so, like, is it really that hard not to capitalize my name? or do you think i've been accidentally not capitalizing it since i was 12 years old?

in other news: it's finally happened. recess monkey has usurped bad brains as the most played artist on my last fm page. i would like to blame this on zac & jaden, but really it is because of my undying devotion to the wonderbees.

so i feel like i have been neglecting this lately, but really it is a paradoxical combination of life moving too fast and me having nothing new to report.

i guess one new thing would be that i've been dating another guy lately and it seems more promising than usual. so far he has met three of my good friends without completely withdrawing into himself and/or being an overpowering asshole. so, good for him.

my old policy on introducing guys to my friends was to wait until we were in a definite relationship. kind of like most single parents don't introduce dates to their kids until they have staying power.

my NEW policy is to realize that as i get older and have already done the whole "all-consuming love/blind infatuation" thing, i now need to know that my boyfriend can get along with my friends. or i will start to hate him.

in other news, i've met a lot of other really cool people lately, such as judy from LA and asia from peru. okay, so asia isn't really from peru, but informed us that she was "practically raised by peruvians" while her mom "was at some bar."

also, i've decided that i will happily trade the reduced admission cost of $7.50 i get with jaden's membership for the half hour of pay it equates to and continue taking her to the zoo as much as possible. there is still so much to do there; we only go for about 2 hours at a time and we still haven't seen all the animals or even played in the zoomasium. i think i'm saving that for a rainy day.

jaden has also invented matzo miso soup, an east-meets-west delicacy i am pretty proud of her for. i am also proud of her for successfully using training chopsticks but, really, what can't jaden do?

other than randomly attending pretend cocktail parties and cooking delicious vegan stirfries and stews, the real thing i am doing right now is focusing on school. it's almost the end of summer quarter now and i have a few big projects to work on. i also need to make sure all my affairs are in order before i start MIT this fall. i'm really nervous that i'm never going to have enough time and worried about how needing to wake up at 6am is going to affect my life. but i guess only time will tell.

on a lighter note: ( pictures ) from the last few days

The Caspian Sea is technically a lake, as it has no outflow.



According to the Wikipedia article on seas:

Some bodies of water that are called "seas" are not actually seas; there are also some seas that are not called "seas". The following is an incomplete list of such potentially confusing names.

* The Sea of Galilee is a small freshwater lake with a natural outlet, which is properly called Lake
Tiberias or Lake Kinneret on modern Israeli maps, but its original name remains in use.
* The Sea of Cortés is more commonly known as the Gulf of California.
* The Persian Gulf is a sea.
* The Dead Sea is actually a lake, as is the Caspian Sea.

But then, things get confusing. As the Wikipedia page about the Caspian Sea says:

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. It has a surface area of 371,000 square kilometers (143,244 sq mi) and a volume of 78,200 cubic kilometers (18,761 cu mi).[4] It is an endorheic body of water (has no outflows), and lies between the southern areas of the Russian Federation and northern Iran.

According to a quick poll taken at Cafe Solstice, 6 out of 16 people believe the Caspian Sea is actually a lake, while the remaining 2/3 of people believe it is, indeed, a sea:



The people have spoken.

is it as much of a conspiracy theory to believe that obama is pretending to be centrist to get elected as it is to believe that mccain is pretending to be centrist to get elected? can we pause to assess the fact that bush was elected on lies and dirty campaigning/playing up stupid moral issues and "cleverly" diverting the topic from things like the economy? obama's campaign would be fools not to understand that his being elected depends on courting moderate or even conservative swing voters. can we not realize which election outcome would be worse for america, regardless of the campaign that gets the person elected? it's not like hillary wasn't ALREADY using these tactics in the fucking nomination process - and this is the general election! obama needs to trick some people into voting for him so he can actually make the changes he is trying to make. some of which will escalate the class war already in existence into perhaps a real civil war.

there, i said it. now i will go back to keeping my "obama is like lincoln" theory to myself...but really, if anyone who has read either of obama's books really believes that he is going to override roe v. wade then i feel sorry for how ignorant they are. like john mccain is going to be better? you cannot elect someone out of spite. oh wait, you can.

in other news: kevin marshall visited seattle today. pictures to come later

EDIT: still no pictures, but i wanted to add that i *am* disturbed by obama's FISA vote

so i the past 2 weeks i've:
( cut my hair ),
( gotten a cute skirt ),
( graduated ),
( gone whale watching )
( gone hedgehog watching ),
( been to the library ),
( visited parks ),
( enjoyed beverages ),
and ( been housesitting/catsitting/gardensitting ).

what have you been up to? please follow up your comment with a picture.

