a busy holiday, but not like you might expect...

thanksgiving is now behind us. wow, what a crazy holiday that was! i didnt do anything even remotely close to a traditional thanksgiving. my family actually came down here this year. my brother-in-law found a great piece of carpet, so they decided to come down and lay it in my living room. score. my carpet was pathetic to say the least. i figured if im emptying to room, i might as well repaint while im at it. so i did. the walls are a kind of brown/khaki/pumpkin color. sounds strange, but it looks cool! the trim is all white, and the carpet is a short white-ish color. i even found a new couch that fits so i could pitch out my nasty smelly old couch. it all matches quite well, and looks amazing! ill try and get a picture and put it on the PIWaS image gallery soon.
i had a very unthanksgivingy thanksgiving dinner. i ate frozen pizza and gatorade. fruit punch, in case you were wondering...

a tough deadline

im not really a fan of painting walls. i have to do it alot. each year i loose a renter i have to totally repaint the other apartment. ive also been slowly repainting each room of my place. i started with the bathroom (the smallest, so i figured id start easy) and it went well, but i forgot to paint the ceiling, so i have to do it over again sometime (which is ok, because the color i picked really sucks) then i repainted the kitchen. i went for a grayish purple, which i still like, and it looks good.
this weekend my brother-in-law is coming over to replace the carpet (thats what he does for a living, and he found a big piece of carpet for me for totally cheap) and for some reason i said i would repaint the walls in the living room before they come on thursday. that was stupid.
ive cleared out the room of all my junk (a huge job in itself...) and tonight i have to paint the ceiling and trim. yikes, its going to be a long night. im hoping that i will be able to get two layers of paint on the walls tomorrow and it will be dry by the time the family comes. we will see...

if i won the lotto...

last night i was talking to a friend of mine and we decided that i need to win the lotto. i decided that if i won i would spend the money on making a movie. it would be a movie about my life. it would be kind of boring, you know, right up until the point where i win the lotto. i would want part of the movie to be about us making the movie. try and get all that cool postmodern hyper real stuff. the movie would be about making the movie while we try and make a movie about making the movie. i would totally need Charlie Kaufman to write the script because hes really good at that post-postmodern stuff like adaptation and eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
in order to keep up that 'artistic film' feel i would want it to be in a foreign language. id really like to have lots of kung fu in the film so i think it would be best to have the film spoken in mandarin chinese.
my friend suggested that brad pitt play me, she said i totally look like him. i guess i agree, but i have larger wrists, so he would need to wear prosthetic forearms. but other than that, it would probably a perfect fit.
i would want to get leonard nemoy involved too. not for the star trek stuff, more for his great narrations in that nova show on pbs. id want him to narrate. but then james earl jones would start to narrate, and the two of them would start to fight and there would be a narration battle between the two of them.
i havent quite figured out how it would end, but im fairly sure i would end up getting the girl.

technical difficulties

its going to be a little while before i can update this regularly again. my computer is totally on the fritz. it hasnt been working reliably all week, and i dont expect it to get fixed until the weekend. oh well, im sure you can busy yourself with the archives. dont forget to check out the PIWaS movie and critique sites listed over there --->

a friendly reminder

i had forgotten. it took last night to remind me how fun it is to meet new people. i have always known, heck, ive moved around so much that meeting new people used to be a full time hobby! but its been a while. ive been comfortable with where i am and who i hang out with. last night i got the chance to meet a few new people.
it was cool to be able to start fresh again with people, i dont mean reinventing myself or anything, but its kind of fun being able to share your story again in a new way and include all the parts that are important now and skip over the things that are no longer important. also, it can provide new opportunities to make connections and learn about new things that others are interested in. and its always fun to hear different perpectives on topics from new people.

good days

today was a nice day at school. last year we, the teachers, decided that we should celebrate thanksgiving together. this is fairly difficult because we have to stay in our rooms during lunch and watch the kids. so, we actually plan an hour lunch for ourselves (score!) and have moms come in and watch the kids during this time. so today we got a great big old thanksgiving dinner with the turkey, the stuffing, everything! plus we got an hour long break from the kids. it doesnt get much better than that, now does it?
also, the high school only had a half day today because of parent/teacher conferences, so a bunch of 8th graders from last year came by to visit. it was really fun to see them again. i really enjoyed the class last year, they had a whole lot of personality (in a good way.)
and tonight i am going out to chilis for some fun with friends.
all in all, a pretty good day.

