Thursday randomness.

Point foremost in my mind: Gilmore Girls should never have been made. I realize that this is a point of contention between myself and nearly every female I know, but really, it's hideous. I blame the writers and the people who came up with the thing in general. I realize that in my previous post I claimed to be an idealist, but the relationship between the mother and daughter in this show is far too ideal. I have a great relationship with my mom, but the fictionalized pair make us look like... I don't know, I can't even think of a comparison negative enough.

Meanwhile, my birthday was Tuesday, and as a consequence of this I have acquired LAMBIE SLIPPERS!!!!!!! They are fluffy and adorable.

Today my seminar English class ate at Greenville's latest greatest downtown restaurant: Handi Indian Cuisine. I got entirely addicted to Indian food while I was in England last year, and Handi is the closest approximation to authentic British Indian food I have so far found in America. The food and the service are both appallingly good, and now I have to save up to eat there once a week. Sorry Furman University; no more parking ticket fines going to you!

Meanwhile, if anyone has any favorite very short stories appropriate for reading aloud to ninth-graders, let me know. I'm lesson planning and you'd be amazed how difficult it is to find intelligent literary short stories whose plot does not entirely depend on sex and/or alcohol. I suspect this is due to the fact that most good authors depend on sex and/or alcohol to write. That's probably one of the qualifications for canonization.

I'm going out with friends tonight to celebrate my birthday; we're going to Molina's, a pretty classy (by Laurens standards) Mexican restaurant in TR. Should be exciting.

Pessimism sucks!

No really. I'm so sick of everyone naysaying everything. And this statement is kind of a big deal coming from me, as I would have previously classified myself as an eternal pessimist.

Idealism has fallen prey to a vicious cynicism (some would call it realism) in modern America. No one believes in marriage. Teachers hate their students. And we're all so jaded that we won't even vote because we say you just can't trust politicians. Or maybe we're just lazy.

Believe it or not, it's easier to just not believe. After all, if you don't hope for anything, you won't be disappointed, right? The unspoken side of that philosophy is that you'll never be happy either. In education, we talk a lot about "self-fulfilling prophecy," which, when applied to the classroom, basically says that your students will do what you really expect them to do. Studies have shown that when a teacher believes a student will succeed, he does, but another student of the same ability level fails just because the teacher believes she will. It's an unfortunate situation.

It's even more unfortunate though when you live your whole life expecting to fail. How will you ever succeed? It is our perspective that changes everything.

So now I choose to believe. In my students. In love. In my candidate of choice. In my future. And most importantly, I believe in my friends and my God and myself.

Laundry and assorted nonsense

I have been forced to do laundry today, as I am on my very last pair of underwear, granny panties included. So currently I'm sitting around waiting for that magic moment when I may go transfer my laundry from the two washing machines to the two dryers. I believe I may have to extricate someone else's laundry from the dryers, seeing as how, 20 minutes ago when I put my own laundry in the wash, the dryers still had 87 minutes to go (here at Furman you can set the dryers to run for whatever amount of time you wish, in 15 minute increments). I assume said person is attempting to avoid cooking tonight by having extra crispy tshirts for dinner.

I myself will be dining at the creatively named Business Etiquette Dinner being put on by the formidable Office of Career Services. The OCS is formidable mostly because their incessant emails make me beat my head against the wall multiple times a day. These are very friendly emails attempting to make me go out, get a real job and/or grad school acceptance letter, and make my way in the world. But, SURPRISE! I already KNOW what I'm doing with my life. In fact, I have not only my career planned, but my Master's and Ph.D. programs as well! Therefore, Sandra Clark, Head Honcho of OCS Emails, you may now cease and desist with clogging my inbox with 18 emails a day. Perhaps you could consider compiling all those lovely events and other news into one weekly email, so that I would not get carpel tunnel from hitting the "Delete" key.

My laundry has approximately 2 minutes left in the washer. I am debating whether I should fold the Dryer Fiend's clothes for him/her, or whether it would even matter since I'm not sure that one's t-shirt must be folded to taste like Extra Crispy Tide. Yummy.

Oops, my bad

So I realize I promised more blogs back in, oh I don't know, September-ish, but the reality is that life is choking me with a braided rope made of lesson plans, pointless projects, and senior seminar English papers. (Well, the truth is that there is only one major seminar paper, but to make it fit in the series it had to be plural.)

