Archive for June, 2007

Your friend was right, it’s gonna be a grocery store!

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

I wish I could tell My Monday Coffee Buddy about this but she’s probably somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean by now.

There’s a shopping plaza called Maple Village a couple blocks away from my house. It’s always been kind of a ratty place. I remember when I used to go to Minifab on a rainy day and they’d have buckets placed in strategic locations all over the store to catch the water coming through the roof and ceiling. Minifab closed just recently. I wish I could say it was a surprise but I knew it was going to hit the skids when they replaced all of the home decor fabric with trashy little kitschy knick-knacky type stuff. People who go to fabric stores want *fabric*! If they want trashy little kitschy knick-knacky type stuff, they go to Pier 1 or Cost Plus or Portage Street in Sault Ste. Siberia or wherever. Not, repeat, NOT fabric stores.

Okay, I’ll quit on that rant. As ratty as Maple Village is, it’s on my beat. My regular National City branch is there and the Secretary of State and The Village Kitchen and English Gardens, where I go when a few green streaks appear in my normally black thumb. Frank’s Nursery and Crafts used to be where English Gardens is but I could see that it would hit the skids when it replaced all the *craft* stuff with trashy little kitschy knick-knacky type stuff. I know, I said I’d quit. Grok grok. Good idea, ya ol’ bag. grok grok.

For about a gazillion years, starting probably well before I moved to Ann Arbor, the northeast corner of Maple Village was occupied by a little movie complex, Fox Village Theatres. Over the years we’ve lived here, it has closed and opened a few times under different managements. The last time it closed, I had the feeling it wouldn’t open again. And I was right. A couple of months ago, construction workers started gutting the place, plus a couple of adjacent businesses. My Monday Coffee Buddy and I had both noticed it and had a conversation something like this:

MMCB: So-and-so said that there was a grocery store going in there.

KW [jokingly and hopefully]: Maybe it’ll be Trader Joe’s!

Then, about a month later, as work progressed on gutting the movie complex, we had another little conversation. This one demonstrates how scatter-brained we can both be:

MMCB: Didn’t you say that a Trader Joe’s was going to go in that old movie complex?

KW: No! [laughing out loud] A friend of yours told you it was gonna be a grocery store and I joked that maybe it’d be Trader Joe’s.

Well! Today, there is a banner up in front of the building announcing that Plummarket is going to open there. It looks like it’s a relatively high-end grocery store by the Merchant of Vino folks. It’s within WALKING DISTANCE! I hope it’s successful. If it is, it may end my fairly frequent trips over to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. If gasoline gets up to $10 a gallon, I can *easily* WALK there *and* carry groceries home!!! I do have to say, it probably won’t end my relationship with the Westgate Kroger, that’s just been going on too long. 😉

But I can’t *wait* to tell My Monday Coffee Buddy!!!

Edu-tainment???

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

So, how entertaining does a college instructor need to be to engage college students in learning this day and age?

My community college classes are typically three-hour sessions that happen once a week. Our local community college is a top-notch institute of higher learning and this is a perfect system for me. I only need to schlep the 10 mile distance to the community college once a week (per class), then I have a whole week to do the homework. It’s a rare day that I can’t focus well enough to give the instructor and his/her subject my full attention for the duration of the three-hour class.

I don’t expect every instructor to dazzle me with sparkling, engaging lectures. I don’t expect them to dance and sing or stand on their heads. I do expect them to know the material through and through. I expect them to be able to answer questions. I actually like it if they say, “I don’t know,” some of the time. Just shows they’re human too. If they then go and find out the answer or, depending on the subject, solicit opinions from the class, they get even more points.

I don’t know where this idea came from that a teacher has to be a performer. I mean, I think standing up there and reading a lecture in a monotone is not good but I don’t know why students expect their teachers to be witty and animated and entertaining every minute. I think this expectation has its roots in a couple of things. The first and maybe most obvious is that this generation of college students was raised on television and video games and I won’t go there for now. The second and perhaps a bit more subtle is that the parents of this generation of college students have been too involved in their children’s educations.

