End of an Era

My collegiate life is officially ending.

Although I graduated in May, I haven't actually had to DO anything from June until now besides bask in the afterglow of finishing the degree and read the entire Hunger Games trilogy and lay in bed until 6 p.m. It's not like I had to start working or anything crazy like that. I am a teacher, after all.

But now it's July 31st (happy birthday Harry Potter!) and I have exactly one week until summer is over and I report for my first day as an 8th grade English teacher (YIPES).

So, instead of reading the books I'll be teaching this year or doing any pre-planning whatsoever, I'm writing this blog!

On Tuesday, I am shipping out with Steph and Suz to attend the National Hallmark Convention in Kansas City, and that's where I'll be until my plane gets back at 11pm the night before I start work.

What's that you say? No, no. You read that correctly. A National Hallmark Convention. And that will be a blog all by itself so I wanted to update before that happens.

So here goes. The completely anti-climactic things I did with the end of my last collegiate summer:

1. As aforementioned, I read the entire Hunger Games trilogy in a 4 day time span. If you haven't read these books, you are living under a serious literary rock and missing out on the best series since Harry Potter.

And if you compare them or their upcoming film adaptations to Twilight, we are no longer friends. But for realsies, go read them. I'm currently devising schemes to work them into my curriculum in some capacity.

Oh, and can we please just salivate over these fine hunks of love who are playing the two lead males? YES.



2. I spent a good deal of time with my sister, Stephanie, and we are freaks. In a good way, we hope, but freaks nonetheless.

About a week ago I got a package in the mail at my new apartment. It was addressed to me alright, but with one minor alteration to my name....

"Shannon Nippie Townes"

My sister and I have this utterly bizarre practice of calling each other "nips." Before you go thinking we are batshit crazy or anything, just say it out loud to yourself. Say it in either a tone of sisterly adoration or one of frustration or something. It kind of works, right?........Right?!

Like....

"GOSH, stop being such a NIP and come help me get the groceries in!"

Or...

"Aww, nippie! Thanks for opening the bottle of Barefoot Pinot Grigio champagne for me because you knew I was too scared to do it!"

Whatever. I laughed, hard, when I saw it addressed to that name. But that wasn't even the best part of the package. I opened it up, and THESE were inside.......


Lunch BUGS! They have fake roach decals on them. Arguably the greatest surprise package I've ever gotten. Thanks a bunch, NIP! I'll never have to worry about someone swiping my sammies again!


3. We took our annual family vacation to Edisto. The first two days were pretty normal: beach, booze, beer pong, etc.

And then it rained. And rained, and rained. It wasn't our best Edisto trip, but we did all learn an awesome new dance courtesy of Stephanie. It's called THE WOP. All you do is flail your arms around to the beat of this fancy number:

DO THE WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP.


4. I swear, I couldn't come up with a fourth eventful thing that concluded my summer. That's just how lame it was. However, Stephanie and I went on a simple errand that turned exciting today, which I documented with photos.

We're driving down the road, I look to my right, and this poor little preacher man in a wood-paneled station wagon beside us has left his Bible (of all things!!) on top of his car when he starting driving.


Being the good Samaritans that we are, we felt compelled to alert this 200 year old man to his Bible's whereabouts. We had the best of intentions, but screaming out "SIR!"... "SIR!"...."Your Bible!".... "SIR!"...over and over again at 50 mph might have been more conducive to causing a collision than doing a good deed.

He eventually looked over, realized the message we were trying to convey, decelerated to a snail's pace, pulled over, and finally..... retrieved the Bible. Thank God!

Then, we went to Wal-Mart.



......And met the Kool-Aid man! OH YEAHHH.


And that is pretty much it. The only two events now left standing between me and the start of my "career" are the Bachelorette finale tomorrow night, and the Hallmark Convention from Tuesday-Sunday.

A quick word about the Bachelorette. In my opinion, Ashley has been the most obnoxious and vapid Bachelorette in the show's history, and she solidified her position on my shit list with the dumping of AMES.

Meet Ames:


Ames is a 31-year-old portfolio manager from NYC who has like 7 degrees in things like finance, being really effing adorable, and having a big forehead and too-far-apart eyes that I'm still somehow wildly attracted to.

