Things I learned today while gardening...

1. No matter how much soil you buy, it's not enough. Go ahead an invest in the 100 lb. bag--that tiny little 5 inch pot will take all of it.

2. There's something very soothing and satisfying about planting vegetables. For about twenty minutes, I was a pioneer woman out in the fields, planting a garden to feed my family. Then I came inside and made a frozen burrito for dinner.

3. Basil is such a drama queen. I'm maybe two hours late with the watering, and it's all "I'm wilting, I'm wiiiillllting," until I expected to see a teeny-tiny Judy Garland standing next to it in ruby slippers, clutching a broom.

4. My house is apparently a prime spawning area for praying mantises. I've removed six little 3/4-inch long babies from my kitchen since I got home from work. I keep putting them on my peppers, hoping that they'll eat whatever little fucker is chewing the hell out of them. Also, I feel guilty about the fate that befell the first one, before Owen told me what they were. In my defense, who knew they started out so small?

5. That is all. Come over for dinner in about two months, when we see what I can make with an eggplant, basil and a habanero pepper. With parsley for garnish.

For a really crappy song...

...There are certainly a lot of people analyzing it. I dispute the fact that This Is Why I'm Hot by Mims is the worst song on the air now; I think all of the dreck that Gwen Stefani's been churning out lately is far worse. (Gwen! What happened to your awesomeness?!?) However, I can say that I have heard of no other recent song that inspires the textual analysis that this one has. First:

Found in Translation, where you must download the translation. Seriously, I nearly peed myself.

And then the Village Voice got in on the action. Not quite as funny, but still fairly amusing.

So now that that's all analyzed, we can turn our attention to another matter. Can we, by analyzing her songs, determine exactly when Gwen Stefani was replaced with a pod person?

The flag at half mast...

When I was in the fourth grade, Marlo M. showed me a gun in the back of Mr. Dukluski's math classroom. It was small, in a black case, nestled into a foam cutout. I didn't tell a teacher. I didn't tell my parents. In fact, I think this is the first time I've ever spoken of it, because at the time it didn't even cross my mind that it might be real. I was in college by the time that I thought about the incident and realized that, hey, we were in the middle of Baltimore City, most of the kids I went to school with came from fairly rough neighborhoods, and yeah, it was probably a real gun. I was a naive kid.

Thus begins and ends my one and only personal experience with weapons in schools.

In high school, we had to fill out a survey on weapons, drugs and sex, and I remember being shocked at two of the questions. The first was do you think there are people in your school who bring weapons, and the second was do you feel safe in school. It had never occurred to me that someone at Spring Grove would bring a gun to school. Remember, this was well before anyone had ever heard of a little school in Colorado called Columbine. Of course I felt safe. Maybe it had occured to others that schools were vulnerable, but not to me. Hell, we had a kid threaten to blow up graduation and nobody did anything but gossip about it endlessly. I was a naive teenager.

I watched Columbine unfold on the little TV in the ECTV office. That TV attracted quite a crowd that day. It certainly wasn't the first school shooting, but it was the one that grabbed everyone's attention. Suddenly schools were locking their doors. Metal detectors and security guards began to appear. And it was horrifying and scary, but I was past high school and didn't feel the personal threat that I'm sure students and teachers did.

Today I was on the Catholic University campus in the early afternoon, for the first time ever. There were students everywhere. For the first time I felt vulnerable. For the first time, I felt like it could happen here, to me. If I want to work in a high school, I think I'm going to have to get used to that feeling. I'm not naive anymore.

My heart goes out to the students, faculty and families at Virginia Tech.

Amen, brother

Bill Maher, I think I love you.

Yip, yip, yip, yip

Ok, not that I want my blog to become an endless progression of links to things I find amusing, but...

Go here.

I got it immediately. Did you?

...Freaking Minnesota.

This is pretty cool. Also, hard. Here's how it works. Once you click on the link, you have ten minutes to type the names of all fifty states. No map included. I got 49 in about 4 minutes, then had to watch the next six minutes run itself out while I tried desperately to remember Minnesota. See, there? I gave you one already. Go try it, and let me know how you did.

Heh. (Part II)

Sad but true.

Who would have thought I'd laugh at math humor? And more importantly, who would have thought that Kevin Federline would start to look like the responsible parent?