Lost in Time

My wife and I talk about wishing our lives away a lot. Ussually, this phrase is reserved for those who spend all their time dreaming and none of their time doing. This is not our problem. Sure, our minds fight the battle between goals and responsibilites on a constant basis, a fight that rages in almost every person most of the time. But when the misses and I wish our lives away, it is never from a lack of action. We are all about the action.

We wish our lives away in small chuncks, in increments of days and weeks. "I can't wait until we get paid next week," "Next month, our electricity bill should go down a bit," "In five years, we will be able to afford our lives." We remain under such constant pressure from financial stress that we are always hoping tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

Now, there is some sort of optimism in here somewhere. Despite years of economic disaster as the norm, we continue to believe that the near future offers some solace, some hope that we can cling to. We have not lost so much faith that we have accepted our financial disasters as part of who we are.

But, still. We wish our lives away. Wishing it were payday gives every day in between a dark cloud. I can't see what is great about the universe if I am wishing the day would just hurry up and end. And currently, I am wishing that the next 56 months will end, so that is really doing me no good.

This is sadly the end of my rant, because I have no solutions. I need to somehow seperate my family's need for cash with my enjoyment of every moment I have her on earth, but that seems like just another unfulfilled wish.

A Confederacy of Klutzes

Well, my son, while running across a cafeteria floor, fell on his face, and scared the hell out of everyone. He was gushing blood, seemed completely dazed and his nose was swollen to about twice his normal size. We spent Friday in the hospital, where he suddenly and without warning, woke up, forgot the pain and got happy.

I was very glad to hear that 5 year olds have cartilage in their nose and not bone, else this story would have been much more tragic.

La Poem

(Like La Boheme, get it...)

OK, so just a quick note today. Last night I scoured the internet for performace poems to show my students. I found tons, but two of them I really, really liked.

I, Nightmare by Scott Woods

and

Kiss It by Marc Kelly Smith (Link to Real Audio file).

Enjoy.

The Good, The Bad and the Kinky

I am a Kinky Friedman fan. I like his books, his songs, and most especially, his Texanness. But his current run for Governor, which I at first thought was quite a laugh, is now in the position to spoil the Democrat's first real shot at the Governor's office since 1992.

Let me explain. There are no run-offs for Governor in Texas, so the highest vote getter gets the race, no matter what.

Now, in 2002, Perry beat Democratic nominee Tony Sanchez 58% to 40%. In other state-wide races that year, Democrats performed even better, some up to 46%.

Since 2002, Perry has botched a number of legeslative initiatives important to Texas, making his popularity lessen. A recent poll had Perry's favorable numbers at only 42%, with unfavorables at 38%.

So, a while back, it looked like a run of the mill election season. Perry and Strayhorn would battle it out in the primary, Perry would win, and Perry would defeat whichever Democratic nominee we tossed into the ring. The addition of Kinky Friedman sounded like fun because the Republicans were going to win anyway, why not have a good chuckle.

Then, Strayhorn announces a run as an independent instead of fighting in the Primary. The match changes overnight. Now, Kinky is poised to be the person blocking someone sain from living in the Governor's mansion.

Without Kinky:

Perry: 38%
Democrat: 42%
Strayhorn: 20%

If the Democratic nominee just matches Sanchez's performance last year, then Perry and Strayhorn split the Republican vote and the have a Democratic Governor.

BUT, then we add Kinky into the mix. Kinky will pull Dems and swing voters, in addition to the "new voters" who emerge for an independent like Friedman.

Now we have this math:

Perry: 38%
Democrat: 32%
Strayhorn: 20%
Friedman: 10%

We are left with business as usual, a Governor who cares more about his hair than with the needs of Texan citizens.

Someone needs to tell Kinky that a Democratic Goivernor would make a difference, and that he should not stand in the way.

The Unbearable Dullness of Conferences

(As a sidenote, while writing the title for this entry, I decided it would be fun for all of my titles for the next few weeks be bad puns of famous books. Stay tuned.)

So I spent the majority of the weekend at a conference for teachers. This consisted mostly of "teacher educators" droning on endlessly about absurdly simplistic topics. It was heart-breakingly dull. My brain has not yet recovered from the aftermath of such boredom.

On the plus side, got a lot of my script worked on.

