Saturday, February 23, 2008

Searching for Joanna, Part III

I love my site meter. It's just so darn fun to see how people make it to my blog. Mostly I'm surprised they clicked on the link to get here. Just the other day I looked at my site meter, and it told me people were finding my blog from something called hitchhikr. I checked out the link, and I was a little panic-sticken to discover that it was apparently a site that was for the TCEA Conference I went to in Austin. Somehow it finds blogs that mention TCEA and shows all the links for them with the first sentence or two of the blog. Think about it though, looooong list of boring education related blogs, and then there's the link for my blog titled "In the Ghetto..." about getting lost on the way to Austin. Yep, that's quality. I'd have clicked on that one too. Seriously.

Without further ado, here are the top searches on my list:

1. Rubber ducks that look like dogs -- wouldn't that make them dogs?
2. How much money does a high school math teacher get a day? -- hmmmm, sounds like a fun math problem. You get on that and we'll discuss your findings in class tomorrow.
3. Rubber ducky cake recipe -- it's really just a normal cake recipe, it's the cake pan that makes it a rubber ducky.
4. Can a teacher wear jeans -- I sure hope so. Are we built differently so that they don't fit on us??
5. Hanging oneself how to -- official disclaimer! I do not condone actually hanging oneself nor have I ever given directions on how to do so! :-)
6. Think about it after graduation there isn’t one occasion where people celebrate you -- Yes there is. It's called your birthday. Everyone has one, so it's your ONLY special celebration a year (no anniversary, mothers day, fathers day, etc.), but there is one celebration a year. I'll write more about my bday later, but thanks to those of you who made my ONE day special! :-)
7. which high perfect a year of get car accident -- there's never a perfect year for a car accident, but with God's timing and hand over you, it can turn out ok.
8. pictures of a good honest woman -- well here I am if that's what you want to call me...
9. school cool thing like math divers -- not sure what math divers are but doesn't it sounds cool?
10. pictures about teachers’ burnout -- it's not really an image so much as a mindset, so I hear...
11. the office sprinkles pictures -- Sprinkles is a dog, my dog in fact, and he was named that after Blue's baby brother, not the cat on The Office. He may think he's a cat and act like a cat, but he's not one. :-)

Alright there's my top 11; hope you enjoyed them! Have a good night!

Monday, February 18, 2008

I Think My Car is a Skrull

I despise the artwork of Leinil Yu, so I searched online until I found a picture that he did not draw of Electra as a Skrull. Notice the red outfit and how she has turned green. Now for you non-comic people...pretty much all of my readers, this will not totally make sense to you, but it's a theory I have. To help you a little, without killing you with boredom, I will now slip into my Joanna, the geek, persona to explain a bit of back story. In the Marvel comic universe, aliens (the Skrulls) have been infiltrating the earth. They are shape-shifters, so they have taken the form of super heroes or, as in Electra's case, villains. Thing is you don't know they are a Skrull until they reveal themselves, become all green and ugly, and try to kill you; or they are killed and revert back to their green and ugly selves. As in the case of Black Bolt, they can make their thoughts be read by a telepath as the thoughts of the person they are imitating. Electra was the first big Skrull reveal, and it's left all us Marvel-ites wondering who really is who they say they are. Sigh, I tried to keep the back story short! Main point: hopefully a Skrull who is impersonating someone will slip up and behave in a way that person would not and would thus clue someone in to their Skrulliness.

Now on to The Cap and why I think he's a Skrull. (We all know that's my car right???) I left off part of my Austin story. New car, cruising the road, playing some fun tunes (Celtic Woman: A New Journey...ok not so cool to anyone else under the age of 50 but I love them!), and suddenly in the middle of Caledonia I hear a scratch, and the music suddenly stops. Panic stricken, I try to eject the CD. The Cap tells me that my "disc [is] ejecting", but it turns out that he's LYING to me! My disc is not ejecting! In fact, when I turn off the radio and turn it back on, he tells me "disc loading," but he's LYING again! Lying to my face! The nerve! My disc was neither loading nor ejecting! The Cap ATE my CD! Now I understand if he has different musical tastes than I, but come on, eating the CD is low! Besides, cars having feelings and such aside, what new car eats CDs? That is total un-new car like behavior! See... The Cap is a Skrull! He behaved in a manner unlike himself (as a new car). To go further on this, when I went to the Saturn dealership, they tried to reset the radio, and it wouldn't reset.... ta-da! That's the sign of a Skrull, he's so set in the lie, he's trying not to change his story.

