Denver or Bust

Tomorrow morning I leave for Denver! I'm looking forward to a weekend full of hanging out with friends and not grading papers! Hopefully, my camera won't suck all the life from my batteries in two seconds like they have been lately and I'll be able to bring home some cool pictures to post here!

Lucyfer

Lately, Lucy just isn't happy unles she is well exercised. And by well exercised, I mean at least a half hour of running outside. She paces through the house, half barking, half howling. She prances up to the couch, bites my hands or other available extremities and yaps at me. She paces more, tastes her food, whines, paces, yaps, nips, yaps, whines, licks, paws at me, jumps, paws at me...it continues. Two nights ago she let us know she was upset by bringing downstairs a pair of Kelly's underwear and my work out pants. We were home. We were sitting on the couch. She brought them to us - almost as a warning of what havoc she was thinking of wreaking. We have been taking her out more frequently now that the weather is nicer, but it seems like we need to do something first thing in the morning, before she has the chance to go stir crazy. The thing is, she's driving me absolutely crazy dealing with all her nuttiness!

Spring break

I find that I get just as excited about spring break now as I did when I was a kid. I've also come to determine that I think a "real" job with "real" hours would be detrimental to my health. One reason I think teaching will be such a great fit for me is because of the time that it requires you to take off: all holidays, spring break, summer break, Thanksgiving break and winter break. Without those scheduled times off, I think I would just work and work and work and never take time off, which would eventually lead to my ultimate demise and failure as a well-rounded human being.

Daydreams

Do you ever have daydreams of kicking someone's ass just because you think it would be a good outlet for some pent-up frustration you've been carrying around for a while?

My daydream features an attractive male in his mid-twenties wearing a tight Hollister tee shirt and pre-shredded Abercrombie jeans with hair just long enough that I can get a good handful of for just enought time to make him tear up while I yell at him in public - in front of his friends is best - and make him apologize, although for what I do not know.

I wonder what Freud or Jung would have to say about this (on second thought, Adler may have more to offer on the subject).

NPR/PBS

The other day, K and I were stopped while out and about by a man with a clipboard who wanted to ask us some survey questions. Since it was just a mild survey, we agreed to talk to him. He began with one simple question: What local radio station do you most listen to? He was trying to figure out which station would be the most profitable for his company to advertise on. We told him that we listen to 95.1 - the BSU radio station that carries NPR. Unfortunately, that one wasn't on his list. So he asked us which television station we most watched. We told him channel four: PBS. He said, "No, I mean which local station?" We told him that PBS was the only local station in Idaho, but he argued with us and showed us his list and asked us to select one of the stations he had listed. We told him, honestly, that we don't watch them. He said OK and thanked us in a way that made us think we had somehow disappointed him...Except that I'm not sorry we don't rot our brains with standard network sitcoms.

My Vindictive Daughter

When Lucy is not appropriately (read: to her standards) paid attention to, she chews things. She chews things anyway - mostly paper items - but these things are like stereo manuals that we have no idea how she obtains or junk mail that has not yet made its way to the recycling bin. Yesterday, however, I think due largely in part to the fact that she had not been walked for two mornings straight, she chewed my personally annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird that I have had since high school and have been using in the current instruction of my ninth graders. It is, in no way, salvageable. Many of my annotations, however, did not end up in her digestional cavities so I will be able to resurrect them in another version of the novel fresh from my shelf. It's a pain, really, but the price we pay for having such a bright, spirited and drama queen-esque member of the family.