I have no time and therefore no life. It is an unfortunate situation. And parts of it are unpleasant as well.

I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the public school system in all its forms, including the way future teachers have to jump through 18 flaming hula hoops to become certified--and we get to pay money for that sort of fun! For example, I will soon have to have an FBI background check and official fingerprinting, which does NOT fit into my schedule at all (I will have to skip my EES lab to go to it), and I will be paying a total of $85 for this, $10 of which goes directly to Furman, as though I haven't handed them enough money over the past 3.5 years. And in a few more months, I will be taking the Praxis battery of standardized tests, which will run me about $350 or so, and to pass these tests, I have have to have satisfactory knowledge of only EVERY MAJOR WORK IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (plus a few originally in other languages). Of course, that wouldn't be so bad if I had time to study for said exams, but I'll be doing my Winter Term Practicum (read: student teaching) around the same time, so I'm pretty much screwed all around. Right now I'm just counting down til Spring Break, after which point I may be able to breathe again.

In somewhat more pleasant news, I am hoping to buy a house next year. Of course, there is the logistic problem of my not getting a paycheck until September (thanks again SC Dept. of Education), which means I can't get a mortgage until September, but I remain optimistic. It is an older home that has real fixer-upper potential, and I'm surprisingly excited about working on it. I think this is partially because if I didn't actually have to work on it, I'm not sure I would, and then I would essentially be living in someone else's house, which I think might be a bit creepy.

One final note: only one more week til my 21st birthday, huzzah!

After a 2.5 month hiatus...

The Token Redhead returns post-summer, as she now has reason to procrastinate via blog again.

So the two kittens I mentioned in my June post turned into 4 kittens after we determined that the mother wasn't producing milk, which subsequently turned into lots of time spent with bottles and poop and lots of money spent on formula and vets. Good times! They are now 11 weeks old, weaned, litter trained, and named--Ariel, Sebastian, Scuttle, and Flounder! Flounder is nicknamed Flounder the Pounder due to the fact that I felt it unfortunate that she should be named after a fish, but it seemed preferable to Ursula, and of course I had to keep the theme going.

In other news, summer was mostly working and raising the children, and it recently concluded with a 4 week stint with 9th graders at Berea High, where i will be doing my "co-teaching," as Furman insists on calling it. It has been entertaining, but even with all the frustration the experience entailed (as I've bent many an ear about), I still know that teaching is what I'm meant to do, so that is a good feeling.

That's all my tired and stressed brain can come up with at the moment. Shoutouts to my multiple friends studying abroad in the British Isles--I'm shamrock green with envy.

Stray Cat Maternity Ward

Well, only about a month after 3 kittens showed up and started eating at our house, courtesy of their stray mother who doesn't seem to like us humans much yet continues to eat our expensive cat food as though she were entitled to it, another litter arrived via yet another stray who won't let us touch her but eats at our house. There were 4 of these, 3 born in the Igloo pet house under our deck, and the runt born on the other side of the deck and for unknown reasons left there until my father found him and returned him to his mother.

Long story short, I have become a mother. The newest litter's mother is herself only about 6 months old and seems completely bewildered as to how this happened and why those large male cats were chasing her around in the first place. She abandoned two of the kittens, leaving them in the Igloo and moving the other two maybe 20 feet away. My mother and I watched for a while, and when it became clear that she was determined to no longer take care of them, I kidnapped them and have now become their full-time mom. Believe it or not, I am bottle-feeding them kitten formula every 3 hours, even in the middle of the night, soothing their upset stomachs, and letting them poop and pee on me without getting mad. Who would've known motherhood can change you so much?

It's one boy and one girl, both now 4 days old, and I haven't named them yet, as I haven't come up with anything I really like. Right now Flower and Thumper are my best choices, but I figure I have until they're at least a week old to think of something. And even though I don't really enjoy waking myself up to heat a bottle, it's really not as bad as I would have anticipated.

Forget the plums...

This is just to say
I didn't read the book
I was supposed to.

Forgive me,
I had no time left,
And sleep seemed more important.

Sanity Status Update

2 presentations and 1.5 papers down, 4.5 papers to go!

