Yesterday I taught for half the day, and then had a check up in the afternoon. I hate having to be gone and leave plans for a sub. Really, it's almost more work than staying. Anyway, my check up was quick, so it bought me some thrifting time. My most exciting purchase was a pair of rollerskates that fit perfectly. I'm a kind of sucky rollerblader, but I absolutely LOVE rollerskating! I might even put some cute little pom poms on them to bring me luck. I also scored one of Jane Brody's cookbooks, which really looks like a good one. Maybe it's silly for me to keep picking up cookbooks, when I know that pretty much everything is available online. I just really like the idea of one great cookbook that I use for everything, full of my own little notes.

In other news, if my calendar is serving me right, we should all shout a happy birthday over to Ugly today!

1. Whew, conferences are over. Lots of intense parents this round. I think they wanted me to define their child for them so they could decide where to send them off to college.
2. In between the 30+ parents that I saw yesterday, I was felting little balls to string on a necklace. It's extremely easy. I just felt a little ridiculous when some showed up early because I had to shake their hands with wet felty fingers. Gross. Oh, the cats found my stash of little felty balls in the middle of the night. They're EVERYWHERE.
3. Juno is going to the vet today to get his shots. He must know it because he's been a little bitch all morning long. He likes to hide under the bed and dig his claws into my ankle as I walk by.
4. My grandma is still in town and she's going to show me how to crochet today. Yeah, I know... Teachers are already way overpaid and then they give us off a non-holiday on top of it all.
5. We're getting some Grumpy's tonight and then heading over to see The Hopefuls. I haven't seen them before, so I'm pretty excited to hear what all the fuss is about. The music starts after I'm normally in bed.
6. Zander seems to be getting sick and I've got a sore throat. Ick.
7. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

So we went to see Jethro Tull last night at the State. I got the tickets for Zander's birthday, and quite honestly, I can't say that I'd ever heard their music before. We met the lead singer and flute player after the show. He's not a hand shaker, so here he is, rubbing elbows with Zander. The show was absolutely wonderful. It was great on so many levels, but especially the addition of Lucia. She's this young, beautiful, violinist prodigy that played in a frilly pink dress and bare feet. I've never heard a violin played like that, and if I had, I'd of surely taken it up as a child. Wonderful. The only down side of the night was the prissy State Theater. People needed to rock and they tolerated very little of it before sending down security. The rockers won in the end, there were just too many people that were moved and finally the security people just scowled by the back door and let us be.

Since my sister works for Parasole, she got us into their new, and not yet opened, place over on 50th and France tonight. I'm pretty excited. I remember when we opened Chino and had our first pre-opening event. It was really exciting. I'm also excited because Anthropology isn't far from there and I LOVE that store. No, not to buy anything, I'm far too cheap. Instead, I love to browse and then RIP OFF their ideas.


And speaking of stealing ideas, I'm definitely going to steal Martha's idea on making felt balls. I think you can buy the wool at Micheal's (I've got some left over coupons, you know) and then I'd like to string them into bead necklaces. Maybe even some dangly earrings. How cute!

A Reason to Knit

I found this little Yoda and it's rekindled my hopes of someday learning how to knit. I want to make one for ME!

Getting to school by 7am and getting enough sleep to make somewhat rational decisions while I'm here is proving to be a challenge. So I've been coping by making very few plans after work during the week and then cramming in every ounce of fun on the weekend. Monday morning? Sucks. Must create new system. We definitely need more weekend chill time. Next weekend there's Jethro Tull and virtually nothing else. I'm going to sleep in late and then read in bed. Oh, and drink coffee.