Spammer: If I could find you, I would hurt you

So, some lovely young spammer somewhere, obviously not content with just annoying the population with useless email about useless junk, has decided to target individuals for further torture and aggrevaition.

Last month, some bastard picked me.

Someone has started to send spam with **RandomName**@graelent.com filled into the reply to form. It appears that I am selling online pharmacuticals for some sort. Currently, I am receiving between 500 and 1000 emails daily of bounceback notices, change of email auto-replies and spam blocker notification.

Apparently, there is nothing I can do about this, which just frustrates me further. There is nothing that can stop some asshole from putting a graelent.com email into the reply to box. So, I either have to learn to live with millions of daily emails, or shut down graelent.com.

It is unfair that I must make a choice, and I hate the bastard who using my site.

I just want to hurt them.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Happiness is a Buffy Musical

My wife continues to get caught up on the Buffyverse and finally saw "Once More, With Feeling." The fantabulous Buffy musical extravaganza. Everyone enjoyed it, and Gavin has been singing numbers from it ever since. I still get a huge laugh whe one of the characters is upset they got a book number instead of a breakaway pop hit for their accidental song.

Other than that, life proceeds apace. I have to go to a computer teacher's conference this Thursday and Friday and I am not looking forward to that. Much boredom will be had by all.

Goodhair speaks of intellegence, while showing none

So, Rick Perry believes all Texans should be taught religion by our state's science teachers. This is a bold and quite progressive move, as most of the science teachers I know have some pretty non-mainstream religious beliefs.

One would think that a Bachelors in Biology would not qualify you to teach theology to hundreds of young and easily influenced teenagers, but then again, I am not Governor. I mean, he spends millions deciphering the pulse of the state, and the state must be saying, "Our Ministers are not teaching the Bible, so we must turn to the science teacher."

My daughter: Longhorn Fan

Now, I never watch sports. Ever. I did not get the sports gene. I do not understand the big deal about sports. I am one of very few UT alumni that has never attended a UT football game.

So, it was with great suprise that Merlin demanded we watch the UT vs USC game last night. I still have no idea where she found out about the game or why she wanted to watch it, but she was adament that we watch the game.

Thanks to my daughter, I watched (for the first time) a full quarter of a televised football game. I did my best to tell Merlin what the heck was going on, but I am not really sure I knew more than she did.

Merlin fell to sleep after the first quarter, but she got tremendously worried as UT fumbled a ball and then got scored on. I am glad she went to bed, as the last 5 minutes of the game were apparently very intense and Merlin might not have been able to handle it.

Everyone needs a goal

First, I got a call from my father, who was tickled by my son. When asked what he wants to be when he grows up, my son's response has been "A Mad Scientist." Now, I am all for this, although the story is made a little less kooky when I explain that there is a group here in town that does crazy science experiments at birthdays and they call themselves the Mad Scientists.

In other news, I was explaining to my class that Santa brought bunk beds for my kids this year, and that Santa had to stay up until 4 AM putting the beds together. One of my students remarked that I was a cool dad because her dad never did Santa for her. This made me very sad, and very happy that Santa is able to come visit my house once a year.

Look Ma: Content

I have missed my blog quite a lot. Not because I have anything interesting to say, which can easily be proved by my previous posts, but because it is actually a relaxing thing, sitting down in front of a computer and typing away about the obvious and the irrelevant. I am hoping to start anew, but I have said that before and we all know how that turned out.

The family's holiday was nice, albeit much too short. I was exhausted going back to work, thanks largely to my daughter's gargantuan social calendar. She has more friends that we can resonably visit in a month, which is wonderful and a bit awe-inspiring to me, as I never got her knack.

I am now entering my first semester of teaching and so far, I am enjoying it. It is exhausting on a continual basis, the pay is ridiculously low, and I work constantly. Still, I get to connect with people on a daily basis, I am never bored and my brain is working full time.

I am writing a script, which is actually going well. I have written everything but the dialogue (which I suck at) and I feel it is a tight little script. Hopefully, I can get it put together at some point in the near future.

Saw a lot of people over the Christmas break, which was very nice. Having never had my daughter's knack for making friends, I tend to cling to the ones I already have pretty hard, even those that move half way across the world.

Well, off now. Lessons to be planned.