I'm also pretty positive that Ames is my soulmate and I am in love with him. I am literally praying he's the next Bachelor but he probably won't be because he's not a dingbat moron who overuses the word "amazing", which is apparently stipulation numero uno to becoming the star of this show.

As my brother David says, "Ames is just so.....Ames-y." Sigh, I agree.

Look out for the next post, chronicling the freakshow that is a National Hallmark Convention!

Words with Creepy Strangers

I'm obsessed with Words with Friends. I'm a self-proclaimed Words addict.

For those of you living under rocks, Words with Friends is a Scrabble-esque application on the iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Droid phones, and probably some other platforms of which I'm unaware.

You play it just like regular Scrabble, complete with double letter and triple word scores and a 7-letter queue of tiles you choose from during each of your turns. So many people have this application on some platform by now that most of them have enough games going simultaneously with people they actually know to get their fix.

For some Words with Friends crackheads, however, that's not enough. They need to have the maximum amount of games going at the same time as they possibly can (which is 20 games by the way, I'm always at the limit).

To accomplish this, one is forced to sometimes create games with a "random opponent." In other words, some other Words aficionado out there in cyberspace who is just sitting on his or her phone waiting for the game requests to come in.

I started one such game this morning.

I've started many games of this type, and they usually just fall into my game list and blend in among the other games with people I do actually know.

But not this game.

About ten or so moves into this game, I noticed that the little green chat bubble had 3 new messages from this RANDOM Words with Friends opponont (yes, you can "chat" instant- message-style with anyone you're playing with).

I found that a little bit odd, but sometimes even random strangers like to comment on a particularly awkward board or a really baller word you just played.

But not this girl.

When I opened up the chat window, I had to read through the messages twice because I was so taken aback.

This person,"tatiana," was BERATING me for not playing back fast enough. Now, this MIGHT, in some alternate universe, be sorta, kinda, maybe, acceptable if I had taken hours or even days to play a word back to this girl. That was not the case though. She had made her last move literally four minutes prior to these messages coming in.

At first I was a little peeved I was getting yelled at, since I pride myself on having a pathetic enough life to be able to play people back in this game within minutes of their move coming into my phone.

But then I just laughed, because this person was obviously 12 years old, or pretending to be, and I decided to engage in the conversation for a little while. I took screen shots of the whole shebang because I was so amused.

After messaging back and forth with her a few times, I wanted to tell her that she couldn't be more than 14 years old because she reminds me of my 9th grade students from last semester. But you know what? That would be an insult to my awesome 9th graders.





Who does this? Who asks for a stranger's real name in an online Scrabble game chat window?


Oh, thank God she's *not* a freak!




I couldn't have crammed more stereotypical preteen word vomit into one message if I had made it up myself.

Ohhh, okay. She has an iPod Touch, NOT an iPhone. That changes everything!

I know she asked me to quit the game over three hours ago, but as of now she's still just lingering in Words with Friends purgatory out of spite.

Here's hoping for better luck with future random opponents, and if you ever happen to receive a request for a random game with "tatiana1228," I'd advise not accepting that invitation.

The Phantom Cone

You are all now cordially invited to address me as "Master," preferably in a tone appropriate for a Sith lord or otherwise highly revered being.

Yes, I graduated from my Master's program. I haven't posted on here since February, and a few milestones have occurred since then.

Since February, I successfully completed an absolutely fantastic student teaching internship, sold my soul to Steve Jobs and succumbed to the iPhone, turned the ripe old age of 24, and began searching and interviewing for my very first teaching job for the 2011-2012 school year. Of those things, the only fun part has been the iPhone and a new, sick obsession with the Words with Friends and TapZoo apps.


Yes, I have a virtual zoo on my phone and yes, I want to be your neighbor.

So far, the only negative thing I can say about the iPhone is that my texts still often make me look like a drunken 4-year-old. I've had it since March and I still have not conquered that cursed touch screen keyboard.

Soon, keyboard. Soon.

The task of chronicling everything I've done or seen since February seems too daunting to me on this lazy Sunday. Instead, I'm just going to try to make a couple of succinct reflections about the end of my graduate program, and then discuss something I think is interesting and funny that happened to me last night.

So, what did I actually learn in my graduate program? That's a very difficult question, seeing as I considered a lot of what I did in grad school to be what I call "graduate level busy work." However, after twenty-four months of grad classes, I was bound to come away with something, right? I know my parents and their tuition money sure hope so.

