LaurenandLloyd.com

where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

Lloyd

Pre-Pay? No-Way!

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I'm gonna miss you guys
Well, the gas station that I’ve been going to ever since they opened switched to “Pre-pay only” yesterday. I really liked this gas station. They had a nice car wash. The restrooms were always clean (actually the men’s was always clean; I don’t know about the ladies’). Their prices were always competitive. And most importantly, they didn’t charge more for an ICEE™ than for a normal fountain drink.

But I don’t like the pre-pay idea. If they don’t trust me, then I’m not trusting them either. But I don’t know where I’m going to go to get gas.

I’m not a Nicolas Cage fan.

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Tonight was the February Bad Movie Night. We had a new addition tonight. It was Curt Niermann’s first bad movie night (Jenny Niermann’s younger brother for those of you wno know Jenny). So there were 4 of us in total, and that’s a good number, because then we fit comfortably in a booth at our usual restaurant, which we didn’t go to.

I always hear Johhny Cash singing this

The movie was pretty bad. The acting was reasonable, but the writing wasn’t. I don’t know if it was true to it’s comic book origin. I was never a Ghost Rider fan. My impression was that people who read it were pretty hard core. The fight scenes were boring, but the flaming chain was neat. Yes, a bad movie, however, during the final credits there’s a cool cover of the song (Ghost) Riders in the Sky by Spiderbait, which we also covered at Lauren’s last Ukulele Night. I couldn’t find the song anywhere; it’s not on the soundtrack. If anyone digs it up, let me know.

After the movie we went to Lone Star and everyone had a steak. Even Samith. Then we threw back a couple of shots of whisky and shot up the joint. We barely made it out before the cops arrived.

By the way, I’m not a Nicolas Cage fan. I think the only movie of his that I like is Raising Arizona.

Breakfast of Champions

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Here’s what I’ve been eating for breakfast every school-day for the past 2 weeks. I was digging around in the cabinets one day, trying to imagine how I would rearrange them, when I found some jerky. Not being the sort of person who would pass up some jerky, I tried a piece. It was as hard and dry as… um… well… as jerky that has been left in a cabinet for about a month. It seems that Brad left it there over Christmas (yes, this seemed unlikely to me as well, but Lauren insisted).

By itself, jerky might not seem like an ideal way to start the day, but wash it down with a pear and you’ve got the perfect morning meal. But make sure you get the order correct. It’s jerky then pear. The other way around is too thirsty.

Can't sleep... Clowns will eat me...

Gooda wark Danialsan

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We have three “Access periods” each week, because good middle schools have things like that. It’s in all the literature. Our access groups are students selected at random from 6th-8th grade. Once you have someone in your access group they stay with you until they enter high school. We don’t know what happens to them after that. So we’re pretty much stuck with the kids that we get unless you can convince another teacher to trade with you.

I have the best access group. It was a little experiment in self-fulfilling prophesy. When we first started doing these groups I told mine that they were the best access group. We fed off the fact that we happened to win the first inter-access group contest, and now they are the easiest group of middle students to work with ever. The 8th graders make the 7th graders tow the line and 6th graders are all terrified of me.

Wax on... Wax off...

This week we’re talking about bullying, and to introduce it we showed The Karate Kid to the rugrats*. It works well for an introduction, and when we first did this 2 years ago I made up a Karate Kid “talking points” cheat sheet for our teachers to use to lead the discussions. It’s an interesting movie to use, because it’s got the swears, drinking, smoking, fighting and racism in it, but it’s incorporated in a way that makes it easy to turn each one of those into a useful discussion. I think next time we show it I’ll include all of the swears in my introduction so the students aren’t shocked when they hear them in the movie.

We tried something new this time. We took a long sheet of paper from the art teacher and combined the two 12×12 screens into one huge 12×24 screen and showed it in letterbox. It worked surprisingly well.

*I said “rugrats” because I knew Annette would jump all over me in the comments if I said “kids”.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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Wintercoat (75% off at Eddie Bower 8 years ago) $100
Gloves (full price 6 years ago in Alaska: both “Duwable aynd wahm”) $120
Packer’s Touk (my mom bought this at least 23 years ago) $1
Pushing shovel (stupid plastic shovel, I hate it.) $20
Lifting shovel (Eragonomic handle worthy of its own post) $40
Boots (Teaching boots become weekend books after 2 years) $120
Getting everyone to hum It’s Beginning to look a lot like Christmas Priceless

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow
I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas
Dashing through the Snow, In a One Horse Open Sleigh
Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful
Just hear those Sleigh Bells Jinglin', Ring-ting-tinglin' too...

Worst day ever.

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Things actually went fairly well as far as putting computer stuff together, but apart from that it was the worst day ever (again). First Lauren hurt her back. She was lying under a table screwing around screw into the table to hold up a piece of vinyl siding to hold all the computer cables, when all of a sudden her back locked up. We thought I was going to have to pull her out from under the table by her feet, but she eventually crawled out. It didn’t really get better, but it was bearable.

Then that cute little camera that she got for Christmas just stopped working. It was in the middle of one of Lauren’s frequent photo sessions. Instead of the lens popping out it beeped and said “e18”. There was some misunderstanding here as well as to the nature of the problem that made Lauren think I wasn’t listening to her, when I really just didn’t understand her. I thought I was doing what she wanted, but I wasn’t. This is not the first time that this has happened.

Those are sharp stabbing pains shooting out from Lauren's back. Not majesty.

Lauren looked around on the Internet, and “e18” is fairly common. I’m off school tomorrow, which means that I’ll go in anyway and do some of the computer stuff that I can’t do when there are students and teachers all over the place, and I’ll try to return it to Circuit City. Lauren isn’t happy.

Then, to add insult to injury, while Lauren was soaking the the tub, trying to find some relief for her aching back, she asked me if I would write a post about her worst day ever. I said I would, but ,when she got down here, I was reading a book instead. Needless to say, I got that look that said, “I hurt my back slaving away helping you all day –on the weekend, I might add– and, when I ask you to do one little thing for me, you just blow it off and read your stupid book.” I’d seen that look before, so I knew that I was in trouble. So, I’m going to have to cut this post short, as I’ve got some serious sucking up to do.

At least we weren’t trapped in Lincoln.