I Did Think About Being Her for Halloween

Your results:
You are Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)
You are good at fixing things.
You are usually cheerful.
You appreciate being treated
with delicacy and specialness.

Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)		80%
Derrial Book (Shepherd)		65%
Wash (Ship Pilot)		65%
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)		60%
Alliance		55%
Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)		55%
Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)		50%
River (Stowaway)		40%
Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)		30%
Inara Serra (Companion)		30%
A Reaver (Cannibal)		10%

Click here to take the "Which Serenity character are you?" quiz...

You Know What They Say About People Who Assume

People are stupid. Not all people - just a lot of them.

I was reminded of this when my friend Nicole sent me a link to the opinion page of our hometown newspaper. A man by the name of Woody Russell thinks it is his moral duty to save America's children from being exposed to the occult symbolism that apparently runs rampant in the Harry Potter Books and will inevitably seep into their minds. Read for yourself:

Reader's Viewpoint: It's time to pull Harry Potter books from our libraries

To the Editor:

The article "Not So Wild About Harry (Potter)" in Parade magazine Oct. 29 has some good advice, and it'’s time to pull the worldÂ’s most popular wizard, Harry Potter, from the school libraries. Has witchcraft conquered the church too?

British author J.K. Rowling'’s "“Harry Potter"” books for a brief time were selling better than the holy Bible. Those books were very cleverly packaged to introduce tens of millions of children to satanic symbols, rituals and concepts. Did anyone ever notice that lightning bolt on his forehead?

Parents are not hesitating to buy those books for their children, and as a result witchcraft has now virtually conquered the whole of Christian establishments. The lightning bolt has long been a satanic symbol.

Children have been placing a tattooed lightning bolt symbol on their foreheads. Lightning has long been a supreme symbol of Lucifer, whom the Illuminati deem to be their "“enlightener,"” just as Jesus in the Bible, who says, "“I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Lucifer is also called the "Prince of the Power of Air."” (Ephesians 2:2)

The modern Illuminati have borrowed from the pagan mystery religions, a supreme god as a fiery, flying serpent, bringing lightning and thunder in his wake.

The Greeks and Romans also worshipped angry deities, Zeus and Jupiter, sitting on a throne at the hub of the heavens throwing lightning bolts and becoming thunder at their enemies.

It is also recognized as a phallic symbol -– in the Illuminist religion that originated from tantric tradition, in which it is taught that lightning is a phallic scepter, jewel, lingam or a magical wand of the gods. It also symbolizes the Hindu fire god, "Agni"” – in the third eye region of the forehead between the eyes. The Nordic people also worshiped him as Odin.

A Hitler Youth bugle band also once flew a banner of the lightning bolt, an occult symbol of the ancient Mystery Religions. The were designed as a rigid "“S"” meaning the secret adoration of Satan.

In Britain, the New Party once marched with a banner with a lightning flash that stood for action in a circle (wreath) that was around it for Unity or Union. Another Illuminist symbol is the five- or six-pointed stars -– symbol of the Devil.

Believe it or don'’t!

Woody Russell,

New Philadelphia

I'm baffled by the fact that this man would leave himself so open to rebuttal. He's obviously intelligent enough to pull a few facts about the lightning bolt as a symbol of Satan off the internet, but he conveniently left out the fact that the lighning bolt was also seen as a symbol of God's might in the Old Testament (I can pull information off the internet, too). Even more disturbing, though, is the fact that he obviously didn't bother to research the Harry Potter books themselves. Instead, he arrived at his earth-shattering conclusions about Rowling's books based simply on the cover art. Aren't his powers of deduction just incredible, that he could form an entire contention regarding the nature of what is arguably the most popular series of children's books in the last decade without even lifting the front cover?

Naturally, I couldn't let this kind of ignorance sway the consciences of the good (but easily influenced) people of Tuscarawas County. Thus, I penned a response that will hopefully appeal to the religiously conservative majority of my place of origin. As someone who actually read the Harry Potter books before making up her mind about them, I think I'm a bit more qualified to form an opinion about them:

To the Editor:

I am writing in response to Woody Russell’s contribution to Reader’s Viewpoint titled “It’s time to pull Harry Potter books from our libraries.” Russell’s letter was both closed-minded and based on speculation, and I think it’s a safe bet to say he’s never read a single page from any of the Harry Potter books.

Russell’s argument was based on the cover art of the books, all of which features an artist’s rendering of Harry Potter himself, who is depicted with a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. Had Russell bothered to find out how Harry obtained the scar, he would know that it was the by-product of the murder of Harry’s mother, who died protecting her infant son from a powerful wizard turned evil. Harry’s scar is not a mark he chose. Nor does it label him as evil, as Russell assumed. Rather, it is the outward evidence that Harry has been the victim of evil. Lily Potter’s selfless act spared her son Harry from certain death and rendered him immune to the evil that, until then, was unstoppable. Maybe it’s just me, but the story reminds me a little bit of another famous story, one that you’ll find in the New Testament, involving a selfless act made by the son of God.

Anyone who’s bothered to read the books before condemning them knows that Rowling’s story is a classic one of good versus evil. Young Harry devotes himself completely to living up to his parents’ memories by defeating the evil wizard who made him an orphan and has caused so many other good wizards and witches so much pain. It seems that much of the proposed censorship of children’s literature stems from simple ignorance. Take, for example, C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” which appears on more than one list of books that are challenged with some regularity. In the case of Lewis’ book, the charge is often made that the book is satanic, by people who do not understand the meaning of the word “allegory” and who do not take the time to find out that C.S. Lewis was one of the most respected theologians of the twentieth century.

We should not pull Harry Potter books from our libraries, as Russell suggests, but instead make available more copies of them. There are precious few books that children will almost universally devour of their own free will, never mind that their pages number well past 800. If parents want to prevent their own children from reading the Harry Potter books, that’s their business, but they have no right to impose their assumptions on all children. Censorship on the scale Russell proposes has no place in any of our libraries.

