Seuss, Teaching, Malapropisms and Watson

So I finally have a moment to blog, seeing as it's a much more decent hour--9:40 as opposed to 11:59... So as I try to keep Watson from eating the couch and climbing into dresser drawers from the underside, I shall write.

First, first, first: Happy Birthday Matthew!

Second, I have been kept super super SUPER busy being the assistant director for Tripoli's production of Seussical. This play is SO MUCH WORK! I'm not *complaining* I am *stating emphatically* because I am having a lot of fun! We're finalizing props and getting sets and their related changes and trying to deal with kids who are sick. Lots of crowd control. But I think the show is coming together really well. :-) The showtimes are Nov. 6th and 7th both at 7pm in the HS gymnasium. Tickets are $4 for students and $5 adults. I'm excited to see it with costumes and all... I choreographed all of Oh, The Thinks You Can Think. :-D

Teaching in general is going really well. I mean, nothing ridiculously exciting. We're in the middle of "Hallowe'en Week" and tomorrow I start my lesson with the 4th-5th graders about the song The Erlkonig. It's really cool and creepy! The 2nd-3rd graders just finished acting out a story to The Sorcerer's Apprentice and the Kindergarten and 1st grade did a sound story to the book The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything. It was a lot of fun! :-)

This Friday Emily and Rachel D. are coming over and we're going to have a girl's night! I don't know exactly what we'll do other than watch movies, cook food and play with Watson. Saturday I have a 1st year Teacher's Conference all day and Sunday I have rehearsal from 1:45 to whenever.

That means I need to do lesson planning for next week THIS week... Since I won't want to do them on Sunday like I normally do and I obviously don't have time on Saturday. At least I can legitimately start practicing for our elementary Christmas concert next week!

And the piano in my classroom FINALLY got TUNED! And it sounds SO MUCH BETTER!!! My *kindergartners* could tell that it was out of tune. That's how bad it was.

Okay, so this just came up on mugglenet.com... WANT. That would be SO COOL!!!! (In case you are confused, it's the audition schedule for the Harry Potter theme park that Universal Studios is build. I wish I had $$$ and TIME to go do that!)

Okay, so this is random, but as I'm typing this I'm listening to Pandora... My Alan Menken radio station to be exact... And do you ever have one of those moments where you FINALLY get a pun, or a particular joke or specific play on words? Well, I just had that... "Zero to Hero" was playing, from Hercules, and there's this line that always sounded to me like "Now who's rich and famous, he can tell you what's a Grecian urn." And I always thought... "Yeah... What IS a Grecian urn?" and then I think of THIS scene from The Music Man. (Side-note: don't watch into Shipoopi... It gets painful.) And then I heard Zero to Hero today--just now-- and heard that line THIS time understanding the "urn" should be "earn." :-P But this isn't the end of my malapropism, dear readers. The REAL line goes like this, since I've now looked it up:

"Now nouveau riche and famous
He could tell you
What the Greek'should earn."

Oh, Disney... Sometimes I don't know what to think about you and your clever and often misheard lyrics.

Okay, what next... Haha, maybe... Watson? :-)

He's getting so big! If I'm home long enough, he will actually calm down and cuddle a little bit. Saturday we watched The Ghost of Girlfriend's Past and he slept curled up on my chest and purred and it was nice and warm. Tonight we watched The Secret Life of Bees and snuggled :-) In fact he's curled up in my lap right now. We haven't progressed to him sleeping in my bed yet... He's still too crazy and I wouldn't get any sleep.

Even though he is starting to cuddle, he is still a little turd sometimes. He loves shoes. LOVES them, and I don't really know why. Because he isn't really specific. He likes the shoelaces on my tennis shoes, and the leather on my ballet flats and the squishy-foam of my flip-flops and my fuzzy slippers. Sometimes he doesn't even attack them. He just holds them or curls up on them.

He's kind of nibble-y on me too... Like he'll try to initiate play by biting my hand, but it's never hard and he's never punctured skin or he'll tackle my leg and I have to shake him off. We're working on stopping the nibbling. I hope it's just a phase.

He *IS* getting better about jumping into my lap with out his claws extended, which is nice.

I took some pictures of him, which was hard, because he doesn't stay still for very long...

















He's actually asleep in this picture. Be impressed.


















Lasers on! Check!



















This was taken right before he started trying to attack the camera.



















And then ONCE in a BLUE MOON! He stays still long enough for me to get a beautiful picture of him! :-D YAY!



I love Watson! And I can't wait for the Sherlock Holmes movie! :-D



Note: The sleeping picture was taken last Saturday, the rest were taken today.

A surprise, and people who think they are smarter than me...

Hello, this has to be quick, because I need to get to bed and it is considerably later than I intended...

1. Surprises:

Tonight I was getting ready for a bath. I won't go into the details, other than... Tonight Watson jumped into the toilet, pre-flush. My hand was ON the flusher and I hear this "blooop" and there is my cat. In the toilet. Stupid, stupid cat. So I picked him up, and put him in the bath tub, which was conveniently filled with water that was for ME... But what else was I supposed to do? So I put him in the tub, which rinsed off the bits of him that came in contact with the toilet water. This obviously made him even more wet and very unhappy, but I told him he deserved it.

So then I had to get new bathwater and take MY bath while Watson fussed about being dripping wet and tried to dry himself off.

Needless to say, I didn't feel very sorry for him.


2. People who think they are smarter than me:

Mainly, some of my students. In two specific areas: Music, Harry Potter and quite often where those two subjects coincide.

And I know it sounds self-centered and over-confident, but really. Don't even go there. I have been reading Harry Potter since before most of them were born... Yet, they seem to think they can argue with me saying that Greig's In the Hall of the Mountain King is from Harry Potter, and that the track Double Trouble (which *IS* from Harry Potter) is from the 4th movie. No. Double Trouble is from the 3rd movie and the text is taken from the Scottish Play. Greig's In the Hall of the Mountain King was written as incidental music for the play, Peer Gynt and premiered in 1874.

Um, no. You're fighting a loosing battle kids. Especially in these two areas.


Okay, that's all I have to say. Watson is trying to run off with one of my shoes. I must stop him and go to bed.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

An introduction...

Hello everyone!

I got my new kitteh! I've decided to call him Watson! (In the end it was between Watson and Maxwell--because when he purrs really loud it sounds like when you make coffee...) He is a big trouble maker and likes to talk. He can purr really loud and likes to pounce on things that do not really exist. :-)

I went down to Iowa City this weekend to have him checked out by my uncle who is a vet and Watson has a clean bill of heath! My uncle said he found him to be friendly and easy to handle, which indicates that he came from a good family and has a good personality. :-)

It was also good to see some of my cousins, uncles and aunt and my grandparents. :-) Grandma made a delicious lunch and Grampa and I watched the food network and had Chinese for dinner! Grandma went to the Hawkeye football homecoming game with some of my cousins and Grampa and I watched it at some of my cousins' houes. (1st half at one, 2nd half at the other.) Like I said, it was good to see everyone! :-) (And Iowa WON! YAY!)

Oh, and it SNOWED yesterday! And it even sticked for a little while!

Okay, that's all for now... Here are some cat pictures! :-)

















Watson asleep in my lap...



















Watson on the go....


















Eating his bed...


















And drinking his water...


Also, it's important to remember that if you spray your hands with the "no chew" animal deterrent spray, so your cat will stop biting your hands in play. it will still taste bad 2 hours later when you forget that it's there and lick yogurt off your fingers...