so i've discovered that whenever i get lazy and can't think of anything to write in my blog, i can just steal something that is supposed to be in an email and put it here... i'm a genius.

Four jobs you've had in your life:
1. Waitress
2. Teacher
3. Flying J customer service representative
4. desk clerk at the Canterbury Hotel

Four movies you could watch over and over:
1. Love Actually
2. Pride and Prejudice
3. The Italian Job
4. 10 Things I Hate About You

Four places you have lived:
1. Nancy, France
2. Cheltenham, England
3. Chicago
4. Las Vegas

Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. Alias
2. Gilmore Girls
3. The Simpsons
4. CSI

Four places you have been on vacation:
1. Park Rapids, MN
2. Pigeon Forge, TN
3. St. Louis, MO
4. um...not to brag, but all over Europe


Four websites I visit daily:
1. gmail.google.com
2. match.com
3. craigslist.org
4. sparknotes.com

Four of my favorite foods:
1. cereal
2. ice cream
3. yogurt
4. taco bell

Four places I would rather be right now
1. Tuscany
2. Jamestown, IN
3. My new apartment
4. the biggest suite at the Wynn downtown

Huzzah! Now I don't feel guilty for not updating. this is kind of like a real update, but required very little originality or independent thought on my part, which is always nice. now i need to go do some work. gross.

wow. i know. i suck at life. i wish i could say i've been super busy and i've just not had time... but we all know that would be a filthy lie.

i'm moving next weekend. i started packing today. why oh why do i have so much crap? because i'm a nolan.

i'm going to ward in advance, this might be really disjointed because i have a lot of random thoughts in my head, and no real cohesive stories or anything.

oh! spider man is on. that might be fun to watch...

i don't have school tomorrow, but i'm going to go there and get some work done. i really don't work well at home, because there are too many distractions (tv, computer, tv.) kirsten dunst has a very strange walk. she leans forward with her torso so it makes her breasts bounce a lot. it really annoys me most of the time. and i really don't like her with red hair. it looks bad, and very obviously fake. people shouldn't try and fake being redhead--it's reserved for us certain few. i missed the part where he wakes up all muscle-y with his shirt off, which is really one of the better moments in film history. darn.

i hate moving. i hate it i hate it i hate it. and usually i have my parents here to make it better (ie, do all the hard work and motivate me) but that's not true this time. gwen is helping me with a lot of the packing because she is a magnificent human being, but it's still my show. i'm looking forward to my new place--it's going to be really cool. it's a lot nicer than my current shithole, and i found out today it's getting new carpet! huzzah!

i found a binder full of my emails from europe (france mostly) and a lot of them were really funny. i wall all political and stuff. i even made a joke about what the US would do if they stopped dropping bombs on the middle east. i even remembered a story that I had repressed, which was unfortunate.

i got couch pillows today!!!!! highlight of my week.

so i have a profile on match.com, and i've had a couple people email me, which is exciting. i told gwen today that this is like in eighth grade when you found out for the first time that a boy liked you, but it's happening to me at the age of 24. it's just strange to me that a boy would think that i'm cute. i mean, i think so, and i'm glad someone finally figured out what always seemed obvious, but it's still exciting.

when packing, i found my old box of checks, which i bought about two years ago, and had used two books from. i never write checks. i pay all my bills online. i get my first key club bonus this week. i also eneed to get my taxes done, so i can get that refund.

james franco creeps me out. a few of my students asked me if i saw tristan and isolde, and i said i would wait and rent it for a few reasons: james franco is creepy, the modern music over a historical film bothered me and the trailers. they were so overblown! BEFORE ROMEO AND JULIET; THERE WAS ... TRISTAN AND ISOLDE. seriously?

i spend most of a class period the other day telling my kids about living in a small town, and they had no clue. one f them asked if we had tv and cell phones. they couldnt' understand that we had all the modern conveniences, but just on a smaller scale. they asked a question about the busses, and were amazed that jamestown had no public transportaton. i told them it wasn't necessary: you could walk from one end of the town to the other in 30 minutes, 20 if you were hurrying. they asked what we did for fun and i had to explain that it was the same stuff they did, we just had to drive farther to get there.

yesterday i bought a shirt that says "everyone loves an irish girl" to wear on st. patrick's day. i know it's kind of cliche, but i think it will be fun. man i hate moving. i really really really really hate moving. i'll be glad when it's done, but i hate moving. it's the packing and transporting and unpacking part that sucks. the having a new place to live thing is fun. unless the new place is a shithole like my current place, then it's less fun. did i mention that i get new carpet?

i saw proof tonight. pretty good. i recommend it.

i'm spent. it's really late for me on a sunday and i'm going to bed soon. i have this partial week, and then six weeks straight until spring break. and then even more weeks straight after that until summer. why did i choose this job again? oh yeah, i get summers off, and everyone else gets two weeks of paid vacation with an extra week added after three years of perfect attendance... suckers. of course, they get paid much more than i do in a city (indy) with much lower housing costs.

i get new carpet.

and i'm getting a kitten. if it's a boy, his name will be guillame le conquerant (william the conquerer), guy for short. if it's a girl.... maybe beatrice? maybe tess. although tess got raped and died at the end of the story... perhaps minou, which means kitten in french. or maybe mitzie.

i have french student in my 5th period and we spoke french to each other for about 10 minutes and all my students were very impressed with my skillz.

bedtime. sorry i'm a dork who can't update regularly.

remind me to tell you about the match.com creeper who asked for semi-naked pictures of me. it's a good one.

did you know that angora is goat hair? gross!! i thought it was rabbit or something...

i'm not joking about the quiz. expect a new one every day for a while...

i could waste so much time...

...with free internet quizzes. i got this one from john's xanga. i'm not sure how i feel about it.

You Are 21 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

i didn't realize that law and order would cause such a stir. let me clarify: i have nothing agianst people who like law and order, and i don't mind it once in a while, but it's not really my favorite and i don't want to watch it all the time. i didn't mean to choose such a hot-button issue...

it's finals week. so it's the best week of the year for me, because i get to sit at my desk and watch my students squirm in pain. then they leave at 10:45 and i get to go out to lunch and have the rest of the afternoon free. it's the life. the downside is that i have to grade all the final exams.

today one of my students was wearing a shirt that said "attention ladies: underneath this shirt is the man of your dreams." it was pretty funny. plus, the kid is really nice so it wasn't pervy or obnoxious. if one of the assholes had worn it i wouldn't have found it amusing.

there are two kinds of high school students. those who do something they're not supposed to with one eye on the teacher at all times because they're waiting to get in trouble and those who either don't realize they shouldn't be doing what they're doing or--more likely--don't care. those who don't keep an eye on the teacher are more fun. partly, i have to respect them for not being pansies, and partly because i get to stare at them for 5 minutes until they realize that i'm doing so and then they feel stupid because the entire class is following my line of sight.

so i'm reading a book about the wives of henry VIII and i just found out that one of the gifts he gave to anny boleyn before he divorced catherine of aragon was venison. nothing says "i love you" like dead deer. nothing. that henry, he was a romantic, i tell ya...

