Brain Drain

Feeling drained--had a busy day today with students. After about three hours of one-on-one tutoring I start to have problems focusing. Tomorrow I have five straight hours of tutoring set up. I do enjoy working with the students, though. I have (a lot) more students this semester than in previous semesters (a result of the ENGL department's decision to not run an ESL freshman comp class)--mostly freaked-out freshmen scared to death of their professor's demands that they read Montaigne, e. e. cummings, and Aristotle.

Taking a tea break, feeling dazed, drained, but not irreverent (inirreverent? I like that. I'll have to add it to my lexicon).

I have a nice mix of students this year. So far: one from Japan (by way of New York), one from China (by way of Canada), one from Belarus who calls herself Russian and another from Lithuania who is decidedly NOT RUSSIAN, one from Columbia, one from (within) Russia, a new students from Korea (and several regulars from Korea), one from the Netherlands, one from Turkey (by way of Germany), one from Zambia, and one very confused American who thought I could help her with her Spanish homework (obviously my "English as a Second Language Tutor" sign was a little unclear).

Anyway, I need to get back into hard-core grammar mode for tomorrow. (I just heard a double modal! I LOVE double modals!) One student I'm working with tomorrow is a math major, so I think a visual approach to the structure of English grammar might be most beneficial for her. (Could I do a modified tree diagram?) At the very least, I want to give her the structure for phrases--I do think it would help her if she felt she had a "formula" to use to check her language. I'll have to try it.

Just thinking aloud.

3 Of A Kind - Babycakes

CAMP! But I don't think that 3 of a Kind knows that it is camp. Hmm, kinda sad. But still pretty damn funny. I refuse to feel guilty about the US inflicting Britney Spears on the world when the world (here, the Brits) insists on inflicting their own crap on us.

Computer Game

Waste some time playing this game:

http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/airportsecurity.jsp#None

You are airport security and you must keep up with the constantly changing carry-on prohibitions. Have fun.

American Pie 4 - It's Stuck!

Things to NOT do with an English Horn...

Greatest hits

I actually wrote this in an e-mail to a couple of my friends, but I had planned on posting this story anyway, so I just copied and pasted. (I left the first part because I liked the segway).


Anyway, evil is a history professor assigning a freshman ESL (English as a Second Language) student an essay on Aristotle's Ethics. I swear I spent an hour with this poor student trying to figure out what the hell Aristotle was going on about. I've seen ESL essays that made more sense than this thing. (And I probably shouldn't have told the poor kid that I didn't actually bother to read anything when I took philosophy 101). Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that Aristotle's English skills were a little weak (yes, that was supposed to be funny. It was like the comments that English was good enough for Jesus. Speaking of Jesus, I had 9-11 jesus freaks at the door today. No, it wasn't nine to eleven of them--they just wanted to take anvantage of a national day of mourning to convert the godless heathens. Anyway, I was late for class and Mom had sworn several times that the best way to get rid of door-to-door missionaries is to just tell them that you are a secular humanist. She says it worked better than telling them you are an athiest or satanist. Anyway, I told the old broads that I was a secular humanist and waited for them to recoil in horror. No such luck! The main woman looked at me blandly and said that she didn't know what a secular humanist was! Agh! Fu*k fu*k fu*k! Moral of the story: Next time missionaries knock on your door on 9-11, throw on a head scarf before answering the door and tell them you are a Muslim.)

Oboe!

Well, after almost a four (or five?) year haitus, I've gone back to the oboe. I'm in the process of breaking in my oboe again--as well as trying to retrain my diaphram, my lips, my mouth, and my ear (it is amazing how much Ive lost of my ability to "hear"). I sound like crap right now, but I hope that in a few months I'll maybe sound slightly less frightening.

Oh, and the dude in the painting? That is Marcel Tabuteau, the father of the United States oboe sound.

Family Stories

I'm not much of a kid person, but I make an exception for family members' kids. My cousin A. has a three-year-old named Marcus. She related this little story to me in the last e-mail she sent (I hope she doesn't kill me for posting it). I just thought it was hilarious and I had to share it:


Marcus has become quite the precocious (sp?) 3yrold. Today after falling off the bed he stood up, pulled down his pants, kissed his hand and then smaked his naked ass with it. I just about fell off the bed too and laughed, "Marcus what are you doing?" He said, "If ew tiss it, it doen't urt" I'm sorry i laughed because he did it two more times just for the reaction. Please lord, never in public.

Florida

And here are some pictures from Florida's "Redneck Riviera" (as my father so lovingly refers to it). The sand was white, the water was clear, and the sun was intense. (Sunblock every two hours, cover-ups galore, and I just stayed inside from noon to 3pm every day. It worked--I came back without any major sunburns and only a little sun rash. Yea me!)



Panama City Beach



Not a trip to Florida unless you come back with a picture of one of these!



Just a cool pic.



Remember the Truman Show? Well, that creepy little village actually exists--and it's in Florida (wow, what a surprise there). It is called Seaside and it is creepier in real life than it is in the movies. I figure that is where dermatologists and plastic surgeons go to vacation.



More Seaside. Yeah, it's creepy, but it is also fascinating.

More pics later. 'night!

Mexico City

Okay, so here are some more pictures from my trip to Mexico. These ones are all from Mexico City:



I was there about a month or so after the Mexican presidential elections. There was a dispute about the winner, and people were still protesting while I was there (which was great, until about 4:30 in the morning when they were still demonstrating...) Anyway, this was all set up in the Zocalo (or main plaza) in Mexico City.



This is the Catedral Metropolitana in Mexico City. (This is actually the back of the C. M.) I couldn't get a picture of the front of the cathedral because it was on the Zocalo and there was--you guessed it--a giant demonstration going on.



The Casa de los Azulejos (The House of Tiles).



The Palacio de Bellas Artes.




The Templo Mayor. This was in the Zocalo as well. It was the "center of religious life" when Cortez stumbled (oozed? manipulated? slimed?) into Mexico City. It had been built over and it wasn't until 1978 that workers uncovered it. (In fact, the temple has a brick pipeline going straight through it. You'd a' thunk that someone might have noticed the presence of an ancient structure, but... guess not.) The museum attached to the Temple was really, really impressive.