Two of our high school teachers are expecting little ‘uns to appear this summer. So today, we had a baby shower for the pair of them. Kim is expecting her second child in August, but as we missed out on her first baby shower (because she was off having the baby prematurely) it seemed appropriate to have a shower for her second. She brought little Kaden with her (he just celebrated his first birthday on Monday) and he was awful cute. Ann is expecting her first child in July. So this was also her first baby shower.

It was held at one of my co-workers houses off on the other side of Troy. I hadn’t been to her house since I was a senior in high school. We had a cast party for our play there. But I did remember how to get there. I was the second person to show up. The media center lady was the first and I was right behind. Once everyone had arrived, we played a standard Baby Shower Game(TM). They brought out a tray full of baby items and went through them all. Then it was taken away and we had to write down everything that we could remember. Of the 25 items, I was rather pleased with myself for remembering 17. I did the worst in the room! My memory sucks. 😛

Thank goodness they didn’t make us taste different baby food flavors and try to guess what they were. Deanna, my cousin, devised that game for the baby shower she held for one of her sisters-in-law. Blech – I really felt bad for my cat after that. I figured if the food we’re giving babies tastes that bad, cat food must be even worse! (No wonder Leo loves raw tofu, something with practically no flavor must be better than cat food.)

The ladies opened their presents next. I went in on a group gift for Kim and that was a stroller to hold two little ones. So Kaden will be able to keep an eye on his younger brother. I got Ann’s little one some classic baby toys: a Rock-A-Stack and Baby’s First Blocks. I also got a little toy monkey that was very soft to the touch. And it’s good that I thought to get Kaden a little soft teddy bear since he was also at the party.

After gifts, we had lunch – egg salad mini-sammiches, broccoli salad, cheese ball, pretzels, etc etc and “pretzel salad” for dessert. Mom’s the one who called it that – I didn’t even know there were pretzels in it. (They were the crust that I thought were crushed nuts.) Heh – and I just found the recipe with the first page that Google gave me. Here is someone’s pretzel salad recipe. Sounds like the one we had. Oh, and there was lemonade too – which I spilled on the carpet right as we were going to start the game. Ann was pleased since that’s usually her, she said. Glad I could help. 🙂

Around 2pm the party broke up and I drove back home (stopping briefly at Staples). And then I ripped my two new George Harrison CDs (which I got from the post office before the shower) into MP3s. And am listening to Cloud 9 now. (Coincidentally, my favorite tune from the album is playing now. And no, there wasn’t a whole lot of gossip going on at the party, which is what the song is about.)

Every year around this time, I ponder my senior year in high school. If I weren’t a teacher who taught physics to seniors, this might be rather unusual behavior. But as I watch these young men and women sign each others senior books¹ and invite each other (and me) to graduation parties², I remember my own time doing much the same. So, since I’m in the process of cleaning out my closets (and not in an Eminem³ way), I got out my own senior book and looked through it.

I noticed that I didn’t have a lot of notes from classmates, but at least had some from the girls that I knew the best. And I reserved one quarter page just for Amy to write on. She read through the others and so started hers with “I can’t believe we’re seniors!” She was, at the time, in 8th grade. She’s so funneeeee!

Didn’t have a boyfriend, so the page reserved for one’s significant other was plastered with pictures and comments about Eric Idle. (Yes, Sylvester McCoy was barely a glint in my eye at the time!) No football at Newton, so the football page was covered in band photos.

When I looked in the pockets in the scrapbook, I found several senior photos. And the very first photo I looked at, I had *no* idea who the girl was. So I turned it over and read what the girl had written. “To a really smart, interesting kinda gal, who has great taste in music! I wish the best to you in everything you do! Good luck with the men in your life! Don’t forget me!” Sorry Randi! I well and truly forgot you! I feel so bad! At least the other photos in my pocket were of folks that I remember. But, GAH, the 80s hair styles!!!! It’s like watching one of those evil 80s teen movies!

My final comments on the scrapbook are about The Future???
What I might be doing next year at this time: Taking finals at Wright State University That was probably correct…
5 years: Still taking finals (with a double major I may need more than 4 years) That was definitely *not* correct. I didn’t have a double major. I started out in physics ed but quickly switched to chem ed and was done in 4 years. By 5 years hence from graduating, I was done with my first year teaching at Eaton.
10 years: Be teaching and maybe even visiting England By golly, hit that one spot on. Not only have I been teaching all this time, but I’ve been to England. Yup, six times… three within 10 years of graduating HS, IIRC.
Career goals: Become either an English or Physics teacher. As I mentioned before, I became a chemistry education major – while I was teaching at Eaton, I took extra classes to get my physics certification. So now I’m certified in both chemistry and physics and teach both. I notice how computers were nowhere in my vision at the time.
Outlook on Marriage: I’d rather not, at this point & time. I’ll wait until I’ve seen the world. Yeah, that one still sounds good to me.