so i'm obsessed with gilmore girls and rory has bangs and i really want to ge bangs because hers are so cute and winter is really the best time to get bangs because your forehead is less likely to sweat and make your bangs all gross, and then (ideally) they'll be grown out enough to go behind my ears by this summer, when it is hot and they will get all gross against my forehead. but i've gotten bangs before and i like them for approximatley 14 minutes and then they get on my nerves. and i have to keep in mind that she has someone whose job it is to do her hair each morning and make it look perfect, and it's probably got enough hairspray to last motley crue a week in 1987 so that the bangs stay perfect all day long, and i don't. but i still want bangs...

i hate the word bangs. i really think that as a society we should be able to come up with a better word for it/them. why are they called bangs? because they bang against your forehead? because they make you want to bang your head into a wall when they won't stay out of your eyes? because they were popular with head-banging hair bands? (the last one was a bit of a stretch). and it just sounds dumb. and the more you say it, the dumber it sounds.

the other day i was watching gilmore girls (shock of all shocks) and rory was reading the book a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and i was proud because that's a book i read a few years ago. it made me smart.

so the american idol tryout shows are one this week, and i don't like watching them. i know for many people those 4-8 hours of television are the highlight of the year, but i just dont' enjoy it. how many times can you watch someone suck at singing before it gets boring? not many if you're me.

i think i was paid a compliment at lunch today. somehow we got to talking about how well our department gets along and someone said something about brandon, one of the other new teachers. he's the same age as me. rob, my department chair said something about how young he is, and i started to say that he's the same age as me. rob then said that he's much younger than me, even though we're the same age. i think he was calling me mature. he's really really wrong, but it was nice nonetheless.

i also got a compliment from my insurance guy. there have been multiple problems with my insurance (another sarah nolan in indianapolis wrecked a mazda in 2004 and they keep wanting it to be me to make my insurance cost more, and then today i checked out my bank statement online and found that my insurance had taken $400.00 out of my account even though we'd agreed not to make any payments until the mess was taken care of) and i called my insurance guy to try and get the problems solved and at the end of it he said i'd been great through all this, even though there had been multiple opportunities for me to yell and scream and i hadn't once and he appreciated it and i was a great customer. now he could have been just kissing my ass, but i choose to belive that it was sincere. too bad he's short.

did anyone else see peter jackson at the golden globes? holy 150 pound weight loss batman! and he's lost the glasses. still needs to comb his hair.

last night i decided it would be a good idea to drink a soda at 8:30 pm. needless to say i didn't sleep well. stupid caffeine...

i need a new message for my voicemail and i want something funny, but not something that says "i'm 16" but still shows my personality (which, coincidently, is fairly close to that of a 16-year-old). since it's my only phone number i sometimes get "real" phone calls on that phone and i don't want a ridiculous message. any ideas?

i don't really have anything else...

oooh! i just turned on USA network and Casino is on, not law and order. one of the best movies ever. and set in las vegas--back when it was run by the mob. ah, the good old days...

they should rename the USA channel the law and order channel...

because everytime i turn on channel 34 (USA network) there is an episode of law and order on. other channels at least make an effort to show other stuff sometimes. not usa. once in a while they'll show an episode of monk or something, but the rest of the time it's law and order. and i don't really like law and order, so it doesn't work very well for me...

i went to linens-n-things last night to try and spend a gift card on some towels that actually match my bathroom (because mine are yellow, pink, and maroon in a bathroom that's silver, black, and white). i had to leave without buying anything because the selection was overwhelming. i called my mom today and we figured out what i'm going to buy and how i'm going to arrange the towels. i feel better. i'm going back tomorrow.

i went apartment hunting today and found a couple that i like. there are a few more that weren't open that i'll have to revisit this week. i'm hopeful. the last time i went i was mostly on the south side of time, and this time i stayed north, and they are A LOT cheaper up here. and a lot of them don't charge any extra for pets per month which is cool.

so i was watching gilmore girls this week and it was the episode where rory goes off to college and it got me thinking (which is either pathetic or impressive. impressive that i can use anything, even gilmore girls to stimulate profound thoughts; or pathetic that i was watching that instead of reading the new yorker or something). there are a lot of big moments in life. some you don't remember: birth, first steps, first words, potty training, etc. and some you think will be a big deal, but they're too quick: college graduation (3.7 seconds walking across stage), high school graduation, getting your first job, first paycheck, first kiss etc. some actually have the weight you expect, but the circumstances make it so that they don't feel like you think they should. for example, when mom and dad left me here in las vegas, i should have felt strange or cried or something, but i had to immediately deal with las vegas airport traffic and so my focus was directed elsewhere.

anyway, in that episode there's the moment when rory hugs her mom goodbye and her mom leaves and she walks into her dorm room alone. i remembered that moment. it's really a busy day. you get there and you have to move all your stuff up three flights of stairs and you meet your roommate and you have to rearrange the room four different ways to get it all to fit and then you have to figure out how to fit all your clothes in the absurdly small dresser they give you and you have to make your bed and get some lunch and then you go to a meeting and your parents go to a meeting and you have to do all these things all day and then, all of a sudden, you go out to your parents car and they drive away and you don't and you walk back to your dorm room and sit down and that's it. and i don't care how far away your college is, it's a weird moment. because, for the first time, you're not living at home. and it's sad. before i went to college, i had traveled, i had gone to camp for one or two weeks at a time, i had been apart from them and i had never been homesick. and that day i was so homesick. the first time i called home a couple days later i cried a little. it was just really bizarre to go back to my room and not have it be upstairs from my parents in the kitchen. and i don't really know how to explain it, and it's something that anyone who has moved away to college like that will understand. you just have this huge feeling of "i'm older now. nothing will every be exactly like it was."

i saw the cutest dog today. chow and akita mix. 9 lbs. tan. so sweet. i want one.

i'm excited because it's almost tax season and i think i'm getting rebate this year. at least i hope i am. we'll see.

so there is a website called postsecret.com (it's in the new all american rejects video "dirty little secret") and the whole point is that people put secrets on anonymous postcards and mail them to an address and then this guy has a website out of them. it's amazing. i suggest checking it out. there is also a book and i bought it last night. it's amazing. in the 10 minutes i looked through it in the store, i found at least 4 secrets that i share. some are funny, some are serious, but they're just so amazing. they're these little pieces of someone's life that they share with the world. best $20 i ever spent.

i'm thinking about dropping cable, because it causes me to waste so much time, but i know i'll mist abc family and hgtv. and vh1. and tbs. the thing is, the tv is my friend; the person who talks to me in the evening when i'm here alone and without it my apartment would be very quiet and sad. and i would have no friends. but i would get a lot more done. i would read more, i would play the piano more, etc.

i don't watch the OC. i never have. i saw it the first time when it was called 90210. but i do watch fox sometimes and i've noticed that they've introed a new character who is marissa's sister and is "the bad girl." which is something they also did on 90210. remember tiffany amber theissen as valerie? bad girl. and just a question: i seem to remember brenda and brandon's parents dying in a horrific car wreck or something? please let me know if that's correct.

i think that's all i got for now. i'm going to watch extreme makeover: home edition and go to bed. another 4-day school week this week. man, my life is tough... (that was for you mom)

don't you hate it when your nose tickles like you have to sneeze, but then the sneeze never comes...