I can write about this honestly because I *am* the parent of a college student and I *was* involved in my children’s educations. I did volunteer work for my children’s schools from the first day I dropped the almost-3-year-old off at co-op nursery school up through the second and last high school graduation. I’ve done everything from clean toilets to balance a long-neglected PTO checkbook to read to struggling elementary school kids to campaign (unsuccessfully) the school administration to keep a beloved alternative middle school open.

I always *tried* to stay out of the relationships between my kids and their teachers. It was HARD! It’s so tempting to want to get in there and help them with do their homework for them. After all, it’s so easy. For a 40-something-year-old, that is. And it’s hard to watch when your kids are misunderstood or overlooked or underestimated. But they need to learn how to resolve conflicts and other difficult situations by themselves. I wasn’t perfect. There were a few times when I intervened if a situation didn’t seem to be resolving. And there were a couple of times that I flat out lied to a teacher to finagle someone an extra day on a project.

There were other parents who would complain about the most trivial of problems at the drop of a hat. Move their kids out to expensive, private schools. Sue the school district. Etc., etc. On the other hand, there were kids dropped off at the elementary school who were moved to a different school every couple of months, as the family moved from apartment to shelter to van to apartment, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Kids who didn’t get enough to eat or were up all night because mom or dad had friends over getting high or whatever.

School isn’t always going to be fun and exciting. Teachers aren’t always going to be funny and entertaining. Even the best of teachers are going to have bad days. Also, teachers rarely have just one student to focus on. They have a whole classroom full, 25 or 30 or even 35. Each one of those students brings his or her own unique set of talents, habits, issues, and general baggage to class.

I think we need to encourage our kids to approach school as a place to learn, not to be coddled, indulged, or entertained. Not every day is going to be perfect. That’s life. We need to support their education and support their teachers but we need to back off on micro-managing all the little everyday kinds of problems. Some days are going to be boring. Some subjects are going to be hard (or boring) for some kids. When our kids get to college, we aren’t going to be there to finagle extra time on projects. Our kids have to learn to manage their education on their own.

I am definitely not a traditional college student, having been through my own education and that of my children. I try to approach each class with the attitude that I am there ready and willing to learn. I try to give each instructor the benefit of the doubt, knowing that they have worked hard to prepare lectures, labs, and activities that they believe will enable students to learn the subject. At the same time, they are dealing with a myriad of issues that often have very little to do with my individual needs as a student. Sometimes a teacher might not be the best lecturer but is always there to give a struggling student individual help.

Fellow college students, you are in college to get an education and you need to participate in that process. Go to class. Be on time. Do the homework. Be prepared. Participate. Ask questions. Try to understand that teachers are human beings and that the vast majority of them care about you and want to see you succeed. That’s why they are in the business of teaching.

Am I on the right track or am I just an old bag? Grok grok. You asked!!! Grok grok.

Comcast Rant

Monday, June 11th, 2007

Apparently our little problems with Comcast are solved now but we sure wasted a lot of time down there in the snake pit yesterday. I am still convinced that the problem was related to an upgrade gone haywire. I’m a little bugged that it seemed like the upgrade involved inserting scripts to hijack accounts but I’m just gonna go on for now, as if there was another choice. But I still want to know why a large company like Comcast can’t at least put a notice on their website home page indicating that they’re having a problem. Or send an email to notify their customers that they’re going to implement a major upgrade.

A lot of people have been known to complain about Comcast but overall, our experience with them as an ISP hasn’t been all that bad. The first couple of months were absolutely abysmal. We still had a dial-up line at that time and I just plugged it in for the duration. I’m tough. But after a while, things settled a bit and down time hasn’t been a regular problem (knock on wood). And actually we have had some pretty good experiences with phone tech support. That said, there are a few things…

Like when they sent out the creepy subcontractor. Our connection seemed to be deteriorating and Comcast said they’d send somebody out. And “somebody” came out… There wasn’t anything overtly strange about his appearance. It was his total lack of social skills and his aura I didn’t like. (Yes, I wrote aura. No, I can’t see what color yours is.) I don’t expect a service person to be a social butterfly. I am not a social butterfly. But this creep was almost totally silent. He didn’t answer questions and he didn’t seem to have the faintest idea about what he was doing. I found myself looking around outside to see if Luke or Hans were hanging around their yards.

