Friday at last, Friday at LAST!

Thank God Almighty, it’s FRIDAY AT LAST! Man. It has been some kind of WEEK. I honestly couldn’t even tell you where all the time has gone, but I’ve felt just ridiculously busy. So much so that I have failed to regale you with anything interesting since last Friday! For that, I apologize. I hope that you’ve gotten more done at work this week without Onward Hoe! to distract you from your responsibilities. Let’s see if I can catch you up on the exciting things that have happened.

First of all, Jill got married. It was sweet and beautiful, and she played the fiddle at her own reception. Because she’s awesome. Then I caught the bouquet, and Guthrie (her new hubby) ran over a traffic cone in their get-away vehicle. With all his wedding guests watching. Good times, good friends, good fun.

Then, there was a lot of teaching. And I started going to bed earlier so I could spend a few minutes writing every night in addition to my nightly reading. It’s been off to a bumpy start, but habits take a while to form. I’ll get there.

I had a date last night with Whitney. She ate dinner (I’d already eaten), and then we went on a field trip to Target and Lowe’s Foods. They share a parking lot, which was convenient because we were in a hurry to get back, finish our OK! Magazine article on the Madonna/Guy Ritchie split, and watch The Office. So we went to Target first, returned a sweater I’d purchased, then flew across the parking lot to Lowe’s Foods. It was dark, and you know how those parking lots are. There are little islands everywhere, and you never can tell exactly where the exits are. They’re like mazes sometimes. So I was driving quickly while trying to make sure I didn’t hit anything, which sparked the following conversation:

Whitney: You seem a little unsure of where you’re going.
Me: (Rabidly) A LITTLE NIGHT BLINDNESS NEVER HURT NOBODY!

We both survived, by the way.

When we got home, we watched The Office while peeling grapes for the “Haunted Classroom” my students put on today. The grapes, in the dark, feel like eyeballs. It is very disgusting. We also watched 30 Rock for the first time, and I have to say, I’m hooked already (DLF, you were right). Whoever writes for Alec Baldwin’s character is a freaking genius. I mean, the part where he was talking about the Dora the Explorer underwear that were clearly made for an obese child…that was amazing.

Last night, I had a dream that I married my friend Jim, except I wasn’t actually at the ceremony. I just asked him about it later. He said it had all gone well. He’d said “I do” and everything.

So then today,  my class set up and put on “Haunted Classroom 2008.” They’d spent a large part of Thursday planning it, and then when they came in this morning, it was all I could do to keep them on task for the first hour and a half before it was time to start setting the thing up. And by “on task,” I mean learning vocabulary and putting the lyrics to “Thriller” in order.

Anyway, at 10:30, we stopped “working” and started getting the diddy ready, and by 11:30, we had creepy sounds, cobwebs everywhere, the windows blacked out, skeletons hanging from the ceiling, severed heads on every table, a Taiwanese mummy, an Argentinian witch, a Ukrainian demon bar wench, a Tibetan monk vampire, a Hungarian ghost monster, several multicultural under-the-table goblins, and a Korean clown (handing out candy at the exit). I tell you, friends, it was a thing of beauty.

So after the long break, I put on the werewolf mask and hands they’d brought for me and went around to all the other classes, one by one, inviting them to come experience “HAUNTED CLASSROOM.” And surprisingly enough, people were actually freaked out by it. And my students had a BALL. They all felt, afterwards, as though they were truly ready for their first (in most cases) American Halloween. And that’s what I’m all about, y’all. Preparing them to enter the culture. Normally, I would teach them more Mary Kay-approved makeup techniques than covering one’s face in green eye shadow, but that’ll have to be another lesson. Maybe for when the Tibetan monk is absent.

The easiest (and perhaps only) vegan recipe you’ll ever LOVE

I’m really not entirely sure where this recipe originated. I want to say it started with one of my aunts, but I don’t think she invented it. No matter. I’ve veganized it now, so it’s slightly different anyway. But only slightly. And I’m serious when I say that you are going to LOVE it (if you like Mexicanish food and soup). Here’s how you do it.