i just spent the last hour reading my old posts. i'm quite funny!

mother of pearl! i love the daily show!

and i just swallowed a gallon of snot.

the daily show is on at 11pm, and thent he colbert report after that, so i can't watch it because it's way past my bedtime. and comedy central reruns it at 10am, but i'm at work that time of day, so i can't watch it then. but fear not my friends: now they re-run it again at 8pm. BRILLIANT!! but i will say that there are a ton of commercials during those two shows.

so i was telling my modern lit class the other day (before winter break) about christopher walken being the scariest man alive (i can't remember why) and that jack nicholson was a close second, and i went on to tell them about the top four creepers:
1. wayne newton
2. tom jones
3. barry manilow
4. niel diamond (mostly because his hair never moves)
and one of my students mentioned that they're all las vegas performers, to which i just smiled cryptically and said "I know."

i swear--my students are all a bunch of delinquints. i asked yesterday and today if anyone had any exciting and school appropriate stories from break and there weren't many. so i asked if the break was boring or if all their stories weren't appropriate and the latter was their response and it just made me sad. i've told them that i dont' want to know about any illegal activities in which they engage, and they respect that for the most part. but i look at them and the things they do, and i wonder what will they have to look forward to? i fear for their adult lives, because so many of the exciting things have already happened.

yesterday was the 36th birthday of one of my colleagues, and several of the teachers were teasing him for being so young. i stayed silent. because i'm not quite there yet.

i have a whole bunch of change in the bottom of my purse that i need to put in my change glass.

see, this is why i don't post everyday: there aren't that many exciting things going on in my life and so the posts become these random, disjointed pieces of nonsense.

i really want an ergonomic keyboard...

i heard on e! news today that orlando and kate were seen shopping for engagement rings in london. i know this may come as a shock to many of you, but there's a slim chance i won't be marrying orlando bloom. is michael vartan still single?

whatever happened to mo rocca?

yesterday one of my key club girls was hanging out in my room after school and all of a sudden she says "ms. nolan! did you notice that i'm wearing hollister??" i hadn't noticed, because honestly i don't pay that much attention. i guess it was a big deal because she never wears hollister and she had gotten a shirt and jeans from there. i just think it's funny that she thought i paid that muc attention to her clothing. i barely pay that much attention to my own clothing.

it's very warm here this week, which sucks because i got several new sweaters and i can't wear them because it's too hot. i mean it's going to be near 70 degrees by friday. we got a new principal. we met him yesterday and he was very loud. our last principal was pretty quiet.

i have my first parent/teacher conferene after school tomorrow. the parent has asked for it with all her students teachers because she has low grades and wants to know what she can do to bring her grades up. she has a 26% in my class. TWENTY SIX PERCENT!! she doesnt' do anything. she's absent half the time and when she's there, she sleeps. and so her parents call a conference the last week of the quarter to bring her grades up. SHE HAS FOUR DAYS OF MY CLASS LEFT. THE GRADE IS NOT GOING TO MAGICALLY IMPROVE TO A B. OR ANYTHING BUT AN F. morons

and i think the colbert report might be funnier than the daily show. sorry john stewart.

today we read "the raven" in my american lit classes and watched the episode of the simpsons that has the raven in it and one of my students said taht was cool and can we do it another time. of course, my sarcastic comment was that from then on out, i would build the curriculum around the simpsons. that might have been a little harsh.

remember the days when i would get worried about the fact that i wasn't prepared for the next day and felt bad for not grading when i got home. good thing i got rid of that guilt. now slacking is guilt free. and as a result, boring. kind of like when i used to play snood in college. it was only fun when i was procrastinating.

anyway, i think this is good. PLEASE COMMENT!! otherwise i think no one is reading them, or no one is enjoying them and i lose my motivation. i like comments. the make me feel loved. they don't have to be witty or long or even nice. :)

i'm stole this. it's what teachers do.

my friend heidi sent this to me in an email and she stole it from another friend's blog, so i'm just perpetuating the cycle... here goes!!

my uncle once: scared me. a lot. and by "once" i mean "every time i saw him." he was just very loud and boisterous and always called me "sweetie" (his petname for every female he ever encountered) or maybe it was "baby." or "honey." or all three. but anyway, he's a super nice guy, but when i was little i was shy (shock!!) and he always came in yelling happily and kissing me on the cheek and it was a little bit scary. i'm not scared of him anymore.

the one person who drives me nuts, but then can always manage to make me smile is: probably my mom. i love her and she's my best friend, but she likes to mother me. a lot. i guess she earned it around the time she squeezed me out of her vagina, but it drives me nuts sometimes. but then she does something really awesome and it's all good.

high school was: fun. excruciating. boring. hard. too long. too short. the worst four years of my live. the average four years of my life. not the best four years of my life. not like saved by the bell. absurd. dramatic. lonely. busy. this could go on forever, but high school was what it was. nothing more, nothing less. i have very mixed emotions about it and i've not sorted them all out yet. it's still too fresh of a wound.

my first real love was: jonathan brandis?

if i were to get married right now, my bridesmaids would be: how can i possibly answer this without offending someone? i refuse. and what's the point of thinking about an event 50 years in the future?

i talk to my ex: haha. very funny.

last Christmas I: " gave you my heart. the very next day, you gave it away." no, seriously, i thought i would never make it through student teaching and the concept of having a job as a teacher was almost unfathomable. actually, that last part is still true...

when i turn my head left i see: my filing cabinet, my wall, and a magnet for an insurance agent that i never called, which reminds me that i need to buy magnets for my classroom. and a pile of paid bills. stupid bills.

when i turn my head right i see: my tv, couch, movies, piano, front door, two pairs of shoes, a wall thing for my kitchen that i bought in november and have yet to put up, two empty soda cans... is that enough? because i can keep going...

the craziest family event was: if you've met my family, you understand the futility of this question. they're all crazy.

if i was a charater on friends, i'd be: i hate to admit it, but probably ross. boring, neurotic, loser-ish, nerdy...

by this time next year: well let's go with the old standby for shits and giggles: BOYFRIEND!!

you know i "like" you if: i pick on you. i've never quite left that realm of 2nd grade. but if i'm mean to you, i like you.

if i won an award, the first person/people i'd thank would be: my parents. or my boyfriend, orlando bloom.

take my advice: don't go to the las vegas strip for new year's eve. it's not worth the brushes with death.

my ideal breakfast is: have you seen pretty woman? that, except substitute orlando bloom for richard gere. and i'm not a hooker. and he's not more into his work than me. and i have better hair. and i don't eat a plain pancake with my fingers. you know, exactly the same thing.

if you visit my hometown: don't go to the park after sundown. it's a rough place.

if you spent the night at my house: you'd get the couch, because that's just how fancy i am. with the sheets from my bed in college.

i'd stop my wedding if: orlando bloom called me and expressed his undying love...

the world could do without: the lifetime network. no one has that much estrogen. wait, correction: no one should have that much estrogen.

my favorite blonde is: there are two: tyler and trevor-- THE CUTEST KIDS EVER!!

