Posts (page 2)

Classroom

Damn, I came really close to using my playground voice again today. That’s three times in less than a week. I don’t know what it is but I think there are more people who just don’t give a shit at Clark than there were at De Anza. Sure people occasionally talked in class at De Anza but not every day in every class. Clark seems to be cornering the market on people who listen to music REALLY loud in common areas, outside open class rooms and in libraries. There also seems to be a LOT more people who just talk out loud in class here. At De Anza they were warned once then thrown out of class but here the professors seems to be happy with saying “please keep the noise down” over and over and over and never really tell anyone to shut the fuck up. I guess the kids don’t give a shit because technology hasn’t caught up with Washington so you can still be a dumbass make a living whereas in the Bay Area it’s getting really, really tough to have a comfortable life without a higher education. That’s too bad. Maybe it’s time Clark cracked down on the students that really don’t give a shit, they might wake up and pay attention. I know they are paying for their class time too but they don’t seem to want to learn anything and when you sit in a room and get watched over by an adult that’s called baby sitting. I am not paying to be watched by a baby sitter; I really want to better my life through higher education so maybe I should start speaking up more often. Heck I am new to the area so if I step on some toes meh, who cares. They are not the ones who will get me a job, they won’t pay my bills, they won’t feed me so who gives a shit if they like me. If I don’t speak up them in a way I’m just as bad as they are.

Oh wait, there is something that Clark has that’s better than De Anza other than Wi-Fi; It’s no litter or very little litter on campus. De Anza was so bad I actually took close to 50 pictures of trash that was left in classrooms and “next” to trash cans where people just finished eating and walked away from their plate. I was so irritated I was going to send a copy of all the pictures along with a rant to the school paper. I still have then. I should still send them and stir the pot so to speak.

I hate filling my blog with mostly rants but so much stuff goes on around me that pisses me off I feel I have to in order to keep from biting someone’s head off in an argument. Yelling at my keyboard is safer than yelling in public.      

I finally remembered to put my camera back in my backpack. Picture one is from my front yard as I was leaving for school and the second was taken as I was driving in to the school parking lot about 30 minutes later.

Morning

Later morning

I really can’t stand the holidays. Yeah, the time off is nice even though this will be the first year I haven’t worked on any of the year end holidays if not all of them in about eight years. I know, “It’s not even Halloween and you are already suffering from the holiday Grrrrrs?” Well they are already advertising for the holiday cheer and that angers me for some reason. Maybe it’s because I know those commercials you see on television seem all cheery but they were written and produced by people who couldn’t give a crap about the holidays. All they care about is if they can some how cause a holiday shopping blitz that makes them millions. They show you the happy family all wearing sweaters and porking down roast turkey with relative but what they are really saying is “see this perfect family? If you buy foster farms turkey your life might not suck and you could be like them”. Maybe I hate all the holiday cheer because every year I always feel like I am standing outside the house looking in at everyone having a Kodak moment. The holidays really make me aware that I don’t have a family of my own. I don’t have the fancy house with the statistical family and all that goes with it. Maybe just I need to tell myself that the big house, the wife, the 2.5 kids, the dog and the Christmas tree are all really just a fantasy. Maybe I should stop looking in other people’s windows at their perfect lives and realize that maybe my perfect Christmas is actually not working for a change and actually sleeping in for a few days. You know, just something simple like that. I shouldn’t let those commercials bother me because in reality, I am sure the happy family you see pictured sitting around the dinner table with Grandma and Grandpa with the snow falling outside and the crackling fire inside is REALLY a normal family. Normal as in dad can’t wait to finish dinner so he can get back to his secretary, mom knows it and has a date with a bottle of wine. One kid is a pot head, the other cuts herself to get over mom and dad and the grand parents can’t wait to get back to Florida where it’s warm and the only fighting they hear is over a $2.99 buffet closing early. The only normal one is the dog who sits happily in front of the crackling fire and licks himself. Ahhhh, now that’s a commercial. It could be the perfect commercial for the therapy department at your local hospital. I can see it now. Once the dust settles the text pops up on the screen that says “This message brought to you by the psychiatry department at such and such hospital”.  

Wow, after writing all this gloom and doom I feel a little better. I should write a short story about the fictional family that finally takes off their happy masks and has a real holiday for a change. It could be like a cross between Desperate Housewives and cops. Heh. Now that would be cool.

If you were going to write a book, what would you write about?

I have actually been thinking about this for a long time. The first book I want write would be a comical look at the really bizarre conversations and situations that go on around me EVERY time I venture in to public places. I seem to attract crazy where ever I go and Washington is a gold mine for crazy. I can find humor in just about anything. I was also thinking of putting my comical slant on some of the more disgusting things I have seen through out my daily life like unexpected places I have seen vomit and people like "The Pee Bandit" we used to watch from the third floor window of the office building I used to work in. You know like a 300 page fart joke. Something every guy couldn't do without. Like I said, I have a pretty twisted sense of humor so I can find comedy in just about anything.

On a different note, I was thinking of writing a cook book. Nothing huge, just enough to get people to try new things "like cooking". I love to cook and recently started writing down some of the recipes I've had floating around in my head. When ever I bring something to a potluck or cook for a group, people attack it like a pack of dogs so it must be OK. Then they always hound for the recipes. This one still needs some work though. I don't think I have enough to full a whole book yet. I'm working on it. If someone can write a book on cooking with canned soup then I can write one with my quick and easy stuff. If they don't sell at least one day I can yell to someone "Hey, I am published you know" then they can reply "huh"? What more could someone ask for right.