This is what I think one learns in grad school:

1. If you thought you were a good procrastinator before, graduate school will push you beyond your wildest realm of imagination in this regard.

My paper-writing record was 6 pages in fifteen minutes, and I'm pretty sure I was also drunk. As the saying supposedly goes, "some papers are good, and some papers are done."

2. You will meet the greatest people of your life.

The individuals that comprised my cohort for the past two years are the most hilarious, intelligent, entertaining people I could have hoped to survive the trenches of grad school with. The great thing about a graduate program is you get a mixed bag of the most random group of people ever, and you probably would never have met each other if not for your very specific shared interest in secondary level English, or whatever your discipline may be.

In our small cohort alone, we had our resident "creepy old guy," the singer from a metal band called Right to Fall, a comic-book-loving-Black Belt asskicker girl, drunken theologists, former undergraduate party animals, and many other colorful characters. I feel lucky to have gone to school with this hodge podge of badass weirdos.

This is some of us pretending we have bat wings in our Master gowns. Who gave us graduate degrees again?

3. You will meet the most terrible people of your life.

As evidenced in my many posts on The People You Meet in Grad School, there are some really terrible, miserable people roaming the halls of higher education institutions. The people who live to hear the sound of their own voice, who have such an inflated sense of ego and self worth you wonder how they bear to sit in the same classrooms as mortals such as yourself, who play devil's advocate "just this once" every. single. class period.

Let's not!

I hope these people continue pursuing graduate degrees for the rest of their lives so I never have to encounter them out in the real world, and they probably will. Because that's what they do. Professors are not excluded from this category of people.

4. Being a nerd is cool and socially acceptable.

Now, depending on where you went to school and what kinds of activities you were involved in, this might ring true for some undergraduate programs. In grad school though, it is especially accurate. Suddenly it is perfectly acceptable to go to pint night and talk about nothing but Shakespeare or a project due in class next week. In fact, I found it was hard to talk about anything BUT school when I went out with my classmates.

School consumes your life, and that's okay. If a lively debate over whether Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi is the better Star Wars episode made it into the conversation, that was okay. And on some rare occasions, if your friends don kilts or start speaking in rudimentary Middle English accents over a bottle of "Chaucer's Mead," that was okay too.

5. Everyone develops a superiority complex, and your school's graduate department will give any idiot a Master's degree if they pick an easy enough discipline.

I'm not excluding myself from this conclusion. Once I got to grad school, I immediately thought I was better and more worthy of praise than my undergrad counterparts. I couldn't help it. I was aware of it, and I might have even tried to quell it once or twice, but I couldn't. I got infuriated at Facebook statuses from undergraduates complaining about 5 page papers and having to go to a 50-minute-long class.

Ohh really? You think 50 minutes is a long time to sit in a classroom? Go to grad school and have fun rotting away for 3 hours straight, three times a week. (It's even more fun if they've just repainted the hallways of your classroom building and done nothing to repel the noxious fumes). Go to grad school and enjoy writing 30 page papers and compiling hundred page portfolios.

Here's the other thing. At least in my program, this complex transcended the simple grad-undergrad dichotomy. I'm sorry, Physical Education majors, but we just really didn't perceive you as being on *our* level. I'm sure these were nice, intelligent people, but in our orientation for our final semester of the program, one of them seriously asked what it meant to write something in "narrative form." Really?!

I once asked a guy in one of my grad courses which class he'd just come from. His reply was "Basketball." Not "Principles of Teaching Basketball," or maybe even "Advanced Basketball Strategies." Just basketball. And they gave him a Master's degree.

Enough ranting. That's all I have. I'm sure I also learned a great deal about teaching methods, canonical literature, adolescent psychology, or strategies for struggling readers. But mostly just those things up there.

HOKAY, SO......part two! The following incident can be filed under "weird shit that happens to me and gives me the fodder for keeping this blog in existence."

My sister drove down to my apartment from our parents' house last night to keep me company because neither of us has friends. We went to see the movie Bridesmaids. It was a funny movie. A bit predictable, a bit disgusting at times, but not a waste of money.

So we saw the movie, during which I drank approximately 44 ounces of Diet Coke, and went to find my truck in the parking lot.

That's when I spotted it. From across the parking lot. I stopped short. I grabbed Stephanie's arm and she stopped, too. She looked back at me inquisitively. I was entranced, but I spoke...