paper clips are more useful than: the security tape they put on cd's and dvd's. i'm pretty sure they only purpose it serves is to drive m crazy and make it so i have to wait 15 minutes to listen to a new cd. bastards.

if i could do anything well, i would: dance. or write. or figure skate. or diet. whatever.

and by the way: who decided that chocolate needed to have 12 billion calories per serving? i mean, it's a necessary food group (i would argue it's more important than the starches) but i have to feel guilty every time i eat it. bollocks!!

once, at a bar: i kissed i guy i'd never talked to because it was my 23rd birthday and i was still a kissing virgin and my friends convinced me that it was a good idea and he slobbered all over me and put his number in my cell phone. i called him a couple weeks later and he never called back then dated my friend. AWKWARD.

las night: i watched arrested development and went to bed. mi vida loca.

there's a girl i know who: failed organic chemistry once and barely passed it the second time, got c's and d's in all her science classes and still thought she would get into medical school.

if you actually read this, you: need to get a life. face it people: i'm not that interesting.

if i ever go back to school, i'll: when i go back i'll get my masters in either: education, linguistics, literature, or british history. or maybe all four.

next time i go to church: i'll again be shocked and awed at how big it is.

my birthday is: october 6th. and generally a letdown.

have you ever showered with someone of the opposite sex: i think i took baths with my brothers when i was a baby... as if you all didn't know that answer already.

have you ever brused your teeth in the shower? i dont' think so. it just feels wrong to brush my teeth with hot water.

how old do you look? younger than most of my students, so 15. no, seriously, probably a bout 21 or so.

What's the last song you sang? i think it was "breathe" in the car today.

do you kiss with your eyes open or closed? i don't kiss. because i'm pathetic.

are you in love with anyone right now? myself.

does anything on your body itch right now? my arm, but it only started itching when i typed this.

have you ever had a member of the opposite sex in your room? yes. i'm a virgin, not a puritan.

are you more creative alone or with other people? a little of both. but i think best out loud.

do you end up making a fool of yourself when you try to flirt with someone? usually.

do you exercise before you eat in the morning? i get up at five as it is. i refuse to get up at 4 so that i can exercise.

is it better to be single or in a relationship? like i know.

where/when will the next vacation be? there was talk of going to south korea this summer with my parents to visit my brother, but i don't think i'll be able to afford it. so probably to indiana in the summer to see the fam and be in lindsay's wedding.

do you talk in your sleep? i dont' think so. sometimes when i take naps and i'm not sleeping very deeply i moan. anyone remember the episode from college when we were watching dead man walking??? good times.

name one random fact about yourself: i have a blue freckle on my leg. and when i was in the first grade, i played a bunny in the chrismast musical and i got to stand on stage during one song and i peed my pants right before it started. i had to stand on stage and pose so that people couldn't see the big pee spot on my pink bunny costume (which was a pink sweatsuit). not my best moment.

if you could "take back" your virginity from your first partner, would you? blah.

would you prefer the lights on or off during sex? by the time i get to that particular activity, i won't care. i just can't wait to have sex.

would you ever start a relationship with someone who was still living with an ex for financial reasons? no.

is the male or female body closer to perfection? female. have you seen the male body? i really think the penis was an afterthought. god looked at man, and realized that something was missing and just threw it on there where there was a free spot. not attractive.

would you date someone significantly (9 years or over) older than you? it would depend on whether or not he was michael vartan.

generally, in life, what makes you happy? family, friends, coziness, teaching, learning, so many things. the fact that my key club kids ran toward me and gave me hugs this morning. when my nephews laugh at my jokes (of course, they also laugh at the word booger, so it's not such a big deal). looking out the window as my plane lands in indy. looking out the window as my plane lands in las vegas. the fact that elizabeth and darcy always get together.

How well do you handle criticism? i'd say fairly well. but i tend to agonize over it. i'm one of those crazy overachievers.

would you like to date someone a lot poorer than you? interesting wording there. would i like to? well it's not something i hope and dream about, but i would, depending on the situation.

when fooling around with someone, do you sometimes have fantasies of other people? oh yeah. all the time.

is it possible for a fuller-figured woman to be as attractive as a thinner woman? i'd like to think so. other wise i'll die a virgin.

you've just met someone incredible while out with friends, and s/he has been kind enough to cough up a number. how long do you wait to call? at least a week. probably 6 days, so it's not right away, but it's not obvious that i've waited a week. it just seems like i casually decided to call.

would you have a "happy button" installed on your body, connected to your brain, which would instantly make you very happy whenever you pressed it? they did that with rats, and they died. so no. it's the tir na nog thing: without sorrow you can't ever know great joy.

what's sexiest on a woman/man? any attraction to me. and good hair. and a nice big... brain. DON'T BE DIRTY!!

would you rather marry a virgin or someone experienced? i would like to marry a virgin, but i realize that's fairly unlikely considering my age and the current sexual climate.

have you ever had a one-night stand? ha.

is it better to have loved and lost or never to have loved at all? loved and lost. i think. i'm not speaking from experience here or anything, but i think a life without love seems really sad.


wow! that was a lot longer than i anticipated. anyway, i think that will suffice for a post today.

near death experiences and other new year's eve adventures...

okay. so among my many goals for this year is to update my blog at least once a week. in the last few weeks before i went home for winter break all motivation to do anything at all except sit on my couch and watch "the fabulous life of..." on vh1. so now i'm back in las vegas and i've had two weeks of extrovert bliss (read: not living alone) and i've got some of my motivation back to not be worthless. so we'll see. i know most of you are cynical because i've made this promise before and have then failed to make good on it, but i'm going to make it again. it's like smokers: most smokers try to quit an average of 6 to 12 times before they're successful. hopefully my number will be less.

anyway, let me tell you about my new year's eve. my plane landed in las vegas at about 12:45 p.m. that day, and i finally left the airport with all my luggage (all three suitcases and a carry on--i suck at life) about an hour later. i waited for my bags for 30 minutes!! my friends who were picking me up eventually just decided to park instead of circling the airport to pick me up. so i got home about 2:30. i thought this was plenty of time to unpack, take a nap, clean my apartment, and just generally get ready for the evening (i was planning on curling my hair, generally a drastic, time-consuming procedure). on the car ride home, gwen told me that everyone had just decided to go down to the strip and wander around and hang out because it was free and it was $120 to get into some of the cheaper clubs. the really cool clubs (i.e. Tao, where paris hilton was hosting a party) were $300 and up. i was cool with that idea because i'm poor and i didn't have any clothes that were cute enough for the cool places. i figured we'd get there around nine or so, maybe earlier to get some dinner, no sweat. no. certain people in our group wanted to get there earlyso we'd get parking, it wouldn't be too crowded, etc, so they wanted to get there at 4. FOUR PM!!! seriously? do they know what time midnight is? and how far away that is from 4?? well, gwen had talked them down to 5:30 or 6:00, which was a little more doable for me. we had decided to meet at sean and gwen's to preparty, so i said i'd try to get there around 4:30. when i got home, i grabbed some food and money from the atm and wanted to relax a little before i had to leave. it was also really windy, so i decided to just leave my hair like it was (straight) for the evening.

