Today was my twice-yearly dentist appointment. I’ve been going to the same guy for nearly 30 years. He made a bundle of money from my parent’s teeth¹, but has been pissed off that he hasn’t been able to do the same with my sister and me². After the dental hygienist finished x-raying and cleaning my teeth, he popped in to give me the $28 “adult exam.”³ That’s 5 seconds of poking about in the mouth, 5 seconds of moving my tongue around, and some sage advice. To improve the quality of my teeth, I’m to start drinking 6 Mt. Dews a day and eat lots of caramel. 😉

The caramel bit is tempting, but goes against my Portion Control Project. Mt. Dew, OTOH – blech! I can’t believe I used to drink that. I’ll stick with water from now on.

I can always tell when April is here – my work calendar is filled to the brim, the seniors have turned their brains off, the weather is alternating gorgeous and icky, and I don’t sleep well… Actually, that last one seems to be true most of the year. 😉

Anyway, I’m glad April’s almost over, but then there’s May. And in some ways, May is even worse than April. I’ve already figured out the physics lesson plans from now until the end of their stay (they get out WAY too early, if you ask me!) What I do is start with the last actual day that I’ll see them (May 24th in this case) and work backwards. Final exam on the 24th, the Dreaded Beaker Test the 3-4 lab periods before then, squishing magnetism & nuclear physics to 3 days, max, etc. etc. They had a test last Monday (which I’m almost done grading) and they’ll have a test this coming Friday. There’s only one more test of them after that (on electronic circuits – an easy-peasy test, actually). The Dreaded Beaker Test will then be the last actual test grade. And my final exam is fun – it’s all Wile E Coyote questions. “The Coyote pushes a boulder off of a cliff that’s XXX m high, but he falls instead. How fast is he going right before he hits?” and things like that. Sure, it’s short answer, but since my last day with them is the 24th but they don’t actually graduate until Memorial Day, I have a bit of time to get them graded.

In the “Woohoo” side of things, I got my very first grant awarded today! It’s the first one I’ve written and, as grants go, it was pretty easy to write. I worked with the business/computer teacher (hereby known as MBA) and we wrote one to get Macromedia MX 2004 for our school. It’s $2500 for a 500 computer license and as we’ve only got 270 computers in the school, that’s practically a site license. 🙂 MBA and I will set up a Technology Club or somesuch and train HS kids in how to train the elementary kids how to use the programs. I can just see the little kids flipping when they realize they can make their own animation with Flash. And the HS kids are thrilled we’re getting something other than FrontPage XP which has been a pain in the ass on our network. (I could go into a fine rant about that program, but since we’re replacing it, I won’t have to – ha! Take that, Micro$oft!)

So, back to the busy grind tomorrow. If I seem sporadic in updating my LJ, at least you’ll have an inkling why. 🙂

I’ve mentioned before about my cool co-workers. Well, tonight was the Louisiana Boil that was held at the home of the Fishers. My former first grade teacher and my former industrial arts teacher. I call ’em Marsha and Gary now. 🙂 Their daughter and son-in-law and several other teachers and spouses were present.

It started around 6:30 and I came in with my home-made Bailey’s Irish Cream Ice Cream. One of the ladies (wife of our former principal) brought some heavenly bread and some oils & spreads and we munched on those. I tried some Zinfindel and then some Riesling, but decided that, though they wanted to taste like sour dough, they just didn’t. Guess wine just isn’t for me. (Raw sour dough, OTOH – yum!) Eventually, everyone was present and the rice was ready, so we started with Gumbo. I sat with three ladies and we talked about careers and computers and travel and stuff. The gumbo was very good eats.

Meanwhile, Gary was out putting the various things into the Louisiana Boil. He had a huge metal pot that was on a propane burner and he had things timed for when each ingredient was to be added. In the Boil were mussels, shrimp, crab legs, crawdads (crayfish, crawfish, whatever you want to call ’em), corn on the cob, taters, and something green (beans, I think – I didn’t eat anything green tonight). He added spices as well, but I don’t know what. All I can tell you was that everything was great. Marsha had melted butter which she portioned out for everyone. Emily, Megan and Tammy were my eating mates this time. Emily (Gary’s daughter) taught us how to eat the crawdaddies. They were OK, but I much prefer lobster. Lot more meat for the same amount of work. The crablegs were good enough that butter wasn’t needed. The shrimp and mussels were good too. I dipped the corn in the butter most of all. 🙂

After the seafood, it was brownie & ice cream time. I got to show off Elsa’s wonderful Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream recipe. Everyone loved it. And they ate it all. Woohoo! And all throughout the eating there were many conversations. To cap the evening off, Gary & Marsha danced a Cajun waltz and then a Cajun jig. They were really impressive. (They’ve been taking ballroom dancing, and it shows.)