You’ll need:

• the biggest pot you can find, and I mean BIG
• a 26-ounce (more or less) jar of salsa - I like a nice chunky one, but I generally buy whatever is the cheapest.
• 2 cans of corn (15 or so ounces each) - I prefer white, but I’m prejudiced. Oh, and drain it before dumping it in.
• 2 cans of black beans (same size as the corn) - Drain them too.
• a 32-ounce box of vegetable stock
• a box of Rice-a-Roni Whole Grain Blends Spanish Rice
• a clove or more of garlic (however much you like)
• salt/pepper
• cayenne pepper

Get the rice started cooking in a medium saucepan according to the instructions on the box. It takes about 25-30 minutes, so after you get it in the covered/simmering stage, dump everything else into your ginormous pot, stir it up, and let it simmer on another burner. Just open the cans/jars/boxes and dump them all in. Stir and heat. That’s it. When the rice is done, but not to the point of sticking to the bottom of the pot, dump it in too. Stir and keep heating.

If you want to dump in a can of diced potatoes, chickpeas or other kinds of beans, that’s tasty too. And I literally toss in every kind of pepper in my spice rack - crushed red, black, white, all of it. Oh, and if you can get your hands on some Bojangle’s french fry seasoning, that makes for some deliciousness too. If you have never lived in the American South, you may not be familiar with Bojangle’s, and if you are not vegan, you don’t know what you’re missing. If you are vegan, you’re not missing anything as there is nothing there for you except for the seasoning. So just get some seasoning and put it in your soup. You will not be disappointed.

This recipe will serve like twenty people or something crazy. I have never tried to feed that many people with it, though, so I can’t promise it’ll serve that many. But it makes a TON of soup. My co-worker, Lisa calls it “endless soup.” If you’re not cooking for anyone else (like me), you can make a big pot of it and eat it for a week straight (or freeze it for later). It is delicious hot (as a soup should be), or you can eat it cold as a dip, which is equally good.

Give it a try, and let me know how it comes out!

Reunited, and it feels so good!

I realized as I was headed out of town on Friday that I had, both tragically and classically, forgotten my camera, so I don’t have any reunion photos for you just yet. However, there were several cameras there, which means that sooner or later (hopefully sooner), facebook will abound with memories of the weekend, and when that day comes, I shall save them as… and share them with you. But only if I look cute in them. But seriously, who are we kidding? OBviously, I will look cute in all of them. I’m cute. That’s how I roll.

ANYhoe, the ten-year reunion of the Wilkes Central class of ‘98 was a weekend-long event. It started Friday night with drinks at “The Lounge” above Dooley’s bar in Wilkesboro. Yes, Dooley’s. Dooley, for those of you who don’t know, is the name of Whitney’s dog. We have long suspected that he was up to something like this, but Wilkesboro - that’s quite a commute. I guess some of those night classes* he took were business-related. And this explains why he sleeps all day every day. I just want to know whose car he’s driving back and forth with gas prices being what they are. If it’s mine, I expect him to chip in for maintenance and top off the tank.

Upon my arrival at Dooley’s, I saw at least ten people I’d been missing for some time and at least ten more I hadn’t really thought much about at all since 1998 but was ecstatic to see nonetheless. And then every time someone new would walk in, we’d all just look and think or say out loud, “Holy crap.” We just could not believe that they’d actually shown up. So we chatted and hung out and posed for pictures and caught up until I was about to fall over from exhaustion, and around 1:30, I staggered back to the lovely Michelle’s house, where I was staying (thanks Chelle!!). By that point, my expectations had already been exceeded, and we still had another full day of reunion fun ahead of us!

