Litter sucks

yes, that's all I wanted to say tonight. Goodnight.

Fast Food Nation

I frequent Pei Wei before classes in the evening near work. My lunch at work is at 9:51AM so by 2:30pm I am quite hungry and usually have a course or workshop in the evenings; therefore, I stop at Pei Wei. In the springtime my stomach was acting up, and I was quite ill. I lost twenty pounds before my GI put me on Prednisone and I ballooned upward. These two situations coupled put me in an uncomfortable position that sometimes bother me, and other times it bothers me that it doesn't bother me. So today I walked into Pei Wei, the fast food version of PF Chang's Chinese Resataurant. There was an overweight man sitting in my favorite seat. His green t-shirt hung from his obesity and his jeans gravitated downward in the rear. A sweat ring ran about his collar and he sat eating my favorite dish. Moreover, he sat with something to read, as I looked down at my current readings and had the same number of excessive fortune cookies I usually took. I can't become him. I can't. This is unhappy. I'd like to get things under control, but it was so hard with this medications, although I am healthier than I have ever been (literally). What's more important?

Student Teaching

I received an email last night stating that I had a student teacher and today found out I do not in fact have a student teacher. I had a high school intern for a while - one day. He swept into the room in his long shorts, t-shirt, and hair up and out, and he never came back. The next time he cut then did not show on Friday. My email last evening referred to this intern who since went on the wayside, although KM thought I had a student teacher. IRC said you have to be here four years to have one, so I have a while to wait. Yum. Of course, I'd like one. I was suppose to have one last year, but Cecilia Johnson stole her away from me. That woman had it out for me, and I care not who knows this now. I did nothing to this woman, but she spent her days treating me poorly -one of the reasons I left that high school.

Finishing it up...

The quarter is almost over and the kids take their exams tomorrow. Some won't do as well as I would like and many blame me. They earn their degrees, they earn their grades, so what's my position? Vessel-pourer-intoer? We're discussing formulaic dissertation writing versus more of a narrative approach, and I know what I want to do. Narrative. The experiences of teaching AP makes me hungry to write again, and this is why we're here together today. This is great fun.

Shawn Lynn Walker | Pirouette du Vache

I went to this website Shawn Lynn Walker Pirouette du Vache randomly online today. How odd...

Future

I am apprehensive to continue doing what I am doing because I love what I am doing. I really enjoy my new job and don't really enjoy my class right now. My class is somewhat interesting, but I am not motivated to do the reading and feel that I am short changing myself with this. Johann sent me 46 pages double sided of narrative this weekend, and I need to begin transcribing it, too. I don't want to me ABD... too many people are. I will finish this and do it well.

Esra stood us up for brunch. We sat holding up a perfectly good table for half an hour before giving up, stopped watching the door, and ordered food. $20.00 later we went to Costco. She called later and apologized saying she had taken a painkiller last night and slept until this afternoon. She felt I was short with her on the phone and my negative tone made her think I didn't want to speak with her. Shortly thereafter we got off of the phone. Even here, I have nothing to say about that situation.

We took Dan's cousin Jessie and her boyfriend Teddy to Dersert Ridge last night. We'd never been there and went to Jillian's. It was not that exciting. They were wonderful, but the setting was less than desirable. It was loud and our waitress was a skank, but she was a genuine skank. We played Skee-ball, and couldn't really talk due to the loud music. Jessie will run Jeff's store, and Teddy will look for subbing work, which I will help him find. I remember when we first moved here, and it was something new and a little scary --now here they come. We three enjoyed their company last night.

Today and tomorrow

So happy today... woohoo. It's the drugs maybe. We're taking Jessi and Teddy out this weekend Saturday night and there's a BBQ at Liza's. Hopefully we'll find some non-smoker types with whom we can maintain a lively discourse in of doors. Class tonight... I'd like to teach at comedy college some day I think, and this is my path to that. It sounds like a rad gig. Anyone out there reading this? Post damnit if you are. My kumquat is coming along nicely.