I called the GG under the guise of needing his help to detect the problem and kept him on the phone for a while, i.e., if I scream or disappear from the line or something, call 911, willya. At one point, Creepboy went down in the basement to check the cables there. The GG said, “I’d feel much more comfortable if you went in the basement with him.” I replied, in a rather vehement stage whisper, “I am NOT going in the basement with him.” In the end, it took Creepboy 2-1/2 hours to diagnose that our *ancient* (1999, maybe?) cable modem was dying. That had been *our* theory from the beginning. He played around with the GG’s computer and left the cable box in a mess. All told, he was in our house until seven in the evening! By that time, the GG had come home and I was such a nervous wreck, I retreated to my room until Creepboy was gone.

Later that night, I went out to the Comcast website to try to find a way to send them a complaint. I could not find a simple contact form to save my life! I tried to log in to my “account” thinking maybe that would lead to a method of contact. Years ago when Comcast took over our cable modem, I was assigned a Comcast-generated user ID. It was associated with an email ID I didn’t need and consisted of a cryptic collection of characters. There’s no way I could remember it! I also couldn’t find a “forgot user ID” link anywhere. I’ve done just enough server side programming to know about the security issues surrounding on-line verification of a legitimate account owner but I still say, “If National City can do it, so can Comcast.”

In desperation and with some trepidation, I clicked into online chat. Still hoping that there was a contact form buried in there somewhere, I started out by asking for my ID. The rep asked me a couple of questions and then reported that she couldn’t tell me my ID. Oh, fer Kee-reist sake! Exasperated, I finally said, “I don’t really care whether or not I can log on to my account, but I can’t find a contact form anywhere and I want to complain about the creepy subcontractor you guys sent out to my house today.” *Immediate* reply with addresses and phone numbers. I never did find a contact form. If there had been one, I’d have sent a complaint in that night. As it stands, I never got around to it. I wonder if Creepboy is still working for them. Or if he’s in jail.

So, here’s a note to Comcast and all other Internet providers. If you are having “issues” — I don’t care if it’s hackers or a derailed system upgrade or squirrels gnawing up your cables — LET YOUR CUSTOMERS KNOW! Put a note on your web page. Email us. “We are having such and such a problem. We estimate that it will be fixed by the year 2010, blah blah blah.” Or tell us (email?) in advance *when* you are going to make a big upgrade. I like to know what’s going on when I encounter some weird error page. It’ll also reduce the calls to tech support. Maybe you could save a few bucks there.

And one last thing: if you are hiring people who will be going inside other people’s homes, maybe it would be a good idea to do a little basic screening for creepiness. Not to mention competence.

P. S. In all fairness, Comcast has updated its website since I last tried to find a contact form (fall 2006) and there is now a link to one in the bottom nav. What happens to the form after you submit it is anybody’s guess. But it’s there.

Hiccity-up! Comcast Phisher?

Sunday, June 10th, 2007

Okay, I guess “phisher” is probably not exactly the right word but it sure has been an interesting morning around here. I was merrily surfing around the ‘net a bit and I clicked a link that didn’t go where I expected it to. Instead, I was taken to this page, which proclaimed that there was a problem with my Comcast account and I couldn’t go anywhere else on the Internet until I had spoken with a Comcast rep. Say what? I knew it wasn’t a billing problem because I had seen the payment clear just a couple days ago. Could they be shutting me down over my rather ho-hum post about Paris Hilton? I had two options. I could chat with an on-line rep or call. I was 81st in the chat “queue” and the phone number led to a busy signal. Hmmm…

The GG (who is much better at deciphering waaaars and hubs and stuff than Kayak Woman) called the local Comcast office. At first, they were treating it as if it were a typical garden-variety connection problem but as the conversation progressed, the switchboard began lighting up with calls. It was tentatively decided that Comcast was being hacked or something and we hunkered down to wait it out.