It was nearing 10:30 when I decided to head out. The party was still going, so they’re probably still at it. Poor Emily and Chris have to drive back to Columbus tonight – that’s an hour and a half at least. Bleh! Glad I lived just 15 minutes away. Time for me to veg the rest of the night. 🙂

I could write about the week (one of *those* weeks) or the nice night out at BW3’s to celebrate the end of one of *those* weeks. Or about Leo. But I’m in a bleh mood. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to write about the Louisiana Boil and the garage sales that I’ll be going to tomorrow.

Gah! I can somewhat understand a Doctor Who/Buffyverse crossover as those are two series that I watch often and would sort of work together. But last night I had a Remington Steele/Black Books crossover! (WTF???) I don’t remember a whole lot of details (thankfully) other than by the end of the Holt & Steele bit, they were in the desert with a scantily dressed African native who looked like James Brown on a bad hair day. He was showing them how to find water from the desert sands by using what looked like a giant wire hair pick (a bit bigger than a rake) which was pushed into the sand and drawn forward. Any water in the sand was then brought up near the surface. Poor Bernard Black, OTOH, was the focus of some woman’s revenge and by the end she’d burned his flesh off and he was a walking, smoking (cigarette, that is) skeleton who explained to her that she must have been wrong about him or else he’d be dead by now. As intrigued as I was to find out if Bernard gets his flesh back when he’s vindicated and if Steele & Holt were going to escape the desert, I did have to pee (for real). So I looked at the display on the DVD player (gee, this was a movie?) and had only watched an hour and 12 minutes thus far but still had an hour and 32 minutes to go. So I stopped the movie and woke up.

Gah – my brain! My brain!

(Actually, the one thing this dream has done was made me want to see some Remington Steele!)

I think last night’s dream takes the cake as far as strange TV-related dreams go. I’m reading Usenet about the upcoming Doctor Who series. (That, in itself, is odd since I haven’t been on Usenet in ages.) I hear tell that the companion has been cast, but it’s still a secret. And the person playing the companion is currently in hospital for something or other. So people online are working on figuring out which hospital and which celeb it must be. The term for this person is “Patient One.”

So, switch to the producer of the show (who looks a bit like a cross between Adam West and Anthony Zerbe) as he discusses stuff with someone else (Russell T Davies, maybe?) They decide to use a stealth mode to tell the person that they’ve got the part. So switch views to a hotel room. Knock on the door and it’s two call girls and two men dressed as the TV Batman & Robin (though thankfully the Robin character vanishes quickly when my brain realizes there’s no reason for him to be there). So the future companion of Doctor Who steps back and I can finally see who it is. It’s James Marsters (still looking remarkably Spike-ish).

One of the call girls (who’re both dressed as French maids – I told you this one takes the cake) explains that the person dressed as Batman (actually the producer) will pie Marsters in the face if he doesn’t give Batman $20. Well, the thing is, Batman has pies in both hands (and no, not cream pies, cherry pies), so Marsters has to put the $20 in Batman’s mouth. And then he gets pied anyway… I then stop the video that I’ve been watching on my computer and move back to Usenet, surprised that they aren’t talking about the new companion. Only they are, actually. I just needed to refresh.

So, as I’m waking up from this dream, I try to puzzle out Marsters as the companion of Eccleston’s Doctor. And realize that both of them look rather emaciated and so would be an odd-looking pair. Then I finally came to my senses and realized, thankfully, that it was all just a dream. I mean, James Marsters as Rose???? 😉

One picture is worth a thousand “ughs”!

Trina’s morning task – bleh!

