I’d never been “wined and dined” before, but after today, I can say I have been – sans the wine… Holt, Rinehart, and Winston are a textbook company and they had what they called a “Dash and Dine” gathering at the Holiday Inn in Fairborn. They promised gift certificates for supper as well as snacks at the meeting, so I told the biology teacher “hey, let’s go!” So a few weeks ago, I made reservations for us, and today we headed out after school.

Now, before I continue with the wining and dining bit, I should talk a little about the morning… And maybe of the evening before. Then you could see just how nice of a day that I had today…

Last night around 10pm, just as I was stepping out of the tub, the phone rang. I rarely get calls, especially calls after 10, so I figured it was a phone call regarding the school levy. Sure enough, it was Mary Jo telling me that the levy FINALLY passed. It failed the first time at 20:80, the second time at 30:70, the THIRD time at 40:60, so I wasn’t sure that this one would pass. Monetarily things are getting SO bad at school that they finally had to discuss getting rid of extracurriculars. So the kids stepped up and worked their butts off to get the levy passed. It’s a shame they had to even be bothered with it, but they did a fabulous job. Many excellent letters to the editors of local papers were written and the kids organized a levy rally for last Sunday that was a real success. So the levy passed yesterday at 59:41. YAY!

As you might guess, things at school today were very upbeat. The staff feels as though a weight has been lifted, the kids can look forward to doing their favorite activities next year, and we’ll only be in the hole a bit. 😉 Yesterday, the NTA (teachers union) organized a gathering for after school today which they’d hoped was going to be celebratory – and it was. So I went down for some snacks, had some Sprite, and chatted with some of my coworkers.

At 3:15, Margie (the bio teacher) and I headed doon sooth to Fairborn for the Dash & Dine session. Registration was supposedly from 3:15-4:00pm with the session beginning after that. I figured I could get us there before 4, and I did. Mere minutes before. 🙂 It turns out only 10 people had called to confirm, but only 6 of us showed. We tucked into the snacks there – some crab rangoon, veggies, cheese & crackers, more Sprite and some things I didn’t have.

In the presentation room, we sat in the front row and investigated our bag o’ goodies. Nice canvass bag, book on dazzling demos and another on edible experiments, and a book of sci fi short stories. Pen and pencil and pad of paper, too. They had a science guy there who did some short little demos that were pretty cool (though some of his explanations left a little to be desired) and I won 3 candy bars during the candy bar quiz. (Snickers, Crunch, and Baby Ruth). And me on a diet… 😉

At the end of the session, we perused their textbook samples and Margie requested a couple. I only recently got new books which I’m rather happy with (both from Addison-Wesley – sorry Holt!) so I didn’t request any. Then they presented us with $20 gift certificates to restaurants that were local to the hotel. We each nabbed one for Olive Garden and I drove us there for supper. Yum!

We both ate about half of our meals and she’s giving her second half to her hubby for his supper tonight. Mine will be tomorrow’s supper. Woohoo! Then she gave me her gift card (with about $3 left) and with my gift card (ditto) I can have a nice discount on my next Olive Garden meal. (Margie also gave me a $25 gift card for Best Buy that she’s never been able to use – heck, I’ll be more than happy to spend her money – woohoo!)

So today has been a very nice day. Thank you Holt, Rinehart, and Winston for helping us celebrate the passing of our school levy!

As I suspected, the 250 Transparent Photo Corners just weren’t enough. I still have nearly 40 photos to mount on card before I’m done with the McCoy pix. I decided to count up the photos (since I like numbers) and discovered that I have 75 photos of Sylv (either alone or with folks) which are color, and 30 which are black & white. And you know, I know there are some out there that I don’t have! 🙂

My electronic collection of photos is even more extensive (well over 500 photos, but there may be duplicates there that I haven’t thinned out yet). Remember, that’s just the McCoy ones. When I do a search on my computer for any graphics image (other than clipart) I get nearly 5000 files. Good grief! Thank goodness for huge hard drives!