I had a group presentation yesterday on the Chinese American Experience for my novels class (we're reading The Joy Luck Club). Unfortunately this was perhaps the most politically incorrect group our professor could have possibly put together, and many of our group meetings consisted of Matt expressing his frustration with the cashier at the Rice Bowl not understanding his need for 20 pairs of chopsticks and Carolyn doing a pseudo-Asian dance to the theme song of Amy Tan's cartoon TV show about her "Chinese Siamese Cat." I could feel us losing point by the minute.

I also had a presentation this morning on the differences between English and French syntax. A thrilling topic I assure you, but at least one that I knew enough about to not have to spend entire days in the library. According to Roommate Laura I spent the whole presentation trying to push my rather short hair behind my ears. This is my standard in-front-of-people-anxiety habit, as evidenced by the multitudes of VHS tapes of me in plays--the donkey at the stable tugging on her hair, Alice in Wonderland flipping her hair behind her ears, Auntie Em attempting to pull the errant strands from her bun behind her ears. I thought I had conquered this issue, but apparently not.

Meanwhile, I have in fact managed to stay somewhat ahead of the game in this end of term madness. I wasn't up 'til 2 am this morning finishing my presentation, and those 1.5 papers I've completed aren't even due until Monday! (Nevermind that there are another 2.5 due that day too.) And I have a fairly solid idea of what I'm going to write about for the 2 papers due Wednesday. In fact, I think I'm so ahead of the game that now would be a delightful time to take a nap to congratulate myself. I mean, that's what all my friends who are already out of school are probably doing right now.

Summer Reading List

This is the list of books I am forcing LaurenFrances to read this summer. You should too.

Much Ado About Nothing : Shakespeare
The Sun Also Rises : Hemingway
The Color Purple : Walker
The Awakening : Chopin
My Sister's Keeper : Picoult
Maggie, A Girl of the Streets : Crane
The Handmaid's Tale : Atwood
How the Irish Saved Civilization : Cahill

That should do you for now. List of books I plan to read this summer will be posted once I have figured out what they are.

Kristen the Evil Technological Genius

I have just downloaded a ringtone of Sara Evans "Born to Fly" for my cell phone. This is my first ever purchased ringtone. Shh, don't tell my parents, to whom the bill will go. And parents, if you read this, ignore that last sentence and I owe you $3.

Hicks, Jesus, Beer, and BBQ

I have to admit, one Brandon Kinney handed me that title on a silver platter at the concert Saturday night. He was the opening opening act, and he wandered onto the stage wearing a plaid flannel shirt and a backwards baseball cap. It was a promising start.

He sang a total of four songs, before each of which a woman in a bikini top and the tiniest daisy dukes I've ever encountered strutted around the stage waving a big piece of posterboard with "Song 1/2/3/4" written in black magic marker. I swear I'm not making this up.

His first song was an ode to hickdom, creatively titled "We're Hicks."
The second song was about how Jesus must be coming back soon.
The third song was alternately about how good or bad life is and thus he needs a beer.
(Postlude to the third song--bikini girl made an extra appearance to bring him a bottle of beer and mop down his face with a towel.)
And finally, the fourth song was an innuendo-packed love song to a barbecue smoker. This is a direct quote:

I knew I had a winner
When I stuck my meat in her
For the first time.

No, I'm not kidding. And I can assure you that wasn't the worst of it. I can no longer hear the word "barbecue" without twitching.

After all this pain and suffering, we were rewarded with a spectacular performance from Sara Evans. To the persons who planned the concert line-up: she would have been a "real fine place to start," thank you very much.

Adventures in Nashville!

Yes I am indeed writing this post from my FABULOUS hotel room in Nashville, also known as The Room that Almost Wasn't. Story soon to follow.

This was yesterday: Went to class, walked back to the apartment where I packed (and later realized didn't pack my pajamas), then piled into a car with 3 other wonderful Furman females, and embarked on the 6 hour journey to Nashville, TN, where Laura the Roommate and Boy (Laura's fiance) ran the Country Music Marathon this morning.

So of course there was your typical fun long car ride that involved belting out assorted show tunes slightly off-key. Good times. Then we got to Nashville and registered for the marathon and proceeded to head to the Embassy Suites to check-in before dinner. After hauling our luggage inside, we were informed that No, there were no reservations under our name or confirmation number. Oh goody. And since there were 30,000 people running in this marathon, plus all their companions, plus a significant number of small children competing in a soccer tournament and their families all trying to cram into Nashville's normally-abundant hotel rooms, there was literally not a vacancy in the city. We know because we had 2 sets of parents and one boyfriend at home checking the internet, plus we'd called at least 10 hotels and stopped by 3 to beg in person.

