This and That

1. Bought tickets to go visit Grandma Carol and Grandpa B in Albuquerque before their big move to Florida! I'll be visiting in mid-April, and am excited to head out west. Any Albuquerque recommendations you'd like to share?

2. My brother said a while back that if he was a teacher, he'd have the kids call him Mr. E. Say it out loud. Isn't that awesome? I think Matt should become a teacher so that the kids can call him Mr. F, a la Arrested Development.

 [source]

3. I'm too fat for words right now. Before long I'll have to start buying special shoes, because regular shoes will no longer be able to support my weight. And I'll just get a circus tent to wear to school. Ugh. Someone go get me a sandwich!

4. Because of the fatness, I'm trying to be a little more healthy with home snackin'. So tonight I'll be making Mandy's Famous Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream, except that it'll be Mandy's Famous Blueberry Cheesecake Frozen Yogurt. I'll let you know how that turns out.

5. Mitch loves to lie under the blankets and sheets when they come out of the dryer.

6. My dad put his kid brother in the dryer and turned it on when they were kids. Needless to say, my uncle is a little nutty.

7. The art club at school was making buttons. Naturally, I had them make one out of the best silhouette of all time. Aren't you jealous?

8. I have a new favorite whiny boy band: Noah and the Whale. This also means that I have a new favorite Pandora station. What's your favorite Pandora station?



9. Tried yesterday to convince my students that Jesus had come down from heaven to inhabit my body and to keep an eye on them. Even though I reached out my arms and let my hair down and addressed them as "my children," they didn't buy it. Kids these days are so smart!

10. In need of some sage advice? Don't keep toothpicks in your pocket.


There you have it! I'm off to enjoy a productive night of cleaning, laundry, ellipting, and paper grading. If everything goes according to plan, the only thing I'll need to do this weekend is lie on a blanket in the sunshine.

Happy almost weekend!

Weekend in Pictures

Yes, my costume included a foam menorah and lots of messy hot glue.  I burned myself more times than I'd care to admit.

 Werewolf Bar Mitzvah furry scary gloves.

 Mmmmm.  Favorite cookie made with peanut butter M&Ms.

 It's never not cute when he does this.

 Ahh. . .open window days.

 

 This is where Matt put the Halloween candy so that I could easily find it and hand it out to the trick-or-treaters.  Really, Matt?  Trying to prevent more Butterfinger fugue states?

The Dude and Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.  It was when I saw this picture that I knew with complete certainty that I married someone cooler than me.  And smarter.  Shoot.  At least I'm better than he is at shapes.

Boys Becoming Men. . .

I'm getting pretty pumped because this time tomorrow, Matt and I will transform into these two.

Will you excuse me as I fashion a yarmulke from a paper plate and some fabric? 

If you're bored, just listen to the full-length version of my current favorite song.

What are you being for Halloween?

Another Reason I Wish To Be Jewish. . .

A little video happy this week, eh?  I blame it on the fact that I've had very little to do, and have, then, been watching lots of videos on the world wide web. 

But if you love Paul Rudd, you'll love watching him DJ Bat Mitzvahs.


Paul Rudd: Bat Mitzvah DJ from Jewish Forward on Vimeo.

Kind of makes me want to wear a fluorescent yellow shirt and sing NKOTB's "The Right Stuff" with my hair in a side ponytail. 

Shalom Y'all

One reason that I was excited to marry Matt was because I would get to change my name to a name that sounded Jewish. I had this fantasy that I would pretend to be Jewish, and then take off work on all of the Jewish holidays (which is really just a reincarnation of a Saved by the Bell plot, I believe).

To celebrate my fake Jewish heritage, then, I began to embrace all things Jewish.

To nobody's surprise, I began with food. My former roommate Cris and I became big fans of Savannah's Jewish Food Festival, appropriately titled the Shalom Y'all festival. I'm not joking. That's really the name. They sell tshirts, even.


The festival was this weekend, so I joined Cris and friends to enjoy a beautiful afternoon in Forsyth Park, and to feast on Jewish delicacies. Adventurous eater that I am, I inhaled a footlong hot dog. It was. . .amazing.

And I picked up some kosher dog treats for the pup.

A few years ago, when Cris and I attended the festival, I picked up this literary masterpiece. Noshy Boy. It's Jewish didactic children's literature at its finest. I'm obsessed with this book, and if more people knew about Noshy Boy, I'd be him for Halloween.

Nosh: (verb) to snack

Noshy Boy has a very similar plot to one of my other favorites, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Noshy Boy loves to snack, and he snacks himself fat. He learns, through the course of the work, to enjoy healthier foods and snacks only in moderation. It's a coming of age piece, really. A real bildungsroman.

I think I had this happen to me once. . .

Well, today I picked up another in the series, Shluffy Girl.

Shluffy (adjective) sleepy, tired

Shluffy Girl has her own vice: sleeping too much. "Nap time is Shluffy Girl's favorite time of the day. But for Shluffy Girl, nap time is almost all the time." Shluffy Girl sleeps all the time, and it begins to cause problems. . .

She falls asleep on the bus and misses her stop.

[Hot damn, if this didn't happen to me when I was in the tenth grade! I fell asleep lying down in the seat, missed my stop, and woke up going down the highway. It was a debacle, a horribly embarrassing experience. As we learned a few weeks ago on 60 Minutes, this also happened to Andy Rooney. You know something's seriously wrong with you when you start having stuff in common with Andy Rooney.]

Eventually, Shluffy Girl learns to find a balance between life and her true love, sleep.

I feel like I've met her somewhere.

Oh dammit.