um, i'm sorry

so, it's been awhile. things have been pretty okay lately. i went home to michigan and saw a lot of you, which was lovely and just what i needed. then i went to wild wonderful west virginia for school for a week, where i stayed in a cabin and saw lots of deer and christmas lights. and now i'm back to work, trying to get back in the swing of things around here. there's really a lot going on in my life and in my head. i'm responding to the unknown by praying and blowing bubbles in my office. it's pretty effective so far. if you'd like a more personal relation of my current events, call me. this is not the time or the place for it. in the meantime, i'd like to share this with you:
The World According to Student Bloopers
compiled by Richard Lederer at St. Paul's School
(courtesy of my little sister)
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.
The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Pramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
Pharoah forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns--Corinithian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable. Achilles appears in the Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interest in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Danes, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harold mustarded his troups before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by Bernard Shaw, and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America by cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was known as Pilgrim's Progress.
George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution, the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assassinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
The sun never set on the British empire because the British empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplatory of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.
The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steam boat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code of telepathy. Louis Pasteur invented a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of Species. Madman Curie discovered radium. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
The First World War, caused by the assassination of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

brilliant.

a christmas wish list

though i feel safe betting that most people have, unlike me, finished their christmas shopping so late in the game, by smam's suggestion, here is a post about some christmas gifts i would like to receive:
1. regina spektor's new album: begin to hope
2. the office, any/all seasons of the american version
3. books by bill bryson, but i've already received english: the mother tongue
4. the a&e version of pride and prejudice
5. settlers of catan and the expansion pack for 5-6 players
6. postsecret books
7. target gift cards are always appreciated

that's all i'm going to write now. at the moment, i've forgotten most other things i've asked for, though i'm sure i'll be thrilled to remember when i receive them this weekend. (all that to say, if you bought me something and are now worried because i didn't list it here, don't be worried. i'm easy to please... i'm sure i'll love it!) in review, i am not finished with my christmas shopping, and am hoping to invite suggestions from your wish lists by giving you mine. pathetic, i know.
anyhow, i'm headed off to get into the christmas spirit by attending one of my favorite seasonal services at a nearby church. merry christmas.

absolution

yesterday at the geneva HED christmas party, we played a game of sorts, which i won. i received a package that included the following variety of green and white items:

--whitening toothpaste
--whitening gum
--whitening tooth-covering apparatus
--dental floss (the kind that is suspended on a wish-bone like structure)
--gum-pickers
--an electric toothbrush designed for children that has a dolphin on it. my professor commented that it is a "porpoise driven life" toothbrush.

(at this point i started to sense a theme, and got a little self-conscious about my teeth. however, as the game was not rigged, i was forced to conclude that this collection of items was not intended to spur me, personally, on towards better dental hygiene.) the following items were non-tooth related:
--12-pack of sprite
--geneva college watch
and my personal favorite:
--"wash away your sins towlettes." the packaging claims that they are "heavenly scented," "handy, reliable," and contain an "anti-bacterial formula that kills sins on contact." the back of the package gives directions for "righting your wrongs with a wipe!"
1. remove moist towlette
2. devoutly wipe away wrong-doing
3. spot-check for stubborn guilt
4. wipe again as needed
5. discard sins in waste receptacle
6. go forth purified & moisturized

fantastic. i'm saving those for next time i do something really bad. it's kind of like a get-out-of-jail-free card. may you all be so lucky this christmas.

all right, all right, i know

i know i haven't posted. but i have nothing to say. feel free to suggest a topic you're interested in hearing about, and i will consider updating you on the subject. or i might ignore you. i can do what i want. this is my blog.


well, now that i've scared off all my reader(s), i'll sleep better knowing that at least you're not checking back and getting disappointed. happy holidays.

wow, this thing is BORING these days. the truth is, i've been quite busy, and unable (unwilling?) to take the time to update it. my apologies to those of you who depend on my blog for an up-to-date snapshot of my life.
i've been participating in the following activities, in no particular order:
-learning arabic
-reading books
-doing dishes
-making presentations in class
-contemplating "the next step" in a number of different life-areas
-transforming college students to transform the world
-writing emails
-wasting time on facebook
-packing to go home
-hanging out at borders reading books by bill bryson
-double-dating
-reading other people's blogs and being comforted by their failure to update
-playing with small children, of whom this one is a favorite:

you can't get better than that. look at that toothless grin. a-dor-a-ble.
all right, folks, that's all the time we have. back to work for a few more hours, then home to pack! whoever thought it would be a good idea to fly home tomorrow, on the busiest travel day of the year, was kind of stupid. and the person who decided to make that flight for 7:20 a.m., requiring her to arrive at the airport at six, was even stupider. and the person who decided to carpool with her boyfriend, whose flight was EVEN EARLIER, was stupider yet. sigh. hindsight is 20/20.
happy thanksgiving, y'all.

pierogies

hey everyone. please enjoy this excerpt from today's pittsburgh post-gazette. it's an article about a competition for the pierogie capital of the world. pittsburgh lost to buffalo, ny due to a poor showing of spirit. a spokesperson for the mayor of pittsburgh made the following comment: "at least we're still the city of trees, bridges, intelligent children and good looking and talented women." and to show there are no hard feelings, he's issued an invite to buffalo officials. "they can come down and eat pierogies and look at our super bowl trophy."

back at it

hello all. i got sick of looking at my last post, with the no comments. boooring. so, here's a quick update on me:
i went to g-rap last week. thanks to everyone for a great time. i got to spend lots of time with my family, including a shopping-for-birthday-present-for-my-dad trip to dick's sporting goods. i went with my older sister, in search of something that i can no longer name and also some waders. we were in the hunting and fishing section (where i *clearly* don't belong), and i felt more than a little out of place. while being eyed by the employees and other patrons, sarah and i started singing the "one of these things is not like the others" song to amuse ourselves. however, she did in fact know exactly what we were looking for, and with a little help from the store clerk, we successfully purchased what turned out to be the wrong kind of waders. oh well. it was an adventure, nonetheless.
i also got to see a bunch of friends and learn how to play texas hold 'em, which i am awesome at. it was lovely to see you all. and i had such a good time (as always) that i didn't get quite enough sleep and had to pull over and take a lil nap in a meijer parking lot about an hour east of grand rapids. luckily, i didn't die at all, and am back in pa getting back in the swing of things.
i have to go now so that i can study a bit more before my arabic class. that's right, i'm taking arabic. for free. at bobby mo. masaa al khair.