I used to carry a camera where ever I went just in case something amazing happened I could blab it all over my blog. And since I decided to stop carrying a camera, here is a really crappy cell phone picture of yesterday’s spectacular sun rise. Yes, I am putting the camera back in my back pack as soon as I get home.

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I would have to say waking up with a nose bleed sucks. My alarm just went off and I brushed my nose and “poof!” I got that something is wrong feeling and ran to the bathroom sink. It was a good one too. It took about 5 minutes to make it stop. I hate allergies. My snout gets all bent out of shape when the weather turned wet and cold. Thank god I moved to a wet and cold state. Good thing it happened at home and not here at school. It would have looked like a murder scene in the restroom.   

I had an extra day this weekend but you would never know it. My Jeep had been making a s…..”I just saw 6 squirrels run in a line from the bushes outside the window, across the sidewalk and up a tree. What was funny is someone was walking down the sidewalk and didn’t even bat an eye at the squirrel train that just ran right in front of him?”

Anyway, back to the squealing Jeep. The last time it was making noises like that I had to replace the water pump so this time I was thinking the replacement went belly and in less than six months after it was installed. I was getting all fired up to replace it in the driveway to save money when I decided to take it to a mechanic instead. The reason being if I had problems in another 5.5 months I could take it back and get it replaced on their dime instead of mine. I went to the shop my mother swears by and they said “yep it looks like it could be the pump but we want to take a closer look first”. That’s fine. If it was bad they were only going to charge me $280.00 for everything. Then I get a call from the shop about three hours telling me it was done? It turned out to be my belt and not the pump. When they pulled the belt off the underside was covered with gunk and it was slipping on the pulleys. He said they cleaned off all the pulleys and replaced the belt and “poof” no more noise. So my bill ended up being $40.00 instead of $280.00. Whoo hoo! Now I don’t have to shoot the Jeep.

The rest of the weekend went pretty quick. I caught up on a lot of sleep, went grocery shopping then tried to cook a meal I saw on the food network which turned out to be nasty. I didn’t watch very much television though. I spent time reading more than anything else. Yep, reading. A real book with no pictures too. Heh. I am reading a book called “Outliners” which it’s about really smart people who have done great things over the last 200 years and how they all have similar back grounds, opportunities growing up and even birthdays. It’s been pretty interesting so far.  

On another note, I seemed to have left my laptop on hibernate instead of turning it off when I was using it here at school last Thursday and to my surprise, the battery was still at 25% after four days.

This last weekend went pretty well. Friday afternoon Hayden and Carson came over late in the afternoon until Brian came home from work and there was no fighting or arguing. Usually when they come over it’s like a train derailing and there is total screaming, bickering chaos. They must have been tired. When Brain picked them up he asked if I could go with him and the boys to the dentist for a check up and cleaning. All I had to do was entertain one while the other got poked and prodded. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to keep them busy in a dentist’s office or not until we got there. HOLY CRAP! This place apparently this place mainly sees children because it looked more like a toy store than a dentist office. There was a huge table covered in wooden Thomas the Train tracks and train cars, a big screen television playing cartoon, little kid music playing, a mini kitchenette complete with stainless appliances and a train track that turned on and circled the room when you pushed a red button on the wall. Damn, I want a cool dentist like that. I don’t think either of the kids even knew why they were there or even cared once they started playing with the toys. After that Brian took us over to Portland to get burritos for lunch. I seem to be craving really spicy food these days and dumped three little cups of the special house salsa on my carnitas burrito. Mmmmm spicy and porky. When we got home I had to help Brian get Carson’s new fire truck bed up stairs and put together. Sheesh, I never had a fire truck bed when I was little. Hayden has a race car so now they get to trade off sleeping in each others bed. Sunday I spent the day vegging and doing home work. Later in the day I started coming down with a cold and now I have a real annoying runny nose. Let’s hope it just stays a runny nose. I really don’t feel like being bed ridden again. The last two years I didn’t get “the cold” and I’d like to keep it that way. Today I get to buy a new water pump for my Jeep and install it over the weekend. I don’t have class on Friday so I will have 3 whole days to crank on Jeepy.

WOW! Apple really, really wants me to install I-Tunes, Quicktime and Bonjour on my laptop. It has tried to download and install all three item 3 times in ten minutes. What the hell! I don’t even have I-Tunes installed on this machine?  

I remember back in the day “about three years ago” when digital storage was expensive and hard to come by. Now it seems like everyone offers as much storage as you want. That’s cool and all but this morning I opened my Google account and half way through reading my e-mail I noticed that I had 1300 messages in my inbox! Holy crap I don’t even know 1300 people? Heh, I remember the old days when your incoming massages were kicked back because your inbox was full. Unlimited storage seems to have made me real lazy. Now if you will excuse me I need to get back to deleing “stuff”.

Great! I spend three hours in the li-berry each morning going over everything that needs to be turned in that day. Yesterday, I noticed a guy who looked sick enough to be placed in quarantine sitting in one of the cubes. He hacked and wheezed for a few hours then left. Today, just as I was about to sign off guess who drags in here and sits in the same spot. That’s right, Mr. Wheezy. I love it when people feel they HAVE to be somewhere when they are sick instead of being home getting better. I’m not talking about a little cough or the sniffles. I am talking about full blown flesh eating virus sick. Maybe that’s how people kick nasty colds? They just go to work/school and infect everyone around them with the plague and eventually there are more bugs on everyone else so they start feeling better. Nice! I think I’ll stop off at Safeway on the way home and buy a few packages of Lysol wipes. Does Lysol make a disposable hasmat suit?