I'm stuggling putting together a witty and meaningful entry today. So here's some randomness:

1. Does anyone have the new Fiona Apple CD? Is it good?
2. I've got to get new paint brushes for my art room and I'm just cruising through my budget, so I've collected Michael's coupons from my students. I know that it's one coupon per transaction/per day, but do you think they'll really mind if I go through the line 11 times?
3. This weekend, Zander bought speaker guts from AxMan for 12 bucks and fixed our broken ones. So much better than throwing them away and buying new ones like Best Buy suggested! Besides, I use them for plant stands too.
4. My grandma gave me a large collection of vintage matching earring and necklace sets last weekend. They're absolutely adorable (she wore most of them to go square dancing) and special because they're from her. The clip-ons only bug me once or twice and day, and at that point I feel like smacking things with a baseball bat. Luckily the feeling passes quickly.
5. The students are super wired today. The Sadie Hawkins dance is this Friday and I can almost smell all of the hormones in the air. I even saw two students dry humping on a locker before school this morning. Barf city.
6. I want to make baked acorn squash for dinner this week with a scoop of something good inside. Any ideas on what would be good inside AND if I'd cook them together or separate?
7. Snow already? Please no.
8. I'm looking for a huge mirror to hang on the wall in the basement. Yes, so that I'll be able to watch myself practice my bad-ass belly dance moves. Instead of just imagining how stupid I look.
9. I love Method cleaning supplies. I especially love the one that kind of smells like almonds and is for wood. Oh yeah, and the grapefruit kitchen cleaner... ahh, so nice.
10. I've got to hem two pairs of pants this week. I'm so crappy at it. I really wish I could find a good sewing class that would cover basic alterations.

Wow, it's 5pm and already almost dark out. Today started out just gorgeous. I went for a long, fast walk down by the river and actually got hot enough to take my jacket off. Most of the leaves are off of the trees and I'm just loving that leafy smell. I keep thinking that it'd be interesting to take one picture a day of some kind of urban beauty. Today it would have been the little boy sitting in the corner of his yard, on my way back home. From about 20 feet away he had this goofy look on his face and when I got up closer I saw that he'd been grinning at me the whole time. "What doin'?" "Goin' for a walk." "It fun?" "Yeah, it fun." After I'd walked about a block farther, I heard him yell, "BYE!" Hey, I have slow reactions too sometimes... alright, alright, maybe most of the time!

Tomorrow my entire family is coming over for an early dinner and we're making waffles. We might even make everyone wear a robe. After all that we've eaten this weekend, that might be all that fits anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm slacking on the posts these days! No lack of love here, just lots of random busy stuff. Here are my highlights...

On Halloween our first trick-or-treaters were all excited to get their candy until Boo jumped out the door and they screamed "BLACK CAT!" and ran away. It probably didn't help that I kept yelling "BOO, get back here". They just ran faster and faster.

For Zander's birthday on Tuesday, we headed over to Rice Paper again. It was good, but not as good as before and I wanted it to be great for a birthday night. The server sat down the check with our meal! That's fine when the bill is under twenty bucks, but I was pretty irritated because we'd had wine and entrees and appetizers, how about offer us some coffee??? I got us tickets to see Jethro Tull for Zander's present. He LOVES them and I don't think I've ever heard their music. I'm kinda excited to check them out.

I had one of these on Thursday. It kinda really hurt. Thus, I missed my beloved Crafter's Conspiracy AND and chance to craft in a crack-users home. SHIT BALLS. By the way, despite my previous suspicions, my test results looked good and I've not recently peed out an ovary or anything.

I got two lovely vintage dresses at Value Village. One is brown two-piece dress that I adore for its conservity. Anna, is that a word? I'll wear it to conferences. And then there's a knee length, empire waisted, hot pink polyester number that I love for promising me the hottest christmas ever. Hot pink is the new red... or so I'm telling myself.

Friday I got to skip school and attend the art educators of Minnesota conference. It was a nice change of pace and I scored some great samples. It was like trick-or-treating except that I got scissors, construction paper, and Sharpies instead of Twix. The best part of the day was having a glass of wine at Thistle's afterward and bonding with my co-worker. All summer long I thought we were going to hate each other and I absolutely LOVE her. She's funky and funny and thinks I'm funny and she's 56 and got carded at the bar. We giggled a lot. I thought we were going to get kicked out.

Dinner last night was the most delicious I've had in ages. We went over to Julie and Brian's downtown swanky condo and just chilled. We drank, we played a fun game that I've forgotten the name of, and just chatted away while it rained outside. They built a fire. It was wonderful.