An Event 26 Years in the Making

I finally believe everyone who said having a B.A., even a somewhat useless one in English, would someday pay off. This is because, three years after finishing that degree and starting my (still unfinished) M.A., I finally have a real job.

What qualifies as a real job, you may ask? Well, according to my definition, it features (a) a living wage, (b) the option of real health benefits, and (c) work that I find rewarding to some degree. I start that job on Monday. It's basically the same thing I've been doing for the past few months, just full-time and with benefits. And at a different library in the same system that's actually five minutes from where I now live. (I could walk to work if I was feeling ambitious and left early enough.) It only took me a year to find such a job. Finally, someone thinks my crummy English degree and my varied field of experience is worth something, and I have a better answer for everyone who's asked me what I'm going to do with my degree in English (though really making a career for myself in the library will require an MLS, I think).

New Additions

After a period of mourning for Edie, Mark and I decided to get a new creature to live with us, in addition to my six fish. After much discussion, we decided to go with something furrier this time, since (a) fellow mammals are sometimes easier to relate to, (b) it's hard to find a babysitter for something that eats live crickets (though we're lucky to know someone well-versed in herp care who watched Edie while we were in Florida), and (c) all lizards other than anoles are far more expensive than Edie, who was free.

Following this lengthy discussion, we went to PetSmart, where our minds were made up for us by the absolutely adorable dwarf hamsters, which are the next best thing to cats and dogs, which we aren't allowed to have.

Unfortunately, they don't have names yet. I was going to give them both literary names (I thought perhaps Wanda and June, after a Vonnegut novel, or Thelma and Louise...nothing I've thought of so far has been a perfect match). Then Mark decided he wanted some say in the naming. Thus, I'm naming the "cracked out one," as we've been calling the hyperactive hamster I picked out, and Mark is in charge of naming the "cool one," as we've been calling the more easygoing hamster that the girl at PetSmart placed in my hand, which caused us to fall in love with her immediately. So I'm trying to think of a similarly cracked out literary character to name my hamster after while trying not to think of what Mark will come up with for his (such as KeeneHamster 1.0, if he names animals the same way he names everything else).

Suggestions are, of course, welcome.

RIP Edie Lizard Okaloma

I discovered Edie dead in her cage late last week. Very sad indeed. I cried and buried her in the landscaping in front of the townhouse. I now have creatures buried at my parents' house (Charlie and Abby, dogs; Snowhead, cat; Curiosity, Generosity/Lazarus (long story), and Sam, newts; Baby and Joshua, godfish; Astrophil and Stella, betas; Snoopy, hamster; Bumper and Thumper, gerbils), flushed down the toilet in Riley Court at Bluffton College (Stella, beta), flushed down the toilet in my first apartment in Oxford (Hindley, goldfish), buried in the landscaping in my second Oxford apartment (Sebastian and Samantha, snails), and buried in the landscaping of my Hamilton apartment (Edie and a small, unnamed snail).

On Gender and Car Repair

My car started leaking power steering fluid last week. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach the first time I noticed the wheel being slightly more groany than usual on a sharp turn, so I checked the power steering fluid when I got home. It was at less than half the acceptable level. My mood turned foul immediately because
(a) my car (Mr. Fabu) is my baby. He's a piece of crap, but he's my piece of crap that I worked hard to get.
(b) I'm poor, and even poorer now than I previously was, because I'm working less to finish my damn thesis. And bad car noises almost always mean dropping an unacceptable amount of money on repairs.
I looked at the power steering pump more closely the next day, with the advantage of daylight. I consulted my Haynes manual to see what the hoses coming out of it do and where they go. I watched my car's guts intently, waiting to see a drop of power steering fluid (by now there was a sizeable puddle in the driveway). I pondered and hypothesized.
Enter my neighbors, a couple about the same age as Mark and me who share our driveway. The male, seeing a woman staring intently at her car's inner workings, made two assumptions:
(a) that something is wrong with her car
(b) that she has no understanding of anything underneath the hood of her car.
You know what they say about people who assume? They make an ass out of u and me.
"Uh oh, what's the problem?" he asked, strolling over confidently to play the hero to the damsel in distress.
"It's leaking power steering fluid," I said, knowing he would offer the knowlege of cars that is inherent in those blessed with a penis.
But I was wrong. He didn't offer. Instead, he moved into my personal space, forcing me aside so he could have my view of the power steering pump.
Why is it that so many men assume that having a uterus and knowing the first thing about cars are mutually exclusive? The last time I took my car in for an oil change and safety check, I told the guy at the counter it was a 1997 Grand Am SE.
"Do you know how many cylinders it has?" He asked, patronizingly. He obviously knew the answer, as it's impllied by the 'SE.'
"Four," in my most patronizing voice.
"Good for you," he said as if I was a two-year-old who'd just used the potty for the first time. Mark put his hand on my arm to restrain me.
Anyway, trying to be grateful for my neighbor's concern, I moved to the side of the car and pointed to the place on the pressure hose where I'd seen a drip form and fall, and where a buildup of moisture and crud had formed a black goo on the plastic casing of the hose. I told him the theory I'd formulated moments earlier, that there was a leak in the pressure hose in that very spot.
He more or less ignored my prattling on and said he thought there was a crack in the pump where the pressure hose hooked in. He then gave me a lesson on the anatomy of the power steering pump (even though I'd already pointed out the pressure hose and called it by its proper name and had my Haynes open), mentioned a repair shop and wished me luck with it. I thanked him as graciously as I could and sighed with relief once he was inside and out of my way.
I consulted CarTalk.com and my friend Linsey who has lived in Hamilton most of her life for the name of a good local repair shop. Then I called the one they concurred on and took Mr. Fabu in for a checkup, dragging Mark along with me. Based on my previous experience with mechanics, it seems to be a good idea for a woman to have a guy around, just for show if nothing else, when taking her car into the shop. And my neighbor hadn't really convinced me that the stereotype about women and cars had been broken down.
The mechanic who looked my car had the problem diagnosed within five minutes. And lo and behold, it was exactly what I thought, marking the second time in a row I've taken my car into the shop and been right about the problem (the alternator went bad last time). It was an easy fix, not economically devastating, and my car was as good as old the next day.
So tonight, the day after I got my car back, my neighbor was outside smoking when I got home from work. "Did you ever get that leak fixed?" he asked.
"Yeah, and it was just what I thought it was." (I swear I wasn't gloating when I said it.) Again, he ignored me.
"Was it what I thought it was?" he asked.
"What did you think it was again?" I honestly didn't remember, because I'd stopped listening to his theory the second I realized he was ignoring mine.
He repeated his idea about a crack in the pump.
I told him about the pressure hose and repeated that it was just what I thought it was. He seemed unimpressed. I, however, was trying to hold back a "so there," complete with snapping action.
He finished his cigarette and said goodnight as I was getting my stuff out of the car. Again, I was relieved to see the sexist bastard go inside.

