Can you hack it?

You look at the wheel spinning ever so quickly. You think, "I can do that. No problem!" You wait for exactly the right moment. You hop on. You are able to keep up (for a while). You get tired. You slow down, but the wheel does not. This is what happens!



Answers from yesterday's trivia: 1. Billy Madison, 2. Tommy Boy, 3. Super Troopers, 4. SNL: Justin Timberlake (D!ck in a box), 5. Seinfeld, 6. Married with Children, 7. The Simpsons, 8. Home Improvement

Movie and TV trivia

If you can tell me what movies or TV shows these are from(or in reference to), you are my hero!

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P.S. I know the answers! I'll post them tomorrow!

I am smarter than I thought I was...

So, on the road to becoming a better person and finding a career that I can love and do for the rest of my working days... I turned to teaching. I have always wanted to be a teacher. You know the old adage "those that cannot do, teach"? WELL, I CAN DO, but I also want to TEACH! I love breaking things down for people and "showing them the way." Plus, I could put a lot of my organizational skills to good use. *wink, wink*

So, I applied for Project Pipeline back in May. This is a program where you can earn your teaching credential WHILE you are putting in real time in a real classroom. I was missing a couple of prerequisites to get into the program, and realized that I had all of 13 days to study for a HUGE test... the CSET (California Subject Examinations for Teachers), in order to be a Life Science/Biology teacher (which happen to be in HIGH demand these days). I broke it all down into how many hours a day I needed to study. I took a week off of work. I lost a lot of sleep and subsequently time with my baby girl. In the long run, I knew that it would be to her benefit (having me home during the summer), so I tried not to feel too bad about it. Anyway, the CSET subtests I had to take were two general science subtests, and a biology concentration subtest. This was about 150 multiple choice, and 7 essay/short answer questions.

On paper, it did not seem so bad... but in reality it covered a lot of ground, all of which I had been taught in college, but at this point in my life could not remember. Physics and Geology and Astronomy, OH MY! I read somewhere that only like 15% of the people that take all three tests at once pass. So, odds where definitely not in my favor!! Notes, flashcards, endless hours on the computer... I was more prepared that I could have ever imagined. The day of the test, I could not even bring myself to look at the material. If I did not know it by now, I was not going to know it! The first and second tests were okay, not easy, not difficult. By the time I reached the third test (Biology, which should have been easy for me), I was totally brain dead. I was yawning every two seconds, having to reread questions multiple times... then I got to one of the essay questions asking about the Greenhouse Effect, and all I could think of was "COW FARTS." It just so happens that methane does cause it, and I was not just mentally "losing it" at that point. That was the last question I answered.

I felt like I had been run over by a truck, then thrown into a wood chipper. I was exhausted. I could not keep my eyes open the rest of the day (except for the drive home) and the next day. I still had to wait A MONTH to get my results. That day was yesterday, and you know what?

I PASSED ALL THREE.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia

Yes, the fear of FRIDAY THE 13TH! According to John Roach ("Friday the 13th Phobia Rooted in Ancient History", National Geographic News, August 12, 2004), "It's been estimated that $800 or $900 million is lost in business on this day" in the United States. Luckily, there is only one FRIDAY THE 13TH this year, however, there are THREE next year (Feb, Mar, Nov). Now, I am not superstitious, but if I saw Jason Voorhees coming towards me, I would probably shat myself, then change my mind!! BUT, in light of all that...

Beware Of The Friday 13th Virus
It will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty.

It will give your ex-girlfriend/ex-boyfriend your new phone number.

It will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank.

It will put a dead aardvark in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.

It will give you nightmares about circus midgets.

It will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.

It moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it.

It is insidious and subtle. It is dangerous and terrifying to behold. It is also a rather interesting shade of mauve.

For the ladies: It will leave the toilet seat up. It shaves over your bathroom sink and then leaves the hair to clog your drain. It will drink all your beer and leave dirty socks on the coffee table when company comes over.

It prevents scurvy, but it gives you mega garlic breath as it does so, which makes the net results negative.

It cheats at Scrabble. It can forge your signature.

Longing for simpler times...

As I am beginning to pack up our house (in anticipation of moving sometime in the next month), I wonder what life was like without Cuisinarts, Kitchen Maid mixers (hand mixers for that matter), and ornate cups, glasses and dishes. I am sure that it was more time-consuming and a general pain-in-the-ass to bake cookies, pies, and cakes... but would it not have made it more special? You would not need a huge-ass kitchen just to hold all of your small appliances and modern day conveniences either! *sigh* And the amount of toys that our children accumulate? YIKES! Jacks, marbles, handmade dolls... what happened to those?

This gets me thinking... did the importance of education get kids out of the fields helping their parents with crops and into the classroom? What about learning life lessons? Life lessons: anything worth doing is worth doing well. I'm not saying that education isn't important, or that modern conveniences are a waste. Just wondering how it is that our kids got so sheltered and spoiled. Aren't "street smarts" just as important as "book smarts"? If Pa had to go out and kill a chicken for dinner, or one of the farm animals died, a life lesson presents itself and viola! your child learns the ways of the world. I'm sure that kids don't really understand where their chicken nuggets or cheeseburgers come from these days, until much later in life. I can only assume at that point it is met with disdain and horror, promising never to eat those food items again...

....ah, simpler times...