Move Baby Move

I love McSweeney's.

So Long Dearie

I am all cleaned out (with only a slight finger injury) and gone! So long, Utah!



P.S. More to come soon, I promise.

Pick-a-Little/Talk-a-Little

For someone who's on summer vacation, I've been a bad blogger. Sorry. This week was ripe with blog fodder, but part of the potential entries involved my multiple freak-outs about moving. And those freak-outs are not the least bit conducive to sitting in front of my laptop and verbalizing my thoughts.

So, to catch you up, here's what's been going on in my world:

Today
I spent the morning on the phone, trying to fix the issues I'm having with my moving company. I don't like movers.

The day perked up when I headed to the opening session of the downtown farmer's market. It was hot and crowded and very lively. I hung out with Janelle and Dallas and Janelle's family, got my first sunburn of the season, and didn't buy a single thing.

Next came errands, mostly setting up a new bank account (my current one is local and from my college days, so it's about time I got one with a national company). In the process, I found out that I have a savings account I didn't know about. From 1991. With over $2000 in it. I wonder how much of that is interest from the past 17 years. It kind of reminded me of that episode of Futurama where Fry discovers what 1000 years of interest did to his old bank account. I think I'll put it towards my move. Imagine that.

After errands and more time on the phone with the movers, I realized that I hadn't eaten yet today, so I picked up what I affectionately and nostalgically call a European meal - some good crusty bread, a yogurt, and a pear. Yum!

Then, off to get my hair cut. I told April she had free reign with my hair - she's really good at figuring out people's personal styles as well as hair. I trust her, and I wanted something different. She gave me this cute asymmetrical disconnected cut that I really like.

And as I type this, I realize that as a good blogger, I should probably post a photo. So here I am in all of my Photo Booth glory:
(By the way, you see that tower of boxes behind me? Yeah, those are all filled with books. And that would be Tower #1 of 4. Seriously, I have a LOT of books.)

The day wrapped up with a visit with my brother at Liberty Heights, take-out from Rumbi's, and an evening getting ready for my trip to Grand Junction tomorrow.

Friday
Janelle, Christine and I ran away to Bear Lake for a day. We were going to do a slumber-party-type-of-trip, but Janelle's husband had some issues with the idea of Janelle and the kids being away overnight, so we settled for a day trip. 2 hours up, mostly spent listening to the Broadway channel on Christine's satellite radio, then lunch at LaBeau's, movies at the cabin, and then back to city life again in the evening. We actually did pack swimsuits and towels and all for the beach, but it was rather chilly up there. The lake is full and blue and pretty, but we didn't go near it, opting instead for building a fire at the cabin and passing the baby around over movies. It was much-needed by all.

Monday-Thursday
Packing, packing, packing. And a trip to the temple, some grocery shopping and home cooking (a treat for me, since I usually don't bother during the school year. The featured meal of the week was fish tacos. Oh, I also got sucked into reading "The Shadow of the Wind", which I highly recommend to you book lovers out there (of adult ages, I'm afraid. As your former teacher, I can't recommend this to you lovely, bibliophiliac ex-students of mine until you're old enough for books with scenes of, shall we say for those who were in my English class this year, "pink bits"). It's terribly fun. Jason's the one who recommended it to me, emailing me the suggestion when he was a mere 30 pages in. I finished it first, telling him that he had to call me when he finished it, too. He did last night at 11:00pm, which is why I didn't go to bed until 2:30 am, which is why I've had a headache all night and really ought to go to bed soon.

Anyway.

On Thursday I hit a major funk of a mood, feeling very angry and sad and stressed and all kinds of other things at once. So, naturally, I called my mom. She's very nice to me when I'm in complaining moods, which has been all-to-frequent this week. After I got off the phone with her, feeling better, I realized that that was the first real human interaction I had had since Sunday. Four days without really talking to anyone. I mean, I was busy and active and all, which explains why I didn't even realize how isolated I had been. I was surprised, though, at what a toll that took on my moods. As I said before, Friday was a much-needed day off.

Oh, and up until the trip yesterday, I had been very good, exercising about 1 hour a day every day since Saturday. It's a lot easier to do when it's mid-morning, as opposed to the early evening. I'm not at all eager to go back to work.

Tomorrow I'm off to good ol' Grand Junction. It's mostly a trip of practicality - I'm taking the cat down so she misses the rest of the move (she's already totally freaked out by the boxes), getting my car repaired, and hopefully hanging out with the folks a bit and playing with Emily and co.

There. I've been a good blogger, given a thorough update, and now I'm off to bed. If I can find my way there through the towers of boxes.

TTFN!

Magic Man

Last weekend, while my parents were in town for Andy's graduation, we went furniture shopping for my new place. Specifically, I was hunting for new armchairs for the living room.

We looked at Ikea first, and while there were some styles that I liked, the color choices were not good. I began to fear that the only way to match the existing couch was to get chairs in stark cream or black. That, or get rid of the couch and start from scratch. Neither were favorable options in my mind.

Then my parents suggested we stop by another favorite furniture store of mine, Copenhagen West. My bedroom set is from this upscale Scandinavian store, and I love their stuff. Upon entering, we were greeted by an enthusiastic salesman, Casey.

Casey: Hello! Anything I can help you find today?
Me: Yes. I'm looking for an armchair or two to go in a room with a dark teal couch and butter yellow walls.
Casey: Well, there's nothing like a challenge, now is there?

