2008 in Review

2008?

Hello friends! Well I can’t say 2008 was uneventful. We traveled to Florida twice and Ohio three times.

I got to see all my siblings this year, most of my cousins and my parents several times.

Fresh starts…

My nephew Bobby (Craig’s oldest) has graduated from high school and has started at Ohio State as a sophomore. He is still trying to choose which type of engineering he will specialize in. See the attached video to see him play the marimba. Talent, brains and just turned 19—I’m so proud (and a little jealous)!

Also, Diane and Jeff bought a computer store near Melbourne, Florida. Di is doing the accounting for her business and has got a second new, ocean-front accounting job. They and their two girls are staying with Jeff’s parents until I sell their house here. What a change!!

I took singing “lessons” for the first time in early 2008. It was an improv/ harmonizing class. I believe I was the most conventional and most conservative person there! (For those of you who know me, that’s saying something!) I’m happy to know I have a lot of room to grow in to the true hippie that I feel I am deep inside. (I’m already hippy—that’s a start!)

I kind-of redecorated Reese’s room—I really just replaced her baby furniture, but Will was very jealous, so… I totally redecorated Will’s room. The only things that remained of his old room were his mattresses and carpet. He now has an L-shaped glass desk, gorgeous black bed, dresser (which Travis refinished) and floor-to-ceiling black shelving unit. Marc (Grandpa) painted the room for Will and we topped it off with three, life-sized clone trooper stand-up posters mounted on the walls. (To be honest, I could have left out the rest and just put in the posters and he would have been happy.) I know this is uncharacteristically domestic of me—that’s why I’m so excited that I pulled it off. Now I don’t have to decorate anything for another ten years. We take turns going into Will’s room and wishing it were ours.

What was old is new again…

I started teaching again after taking a twelve-year break. I teach seventh grade English language arts and it’s great! It’s a fun age (really) and the school is as good as a private school. It’s like winning the teaching lottery.

I also got to see about two dozen old friends that I went to school with in Ohio. This outgoing trombone player/ mathematical genius hosted a big outdoor bash for dozens of former band members and their families. The West M folks spanned five or six graduating years. Even our old band director was there! (He was a very young band director—I never even realized that until this shindig!) What poetic justice that the band folks turned out to be so successful and cool.

Oh yeah, and legging are coming back in style. (Blah—see hippy comment above.)

Sad things…

I lost my 98 year-old grandmother. She was the last remaining child of the eleven. (This is why I’m related to half of Hopewell, Ohio). She lived a long life and had her wits until the end. She was even in her own house (thanks to a great deal of dedication and sacrifice from my mom and her two sisters, Carol and Rhea). As sad as I am about her death, I have to appreciate what an extraordinarily full life she led.

My best friend moved to Florida to open a computer store. (See “Fresh Starts”.)

Real estate has tanked. I had planned on going back into teaching in 2009 anyway (I had kept-up my certs for when Reese started kindergarten) but had to rearrange my plans a little. Luckily I love the teaching position I’m in!


The status quo…

Reese and Will are doing well in school.

Will is a patrol this year. He gets to school early and protects the citizens of Evansdale Elementary. He has also taken at least five field trips this year and has several more planned. Fifth grade has been good to him! He got his Halloween costume early and was a clone trooper for Dragoncon. He has an uncanny ability to look right past the half-naked alien ladies and focus instead on the robots!

Reese is either in a “phase” where she irritates her preschool teacher about three times a week or she’s starting a career as a class clown. She is ridiculously happy, open and a lot of fun to be around. I think we’re in for a rough 15 years or so.

Adonis (AKA Travis) is doing well. He travels a lot for his job. In 2008, he traveled to: New Port News, Virginia; Raleigh and Salisbury, North Carolina; Boston, Massachusetts; Jacksonville and Lake Mary Florida; Greenville, South Carolina and Salt Lake City, Utah. Most of that took place in the first six months! He hasn’t played much pool or golf this year. I’m hoping he’ll get back on a pool league in 2009. He wants to get back into cycling.

