That dratted Sharpie liquid pencil is mocking and taunting me!

note: Sharpie pencil has terrible reviews on Amazon (where I get all my reviews)  Maybe it's better that we have not found each other.

Alas

I got my teacher evaluations for the Summer.  Generally they are good, of course there are always a few students who could apparently live without me.  I get the feeling they won't be so good for the Fall semester on account of the class I'm teaching is  . . . well . . . sort of boring . . . sometimes.  There's a lot of repetition, and for those of us with the minute attention spans- I can see why they are frustrated with the program.

My favorite comment in Summer evaluations: 
Q:  Did the instructor teach the class in a way that helped you learn?  Please explain. 
A:  Yes.  She did.  She explained the grammar that we didn't pay attention to.

Thank you very much.

Today at the grocery store a guy totally "How YOU doin'"-ed me.  My first thought was "I've been Joey Tribbiani-ed!"  But of course it wasn't a goofy Italian American New Yorker, it was a very large African American Fort Wother- Worthian- Worthite?  Don't know.  Whatever- as always, the brown men love me.  Thank you for your support brown men.

I made oven pancakes today for breakfast.  They looked like slightly over done giant brains, but they tasted pretty good with blueberry syrup.  I got the recipe from a stack of cards and papers I've been moving about with me for who knows how long.  I think I got this card when I bought a whole box of 70s era recipes from Salvation Army.  This one is dated 1975, and is from a collection called "Mainstays Without Meat."

I wanted waffles tonight, but it seems the waffle maker has gone the way of the DVD player and the microwave- so long waffles!  I'll miss you!

Ronald and Nancy Reagan looking too cute with their babies.  Isn't he just so Hollywood? Isn't she TV-land domestic? EEEK!  I love it!
Here's why I notice:
1.  The internet is amazing-obviously
2. I have a follower- I don't know who you are follower (Not Jayme, I know you) this follower is also a follower of another blog- I looked at the other blog which is written by a history professor- who had a post about ugly presidents- he/she said Martin Van Buren was the ugliest present and LBJ was number 2.  I agree about Van Buren- but I'm not convinced about LBJ- so I went looking for ugly on Google.  Instead I found super cute!

Currently reading Julie and Julia which was recently a movie.  She's a salty gal.  Sometimes I read these books and wonder what it is that makes publishers and people think that this piece of writing is something special that will sell.  I don't think this because it is bad or poorly written, but it is basically just a memoir of a Joe-Blow-Nobody.  So this woman decides to cook Julia Child's French recipes all year, and keep a blog about it.  Eh. 

It makes me think that if I decided to do something all year I could write a book about it.  The problems being of course that with my gnat like attention span I don't know of anything that I can commit to for a year and me thinking the whole time, even if I did convince myself to do such a thing, "who cares?!"

Then how much money does one really make on such a venture?  What expectations result from success?  Would they want more?  If I were to write a book, I'm pretty sure there's only one in there.

I've read books about people who read the encyclopedia all year, who lived by all the biblical rules for a year, cooking for a year- auto biographies about childhood, dog ownership, travel adventures etc.  I have a friend keeping a blog about losing half her body weight.  That's determination. First deciding to do such a thing, then keeping up with it by writing about it each day. 

Do I have it? Would anyone (including me) care if I did?  I took a long-long-long test in exchange for writing a Master's dissertation.  What could I do so that I'd have enough material to write a book about it?  I heard a guy talking about taking a job in Antarctica so that when he was done he'd have a bunch of money (since he couldn't spend it in Antarctica.)and he could travel up through South and Central America and then illegally cross into the US, just to see how it felt.  Me: Antarctica?  No- the plan is over.  That's too cold.

Any suggestions- send them my way.

I have a computer in every room. That would be embarrassing if they all worked. The one in my bedroom won’t connect to the internet. The one in the office connects but very slowly. It is also a dinosaur in computer years. The one in the living room is a laptop but I can’t move it around because it has no battery life and the charger doesn’t connect to the computer right, so sometimes it just shuts down when you least expect it. I only use it to watch TV and movie downloads because 1. My TV gets 3 stations, one public television station and two Mexican stations. (Odd since I live about 3 blocks from the CBS tower.) I don’t know if it’s the antenna or the digital converter box that has the problem. I don’t want to buy a new converter box, but I don’t want to buy a new TV if I’m only going to get 3 stations. 2. My DVD player is broken, there is sound, but no picture.

The computer in the dining room is pretty good though.