So this is the post where I introduce myself to a writing community (hence my use of punctuation and capital letters). I'm not sure what to say, really, except that I am both a writer and a writing teacher, and when I am succeeding in one of these areas it likely means I am losing focus in the other. Since I'm not teaching this summer, I am using this opportunity to try to generate some new writing to add to my body of my work. Most of my existing writing is saved in various journals, note cards, and word documents (and could use a lot of revision). I share some of it here, but I would share more if I were braver. 98% of my writing is unpublished. Probably because I adore improperly using sentence fragments and beginning sentences with numerical percentages. I'm 24 years-old, I live in Seattle, and I get my best ideas riding the bus.

In reference to the California poll showing a majority support for gay marriage:

...It's because younger people today—-those under, say, 45 or so-—have been far more exposed to the gay "lifestyle" and to more fluid notions of gender and sexuality, to the idea of homosexuality as a common, nonthreatening, everyday, what's-the-big-deal shrug, and therefore, as a demographic, they/we understand that allowing gay people to wed doesn't actually mean our shaky notions of God and family and society will collapse like a priest's willpower at a Boy Scout jamboree...hence the obvious conclusion: It's only because the "Greatest Generation" is finally dying off that something like gay marriage can be realized as less of a silly threat....among those 18 to 29 years old, support is at a whopping 68 percent, whereas only 36 percent of people over 65 think it's totally OK to love whomever you want and marry them and then redecorate the kitchen and fight about appliances and money and sex and kids and, later, who gets the dog in the divorce...

read the rest of the article, aptly titled, "Farewell, All You Old Homophobes"

the author also has a section about how there are plenty of elderly Americans who *do* support gay marriage, and i laughed at a memory i have of my grandfather. in the later years of his life, umpy had this thing for watching the birds outside on the deck. to this day, my aunt and my grandmother are convinced they receive "visits" from him in the form of some of the birds he used to love. and he really did love those backyard birds, going so far as to make up melodramas about their feathered affairs. "that's my favorite couple," he told me once, pointing to two obviously male cardinals. i was quick to point out that the more elaborately "dressed" birds were the males, and umpy was even quicker to reply, "what? i support alternative lifestyles." sometimes i really wish he was around to meet uncle mark.

so for the past 3 days now i've had a sore throat. it's really awful but accompanied by no other symptoms. now that i actually pay for insurance, i need to go to group health and ask them what's up. ibuprofen has been really hurting my stomach lately so i've been trying to take acetaminophen. which makes me laugh because it is one of those words i always mispronounce in my head and have to convert before blurting out, "can i have a handful of "acetomicen?"

which sounds a lot like a handful of these:


also, today i went to zac's dance recital with zac & jaden's family and it was very entertaining. especially when jaden recognized and started singing along to a timbaland song we have been known to listen to together...oops.

while americans are banking on "anyone but bush," citizens around the world would just be happy if the u.s. had a president that "strings lots of sentences together into paragraphs."
woah dream big!

but in all seriousness, i'm thrilled that americans are another step closer to existing in a world that no longer assumes we are all complete dumbfucks. not that i care what the rest of the world thinks about me, per se...it would just be nice to not worry about being completely cut off as the global economy adjusts.

it's not that i care when random boys hit on me on the street after ladytron shows...it's when they momentarily grab my shoulder as i'm talking on a cell phone walking back to dawn's car. like, who gave you permission to touch me?

and in other stranger danger reports: another random drunk kissed me on the mouth after i informed him you had to call to get a cab in this city. it's okay because he's gay? i have a theory that i had a very "fresh from new york" vibe about me this week, which may have somehow lifted seattle's usual no-contact ban with street passerby.

note to self: never lament the way seattle street life is not like east coast street life again.

and now some ( pictures ).

also, it was amazing to be back on the east coast and peyton's graduation was fun (except for the rain during the ceremony). advice from the governor of new york? move back home, kids; the economy sucks. advice from me? no matter how many degrees you hold, mrs. henry will still tell you how to "mind the gap" and iron your dress.

speaking of which, my final portfolio is finished. my evaluation has been conducted. my requirements all check out. i am now the official recipient of a master's degree in curriculum & instruction. hard to believe i did it in less than two years, considering my much easier college degree took what, five?

