Ah, the St. Patrick’s Day parade…

I actually missed the parade for the first time since I’ve lived in Buffalo. I highly enjoy the parade, normally…but sick Rand was beckoning, and it was snowy and cold anyway. (Being cold and wet generally hinders my enjoyment of outdoor events.)

I went out and bought some food and medicines for my poor sweetie, then met up with Jen to see Jackdaw at Sphere.

I *love* seeing Jackdaw at Sphere. It’s a great venue for music (the drink prices are outrageous, though)…a large “dance floor” area and two additional levels for viewing the stage. I do not, however, enjoy the hordes of drunken teenyboppers who crawl out of the woodwork for the St. Pat’s show. Bleah. I hope I’ve never been that annoying. (I’ve been told I’m a cute drunk. Heehee…)

Jen and I went to see the boys for the first time in months recently at Mohawk Place. It was a good show, but I was getting over a cold and the band didn’t go on until almost midnight. We barely made it through the first set. This show was everything I expected of them. I admit to being a bit wary of how things were going to go without Mike, but they’re as kick-ass as ever. Dave’s doing an excellent job of handling the standbys like “Hay Wrap,” “Black and Tans” and “Molly.” Kudos!
(I have to ask, though…dude, what’s up with the mohawk? Seriously…)

And while seeing the O’Sullivan Irish Dancers makes Jen want to populate the world with young Irish dancers, it makes me want to *be* one. Is there a way for an adult to learn the Irish Jig without taking classes with six-year-olds? 🙂

Never, never miss the opportunity to see the Ron Hawkins Acoustic Revue.

Jen and I broke our cardinal rule of never missing an acoustic revue ever, under any circumstances, when we didn’t go to the Friday night show at Club Infinity. (In my defense, I was caring for sick Rand…) Last night, we met up with our Canadian friends, who told us that Friday was the best.acousticrevue.ever. Sigh.

Not that Saturday wasn’t a fantabulous show. It was. Lots of Rusty Nails stuff. They sounded great. And we discovered a juicy little tidbit…my Lowcrush Lawrence and cellist Alex McMaster are apparently an item. Hm…if I wasn’t in a happy relationship, I might be a little bit sad about that. 😉

Off to see the Ron Hawkins acoustic revue with Jen and Rachel this evening. Whee! 🙂

Only thing sad about this…Rand has to miss it. We were supposed to see the show last night in Buffalo, but he is way too ill. I know he’s disappointed about missing it. He enjoys the acoustic revue almost as much as Jen and I do. 🙁

Traffic school. And a $65 “parking ticket.” Quite a little moneymaking game we’ve got going on in the Village of Hamburg, eh? I should be grateful. No points. But ugh…traffic school. ALL DAY on a Saturday. Not to mention the three hours of my life that I’m never going to get back from last night…more on the annoyances of sitting through court later.

Boo. Hiss.

I did postpone the jury duty. You get to select a time within the next six months, and they give you whatever is closest to that time. I picked June, after school is out, at time that I don’t anticipate having anything going on in my life.

I have many, many applications that I need to work on sending. Two are ready, but I need to buy envelopes. I ran into another one of the adjuncts at the community college who tells me there may be a couple of upcoming retirements in her district. *fingers crossed* I also need to get my supporting documentation scanned, because several of the districts have a new online application process.

I’ve received one call for an interview during teacher recruitment days, with (dum da dum) a Catholic high school… 😉

Going through serious boyfriend withdrawal…Rand was in California last weekend, from Thursday to late Monday/early Tuesday. I saw him Tuesday night, I had class and he was busy Wednesday, and then he got sick… 🙁 I’m going to bring him some cough syrup a little bit later.

Oh, they gave me such a headache yesterday. The seventh graders were bouncing off the walls. I let them play a game to review the unit we just covered, and they were *crazy*. My eighth graders were good in the morning…they were little angels at Mass…but by the afternoon, well…let’s just say they were not at their best. I think I’m going to have to give them assigned seats. Their teacher had them in pairs, but I think we’re going to have to go to regular old rows.

Last week, the girls told me that a fourth grader asked if I was single. Ha…

I had brought in some magnetic poetry, and was having a problem with the kids writing, ah, inappropriate things. I posted a note, which only succeeded in having them mix up the words before I saw them. At Barnes & Noble the other night, I found a “high school” edition…with school-related words. I brought that in, put up some new words, and took down some of the questionable ones. Like sausage. And wet. And lick. Etc. We’ll see how that goes. 😉

The other night, I graded papers for my night class. My Wednesday class…oy vey. They were so bad. SO bad. And 90% of them wrote about “The Yellow Wallpaper.” I wanted to kill myself by the time I was done reading.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to postpone the jury duty. Yeah, it’s a risk that when I’m called again, it’ll be at a worse time, but I’ll take the chance.

