both on the mend now.

• Lanse is wonderful. I had a rotten section of the day yesterday (note shoe comments), and he brought me food and built a fire for me and snuggled me and did all kinds of lovely things. I figured he was just concerned about my mood yesterday, but then he brought me coffee this morning. He's apparently just an all-around great guy.

• I had a dream in which we were exploring a house we bought and lived in but somehow hadn't looked at it all yet. That was one really rockin' house. I should try to draw it. I miss my architecture program; it got lost in the move and now the company doesn't make it anymore, and doesn't even make a program that runs the file type, so now I have a couple thousand floor plans I can never look at. *sniff*

• I have a paper and a discussion post to write today. I also have to have read the stuff about which I must discuss. Bah.

• Finally, for your viewing enjoyment, Colin plays with the jingle mouse toy. It's a fuzzy, now really-beat-up toy mouse around whose tail we've tied a blue jingle bell. They all love it in turns. This is a wmv file, I don't know what you need to make it work. It's maybe two minutes long, I'm not sure. I hope you can see it... the back flip at the beginning is rather impressive.
  

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Malfoy vs. the Doctor

As we skidded the blue van into the parking lot we could hear the screams announcing we'd arrived at the right place. We finalized our plan, jumped out of the van, and took off running. The Doctor and someone else went around the corner of the building and into the main University offices lobby. I was trying to keep up, but had this enormous fake book slung over my shoulder and it kept banging into my knees. By the time I rounded the corner for the stairs, they had vanished into the building (which, incidentally, was nice rich brownstone and brick, three-stories, entrance on the second, with crenelations and towers in the facade, but unfortunately no neat tower rooms. There's a floor plan at the end).

Since the book is vaguely important later on, here's what it looked like:



The idea had been that we'd get there before the bad guys, and I was supposed to be posing as a student. (The book was supposed to look like a textbook; it was part of the Sneaky Disguise). Obviously, we'd timed things wrong... so I skipped the fake student thing and went on with my mission! I had a mission... though I don't think it was ever clear what it was. I snuck up the stairs towards the front door and peeked in to see two small explosions go off in various parts of the lobby, and a blond scary guy with a gun standing near the door facing in, so he didn't see me.

All the bad guys were scary blond men along the lines of the kind of Russian spy type you might see on original Die Hard or other 80s explosion movies. This particular group was run by Mr. Draco Malfoy, as seen here: (Image taken from a google images search from someone's blog, but I do know it's an official photo from the new movie coming July, 09!)



Getting back to the plot, after watching the scary blond gunmen for a minute or two and taking general notice of the construction and layout of the room, I edged back to the corner of the stair and scanned the courtyard for any sign of the Doctor. While I had my book thing slung backwards, and my eyes facing forward, a kinda sleazy student thief-for-pay snuck up behind the stairwell, reached into the cover of my book, and stole my microchip! There was a break in the action as he got away, and I sat in the stairwell "guarding" and waiting.

After a bit I heard Malfoy's voice saying, "Ahhhh... the Doctor!" and somehow I knew that he'd gotten the microchip, and knew it was alien, and suddenly realized his doom was at hand! All the scary blond bad guys ran for the end of the courtyard, just as the Doctor came up behind me. I started in with, "I'm sorry, he got the chip, I couldn't stop him..." and there was a HUGE explosion at the end of the courtyard. Draco stopped and looked back, laughed an evil laugh, said something like "You've not seen the last of me!!" and vanished around the corner.

Then there was a break and some snogging. And then I woke up.

For a bit of a visual aid, I created the following Dream Event Map. Enjoy!

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Pierce Family Dream 2

Once again I dreamed of the Pierce family! Apparently I'm thinking about them a lot. Hallo, Pierce family! *wave*

This time I was visiting, and unfortunately I was not wearing much. Obviously, they disapproved. So Moira and I went to her room, where Christopher and Bennett were asleep on her bed, and we went through her clothes to find me a pair of shorts. She only had one, though, and it was pink and she was wearing them, so we found a gray skirt that she was willing to share with me. It had zippers on opposite sides and we figured out we could zip them together and make shorts out of them. They were comfy. Sometime in there my cousin Kelly (at the age of about 10) snuck in and sat and watched us for a bit and then left again.

Mo and I sat on the second floor landing and painted miniatures for a little bit; hers was fantastic and I was so proud! Then Heidi called her for something, and I wandered down into the family room, where there were tan couches filled with tired gamers drinking soda. They had apparently had some run-ins with the GMs upstairs and were pouting.

I went up to the game room to set up for my game. There was a large group of people at rectangular tables all set around in a cube. Apparently we were all playing the same board game, but it was like the traveling D&D stuff where you join a club and you can use your character in any event across the country (unless it's dead). Whatever we were playing now started with a B. I was late, and received the most horrid glare from the DM, who stopped and said, "Well? Are we waiting for you?" And I was "Um... no, go ahead, I'll catch up" and he got pissy and asked again, and I said "Yes, I'll play," but they weren't willing to let me set up. At that point I got upset that it was one of THOSE games, and then said, "NO, I'm not playing," and cleaned up my game. (There was a fun jungle map on my game board, and I had little pieces like from Sorry, except they looked cool.)

From there I stalked out into the lobby hallway area and found some teenager gamer chick taking the minis that Mo and I had painted from the landing shelf. I didn't care about mine, she could have it... but I was all, "Are you taking that small pink girl mini? A 5 year old little girl painted that, and this is her house... YOU want to deal with a screaming 5 year old little girl's mommy? HUH???" and she gave it back to me.

Everything faded out after a while, though this time I didn't wake up right away.

One of the fun things about my dreams is that I always know exactly how the environment is constructed, even if it doesn't make sense. I have a folder stuffed with floor plans of buildings that my dreams took place in. So here's last night's Pierce Family Home (and no, apparently they had no bathroom):

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Homebrew blitz week(end)

My father works for Habitat for Humanity. A couple times a year they have "Blitz Week" when they gather up as many volunteers as possible - church groups like to do this - and try to build xteen houses in one area in a week. It's insane!

Well, my parents will arrive this afternoon around 1:00, and we're having our very own crazy blitzy house-project weekend. We have two long lists of things to do... everything from pressure-washing the house, balancing the AC, and repairing torn porch screen, to gardening, rearranging furniture and hanging curtains. They'll be here until Monday morning, so hopefully we'll get a lot done.

They also are bringing their super deluxe carpet (and floor) scrubber machine. In preparation, we started moving furniture around to get the carpet clear. We decided since we had loads of dead space in the bedroom but didn't want to sacrifice having a master bath (turning the large room into a den), we're using the extra space for our library. I'm still torn as to whether I'll sleep worse this way because I'm surrounded by adventures I want to have, or whether I'll sleep a lot better in the security of being surrounded by friends. It took Lanse and me about two hours to move three 6 ft bookcases (and books) from the office to the bedroom, having moved furniture around to fit it and cleaned the hardwoods before moving them in. We have great plans for the rest of the room, but way too much junk that we feel we could feasibly do without, but may need in the future. Extra pieces of furniture we don't need now but will when we talk about furnishing a kid's room and haven't any extra money to start from scratch.

So we will make decisions today and go shopping and get to work and see what our home feels like by Monday afternoon. Hopefully much warmer and more cohesive.

I love looking at floor plans, so here's one I tossed together in Paint of our house. The weird cross-hatchy things are windows, the stairs go up to a loft, but I drew the garage that's on the ground floor under the loft. There's so much work I want to do on this in the future, like adding windows and possibly pushing out the two back bedrooms a couple of feet, but that's all really major in the cost department so probably won't happen. That's okay.

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