If What They Say Is True, You're A Boy And I'm A Girl

1. My "teaching" experience this quarter has been diverse to say the least. My class had their final yesterday and then I sat for three straight hours grading short answers. It is really amusing to see the terms people conjure when they are desperately grasping at straws. I held a review session for this final last Friday and almost stroked out during it because I glanced down at my papers for a second, looked back up and made eye contact with this sk8erboi kid right as he turned to his friend and mimed putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger while rolling his eyes. My mouth dropped open, and I stared him down until he turned bright red and shifted to hide behind the girl sitting in front of him. I almost, almost got up on my pulpit and started screaming about the totally un-mandatory nature of the review and how he could march his smug flat ass out of my G.D. class if it was so G. D. boring and unhelpful. In hindsight I wish I would have flipped out all crazy like and started screaming, but I just murdered him with my smoldery intense glare-bear stare instead. I was totally rattled by that kid. Then at the end of the review this girl came up to me and was all, "you were the BEST tee ay out of all of them and this was really helpful and thanks." Which should have made it all better but didn't quite.

What did make it all better was A. while proctoring the final yesterday, I sought out Mister Rude Gesture and positioned myself just in his peripheral vision (you know that spot where you TOTALLY know someone is there but if you keep turning around to look, the tee ay will bust you for cheating off your neighbor's paper? yeah) and sent him Evil Thoughts so I'm confident he failed the class, and B. I got an email from a random dude in that class this morning about my lecture from earlier in the quarter, in which he said it was the best lecshur of the entire class and that my jokes were actually funny, which surprised him because all his professors try to make jokes in their lectures and the joke "ALWAYS bomb." That tickled me. I totally thought I was being hilarious but how validating. So I am 1.) the best tee ay in the class 2.) the best lecturer from the quarter but 3.) so fucking boring and unhelpful and stupid that I make these evil turd people want to blow their brains out with imaginary guns.

How do I reconcile these diverse opinions? Hmmmm.

2. I know, right, where are the cool brain photos of JD? I am working on them now. You see, dear readers, the class paper isn't due until tomorrow so there was no way in hell I was going to start doing the labor-intensive work creating the magnificence you all want to see until the Last Possible Second. So maybe later today you will have those gems to look at? We'll see. I can tell you now (again) that it looks fucking COOL and you will just shit your pants with delight when I do post them.

3. I'm going to Boston thursday morning and that is going to be fucking awesome. I'm supposedly going to attend a conference, but there is a very large chance that I will blow it off, not register for it, and just hang out with Jenny instead. For the most part. I mean, I'll go and shit, but since I'm not presenting anything I just do not care. But that's not until next week. This week Jenny and Keith and I are going to see the Decemberists, yay!! So excited they are fucking great live. I'm not excited about the weather. I'm cold all the time here and it's 70 degrees.

4. What else? I am so very interesting but also so busy. I have been doing those crestwhitestrips, but i find myself almost always drinking coffee while I do them. does that cancel it out? i have also fallen in love with brown eyeliner, and decided that from now on jd and i are living on a Budget. Also JD is kind of going back to school starting in april for this crazy databse thing that means he has a real genuine career ahead of him, and that's rad. also he is so adored at work and internationally it's almost too much to stand. i am so glad he's getting all the recognition for being awesome that he deserves for working so hard and i'm also glad he's such a grownup sometimes. There are, seriously, several countries climbing over one another to woo him into working for their organizations when his stupid bitch wife finishes her phd. teeeeeheeee. i'm such a liability, he can't go anywhere until i am alllll done here.

5. i just mis-specified part of my brain photo model i'm running by telling it that each round of photos took 2000 seconds rather than 2 seconds to collect. I'm so fucking retarded! I thought it was in milliseconds! No wonder I had a problem with that model! yuck yuck yuck.

Ok back to work. LOVE YOU GUYS

You're Young Until You're Not

Sitting in my office with an undergrad the other day, she peered at the outdated photo collages hanging above my desk and exclaimed, "oh my GOD, how OLD were you in that picture?!"

She was pointing at a photo of me and Mike and Keith crammed in a photo booth from when we all drove to Florida and Stacey and I almost died.