Today we're going to the school play and then heading over to my Mom's to make some soup because my Grandma is coming to town this afternoon. She thinks that Minnesota is the coldest place on earth, which is her version of hell, so I'm just doing my part to warm her up. I'm just dumping things together, but something with chicken, spinach, and tortelini.

Have a good Sunday!

Party Guilt

What a weekend! About a gallon and a half of red wine and a pound of cheese later, here I am, just getting through Monday. Tomorrow is Zander's real birthday, so I'm trying to figure out a fun place to go to dinner. As many of you already know, we had people over to celebrate yesterday and Zander REALLY had a great time. I had a great time too, but I'm suffering from day-after guilt. I keep thinking that I didn't get to talk to everyone I wanted to enough AND that maybe people felt weird just pouring themselves a drink and I should have been more hostesserly. So, if I didn't sit down and chat or pour you a drink, please don't think I'm a jerk... Just a little ADD in a big group, and then sorry for it the next day.

FRD

What do these crazy characters have in common? Well, F, R and D! Frodo and Frida had a lovely time at Rob and Amy's reception. Lots of red wine, good pizzas, exceptional dancing, enticing conversations, and an all around fun time. Now, so sweepy. Must go to bed. Zander is putting the meat in the crockpot as I type. Tomorrow's gonna' be fun...

Wowza. It's been quite a day! First hour one of my students came up and said, "Look at my hand." I need to preface this. Usually this type of statement means that the above mentioned student has learned some kind of trick to make their hand LOOK mangled. Like putting a bunch of glue on their hand and then sticking a pin through the glue... Unfortunately that was not the deal this morning. It was a clay needle tool and it went all the way through the "webbing" between his thumb and index finger. It didn't bleed because there was too much flesh. He went into shock. He went to the ER where they made sure it didn't splinter a bone or hit an artery. This needed to happen before they could remove the needle. Oh, and had he taken it out in class, it would have sprayed us all. I'm not going to get into how or why it happened, but needless to say, I'm planning where I'd like to stop and get a bloodymary tonight. Whew.

Last night we made it over to see Minnesota Pro-Wrestling at First Ave. Usually we have to drive all the way out to Maple Grove, but now at long last, we have some true culture in our very own downtown. What a blast! The next show is on November 30th, at 8pm. Put it on your calendars people!

In other news, I need to put up a picture of my newly sewn kimono shirt. It's really pretty cute, but might teeter on the edge of looking a bit pajama-ish. I'll wear it to the next CC meeting and get some opinions. I've also been experimenting with the quilting foot on my new machine. I cut up an old flannel shirt and a pair of sweats and cut them up into skinny, long strips. So now I've been quilting the flannel and sweats into a long and skinny scarf, leaving the edges unfinished. Not exactly high fashion, but a good experiment for me.

Alright folks, I just found out that my insurance will give me $20 off at the YMCA if I go 8 times a month. I'm going there right now to check out their class schedule and see if there are a plethora of classes that will be uber convenient AND so interesting that I'll be eternally enticed into working out all the time.

I'm trying to cram lots of good stuff into my couple o' days off. This morning I had a leisurely coffee and egg, gave Boo and Juno some extra love, did a bit of reading, and then headed out to the new H&M. There was LOTS of interesting stuff there. I really held back so I'll be able to justifly making a return trip out some other time with girlfriends. I did "splurge" (come on, it was under $30) on a cute little sundress that I'll wear with a turtleneck and jeans. Sounds a bit awful, but really looks cute. I also got a cheap pair of dangly earrings to wear to a fancy wedding reception this weekend.

I also met my mom for lunch over on Como Ave. I love it down there right now. The leaves are beautiful, the air is crisp, and I used to wait tables at Muffuletta, so it's filled with some fond memories and funny stories. Next I headed down to the Boy Scout Garage sale in Roseville. Total Boringsville. Eagle scouts keep lots of crap that even I don't want. Next stop, JoAnn Fabric. While it's not my favorite fabric store, I do like their sale bins and 40% off patterns. I got something really simple that I'm hoping to embellish, but really who needs to embellish when you're working with a skunk/squirrel print with a polka dot contrast? I'm pre-washing the fabric as I type. Oh, and keeping an eye on Oprah and how irritating she is. Why isn't Ellen on at 4? She's got ALL the dance moves as far as I'm concerned.