We slept in on Saturday, took our time getting ready, and rolled on over to the Apple Festival around noon. I got a caramel apple sample from Coach Tommy Johnson, who I’m pretty sure had NO idea who I was. We ran into Susan and Emily at some point and walked around with them until Susan left. Then Michelle, Emily and I wandered down the street just a bit more until we decided that it was entirely too hot and crowded to stay out there when we’d pretty much seen everything there was to see already.

Michelle went over to her parents’ house for a while, and I went to help set up for Saturday night’s festivities. Then I came back to discover that there was nary a full-length mirror in Michelle’s house. I called Emily, who saved the day by coming over to tell me what looked good together (since I couldn’t see my outfits as a whole). We both got ready and headed over to Roni’s Italian Restaurant.

Our excitement grew as we approached the restaurant and saw all the cars parked outside. We were fashionably late, so several reunion-goers had already arrived and were inside awaiting our grand entrance (ok, maybe they weren’t so much awaiting our entrance as just hanging out, but still…). It was a different crowd from the one on Friday night. There was some overlap, but there were several people who were there on Friday but not on Saturday and vice versa. In all, I think we probably saw 60-70 people from our class including (but by no means limited to):

• Julie Gilstrap, who came from Scotland. I hadn’t seen her, I don’t think, since I was in Edinburgh in 2004, althought we’ve kept in touch pretty well via facebook (thanks facebook!).
• Lee Spears, who came from frickin’ CHINA even though he didn’t actually graduate with us (he was whisked away to the School of Science and Math after sophomore year). I thought it was very cool of him to come.
• John Bowman, who also left us for the greener pastures of Science and Math, but who was also very cool to come back for our reunion.
• Matt Hagaman. And his fiancée (sniff sniff). The rumors were true. And alas, she seems lovely, so we didn’t feel it was appropriate to take her out back and deal with her. I guess we’ll just let her marry him and wish them all the happiness in the world.
• Sam Graham. Oh internet, if you only knew.
• The lovely Mrs. Emily Hogan, who was voted “most changed since high school,” although we’re really not sure why. She did get a haircut, but other than that, I don’t know that I see a whole lot of difference there. My hair is much shorter now than it was back then, and I didn’t get any votes in that category. What up with that, class of ‘98?
• Brandie Huffman, who was voted “least changed since high school” (evidenced by her name tag, which read “GO EAGLES!!” below her name), and of whom I hope to see video footage very soon. Not many people danced, but really, that was fine. She did enough for all of us.
• My buddy Wes, who lives with his wife probably twenty minutes away from me. I hadn’t seen them in probably eight years. Shame on us. We must repent of such long absences.

There were plenty more, but since most of y’all are bored because you don’t know these people, I’ll stop there. I skipped the picnic at the lake on Sunday afternoon because I had to get back to Raleigh, but before I left, I had brunch with Jim at the Coffee House, which seems to have recovered nicely from when that van drove into it a while back. I highly doubt anyone has ever called a meal at the Coffee House “brunch” before as it is essentially a generic version of the Waffle House. Oh so swanky. But brunch with Jim is lovely by definition even when the meal comprises hash browns and waffles with a strawberry-flavored fruitish topping.

I can’t believe it’s come and gone so fast. We have literally been excited about this reunion for the past five years, and just like that, it’s over. It was good times, though, I must say. Good times indeed. Mediocre food, perhaps, but the company would be near impossible to beat. I tell ya - it’s going to be hard to elope when the time comes and not invite some of those old friends to celebrate my wedding. We’ll have to have some killer parties all over the country to make up for it. Perhaps even all over the world. Yeah, I can handle that.

(*Whitney dreamed once that Dooley started speaking, and when asked how he learned English, he replied very matter-of-factly, “I took night classes.” )

and I call myself an educational professional

Well, I did slightly better on my Hannah Montana quiz than Lauren, Whitney and I did on our Jonas Brothers quiz. But still, I’m pretty sure all chances of getting myself or my children into an Ivy League school are now out the window. If only I’d applied myself more. Mom, Dad, I’m sorry. I’ve let you down.