Vile Purveyor of Groceries

Today as I went to leave my grocery nemesis for the last time as an employee, the automatic doors failed to stop closing from the last person through them as I walked out. One of them actually hit the bag I was carrying and almost hit me. This is the only time I can recall being accosted by the automatic doors in any establishment, so I find it especially interesting that it happened to me on my last day. Is the building itself a sentient being bent on keeping overqualified employees within its grasp?

Freedom

Today I work my last shift as a floral clerk, having gotten a job in Information Services at the Fairfield Lane Library. Finally, things are starting to look up. I will miss a few people, but as a whole, Kroger can kiss my ass.

Freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom, freedom is coming, oh yes I know.

People With "Authority" Who Don't Have to Shave

There's a new kid at my place of work, and he really might be a kid. There's not even the faintest suggestion of stubble on his face, even at 9:00 p.m. And he clearly has no idea how to exercise the authority some genius gave him.

My first encounter with his supposed authority occurred about fifteen minutes before my shift ended. He asked me to run the register, and I rolled my eyes and did it until the line was gone. Then I signed off the register and went back to my *actual* job. And he came over and asked me to stay on the register for another fifteen minutes or so. I said no, I was off in five. I had things to do in my department before I left. He said, okay, just stay on the register until the end of my shift. I looked at the check-out lanes. There were five open, and only two of them had customers checking out. The rush was over. I gave him my incredulous look that is so easily interpreted. His face registered intimidation, but he said, "Please? I just don't want another rush." Right. I said "Fine," with all the attitude I had in me (it was a lot) and signed back on to the register. And stood there as no customers came. So I followed him around with my "you're an idiot" gaze and watched him avoid looking at me. I finally checked out one girl with one item and decided my shift was over and left.

Now, in the larger world, I'm still quite youthful. Relatively speaking at Kroger, however, I'm pretty sage-like. It's very possible that the pharmacists are the only people who have more education than me, and I'm also older than the vast majority of the minions (non-managers) by a few years. I know my job better than anyone but my manager. I work hard, even though I don't make anywhere near a living wage. I do what's asked of me without being told twice. I would like to think that this gets noticed on rare occasions.

I'm willing to run the cash registers up front if there's a rush and I'm really needed. The front-end manager always asks nicely and acts genuinely grateful when I do. It's not part of my job, and I hate doing it with a flaming passion, but I stick it out because I've always been a people pleaser. As much as I hate people, generally speaking (if you're reading this, I probably don't hate you), I somehow had this need to make authority figures like me. And the ones that matter do, or at least they don't dislike me. But this kid is not an authority figure. He's a kid. I found out after I started this blog that he's still in college. So, I don't care how much seniority he might have (he transferred from another Kroger), he's not the boss of me. So I don't give a flying fudge what he thinks of me. He can think of me as that red-haired raging bitch in floral, and I'll be happy.

Here's the kicker: I left work that day with an incredible amount of rage. Seriously, I wanted to inflict pain on someone. I could feel the stomach acid roiling around in my gut. Then my phone went off. It was a restricted number. When I pulled in at CVS, I checked my voicemail to find out that the HR person from the public library system wanted to talk to me about the job I'd interviewed for. I called her back. She offered me the job.

I'm done trying to please people at Kroger; until my two weeks are up, they can kiss my ass on a daily basis. What are they going to do, fire me?

Gingervitis? Your Kid Should Be So Lucky

Today started out well enough with an early morning run to Hertz to drop off my lovely replacement car (a Vibe) and pick up my newly restored Grand Am (which now looks better on the right side than it did when I got it). Then I got to work.

Approximately five minutes into my shift, I went to the customer service desk to get a till for the floral register. The very pregnant employee behind the desk was on the phone, discussing her pregnancy - certainly not official store business. I waited patiently for her to hang up. Several minutes went by. She had to know why I was there, but she chose to not even acknowlege my presence by looking in my direction. Whatever, I wasn't in a hurry, and this sort of thing is commonplace. I eavesdropped on the conversation that the keeper of the till was engaged in because, well, I really didn't have a choice.

"I just hope it's not red," she said. I only had a few seconds to wonder what she was talking about. She continued, in all seriousness, "Well, it runs in my husband's family and my family, and, well, that would just be bad."

There was a time when I resented my red hair. Now I'm quite proud of it; after all, we gingers make up a mere 1 to 5% of the world's population, depending on whom you ask. Because it is such a rarity, red hair has been both revered and reviled throughout history; it seems that at no time was it ever considered just another hair color. Even in elementary school, my classmates either thought it made me cool or thought it made me a freak; either way, it has always been a defining characteristic. Thus, when someone who doesn't know me makes a derrogatory comment about redheads, I tend to take it personally.