Anyhoo, I’m done moving bracken and branches and mowing the lawn and cleaning out the litter boxes and only have 2 more hours of laundry to do, so I’m off to have a late lunch/early supper.

This morning, I was going to do yard work (not something I often do) which was trimming shrubs and mowing the lawn. I started out well, trimming the shrubs with my electric trimmer. Only nearly cut off my fingers once when I happened to wave to Leo who was sitting in a bedroom window and watching me. As I made my way around to the back of the house, I found one of my shrubs had been invaded with a weed-tree (it’s a tree of some sort, but I don’t want it there, so it must therefore be a weed). That required getting out my saw.

Heck, while I had my saw out, I thought, I should get rid of those weed-trees between my place and the neighbors (the neighbors who aren’t my parents, that is). So I sawed and sawed and moved branches out and sawed some more. Then I thought “that damn Lilac bush is in the way of my clothes line” and decided to start hacking away at it. From my neighbors who *are* my parents, I borrowed a really nice set of shears (great use of the lever in these shears) to cut the branches 1 1/2″ and less in diameter. But the really thick lilac branches were too thick for the shears and would take too long with the saw. “An ax!” I thought. So I went down into dad’s basement and found his ax. And for the first time in my life, I used an ax to cut wood. I felt so independent!

(In a phonecall with my sister, she was aghast to discover that I did this with only Leo around to dial 9-1-1 in case anything had happened to me. And as Leo was back inside the house at the time, even he would have been unable to help. The folks, BTW, are in Pennsylvania this weekend at a Connecting Families weekend.)

As I hinted at in the parenthetical thought above, Leo got to spend some time outside today. I put him on his leash and draped it through the hose and he spent half an hour or so sunning himself and investigating the steps. He eventually got himself loose and lay in the shade, so I figured he was ready to go back inside. He put up no fuss as I took him back inside and he spent most of the rest of the time watching me from the kitchen.

Anyway, by the time I’d hacked away about 1/3 of the lilac bush (but still not enough to get my clothes line through) I was exhausted and it was after 1pm. I picked up and returned all of the tools to their respective places – and damn, just remembered that I left the folks garage open. I’ll go close it after I finish this LJ. Then I took a bath, put on some clothes (shorts – woohoo! sandals – woohoo!) and went off for Chinese Buffet. I’ll clean up the branches and mow the lawn tomorrow, I guess.

After lunch was shopping and after shopping was home again. I made Bailey’s Irish Cream Ice Cream with my ice cream machine – thanks to elsaf for both the ice cream machine and the wonderful recipe. If you have an ice cream machine, give this recipe a try!

2 cups whipping cream
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup Bailey’s Irish Cream

Freeze in your ice cream machine.

Good stuff! I just had some (though still runny – it’ll be solid tomorrow.) Anyhoo, time to go and shut the ‘rents garage!

So I’ve been playing around with Component, the style I use for my LiveJournal, and I managed to create a “Random Sylv Picture” component. Click here to see my main LJ page and scroll down under the silly poem. Every time the screen is refreshed, you’ll see a new picture. There’s only 7 pictures there so far, but I’ll add more as I have time. To begin with, I’m just taking pictures from my Sylv Site, but I might add more later on.

I’d like to thank dianna_wills and s2component for doing the ground work that allowed me to get this component done. 🙂

Mmmmm, Sylv-y goodness! 🙂

Mmmmmm – after a LOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG day at work, it’s nice to sit back with your mates and drink an amaretto sour. We had parent/teacher conferences tonight, which meant we were at the school from 7:30am until 7:00pm. But since we worked a second day today, we have tomorrow off. I’m gonna sleep in, then go to a tech meeting. (What is it with me and going to meetings on my time off?????)

Anyhoo, after the long day, I went off to meet the usual lot at BW3’s. I ordered an amaretto sour (which I tasted when mom got it the last time she was there and decided I liked) and 4 boneless wings. Turns out on Thursdays they have their boneless wings for only 40 cents, so I spent $1.60 plus tax on my wings and Gary bought my drink, so it was a cheap evening for Treen. I liked the amaretto sour, though it took me a long time to drink it. (Just as well, I had to drive home yet.) I also drank water while eating and drinking. Made it home OK, too. 🙂

So, off to play more of Diablo II and then to bed.