Travis is still working from home. Despite all the travel listed above, his company has had a slow few months; however, he will be travelling for three weeks in January so it seems to be finally picking-up. Talk about a mixed blessing…

We still love living so close to Travis’s parents. It’s great to have them as a part of our everyday lives. I also have the distinction of being in book club with both of my mothers-in-law and Travis’s aunt.

Christi still has her Aldabran Tortoise farm. In case you didn’t know, my sister raises rare giant tortoises in South Florida. (These tortoises are the largest species of land tortoise in the world and are native to the Aldabra Islands in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa.) She has finally hatched a baby one this year-- with the help of a surrogate mother tortoise, of course. I’ll have to devote a later entry to her and her shelled clan.

Kim is in the high desert of San Diego. In April of 2008 she got a new bird (an Umbrella Cockatoo). Since Joe and Kim plan to move when they retire in a couple years, they’ve been enjoying the beach and their beautiful house while they still have it. She has an incredible garden and grows herbs, avocados, and dozens of vegetables—she was obviously adopted.

My Fabulous 40th and the wrap-up…

I was sick with a cold-like malady for the entire month of October. I spent most days looking forward to my 8:30pm bedtime honey-lemon-whiskey toddy with Benadryl chaser. My fortieth birthday was, therefore, understated. I plan to remedy that on Travis’s 40th in June of 09.

To wrap-up my year, I have finally learned to hula hoop and still play a ridiculous amount of on-line Scrabble. I think I’m improving, however, every time I get a little cocky, I go down to the Tucker Rec Center and let the septuagenarian tournament players beat a little sense into me. I would like to start a Scrabble club at school this year or next.

I've done my best to make this entry sound like a "Holiday Form Letter" since most of you didn’t get Christmas cards (sorry!) I hope this will be a sufficient alternative. Please feel free to comment or leave a message on Facebook about your 2008 and your upcoming plans for 2009.

Happy New Year!

I have finally found a disadvantage to having a female presidential candidate— the mandatory interview with Katie Couric. In Katie’s quiz on 60 Minutes last night, she asked Hillary Clinton about boys (Barack and Bill) and diet. She lobbed softballs like “do you like Barack Obama?” and “how do you stay healthy on the campaign trail?” In the same 60 Minutes episode, Steve Kroft asked Barack Obama questions like, "how do you plan to beat John McCain?" And "how can you call yourself an underdog when you are leading in delegates?" Recently Hillary Clinton replaced her campaign manager; I’m guessing it’s because she arranged that televised People magazine interview.

Not English Idiom

OK, the hard part about English grammar is the many verb tenses, right? It is stressful if you ever actually have to think about verb tense. (Was that last sentence in the present, present perfect or present progressive?)
I have found some even more nefarious villains in our language, however. They have been billing themselves as innocent little helpers; so insignificant, in fact, that they are not capitalized in a title. I am talking about prepositions. Their job? Explaining how a noun or pronoun relates to another word.

As we huddled around the woodstove at the schoolhouse back in Gratiot, Teacher used to tell us that a preposition was “anywhere a squirrel could go.” (Sorry—I keep forgetting I’m not Laura Ingalls Wilder.) What would that squirrel think if it knew that the part of speech that made it famous was robbing non-native English speakers of precious points on the SAT? Probably nothing—squirrels are pretty stupid.

I realized prepositions were a problem when I recently taught SAT Writing and Grammar to a class of Korean-American students. I was having trouble explaining why some of their answers were incorrect. About two-thirds of the time, prepositions can be taken literally—just visualize that squirrel on the rail, going through the woods or riding in a Ferrari. The other ones are problematic, however. They just sound right to a native speaker, which means they just have to be memorized by one who is not. The answer key simply says “not English idiom”—how helpful.