I can think of two other redheads, out of the dozens of employees at the store, and she had to bring up the curse of red hair while I was standing a foot away from her. She either really hates me (not outside the realm of possibility) or is completely inconsiderate of others (also likely). Either way, it was a bad move on her part. As Cartman will tell you, we gingers have no souls and want nothing more than to rid the earth of all non-gingers.

I came very, very close to confronting her but decided it wasn't worth the effort; anyone shallow enough to obsess about her offspring's hair color isn't likely to listen to some pathetic redheaded floral minion. I feel sorry for her kid.

Karma

While driving us home the other day, Mark felt an odd wetness on his arm. Then he made a sound of surprise and disgust. "What is it?" I asked.
"A bird pooped on my arm," he said with a bit of dismay in his voice. Suddenly I had the oddest feeling of deja vu . Then I snickered. He didn't.
"You don't think it's funny?"
"Oh, it's funny as hell," he said, not laughing at all, "but how do I get if off of me? Do you have a napkin or something?"
I managed to stop laughing just long enough to find him one.

Of Broken Glass and Twisted Metal

My mother says bad things come in threes. I think she's right.

Two Sundays ago, on July 23, I was driving on State Route 73 toward Oxford. Mark and I had planned on taking one more load of crap from my one-bedroom apartment in Oxford to our new, two-bedroom townhouse in Hamilton. We were both driving our cars, but we got separated, and I took his usual route back to Oxford (177 to 73) while, I later found out, he took mine (130 to 27).

As I was coming over the crest of a hill, I saw headlights pointed directly at me, in my lane. In the course of less than a second, my mind thought several things: (1) some jackass was passing someone on a double yellow line (2) the jackass was spending a bit too much time in my lane (3) the jackass wasn't moving (4) oh shit, I'd better brake! And brake I did, but I didn't slam on the brakes, knowing that such an action can sometimes lead to losing control of one's vehicle. Instead, I hit them fairly hard and veered to the right, off the road, to miss the truck. Just when I would have normally been able to get back up on the road and avoid any collision, I saw an overturned truck, one of those jacked-up pick-ups with too big tires that are used for offroad driving. To the right of it, preventing me from continuing my path on the side of a road, was a sign that read, ironically, "Pass With Care." To the right of the sign was a broken dolly that had previously been carrying the overturned truck.

There was no time to completely avoid everything, so in the split second I had, I chose the least of three evils: the sign. I turned a bit up toward the road, enough to miss the overturned truck and avoid hitting the sign post dead-on. Instead, the sign scraped along the right side of my car, twisting off the side mirror and sending it hurtling through the passenger side window. (I later found bits of the mirror in my backseat and on the passenger seat.) The damage stopped just short of the right quarter panel.

I sat, stunned, as my car crawled to a stop. Before it had even ceased movement entirely, I heard a voice approaching me through the driver's side window, which was rolled down: "Are you fucking retarded? You see hazard lights, you stop!" (More about that later.) The voice came from a large shirtless man, who then started suggesting that my car was probably still driveable and that I could probably just leave the scene before the cops got there. One of his friends said that would mean forfeiting any reimbursement for the damage from my insurance company. "So?" the large shirtless man said.

My mind stored this away until the drive home from the accident. I continued to sit in my car, processing what had just happened, for a few minutes. Eventually other people came over to ask if I was okay, and I told one of them (a skinny, shirtless man caked in mud) that I had not appreciated being yelled at by the large, shirtless man. A college-aged girl told me she nearly hit the truck as well, and I suspect she went left of center to avoid it, as what I think was her car was parked on the opposite side of the road.

I got out of my car and started to wonder what I should do. I called Mark, who said he was on his way, and continued to stand around in a daze, shaking a little but otherwise strangely calm.

I think Mark arrived before any police, but I'm not sure. Mark made sure I was okay and started talking to the people involved in the accident I'd stumbled upon. Then the police arrived and started piecing it together. Apparently, the overturned truck had been hauled by the truck whose headlights had been pointed at me on a faulty dolly. The tongue on the dolly broke, The dolly rolled away to the side of the road, and the truck it was carrying broke free and rolled over. Some genius put the truck that had been doing the hauling in my lane, with its headlights and hazard lights on, to attempt (in vain) to stop oncoming traffic.

The people involved in the accident before mine pissed the cops off immediately by going on the defensive the moment they arrived. I, on the other hand, calmly told them my version of what happened - a fact which amazes me to this day, as I would have expected my temper to get the better of me. The cops took my statement as a witness, as they had decided almost immediately that my accident was not my fault. If the other driver is not found at fault after an investigation, however, the whole thing will be ruled as no fault and I will have to pay the deductible on my insurance.

Mark asked all three police officers on the scene if any of it had been my fault. All three told him I'd had reason to believe my path was clear, and it was simply something that could not have been avoided. He later gave me props for the split-second maneuvering that minimized my accident. In retrospect, I also don't think I could have done any better.

After I got the name and number of the officer filing the report and was ruled okay to drive, I was sent on my way. And then the night got really interesting. I had just arrived in the parking lot of my old apartment, relieved that the ordeal was over, when my cell phone rang. It was Mark. "This is going to be really funny tomorrow," he said. His car battery was dead. He'd parked in a driveway and hurried off to the scene, not bothering to turn off his parking lights. He has a battery starter he keeps in his trunk for just such an occasion, but, naturally, he'd taken it out to be able to move more things to the new apartment. My battery starter had just been charged, so I grabbed it and went back to the scene of the accident.

And of course my starter didn't work, and I didn't have any jumper cables, and neither did the officer who was still hanging around the scene. So we drove back to Hamilton to get his starter box and his two sets of jumper cables that he'd also taken out of his car that very day. Thankfully, his box worked, for whatever reason. Then we took it over to another stranded motorist who's been stuck in the road block and left his car on but then engine off. And then, at last, we finally went back to the old apartment and I began a new ordeal with my insurance company.