Casey proceeded to lead us on a zig-zaggy tour of the store, pointing out various styles of chairs. Our destination, it turns out, was what I now refer to as The Magic Pillow.

Casey produced The Magic Pillow from a display towards the back, proclaiming it one of his favorites. "My partner and I have two on our couch at home!" I immediately liked the colors in it, so we set off through the store again, this time with The Magic Pillow leading the way, gripped by Casey.

And lo, we came upon a lovely little swivel leather armchair in apple green. I never would have picked that color, but it went beautifully with The Magic Pillow, and when my dad held up a swatch of yellow fabric he found that is close to my walls, I fell in love.

It's close to this style. Now picture it in something like this color. Crazy, right? I'm telling you, the pillow is magic!

And this is why it helps to shop with someone who knows how to decorate (not to mention two very generous parents who not only bought me two of these darling chairs, but also two Magic Pillows - thanks again, parents!).





Behold, the magic:

Okay, it's better in person than on a blurry picture taken via Blackberry. Still, do you see how it actually matches the teal couch? Magic!

Give Them What They Want

Why I love the internet:

I posted an ad on Craig's List saying, essentially,
"Broken NordicTrack Elliptical. Free, if you pick it up."

Within 36 hours I had three offers, and this afternoon it was gone.

Yay for Craig's List!

All Choked Up

So many posts I want to type, so little energy! The end is in sight, though, people! And come that glorious day next week when I will have nothing (NOTHING) to do other than packing my apartment and resolving banking issues and organizing the piles of things I've toted home from my classroom and updating my computer and waking up when I want to and not at the ungodly hour some adults from agricultural times decided teenagers (and me) would be at their peak learning times, at that time, my faithful readers, I shall blog, blog, BLOG!

A word in the meantime about emotional teenagers (and me).

So the Farewell assembly was Tuesday, and it went very well. Towards the end, Bonnie and Lindly sang For Good (technical side note - they wore peach and teal shirts respectively. A nice nod to the Wicked characters, but horrible to light when my only cyc colors are red, blue, green, and orange. After much debate with very patient techies, Ben and I finally found just the right blend of red, blue, and orange. And it was pretty.)

I was in my usual place in the front row (Handy for 1) checking the sound in the house since the booth's monitors are totally unreliable, 2) running the projector, and 3) being totally in control. Or at least feeling that way. Remember the God-like character Ed Harris played on "The Truman Show"? Yeah, that's totally me during assemblies). I had my headset on and partway through the song, I heard some odd noises. For a moment, I thought the headsets were going out on us again. Looking around, I discovered that the noise was not in the headset, but rather the audience. Some of the girls around me had started crying.

The tears, I think, actually started with the Dance Company number Kelley put together for the assembly. It was very much a "saying good-bye" piece, and that triggered a lot of the tears. "For Good" sent them over the edge. By the end of the song, there were at least three girls and one guy sitting near me who were sobbing (SOBBING). The can't-catch-your-breath-I-don't-care-who-hears-me-because-
it's(gasp)so(gasp)SAD!-kind-of-sobbing.

Awesome.

Especially when Ben introduced his gift to the ninth graders. As SBO advisor, he's been taking a lot of pictures since he was installed; which, coincidently, was when this year's ninth graders were little obedient sevvies. So he made them a slideshow of retrospective pictures. All bespectacled and metallic-grinning with their new polos buttoned all the way up. They were so cute.

And any sort of emotional control they had found during the faculty band's numbers scattered and the tears started up again.

To be fair, I used to cry a lot at their age, too. Mostly at movies. There was a time when any movie brought me to tears, including an anniversary screening of "Pinocchio". Then I felt silly and I got very good at controlling my tear ducts (Yay for the intellectual conquering the emotional!). So, despite a lot of pent-up emotion this week (including the horrendous task of saying good-bye to Heidi - she's off to Ireland for a month, so this chapter of our friendship is done), I kept control and didn't cry.

Even today! When my ninth graders all left, when the administration moved up the refund time, canceling my last period with my Advanced Drama kids (I was furious that we didn't get to formally close the class!), when I gave Sonetra my copy of Nobody's Princess because he couldn't get it at the library and he's fallen in love with Greek mythology this year and he was literally speechless, when a student from my first year at Dead President Junior High came back to tell me he got things figured out and he's graduating from high school tomorrow (!!!), when I had to say good-bye to students I've taught all three years and whom I love dearly, I kept control.

That is, until Jackie came to my classroom and gave me a DVD. She had interviewed and filmed dozens of students and teachers, asking them for memories of me and farewells for me. It's hilarious (thanks largely to Jacob and Daniel, of Shakespeare Festival/Nick's eulogy fame, who managed to work their way into almost every interview), and touching. It's also what finally made me let go and cry.

The Melody of Spring

I typically end my Drama 1 class with a Lip Sync assignment. It's a popular one with a good reuptation - when I answer questions about the class on the first day, they say "Do we get to do the Lip Sync thing?"

This year, two of my students asked if they could do a video instead of a live performance. I knew they had taken video productions (a new class at our school), so I figured, what the hey?

I expected a video of them turning on the camera and pretending to sing along while the music played off camera. Their actual project is far more awesome than that. And, they put it up on YouTube themselves, so I get to post it here for you to enjoy and for you to see two eighth-grade reasons why I'm sad to be leaving.




(I don't get the antlers, but I love the antlers!)

Rent

I paid my last rent check! Yay me!










(Not my actual check)
(Nor my actual name)
(Nor the actual amount I pay in rent. Trust me.)