We had three computers going (G4 iMac, G4 powerbook and MacBook) and for a while it was totally random whether we could access various sites or not. ababsurdo was almost always inaccessible, although I could sometimes get to the administrative side of the blahg. mousesnest and cliffsvic were always okay. Boingboing was on and off — the GG could get to it, I could not.

I shut down my computer and did some chores. When I got back to it, I could get to ababsurdo again (knock on wood). boingboing would load, sort of — no stylesheets — and there was some weird behavior as it loaded, involving messages from “comcastsupport.com” in the status bar. I randomly tried the WCC site. It appeared to load normally but I have firebug running and I noticed that there were two errors. Out of sheer, random curiosity, I clicked on the firebug error icon and encountered something very interesting. One of the errors related to a javascript file, “http://include.reinvigorate.net/re_.js,” which contains the html for the entire “comcastsupport.com” error page!

I do not have the expertise to know exactly what’s happening here, or even begin to explain it. But hang on to your hats. If you want to call Comcast, call the local number, not the number on the error page. They know about it and they seem to be working on it. Cheers!

Er, things are still pretty weird out there. Maybe this day isn’t over yet…

Update: knock on wood big time, all the hiccuping seems to be over now. We never got much out of Comcast but we are leaning strongly toward the theory that this was just an upgrade gone bad. No phisher or hacker attack. Sunday morning is a typical and logical time to implement changes to a real-time system, when fewer users are likely to be online, and we’re guessing that’s what this was.

Graduation party pics for those who can’t be here

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

party06.jpg
click for pics

Aristocratic spoiled brats vs. all the rest of us poverty-stricken drones and slackers

Saturday, June 9th, 2007

The latest topic of conversation on The Marquis’s email chat-list has involved everybody’s favorite email subject line, Paris Hilton. If I had a dime for every email I’ve received with some variation of “Paris Hilton sex tape,” I’d, well, you know, I wouldn’t be a poverty-stricken slacker. I’ve been deleting them since back in the days of the strawberry iMac. Paris Hilton is about the last subject I ever thought I’d be discussing on my blahg but, well *really*!

I won’t try to repeat the whole chat-list conversation here, for one thing, I don’t have The Marquis’s permission. If you’d like to join his chat-list, leave a comment and I’ll forward you to him. (Mark, if you have a better title for whatever it is those emails are other than “chat-list,” lemme know. ;-))

One word that was used to describe Ms. Hilton was “rebellious.” That stuck in my craw right from the get-go. It was the wrong word (imnpho) but it wasn’t until a little later that I had formulated a fairly complete idea of why. I can’t claim to have any idea what Ms. Hilton’s childhood was like but this “entertainment news” article seems to support my hunch that any kind of behavior she engaged in — good, bad, ugly, or rebellious — was not only tolerated but probably indulged.

My point is, how can you be “rebellious” if there’s nothing to rebel against? If your family doesn’t care if you traipse around making a public fool out of yourself, then you are not rebelling. You’re just traipsing around making a public fool out of yourself. Not thinking about whether your behavior may have any effect on anyone else, I might add. It seems to me that this 26-year-old lawbreaker still expects to be treated like a naughty but cute little toddler and her mother is apparently still indulgent. I’m sorry but tell me again who these people are and why they are special?

Enough is enough and I’m going to forget about this and go celebrate Pengo Janetto’s graduation from Grand Blanc High, magna cum laude. Blonde but definitely not some spoiled aristocratic airheaded bimbo. Er, salami-brained, maybe. 😉

HB Pengo Janetto Cookie Tester Penguin Hoosh! (ark ark)

Friday, June 8th, 2007

pengo.jpgYesterday and today belong to Pengo Janetto. Tomorrow too. Actually, she more often goes by Nook these days but being an old aunt (grok grok, ya mean ol’ BAG, dontcha? grok gfok), old habits die hard. Yesterday, she graduated from high school. Today she turns 18. And tomorrow is her graduation party. Click here or on the pic for a mini slide show.