Some Cultures Would Consider It Good Luck

For those of you who don't know, Mark and I recently spent a week in Florida visiting his parents and seeing my best friend, Beth, and her adorable offspring, Katelynn. It was a wonderful, relaxing vacation, and I can't wait to go back. However, there was one moment during which I was slightly less than pleased with Mark. Now, of course, it's a humorous anecdote.

Mark enjoys feeding other creatures. If we see ducks at a park, he has to find some stale, abandoned snack in his car to present as an offering. When he lived in a house full of other guys, he always had a cracker, or a piece of cheese, or some other castoff to give the resident dog, Jack. When we went to Sea World in Orlando, he spent a small fortune buying shrimp and fish to feed the sting rays and sea lions, and he saved the French fries from his dinner to feed to birds on our way out of the park. So it wasn't much of a surprise when he decided to give the remainder of his chicken tenders to the sea gulls at the beach one day, although he didn't realize until later that he was essentially turning the sea gulls into cannibals in so doing.

I like all animals, even the slimy and creepy crawly ones that make some people (like Mark) freak out. I was the girl who played "Worm Rescue 911" with my cousin, throwing the earthworms from the driveway back into the dried-off grass after a rain so they didn't get run over or picked off by birds. And I don't mind tossing a little food at a small gathering of birds. However, having spent a little time at the beach, I know that as soon as you feed one sea gull, you'll have fifty more demanding food from you. So I put a little distance between myself and Mark and his feathered friends. And, of course, I was the one who was shat on, twice, by excited sea gulls. And Mark emerged clean and unscathed. And laughed.

"You don't think this is funny?" he asked when he met my angry gaze.

"It'll be funny tomorrow," I said. "Right now it's disgusting." So he found a napkin and wiped me off.

"At least it's something to write about," he said. And so it is.

FYI

The lizard's name is Edie Lizard Okoloma. Edie Lizard after my favorite British transvestite comedian, and Okoloma after a town in...Kentucky? Tennessee? whose name Michelle and I are somewhat fascinated with. Quite a long name for such a small creature. I'll try to post a picture of her on here sometime.

An Interesting Day at Work

So last Wednesday at work, after I had unloaded the day's shipment and was cleaning up to get ready to go home, I moved the trash can out of the corner to empty it and noticed something dart behind a box. Upon further investigation, I saw that the something was a small brown lizard. Acting upon instincts honed by years of catching tadpoles, fireflies, and other forms of creepy crawly life that inhabited my parents' backyard, I caught the lizard by the tail and stuck it in a vase. Then I went back to produce to show off my find.

Andy, my fellow minion, hypothesized that the creature had stowed away in the box of Kim Queen ferns I'd unpacked earlier. Then he went to find a proper take home container for me. He also thought to stick a piece of watermelon in with the lizard, more for moisture than sustenance (I doubt there are many lizard species that eat melon).

After I got home, I found a slightly better home for it, temporarily known as Kim Queen (after the ferns) until a better name is thought of. (I'm open to suggestions.) Then I drove to PetSmart with it for identification and proper lizard keeping equipment after an online search and the birth of a theory regarding its species. Once there, the fifteen-year-old who waited on me verified my suspicion: I was dealing with a brown anole. He seemed very impressed when I told him I wanted to try to keep it alive and gladly showed me the heat lamp, the basking rock, the substrate, and the food (live crickets) it would need. Thirty-six dollars later, I was set with the basics. After swiping my Discover Card, I was certain the dude wouldn't last a week.

At first it seemed completely uninterested in crickets. Understandable, considering the ordeal the previous 24 hours must have been: sealed in a box, nearly frozen on a refrigerated truck for a good eight hours, thrown around in the box by yours truly as I unpacked the pallet, then running for cover once the plant it came in on was put out on the floor. Further reading on the internet has taught me that anoles are stressed out by everything and that too much stress can kill them relatively quickly. So I was sure it was just a matter of time and wondered how long I had until PetSmart would refuse to take back all my lizard gear. Today, however, it seems possible that it might be around for a while. When I got home from work today, I put two crickets in the cage, and they were immediately gobbled up - the first time I've actually seen it eat anything (until now I was convinced the crickets had all found their way out of the cage). It sounds disgusting, but it was actually kind of cool. And yes, slightly disgusting. And about an hour ago, I spotted what is most definitely an egg - confirming my suspicions that it's a she. And now, at least for a the time being, there's yet another resident in this tiny little apartment.

Oxford Tightens Its Grip, But I Manage to Slip Through

About six months ago, my best friend from sixth grade and I decided that come May, we would both get in a car, drive south, and escape our lives for a week. We discussed the idea of the road trip at length - how I would play Louise to her Thelma, how we could save on gas, what we should take with us, et cetera. And finally, after much anticipation, May 17 arrived. And I was not ready. But after sleeping late and packing at the last minute, Michelle, a.k.a. Thelma, and I hit the road. And made it all the way to The Farm in Ross, about fifteen miles from my apartment, before I felt a weird tingling in my left cheek. Then I realized had suddenly become quite swollen. I pulled over and looked in the mirror, only to find my cheek about twice its normal size and my ear sticking straight out a la Will Smith. I'd been eating some Turtle flavored Chex mix and immediately suspected that I had stumbled onto a previously unknown allergy. Fearing that I would never manage to escape the steely grip of Oxford, let alone Butler County, I listened to Michelle and agreed that we should turn around and get my magically expanding cheek checked out. She dropped me off at McCullough-Hyde's front entrance and went to park the lovely Saturn Ion we'd rented for the week. When I got to the admitting desk, the woman behind it looked at me boredly and said, "What can we do for you today?" "Well," I said, "About half an hour ago, my cheek blew up to twice its normal size." As I said this, I moved my hair, which had been camouflaging the symptom, aside. Her eyes widened and she said hastily, "Have a seat and we'll have someone look at you as soon as we can." I laughed as I did so.



