Ball and Biscuit by The White Stripes

So what is this song about? I dunno, but I love that guitar sound

I do believe I'm getting better, a little better, all the time

Sometimes getting older is not all bad.

When I first started teaching I relied heavily on several teachers for several years. How do I do this-and-such? Where can I find a whatnot? There was so much I didn't know, I didn't even know I didn't know it. You know what I mean? Now, there are a few teachers coming to me looking for answers. It's nice to be able to give that back and help out the new guy.

I remember trying to fix things when I was in my 20s. I always seemed to make matters worse, nothing was ever easy to fix. I'd have to call my Dad, then I would still have to take an extra trip to the store for another part. Or someone would have to fix it for me. Or worse yet, one of us would end up in the emergency room for stitches or metal in an eye.

But in the past year I've fixed my dryer twice and my washing machine once, without injury. And without further fuck-up-ery.
Way to go!

Now, to work on those preventative maintenance and redecorating skills.

I'm not as think as you drunk I am.

ok, maybe I yam.

A Different Moon

Erica and Joan have moon posts up. So I thought I'd share mine. Their eloquence is much greater than mine, so you'll have to settle for pretty pictures. Erica shares her memories of the moon and Joan shares her magic with words. I want to share my love of our universe with you. Here are a few different moons. I like to imagine what it would be like if one of these satellites were orbiting our planet.

But first:

Our moon is quite lovely, even if we only get to see one side of her. Here, for you, is the dark side of the moon:

See all those bright spots? Impact scars. Many more on the Dark Side that our view. There was a evil villain, Dark Seid, that tried to take over the world by moving the moon with a big engine, but Batman stopped him. Holy Impact Craters! What would we do without the moon? Alas, that's for another post.

Jupiter, on the other hand, has at least 16 moons. Imagine seeing that at night. Makes me very still and quiet to think about.

These are Jupiter's biggest moons, in no order:

Here's Callisto: which might have salt water oceans

And Ganymede: With all its cracks

And Io: See all those bumps? They look at bit like zits? Those are active volcanoes. This image is color enhanced to show topographical differences.

And Europa: The white is ice and the brown is uncovered rock. There might be water under all that ice, too.

And Saturn has many moons, too. Here is a composite:

Imagine sitting on your back porch, your favorite mug/glass of your favorite drink, staring at the night time sky to see 4, or 8, or even 16 moons in the sky. Lit against a back drop of billions and billions of stars. And somewhere in the background would be Earth.

You know, if this whole teaching thing doesn't work out I think I'll be an astronaut.

Oatmeal

Once, when I was a wee girl of 10 or so, my mother decided that homemade oatmeal would be a good choice for me for breakfast. But since I was the one getting myself up and ready for school, it was left for me to make my own.

And I haven't always been the HofUK, either. One evidently important piece of info that I was lacking was the proper water to oat ratio. Usually I was left with a gooey, glooey, grey-ey lumpy glob. But something I had learned at the time was

You don't Waste Food!

My parent were notoriously bad with money, and if there was food, by God you ate it, didn't matter if it tasted good or not. So I would choke down that oatmeal. I wish I'd known that if I'd only drank some water before or after my tummy wouldn't have ached so much.

By now eating oatmeal can be a form of punishment for me. I'm too cheap to buy the packs of instant, and they have waaaay more sugar than I want my kids to eat in the morning, so I buy the big tub of Quaker Oats. I put it in the microwave with more water than it says to add, and then put a big spoon of brown sugar with some cinnamon. And then sometimes I can stand it. But even if it doesn't taste good I still eat it, because

You Don't Waste Food.

I saw Alton Brown on Good Eats talking about the best way to make oatmeal. He said make it with heavy cream in a Crock pot-and let it sit all night. I just don't see me doing that.
For one thing- making oatmeal with heavy cream seems like it would negate all the cholesterol-snagging properties inherent in the cereal. If I remember correctly, oatmeal sort of traps the ooey stuff and pushes it along the old digestive track.
Also- I wouldn't have the wherewithal to set that bad boy up before retiring to bed. I can't even make my lunch the night before, How can I set up a Crock pot? And if I did go to all that trouble, I'd have to make a big pot of it, and it would probably just be me making it. And then I'd eat it all because (say it with me)

You Don't Waste Food.