I don’t know what’s next for Janet besides college and life. I wish her all the luck in the world but, as she’s the last of my branch of Fin Family Moominbeach G4ers to turn 18, I find myself looking back a bit. So I’ll tell just a couple of old stories from when she was around four or five, hopefully not embarrassing ones.

Janet was usually the first kid up in the morning at the cabin. All the others would slug around for half the day if they could get away with it. When Janet would come downstairs, Grandroobly would be sitting at the breakfast table eating his two tablespoons of raisin bran with milk and probably telling the politicians on NPR to “stick it” or whatever. The Commander would be bustling around or drinking her coffee and I’d probably be processing dishes and/or garbage. One day Janet came downstairs and announced, “My brain is going around and around and around so fast I can’t stop it.” I said something like, “oh, that’s nice,” and went back to whatever it was that I was doing. She was quiet for about five minutes and we all forgot about the spinning brain until she suddenly piped up with, “My brain just stopped. It stopped on salami.” Salami for breakfast, anyone?

And then there was the day that old Jimbo (her dad, my brother) was sitting at the breakfast table showing off The New Morning Look and I can’t exactly remember what was going on but he was harassing the heck out of Janet, as was pretty typical. Finally, she had had just about enough, so she got right in his face and yelled, “You’re the Big Ugly Giant!” A reference to Roald Dahl’s The BFG, which *everyone* was reading that summer, even the grandparents.

Add your own story to the comments if you want. Or your congratulations. HAPPY BIRTHDAY PENGO JANETTO! and CONGRADULATIONS CONGRATULATIONS!

Isn’t the sun over the yardarm yet?

Thursday, June 7th, 2007

It’s kind of been one of those days and both Mouse and I managed to make separate trips to the grocery store. Mouse had oranges on her list but when she got home, she found that she had accidentally bought grapefruits instead. Go figure. So I got dispatched *back* to the grocery store to get oranges. I got to Kroger and although I didn’t like the look of the oranges, I grabbed a bag anyway. I hemmed and hawed and loitered around for a few minutes, then decided to try looking at Arbor Farms down the street instead. I put the oranges back and threw my basket on top of a tall, precarious looking stack of baskets and headed out to my vee-hickle, which was parked all the way out at the end of the lot, of course. When I got there, I felt a little naked. (Grok grok, didya have yer shorts on inside out agin, ya Ol’ Bag? grok grok) Just a minute. [No Froggy, I did *not* have my shorts on inside out again.] Sorry about that. Anyway, what I was missing was my *purse*!!! I *ran* back inside the store. Phew, my basket was still teetering on top of the stack. Unfortunately, no purse. I tried not to panic. Where could it be? Did I put it back with the bag of oranges? Yes!!! And there it was. Intact. Grok grok. Stoopid Ol’ Baggy! Grok grok! [Froggy, shut up!] Sorry about that little outburst. Anyway, I went on to Arbor Farms, where the oranges didn’t really look much better, in fact, a couple of clerks were arguing about whether to dump the juice oranges or not. Probably it’s not orange season but I am not my mother so I don’t know stuff like that. I bought some anyway and I am home now and I’m not going out again if I can avoid it. And what time does the sun go over the yardarm, again?

Say Yah To Da U. P., Eh?

Thursday, June 7th, 2007

The Yoop is in the top ten: http://www.lakesuperior.com/news/060501.html (Thanks, Becky, for the link!).

P.S. Kayaking the Pictured Rocks is a great trip. Click here or the link on the sidebar for article and pictures. Northern Waters was our outfitter and guide.

School’s Out! School’s Out! Teacher let the Mouseys out! SqueeGrok!