i ended up running a little late and got to their apartment around 5:30 but hadn't finished getting dressed or putting my makeup on, so i'm finishing up at the apartment and amanda (the one who wanted to get there at four and was mad because i hadn't gotten there before them) says to me, "are you still getting ready?" which pissed me off so i responded with, "well i just flew in today and we're leaving a lot earlier than i had planned." she didn't really say anything because someone else changed the subject and we left for the strip.

we get there and park at the mgm grand and met the other car inside (they'd parked at new york, new york) and began our night of wandering.

first, we wandered into a bar inside the mgm and got kicked out 20 minutes later because we weren't buying anyting.

next, we wandered across the street to the new york new york and went out to the other car because they had a cooler of beer in it.

then, we wandered back over to mgm and went ouside an up the street. amanda started complaining that we were walking too fast for her in her four-inch heels (don't ask my why she thought those were a good idea considering we'd be walking all night). we ended up at the aladdin and went in because it was windy and we wanted to not be outside anymore.

we wandered back into the mall there and gwen and i decided that we wanted to eat something. so we found a mexican restaurant and told everyone that we were going to eat, but they could go on if they wanted and we'd meet them later, once we were finished. they all decided to go in. so we get a table, sit and look at the menus and amanda, chris, and sean immediately start talking about how expensive it is, and how there was cheap pizza somewhere back in the mall, and so we told them again, they could leave and we'd meet up with them later. so they finally left and we sat and talked to tracy and dave, and had a really nice time.

we left the aladdin and found a spot in the street (it was closed to car traffic) where we would be able to see a lot of the fireworks. it was about 11:00, so we had about an hour to wait. i had been yawning since about 8pm, and had seriously considered leaving (i had driven down there) about 10:30, but i figured i'd wait it out--i could sleep on sunday and monday, so it wasn't a big deal. well, amanda started whining about heading back to the mgm so we could be closer to the cars when the fireworks went off, but most of us were cool in our spot, so we decided not to move. all of a sudden, she freaks out and decides that she's going to walk back by herself. there are a lot of people down there. the street was full from the stratosphere to mandalay bay, and she decides to walk from the bellagio/alladin to the mgm. so tracy takes off after her and brings her back, and she's yelling at her husband, chris, which was a continuation of an earlier fight from inside the aladdin, and we all started walking south just to shut her up. we got half way down and stopped in front of some port-o-potties for a reason which i can't remember right now and she started whining again about walking because someone made a joke about celebrating the new year in front of the port-o-potties. someone commented that they liked our spot before so she explodes again and tells everyone to go back there and she'll meet them at the car afterwards, blah blah blah.

eventually, we watched the fireworks from in front of the monte carlo. just about every casino on the strip sets off fireworks and they're all coordinated, so it was really cool. i'll try to post my pictures sometime.

several of the casino signs had a count down to midnight, and the two we were watching, new york, new york, and mgm grand were both doing it, but their countdowns were three seconds apart, which was funny. tracy was pretty sure the world would implode if the new year happened twice, but luckily, it didn't.

so we watched the fireworks and cheered and blew our little horn thingies and decided to go to the car. it was crowded, because a lot of other people had the same idea, but it was manageable and we weren't concerned about it. we got down to the ny, ny and were had to walk into a pretty big crowd in front of the brooklyn bridge, so we made sure to stick together so we wouldn't lose anyone. what happened next was seriously the scariest 30 minutes of my life. you know how you hear those stories about people being crushed to death at soccer matches? i was caught in something like that. at first it was crowded and kinda fun, but no big deal. then we started making jokes about not falling because you'd get trampled, and then it was seriouly an exercise in not being pushed over. and it stayed like that for 15 minutes. the fact that the drunk morons kept pushing didn't help. we realized that there were two barriers, one separating the street from the sidewalk and one that made a T into the other one, and we were stuck in the corner of them. we had to climb over the barrier to get out of it. amanda and gwen were both crying and scared to death and i was getting really worried. the crowd was helping to get all the women out first and it was sort of a titanic/berlin wall kind of thing. it was really scary.

we all said our goodbyes and went to our cars to go home.

it took us two hours to get out of the parking garage.

we moved about 20 feet in the first hour and a half.

i wanted to die. and sleep. but mostly sleep.

and that was my first new year's eve in las vegas. not a high. earlier i had told gwen that i wanted to stay home and sleep but thought i would regret it if i didn't go out. i ended up regretting going out. here's the moral of this story: staying home and watching movies with your parents on new year's eve is much more fun than going out partying in las vegas. i am such a loser.

here's some sad news: this is the last season of arrested: development, which is the funniest show on tv and will be no more come may. *sigh*

not looking forward to getting up at 5am tomorrow. not really looking forward to going back to school. blah. hooray for updating!!!

i suck at life

i was going to do a pathetic non-update update where i just write about how sorry i am that i haven't updated and i decided to look at my blog first and i realized that i haven't really updated since my mom visited!! and that was forever ago! so i'm going to update. it won't be as long as other have been, but i will share some things. and i just finished writing a lesson about effective sentences for my modern lit class and i'm cringing at my writing. oh well.

it's gotten out that i have a blog, and i'm really worried some of my students will find it and know WAY too much about me as a result, but i'm willing to take that chance. i'm banking on the fact that they'll either be too lazy to read all of it, or too stupid to keep it a secret that they've found it. someone will let it slip and then i'll have to go into the blog witness protection program and change my url and write all my entries in some kind of code. actually, any word over about six letters whould be code to them, so i'll just become very close with my thesarus.

here's how cool i am. it's about 9:30 on a sunday, and am i watching desperate housewives like the rest of america? no (i've never watched it. i didn't watch it the first time it was called peyton place either). i'm watching masterpiece theatre on pbs. it's the story of elizabeth I, one of my heroes. i would love to name my first daughter elizabeth, but it's such an overused name, and i want to avoid those as much as possible. i might try to figure out a way to name her elizabeth and call her "iza," but we'll see what my future husband (orlando bloom, michael vartan) has to say about that. i was just flipping channels when i saw that it was on and i was going to tape it, but i dont' know how to record anything with my vcr. we've had dvr at home for so long, and i use my vcr so rarely anyway that i just don't know how it works. sad.

oooh! tomorrow is oprah's 20th aniversary show, and i'm sad to say that i plan to make sure that i'm home in time to watch it. i think oprah infuses some sort of hypnosis into her shows to make you want to watch more, and to make you want to do as she says. why else would everyone in america go buy three books by william faulkner this past summer? it saddens me to know that oprah is the moral compass of at least 56% of the US, and if she ran for president, would win by a landslide. it saddens me even more to know that i would probably vote for her.

every so often, i read other people's blogs and i realize that i'm not quite doing it correctly. everyone else uses them as a place to write their thoughts and feelings, and i just tell dumb stories about my students. so then i start to think, "should i talk about my feelings more?" but then i realize that you all don't care about that, and i like the idea of my feelings being private (no offense to any of you), and you all have feelings of your own to worry about; you don't need mine heaped up on you too. and then i feel okay.