"What is that on my car?"

She looked over to my car.

"Oh my god. I don't know. What is that thing?!"

We walked a little bit closer, tentatively of course. If you've spoken to me for five minutes, you know I'm nothing if not suspicious and irrationally paranoid.

When we got close enough to determine what it was, we looked at each other and shared a why-does-this-weirdass-shit-always-happen-and-only-happen-to-members-of-our-family? kind of look.

This is what was on my car.





It's a cone.

A seemingly innocent orange parking lot/traffic cone. But why was it on my car?! Who put it there? What if there was something underneath that cone?! My truck is not at a party. It does not need a party hat. What are you doing up there CONE?

For some reason, it terrified me. It was a piece of molded orange plastic, but I was terrified. I think it was the mystery behind the cone more than the cone itself. We didn't want to touch it.

I was thinking things like "maybe there is a bomb underneath my car?" or "maybe there is someone hiding in the backseat?" Two highly irrational thoughts, because if either of those things were true, I don't think the perpetrator would have warned us about his deeds with a bright orange cone sitting like a beacon atop the car.

Stephanie ended up swatting it off the roof of the truck, and I told her to toss it in the bed. I would decide this cone's fate later.

That's where the cone still sits right now. I have no plans for the cone, and I don't even why I kept it. But it taunted me and I wasn't going to let it stay in its familiar home in that sketchy movie theater parking lot. I'm open to suggestions as to what to do with it.

Welp, that's it folks. I've re-emerged from my long blog absence. My apologies if I've rambled as a result.


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Things I've Learned about High Schoolers....so far.

Yes, I am aware of the huge pile of blogfail currently sitting at the top of my blog as my header. I wanted my blog to look more fancy and less like I write it in my pajamas at 5 pm on a Saturday and don't know the difference between HTML and a hyperlink (ps. I kind of don't).

So anyway I made what I think is a super cute header collage and tried to affix it to the top of this page, and ended up with what you see above. I don't know what the black chunks are on either side of it and I don't know how to get rid of them. HALP me, plz.



Since I last wrote, I started full-time student teaching English I to seven blocks of 189 ninth graders at a local high school. I have made some discoveries about 9th graders and about my sad excuse for a life in that time.


1. High school students think that Jersey Shore is more important than Martin Luther King, Jr.

True story: When my coaching teacher asked our students if any good specials/celebrations had been on TV the day before, my students responsed with: "Yeah! Jersey Shore!"

The day before that was MLK, Jr. Day.


2. No matter how close in age you may be to high schoolers, if you are not in high school anymore, you are automatically an old loser who is a lot less intelligent than said high schoolers.

My students have tried to tell me that "Smirnoff" is a brand of gum, that the "real" bell actually rings at 8:15 and not at 8:00, and that college couldn't possibly be as hard or boring as 9th grade English.

they pretty much see you like this. even if you are only 23.


3. High school students do not have it in their physical capacities to maintain possession of a piece of paper you give them from one day of high school to the next.


4. High school students will pick up on even the most minute, obscure sexual innuendo you have the misfortune of accidentally uttering, and will take this innuendo and ruin the next 30 minutes of your life with it.

*Note: They will forget every scrap of information you share with them on Animal Farm, but they will remember this accidental sexual reference until the end of time.

5. If there is one tiny detail you forget when teaching any given subject, high school students will ask you 17 questions on that detail during that lesson.


6. At least a few students in the class will take literally almost everything that you meant sarcastically.

One day, when trying to get students to raise their hands and participate, I made the mistake of telling them that it's a special talent among teachers to be able to just stare out into a room of silent students for as long as it takes for someone to produce a response.

Next thing I knew, a student in the back row was encouraging all of his classmates to "test Ms. Townes' talent," and all of my kids went mute. Teacher fail.

7. High school students think you are really stupid.

My students think I really don't know that they ask to go to the bathroom so that they can roam the halls for 5 minutes instead of sitting in class, that they act confused and ask questions to which they almost certainly already know the answers just to waste class time, and that if they tell me their name is "Elmo" that I can't simply go to the roster book and discover their name is actually John.


8. High school students may hate you, but they hate substitute teachers more than you.

This results in a very weird camaraderie on days when your coaching teacher is absent, and you are there alone with your students and a substitute. Suddenly the ones that despised you yesterday are your best friends. The ones that already liked you have clung to you like leeches and are your staunchest defenders in the face of a foreign invasion by a substitute.