Toto

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you
Chorus:It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had
The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what’s right
Sure as kilimanjaro rises like olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what’s deep inside, frightened of this thing that I’ve become
Chorus(instrumental break)
Hurry boy, she’s waiting there for you
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa, I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa, I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

Europa Pastry Cafe

Two weeks ago Donna and I went to Dan and Madeline's house for fondue Friday night. Afterware we spent the night and got up early to go to the ghetto garage sales in the valley. After that Madeline called and we met her at this polish bakery. My wife is half polish and I really love Babka, which is a polish bread. I prefer it with cheese, but that day they only had it with raisins so I bought a loaf with them. In a few weeks I am going to Philly and Babci will get me the kind I like. Yum.

This is a photo one of my student posted on our discussion board. One of the kids likes to cause controversy and have people banter over this and that, so he started various posts to crazy subjects. Then I had another student give out the password to the site. Woohoo. The kid he gave it to has a grudge against one of the girls on the site so he posted about her and used some nasty words that make my administrators take notice. We'll see how that turns out. Amazing Race 5 is over soon. It's fun and mindless, and I am tired.

Darling Nicki

Nicki has always been there since college years. The first time I talked to her we sat for hours in her dorm entrance way. I thought for awhile she might be my big before Dan and didn't really know. She was and is a dear sweet woman with twinkling eyes who I see more than Dan sees here. For many days and weeks and even years we were inseparable the Trynamic Trio. Dan's headed around the world, I am here writing this in Phoenix, and Nicki is going through a tough time on the east coast. Think of her often and send her your best as you read this. She needs our love and support and she deserves the world.

Monday night...

...is another night, after sitting here in class (imagine me sitting here typing, multi-tasking, writing, taking notes, and getting yelled at by the woman in front of me with ADD who cannot pay attention because someone else is typing too loudly. Oh well ... I will go and come back later.

So when I left class the ADD lady said "surely you can't be taking notes on everything." Does she know me? No. Can she sit in almost anywhere else in the room? Perhaps she had a problem this week because some lady sat near me and clacked away on her iBook borrowed from my friend the whole damn time.

Meghan is studying the EU. Prophetically it could be the beginning of the end of Revelations. With the union of Europe. I started a story once with this motif, but now with all those Left Behind books, who knows. It's like people want to be scared and know how they may die. We all want to know when we will die and deathclock just doesn't do it for most.

Best friends mean more than anything. Dan is mine. Has been for pushing a decade now. We've had our ups and not many downs. Sometimes we don't have time to get together all of the time, but we do what we can. This is a photo taken at Cracker's the Sunday before Dan left for his trip around the world. Madeline will meet him across the pond in her favorite France where they will attend a wedding before heading south to Africa. We will miss him here, and it meant much to me when he called before leaving. It's 10:43pm and time for bed. I don't mind getting to sleep early and waking early. 5:01AM my alarm goes off every morning, and I roll sideways from the bed toward my left and amble in the dark to the bathroom where I prepare for each day, which are usually so different. So so different, like tomorrow.

Sunday night

This morning we went to see Wimbeldon. It was a good film, although horribly predictable. Kirsten Dunst cannot act out of paper bag. We then played a game called Sequence at Allie Burke's house whose husband was an ASU football player in the late 80s. After that we bowled and I did vocabulary for the kids from Into the Wild.

Chris McCandless walked into Alaska in the early 1990s and died. It's a strange strange trip to starve to death in the wild within miles of a cabin filled with meat. His Thoreau and Tolstoy lying near his decomposed body. My students are now reading this, and they really connect to it, as we are halfway through the twentieth anniversary of 1984, and with the patriot act has really helped the Big Brother concept come to fruition.

So...

Damn it. I had a long post that disappeared just now. Still learning blogging, but really got my creative juices flowing ... It's not that I don't want to talk about the ferrets, but she can get off my case. And it bugs me, but sometimes not really. I knew her when she was a sniveling underage student, even. Errr. I like her, as I do most, but it's a little much sometimes.