Hannah Montana Quiz!

60% (9 out of 15 Questions Correct)

Fun quizzes, surveys & blog quizzes by

I have quite a bit of random food in the fridge/freezer that I’m determined to eat before I buy any more. I’d like to do this for two reasons: I don’t want it to go to waste. And I’m poor this month. So let’s see how long I can go without buying food, shall we? I don’t think it’ll be that long, but…

Dear Roommates,

Don’t let me buy any food until I’ve eaten what I have. K thx bai.

You have 5 months to practice.

Friends, my birthday is coming up in about five months, which means you need to get to a cake decorating class now if you want to be able to produce anything anywhere NEAR this beautiful by March 6. Ladies and gentlemen, BEHOLD!

Thanks, Danielle!

I had fun with this, but if you don’t like it, blame Danielle. It’s not like you can do anything to her. She lives way over yonder on the other side of the world. It’s SPRING there, even. And it’s not like you can just go into SPRING and get her. It’s a whole other season. I dare you to even try.

How well can you…

cook? I have to say…I’m pretty good, but I don’t do it that often because I don’t plan ahead well enough to have ingredients on hand. I generally get hungry, decide what I want, go out to purchase ingredients, decide I’m too hungry to wait until I’ve cooked whatever it is I have the ingredients for, and swing by the Taco Bell drive-thru on the way home from the grocery store. On the upside, I have those ingredients for later. And THAT is the only reason I know I can cook at all.

sew? Ummm…hello?

clean? Hahaha. Yeah, let’s not discuss that. Well, ok, we can. I like to put the dishes in the dishwasher as I use them. Then, when it’s full, I like to run it. But after that, things start to break down. I don’t like to unload the dishwasher, so then I can’t put new dirties in, and they just pile up in the sink. My bathroom sink, however, is always clean. I wipe it down every night after I wash my face. Generally, although things may not be dirty, they are just strewn. I strew. I’m a strewer. It’s not unsanitary. It’s just cluttered.

sing? Like a Vienna Choir Boy

play an instrument? I can play the guitar…kind of. And I used to be able to play the piano. Back me up on this, please, somebody, because anyone who’s heard me lately would never believe it.

write? I mean. I like to write. I love it, actually. And people tell me I do it well, although that didn’t really start until college. Up until that time, I didn’t think I was very good at it, probably because my style didn’t fit so well into the writing mold required by standardized tests. Even when I took the GRE (after I’d realized I could write), I got a pretty bad score on the writing portion. So unappreciated.

read? I can read at a post-graduate level. Oh yeah. I’m that good.

paint or draw? THIS is worth laughing about. I sometimes try to use illustrations to define words or concepts to my students, and all animals come out looking like animals other than the animals they were intended to be. And all people are stick figures unless they need to be wearing clothing or have a chest cavity for some reason. The one thing I can draw kind of well is a big ol’ plantation house. When I taught level 1, we would talk about house vocabulary, and I would have them draw and write about their dream house. Their dream houses would inevitably be modest ranches - maybe a split-level if they were really ambitious. But mine… Mine was always a two-story, white house with columns, a wrap-around porch, a balcony, a porch swing, a bay window, two chimneys, and a gigantic old oak tree in the front yard. Not that I’ve thought about it that much.

tell stories? Well, I needed a dresser, and we needed a coffee table for our living room, so we set out one Saturday to scour the Goodwills of the Triangle in search of these items. But they are large items, you see, and we were in my car, which would not accommodate them and us, so we stopped by Lauren’s parents’ house to borrow their truck. Then we went back to two Goodwills to make/pick up our purchases before driving back across town to our house. Lauren, needing to return the truck to her parents, headed over to their house for dinner, but it’s quite a haul from there to here, and her mom didn’t want to drive her back over to our place.