Argh. Ok, back to class for me…

Know what else I object to? The fact that stupid blogger just ate my post. Grrrrr…..

So yeah, I have to go to traffic court in Hamburg this Thursday. I got picked up for speeding in a school zone on the way to Jen’s grandpa’s funeral.

And I got a summons for jury duty. It’s the Monday after Easter. How much does that suck for me? I had planned on spending the holiday in PA with my family, and not having to drive back to Buffalo until Monday, since I don’t have to work. Did you hear that? No work. It’s spring break. So instead of relaxing and enjoying my break, I’ll be wasting numerous hours of my life. Grr. GRRRRRRR.

I feel like I’ve been at home for weeks. I can’t say that it’s been a “good” trip, considering the circumstances, but it is nice to visit with family. I finally got to meet my new little cousin Colton (what do you call the child of your first cousin? that always confuses me) this afternoon.

Baby Colton

At the funeral home on Thursday, I got re-acquainted with my dad’s cousin’s wife…I don’t get to see them much as they live outside of Chicago, but we hit it off quite well. She wanted to adopt me by the time they left on Friday. I had heard that she was from Scotland, but thought it odd that she had barely a trace of an accent. Later, at my grandparent’s house, she was talking with some people and “did” her Scottish accent. She said that when she talks to her brother, he tells her “Talk Scottish, or I’m hangin’ up!” Hee.

I thought I recognized the accent, so I asked her what part of Scotland she was from. Glasgow, she said…ah, yes. X’s family came from Glasgow. So I’ve retained the ability to recognize the accent. 😉 It was then that I realized that she reminded me a bit of X’s mom.

I really liked X’s mom, when she wasn’t driving me crazy. He was my first boyfriend whose family really welcomed me in and treated me like I was one of them. J’s family was messed up…completely messed up…and so it was my family who took him in. K’s family never warmed up to me. I always felt like an outsider with them. So yeah, I really, really missed X’s family when we broke up. I missed them long after I stopped missing him.

Gah…where the heck was I going with this?

Anywho, it’s always the same at these things, isn’t it? Seeing family you haven’t seen in way too long. Hugging and saying “we should get together more.” And you say it, and you mean it…but you rarely do. You’re just back at the next one, saying the same thing. Sigh.

I was pretty together Thursday night at the funeral home…but then at the end of the night, the choir my dad sings with came in en masse, apparently straight from rehearsal. I got a bit choked up. They stayed for the wake service, and at the end of it, they sang a verse of “Immaculate Mary”. My dad’s choir is amazing. People around here almost unanimously agree that the Sacred Heart choir is the best church choir in the area. So needless to say, as soon as they began singing, everyone started to cry.

After the service, the priest came and asked me if I’d do the readings at Mass on Friday. Of course I agreed…and after Mass, several people commented me on what an excellent job I did. Hey, sometimes those public speaking skills pay off…

My uncle served in the Navy, so there was a burial detail. We all stood outside the church, and it was COLD. The little old VFW guys had a rough time folding the flag. Seriously. It took way longer than it should have, and it ended up looking sort of floppy and unkempt.

Afterwards, it was off to the luncheon where we made all kinds of small talk with all kinds of people I didn’t really know. An old couple who used to live down the street from my grandparents came up to talk to me, and reminded me that their dog bit me in the bum when I was a little kid. Ahhhhh…yes. I remember well. Actually, what I remember more than the actual bite was my great fear of the tetanus shot in the emergency room. I screamed and cried and howled, and the very kind, calm emergency room doctor talked to me, distracting me while the nurse snuck in from behind to administer the shot. It was over before I realized she was doing it! Weird…I hadn’t thought of that in years.

Friday night, my mom and I went for a fish fry with my aunt and uncle at their church. We ran into the mother of one of my former classmates who asked “Are you back?”

Back?

“No, just visiting.”

I immediately thought that was weird. I mean, is your immediate assumption upon seeing someone in their hometown normally that they’ve moved back to town? She then goes on to tell me that her daughter (who lives in Raleigh and just *loves* it) got married this fall (aside…I always thought there was a chance said daughter might be a lesbian…) and wants to have a baby immediately. She followed that up with “You know, she’s worried about getting too old.”

Ach. That again. I suppose people just don’t think that those kinds of comments might be irritating to the unmarried woman who is the same age as their daughter.

