woman would be proud

i gave my first eyewash today! i haven't actually been first-aid trained yet (hm, i meant to ask about that today), but at leap they had this cool thing that fits right over the eye and you stick some water in and the kid tilts their head back and it rinses out the whole area. so when this kindergardener got herself pepper-sprayed (and by pepper-sprayed i mean another kid threw some dirt in her eye) i helped her out while someone else tried to get the other kid to own up.

overall, leap is really fun. pretty laid back as always, and the k-2's are so cute! plus today i got a babysitting gig too (oh yeah, i got lots of networking). woot to under-the-table income.

tomorrow i start the other job, helping to organize an office. not in the cool organized labor way--that'd be difficult as i'll be the office's second employee, including the owner of the company. i'll just be helping to neaten up the cabinets.

then on friday i go to indiana to visit the little bro. at school. woot!

wesleyan, aragorn, oh and pirates of course

last week saw a slew of ex-35 home-birthdays, and one of them i was close enough to go celebrate! i went on down to m-town to have myself a time, and to see as many fellow wesers as possible in under 24 hours. so first we got to surprise elach with a party! which is always fun. there was cake and ice cream and lots of pink. and lots of catching up with some fellow '04-ers.

then it was on to gin and tectonics, which was attended by two other sketchy alumni (one of Team Sketchy Alumni fame), although one or both of them may actually also be grad students. floored ngold; due to the surprise nature of the b-day party i hadn't been able to tell many people i'd be around. but, turns out, it rawks to surprise people with my presence! or they were faking it and only pretended to be happy to see me... i'm hoping the first tho, cuz it rawked to see all of you! woot!

thursday, i went to the campus center lunch (ah, the good old days) and saw lots more peeps. and got a burrito, also like the good old days. course, i'd forgotten that the onions are damn strong, so it was extra spicy. after lunch, got to see the rest of the 19 fountain crew cuz bcod took a sick day. hope y'alls are feeling healthier! and that your simcities are prospering... or burning down in a robot invasion-volcano-earthquake-related disaster, depending on what you intended...

so then on friday, KPd came up! woot! after an insane busride that she'll probably post about herself, she arrived and we watched viva la bam and other crassness, before resting for weekend awesomeness! like...

going to the lord of the rings exhibit at the museum of science and entertainment (formerly, and officially, the museum of science)! there were costumes! and armor! and the one ring (actually kinda unimpressive)! and scale models! and... a place where kp and i got spliced into a shot so that she was hobbit-sized and i was wizard-sized, and vice versa! i'd have pictures, but they cost extra, so we just played for free. and... GANDALF'S SWORD! or, a replica that we got to hold, with gloves on.

sunday we saw the sadownik for lots of leftover kosher food (bagels and hallah and kugel--oh my! and yummy!) and catching up. and stories. kp and ss are the masters, after all.

so today, i started my job! well, kind of. i filled out all the paperwork and tax forms. tomorrow i start for real. oh, by the way, i got jobs! most of y'alls know already, but yeah. i'm working at lincoln extended-day activities program (aka LEAP. formerly lincoln everyday afterschool program, back when i was getting the acronym wrong) on tuesday wednesday friday. i'm helping out at an office in town on monday thursday; i start that one on thursday. woot to jobs! and to getting paid! which won't happen for a couple weeks cuz i just missed the pay cycle, but whatev. soon i'll be rollin' in it. and by rollin' in it, i mean i'm still not making enough to survive on my own. maybe nyc pays better...

yesterday i found out that the movie hero i am is...


!

... turns out having no work to put off doesn't prevent finding fun new online quizzes.

So, it's been a while... I've actually been mildly busy! But haven't thought of much to say about what I've been up to. Oh but I did find this out:

My Boobies' Names Are: Thelma and Louise

Get your own Boobie Names

So that's exciting. My boobs are badass. I just hope they don't drive me off a cliff... but armed robbery might be ok.

Saw the new school again today. It had more stuff going on, and the auditorium is really nice, but parts of it made me sneeze hardcore. Oh and the boys' locker room smells bad already (I figured, probably the only time I'd be allowed in was on the tour), and not in the paint-y way the rest of the school smells a little funny.

Tomorrow I go to get my eyes dilated--the doctor puts drops in so they can look real close at the retinae--so I'll be blind all day, even with my glasses on, but I do get funky dark sunglasses. Maybe when I go to Wes I'll wear them ironically. Feel free to call the home number and chat, as I'll not be able to read or watch tv or anything else visual for a while.