A few minutes later, I was called back to triage and then finally given a curtained off "room." Miraculously, my cheek started to go down in size. The doctor finally appeared and I showed her the bag of Turtle-flavored Chex Mix that I thought perhaps I'd had an allergic reaction to.



The doctor, however, told us she suspected a stone in my salivary gland, something neither one of us had ever heard of. The stone was blocking my saliva's exit into my mouth, and so it was filling up my cheek instead. This explained the oddly dry sensation around my left molars. The doctor gave me a prescription for an antibiotic in case infection should arise and sent us on our way. I told her we were attempting to drive the first leg of a road trip and reach Nashville that night, and she said that it should be fine, since we'd be on interstates most of the way and there were plenty of emergency rooms along our route should things worsen. And so off we went on our grand adventure.

Epiphany

In contemplating my job situation today, I've come to somewhat of a realization: I have to teach.
There are, of course, other options, but at a price. I could continue to languish in the belly of the Kroger beast, which is not without benefits, namely a 401(k), decent heath coverage with vision and dental, and an education in horticulture I never would have obtained otherwise. However, the "education" of my current job is more in line with Richard Rodriguez' "banking" theory of education than I would like. That is, I collect factoids about the flora I am paid to maintain until they are purchased. These are used day-to-day in the upkeep of the plants, but they are also regurgitated for any customer who asks (or, if I'm feeling unusually chatty, regardless of whether the customer wants to know). There is very little critical thinking involved: water a spathiphyllum too sparingly and it wilts. Bromeliads should be watered in the lowest cups formed by their leaves, not in the soil. Hedera ivy does best in bright light. Alstromeria is one of the longest-lasting cut flowers on the market. And so on.
As a teacher, however, I was constantly learning with my students. It's one of those corny cliches you read in education textbooks, but it's actually true. Even in a classroom full of 18-year-old half-wits, every once in a while, one of them managed to think of something in a manner I hadn't considered before, which forced me to reconsider my understanding of it and kept my critical thinking skills sharp. Short of making good on joke that I'll spend the rest of my life as a student at some institution or another, it's the only way I'll ever maintain the level of intellectualism (read: nerdiness) that's become part of my identity. I was never the athletic girl or the pretty girl or the popular girl, but I was the smart girl from my first day of kindergarten until at some indiscernable point I became the smart woman.
Except that I'm pretty sure I've become dumber in the last year, which I've spent mostly away from academia. Sure, I've read, and I've written, but I haven't interacted with students or teachers much, at least not in a setting conducive to learning. It's time to shake the cobwebs out of my brain and get back to what I'm good at.

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming

Perhaps in sympathy with Amy and Laura as they complete their semesters (Laura's last at seminary, yay!), my body has also decided to rebel against me. I went to the emergency room Friday night at the boy's urging, only to discover that I had pneumonia, as well as some still undiagnosed vomit-inducing...thing. Of course, the more logical theory is that my illness is a result of my already pathetic immune system's further weakening due to the "thyrogen stimulation protocol" I endured two weeks ago, which finally resulted in me finding out that I am now cancer free (insert Arsenio Hall-style "whoop whoop whoop" with appropriate hand gesture here)! Ironically, yet somehow not surprisingly, I received this news on the very same day I wound up in the emergency room. Thankfully, I am now well on my way to recovery, and the floral department will soon have its slave back.

Thought for the Day

Steel-toed boots are dangerous, but only when they're not on the wearer's feet. If the wearer becomes enamored of the sudden ability to kick things at will without pain, he may find himself kicking things without the boots, and therefore hurting himself.

Something Like That

You're the Tortured Intellectual!
Take What sort of Hipster are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

You're sensitive, you're emotional, and you wonder why everyone else in the world exists on a different plane. You cannot eat, breathe, or sleep without analyzing each action to death. You're usually sombre, depressed, lethargic, but you can be nearly glad from time to time. You wear whatever you can find on your cluttered bedroom floor. You carry books, notepads, reading glasses with you wherever you go. You have friends, but only a few who truly get where you're coming from. You frequent coffee shops, libraries, and the less crowded bars. You're obsessed with past people, past ideas, past lives. You wish you could die and be reborn as Jack Kerouac.

The Learned Automaton

I really should be doing my taxes, but after discussing the following with Chadders, I feel like writing instead.

I hate my job. I hate the hours, the pay (especially the pay), the lack of responsibility, and several of the people I work with. In fact, the only things I don't hate about it are a handful of the people I work with and the horticultural and artistic aspects of it. Probably the thing I hate most, though, is the fact that I have a B.A. and am one thesis short of an M.A. and I do a job that will probably be done by a robot within fifty years.

I tell myself that my job is character-building, that it is something I will look back on someday, when I have a rewarding job and possibly a house, and remember as an experience that I wouldn't care to repeat but that at least gave me a few friends and a few funny anecdotes. And, possibly, the basis for a short story or even a novel (I started writing a story about a particularly interesting loiterer last week). But there are days, an increasing number of them, when I want to tell the prick of an assistant manager what I really think of him, strip off my three-sizes-too-big Kroger shirt, light it on fire, and storm out of the store in a blaze of glory and synthetic fiber. Saturday was one of those days.

It started out with one of the baggers (we'll call him Dallas) striking up a conversation with me in the break room. He'd just gotten a raise, he said. A whole nickel. We bitched about the ridiculous pay for a minute or two (bitching about common afflictions is how I make at least fifty percent of my friends) before I told him, resignedly, that my job is an embarassment to me because I have a B.A. and almost an M.A. and I work in the floral department of a grocery store.