9. Although I'm sure they possess them, high school students do not use their inference skills very effectively.

My students were having quite the heated debate about how old they thought I was one day.

Student: Okay, so are you old enough to buy alcohol?

Me: Yes, I am.

Another student: WAIT, but are you old enough to buy cigarettes??

Yes, Bobby, I'm at least 21 years old, but somehow not yet 18.


10. High school students will make fun of you at ANY and EVERY opportunity you give them.

I recently made a mix-CD for my students for a lesson on theme, and they scoffed at the fact that I had NINETIES music on this CD. As in, the 1990's. This prompted me to ask what year they were all born and subsequently experience my first "I feel so old ballz" moment when they all responded they were born in 1995 and 1996.

My students have also exploited my fear of roaches and love of Star Wars, and flat-out could not put their little brains around the fact that I go home at night and plan lessons and activities for them to do in class the next day. I guess they thought the magical lesson plan fairies deliver their material to me when I get to school each morning. If you don't have a thick skin, I wouldn't recommend venturing into the minefield that is a 9th grade classroom.



All that being said, it is "so far, so good" in my student teaching experience. Maybe I'll go watch Clueless or High School Musical or Bring It On and reflect on how wildly unrealistic they are in their depictions of what goes on in high schools.



"Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves." -Virginia Satir
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Winter Break Cabin Fever

Today, my mom came home from running errands with Chick-fil-a kids meals for my sister and me. My 19-year-old sister and my 23-year-old self. As we dug into our 4-pack nuggs, Suz was bustling around the kitchen, straightening things up and doing Mom things, when she casually stated:

"Ginger threw up a sock today."

What?!

"Yeah, she threw up a sock. It was just a gross, balled up mess of sock parts and bile."

After she told us this delicious little bit of information, I was wondering two things...

Where was the sock now? And did she take a picture?

When Suz told me that she threw the sock mess away, and that she did NOT take a picture of it, I was legitimately upset. Like, actually upset that I didn't have evidence of the sock-vomit.

Why?

Because if she had taken a picture, I could have written a whole blog post about my nasty dog and her nasty sock vomit.

I kid you not, I even contemplated RE-CREATING what I thought the regurgitated bile sock might look like and writing the blog anyway.

And that's when it hit me that winter break has officially gone on for way too long.

When you become noticeably, admittedly frustrated that you don't have any photographic proof of a ball of sock mess and bile that your dog vomited earlier that day, it's time to go back to school and be a real person again.

This got me thinking back to the events (or lack of events) from the past month that led up to this extremely low point in my life.

I left the house a few times over the course of winter break, I swear.

The first thing I did was go on a road trip up to Washington, DC back in the second week of December with my friend Jen.

Jen's mom lives outside of DC. So we went up there, had a few nerdgasms in all of the DC mall's awesome museums, hung out with Jen's awesome mom, and just had a generally good time. This short but sweet trip had me feeling pretty good about how winter break was gonna go down.

nerdgasm in the lobby of the museum of natural history

A few days after that, my family and I headed up to Asheville and had ourselves a lovely time at the Biltmore estate. Another very pleasant trip. My spirits were still good. But this was only about a week into break.

A couple days after the jaunt to Asheville, that creepy little menace known as boredom started to sneak up on me. In recent years, when I am home at my parents' house with my sister and we start to get bored, a trend has developed...

We do stupid shit to our hair.

So, 2 days before Christmas and 4 days before our formal, professional family portrait session, Stephanie and I went to the hair salon.

And accidentally dyed my hair red.

Prior to this incident, I had been a platinum blonde for all 23 years of my existence. I went from platinum blonde.......to this.........

just call me Ginge.

Some of my friends and family members told me that they liked it and that it didn't look that bad, but all I could think was OHMYGODI'MAGINGER.

I have nothing against redheads, but on my own head? Hideous. Plus, Suz was none too thrilled about me taking the formal family portrait with these new locks.

Now, keep in mind I did this to my head 2 days before Christmas. So there I was, on Christmas Eve, on a desperate search to find another hair salon to fix the hot gingery mess on my head before the Christmas weekend and before our family portraits.