Guess I'll just stick with my shredded wheat.

I got a rock and Roll heart

So the Marine gave me a couple of guitar books, one was about scales and riffs. Most still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I can muddle through a few tabs, have even tried my hand at what the book calls a "12 note blues riff". It's not great, and BB King would probably club me to death with my own guitar if he heard me, but it is a least recognizable as music.

There is so much I don't know about playing guitar, but Man! am I looking forward to learning.
Now, I'm gonna go try and figure out some more tabs....

It's all in the Touch!

A couple of years ago, the Hubby got me an Ipod Shuffle (The greatest present EVA, I tell ya!). It has been a faithful companion. Hours and hours of listening fun. And it still works. Mostly. It stops playing sometimes, and I have to reset it every few times I use it, but hey- it still does Exactly What I Want 15 times out of 16. I'm keeping it for my walks, too.

This year, my husband got my an iTouch.

Behold:

I could put about 6 hours of music on my Shuffle, on the iTouch I get 5 days of music!!

and pictures and video. Life is sweet.

one, two, three, floor

Some of my fellow teachers and I went to a Crisis Managment Session yesterday afternoon. I chose to medicate myself with Tequila and fried clams. Two. Tequilas, not clams. I didn't really count those. Then I came home and repeated the dosing, as per instructions on the package.
And it turns out that it doesn't take a lot of that shit to fix my wagon, tear me up and over, tear me outta the frame. etc etc etc. But there were no pictures, thankfully.

Sheesh, my head hurts.

And I get to go to the mall to shop this morning. Won't that be fun, boys and girls?

On a happier note, our Marine is home, safe and sound, for two weeks.

May your house be overflowing with love, joy, and a little Tequila this season...

2001, revisted

So December 17th was Arthur C. Clarke's 90th birthday. I actually knew that because of one of the book reports I was reading. but then I saw this news article and then it hit me: just because you're smart doesn't mean you are not a bit loony. He wants us to find evidence of extraterrestrial life. Which is all well and good, maybe life has started somewhere else, maybe chemo synthetic instead of photosynthetic. I'm just the Holder of Useless Knowledge, I don't have any of the good stuff.

But I bet if there are aliens they don't have jasper: this rock formed early in Earth's history when free oxygen was 1st available in the air and as far as I know doesn't form anymore. Our atmosphere is very different now, and any free oxygen is quickly trapped by something else. I could be wrong, (don't tell anyone) but I thought the only free, naturally occurring oxygen was in the ozone layer popping onto an O2 molecule and then popping off ever time UV hits it. Or maybe it's the other way around.

I wonder if they have Koolaid? Or sweet tea? Any civilized place should at least have sweet tea. Maybe not Koolaid. Hey, does that shit get in your nose every time you make it? Then an hour later when you sneeze you do a freak out 'cuz you have orange or purple snot? Me neither.

I wonder if they have an alien version of the Spears' sisters? I wonder if they want them. Sheesh, learn a lesson why don't you!

Any way, back to the original point, or at least the original thought that got me started: space travel. The second closest star to us is Proxima Centauri. It's 4.2 light years away from us. That's 186,000 miles per second times 60 seconds per minute times 60 minutes in an hour times 24 hours in a day times 365.25 days in a year times 4.2 light years times 186,000 miles per second and you get

2,465,279,712,000 miles away

or

2 trillion, four hundred sixty five billion, two hundred seventy nine million, seven hundred and twelve thousand miles away.

Now imagine driving there. The Space Shuttle's top speed, according to NASA, is 330 miles per hour. It would take 7470544581.8182 hours to get there.

Even at a tenth of the speed of light, 18,600 mi/hr, it would take
132,541,920 hours or
5522580 days

or

15, 120 years at that speed. Not gonna happen.

So, Mr. Clarke, have another cigar, and spend your time hoping for something possible, like Al Gore admitting he's a liar.

24

Apparently, if you Google "Zonker" and then go to page 24, of the many, many pages, you will find my site near the bottom. Some one needs a hobby, there in Bradenton, Florida. Shall I send you some homework?

Shrubbery

No, I'm not going on about Monty Python.
I'm in the middle of book reports and as a student writes

{so and so writer} has two children, {Yada Yada and Bozo}, they live in the shrubs in Chicago.