Tonight was Rockfish for dinner. Donna needed to eat so we drove down with coupon in hand. We had the crabcake appetizers but I just couldn't do it since I kept thinking about last time I had them in and out. Oi vey. More tomorrow.

Rasputin doesn't like to be teased either. Here we glare at ferret haters around the world. Yes, I know this blog is getting wild. Woohoo. But perhaps I will pull it back a bit and perhaps I won't. You will have to check back and see.

Chris and Anne's story

I really don't know where I am going with this, but I think I know where I am going with this and no one has seen it until now. Comment, please. It's less than half done. I will edit it when I add more here.
-D

“Did you bring the schnapps?”, Chris asks Anne as she shut the door against the cold wind and knocked clumped snow from her boots.
“Yes, my sister picked it up earlier this evening and thanks you for the extra cash. Who’ll be here tonight?”
Shrugging his shoulders, Chris answers, “no one but us” meekly ushering her into the pine paneled bedroom in the basement of his parent’s house.
A cool wind rustles through the register gaps, and the furnace clicks on and off behind a thin drywall where the bed props in the corner of the room under the stolen street signs.
Reaching for Anne’s shouldered shawl, “may I take this?”
“No, not now.”
Chris pulls back his hand, sitting on the bed’s edge with the Schnapps between his knees, a jutting phallic aphrodisiac. He fingers the lid like her had caressed a hole torn in her jeans months before shortly after his junior prom. Their flirtation developed from a quasi-innocent orgy of friends to Anne pulling herself from Chris’s car after a sweet kiss in June.
“Where’s your cousin tonight?” Anne asks politely perched on a plastic lawn chair under the stairs. Her favorite jeans worn from weeks or rafting through piles in South Park before movie nights or trips to Denny’s with a small group of mostly her friends.
Brown hair falls in Chris’s eyes where he grunts a “don’t know” feeling an invisible barrier between the two of them like a broken winged fluttering dove. “I think he went to Shelley’s house tonight. He’s there most nights after they leave the mall.”
“I thought he’d be here, or maybe someone else.” Anne asked quietly pulling her knees to her chest and covering her legs with the yellow shawl. The same shawl Chris’s mother bought her last Christmas while shopping for Anne and Chris. The mall heat blew stifling on Chris who had joined his mother on that excursion never really enjoying surprises and always enjoying picking out his own gifts.
Beads of sweat formed under his wool sweater, a gift from Anne last year after he’d seen it in a catalogue. He hadn’t expected to receive the box that day and quickly called Anne at school to thank her. He prayed she’d answer the hall pay phone unlike the weekend nights when he’d never get a hold of her.
“Maybe you can put on some music,” Anne suggested. “A little Stevie? Is that ok?” She asks as she extends her legs away from the chair into the center of the room.
“Ok.” He brushes his hair back while flattening his sweater and shoving a well-played disc into the stereo.
She’s the candle in the dark, and then she is the darkness. echoes off the tiled ceiling as the furnace click on again loudly. Anne rubs her arms closely to her chest and slumps slightly in the chair but jerks when the door opens at the top of the stairs.
“Chris, are you home?” Mom calls down.
“Yeah, we’re here,” he answers hesitantly glancing at Anne who sits straight in her plastic chair.
“Anne and you? What’re you doing?” The smoke smell wafts down into the basement through the open door.
“Nothing, really,” he pauses with hopeful anticipation.
“I gotta get up early and the snows piling up outside. Get her home. Night, Anne.”
Anne answers but the door but the door has already shut quietly to not wake dad who’s been in bed for hours, a self-employed workaholic who always get his worm.
“Are you cold, should I open this?” Chris asks fingering the Schnapps again.
“Sure.” She reaches for the green bottle, leaning forward as she grasps the bottleneck tightly seemingly never letting go of the elongated smooth warm surface. Tipping her head her blond-hair pours backward as the minty liquid splashes against her tongue. She sits back hard and the chair leg cracks quietly as she grabs the chair arms to balance herself, the bottle nestled warmly between her thighs. “Shit, sorry about the chair.”
“You could sit here,” Chris shrugs indifferently and slides across the bed to make room for her.
“Ok. Maybe.” Before moving toward the bed, Anne flips on the strobe light near the stereo now playing “Go your own way.” She flops hesitantly on the comforter, her chenille shawl rubbing roughly against Chris’s sweater as she passes him the schnapps. “Here, have some.” Anne offers her fingers pressed lightly against Chris’ hand as the sound of Fleetwood Mac bounces off the teal painted and wood paneled walls.
“You’re cold,” Chris comments, his leg resting slightly against hers.
“A bit, but warmer than that chair.”
“I could come closer,” he suggests, sliding his arm down his torso, resting on her ribs.
“That might be ok,” she answers. Her upper body shifts slightly, but tighter than it had been. He reaches toward her, his eyes closed against the light trying to blink against the strobe bathing her face in darkness.
“Did you talk to him this week? Did you see him?” Chris asked, fingers dancing delicately.
“Don’t get me started. You know how it is.” She rolled sideways.