Heh – it’s interesting for 33 1/3 year old treen to read the ramblings of 18 year old treen. Might not have been as interesting to you, but hey, there ya go. 🙂

¹ Since high school yearbooks don’t come out until the following year, there’s a tradition in our school to purchase a prefab scrapbook for your senior year. We get ours from Jostens, a company that specializes in removing money from the parents of seniors.
² Alas, I don’t usually go to the graduation parties. Most take place during Memorial Day weekend and I’m busy hangin’ with the girls (elsaf and judiang) at mom & dad’s cottage at Lake Loramie. The one exception was the year my cousin, Deanna, graduated. I left the girls at the Lake and went to Deanna’s graduation and then hung out with the family at Granny’s for awhile. Actually, now that I think about it, she had her party a different weekend – this was just for the graduation.
³ “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” by Eminem is *not* about housework.

LOL – elsaf‘s gonna be so jealous!

Your Husband Generator by Lady_Galadriel
Name
Your Husband Is
You Met	at a cheap café
You Have	0 children but 7 pets
You Live	Greece
In	a bungalow
You And Your Partner Are Best Known For	you’re charity work
Created with the ORIGINAL MemeGen!

Nice to know that Leo will get some siblings. I wonder what he’ll think of living in Greece, though…

While I was mowing the lawn this evening, I was trying to figure out why I hated it so much. Yes, it is hard work. I’m rather lazy. However, I do hard work a lot, despite being lazy. It can be near hell during the middle of the summer. However, we had a lovely spring evening tonight while I was mowing. When I get done, my hands feel like they’re still vibrating, but that’s really more funky than frustrating. So I think it all goes down to one thing – I used to have to mow the lawn when I was a kid. Cleaning the kitchen and mowing the lawn were the two tasks that I had to fulfill as an indentured slave under mom & dad. Oddly enough, those are two tasks that I now despise doing… Coincidence? I think NOT! 🙂

Anyway, I think I might try to mow my lawn myself this year, rather than pay someone to do it. It’s good exercise for me and it’s less expensive. Especially if I conveniently forget to reimburse mom and dad for the gasoline. (I use their lawn mower.)

So, an hour and a half after I started (and as the sun was quickly setting in the west) I finished with the lawn (even raking it). I still hate doing it, but it’s always nice when it’s done!

About 10 after 9pm tonight, I’m online and clicking away for folks on Kings of Chaos, when Zap! the power goes out. The Zap! was caused by ordinary lightning and it took out the entire block. So I got my rechargeable flashlight and found the cat. I read for a bit and decided to go to bed early. Oh yeah, and I was in the middle of drying my laundry when the outage happened… My underwear in particular. Of which I had no clean stuff left. Heh. Ironic, eh?

Thankfully, I’d only hours earlier figured out where my travel clock was and set that up to wake me at 6am and then it was bed time for Trina and Leo. And we were snoozing (though I don’t think either of us were actually asleep) when the air conditioner started back up again just a few minutes ago. So I thought I’d turn on the computer to make sure everything was OK. And heck, while I was checking, I’d write up a quick LJ entry about it. Still going to wait for the morning to dry my underwear, however. Probably tempting fate, but I don’t want to stay up for another hour in order to fold everything when it’s dry (and there are some clothes which ought to be folded in with the undies).

One comment on my power & light company: I called the emergency number, which was to an automated system, and it informed me that they already *knew* that my area was having an outage… Spooky! I hate psychic companies!

I meant to do this meme which I gakked from axonite at an earlier date. But I had pictures of house painting to post instead.

1. Take five books off your bookshelf.
2. Book #1 — first sentence
3. Book #2 — last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 — second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 — next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 — final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph

Lovely as a menace to himself was one thing, he considered; foolishly, he refused to believe that he might be in serious danger from the half-breed; he believed that Lovely was a boaster, a coward, and that he would be afraid of the prompt vengeance of Jim’s friends. Close your eyes, murmurs her teacher. Gradually he grew calmer. The result was that while a physical map of Golter was a relatively simple depiction of the planet’s varied but unremarkable geography, political maps tended to resemble something plucked from the wreckage after an explosion in a paint factory. “It hasn’t even begun.”

(Well, that’s the best that I could do with the five sentences… Sheesh, Iain M Banks sure writes long sentences! My books, for those curious, were Fallen Gods by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, Against a Dark Background by Iain M BanksThe Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, Voice of the Turtle: American Indian Literature 1900-1970 edited by Paula Gunn Allen,, and my favorite book of all time, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.)

It started out a cloudy day, but the clouds finally cleared and I took some photos of the house. I’ve paralleled them somewhat with my first post about my house painting.

Here’s that south side window which looked so horrible after the power wash. An improvement, no?

Here is the other south side window.

The windows on the west side also got a complete makeover. No more faux shutter lines! (Big tree shadow, OTOH.)

The south side of the garage was vastly improved by the new paint job…

…as was the front of the garage.

Leo sits on, approving of the new paint job.

And to finish my photos, here’s a picture of the front of my house. You can see the Student Painters sign in the yard. I’ll keep it there for awhile yet.