English is rife with idiomatic phrases that way-lay ESL speakers. Margarita, a woman in my book club, says that her husband thought she had been calling him a pig for years. Every time she made a new dish, she would ask him to be her guinea pig. Imagine his relief to find out that he was just an experimental subject instead!

Back to prepositions…
Does one work “in” or “at” a factory? Why do we say in the morning, in the afternoon and at night? If one were to say “I have trouble sleeping in the night” an English speaker born in America would notice that it was an unusual phrase or not an English idiom. (Best to take some Ambien and avoid the whole scenario; what’s more American than taking a highly advertised prescription drug?)

OK, so which is right? I work in my father’s factory or I work at my father’s factory? It’s the latter. The word in usually means "within a geographical place or enclosed area”; in this sentence, the preposition refers a location that involves a specific activity, so at is correct. Damn you, squirrel!

New Year’s Resolution: Resume this Blog.

Here are some things (and people and places) I discovered in 2007:
The Atlanta Botanical Garden
The movie Waitress
Writer, director and actress Adrienne Shelly and her tragic demise
The shortest and smartest 3-year-old in Atlanta (and she happens to be mine!)
The Shakespeare Tavern
The music of the 70's (I have rediscovered the music of my youth as I’ve been faking a lot of seventies songs on the piano)
Universal Healthcare as practiced in other countries (via the movie Sicko, not 1st hand experience)
La Madeleine
Showtime (Weeds, Dexter, Californication)
The ridiculous number of Transformer toys
Key Cinema Sunday
The I-Pod Nano
Khaled Hosseini
Facials
People either love or hate Christmas carols
Café Bombay (I can put away some goat!)
Vegas, Baby!(For our 10th Anniversary)
Marilyn Manson had a terrible childhood
There are bad movies made in England too—they just don’t make it over here very often
Adrien Brody is sexy
So is Richard Roeper (and to think I squandered my time on the cruise with him back in 2003)
Northside Tavern
Baba Ghanoush
Third and fourth graders are given too much homework
Colorado Springs
Manitou Springs
You need at least a week for a decent beach getaway
The closest hospital to Edisto Beach is 40 miles away in Charleston, SC.
Nine-years-old must be a growth milestone for boys
I’ve taken my last trip on a Greyhound.
Some airlines are better than others. (All are better than Greyhounds!)
The Georgia Aquarium
I hate housework (OK—I knew that before 2007)
I can now French braid someone else’s hair

What did you discover in 2007?

Hi there. I’m sorry it’s been so long. I have written a couple of drafts and never posted them, so in my mind I have submitted something. One of them was a list of everything we’ve read so far in book club. I’ll post that eventually.

Today I’m a little ticked that one of my favorite Vietnam protest songs “Sunshine” by Jonathan Edwards (not to be confused with the 18th century theologian or the North Carolina Senator) is being used to peddle Jeeps. The commercial cuts it down to a chipper beach ditty to which the Jeep travels through time. The version below is the real song though the video is probably not what Mr. Edwards envisioned either. There’s also live version on youtube, but Reese really liked this one. (Between Will and Reese, we have at least half of these toys!) The dirty laundry and the homework lend authenticity too. To be honest, this is the video I would have made when I was 12. (If I had been born 25 years later, that is.)

Sunshine Stuffed Animal Video

I've always though it was a good song for the feminist movement.

My mother-in-law e-mailed this to me...

Subject: Bogus tick warning

If someone comes to your front door saying they are checking for ticks due to the warm weather and asks you to take your clothes off and dance
around with your arms up, DO NOT DO IT!! THIS IS A SCAM!! They only
want to see you naked.
I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid.

Hey-- I ranked second in Mig's limerick contest!
Click on the link to see all the entries.
(I rated for quantity rather than quality.)

Can't wait 'til next Valentine's Day? Challenge
your inner-Shakespeare (or inner-Calvin Trillin)
on Quickmuse. If you get inspired let me know,
I'd love to read it.