My sister happens to have quite a bit of experience in the hair catastrophe department, and managed to track down a salon in downtown Greenville that would take me, last minute and with no appointment on Christmas Eve, to try to salvage my coif.

In an epic stroke of luck that doesn't usually befall someone like myself, this woman was a hair miracle worker. She took one look at my head and went straight to down with highlight foils.

thumbs up to destroying the integrity of my hair to avoid ruining formal portraits and being etched off the family tree.

And so, several stress filled hours and 200 dollars later, Susan the miracle worker at Headquarters day spa in Greenville had saved the day. The new finished product went from holy-redhair-batman! to this:

crisis averted.

Some have said it still looks dark blonde, others say light brown. But all I see is "not red." So i'm happy.

Also, those of you who know me know that I don't wear glasses, so I guess I should essplain those.

I'm really obsessed with glasses, but unfortunately I was cursed with near perfect vision and have no actual need for them. Thus, I buy fake glasses and wear them around like I'm bat blind without them.

And I don't even care that I'm announcing that they're fake right now because I just love glasses that much. And I especially love looking like a nerd, so I'd say these huge specs I picked out do the trick.

The hair debacle entertained us for a few days. Oh, and I guess Christmas did too. And just when cabin fever was setting in again, it was time to ship out to Atlanta for the South Carolina bowl game in the Georgia Dome on New Year's Eve.

I had high hopes for New Year's Eve. Unfortunately, USC's football team and the Marta subway system conspired to bring those hopes swiftly crashing down as the clock struck midnight.

We lost the bowl game kind of miserably to Florida State, which is embarrassing enough. After all, they are in the ACC for crying out loud.

(And on a sidenote, if I ever have to hear the Seminole tomahawk chop cheer ever again, I might murder someone. Death by tomahawk chop.)

After the game, my friend Kate and I had a very simple plan: take the Marta to a club called Cosmo Lava, pick up our tickets we had already pre-paid for, and ring in a fun New Year in downtown Atlanta.

We did not take into account, however, how the Marta system has magical powers that turn two decently intelligent 20-somethings into complete idiots with zero sense of direction or common sense.

15 minutes before midnight, we got off on a stop on Peachtree Street.......literally 18 blocks from where we were supposed to be.

We admitted defeat, sat down on a street curb in the middle of downtown Atlanta, and rang in a very anti-climactic new year with this guy:

This man is called Dwayne. He is homeless, has two fake legs, and fought valiantly for our country in Vietnam.

Someone asked me on New Year's Day if I had a NYE kiss. I replied "No," because if I had had a new year's kiss, it would have been Dwayne.

Dwayne was nice and all, but homelessness and prosthetics just don't really do it for me.

I got back to Greenville from Atlanta on the 1st, and for the past 5 days have done almost quite literally nothing except StumbleUpon and watch movies on demand with my sister and drink wine.

That brings me to this evening and my yearning for Ginger's sock vomit. So I wrote this blog.

Happy 2011 everyone! I need to go back to school.


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Nerdfest 2K10

It's almost unbelievable.

If I didn't take pictures and document them in writing, I swear to god no one would ever believe that things like the following exist.

I mentioned in a blog post last week that one of the reasons I blog is because going home to my parents' house is like entering some weird alternate universe where the 1980s are still cool, made-up "designer" breed dogs run loose and wild, and in any given closet or alcove you might find an enormous hidden stash of bird seeds or a life-size Darth Vader head staring out at you from the back corner.

This weekend was no different.

Friday night rolled around, and my parents, brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew were all here for a nice Friday-night-in with Pizza Hut for dinner.

The pizza got eaten, and conversations were had about the usual things: everyone's work week, my school week, what funny things the kids had done lately, etc.

After dinner, my brother, nephew, and I went to the upstairs den. We put on Men in Black, busted out the K'Nex, and started making kick-ass pieces of K'Nex construction equipment, with my nephew serving as construction manager and pointing out every tiny thing I was doing wrong in my K'Nex handiwork.

And then, right there amidst the Christmas decoration explosion that covered every inch of my parents' house, my sister-in-law came sprinting into the den, shrieking with excitement and teasing us with taunts of "Guess what I found?! Guess what I found?!" as she came scurrying down the hallway that led to the den.

My brother and I exchanged glances. We didn't know what the hell Mandy had found, but we knew it had to be good. We. were. excited.

We were not disappointed.