mary just died. God save the queen. (i'm talking about the movie right now, in case i lost anyone) "This is the worlk of the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes." i think my favorite thing about the whole bloody mary/elizabeth I thing is that mary thought she was preggers, but it turned out to be a tumor!! haha! take that mary. serves you right for burning protestants. i would mention something about karma here, but anyone who's ever taken a south asian history class with manu bagavan knows that we use karma incorrectly most of the time, and while i can't remember what it really is (it's in my notes somewhere, but i'm not about to pull them out for you all), i now that it's not how most american's use it.

i saw the new pride and prejudice friday night. i'm not going to write much about it because i don't want to preform any opinions for those who haven't seen it (i hate it when people do that to me), but suffice it to say that i was smilng and giggling like a schoolgirl with pigtails 95% of the time.

so yesterday i spent the whole day at six flags in california with my key club. it went well. i enjoyed the rides. both of them. that's right. i rode two rides all day. *sigh* the woes of a chaperone/advisor. they have this new roller coaster called "extreme" where the seats spin end-over-end as well as the coaster being all over the place (i realize that was a terrible explanation, but i can't describe it without the use of my hands), and we waited in line FOR FOUR HOURS! it was a good ride, but no three minutes can be worth four hours of waiting. (insert some comment about sex here. i don't have any, for reasons we're all well aware of) after that i had just enough time to spend $10 on some fast food chinese (10 dollars!!) and meet my kids at the exit. there was a minor catastrophe about some wristbands that we didn't get but were supposed to, but i wasn't there for that and the other chaperone got up in someone's face about it and it was taken care of. (i was off buying a corndog at the time. i don't think she knows that...) i'm glad she was there, because i wouldn't have had the fortitude to get as angry as she did.

i don't like the way they portray elizabeth here. she seems very bitter and snotty. i like to think that the real one was not quite so bitchy. she was more like kate blanchett's portrayal in Elizabeth. she had her moments, but over all she was quite a peach. i used to think that i liked queen victoria a lot, but after reading a bio of her this summer, i realize that she didn't do much for feminism. she really played up the "i'm a helpless woman. i need a man to do it for me." she let her husband run everything until he died, and only then did she start to take control.

so here's my latest tv greivance. (yep. my life's so empty that i'm concerned about this) so, alias used to be on tnt (channel 18) at 6pm, which filled quite nicely the slot between gilmore girls on abc family at 5 and csi on spike tv at 7. well now, tnt changed their line up and alias is on at 4pm, which is fine, but that's the same time as oprah on channel 14, which isn't big deal, because i dont' watch oprah every day, and i've seen every episode of the first three seasons of alias (i own them). usually i opt for alias anyway, because michael vartan is HOTTTTT. but now i don't have anything to watch at 6pm. i could watch friends at 6 and that 70's show at 6:30, but they're not as good. and we all know i'm not going to turn the tv off. it's my best friend.

i was supposed to grade this weekend. i didn't.

i'm gong apartment shopping with gwen next weekend. she's told me that if she has anything to say about it, i'll be moving to the southwest side close to she and sean. we'll see. i'm looking into finding a condo that the owner wants to rent, because sometimes their cheaper, and the furnishings (kitchen and bathroom stuf) are usually nicer. keep your fingers crossed for granite contertops!!

i got nothing else. i will try to update again later this week, but my modern lit students are turning in essays tomorrow, so i can't guarantee that i'll have time. plus, tomorrow i have book club and tuesday afternoon/evening i have new teacher training (aka new teacher torture) and i'm giving a test on wednesday (probably with no essay--they've already written one over the book. mrs. elkin and mrs. beck would appaled if they knew) so who knows. luckily the test is already written. i've used another teacher's quizzes and study guides throughout the book--why not use her test as well!? so, i'm going to watch the last hour of masterpiece theatre (no worries--the rest on next sunday night) and go to bed. or i might just go to bed. we'll see.

ps. no boyfriend yet. no prospects. the guy in my book group / small group from church who seemed like an option doesn't seem highly compatible so far. gwen agrees with me (she's in the same book club). also, he seems to be interested in another girl in the group. my single status is still intact!!!

i took the pictures of sophie down because i had to put her to sleep a week ago. she had parvo and it was going to require hospitalization (which was going to cost $1000) and even at that she only had a 50% chance of survival. i have a friend whose parents dog had that and they did the hospitalization thing and he died anyway. so that's that. i had her for a week.

and i'm pathetic for not upating for about two weeks and i'm going to, but not tonight, because i've been falling asleep since about 7:00 and was staying up in case a couple of phone calls came in. but now, it's to bed, and then i have friday off (huzzah!) and i can sleep in. and then i got to six flags with 30 high school students... i'm really afraid that we'll leave someone there. to bed. good night.

i think i may have become an adult...

...and here's why:

1. it's 9:15 on friday night, i haven't left my apartment since 4:30, and i have no plans of leaving this evening. since 6:30, i have been cleaning my apartment. on a friday night. young-type people don't do that.

2. it was recently my birthday, and when i got my birthday money from my parents, my first thought was "ooh! now i can buy a new vacuum!!" i didn't think about shoes, or dvd's (i download those anyway) or clothes or even books. my first thought was of a new vacuum. sad.

okay, so those are the only reasons, but i think they're weighty enough. i won't be updating until tuesday at the earliest (no guarantees) because MY MOM IS COMING TO VISIT!!!!!! (i'm a little excited) she's coming in tomorrow morning, and then we get to spend all day with my key club students while they learn cheers for their fall rally in november. but, after that we have free tickets to go see mama mia at the mandalay bay, preceded by dinner (also free) at wolfgang puck's.

so tonight i had to do dishes IN MY BATHTUB because my kitchen sink has a leak, which i reported to the maintenence department on monday, and it hasn't yet been fixed. and that last sentence was a run on and i'm too lazy to try and fix it. i put a lot of the dishes in my dishwasher, but some of the bigger stuff (crock pot, mixing bowl, etc) i had to do by hand IN MY BATHTUB. seriously, how ghetto is that?? i can't wait until my lease is up in february.

well that's all i have. i just wanted to say something quickly, and now i'm going to go watch batman begins and probably fall asleep.

OH HELL NO!!!

here are some things that make me say "OH HELL NO!!!"

1. Oh hell no did Western Boone hire Rob Ramey as their new principal. ROB RAMEY!!! this was the man who taught me economics by showing the "mocha islands" videos (melons! get your fresh melons here!). i'm not sure he'd even TAKEN an econ course. i'm not joking. i can't put into words how terrible his class was. don't get me wrong: i liked it because it was easy and i got an A, but i didn't learn anything. i learned more about the economy from listening to my college roommate study for her exams. and some history lectures. call me crazy (you're crazy!) but i think that school administrators should have success as teachers before they are put in charge of the educations of several hundred students.