Lucky for her, I was going to the airport that night to pick up VA, and the airport is MUCH closer to their place, so her mom just dropped her off with me at the Sheetz down the street from RDU, we picked up VA (after about a two-hour delay), and headed back into town to drop VA at her apartment before returning home (finally).

So we were in the car with VA, and she asked something along the lines of, “Lauren, what made you decide to come to the airport too?” And I proceeded to launch into the whole story of the day, starting with, “Well, I needed a dresser…” which Lauren found REALLY amusing. She said she probably would have just said something like, “Oh, I was at my parents’ house, and I didn’t have my car, so my mom just brought me to meet Beth instead of driving me 30 minutes across town.”

I said that was completely illogical to me, and that it only made sense to start at the beginning of the story regardless of whether or not the complete story is necessary information. So I don’t know if I’m good at telling stories. But I really like (or perhaps feel compelled) to tell them.

persuade? I’m probably really good at convincing people to do things they want to do deep down but feel they shouldn’t do for some silly reason of responsibility or societal expectation. Oh yeah. I’m an instigator.

resist those who persuade you? Same thing. If I want to do something, I am easily persuaded to do it. But if I do not want to do something, I am unmovable.

dress? I don’t dress. I OWN.

decorate a room? It takes me a long time to get a room just right, but I take great joy in seeing it come together. I love finding old fixer-upper stuff at the flea market, etc. to give a room a little extra something. I also like seeing completely mismatched things come together to complete a room. I find that very beautiful for some reason.

decorate a cake? I’m not very good at cake decorating. I leave that to Brookie. But I did make one spectacular “Wave of Babies” cupcake. And I am a champion cake-eater!

parallel park? On a good day, I’m a pro. But on a bad day, I may as well not even try. I just can’t get close enough to the curb sometimes.

dance? What? You mean you have yet to see me to “The Grind” or “Sexy Up/Down” or any square dance moves?????? Oh, friend, you are MISSING. OUT.

swim? I’m a Pisces and a once-licensed SCUBA diver. You be the judge.

the results are in

Well, I just checked the 2008 “A Christmas Carol” cast list, and it appears as though I will not BE APPEARING ON STAGE THIS HOLIDAY SEASON!!!!!!! I have never seen it before, but I’m told it’s quite a fun little show, so everyone get your tickets right away, so you can not SEE ME PERFORMING LIVE!!!! This is really just a test to see who reads and who just skims. Was anyone duped by my deceptive caps locking and bolding?

I don’t really have much else to say about it. I am neither surprised nor disappointed. It would have been fun, but I have plenty of other things going on in my life. For instance, right now, I’m going to watch Arrested Development and eat Oreos. See? I’m super-busy. (Actually, I am pretty busy, but it’s Friday, and I’m tired. Don’t judge.)

I can’t go on.

I spent the afternoon planning lessons by watching TV. Well, first I finished watching The Big Lebowski (see my very brief review via Twitter) so that I could take it back and get I Love Lucy, which I need for class tomorrow. Then I had to watch Lucy so that I could write some comprehension questions for the students to answer while they watch. Then I watched snippets of My Fair Lady, trying to decide whether or not I wanted to use it tomorrow as well. I probably should at least have it ready just in case I have extra time. It’s a tough life, I tell ya. Then I went out to dinner. I mean, I just do not know if I can handle too many more days like this. The stress is just overwhelming.

Sigh. Back to the grind. I’d better go make my copies for tomorrow if I want to be in bed by 10.  Which I do.

another day of sweet, sweet unemployment

As you can see by my twitterances (aka tweets, twits or another word Amaris used once that was NOT the correct terminology), it’s been a super busy day. It started bright and early. Well, mostly bright because it was about 9:30. Anyhoe, I had to finish watching a DVD that I had to return to Blockbuster later, so that was item numero uno on the to-do list. It was a rather bizarre little collection of Parisian vignettes directed by different people. I had no idea that that’s what it was going to be. I knew that it had a lot of famous actors in it, and that there were therefore probably a lot of different story lines, but I imagined it to be more like Love Actually set in Paris. Instead, however, it was a long string of very short, unrelated little films. And once we got that figured out, I really liked it, but for the first 45 minutes at least, Lauren and I were very confused. We just kept waiting for the stories to weave themselves together, and then there was this extraordinarily strange one about a hair product salesman who goes to this Asian salon and gets beat up by the salon’s owner. Truly, truly weird.