An Open-Letter to Future Educators

The role of education is changing. Instead of focusing our efforts on teaching every child the same thing, we need to teach children to learn and think for themselves. We need to direct students to gather information about what interests them the most, so they can share it with others and become experts in their fields. We can no longer assume they will be competitive in the job market or successful in life just by obtaining a high school degree.

America is not a meritocracy. Things are not equal. There is a legacy of oppression that maintains the status quo. A large part of this is achieved through an educational system that reproduces social inequalities, a system that advances the haves while disenfranchising the have-nots. 1 out of every 100 Americans is now incarcerated, prison populations of the future can be predicted by fourth-grade reading failure rates, and more jails are being built than schools. It is imperative for you to fight for the rights of future generations of disempowered Americans right now, while they are children in your classrooms. This fight can only be won when you are informed. Educate yourselves so that you may go on to educate others.

Learn the full story about the racism and classism of the past so you can recognize its legacy in the present. Unlearn deficit theory. Believe that parents want the best education for their children regardless of their culture or class. Seek to understand different learning styles and make efforts to teach to a broader population of learners.

Learn about linguicism, the discrimination against students who do not speak the language of those in power. English is a living, changing language, every person (including you) has an accent, and every person speaks a dialect of English; there is no "standard" way to speak it. There is a difference between a grammatical error and a mismatch in culture.

Help students feel comfortable in their own skin. Understand that every child brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the classroom; tapping into that is essential for making meaning. Plan and teach culturally relevant curriculum. Design anti-bias courses. Seek out cross-cultural experiences and do the self-reflective work you need to do.

Most importantly, know that every child can learn, but they can’t all learn the same way. Don’t give up on the ones that seem to be rejecting their education. In the long run, actions speak louder than words and affirming words will speak louder than self-doubt.

If we are to truly make education the great equalizer it was never intended to be, we must work together to make drastic curricular and instructional changes. We must have the wisdom to admit when policies and practices are no longer working. We must have the vision to create, to change, to improve. If the system becomes broken beyond repair, we must have the courage to uproot it and begin anew. Education should be first and foremost for the students. When it ceases to serve them or even be about them, we, as their teachers, need to demand a better way.

adventures with bonnie & a certain hedgehog i've come to love (bonus points if you can tell which bars appa's negligent mother took him to)












my lunch with jaden (during which she was very determined to clean our table with a napkin in my water glass)






Act III: in which jaden is amused by wearing slippers on her hands

so i wonder, now that everyone thinks obama is bound to his "offensive" christian reverend, if anyone still thinks that obama is a muslim? i guess you can't really have it both ways

you know something? making a joke about a kid who got left back twice by saying "at this rate he'll graduate when he's 27" isn't really funny. especially because thanks to NCLB many kids are being routinely held back 2 and even 3 times. and we know that, statistically, each time a kid is held back that means he or she is 3 times more likely to drop out of school.

so in conclusion, he won't be done with school when he's 27. nope, he'll be 16. which means he will probably be in 8th grade. and if he's lucky enough to go to school in a district like houston, he won't even be reported as a high school dropout. awesome.

technological things i'm not good at
-correctly filling out captchas (requires spacial relation/visualization skills i clearly do not possess. this is evidenced by my failing these sections of intelligence tests over and over again). perhaps i am a robot.
-remembering my fafsa pin (i always attempt twice using 4 digit codes that would logically make sense to me, before being automatically denied new attempts because i have attempted too much. then i remember that fafsa pins are auto generated. then i wait for my pin to be emailed).
-figuring out if i need to RENEW my 2007-2008 fafsa or if i need to APPLY for my 2008-2009 fafsa
-filling out my fafsa (it requires math).
-finding my adjusted gross income and taxable income before my h&rblock login expires and i have to start all over

life skills things i am good at
-packing my lunch in my bag the night before
-sneaking my gym membership card into my wallet upon changing bags
-carefully tucking away an extra battery for my mp3 player in a place i knew i would look even if i forgot i put it there
-astonishing myself by producing said gym card, lunch, and battery at the appropriate times. sometimes i feel like i am that guy in the movie memento because i am constantly 2 steps ahead of my absentmindedness. i'm finally at the stage where i can plan ahead for my future self who forgets to plan ahead.

one of the reasons i think i'm good at understanding special ed transition plans is that i pretty much wrote myself an IEP to function. it's too bad i can't appoint myself as a parapro to fill out my own forms.