It's my last day of school for the week and I'm just giddy happy. Happy to have a few extra days off, happy to have eaten a delicious dinner with good friends last night, happy to have hogged (held) just the cutest, fattest little 12 week girl for the whole dinner, happy to blow off a home improvement project tonight and go see the Wallace and Grommit movie with our very favorite five year old, and happy that Zander doesn't have any stupid conventions this weekend so we can play! Alright, sorry if that rant made you want to puke. Dinner last night was at Rice Paper. It's in the adorable Linden Hills and I guess that it's a fusion of Vietnamese and Thai food. The food was delicious. I had the lettuce cups filled with marinated chicken and toasted coconut. The wine was good and I especially liked that their wine glasses were the traditional shape, but stem-free. We were even lucky enough to be served by the lovely Reuben's cousin.

Our basement sanding project needs to wait a little bit longer than I'd planned. I'll explain why later. Maybe. Other than that, I'm planning on hitting a few thrift stores tomorrow morning and then settling in for some hard-core sewing in the afternoon!

Well, it's the Monday of a three day work week for me, and I must say that I'm pretty psyched for a four day weekend! I hope, hope, hope that the weather stays nice. Normally fall gives me this doom-like feeling that we're all going to be frozen solid on the side of the road waiting for AAA to come by and give us a jump. Strangely enough I don't really feel that way this year. I'm not sure if it's the weather, LOVE, or job happiness, or what... I'm going to ride this good fall feeling as long as I can. Oh yeah, school is great. No more bomb threats lately. The kids are great and I'm especially enjoying my art club. They're funny and smart and especially proud of themselves for thinking up things to shock me. I'm not as easily shocked as I used to be (after being married to Zander for four years), so I do my best to indulge them and ACT shocked. So yeah, I'm still enjoying working with these high school people, yes, even the somewhat LOUD Irondale lovies that read this blog regularly.

On Wednesday night Zander and I are planning on renting a sander to get all of the paint off of our basement floor. What kind of wine goes with home improvement? Maybe some Grateful Red? Anyway, the paint has been peeling like crazy and it's so disgusting to take a shower down there and then have to clean the paint chips off my feet before I can put my socks on. Paint chips stuck in the toe of my tights on regular basis is no way to live. I think it's going to be a really hard and dirty job getting underneath all of the stuff that's accumulated down there already, but hopefully well worth it.

In other news, I'm injured. Somehow (I don't remember falling or anything else that I'd associate with this kind of pain) I hurt my tailbone and now my whole body is paying the price. It sounds like an exaggeration, but seriously, tailbone stuff sucks. It hurts to sit almost as much as it does it stand up, and that hurts almost as much as it does to cough or sneeze. I've been trying to cure myself by doing some yoga stretching, but I'm almost to the point where I'm going to call the doctor. Poor me and poor Zander for having to hear about the status of my butt every time he turns around.

Woah There!

GOVERNOR ANNOUNCES MOUNDS VIEW IS APPROVED FOR Q COMP
Today was an exciting and historic day for Mounds View Public Schools. At a press conference held at Edgewood Middle School, Governor Tim Pawlenty officially announced that our district was approved to participate in the State's new Q Comp program.

Q Comp supports districts that establish alternative compensation plans for teachers. Mounds View's version of Q Comp is called Mounds View Teacher Professional Pay System (MVTPPS). To date, Mounds View is the largest suburban district and among only four districts in the state to be approved to participate in this innovative program.

As Governor Pawlenty said today, "Mounds View has a chance to be a very large leader," and clearly, this unique achievement demonstrates that our district has a progressive spirit. It also represents a shared commitment to doing what's best for students by aligning teacher compensation with teacher performance and student achievement goals.