Mandy had apparently accidentally stumbled upon a treasure-trove of a bookshelf in one of my mom's upstairs guest rooms. This bookshelf might as well have never left 1982. Every book on it was 30 years old. And most of them were Star Wars themed.

Honest to god, sometimes I wonder how I ended up being such a dork, but then I remember....Oh yeah! My mother has entire bookshelves and rooms and storage closets and Christmas wreaths completely devoted to Star Wars or any of the franchise's various spin-off stories.

The thing Mandy had found was this:

This is a children's book entitled "The Ewoks and the Lost Children." Awesome.

After this, it was game over. We were all on missions to explore what other hidden caverns of nerd-dom the Suz had hidden away in closets in her house.

Something like this happens every time I come home to my parents' house in Greenville.

It's like....

Oh hey Mom! The North Pole called, they want all their Christmas shit back. Or....

Oh heyyy Mom, George Lucas called, he wants his massive collection of weird-ass Star Wars memorabilia back. Or...

Oh heyy Suz! The 1980's called, they want all of their creepy-ass shit you only ever see on "I Love the 80s," that you have stored in all the closets of your house like it's totally normal to still own an Atari or a Care-Bear, back......

So, like I said at the start of this post, if I didn't have photographic evidence, people might never believe that some freaks in the year 2010 (my mom) still actually own this stuff and keep it in their house like it's completely acceptable.

Exhibit A:

You see that name scrawled in the upper left of this device? Yes. It says "Michael" in small-child-chicken scratch. This first belonged to my 30-year-old brother when he was about 5. And my mom still. has. it. Why? The world of normal people may never know.

It's the "Fisher Price Big Bird Record Player", by the way, and the record we put in it tonight was this also-30-year-old record of Empire Strikes Back.

I find this especially comical because my mother never really let us watch Sesame Street. She thought that the characters looked decrepit and homeless and didn't think they were good examples to show her young children.

....But by god she bought the Big Bird record player.....and kept it for thirty years......





I just stuck this in here because after the childhood toy artifacts started coming out, I figured I might need it, and I got really excited that Rolling Rock is making "Rock Light" now! Awesome!


Exhibit B:

This poor child doesn't know it yet, but she's doomed for a life of LucasFilm-fueled dorkhood just like the rest of us.

The bookshelf where Mandy had found the initial Ewok book that sparked this foray into the Outer Rim of course had to be revisited, where books like the rest of these seen above were found: "Shiny as a Droid," "Return of the Jedi: The Ewoks Join the Fight," and "Star Wars: The Wookiee Storybook." Classics!



Exhibit C:

I just felt like "Shiny as a Droid" was too epic not to give it its own close-up. I'm thinking about bringing this in to my 9th graders for a read-aloud to help them think about imagery and vivid details. Just kidding.......or am I?




Exhibit D:

I wasn't kidding about the giant life-size Vader head. I found it in a closet, accompanied by this....

A giant shiny life size C-3PO head!

And before you go thinking that these little guys are just for display, and don't actually serve very legitimate purposes.....I opened them up and found this inside....

Star Wars character figurines inside a giant Star Wars character travel case inside a closet filled with nothing but blast-from-the-past Star Wars memorabilia. You're welcome, George Lucas.


AND, just so you don't think this household was COMPLETELY biased towards and obsessed with Lucas-lore, I give you....


Exhibit E:

Donatello, in all his green, teenage, mutant, turtley, bandana-ed glory. You can't tell from the picture, but this thing is about 2 feet tall.

*For those of you in my grad cohort, you now have a visual representation of what I wanted to be for Halloween the year after my mom made me go as Alice in Wonderland. And I had to settle for being the trampy, harlot, green M&M instead.*


Sometimes I fear I talk about Star Wars a little too much. But, this is my blog after all, right?


Let's go GAMECOCKS, and may the force be with you.


And just for good measure, some Admiral Ackbar parodies:





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Sh*t My Professors (and Classmates) Say

Oftentimes when I am sitting in class, I get bored. I look for avenues to rectify this situation in a variety of ways. But most often, I entertain myself either by drawing ridiculous things in my margins, or by quoting ridiculous things I hear come out of the mouths of either my professors or my classmates.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you may be familiar with a post I did called Notes from the Margins. This post will be similar to that, only I decided to also add in all of the random quotes I copy down during class.