to be inspired

i think one of the most important things that can happen to you during the course of a day or week is to be inspired. it doesnt have to be some sort of earth shattering ground breaking "eureka!" sort of moment, but just a small moment in the day where you are inspired. it can be something as simple as working on a tough problem and finding a solution, or it can be as big as a life changed.
its so easy to fall into the habit of the ordinary, the mundane. but ive started to realize that is exactly what it is: a trap to fall into. we dont have to be bored by the repetition, we can see it as a challenge to find that spark of inspiration. i dont always know where to find it, and to be honest, i dont find it everyday. but the days that i do find it are the ones that i remember for a while.

ninjas vs. pirates

this is an age old question. which is cooler: ninjas or pirates? recently there has been a strong upturn in people who would claim that pirates are cooler, but i think this may just reflect the current rise in popularity due to the film pirates of the caribbean. in my opinion the obvious choice is ninjas.
sure, the life of a pirate has some great elements: a life of no responsibility, the promise of adventure, cool pets like talking birds and monkeys, tons of treasure hunting and the like, and an excuse to say "arrrrr" anytime you want. but the downside vastly outweights these positives: most pirates have a limb or two missing, they are often betrayed by their best friends, can get really sea sick, and dont even get me started on the scurvy...
ninjas on the other hand have a lot going for them as well, such as: cool costumes, tons of weapons like throwing stars and katana blades, the ability to lurk around in the shadows unseen, and a strong sense of honor among peers. even with all that great suff, there is still a downside: that whole honor thing also means you might be killed by the brother of someone you kill (or vice versa), and it is a fairly solitary life.
but i think all in all, the life of a ninja is totally cooler.

field trip

today we went on a trip to the local high school to see the students put on a play. the one this year was a midsummer night's dream. ive seen the play before and seen the movie, but i had forgotten a lot of it. what was the best part was the creativity of the director. they took this shakespear play about the craziness of love and wanted to show how being crazy in love is universal and is just as true today as it was when he wrote it. so, the cool twist was this: it was set in the 80's. sounds strange, but it was done quite well. the main characters were more the yuppie/preppie types, and the faries and puck were portrayed as punk rockers. really fun! it was also cool becouse a few of the actors are students that i taught last year. it was fun to get to see them again and to see them finding a place in high school. and i got a two hour break from the kids- score!

random entry

i have a really sensitive gag reflex. i almost up chucked this morning just from brushing my teeth.

i really enjoy the number 5.

i set my alarm clock 16 minutes fast to trick myself into getting up earlier. sometimes it works.

i dont like tomatoes, but i love ketchup.

my favorite nintendo nes game is super off road.

i really dont like mowing the lawn.

ive been to florida a couple times and california a couple times, but ive never set foot in the ocean.

im a pack rat.

all these years later, i still find myself amazed and mezmorized by my birthmark.

i have red facial hair.

sometimes i pretend to, but i dont actually like coffee.

i got an F in seventh grade spelling, but in eighth grade i was one of the final five in our school's spelling bee.

halloween

is it just me, or did halloween stink this year? the weather was kind of crappy around here, but that shouldnt be much of a surprise. it seems like every year it rains on halloween. every memory i have of going out and trick or treating includes a rainy night. maybe its just God's way of saying "quit it." but last night i was prepared for the kids to stop by. ive only had a real front door for the past couple years of my life, so still fun for me to have kids come for candy. i had my light on, my bowl of candy, and my happy face on. but alas, no kids. over the course of about 3 hours i only had about 12 kids come up. well, actually two groups of five, and one group of two. sad. is this normal? i dont remember it being this poorly attended last year. are the kids just too 'cool' now for it or something? its fairly disappointing to see.
i have a lot of really great memories growing up of my friends and i spending the week before talking about what we should wear and how much fun we were going to have. then the night of halloween actually going to the corner drug store and getting the costume because what we had spend so much time making turned out so bad. then, grab the pillow case of the bed, and off we went in search of sugery loot! the night was always a success, no matter who's house we started from because it was that one night a year when we were allowed to be a bit crazy and out-of-sorts. checking out the crazy decorations. always falling for the 'dummy' in the lawn chair that was actually a guy- boo! thinking up great ways we could scare the smaller kids. promising how this year we would go and t p someones house, but never actually doing it. never believing that the big kids would actually come and steal our candy, but keeping a watchful eye, just in case...
dang, halloween was fun!