Wow. This seems like good news, doesn't it? (Insert stressed out maniacal sarcasm here) I mean, don't get me wrong, I want to get paid for my outstanding work with student achievement. I work hard and I really like my job. I'm really quite good at it. But, in order to get paid, I will now have to give my art students tests that can ONLY be answered by marking letters A-E with a good old #2 pencil. Student achievement must now be measured by a very precise little machine that scores these little A-E beauties and then barfs out the data for us. Data is very important you know. Data is the wave of the future is what I'm told. OH, and will ONE of these tests per semester truly measure my job performance and my students abilities? Probably not. So, I'll just test some more and gather more data, and many of my students will shrivel up right before my very eyes. Then I'll truly deserve the pitiful check that I live month to month for. I CALL BULLSHIT. Thank you Mr. Pawlenty for allowing me, my art students, and my entire school district the unique opportunity to become your own unique opportunity to put something (data) in your file set aside for education. Why don't you pick on the elderly next time???

This is yummy ya'll!

Tomorrow I've got double duty in the potluck area. At school the art dept is in charge of this month's "Wednesday is Treat Day," and it's also the second Thursday of the month, so that means it's time for the Minnesota Mosaic Guild meeting. I usually just buy something for the guild, but since I'm already cookin', I thought I'd make a double batch.

Cheryl's Pumpkin Bars that She's Been Making for Thirty-Three Years

4 eggs
2 C sugar
1 C oil
2 1/2 C flour
1 can pumpkin guts
1 TBL cinnamon
2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt

bake at 350 in a cookie sheet, when it's cool frost it with...

The Best Frosting Ever that Cheryl has Been Frosting the Pumpkin Bars with for Thirty-Three Years

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3/4 stick of butter
1 tsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
4 oz cream cheese

Tonight Zander and I are baking Mom's pumpkin bars, listening to Death Cab for Cutie, and I even talked him into doing some T-shirt stenciling with me.

Mike Joyce is officially titled, "Da Bomb."

After a VERY productive day inside yesterday, I'm ready to get outside and enjoy this sunshine. How productive was yesterday, you ask? Well, my Mom and Mike came over and bailed me out BIG TIME. We had maintenance on our furnace last week, only to wake up yesterday to a brisk 58 degrees inside. After trying to get through to Centerpoint Energy for 30 minutes straight, I found out that we couldn't get a service call until Thursday! The woman on the other end eventually realized that was shite and pulled some strings to get someone out to us on Monday. Well Mike to the rescue! He fixed it by pulling a DEAD BIRD out of the blower and replacing the old one. How does a bird get inside the furnace? How did the maintenance guy miss the dead bird last week? Why do you have to read about it now? Anyway, 68 degrees feels perfectly balmy now. I appreciate his work so much, I mean, all I could do was hide in the stairway, afraid that something was going to blow up. (While I was watching in fear, I did plan out how I'd save everyone involved.) Oh, he also drilled a hole behind my beloved fridge and connected a pipe to our cold water pipe downstairs. This is a project that the Home Depot guy told me that I could totally do all by myself if I only bought a fridge from him. I believed him at the time. Luckily I didn't run with that belief. I've now learned that copper tubing is a sensitive little beyotch, and our hammer and phillips screwdriver set are no match for these kinds of projects. Thanks again to Mike, we've now hatched our first litter of adorable little ice cubes AND we can drink cold filtered water from the little thingy inside the door.

Today Zander and the boys are at the show, so I'm thinking that I'll stop in for a FEW minutes and see what's up. My motivation for going to the show isn't really based on my souls love for comics, but to see the BTA guys all dressed up in their work outfits/costumes/uniforms. Or whatever you want to call them. They're jumpsuits with a shirt and tie. They look cute. I want Zander to wear his to parties or at least around the house, but he's still refusing at this point.



I love looking for cutsie t-shirts at these comic conventions, but mercy me, we made some pretty cute ones ourselves at the last CC meeting.

Oh and really, the night is not over until the three grouchy owls fly in and break up the party.