2. Oh hell no did i find a TROJAN MAGNUM CONDOM WRAPPER on my classroom floor today. it was empty. i did not touch it. i picked it up with another piece of paper and threw it away. then washed my hands. a surgeon's hands aren't that clean. ugh.

so here's a conversation that took place between me and one of my students today:

LIZA: "Miss nolan, do you want one of my school pictures?"
ME: "sure"
LIZA: "you could make a collage"
ME: "yep"
LIZA: "did you get school pictures"
ME: "yes"
LIZA: "can i have one? my dog needs a new chew toy"
ME: "but doesn't he already have your face? oh! i'm sorry! were you actually born that way?"
THE REST OF THE CLASS: "OOOOOOOOOOHHH!!!"
LIZA: "(silence, crickets chirping)... i can't think of any thing! sydnee, help me think of a comeback..."
she never thought of one. ms. nolan - 1, liza - 0
o'doyle rules.

so i downloaded (stole) mel brooks' history of the world: part 1 and i was really excited about it because it was free and i'd never seen it. and then i couldn't open the file on my computer. stupid free/stolen movies. you just can't get quality files anymore. what do they expect me to do? go to the blockbuster half a block away and rent it? no way mister!!!

remember that one time i used to prepare for the next day and try to be a good teacher? yeah. those were the times...

today is thursday. THAT MEANS ALIAS IS ON! and i know that vaughn isn't dead. he just can't be. no one that attractive is allowed to die on tv. i know this is short, but i just can't think of anything else.

rain, rain, go away...

it has been raining for the last TWO DAYS!! i can't believe it. the funny thing is that my students were completely unable to deal with it. one girl was complaining about her jacket being wet and i asked her why she didn't bring an umbrella. her answer: "my sister has it." IT? i asked her if they just had one umbrella for her, her sister and her mom, and she said yes. i about crapped my pants. i have three. one lives in my car, one lives in my apartment, and one lives in my bag. it was funny at first, and then i got annoyed because it's just freaking rain!! the crazy thing is that the water doesn't go anywhere. at home, when it rains, the water gets absorbed into the ground and it's muddy, but the water doesn't stand. here, because the ground is so dense, the water has no place to go. there were HUGE puddles on the roads and stuff.

in-n-out burger. it's a phenomenon only found in this western area of the united states, and everyone raves about it. the food is delivered fresh daily i guess, so it's really good, and the fries are cut there on site, not frozen... the menu hasn't changed in decades... so i tried it. and the first time i was like, "eh. s'alright." i wasn't really all that crazy about it though, and i didn't think i'd eat there again. then today, driving home (i drave past one every day to and from work) i drove past it, and the craving for it was so intense i thought i might cry if i didn't get any. so i got some (not like that, dirty minds) and it was good. but i think i still like mcdonald's better, at least as far as the burgers go. i don't know if it's the sauce or the way the lettuce tasts, but i can't decide if i like it or not. for those of you (michelle and hannah) who were in france with me, it's kind of like Quick. you know it's going to be gross, but you have this need to eat there anyway. the gross statement, of course, excludes "les cheesy," the best things i've ever had in my mouth.

i think my students need xanax. seriously. they got really stressed out over my new classroom arrangement and trying to decide on their new seat. the poor little lost souls.

i found out the other day that one of my students' mom is the president of the excalibur. yeah. the casino. he drives a mercedes. his answer to the writing prompt of, "what do you sense you're supposed to do before your life is over?" was that he is supposed to be rich, and since his mom is the pres. of the excalibur he's got connections (and this is a direct quote), "every were on the strip." i wanted to smack him and tell him that connections don't do much if you CAN'T SPELL WHERE CORRECTLY!!!! i think i'm going to tell my modern lit class (of which he is a member) that they need to bring me starbuck's every day. i don't think they'd care. they kind of offered to before and it embarassed me so i brushed it off. but now the exhaustion is starting to override the embarassment.

that's pretty much all i got. ...and i'm spent. i went to borders today because educators got 25% off of regularly priced items and i bought two books, which just may cement my status as a complete and total loser (if it wasn't cemented already): A Brief History of the Kings and Queens of Britian, and The Wives of Henry VIII. I would have bought the unbrief version of the kings and queens, but it wasn't there. i've decided that i have an unhealthy and unnatural obsession with the tudor era of british history. if i ever get a third masters, it will be in british history. (the first two are going to be in urban education, because it's free, and linguistics/philology. i'm just going to get lots of masterses and never a phd because i'm terrified of writing a doctoral thesis. i saw my grandpa's once. it was bound and probably about 500 pages. plus i'm faily certain that while i'm a fairly smart woman, i'm not really smart enought to get a doctorate and they'll know that... you like how this is the longest parentheses ever??)

and that's really all i got. i'm going to say that i'm going to go grade some papers. but i'll probably watch CSI and fall asleep on my couch...

tyring to make up for the last one...

i should be making lesson plans right now, but i'm procrastinating (what a shock, right). i know yesterday's post will worry some of you, and i'm sorry for that, but i needed to put it somewhere and it felt more legitimate putting it out there for other people to find. i really am okay. i just get pensive sometimes and that often leads to melencholy or whatever. or maybe philosophizing is just depressing--that's probably it.

today i was watching the natural on american movie classics (another means of procrasination) and i half paid attention because i was dozing in and out and messing around on my computer, but i asked myself the following question: what is it that makes robert redford so attractive? i looked it up, and he was born in 1939. that makes him... 67 years old. and he's still really attractive. i mean, if i saw him at a bar or something and he hit on me, i'd give him my number. AND HE'S SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS OLD!!! i think it might be the smile. or maybe a combination of the smile and the voice... and the eyes. and the slightly mussed hair. i dont' know. but he's attractive. and maybe it's because of the age, not DESPITE the age? anyone have any ideas?

here is a confession: today i spent two hours of my life, two hours that i will never get back, watching the e! true hollywood story of the hilton sisters. why? you ask. not because there was nothing else on tv, because there was. and i have a faily hefty collection of movies i could have watched. but no. i watched the story of the hilton sisters. did i mention that i don't even LIKE the hilton sisters?

i really must go lesson plan. at least for this week. at least sketch it out on paper and then type them tomorrow or something. whatever. i am happy though. mostly. and its just that when i'm not, i dont' have someone here to go talk to about it and get my mind off it and get over it. i spend a lot of time alone (which is okay) and the thoughts tend to tumble around like a dryer and until i get them out somehow they get more and more macabre. so i had to put them somewhere to make them stop. and they did and i'm okay. :)
love you all,
sarah

this will be a long one. prepare yourselves.

WARNING: THE FIRST PORTION OF THIS BLOG IS NOT FUNNY. ITS MY OWN PSYCHOANALYTICAL RAMBLINGS AND IT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO READ (LOTS OF RUN ONS) AND PROBABLY BORING FOR ALL THOSE INVOLVED (INCLUDING MYSELF). FEEL FREE TO SCROLL DOWN TO WHERE IT SAYS "HERE IS THE FUNNY PART.