I've gotten mildly obsessed with a lot of new music: Modest Mouse (yeah yeah, I'm too late to be that hip for liking them, but when did I ever have cutting-edge music taste?), The Killerz (like i said... not cutting-edge. but it's damn catchy), The Streets, Green Day. I need money, so I can get cd's. I don't think this can wait till xmas. Oh I also hope to move out of my parents' house. But the apartment will need a soundtrack =D

You heard it here first

Ok, perhaps not, but as I just read a Safire article that reeked of Karl Rove, I decided I had to do something. You should have heard it from, say, the New York Times or CBS first, but as far as I know they're not up on their typewriter technology. If you did, well, sorry, you heard it here also.

One can easily find, with a Google search of "proportional spacing typewriter" that--lo and behold!--the first match is the IBM Archive from 1941, listing as one of the major events in the company's history of that year was the invention of the Proportionally Spaced Typewriter. So instead of all the fonts looking like Courier, whose l's and i's take up just as much space as its W's and M's, and which therefore is the preferred method of making one's high school papers look longer. I wonder if back in the 60's, by which time proportional spacing was rather common on typewriters, at least the richer kids could make their papers look all fancy by using the typeface that looked more like most printed books rather than those monospaced typewriters. I really wonder if profs who have been working that long adjusted their page-number requirements with the new technology, or if us poor computer users really have to do more writing than our forefathers.

Also, on the superscript/subscript claim (that superscript and subscript were also impossible), that's also complete bullshit. Everyone who actually used typewriters at school and at their jobs knew that in order to make superscript and subscript, all they had to do was turn that wheel thingy on the side a little up or down, and turn it back when they were done writing the "th" after the "4" or whatever.

Anarchy in the UK!

New photos at Europe's Blog! This time, of London. And a little Dublin.

Tom's Petition

Sign the petition to renew the assault weapons ban! Not only is it a good thing to do, but you also get to see yourself added to the animation, six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon style.

IKEA-tastic

Not a day went by this weekend--and by weekend I mean Friday and Saturday--in which I didn't drive/ride at least 3 hours round trip for some adventure or another.
Friday: Going South
So I needed some shelves on which to put the stuff that's currently covering my bedroom floor (ooh, check out that grammar... I didn't go to college for nothing!). My mom needed the same, only for the mudroom instead of the bedroom. So the two of us trekked down to sunny New Haven on Friday. We started out with lunch (yeah yeah, eating is supposed to come last... but it was lunch time by the time we arrived! We're such rebels...). Their Swedish meatballs really are pretty amazing. The lingonberry juice, not so much--a little too sweet. Anyhoo, then we went on our merry way, this time following the nice arrows on the floor. First we found Becca! who was there with her housemates getting some stuff for their senior house. Then we found some great shelves called IVAR and had figured out all the pieces to get and were ordering them from downstairs, when the guy who was helping us discovered they were out of the shelf part. So we had to find other, less perfect stuff. But it was also even less money, so... woot! Then we continued down to the catacombs of the accessories area, where one inevitably finds tons of stuff that one absolutely needs, even if one did not need that set of placemats before entering the store. We also got some coffee and chocolate to take home... or to eat on the way.
As we were in CT already, we stopped in M-town to see whomever I knew was there. So we had ice cream with Elach, saw RC and BSom's house and then also Becca's house. And SWeigle's, but she wasn't home so I couldn't say hi. Then, after way too much time there (at least if you ask my mom... I would have been fine staying for the semester myself) we headed home for the best part of an IKEA trip... PUTTING TOGETHER THE FURNITURE! ... well, I don't have room on my floor for a bookshelf (bit of a catch-22 there... oops), but we assembled the mudroom shelves. And we saw the Daily Show, which finally covered the protests... twice! Way to go, Lewis Black. And... whoever else.
Saturday: Going North
On Saturday, I got up wicked early (as we say in the MA... and in the NH, where the day's trip would take me) to join my dad and a couple other grown-ups to hike up Mt. Monadnock. But that's not all. At the top, there was a dance performance! Right there on the rocks! It looked like this:

Pretty amazing. They did Native American Sign Language within the dances too, of poems and stuff. The hike was long and tiring, but the dance was wicked cool. Then everyone else went swimming, and I went wading, in the frigid water across the street from the trail head. Then we got massive ice cream cones at Kimball Farm, and came back for take-out Chinese food. A tiring day, but pretty adventure-tastic.