Weekend Math

I found out important things this weekend.  One is that on a gloomy day sometimes you need to do some addition.  For example:

Popcorn +

Chocolate Chips =

Yummy Goodness!

Who can feel sad about that?  I also found out that yummy goodness + someone who loves you enough to bring it to you and giggle with you = being very blessed.  Who knew math could be so fun?

Quite Possibly The Nicest Thing Anyone Has Ever Said to Me

Tonight I was at a Mary Kay function.  It was Girl's Night Out.  We feed you dinner from Olive Garden, Wax your eyebrows, give you a facial/makeover, and then give you dessert.  All for $10.  Not to shabby if you ask me.  Anyway, as I said before, I was there tonight.  I have an Amy friend there.  Only the Amy friend I'm referring to is not this Amy friend:

That is my Amy Haider friend what that is my bestest Amy friend.  (On a totally nonrelated issue--I'm pretty sure that is a darling photo of the two of us.)  As I was saying before being distracted by the cutness of that photo, the Amy I am referring to is my Amy Walker friend:

She and I were cutting up the cake to serve to the guests and she out of the blue asks me, "Shan, have you ever met anyone that doesn't like you?"  I wasn't sure what she meant so I asked her, "What do you mean?"  She replied, "It's just that I can't ever imagine anyone not liking you, so I thought I'd ask if you knew of anyone."  Like I said, quite possibly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

Street Cred.

I hate to hurt Hank's feelings, but I have to call a spade a spade...He's a big boy.  Fourteen pounds of big boy.  It looks like he ate another cat.

He also has big claws like these:

And big, sharp teeth like these:

However, today he met his match.  A foe so fierce that Hank ran out of the room with his big, fat tail tucked.  I was able to catch a photo of this beast:  Don't be frightnened:

I'm embarassed for Hank.  I think he just lost a lot of street cred to the 2 pound kitten next door.  He spent the rest of the afternoon like this:

At Least I Didn't Hit Someone on a Motorcycle

I got pulled over again today.  Only he didn't give me a ticket because I just barely got one on Monday.  This officer looked a little more like this:

I'm pretty sure I need to just stay off the road...forever!  My only consolation is that I didn't hit anyone on a motorcycle and none of my teeth fell out.  That's an improvement from the last 2 days.

Alliteration

Monday -motorcycle mayhem.
Tuesday -tooth trauma.
 Wednesday -????????

I'm not sure what all kinds of alliteration goes with Wednesday, but maybe I should stay home in bed tomorrow just to be sure.  Tuesday's tooth trauma is that I have a cracked tooth that sends me through the roof when something cold hits it.  By cold I mean anything below 98.6 degrees.  It will require a crown, but thankfully I can wait until after I get back from New York to take care of it.  Speaking of New York, maybe you need a tiny little sneak peek:

 This is our Hotel:  Portland Square Hotel

Wicked

Statue of Liberty

Ellis Island -I don't think these people will actually be there, though.

Ground Zero

Times Square

Empire State Building

I know that Kesk will not be excited for this guy, but I am.  I feel like I need a hot dog from a street vendor to have the true NYC experience.  Good thing for me that I like hot dogs.  This guy's name happens to be Ernie.

Motorcycles are NOT My Friends

So, today I woke up under the assumption that it would be a pretty good day.  I had reasons to believe that because for one thing I didn't have to go to school and teach all of the squirrely kids.  I had a workshop in Springville that I had to go to, and I was pretty excited because it was going to be done a full hour before I would have been done at my school.  For the record, that part of my day was pretty good.  I only had one major computer catastrophe but as I mentioned before, I got to leave early so I didn't mind so much.

My problems started after I left that workshop place.  I had a million of errands to do so I headed up to Provo to begin those errands.  Only too bad for me, because there was a policeman on the side of the road just waiting for me.  I wasn't even speeding.  I'm careful not to do that so as not to draw attention to myself because I don't want the police to notice that my car should have been registered in July.  He noticed.  He was nice about the whole business.  He didn't even write me a ticket for the fact that my driver's license was invalid.  Neither one of us could figure out why so he told me to call the DMV to see why they didn't want me to drive so much.  He even told me that if I'd get my car registered in the next 2 weeks, the ticket would be reduced to 20 bucks.  I think it was this guy that pulled me over:

After I left the policeman I was a little rattled and couldn't decide if I still wanted to go to Provo/Orem or just go home, put my head under a huge pilla', and pretend like today never happened.  I started back home and then thought to myself, "Self, you've got a million things to get done before you go to New York on Thursday, (Oh, by the way, did I mention that I'm going to New York on Thursday?  Because I am.) and if you don't do them now, you'll never have time to get them done."  Again, too bad for me that I didn't do the head-under-the-pillow thing.  I got off of the next exit to turn around.  I had to make a left turn to flip a U-turn so I put on my left signal.  However, I had to lean a little to the right to make enough room for me to flip around.  Some guy on a motorcycle saw me leaning to the right and decided that I was probably only kidding about the left turn signal so he tried to pass me on the left.  Guess what, I turned left, as my signal indicated and hit him!  Or rather, he hit me.  He bounced right off of my front fender.  Lucky for him, he didn't get dead.  My favorite part is that he had the nerve to try and tell me that I shouldn't have been leaning to the right if I wasn't going to turn right.  I told him that it doesn't matter which way I lean, he should probably look at my signal and think that there is a strong possibility that I'm going to turn that direction.  No real damage was done, thankfully.  My hubcap is cracked a little and I have a small scratch.  I'm pretty sure that this is the motorcycle guy that hit me:

The next time that the Holy Ghost tells me to go home and go to bed, I'm going to listen.

Public Service Announcement

DON'T READ THIS BOOK!!!

I guess you could read this book if you want to hear a pitiful story about a 7 year old boy that is beaten so badly on a regular basis that he almost dies.  I am team teaching a class with another teacher at my school and she wanted to know what we should teach next.  I've never taught 7th grade so I asked her what she usually teaches 'cause she's taught for about 30 years.  She said The Lottery Rose.  I'd never read it so I said, "Okay, but I should probably read it before I try to teach it to the kids."  I've found that it usually works out better that way.  So, Sunday I read it.  I didn't love all the yucky stuff, but I told myself it'd be okay because it had to end happy, right?  Nope.  In fact it got worse...there is a little retarded boy in it that the abused boy, Georgie, absolutely loves.  The only person he's ever really loved.  (I'm going to tell you what happens because you should never read it, anyway.)  The little retarded boy dies!!!!!  Not only that but they never tell us if anybody ever loves Georgie enough to take him home or something.  It just ends.  My feelings at the end of this book put Petey in "Touched by an Angel" to shame.