"i'm under attack again my dear, i'm in the way
got no resolutions, no clever anecdotes to say
and still if i yell at the top of my lungs will it be the same?"

nostalgia is a funny thing. for me, at least. i've discovered that i have a tendency to feel nostalgia for things i never had. i realized this for the first time a few months ago when i got to thinking about the tv show "The Wonder Years" and i was missing that show. but i didn't know if i was missing the show because i liked the show or because it reminded me of my childhood. but did it remind me of my childhood because i watched it as a child or because it took place during kevin arnold's childhood? or was it making me miss a childhood in the 60's that i never had? why was a so melencholy when i was thinking about it? maybe melencholy isn't the word. then last night i went to see the movie elizabethtown with my friend gwen. the bulk of the movie is set in a small town in kentucky, which made me a little sad because it reminded me of home. there are lots of shots of driving and the roads looked like home a little. not totally because there were lots of trees and very few cornfields, but it was a helluva lot closer than the desert and mountains. and then there was this small town. and i started feeling nostalgic for my childhood and my small town. but the small town wasn't really anything like jamestown. there was a courthouse. it wasn't really like an of the small towns i know. it wasn't like lebanon, because it was too small, and too big to be jamestown. the closest small town that i can think of is streator, but anyone who knows me very well know that streator just confuses me most of the time, and that i rarely miss it when i'm not there, or when i am there for that matter. and this really distubs me. why am i nostalgic for things that never happened in my life? is that normal? it can't be normal. nostalgia has two meanings: 1) a bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations from the past, and 2) the condition of being homesick; homesickness. i think there is an implied idea that these were events that a person actually experienced. how can i be nostalgic for the 1960's of the wonder years when it's probalby not accurate, and i didn't live through it.

and here is my fear: that one day, everyone will realize that i'm just faking it all. the happy, the sad, the funny, the smart, the... i just feel like my whole life i've been pretending to be this one person and i've never taken the time to figure out if that's really who i am. and if it is who i really am, i'm kind of depressed, because it's not a very impressive being. i think the thing that really scares me is how successfully i have faked it. i faked high school and got a scholarship. then i faked all of college, got a degree, great recommendations, an outstanding future educator award, a second place sports feature award, a diplome with a little sticker that says "cum laude," and a good job. now i've got my job, my career that i faked myself into, and i'm getting praise, BUT I'M STILL FAKING IT. people are telling me i'm a good teacher, and my students are telling other teachers that they can't believe it's my first year and that i'm so smart and it's all fake. i stand up in front of my classes for 80 minutes three times a day and i don't have a clue what i'm talking about. i'm currently teaching the poem "the waste land" in my modern lit class and if it wasn't for sparknotes.com, i wouldn't have a clue what it's about.

i have a friend from college, and we made a marriage pact. if we're not married by the time we turn 26, we marry each other. actually, it's by the time i turn 26, because my birthday is earlier. and pretty soon i'm going to turn 26 (two years isn't THAT soon, i reailze) and i'm going to plan to marry him and he'll tell me that he was joking all along and he thought i was too, and he doesn't want to marry me "because i'm like a sister to him" or some bullshit like that and it will break my heart.

last night i went out to eat with gwen and we had a pretty hot waiter named jared (who reminded me of the tv show the pretender and i started wondering if it was still on tv) who smiled at me an awful lot and i should have left him my number, but i didn't because i'm a big chicken.

by monday i'll be embarrased hat i wrote all this stuff on here and you all could read it, and you'll all be angry because it's not funny (at least it's not supposed to be) and worried because i seem so sad and this will go down as a negative memory. but oh well.

and i hate when i get like this because it's so pointless. i don't solve anything and i feel pathetic for being so neurotic about things that just do not matter because i am so lucky and i have no room to complain about anything. i always think of that line from ever after where anjelica houston says "some people read because they cannot think for themselves" and i wonder if that's me? i don't like thinking. there are never any answers and i just end up thinking in circles (much like i'm doing now) and i never feel as though i'm thinking deeply enough (somewhere along the line i developed this idea that if i'm not entertaining an internal conversation worthy of descartes or socrates, i'm not good enough) and so i just go read someone else's thoughts on the situation. is that why i like to read so much? to escape my own brain and just piggyback on someone else? my whole life i've been standing on the shoulders of giants, and half the time i end up convincing people that i am really that tall. and so i focus on other people's thoughts. i've made plans to spend my life teaching young people about other people's thoughts.

i worry that i'm out of touch with my emotions. my grandmother died in may and i've still yet to cry a lot about it. the tears never come at an appropriate time. almost half a year later and i hven't cried yet? am i a robot? is that why i listen to emo? i can't find my own emotions so i live vicariously through someone else's and then i just feel more pathetic because my emotions aren't like that. so i watch a movie to feel better and feel worse because i'm not in love or because i'm not as perfect as the characters, even thought i know that NO ONE is as perfect as movie characters and i know that life isn't a movie, but i still just really want it to be. i'm stopping now. if i don't i'll end up lying on my couch for the next seven hours watching pride and prejudice and eating half-burnt microwave popcorn. and here's the reason i hate episodes like this the most: because i know that i could change it, if i wanted to but i'm too lazy or uninspired or something. in the end, it's all my fault, and i can't blame it on anything or anyone else, so i decide that insted of obsessing about it or trying to change it, i'll keep on faking it and burying my emotions and ignoring what the nostalgia means and be the same person everyone thinks i am, the person i've convinced myself that i am (most of the time) because it's easier and less painful.

HERE IS THE FUNNY PART

i have a kid in m modern lit class who looks like elijah wood. and i don't mean if you take off your glasses and glance up with your hair in your eyes he kind of resembles elijah wood if it's dark. the kid looks exactly like elijah wood. the first day he walked in i actually did at least a triple take and of course the first thought in my overactive imagination was "oh my gosh! elijah wood is researching a movie role and he's in my classroom!" but devon (the kid's name) is too tall to be elijah wood. he never says a word in my class. ever. i finally was talking to him the other day and i said i coudn't get over how much he looks like elijah wood. he said he hears it a lot and he used to have longer hair and he looked a lot like frodo. he hair is short and very black now. i told him not to worry if i star at him a lot in class, it's just because i can't get over the resemblance. i also told him i'm going to take a picture of him to show to everyone i know because i can't get over the resemblance.

i think a kid in my 8th period has a crush on me. the kids always tease him about flirting with me and the other day in class, another kid asked him when he was going to marry me. i pulled him aside after class and told him not to say anything about it anymore and he said okay, but i know i blushed about maroon when he said it in class. AWKWARD.one of my students told another teacher, who told me, that they can't believe it's my first year and i'm a really good teacher and i'm really smart, which made me feel good.

i made lunch yesterday for the whole english department (we take turns on fridays) and so i took a big crock pot of turkey vegetable soup and bread and two kinds of cookies and i have to say it was a huge hit. i am a rock star in my department. they love me, and i can't blame them. i have also recently discovered the joys of paying my bills online. SO MUCH EASIER.

the other day a kid in my class was wearing a shirt that said "define girlfriend" which would be funny if i was at a club and they guy was 25 and really hot. but when i'm in teacher mode and he's 17 and really spoiled it makes me think that i'll see him on the chanel 3 news for molesting drunk freshmen at a UNLV frat party.

here are some pictures from the last few weekends. most of the captions are messed up because it doesn't look the same when i'm composing it and i can't change it once i look at the preview... anyway, enjoy!!! (i promise, sometime i will clean my apartment and take pictures. but today is not that day.)

my big old face at the top of the rio. that's vegas behind me...


this is sean, gwen and i at the top of the rio. that's vegas behind us...











this is amanda, gwen and i at the top of the rio. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

this is the south part of the strip from the top of the rio.












this is the north part of the strip from the top of the rio