At 9:30 PM (10:30 Eastern time), with no plan and no hope, we stopped at Jack-in-the-Box, where Laura called her mother to get her Tennessee cousins' phone number in the hopes that they would give us a place to stay. Several panicked phone calls, one vanilla milkshake, and 3 cheese sticks later, Laura's phone rang, and lo and behold, we were informed that our reservations were not at Embassy Suites at all, but at another Nashville hotel just a couple of blocks away. Apparently, Laura's mom was at her Supper Club and told those in attendance about our distress, and one of the other Supper Club ladies called up her friend, the wife of the Dean of Admissions at Vanderbilt, who talked with her husband, who was able to tell from our confirmation number what hotel we were supposed to be at. You can imagine how the wind from our sighs of relief shook the cash registers.

Now I ask you to remember the How I Almost Didn't Get to Paris story. Tell me, do I have a travel jinx on my head? I'm trying to shift the blame to Laura and Boy by talking about that other time they didn't get a hotel room... Yeah. Not my fault, I swear.

Thank God for almosts.

The HOTTEST thing in town...

So I had to go home today for a positively de-light-ful dentistry experience that involved digging holes in my gums, but before the reclining chair accompanied by sharp objects, there was...

CHINA STAR! Laurens's brand-new and wonderfully not sketchy Chinese restaurant.

Now you have to understand that previously Laurens had maybe 7 restaurants total, only one of which you would venture to take a guest to (the new-last-year Mexican restaurant), and the rest of which only true Laurens-ites dare to patronize. But then came China Star...

There is a buffet, complete with sneeze guards! And blue walls! And booths with the stuffing still in! And a soft-serve ice cream machine!

Needless to say, I ate a LOT.

What I am most confused by though is that there are apparently Asians in Laurens. I think lunch today was the first time I had encountered a person of Eastern descent in my alternately redneck/ghetto hometown. Although unlike most ethnic-food establishments, the China Star hires a wide variety of skin colors; I counted at least one each of Asian, Hispanic, and Pale. Quite PC of them.

And as a side note, Chinese donuts = sugary coated goodness.

Tragedy

Our prayers are with you, Virginia Tech.

Bad news for my future

So I was working on my SAT essay grader training today for Kaplan, and out of the 10 sample essays, I gave exactly 1 essay the same score as the professional graders. One. And that's because it was just horrible so you pretty much had to give it the lowest possible score.

Now recall that I am studying to be a high school ENGLISH teacher who will be grading lots and lots of ESSAYS. This is bad, this is very very bad.

New career goal: Busking in the London Underground with my trusty sidekick, Barnaby the Wonder Duck.

mmmmmmm

I'm standing around eating lukewarm leftover Hamburger Helper directly out of the skillet. Just thought someone should know...

Just in case you weren't aware...

I am dying a slow and painful death this term, in the form of 3, count 'em, THREE English classes. Yes I realize that this was a huge mistake, and I can assure you it is one I will never make it again. But for the time being, it's killing me.

Plus the 10-minute plays (now over, thankfully). Plus being the Editor of the Echo. Plus starting a new job. Huzzah! I am Wonder Woman personified!

I cannot keep up no matter what I do. And this term I'm really trying. But a novel + a paper + 20 poems/short stories + textbook reading + studying for an intense quiz every week just isn't working out so well. And I realize I'm whining. But by golly right now I deserve to whine!

(No, you're not imagining things, I did just write 'by golly.')

And now I have to go read and write some more. The end.

Why I love Roommate Jenn

This is how the practical joke went:

Last night Jenn and I were innocently standing in the kitchen about to make some cookies. We open the oven to discover, lo and behold, there is a piece of foil with large piles of sweet potato drippings on it from where Roommate Aubrie had baked sweet potatoes earlier in the week. Now we were just going to throw the things away mind you, when Jenn had the audacity to observe that these particular drippings were abnormally formed in the exact shape of... poop.

What came next was inevitable. We went through all the different people we could try to fool with our sweet potato poo, but eventually settled on Roommate Laura, as joking her did not involve much effort or walking on our part.