Wednesday, June 6th, 2007

 
mousefrog.jpg
 

No Diamonds, Please

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007

The question came up, “What do you want to do?” Followed closely by, “What do you want?” The answers are, “I don’t know,” and, “nothing.” The questions came up because somehow or other, time has fast-forwarded to the point that the GG and I will have been married 25 years on July 3rd. I cannot figure out where the time went. I am not sure how we got through the seven-year itch. There has been one so-called mid-life crisis. It resulted in a vee-hickle that now features rusted out floorboards, a passenger side window that stops rolling up about three inches from the top, a dysfunctional gas gauge, several varieties of aminal bones, some with bits of skin still on them, and an old roll of toilet paper or two or three, not toilet paper that anyone would ever want to use for the intended purpose.

I do not know how to process the idea of 25 years. I feel like I have accomplished so little in my life so far. I don’t know what to do to celebrate a milestone anniversary. We don’t usually do much about our anniversaries. We’re usually hanging around with one family or another celebrating the 4th of July holiday. More often than not, I forget it’s July 3rd until maybe halfway through it. We spent our 23rd and 24th doing various funeral-related duties. Heaven forbid that we have to do that a third year in a row. Stay healthy and safe, y’all! Or I’ll kill you!

I can kind of remember when The Commander and Grandroobly celebrated their 25th. A bunch of the usual bank party aminals came out to the cabin and, over a couple of cocktails or three or whatever, they conjured up an alternate universe where Grandroobly was the president of the United States. The Commander was called Francesbird and the friends all had “bird” attached to their names too, Harrietbird and the like. Yeeeee-hee-hee-heee! They had a good old time! 😈

But I am stumped. So I thought it would be fun to put together a little web survey and ask people what they think we should do to celebrate our anniversary. So click here to do a fun little Zoomerang survey! It’s short, too! grok grok

P.S. I can’t write this without noting that the last 25th anniversary celebration I attended was my brother’s. Or *would* have been my brother’s if he had managed to survive that long. He didn’t quite make it and the 24th was his last. But we didn’t let the 25th go by. We joined Karen and their kids at a rib joint somewhere up in Grand Blanc and whooped it up pretty good. Rest in peace wherever you are, bro’.

YAGgies

Monday, June 4th, 2007

mouseyaggies.jpg

Kate took this picture, except for the mouse in the bottom foreground, so I hope it’s okay if I post it. These are the YAGgies and the occasion is the graduation party of the young man in the middle at the back. Who I first remember when he was in about 2nd grade, dancing around on a table in a Mendelssohn Theatre production of The Bluebird.

I have to add that the young woman on the right is also a 2007 graduate. My main acting memory of her is when her double-cast partner called in sick for a performance and she played *both* of her roles (male and female characters) that day. Lots of quick costume changes on the stage behind a phalanx of female guards! Great actors all and I love them!!! 🙂 🙂

Is it okay if I just sit around today?

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

It’s Sunday. It’s been raining off and on all day. There are a lot of constructive things I could be doing. Actually, I *did* do some of them. The stuff I do more or less *every* day, like the dishes, a load or so of laundry, and cleaning the bathroom. Plus I picked away at The Room That Time Forgot, aka my so-called studio in the basement. And I cleaned up/threw out a bunch of crap in the back yard. (Old dead pieces of hose, yay!)

Other than that, I can’t say I’ve done a whole lot. It’s a beautiful day. We needed the rain and everything is green and dripping with water. It’s so dark inside that I turned on my blue Christmas lights and I’m just hanging out watching the rain and wondering if I’ll be able to take my afternoon walk or if more lightning will roll through. Rumble, rumble. Doesn’t sound promising.

Can I be lazy today? What’s the weather like where you are and what are you doing? Are you feeling lazy or are you engaged in constructive pursuits? Do you have your blue Christmas lights on?

Dishrag Moom

Saturday, June 2nd, 2007

No, this is not about dish-processing although I have sure done plenty of that in my life and I’ll just betcha I am not done.