Zander's Mom, Betsy, just sent me the new magazine called Cloth, Paper, Scissors. It's so awesome. This issue shows how to transfer photo images onto metal (even from the inside of a pop can), and I'm completely psyched to try it out. I'm kind of on project-wanna-do-overload. Especially because I re-discovered the Public Library recently. Browsing through the stacks of sewing books just gets me excited to make, make, make. I totally want to make these culots (can I make them even if I can't spell them?) from a pattern that Messica is letting me borrow. I'm working on a pottie humored mosaic entrance to our bathroom. It's all pieced, but needs to get glued and grouted. I also have about 3 other mosaic things that need to get grouted. And hello, Christmas is coming and I want to make people stuff. Like maybe a quilt sewn together from felted sweaters, or a dirty cross-stitch...

I'm a bit obsessed this week about if our Gnome has had her own little Gnome yet. I'm checking my email about every forty seconds!

Water in our basement again this morning! Rain, rain go AWAY! Poor Zander got stuck hearing me bitching about it AND having to clean it up. Henceforth, he's way into our wet/dry shop vac right now! I called the CEE about it and they suggested an energy evaluation. They're coming in with lazers and fake smoke on the 21st to check where our warm air escapes to and where the nasty rain water comes in. The audit takes three hours and then they need another hour to discuss the results and prioritize what needs to be done. While the possibilty of hearing that our house is broken and can't be fixed and we got hosed on buying it in the first place doesn't really thrill me, I am proud of myself for taking care of business instead of just trying to forget about it, which is what I normally do. Wow, run-on-sentence-o-rama.

Zander and the guys at BTA seem to be loving their new studio. Since my house is full and I love shopping the thrifty way, I'm on the lookout for cute chairs or couches for their place. I'm back on Craigslist with a vengence now. If you run across something cool at a sale, give them (or me) a call!

I'll spare you the details, but this weekend has put me into a bit of a funk. But luckily, how can I look at these faces and not feel all squishy and happy and... better?



This is Juno our new cat. Some friends gave him to us and I'm still thinking of how to really thank them. He's cute and sweet and still pretty scared of us. He mostly likes hanging out in the basement where he can hide. But when he's brave enough to snuggle, he's a purr machine, especially when you scratch right behind his ears. Oh, and he LOVES Boo. Boo is used to ALL the attention, so naturally when I'm dancing in the livingroom with Juno, he gets a little bit jealous. But mostly the two of them chase each other around, bite each other, and then have a lick fest. I'm starting to think that they're gay for each other.



Despite the funk, I'm disturbingly thrilled about getting a new fridge. I'm thrifty. I buy used. I shop alley ways. I could buy a couple more trucks for Zander if I hadn't bought this little Maytag, but gosh darn it, it's so nice. It fits right in its spot instead of sticking out a foot too far, which in turn allows us to open the basement door all of the way. Until now, the basement door has NEVER opened all the way. It also has a freezer on the bottom, which I think is pretty nifty. It's also pretty. I didn't really want to put food inside, because I know my jelly jar is sticky and I just hated to mess it up.

Two Things

1. Bomb threat at school yesterday. At 10:30 we went into lockdown. Locked our classroom doors, turned off the lights, and hid in a corner. Waited for the OK, and then "hustled" 1,600+ students out of the building and onto busses. Busses that took us to a safe parking lot where we all sat for 2 hours until the police dogs were sure that it was a false alarm. Best quote of the day, "I bet a f---ing freshman did this."

2. Just as I was about to take a shower, 10 minutes ago, a woman started knocking on our back door. Before I asked her (through the closed door) what she wanted, I saw that she was counting out a huge wad of cash. Hey, usually people at the door are asking us for money! I'm not sure what it was about me, but she immediately knew that I wasn't the chick she was supposed to give her money to. I asked her if she was lost, and she just needed our same address, but on Lyndale. Maybe I should go introduce myself and find out if they sell Tupperware, or something.

PS: Last night was wonderfully spent, huddled up with friends sitting around our fire pit drinking wine. I feel cozy today just thinking about it.

PPS: Way to go Ugly!