Once I used up my corners, I had some time to kill before bedtime, so I made a couple more LJ icons. Still haven’t played around with animated ones yet. One of these days, maybe.

So, this is gonna be a very disjointed post. What’s new, you ask? Heh. (Well, new icon – ish… Back when I designed my Valentine’s Day icon, I designed this one. But I decided to wait until March to display it.)

From time to time, I have dreams which are rather convoluted stories, and last night was one of those. It was about a 16 year old black girl named Francis who runs away from home (from her father and younger sister) because she knows there’s more to the world that she’s getting. She winds up homeless and afraid, but ends up befriending a nice, older homeless man. The man eventually confronts the girl’s father about his lack of concern for her (for he’s done nothing to find the girl while she’s been away) and also gives the younger sister a message from Francis about how much her sister misses her, etc etc.

Now, what good is a dream if there aren’t some unfathomables… Firstly, the role of the father was played by Sylvester McCoy. He also briefly appeared as the homeless man, only for that role to be recast with Eric Idle when it came time for the confrontation between father and other man. The house that Francis was from was my Grandma Anderson’s house (which I’ve not been in since the auction several years ago). The younger sister had a plastic toy boa constrictor around her neck, I remember, that looked sort of like – dunno, was it Ollie of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie? The snake-looking thingy, whatever it was. There was also a discussion about the possibility of Francis being lesbian and/or transgendered during the argument, but I’m not entirely sure now what that was about. Ah, but I love my dreams…

Perhaps one reason why I dreamt about a Sylvester McCoy character was my latest task – I’m going through my photo collection of Sylvester McCoy pictures and putting them on cardboard backing and slipping them into plastic protective sheets. Transparent Photo Corners are my friend! But I’m sure I’ll run out of them before I finish with all of my pictures. There’s only enough of them for just over 60 photos. 😉

I am obsessed with photos and have been for many years. Oddly enough, I blame this on Helen Hayes. I shall explain…

Many, many years ago, I saw a photo of Helen Hayes in a Reader’s Digress or some-such magazine that was simply delightful. She was one of the actors whom I admired, so I cut the picture out of the magazine. And thus began my photo collection. Anyone who visits me can still see said photo of Helen – it’s nearly dead center in my collage that hangs in my den. Tasha Yar is on one side of her, Mark Strickson on t’other. Above is the cast of Avon’s 7 and below is Sidney Poitier from To Sir With Love. Doc7 & Ace, Carol Burnett, Eric Idle (as Passapartou), Columbo, and many others are also present in the collage. Monkees, Beatles, cast of M*A*S*H and more.

Eventually, the magazine photos graduated upwards to actual 8×10″ photos and similar. Thanks to Whomobilia and Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store, I got many photos of my favorite actors: Ron Moody, Julie Andrews, Eric Idle, and that new (at the time) upstart, Sylvester McCoy. Now I’ve got 2 full 1 1/2″ binders full of Sylvester McCoy photos and a few other binders of other photos. Gah!

But I do love it, or I wouldn’t collect them. Thankfully, I stopped my movie poster collecting – I just don’t have enough wall space to hold the ones that I have! When I finally get a finished basement, I’ll decorate the walls with my movie posters properly framed and all that jazz.

Now, after yesterday’s post about Kings of Chaos, you might have thought that I’d never visit the place myself or do anything with it. Actually, I spent all of yesterday morning and afternoon attacking the weak and defenseless and stealing their gold. It was great fun and now I know why George W Bush loves doing it. (Ouch! I’m going to hell for that one!) Anyhoo, I managed to first bolster my offenses and gain more illgotten booty, then I bolstered my defenses to protect future illgotten booty. (Not enough, apparently, as 21,000 gold pieces were stolen from me today while I was at work.) Ah, it’s all in fun, really. If you’d like to help the cause and give me more elves, click here. And thanks!

Phew, that was a long post! Even without the LJ cuts. And heck, I’ll leave you all with one more cut. One of the photos that I cardboarded today I was just simply amazed at the quality of the photo. So I have a scan of it, which, alas, doesn’t do it justice, but I’ll share it here for now.