There was also a really creepy one with Elijah Wood and a vampire. But a lot of them were really cute. If you’re interested, it’s called Paris, Je T’aime. Check it out. And speaking of Elijah Wood, if you haven’t seen Everything is Illuminated, do yourself the favor of renting it. If you’ve ever tried to communicate in another language or culture, you’ll appreciate it.

So I finished watching that, and then I watched a couple of episodes of Arrested Development on Hulu (which is SO great…both the show and Hulu). Don’t worry. It wasn’t wasted time. It was on the to-do list. Check! I was so so productive.  I went to Target, I returned things to the mall, I got a Swarovski crystal necklace, I went to church, I met like thirty people who may all come to our home group (but probably not), I went to Dunkin Donuts with Lauren, Whitney and JBeau (it’s going to become our “Central Perk” with our version of Gunther - a man who shall be known only as “Dreds”). The only thing I didn’t get done was the lesson planning, but having done all those other things, I am now free to lesson plan the rest of the week away! With a few episodes of Arrested Development each day to break up the monotony. I’ll let you know how it goes.

And now, back to Cancun!

No, I’m not going back to Cancun. I’m just going to resume my account of it with the details of the wedding ceremony. You know…the whole reason we went down there (apart from the swim-up bar, of course).

It took place in a gazebo overlooking the ocean, which was nice because you could see the water, but you weren’t surrounded by tourists in thongs. I mean, as picturesque as a European man in a thong is, if I were getting hitched, I wouldn’t want to have them in the background of all the photos. Am I right? So it was in a gazebo, and the bride arrived in a horse-drawn carriage to the romantic melody of the mariachi band that was flanking the entrance. And as she walked into the gazebo, the band fell in behind her, and in that moment I had but one thought. I want a mariachi band to follow me around everywhere!!! They could provide my traveling music, don’t you think? I mean seriously. Either that or the chorus of a musical romantic comedy. It’s a toss-up really. But back to the wedding.

There was a lot of reading. A lot. Discussing it later, Whitney and I really felt that they must have said like three different sets of vows. And since I didn’t have a program, I really couldn’t tell you what all that extra stuff was. I mean, the pastor was reading stuff, then the couple, then the parents were responding, then there was the scripture reading, then the poetry reading, then the vows, then the vows, then the pastor, then the vows, then the literature reading, then the sand ceremony (which was pretty neat and also involved more reading), etc., etc., and periodically, I would peek at the mariachi band, who were all back in the back of the gazebo biting their nails and tuning their instruments and wondering why there was so much talking going on and when it would be their turn to play again. It was pretty entertaining to watch. And the groom was sweating like I have never seen a human being sweat before. Not because he was nervous (I don’t think), but because he was wearing a suit and it was roughly eight gajillion degrees (with the heat index). And you could see it because the suit was sort of beige, so it totally looked like he’d peed his pants. Good times.

Oh! And as my assigned groomsman was walking me into the gazebo, the dude looks at me and says in all seriousness and cluelessness, “Where do you want to sit?” I mean, I know it had been a whole six hours since we’d rehearsed it, but please. A little retention.

Anyhoe, the whole thing really was lovely, and I am so glad that I was able to be a part of it.

After the ceremony, we took all the pictures, and then we had dinner, and whilst waiting for…something (I don’t remember), a band came around to serenade us, and I joined them with a bit of auxiliary percussion. Here’s a picture.

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