It's so hard to make a decent living and support your family these days.

Shrubbery, hehe.

3 days!

3 days until break, so close and yet so far

Things I learned whilst baking Cookies

Food Network (cue the choir) has a thing called the 12 Days of Cookies. You get an email every so often for a new recipe. Day Two was Florentines. They are made of almonds and sugar and butter and you can even drizzle some chocolate on top. What's not to love, right?

Here are a few things I learned:

1. When the recipes says finely chopped, they mean it.
2. Don't look at the cookies while they are cooking too much- it looks like little splats of dog vomit.
3. Tangerine zest isn't the same as orange zest, no matter how much I want it.
4. Uniformly golden brown doesn't exist. You go from a pale center to burnt in two eye blinks.
5. My children will find a way to be in the most inconvenient location at the most inconvenient time.
6. Stuck on wax paper adds a little extra something to the taste of the cookie.
7. The batch does not make 36 cookies.
8. Parchment paper and wax paper are NOT the same.
9. Wax paper smokes at 350 degrees.
10. The smoke alarm hurts my dog's ears.

This weekend: gingerbread houses, cuz I'm not insane enough....

Momma's don't LEt your Babies grow up to be eggheads

See that little sign on the right? The one about asplosions without awarnings.

Well, here's your warning.
Parents (and those of you that one day will be) please listen:

You are not doing your child any favors if you solve all his problems for him. I understand a helping hand, I do. You have experiences your child will definitely benefit from. But, if after 3 years your Darling Buddy still doesn't have enough credits to be called a freshman (that's 4 passing grades, BTW out of 24, for this kid), then you are not doing him any favors to get him extra chances to complete his work by asking the principal to put the kid in ISS (in school suspension) to complete all his work that he didn't do the 1ST 3 CRAPPING TIMES HIS TEACHER GAVE HIM THE CHANCE TO DO IT. Because, after three years he will suddenly decide to do all his work. Correctly. For me to grade. In one week. Because I have nothing else to do. And then the princ. says we should give it to him so we could tell the the mother we did everything we could for her child. Because holding him responsible for his own gottdamn actions has somehow been deemed not fucking good enough.


And in ten years the parent will still be supporting his sorry good-for-nothing-ass cause he won't keep a job, and just like Pavlov's dogs she's trained him to be a loser and he knows she'll keep taking care of him. And she'll blame every one but herself.
She needs to step back and say, "this is now your responsibility. When you begin to pass all of your classes, you may have TV, radio, Pillowcases, meat, music, soda, games, friends, heating and air conditioning, a door for his room, a computer, candy, hunting (fill in whatever he really likes here ), and a social life. If you are not progressing in you education when you are 18 then you will move out of my house and support yourself.
One of two things would happen. He would,

A. Begin to do his work and pass his classes, thereby having the good things that go along with responsible behavior,
or
B. He would drop out of school and get kicked out of his house.

But it would be his choice, his actions, his responsibility.

This is the type of crap that will make me quit teaching. When we stop holding kids accountable. Do you think it's like this everywhere?

Guitar update

fingers very very sore..... must play .... must play more!

I can do a passable G and trying to master C, D is not so bad....

must play, must play more!

My defintion of bad

It doesn't matter what this guy was telling me to do it, I would do it. He looks like he could really mess your butt up doesn't he?

I found him here

Prime Beef or Almost the Meaning of Life

The number 41 is an interesting integer, I do believe.

It is:

• the 13th smallest prime number,
• A spiral galaxy in Pegasus,
• Part of a Cunnigham chain ( but sounds like this guy),
• The last symphony by Mozart, according to the great Wiki Pedia.
  

Other random factiods about this number

• Metallica has sold over 41 million albums,
  
• Sperm swim about 41 kilometers and hour
  
• There are at least 41 million sperm per human ejaculate
  
• A.D. 41 was the final year of Caligula's rule
  
• Kwanzaa has been around for 41 years, 1st celebrated in California (figures, the Land of Fruits and Nuts)
  
• Keifer Sutherland (Jack Bauer) turns 41

And my darling Hubby, of Shadowscope Fame, is taking his 41st trip around the sun. Y'all make sure you go say Happy Birthday to him...


Many more, my dear, many more...