I plan to get some really long wires to run from the living room into the bedroom and the office so I can have internet everywhere. Yes, technically I have wireless, but obviously it’s not that great if it can’t reach from the living room (which is the only room it will connect in) to the bedroom, just down the hall.

I made some whole wheat bread today. Just another spike in the coffin of the corn industry- ha! I didn’t use any high fructose corn syrup! Like I care.

I think I'm going to knit some corn on the cob, give it a tiny turban, a white 'corn silk' beard, and a itty-bitty bomb belt. I shall call it Al Maiza. It will be a cob bomber.

My microwave died this weekend. What’s up with the dead devices? I actually had to heat my lunch up on the stove! Uhgh! It reminded me of when I was a kid. Being the late bloomers that we were, (I still am) we didn’t have a microwave or a VCR until I was in high school. Awkward. I didn’t have a CD player or a personal computer until after college. I didn’t get my driver’s license or my first car until I was 23. Foolishly I got my license, bought a car and drove across the country in the same month.

Now I don’t have a CD player, a DVD player, or a microwave, but I do have a VCR (that I bought in 1999) and an analogue TV (that I bought in 2004,) four computers and a hybrid car (with which I could drive across the county for $100.) Things have changed some, not much. Guess I should save up the money I’m saving in gas and buy a new microwave and DVD player- and maybe a TV . . .

Student writing: "On the one hand, I was so happy and I wanted to be in convulsions." This student is so descriptive- I love her writing.

I’ve been having trouble getting to sleep the last few nights.  That’s unusual for me, sleep is normally one of the things I rather enjoy.  I would like to say that I was good at it, but the truth is that I’m a terribly light sleeper.  I wake up at sounds, lights, movement.  I wake up for no apparent reason many times a night, to roll over or shift positions.  Generally though, as long as there’s nothing bothering me (externally, like someone snoring, or a bright light, etc) I go right back to sleep.  Same thing at bed time, while I’m not the best sleeper, I generally go to sleep easily enough (given the right circumstances.) 

Ok, it turns out that I’m pretty picky about how, when and where I sleep.  Dang it!

My toilet is burbling.

I’ve started reading a book called New Age Bible Versions:  An Exhaustive Documentation Exposing the Message, Men and Manuscripts Move Mankind to the Antichrist’s One World Religion.  Now, that is a mouthful!  I bought this book at a thrift store several years ago.  It’s basically a “Kings James Only” manifesto.   I got it because I was genuinely interested in why some people insist on KJV only.  Yeah, it does sound cool, but I really enjoy many of the other versions.  I have  a vague idea of how translators and editors come up with different versions, why they have different phrases and grammar structures, why different vocabulary is used when they are all to mean the same thing. 

I wonder what other language has such a lot of Biblical translation versions as English.

I looked up the Amazon reviews on this book before I started reading.  I’ve gotten into the habit of seeing what other people think about a book.  I don’t read many of the reviews, I just look at the numbers.  How many people have reviewed this book?  What are the percentages with 4-5 stars and the percentages with 3 and with 1-2 stars.  This current book, has over 100 reviews split almost perfectly down the middle with 5 stars and 1 stars and just a very few 2-4s.  I read two 1 star reviews.  Those folks sounded pretty informed and said, while it was researched and documented, it seemed more like the author was a conspiracy theorist and if she knew more about  Biblical languages she would be in a much better position to analyze the original material herself and come to more informed conclusions.

I wish I knew more about Biblical languages.  Forgetting sucks, I studied Biblical Greek once . . .

I started reading this book and by the time I got to page 22 I wrote the number 27 at the top of the page.  That is 27 mistakes; grammatical, logical, untruths- not to mention the lies of omition and decontextualization. It was just silly.  I’m not a scholar- but even I could pick out that silliness. I put it down for the night.  I decided to sleep on it to decide if it was worth my time to read it.  (For some reason once a book comes into my possession, I feel obligated to read it.)

This evening I decided to go for chapter two after all.  I’d been writing comments and marking the text with a purple colored pencil as I read last night, I decided I sort of enjoyed arguing with this book.  I haven’t had a good argument with a book in a long time.  It is  introducing many interesting things I didn’t know about as well.  It mentions the names of the manuscripts, church fathers, cult leaders,  Bible version editors, and it does have some very interesting ideas about the coming of the antichrist.  

I've read several interesting book this year- if only the Zombies weren't currently monopolizing my time, I'd have more to say about all those books.