He, of course, asked me why I had taken such a job. I wanted to say something to the effect of having always dreamed of working for a huge national grocery store chain, and that I figured having a college education would greatly increase my chances of being hired for a job in which, with the right equipment and a basic set of programming commands, a computer could complete seventy-five percent of the tasks it required. I laid my sarcasm aside, however, and told him that after I decided to stay in Oxford for another year, it had been the only job I could find within a twenty minute drive.

He asked what my degree was in, I told him English, and then he asked me what was the point of having a degree that wouldn't get me a job unless I wanted to get a Ph.D. and be a college professor. I fought down the urge to pontificate on the intrinsic and priceless value of education and told him I did want to be a college professor, that I could adjunct as soon as I finished my M.A., and that the floral department was just a means to an end until then.

Dallas then told me of his own plans to complete not one but two Ph.D.s simultaneously. I lightly praised his ambition and said semi-seriously that he'd probably be in school until he was almost thirty. The bagger (or "Kroger bitch" as they're otherwise known) then told me, very condescendingly, that his guidance counselor (that's right, the kid's in high school) had finished his Ph.D. in seven years, but that he's spread it out, and said he thought Dallas could finish his two degrees in five years if he did them together. Dallas also told me that he'd complete all of this schooling for free, since his mother works for Miami and he'd applied for free tuition, and that he intended to stay there for all of his degrees and then teach at Miami as well. I made an underhandedly patronizing remark about him having everything planned out as I went to leave the break room, and he called out to me, with an air of superiority, "Don't worry, you'll get back on track."

I wanted to get very defensive, but I realized almost immediately that I was taking this conversation more to heart than I should. Dallas still lives at home, and, if he follows his eight-plus-year plan, will continue to do so until he has his two Ph.D.s. Maybe he will be a college professor before the age of 28, and if so, good for him. I won't do so until well past thirty, if it happens at all, but I think that's okay. If the whole cancer debacle hadn't gone down last summer, I'm sure I would have my M.A. by now and be off doing bigger and better things than making floral arrangements and having pointless conversations with eighteen-year-old baggers who don't yet realize that the real world is complicated and mostly unreceptive to allowing five-year plans to go off without a hitch. But if the cancer debacle hadn't happened, and if I hadn't stayed in Oxford to finish my degree, I probably wouldn't have seen much of Linsey or Jess, or met Mark, or (I say this resignedly) learned how to make a really kickass floral arrangement.

Am I really off track? I'm dealing with my life as it's handed to me (this could spark a whole tangent on free will, but I still have to at least start on my taxes tonight), and besides that, I never really stopped working on my thesis. Progress is slow but real. It might take three months, it might take three years, but I will finish the degree. In the meantime, I'm storing Dallas away for use as a naive character in a future project.

Happy Birthday, Skippy!

My dad turns 60 today; he can officially use his Golden Buckeye card. My mom conspired to make sure his school celebrated his birthday by planting a cake and balloons in the teacher's lounge. The school took it one step further by putting this picture up on its website.

Good Riddance

As a cynic, I've never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day. In fact, I used to wear all black every February 14 merely to spite all the happy couples (and I'm sure they cared). However, I never realized how much I could hate the holiday, even as a person in a relationship, until I started working in a floral shop.

The real planning of the biggest day in the industry began on January 2, once Christmas and New Year's were officially out of the way; however, I believe the teddy bears and boxes of candy and floral picks made to resemble conversation hearts and hundreds - I kid you not - of make-you-puke-sweetness balloons were ordered sometime in November. The end of January was marked by the issuance of an official February calendar by corporate to make sure that all Kroger stores made bows on the second and started inflating the hundreds of balloons on the fifth.

And the flowers. My God, the flowers. Kroger 412 in Oxford normally gets one skid of flowers every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The number of boxes on the skid varies greatly; sometimes it's a mere 3, one for each of the bouquets Krogers throughout southwest Ohio sell. There's usually at least one box of random roses, million star, leatherleaf, and/or limonium to sell as single stems. On the Friday before Valentine's day, however, there were four and a half skids and something like 60 to 100 boxes of bouquets, potted plants, and filler. And we still ran out of million star and limonium by noon on Valentine's Day.

Another thing I never realized was how unoriginal men are. We probably had 15 boxes of nothing but dozen rose bouquets. And yes, the front case is still full of them, and there are still three boxes of them in the back (each box holds 10 bouquets), but we sold a whole hell of a lot of them. I personally am not that impressed by red roses, but then I've had an interesting history with them. Anyway, they seem to be all men know to get their significant others.

That's the other thing about Valentine's Day: there's no possible way to keep up with the customers. All three of us who normally staff the floral shop worked that day, and we brought in three people from other departments to help out. In one case that was good, as we got a cashier who knew what she was doing and could crack jokes with the rest of us. In the other two cases, though, we got people who didn't really know the first thing about floral. Not that it's a hard job, but, well, as far as jobs in Kroger go, maybe it is. And one of those two hopeless cases had a real problem with not being in charge of everyone else (she never normally is at Kroger, which is why no one likes her; she's basically a bitch with control issues). The approximately 120 square feet the floral shop sits on was sheer madness that day. If it had gone on much longer, the three of us who worked the late shift probably would have fought over who got to take the trash to the back, which ended up being about 10 minutes of sanctuary.

Yesterday was, in contrast, peaceful. Serene. I stood behind the counter and pulled apart all the carefully assembled Valentine's Day snack packs that no one bought, and I sold three bouquets of a dozen roses (the price went back down from $29.99 to $12.99. That's right, guys - if you're going to be that unoriginal, you might as well be a day late and pay less than half for it). Today I'll probably get some reading done; I might even finish my book.

So true.

You are Schroeder!

Highlight of My Crappy Day

The other day, while driving home from Wal-Mart (I swear I only shop there when it's absolutely necessary and driving to the next town isn't really an option), where I bought a new filter for my aquarium, I noticed a note on my car. Once I reached my apartment, I pulled it off and read the 3 x 5 card:

America
love it
or leave it!

and on the back:

Why don't you move to Europe? You left-wing socialist.
P.S. Your side lost least you forget!