But anyway…

Mom and I rented “Win a Date with Tad Hamilton” which was actually really, really cute. I think Topher Grace is adorable…much more appealing than Ashton Kutcher…and I thought he fit the part very well. I even cried at the end.

Topher as Pete

“I can’t believe ‘Win a Date with Tad Hamilton’ made me cry,” I told my mom. 😉

Actually, it even gave me a wee bit of inspiration for that screenplay my friend Anita asked me to write…

Today, I’ve had the opportunity to be lazy, which I am quite thankful for. Unfortunately, I had to miss Dayna’s baby shower…ah, well…and tomorrow, I must force myself back into the routine…planning, correcting, etc.

Thank you to all who posted words of encouragement this past week. It really means a lot to me.

A full update to come, but first some mindless fun…courtesy of the lovely and talented Stephanie, it’s Popstrology.

As it turns out, 1974 is the year without a dominator. Hm.

It was the one and only year in the popstrological era in which no single star attempted to dominate the universe of pop, and glorious disorder was naturally the result. John Denver leading into Roberta Flack and Paul Anka into Eric Clapton? Barbra Streisand sandwiched between Ringo Starr and Barry White? When else but the seventies could one have witnessed such glorious incongruities, and when else but in 1974 could one have witnessed so many of them? Believe it or not, one prominent member of the critical establishment has actually called 1974 the worst year for pop music in American history, but that just goes to show you how easily one’s mind can become corrupted by a false ideology like rock criticism. Popstrologists make it a rule to steer clear of terms like “best” and “worst” when discussing the pop-musical past, but rules are made to be broken, and you’ll have little difficulty finding a popstrologist willing to proclaim 1974 one of the best of all possible years in which to have been born. At least for those who are comfortable going through life without a ruling philosophy or any hope of finding one that’s offered to them by their peers to be even remotely acceptable.

My “birthstar birthsong” is The Night Chicago Died. Whatever that means. 😉

So yeah, I started my long-term sub Catholic school job this week. It’s going fine…trying to learn names, get the routines down, get the 8th graders to stop goofing off and get to work.

And just when I was getting into the swing of things, I received a call from my mom telling me that my uncle (my dad’s brother) passed away. Not entirely unexpected…he’s been sick, and just made the decision to stop his dialysis treatments. He’d come to terms with the fact that he was never going to get better, probably not ever going to leave the hospital. He died peacefully in his sleep, I understand, and the funeral is Friday.

The principal was, of course, very very understanding. I only actually *teach* three classes on Fridays. They have Mass in the morning, stations in the afternoon, I have lunch duty, which someone will have to cover…ugh. I cancelled my class this evening, because there are just too many things that I need to get done. Pack, for example. I’m leaving for PA right after school tomorrow.

Blah.

And on top of all of that, I’m feeling like the cold that I thought was leaving me is back. I woke up with that dry, scratchy-throat feeling again this morning. Great.

I’m sure there was more I was going to say, but none of it is coming to me right now.

I was going to be all good and go work out this morning, but this lousy cold (which I believe I picked up at home from my 6-year-old cousin) is making me want to curl up and pull the covers over my head and just stay there. Ugh. It’s not so bad that I can’t function…just that I’d rather not.

Yesterday, I went to the school where I’m going to be subbing. I got to talk to the teacher, who was not only very sweet but very well-organized. Yay for me. I want to try to keep their classroom routine in place as much as possible, and with the information she left me, that’s going to be really easy. I’ll be able to add my own little touches, but the foundation is very, very solid.

Umm…hmmm…because of how crazy things have been lately, I’m behind on a lot of things. Like reading submissions for TC. Bad, bad editor.

Interesting what has developed with the community college class…I really like my Tuesday class. My Wednesday class? Uh, not so much. That’s not entirely fair…there are a few of them that I really don’t like. I feel like they’re rolling their eyes and snickering every time I turn my back. The entire class is fairly unresponsive. Blah. Last night, they were really good about being understanding my not feeling so well and not wanting to do a lot of talking. Not so sure how it’ll go tonight.

Rand and I watched Napoleon Dynamite the other night. I’d heard widely divergent reviews after it came out…Jen saw it last week and loved it. I wasn’t so impressed. I thought it had a lot of funny moments, but didn’t feel like it held together so well.

Some other stuff I’ve seen recently:

Boogie Nights (thumbs up)
Spirited Away (thumbs up)
The Sure Thing (thumbs up…can’t believe I’d not seen this before. I had caught part of it on TV once, but never from start to finish.)

I also have an update to my 50-Book Challenge to put up…most recently finished Maus and am about halfway through the sequel.

Thanks to those who posted kind thoughts, both about my job situation and the other (ahem) situation. I do appreciate it! 🙂