“No, I don’t. How? I’ve never done that,” he answered, his voice hurt.
“Not that. I meant school.”
“You’ve experienced that; I have a few months left. A whole semester.” He tries to explain flailingly. “You’ve been away for months. I’ve waited.”
“I know. I know.”
“And I love you. Remember when I dropped you off? You barely squeezed my hand.”
“Well…”
“I can forgive it all. Even the returned calls, late. The questioned nights and missed messages.”
“Deal with it,” Anne answers pulling away a bit while reaching for the now half-empty bottle.
Chris clamps shut his jaw trying to not respond. He lays quietly, his breathing shallow while glancing at an old photo of him and Anne. Barely touching Anne his fingers rigid with contempt rising hotly in his chest. Last summer Anne’s preoccupation with biting Chris seemed like an absurd fetish, one Chris found painful. While driving through Brentwood, she’d reach for his arm. Her braced mouth barely broke his skin, but he pulled the wheel to the left as she giggled.
Rolling sideways on the bed, Chris pulled his legs toward his chest. “What the ----? You know I hate that,” Chris admonishes her and pulls the pillow for beneath his head. “Why do you do this?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I’m mean, maybe not.” Anne reaches sideways, sliding her fingers up this thigh toward his belt. His undershirt had pulled from his waist and supple skin welcomes her hand. He tenses slightly but not unwelcomingly, as she advances upward toward his chest. “It’s been awhile, school’s so harsh. And the winds off the lake have picked up as Christmas approaches again. Cuppaccino’s coffee doesn’t keep me as warm as this though,” she purrs letting the bottle slip onto the bed between them.
“Surely it’s not too lonely there,” Chris responds but doesn’t pull away.
“I missed you. Sorry I didn’t answer. How’m I suppose to cope with school?”
Flipping over hurriedly, Chris turns toward her, his face inches from hers. He smells the hint of fresh alcohol, her shawl slides sideways across her chest. Anne, eyes unfocused, leans towards Chris, her breath electrified.
“I don’t know. I wish it were how it once was.”
“When?”
“When I came to see you. We saw Return to the Forbidden Planet. Remember?”
“Sure I do, Melissa directed…”
“Not her,” Chris interjected.
“Yeah, her. Remember?”
“That was before. You hurt me.”
“We hurt each other before.”
“But not now?” he asks maintaining his distance of mere inches.
“No maybe not. Do you have a condom?”
Chris furls his brow, frowning through his quandary. “Wha- what’d ya mean?” He stutters dropping his head to the pillow, as she moves her leg against his.
“Can’t I be yours?”
“No, you were his. Weren’t you?””It doesn’t matter, does it? He’s not here. You’re here.”
“Maybe, maybe not, eh?”
“Come on…” she hums, sliding against him, closer and closer, Chris’ back against the wall under the Stop Sign.
“I don’t know.” He presses his palm against her breast confused as to even how he means the gesture.
“Yum. I like that.”
“No no, not like that. Atleast… I don’t think.” Chris pauses. “Ok, I got a condom, but it’s upstairs.”
“Why,” she whines. “Ok get it quickly.” Anne’s pulls her slender legs toward her head, making room for Chris to slide off the bottom of the bed. Before trudging up the stairs, Chris twists the knob off on the strobe, now the green glow from the stereo slightly illuminating the room, bed, chair, and desk like Christmas lights on a dark cul-de-sac.
