Busy as a Bee

Sorry guys! I've not had much time for reading blogs, let alone writing them this weekend. First, Hub took me out to dinner for an early anniversary on Friday, since he leaves next week for a long business trip. Then we had a little party that night to celebrate the fact that our really close friends found out they're having a baby boy! It was the day of the 20-week ultrasound.

Then Saturday, we had a friend's birthday party and Hub took me shopping all afternoon. :) For the party I made bacon brownies and raspberry mojitos. Both turned out well and were absolutely delicious. And apparently my right leg was also delicious, as it's covered in mosquito bites.

And today. Happy Father's Day to my awesome, spoiled-me-rotten-while-growing-up dad! He and my stepmom came over for a late lunch. Hub's parents are on vacation. Hub grilled tuna steaks and some veggie kabobs. I made a peach and raspberry custard tart. There are no pictures. We nommed it all. I'm crap at taking pictures of food I make before it's devoured. I need to get better at that!

Hope you all have had a great weekend. I shall return full-force to the Interweb world Monday. I'm pretty sure of that...

Also, I blame 3 World Cup games per day for much of my lack of productivity. Those guys are so fit!

...But They'll Never Take My Freedom!

**Warning: Profanity-Laced Post Ahead** 

Today was the last day with students. I have been in classrooms for seven years and teaching full-time for five. As you probably know, I really do love my job. It's where I'm meant to me. I have a passion for kids - guiding them, caring for them imparting my knowledge to them. But this year has been the worst school year ever! It's like the Herdmans infiltrated the minds of the frakking sixth grade this year and tried to make our lives a living hell. Seriously, I've never taught a worse group.

These kids took, took, took, and never gave a shit. I went through more school supplies than ever before, and I teach in a fairly good middle-class community.  I started out the year with 600+ pencils and ended the year with 10. I don't even want to know what the kids were doing with them. How irresponsible can you be? They smeared glue sticks on my floor and desk. They stole books from my classroom (and from other teachers' as well) and were found "left" all over the school. One was even found soaking wet on the floor of the boys' restroom. No telling...

They were apathetic. They didn't care about their learning. I've always been able to encourage students to take ownership of their learning and make it relevant to "real life," but this group would have none of it. Very few students even showed a glimmer of personality. My honors class, which is usually a highly-motivated, enthusiastic, creative bunch of kids were mostly bumps on a log with their noses stuck in books. I couldn't even get them involved in activities this year.

Needless to say, after a few months of apathy and disrespect (for people and property), I lost most of my motivation to be a "good" teacher. I still cared about the students, but I was starting to care less and less about what I was teaching them. Yes, please, write me a three-paragraph essay that tells me how to do or make something. Seriously, district? This is your idea of a GOOD writing assignment? i was just lucky that the second half of the year meant teaching how to use non-fiction resources, how to do research, a simple novel study, state testing review, and a couple of big, time-consuming projects. I didn't have to put forth much effort. When the students don't appreciate the effort put into the lesson, I'm less likely to make an effort.

There were some super sweet students in this group who got overlooked because of all of the ass-hats that spent most of their time in detention or suspended. I've never had this many students with bad discipline records, ever! And I had a student who almost went to juvenile a few years back! Back to those few good ones. They're the ones who I still tried to reach, but their classmates made it damn near impossible. They're the ones who I actually took the time to sign their yearbooks this week. They're the ones who came by to give me hugs today. They're the ones I hope actually come back to visit me once they're older. They're the handful I'm going to miss.

{via}

That all being said, they did not kill me this year. I have survived. I will no longer teach these students again. If they ever darken my doorway in the future, it will be simply to visit, not as a student. As of 12:00 pm EDT today, the students of Hellclass 2010 are on summer break, and that means I, too, am free! Sure, I have to return for a few days of teacher work next week, but those days are easy. I'm not focusing on that, I'm focusing on my 12 sweet weeks of freedom.

You'll probably be seeing me way too much for my own good online now! But it will definitely be fun. And less stressful.

Photoshop Confessions

Out of boredom and randomness, two things I'm great with, I decided to subject you to my AWESOME Photoshop skillz!

And in doing so, confess a few things.

Yes, it is true.

I have had conversations with a webcomic writer and it's made my day!

So easy to please...

Don't we all have those days? 

Comic panel /via

The Geek Chronicles: The Final Chapter?

 /via

Part 4: And So The Story Goes 

Check out {part 1} {part 2} {part 3}

My husband is an awesomely geeky guy who found the geek girl inside of me and brought her back to life. He introduced me to Firefly. He bought me geeky t-shirts. He took me to see Star Wars: Episode 3. He bought me comic books.

He proposed to me by hiding my ring in a ridiculously obscure German novel that I in no way would have ever wanted to read!

He allowed me to be a lit geek in our wedding, too! As we are not religious people, but had a religious ceremony to appease the parents, I had to put my own touch on it and not have a scripture reading. Instead, I had a good friend, who is also a lit geek (Ph.D. candidate, in fact) read an awesome poem by an awesome poet. 