I had to think about it for a second, then told her that I had just turned 18 when that was taken. She wrinkled her nose and looked from me to the photo and back again a few times, then announced, "you just look so YOUNG in that photo. and it's weird that you're with those guys."

I laughed at the fact that I now apparently look insanely old and crotchety, then laughed harder at the comment about how weird that I was in a photo with "those guys." I then took it upon myself to explain each person in photos in my office and my relationship to those people. As always when I actually pay attention to my photos I am surprised and baffled by the fact that I have no good photos of my husbie, nor any photos of us together, and made a mental note to take care of that. I have bajillions of photos of me and JD. I just never print photos out anymore.

Hmmm.

also interstingly, I was teaching a group of wee froshies about life and I paused to make the point that I am not all that much older than they are, so it's like we're the same generation. Then I looked at their innocent little faces and rethought that. I asked them what grade they were in during the year 2000, when I was in college. THEY SAID SIXTH GRADE.

Yipes. Other weird realizations?
*I have a decade of sexual activity under my belt (haha, literally)
*I have known most of you more than half my life and that is more than a decade
*Hanging around women who are pregnant makes me think babies are a good idea
*My weird proliferation of gray hair is no longer anomalous
*I am starting to notice tiny wrinkles around my eyes
*I almost never get carded at bars anymore

You Love Until You Don't

1. I have a product recommendation. I know, lame. But if you ever suffer from canker sores, mouth ulcers, nasty-ass shit like that (I tend to chomp through my lip every six months or so often when I'm chewing, for example), please go purchase yourself this product at your local pharmacy and prepare to be blown away. You'll notice the website also links to the actual clinical study journal article that's relevant. I read it. Science seems sound enough. But the proof is in the pudding. I am fucking amazed.

You think you deserve that pain, but you don't. Ha. Anyway, I know that's totally nasty and stuff but I know some of you guys also habitually traumatize your mouths and this is a way to head off the resultant 7-10 days of weird facial expressions, bad moods, and social awkwardness that I find usually follow my chewing accidents. Yesterday I could not smile properly (I could smile out the side of my mouth, but that lokos like leering) and I fell asleep with one of these magical patches in my mouth and today it is all better. Shit, that's so fucking awesome. Yeah, and gross. But hey, it has the potential to change some lives. So I'm putting aside my own personal embarrassment at discussing this affliction for your benefit. You guys are welcome.

2. I did my brayne photo experiment yesterday. HOLY SHIT THAT WAS COOL. Because JD is my husband, he was obligated to be my subject if I couldn't find anyone else who thought they could lie still for an hour without having a panic attack. I was unsuccessful in finding anyone, shock. So I now have actual, real, images of JD's brain. Once I convert them and blah blah I'll be posting that shit on here. I'm going to blow up the anatomikkul (more clear) skans and frame them and hang them in my office and possibly my living room. SO FUCKING RAD. Oh yes, suddenly the last six months of physics and matrix algebra became worthwhile. Aaaaaaawesome

3. I got an email this week telling me that I am only eligible for housing on campus for one year LESS than the average time to degree. WTF. What an excellent idea, to kick students out as they are in the final throes of their dissertayshuns. motherfuckers. that is going to be an interesting year. i might just be like, oh, fuck you, school, if you can't find it in your evil heart to make it reasonable for me to complete my training, I'll abd. Oh yeah, I said it. Bitches. What a stupid idea, to fuck over the advanced students so they can guarantee spots for the incoming ones. Really, really stupid. I am pretty sure that will make them look awful if they put five years of training into someone and then that person cannot afford to live here for the extra 9 months to finish. Blah

4. We did taxes yesterday. Haha. We are filing married taxes. Really by this I mean that JD is filing them. I am supremely unhelpful. In fact, I am so unhelpful that I didn't bother paying estimated tacks at any point in 2006 even though I knew I needed to. So that eats up most of the cushy refund he thought he would be getting. haha, being married to a grad student is a huge drain! we are still getting money back but not the impressive lump he thought. I am so irresponsible. teehee. good thing i'm totally hot and smart.