Taking photos wasn’t my only enjoyment of the day. I decided last night that I wanted to see a movie and turns out Mean Girls was at the Piqua Mall. And those darn Red Lobster commercials with the Jumbo Shrimp have been bothering me lately – and coincidentally, there’s a Red Lobster near the mall… So I knew what my plans for the day were. I had lunch at Red Lobster and then walked around the mall awhile until the movie started. While there, I found out that they’ve FINALLY re-released most of George Harrison’s stuff. Still, I was *not* going to spend $20 to buy Cloud Nine at a mall CD store. (I, instead, ordered it from buy.com when I got home. And All Things Must Pass, which I’ve pondered buying but had yet to get around to. I have the former on tape and the latter as an LP, but wanted them on CD.)

A couple of minutes before the movie started, I got to a nice seat in the middle of the theater. Matinee prices at this place are $3.50, so I prefer going to the Piqua Mall Cinemark than to the Teicher theaters in Troy. The theater is a better theater, too. So I sat through 5 forgettable commercials and maybe 7 forgettable promos before the movie started. My sister, Amy, had suggested that I go see it. And, as usually is the case, she was right to suggest it. I enjoyed the movie and laughed a lot. Ah, if only I’d done some of the mean girl things when I was in school! 😉

I’ve been goofing off the rest of the day. Probably should have done laundry, but I still have clean underwear, so there’s no rush. I did let Leo go play in the basement for awhile. He enjoyed that. And I was able to salvage the failure that was my peach ice cream. (I ended up with white ice that tastes of peaches rather than ice cream). I cut it into blocks and found that when you nuke a block a bit (to soften it) and then mix it with my drinks mixer, you have a nice peach milk shake. 🙂 I think’ll get a recipe from my Ultimate Ice Cream recipe book (that Elsa got me for Christmas) for my next ice cream attempt. Judi wants pineapple ice cream for Memorial Day weekend. I’ll have to look for that so I can attempt it before she arrives.

L++W+P-T+++Q+F++

Alas, today was rainy all day, so I didn’t get any final pictures of the painted house done. But I do have 3 pictures taken midway through the job.

As you can see, the south side of the house required a lot of primer. You can get a glimpse of the final product on the left side of the picture.

The front of the garage was also a chief candidate for primer and lots of it.

If you remember the first picture from yesterday’s post, here’s how that window fared during the job.

Since it was a rainy day, I spent a good deal of time cleaning the house. Got the kitchen cleaned and it and the living room vacuumed. I even put the vacuum cleaner away – oooh! When it was time for supper, I decided that I wanted to make a curry. And I wanted to share it with the folks. So I called ’em and invited them over for supper. Mom and I rented several movies this morning when we were out for Curves (and, um, Waffle House for breakfast) including Calendar Girls. She brought it over and we had curry on rice and watched the movie. Fun movie! And Annette Crosbie was in it, too! I’ve been a fan of hers ever since I first saw One Foot in the Grave. Doctor Who and Waiting for God fans may be interested to know that Graham Crowden played her husband. It’s a movie about a group of middle aged women who decide to make a nude calendar of themselves for charity. I may have to get that DVD for my collection later. 🙂

My house needed painting. And I have the photos to prove it.

Here is a picture of the window on the south side of the house. Note the interested observer in the window.

The other window on the south side.

The window on the west side. It used to have faux shutters, which accounts for the shading around the windows.

A closeup shot of the south window. Most of the paint was knocked off during the power wash two days previous.

Here’s a closeup of the siding. Once again, this is from the south side of the house, which was the worst side over all.

As you can see, the garage was a bit worse for the wear, too. This is the south side.

Here’s the front of my garage.

The back of my house. And Leo, once again looking on.

The solution to my problem? Hiring someone to paint my house. I chose Student Painters for the job. They’re a company of college students who’ve been professionally trained and are insured. They use Sherwin Williams paints and really know what they’re doing. They started the job at 7:30am yesterday and worked until 5pm. They returned today sometime after 8am and were done just after 5pm. I won’t have the final pictures until tomorrow (too cloudy for nice photos when they were done) but I’ll post the “during” and “after” photos tomorrow.

When I got home from school today, I started making peach ice cream. I started with Elsa’s Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream recipe and modified it a bit. So far, it tastes good. I think I should have cut out some of the Half & Half, however, since the mixer became over full once it was done freezing. And it’ll be interesting to see how the texture goes when I try the set ice cream tomorrow. Here’s the recipe, for those curious:

3 cups of Half & Half (I think probably 2 1/2 cups would have sufficed)
4 peaches, peeled and then pureed
1 small pkg of Egg Beaters
3/4 cup of Splenda

Mix and pour into ice cream mixer. 25 minutes later, voila!

Some of the ice cream stuck to the side of the ice cream freezer bucket, so I let it sit a bit and later poured the somewhat thawed goo into a cup. Mmmm, peach milkshake! 🙂

Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll figure out the calories and whatnot. And let you know how the final thing turned out.

EDIT: Before you try this recipe out, wait until I get the kinks worked out. I ended up with white ice that tastes of peaches instead of peach ice cream. I think I sprained my wrist scraping enough “ice cream” out into my bowl.