There are some other signs. For instance, no matter how hard I try, I can't keep the outside spotless. I think The Cap is somewhere in there, but his Skrulliness is showing itself by the dirt it attracts. Also, he's red. Electra was red... on the outside. If my car suddenly turns green, I'm freaking out.

Back into the land of what's real. Yes, The Cap ate my Celtic Woman CD, but like usual, the Saturn people were great. When I went by to see if it was a quick fix, I had just gotten back from Austin, and I took Sprinkles with me to the dealership. Without a pause, they petted Sprinkles, told me how sweet he was, and held the door open for me to go in to the waiting area. No issues with the dog being there. When the CD player would not relinqish my CD, they ordered a new CD player. When it came in, they called me to set up an appointment and put it in quickly while I waited. Both times I was there they washed my car for me. Now the hitch is that they have to send off the old CD player for someone to get the CD out and send back. I'm not holding my breath that I'll see my CD again. Sigh. We'll see.

Saturn is great about washing your car when you come in for a service. They kindly leave these little spots on your windows where they "dried" the window with a wet towel. In fact the first time I was there I figured the spots were a fluke, so the night before I went back for the CD player to be put in, I spent 30 minutes cleaning the spots and smudges off my windows. When I got my car back with the CD player fixed, not only had they washed my car again, but they had kindly replaced all of the spots and smudges! Isn't that nice of them? :-)

Seriously though, The Cap might be a Skrull. The signs are ominous...

Thursday, February 14, 2008

In the Ghetto...

I've had a whirlwind of a week or so, and the most blog-worthy event has been my trip to Austin to go to the TCEA Conference. I'm not sure what those letters stand for. All I really know is that it's a technology conference that my principal asked me to go to, and I was more than happy to take the honor and the days off!
Here's Betsy, the teacher who went with me, and I at a reception in Austin.

One of the technologists took apart the flower arrangement and gave us roses. I don't quite have the hang of wearing flowers in my hair... Now I'm a little ahead of myself, so let's start back at the beginning.

I decided to drive my pretty new car to the conference, so we left around noon in the Cap. Betsy had a new TomTom (navigation system thing), and so we decided to use it to get us to Austin (yes, I now know it's 35 South until you run into downtown but I didn't then!). For starters, it took Betsy a l-o-n-g time to get our destination into TomTom. I stopped at McDonalds, got lunch, ate lunch, broke my sunglasses, went to Target, bought new sunglasses, and after all that TomTom decided to agree to go to Austin with us. To be fair, it was new, and so Betsy was still learning how to use it. I offered OnStar, but she really wanted to use her gadget, and to be honest, I wanted to see how it worked.

Skipping ahead to Austin. We knew our hotel was in Austin but not downtown, so when TomTom led us off 35, we were ok. Actually we were ok until we realized we were in South Austin in the ghetto. Not the ghetto like I call the Mall of Irving but the real honest to goodness ghetto. We immediately decided this was not where we were going to stay and started trying to figure out who to call to get permission to use the P-Card (the school's mastercard) for a different hotel. Betsy at one point said something like, "it's getting better, we've got 2 miles to go...we'll be out of the ghetto!" To which I replied (in my highly alarmed Minnie Mouse voice), "We'll still be next door to it!!!" That was about the time when TomTom said, "You've arrived at your destination." Excuse me? We were smack dab in the middle of the ghetto with no hotel in site. For all I knew the houses we were outside were drug dens... yeah, it was not good. OnStar to the rescue! I called OnStar, talked to a real person, and she very nicely led us out of the ghetto and to our hotel. It was a quite nice hotel actually. Right off of 35. Easy to get to. Beautiful. :-) Ah yes... adventure. :-)

The conference was good. I enjoyed the exhibit hall and actually came away with about 5 free t-shirts. One was actually cool - it's a TI "We all use math everyday" shirt that looks like a graphic tee you'd buy on a random fun shirt site. Honestly there's not a lot more to tell. I have no idea how that happened with TomTom, but it was a memory. :-)

I'll try to write more soon.