Important News!

Nylons are turning 70! Nobody cares about that though. My girlfriend and her dance company were filmed for an American Apparel commercial! Allow it to burn into your eyeballs here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s3hznuMsvE

Guess which fine lady I get to take home every night? That's right, all of 'em. Giggity giggity! Ha ha, no, I'm just being funny! The answer is Tiffany.

Get Away, Gonna Detonate

I am just about to explode! I feel like going on a five day bender. I've just got so much work piling on! It's the last quarter I have as an undergraduate, and in order to earn my teaching credential I have to, in addition to passing a bunch of asinine classes, put together a "PACT" - Performance Assessment of California Teachers. It consists of 32 double-spaced pages of "reflection" and "context" spread over 4 assignments, a full lesson plan for an entire unit (mine is 9 days = 9 complete lesson plan write-ups), a 20 minute video of you teaching one of those lessons, and a "daily journal" for each one of those days in the unit. It's due Feb. 27th. I've done 6 pages of write up, completed my lesson plans (mostly). And, um... that's it. On top of that I've got a midterm due Wednesday that I haven't started. Also, I work full time, which doesn't include the unknowable amount of time outside of "the office" I have to put in. Sometimes I wish for a job that begins at 9 and ends at 5 and once I'm out I'm DONE for the day! But being a teacher, it's your life! For example, right now I'm slogging my way through grading, easily one of the biggest time-consuming activities aside from planning ahead. Which I suck at. Let's see, I also just moved into a new apartment (which is super nice though, so that helps), AND I've had the goddamn flu since Friday! Christ! So I spent my 3 day weekend hacking up pieces of my throat and/or lungs while trying to find the energy to focus on accomplishing at least one of the above tasks! I'm finally rebounding a bit - although my chest and back muscles are sore from coughing so much yesterday.

What sucks is that I always get like this right before the "end" of some big task in my life. I know that if I gut it out for the next 16 days I'll be able to knock this thing out and get high marks on everything, but being so close to what I've been working towards for more than a year, and gone through so much crap, all I can think about is slamming whiskeys and beer and singing shantys. Shanties? Jaunty tunes!! BUT assuming I make it and don't crack, in mid-March I will be a California Certified Teacher (for what that's worth)!!

Tiffany and I did venture out to THE HIGH DESERT (think the set of Mad Max or that desert planet Mark Hamil grew up on. Hey, the spell checker didn't pick up "Hamil". Nerds.) to see about a Manx friend for our current pet, a toaster with legs. Saturday morning should find us with dos gatos! Now I won't feel so bad about having to leave the cat alone for 17 hours a day because I'm out gnawing through my fingers during a three hour class about NOTHING AT ALL THANKS GOD I'M THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN DEBT NOW.

Christ, I need a drink. Road trip!