This is partly because I take a lot of my notes on my computer now, so drawing in the margins isn't really an option during those classes. And partly because my professors and classmates are hilarious, in my opinion, and I want to share their deep thoughts with the world. Enjoy.

The other day, one of my Education professors was having us engage in an activity on imagery. She walked to a classmate wearing a flannel shirt and posed the question:


"What does Rachel's flannel shirt feel like?"

My classmate's response?


"Flannel." Well said, Jen.



And from that same professor comes these profound ideas:

"You'll just want to stab yourself in the face with a fork. You'll just stab yourself."
(regarding the idea of us trying to fully grade every piece of student work that comes in)


"Your grades are dropping like prices at Wal-Mart."
(self-explanatory)


This next group of quotations comes from a Professor on whom I loosely based my Endearing and Hilarious Quirky Professor. I have him for a graduate English/Film course, and the guy is an absolute trip.

"Capitalism castrates men. They must win their balls back with Fight Club!"
(we were discussing Fight Club that day)


"Are you opening it?....Is that you?.....Oh! I thought it was Tyler Durden!"
(on the classroom door creaking open from a draft)


"I didn't mean to humiliate her. Oh wait, actually I did."
(on calling a student out for being late)


"They're freshmen! They're scared of me. They don't yet know I'm a pussy cat. Meow!"
(talking about the other, undergraduate level course he teaches)


"Piss ant! I love that word!"
(I can't remember the context, but does it matter?)


"You guys want to look at the vomiting scene? I love vomiting."
(during a discussion on Brokeback Mountain)


"If you guys know anything about S&M communities, this is exactly what happens in S&M communities."
(he then retracted this statement after he realized it might not be 'school appropriate')


"If I spit on you, I'm sorry. This is my blanket apology in advance."
(apparently he is a spit-talker. I never sit close enough to experience this.)


"You're freaking me out over there, baby cat!"
(he calls several of the girls in the class 'baby cat', for reasons unbeknownst to me)


"I love Hearts. I play Hearts all the time. Cause I'm a girly man!"
(on his affinity for the card game Hearts)



And now, some actual notes from the margins:


this was during a lecture on Genesis. obviously my Professor had just addressed this particular phrase...





homegirl LOVES her some pride and prejudice. this was her reaction when someone questioned Mr. Darcy's suitability for marriage. "Oh my god, he comes with a wonderful package!"





just a nice little rendering of a potential book cover for Kafka's Metamorphoses. I think my roach is especially nice, given my opinions towards roaches.




some classmate who never says a "peep" during class wouldn't shut up during this particular lecture. which led me to draw Peeps?





"All the other royalties/crowns of Europe were pooping in their pants." I think she may have been talking about British imperialism or something. Regardless, i thought it was worth writing down.




This is a margin note between Heather and myself. I can't recall the exact context, but I know we were talking about tyranny in ancient Greece ("tyranna"-saurus rex). the rest is up to your imagination to decipher.




"Actual child being butchered in front of you? Not cathartic...traumatizing." ....during a lecture on catharsis.




possibly my nerdiest margin note drawing yet. it's an owl, complete with a Hogwarts acceptance letter, addressed to the "cupboard under the stairs."




i. was. tired. i guess i thought drawing sheep and Zzzz's on my paper was a good alternative to actually counting them in my head and falling asleep.




my professor is Italian, and sometimes her English doesn't translate exactly right, resulting in words like this: "sexuated"...in reference to Marilyn Monroe.




I believe we were talking about paganism of some sort, and I was particularly proud of my illustration of Pan. mythological goat demons FTW.



And finally, although these last two quotes don't fit exactly into the parameters of this blog post topic, I found them worthy of posting:

From my lovely roommate:

"Well, do we have any mugs? or any particularly big, spacious cups instead?!!"
(on whether or not we had any clean bowls to eat ice cream out of, and her desperation for finding a suitable replacement without having to do any dishes)


And from my oldest brother, who has a 5-year-old kid....we were getting into the white van my mother had procured for transportation to another brother's wedding in NYC:

Brother: "Well, it has windows, so at least it's not a child molester van."

5-year-old nephew: "Daddy, what's a child molester van? WHAT IF IT IS A CHILD MOLESTER VAN?!"

Brother: "Oh, uhhh....Daddy's just being silly."


Father of the year award goes to......?



Cheers! And go Gamecocks!
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