So the sweet potato poo made its way to the vanity area of mine and Laura's bathroom, piled itself into a distinctively poo-like pile, and awaited its prey. It took Laura quite a while to notice our little gift, but when she did, this is what happened:

Laura: Um, WHAT IS THIS IN OUR BATHROOM??????
Kristen and Jenn: What are you talking about?
(All travel to bathroom to observe sweet potato poo pile.)
Kristen and Jenn: We don't know.
Laura: Obviously, there is an animal loose in our apartment.
(Laura proceeds to hunt for said animal in various closets and under my bed.)

15 minutes of hunting later...
Kristen and Jenn: We should clean this up.
(Kristen and Jenn pick up supposed poo with hands.)
Laura: I KNEW IT YOU'RE HORRIBLE I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU BOTH!!!
Kristen: It was all Jenn's idea, I swear!!!

(Laura grabs pillow and beats Kristen and Jenn violently--so violently in fact that it left red welts on my arm.)

All in all, a fun evening. Now to await the promised retaliation--eyes and ears alert!

Seeing how Monday begins a new term, I thought it was a convenient time to change the blog as well.

I'm taking 3 English classes this term: British/American Lit after 1798, History of the English Language, and the American Novel after WWI. I'm also hoping to be in the Spring term play, Translations. Basically I'm not planning to sleep for the next 3 months. Should be exciting.

Things I've Learned Winter Term:

1. Being a math professor does not necessarily make one a logical person.
2. Sometimes statistics can actually improve your self-image. (i.e. "60% of the American population never leaves their couches!")
3. Furman's Fitness Center is named after Herman Lay, founder of Lay's, the potato chip manufacturers. (I guess technically I knew this before, but I'd never really considered it until the above-mentioned math professor brought it to the class's attention.)
4. Taking not-English classes frees up a LOT of time.
5. I can cook!!! Good food! Like country-fried steak!
6. Fashion is irrelevant when riding a bike in below-freezing weather.
7. Never ride a stationary bike then subsequently attempt to ride a real bike.
8. It's quite difficult to find good chicken tikka masala in upstate South Carolina.
9. I remain mostly hopelessly disorganized, despite my best efforts.
10. Time flies, whether you're having fun or not.

1 week of class left. Then exams. Then Spring Break. In February.

Engagement is a plague

Breaking news bulletin: the Engagement Plague proves to be fiercely contagious. Roommate Laura got her ring over the holidays, and now Roommate Jenn is suddenly vying for her own diamond, leaving subtle hints like pages torn from Bride magazine on the floor so that her boyfriend will have to step over them. Pages featuring different cuts of diamond, I might add.

The saddest part of the whole thing is that no one is immune--even I found myself studying the diamonds and imagining how a 2 carat princess cut would look compared to an emerald cut. Now it's a toss-up as to whether being Laura's maid-of-honor is going to bring out the romantic side in me or push me even further in the other direction.

And my new favorite marriage quote, courtesy of Big Sister Dana: "It could be worse; I could be engaged." (Dana has apparently found the Engagement Plague immunization formula and is holding it for ransom.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a completely unrelated note: I found on our kitchen counter a can of Le Sueur Very Young Small Early Peas. Not just peas. Not just early peas. They are apparently very different from early peas in their age and stature. VERY different. So make sure the next time you're making a pea casserole that you pay close attention to the label--having Very Young Small Early Peas could make all the difference.

A request

A man I knew was brutally murdered Thursday. Please keep his family and friends in your thoughts and prayers.

Normal life sets back in...

Today is officially Day 4 of Winter Term, and it's going surprisingly well, considering that I'm taking Math and Health & Exercise Science. The wonderful thing about it all is that during a term with no English classes it is actually possible to be done with your work. As in, tonight I have completed my homework and short of studying for something upcoming, there is nothing else for me to do. No paper to work on. No novel to read a few more chapters in. It's an amazing sensation. I'm overloading to take Acting II, although I might have to drop it because the Ed department steals your life and soul, which is really the motto of my life. Although, I have to admit, in this case they would be paying me for my soul with a scholarship, so I guess it could be a fair trade.

Meanwhile, Frasier is probably the best sitcom ever created. That's all for now. And very soon I'm going to finish my free travel updates. I promise. With my fingers crossed.