Sliding through the half-opened door, Chris padded down the hall and through the living room. The Christmas tree, put up earlier that day, stood proudly in a corner glowing vaguely off the golden donkey Dad got when he age 6, purchased by his father when he was away at a Veteran’s Reunion in Central PA.
Dialing his cousin’s number, Chris sat heavily on the rubber stool under the wall phone. Their relationship rocky over three months, but stronger before August. At Anne’s graduation party she wore a pair of form fitted lilac shorts, hugging her ass. She wore a patterned shirt while eating Chick-fil-A catering. A humid wind rustled the streamers around the grove when Chris fell in love with her all over again.
“Mark, is that you?” Chris asked when a groggy hello was heard on the other end.
“Sure. I’m here. What do you need?”
“I’ve got myself into a predicament. Anne is downstairs.”
“Why’s she there? I told you to forget it. I don’t trust her.”
“I know but she’s down there, probably drunk and waiting for me. What should I do?” Chris asks in hushed tones. Confiding in his cousin with whom he has spent many nights sitting in the basement, eyes forward on college life next year. One night, sharing a bed head to toe, Chris’s Dad came down stairs to get a shirt from the dryer wondering whose sandy hair fell from beneath the comforter not expecting Mark to be there. Although he spends more and more nights here close to Shelly’s parent’s house away from a distant family.
“Jeez. I can’t tell you anything, Chris.”
“Come on. Help me out. I know you don’t like her, but---“
“Chris, you’re on your own. I gotta go. See you at dinner tomorrow.”
“Wait, do I have—“
“Look, make up your own mind. Only you can do this.” Chris hangs up the phone to a crackling dial tone after Mark hung up.
Chris cradles the phone, shoving his hands into his pockets. Mark had given him sound advice in the past, but curiously never liked Anne much the same way Chris didn’t like Shelly. Walking back through the living room, Chris slipped back downstairs.
“Did you get ‘em?” She asks when he rejoins her on the bed.
“Yeah yeah, I did,” he answers hesitantly.
Anne climbs over his prone frame, tips of hair fell playfully in Chris’s face. Her elbows locked on either side Chris, wobbly with twenty minutes more of alcohol process. She presses her chest weighing down on Chris, suffocating him. Her shawl now lay half off the bed, the neck of the schnapps bottle pierced through a large yawn hole. Pulling his sweater toward his neck, Anne nuzzled his neck before pulling away to yank Chris’ sweater up over his head.

A new friend from work always makes fun of my ferrets and just this weekend I told one of them, Jackson, the terrible things she says about him. This was the face he made and it says it all.

Welcome

This is a place I plan to write various things and post that on which I am working. I hope people will comment on my writing and tell me what they think. I also would rather not have anyone steal anything I write here. My best friend left yesterday for a trip pretty much around the world for the next 56 days. I promised him yesterday I would get this online ASAP, and I have a short story I am writing. So perhaps I will post it here somewhere for him to read from the road. I believe I will leave you now with my favorite lyric of all time. Here you go:

Sure as kilimanjaro rises like olympus above the serengeti

That is for you Dan. Take a picture for me ... I will u/l for you and maybe me, too.