Yesterday we walked downtown in the late afternoon. We ate at Conor O’Neil’s and then the GG went over to The Ark for volunteer duty. I walked home. It was pretty hot out and I had forgotten my sunglasses, so walking home toward the setting sun was a bit overwhelming and some of the hills felt sorta like San Francisco. I’m not crazy about late afternoon at this time of year. The sun beats down relentlessly and the pavement radiates heat. I do not know how people can run or power-bike at that time of day. By the time I got home, I felt exactly like a dishrag. An old limp, wrung-out one.

I desperately needed to chill out. Lake Superior is not in the front yard here at The Landfill except in some of my more bizarre dreams. We actually have central air in this dive these days but it’s a recent acquisition and, after all these years, when I manage to remember that we have it, I’m hardcore about living without it. I like to listen to the wildlife, even wildlife of the human variety and there was some of that, not sure what was going on but no bombs or anything. I washed my feet in ice cold water and changed into my beat-up, holey old Taming of the Shrew t-shirt, size XXL or whatever it is. I put two wet, cold dishrags washcloths around my neck, front and back, gathered up my MacBook, conjured up an A-hattan, turned on the radio, and settled in on the blue chair in the back room. Bliss.

Fortunately, no one came to the door because I am sure I was a pretty scary sight!

Congradulations! Ding! You’re Out!!!

Friday, June 1st, 2007

And so ended my spelling bee career. Is congradulations congratulations a second grade word? I was thinking it seemed too long for a second grade word. But I’m sure that the bee was in Mrs. Bishop’s class at Lincoln School and I had her for second grade and I remember it because that was the only year I was in a classroom on the west side of the south wing of the school except for sixth grade. By sixth grade, I would’ve probably *purposely* spelled a word wrong so as to not win a classroom spelling bee. But I didn’t misspell congratulations on purpose, so it must’ve been in Mrs. Bishop’s class. And that was second grade.

Around eight o’clock last night, I was restless. It was too late to start anything new and it was too hot to go for (another) walk and I knew if I just sat around reading and listening to music, I’d go to sleep. And it was too early to go to sleep. So I started rumbling around wondering what could possibly be on the (gasp!) telly. We argued around about that for a while (I don’t know how to turn on the set) and I threatened to download a movie from iTunes but I really didn’t want to do that. The last thing I need to do is start filling up my Macbook hard drive with movies at $10 a pop. And then the raccoon family started up their nightly chattering and the GG disappeared and I found him and LofP in the driveway discussing various possibilities for dealing with the raccoon family (which’ll be *nothing* if I have my way, and I will). It was LofP who suggested that the national spelling bee was on TV.

Spelling bee? It was a *riot*! Gripping, edge of the seat television. These kids were well beyond congradulations congratulations! I hadn’t ever even heard of most of the words they had to spell. They were allowed to ask questions, like “what is the definition?” and “what is the etymology?” Etymology? These were middle school kids! We got up to about the tenth round and Isabel and two boys were left. I wanted Isabel to win because she’s a girl 😛 but she went out on cyanophycean. The Canadian kid was my next favorite but he lost out on coryza. I don’t know what a coryza is. Have any of y’all heard of one? Hmm?

It didn’t really matter who won. All of these kids were obviously intelligent, hard-working kids and I was glad to see them get recognized for an academic talent on TV. I probably have skewed memories of this, but it seemed like when I was in high school, every year, we’d have to sit through an interminable awards ceremony. Sure, they honored academic achievement. The seniors with the top five grade point averages (out of about 360 graduates). And the National Merit Finalists, usually around five or ten and *not* usually the same kids as the ones with the top grade point averages. After that, it’d get to the athletic stuff. On and on and on forever through every 1st, 2nd, and 3rd string player of every sport. There was a very small smattering of awards for artistic pursuits, including *one* measly music award. Every year, from 7th grade on, I’d sit there in the band playing inspirational graduation type music and dream that when I became a senior, I would be awarded the John Philip Sousa award. I was a shoe-in, or so I thought. Not. And, yes, I was ticked! 🙂

Anyway, congradulations congratulations to all the participants in the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee! Winners, all!

And I have never spelled congratulations wrong ever again! Er, except on purpose! 🙂