At first I was delighted by the justified outrage this attempt at communication brought on. It was something akin to marching in a war protest while conservatives are hurling insults at you from the sidewalks...something you really have to experience to understand. I was also giddy with the questionable punctuation and least/lest mistake...I, at least, have a firmer grasp of the English language than my country-loving foe.
It's probably important to note that the bumper stickers on my car read 'Defend America - Defeat Bush," "John Kerry for President," and "God Bless All Nations - No Exceptions." So it's possible the note leaver doesn't really know me. It is also rather possible, however, that this was left by someone I know (Adam? You wanna fess up to this?). Either way, I thought it was blog-worthy and at least good for a chuckle. Conservatives will be conservatives.

MCC Can Kiss My Pasty White Ass

I just got a phone call I've been waiting on since October, from MCC (Mennonite Central Committee), to let me know if I'm eligible to go anywhere for voluntary service with them. Granted, I've been more and more turned off to the NGO both because of the types of questions asked in my interview (Do you have an ulterior motive for wanting to teach English in Vietnam, such as a significant other?) and because I heard nothing - absolutely nothing - from them for more than two months after my interview, and then it was just notification that my information was being passed on to some other cog in their bureaucratic machine.

Anyway, I've been informed that I do not participate actively enough in a church local to where I live to be eligible. Never mind that I have both teaching and tutoring experience in ESL or that I have helped to design an ESL curriculum. No, I don't go to church every Sunday and that makes me...what? Too likely to corrupt the proto-Christian beliefs of savage locals in some third world locale? Too likely to start batting for the other team and declare myself a Buddhist? Or just not enough of a sheep?

Or maybe they suspect (correctly) that I'm not into proselytizing among people with a firmly established religion that often seems far less hypocritical than my own. And here I thought the big idea was to help those less fortunate have better lives in an unavoidably globalized world. My bad.

T-County Disappoints

A couple weeks ago I wrote a letter to the editor of my hometown newspaper in response to a "Reader's Viewpoint" about the fact that the U.S. has fallen away from its "Christian heritage" and that prayer should be allowed, and even encouraged, in school, and the fact that many businesses now use the phrase "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." I cited the facts, and only the facts, and didn't even mention that I consider myself a Christian (though sometimes the words and actions of other Christians make me ashamed to admit it). Here is my letter:

To the Editor:

I am tired of Christians in this country complaining that their rights are being trampled on. Those who complain the loudest are usually the ones who fail to consider what our country might be like if Christianity were the religion of the minority, not the majority. Furthermore, many who insist that Americans are backsliding from the deeply Christian values espoused by our founding fathers are largely ignorant of the facts.

To set the record straight, the United States of America was not founded on the purely Christian principles that so many people cite. Many of the founding fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, were Deists – not Christians. Deists reject the virgin birth and resurrection, as well as the other supernatural occurrences that are so central to Christianity. Deists believe in God, yes, but they view God more as a watchmaker than a deity deeply involved in the minutiae of the human experience. That is, God created the world, set it in motion, and then let it run on its own.

Jefferson was particularly skeptical of the miracles the Bible portrays and created his own version of the holy book. He did this by starting with King James translation of the New Testament and eliminating all the events he saw as upstaging the ethical teachings of Jesus – that is, the flashy demonstrations of supernatural power. Jefferson then rearranged what was left into a straightforward account of Jesus’ life as a man, not a deity.

Furthermore, many of the original colonists came to America to escape religious persecution and to be free to practice their beliefs as they saw fit. Those who arrived on the Mayflower are a perfect example. This eventually led to the underlying principle of the Bill of Rights and what made America so revolutionary and so great: Americans are free to do whatever they desire in the pursuit of happiness, so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others to do likewise.

That last part is crucial. Christians who complain that the banning of compulsory prayer in public schools goes against our supposedly Christian heritage should imagine for a moment that they are not in the majority. Suppose, for instance, that the majority of Americans were Muslim, including the principal and most of the students and teachers at the average public school. Suppose, then, that the principal of an average school saw fit to lead the entire school in Salat over the loudspeaker at the appropriate prayer times. Christian students would not be forced to turn toward Mecca and pray in Arabic, but seeing the majority of their classmates do so and hearing the voice of their principal recite the words while they remained conspicuously in their seats would likely make the devout Christian students uncomfortable. Those in the minority also would be likely to endure a certain amount of ridicule and perhaps even be viewed as outcasts by those in the majority, as children are quick to exploit differences among their peers. Christian parents would be understandably upset; the Bill of Rights states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” yet the administration of the publicly funded school would be clearly endorsing Islam by allowing the principal to pray over the loudspeaker as if it were a normal aspect of school business.

The separation of church and state exists to protect the rights of all Americans. Just as it outlaws the above scenario, it protects the right of all citizens to engage in private prayer – even in public schools. By law, students have always been allowed to pray on their own or in groups, as long as it is a voluntary act and not led or endorsed by the administration. This is not a case of moral backsliding. It is America as our founding fathers intended it to be: not a nation of Christians, but, rather, a nation of people free to practice the religion of their choice, or no religion at all.

Kari A. Sommers

Oxford, O.

I expected some irate calls to "30 Seconds," the lazy/uneducated Tuscarawas County resident's means of expressing his/her opinions anonymously and getting them published (an answering machine at the paper gives callers 30 seconds to speak their minds, and the calls are then transcribed and printed). But there has been no response. I think I'm going through "angry letters to the Witmarsum in response to my editorials" withdrawal.

Time to Quantify My Political Stance

You are a Social Liberal (80% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (5% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

I guess it's inevitable

You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy)

You're a great thinker and a true philosopher. You'd make a talented professor or writer.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?