We've been married for (almost) four years now. We go to midnight premiers of comic-book movies. We play table-top RPG and board games. We spend Sunday mornings watching episodes of Firefly or Doctor Who with freshly baked Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. We spend ridiculous amounts of time dreaming up ways to make geeky costume ideas come to fruition (He's dead-set on being Jayne for Dragon*Con). We have creepy Tim Burton figurines decorating the living room of our house. He's my best friend, and I'm his, and we happily inhabit this cocoon of geek we have spun.

This stands as the final chapter to date, but I guarantee you, it will not end here.

/via

And so, to bid you farewell for reading the many parts of my disjointed story, I leave you with this:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
by e. e. cummings

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                      i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

(text via Poetry Foundation)

One Down...

...and 100 more to go!

I was able to completely mark one thing off my 101 in 1001 list this weekend and mark a few as "in progress".

Yay for me! 

The garden is started. I've got some herb sprouts transplanted (basil, thyme, rosemary) and some seeds in (cilantro, dill, and mint). Flowers are in, too. I just hope that I can keep them alive. If this works, it'll be the first time I can grow things successfully since I was a kid! I have managed to keep my dog alive for 2 and 1/2 years, though. :)

I've gotta go get a few tomato plants, probably next weekend, but it's started!

It Takes Three Legs to Make a Tripod

So, in honor of being tagged by the awesome Melissa over at who says i can't? I am answering things about myself that come in groups of three. And I'm also stealing inspiration for my title from hers, because I'm tired, it's Friday afternoon, and I can.

Three Names I Go By
Kara
Mrs. E
Thrace (see here)

Three Jobs I've Had
6th grade English teacher
physics tutor
lifeguard

Three Places I've Lived
Knoxville, TN
Wooster, OH
Bremen, Germany

Three Places I'd Like to Go
Spain
Japan
The Pacific Northwest

Three Favorite Drinks
GOOD coffee
Rum & Coke Zero
Sparkling Mineral Water


Three TV Shows I Watch
Big Bang Theory
Doctor Who
Bones

Three Favorite Old TV Shows
Animaniacs
Gilmore Girls (Can that count? Only a few years off the air...)
Clarissa Explains It All

Three Favorite Foods (I can only list three? How wrong!)
Mom's Potato Soup (this was our family's "chicken soup" cure-all)
Red Velvet Cake
Baked Macaroni and Cheese


Three Make-Up Products I Can't Live Without
Tarte Cheek Stain
Fresh Firebird Mascara
Chapstick

Three Things I'm Looking Forward To
Cookout + Bonfire + Drinking at the in-laws' tonight
Dragon*Con (We'd better end up going after all of this talk!)
The end of the school year (3 weeks away!!)

Three People I'm Tagging
Catherine because she's an awesome writer and fun Twitter friend
Ashley who is super cute and honest
Tabitha because she just started watching BBT, which makes her awesomer

The Geek Chronicles: Number Three

Part 3: The College Years

3 of 4 in an on-going series

Read Part 1 and Part 2 first

I was accepted in an honors program at a regional university about two hours from where I grew up, so I jumped at the opportunity. I was planning on going to medical school, and this university had a great one, plus it was a full four-year scholarship, so why not?!

I had a really heavy course load while in undergrad, but I still continued my search for Mr. Right Now and partied a bit. I started hanging out with some frat boys who convinced me to rush the sororities in the fall. I, to this day, still don’t think I was a good fit for a sorority, but I did anyway. In order to fit in at all, pretty much all geek-cred was checked at the door. My life was class, boys, sisters, tutoring, and drinking.

The Geek Chronicles: Part the Second

Part 2: In Which I Become Too Boy-crazy 

(A Continuation of Part One)

image /via

In high school, I continued my closeted geek activities, joining the school Math Team. I eventually made it into Mu Alpha Theta, a math honor society. I wasn’t the greatest math nerd on our team, but it was fun.

I also was a bit of an obsessed German student. I loved learning the language and culture so much, that I took it upon myself to independently further my studies at the library. You must remember, in the mid-nineties, there wasn’t much Internet. I used AOL for chatting, basically, at that point. I was a painfully active member of the German club and was even president for two years. I happily brought home countless ribbons and trophies for our state German competitions.

And I was a band nerd. I played flute, piccolo, bass clarinet, and contrabass clarinet. I have to say, though, at a school my size, with a band that size, it wasn’t horribly nerdy. I just gave up any hopes I ever had of being recognized by the “in-crowd.” Instead, I became a popular girl in the band crowd.

That had some perks, let me tell you. They’re called boys. Suddenly, I was getting lots of boy attention, some wanted, some unwanted, but by fifteen, I was SERIOUSLY boy crazy and couldn’t stop. Mid-nineties pop-punk and boys became my new, more mainstream-accepted interests.

Every once in a while, I’d indulge in something geeky, like a Star Wars marathon with the cousins, but I had subconsciously moved out of that stage.

The Geek Chronicles: Part One

Part 1: The Early Years

Once upon a time, there was an incredibly precocious little girl who grew up to be a teacher, wife, blogger, and lover of science fiction and fantasy. That girl is me. Welcome to my story.

The earliest nerdy thing I can ever remember was at the age of three telling my neighbors that raccoons were nocturnal. The mom didn’t believe I knew that word, so when questioned, I proceeded to tell her that it meant an animal that slept during the day and was awake at night. My parents should’ve seen it coming!