Sunday Stroll

I was bored on Sunday so I took a stroll by...



BUM BUM BAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

THE SECRET NUCLEAR BUNKER. Shhh!!!!!

I should say the infamous SECRET NUCLEAR BUNKER, revealed to the American public for the first time by Lynnsey's blockbuster expose blog during the summer of 2007. Notice the cunning and guile employed by the British in locating their Secret Nuclear Bunker in a Leisure Complex where no Commi Pinko would dare tread, nor Bolshevik think to sniff er...eh nor illiterate Soviet spy could locate on an Ordanance Survey map. Simply bloody BRILLIANT! That's why the sun never set on the British Empire and the US never closed its English air bases ;-)

I love this country!!!

Craftiness

I'm putting the crafty stuff in it's place! Don't worry! I'll still be here. I have too much time on my hands and there's nothing good on TV.

For those of you who like the crafty stuff...go here. Whichcraft Get frequent updates on how I spend my time when I should be grading things and doing homework!

"Home Ec."

Warning: this turns into a little bit of a rant. Sorry about that. Really.

Some of you who don't know me very well were probably wondering why having string all over me was an "occupational hazard" or why I'm cooking with 7th graders. I'm a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher.

Everybody over the age of 25 just went, "a what?"

Home Ec. I teach Home Ec. Which, of course, means that I must be stupid or something. "Did you have to go to school for that?" is my favorite question. That didn't come from a teenager. No, that came from an adult. A professional colleague. I've actually heard it a couple times now. My second favorite is, "Oh, you teach cooking and sewing?" Yeah, and about 500 other things.

Add to that the fact that I'm a pretty fabulous cook, I know how to sew, knit, and crochet and for some reason everyone assumes I'm a total moron. It's as though people somehow think that knitting negatively affects your intelligence quotient. Now, remember, these are some of the same people who burn water and can't sew a button, but they teach algebra or geography. So they must be smarter than me.

Too bad that I can still do algebra and locate all fifty states. I can balance chemical reactions and I've read most of the modern classics (and then some...around 150 pages an hour on a good day). I teach teenagers how to cook and sew without hurting themselves or others or setting fire to anything. I teach them about personal finance and interior design and child development and personal relationships and everything else. I've had kids tell me my class is the only reason they decided to come to school that day. I teach your kid how to do the laundry, balance their checkbook, make breakfast, lunch and dinner, sew on their buttons, how to not get pregnant and what to do if they do, how to find a home, buy a car, and everything else they're not learning at home anymore because we're all too busy.

"Did you go to school for that?"

String Theory

No. This blog has nothing to do with physics. Ten points, though, to those of you who thought it might. You never can tell with us. Minus ten if you had to go 'wikipedia' string theory. (I even made it easy for you.) Minus ten more if you got a headache reading the first paragraph.

No, this blog has to do with the strings I spend a lot of time picking off my clothes. Even some of my students help me out (I have some of these kids 3 times a day, they get pretty comfortable with you after that). It's an occupational hazard. I am always covered in string. It's like I'm a string magnet. Someone else can be sewing and I'll get their string. I'm not even safe when I knit.

Today, though, I am celebrating the string. The t-shirt quilt is finished. It's in the dryer. I had to wash it to get rid of lines and cat hair, but it is completely done! Yay! Yippee! and all kinds of other celebratory noises!

Not only that, but I also knit the gauge swatch for The Sweater (do you like that?). It's coming out perfect. I never, ever knit to the right gauge on the first (or eighth) shot. For those of you who are nearly as confused by this paragraph as you were by the string theory reference, gauge is what careful knitters try to get before they start knitting, so that the sweater fits the person they're knitting it for (instead of being twice as big as it should be). Basically, the pattern says, "you should get X number of stitches over 4 inches" or something similar. You usually get one more or one less, no matter what you do and then you throw the whole thing in a closet somewhere and go back to making scarves (because it doesn't matter what size the scarf is).

I, however, "got gauge" as they say. And I'm thinking of doing a little dance about it.

So, if my needles ever show up, I can start knitting The Sweater. Hopefully, it will be done before it starts snowing in Brentwood.

Love Story

Since I tell the story better...I guess I'll go ahead and tell it.

My friend met a great guy (that's you, Vince!) on Match.com. Apparently, she thought everyone should be so lucky...so, while visiting her in beautiful Orchard Park one weekend, the two of them decided that I needed a profile. Under threat of them making up their own version, I proceeded to create a profile that was witty and charming and just a little embarrassing. I posted an ok-ish picture and voila...I was back on the market.

Before I go any farther...a few things about internet dating:

There are some weirdos out there. A friend once described herself as "flypaper for freaks" and after the first week I understood with almost crystal clarity what she had been talking about. I had (for some reason...that picture really wasn't all that great) over 400 profile views and a couple dozen emails in the first week or so. Unfortunately, there were a lot of frogs.

I'm sorry, but if you're old enough to be my father you should not email me. If you're "hear to meat women," we have a problem (I'm prejudiced against people who can't spell...a typo is one thing, but, c'mon...really). You should also not start out your profile professing your porn addiction/alcoholism/drug abuse/felony convictions. I'm just saying...

At any rate, there were a few decent-seeming guys. I had a couple of phone conversations that quickly ended that delusion. Then, this guy emails me. Wants to know if I want to go to the Erie Philharmonic tonight (even though he doesn't know my name). He actually used the word (?) "din-din." I should have known then, anyone dorky enough to use din-din and philharmonic in the same sentence was destined to be my soul-mate.

I had my reservations. You know, where this person is a potential axe-murderer and I don't know anything but his first name (more on that later!). I, however, had plans and had to ask for a rain check. No, really. That's exactly how I responded. He, apparently, recognized a fellow dork and agreed to call me later the next day.

This was the conversation about how much he liked to run, how he hated cats, and that he was leaving the country in a couple months. It was also the conversation about how I think people who run for fun are weird, I have three cats, and I'm in the middle of a divorce. Neither one of us ran screaming into the night, and we ended up emailing each other a few times and meeting for dinner a couple nights later.

We met a Figgie's around 6:30. We really hit it off. I learned that he loves chocolate cake (among other things). They all but turned the lights out on us, so we decided to go get coffee. He learned that I love Tim Horton's (among other things). It seems that Timmy's is the place to be for Jehovah's Witnesses at 12:30 in the morning. So, as I said before...dinner, a bottle of wine, a couple cups of coffee, and some Jehovah's Witnesses later, we called it a night. He kissed me and then asked if he could because "it's easier to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission."

It wasn't until the next day when the other half of my department was asking me about my date that I realized we'd hit it of too well. I didn't know his last name! I knew all other sorts of things, but had no idea what his last name was. Computer nerd that I am, though, it didn't take me long. I'm a pretty good listener and I knew where he worked. I figured LP would have a website with some kind of contact list or something and that I could at least narrow it down. Even better, they have photos of the employees! Thanks, Jim, for my making my search a lot easier! It's a good thing I'm not some psycho stalker, though (...just between you and me, I felt like one when I was trying to find him).

So...that's the beginning of the story. It just gets crazier from there! Did you expect anything less from the two of us?