Sunday, May 07, 2006

Updateyness

For those of you who were worried that I have been in a deep depressive funk since Tuesday because of the pressure washer incident, please know that I am fine. If I have enough of my sense of humour left to make a flailing attempt at parodying Hebrew poetry about such an event, then I have enough of my sense of humour left to get over it pretty quickly. Really, I've just been busy.

Wednesday night I didn't have to work at the store, so I celebrated not having to work at two jobs back-to-back by sitting on my butt and not doing anything productive. Well, we watched Lost, which could count as productive. It was definitely an eventful episode. Craziness, I tell you. I don't think Libby's dead, though. They can't kill off a character without giving us any of her back story other than a split second of her at Hurley's hospital! I think she'll be gone when the next episode starts, and Henry will have taken her back to the Others or something.

Thursday I worked two jobs back-to-back again. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this teaching thing. I was too much of a pushover the first couple of days, but I'm getting better at being firm but still cool. I really made an impression on one of the kids who was playing his guitar when I asked him to stop playing Weezer and put the guitar away.
"How do YOU know Weezer?"
"Are you kidding? That album came out when I was a teenager and you weren't even born. You're playing MY music."

Friday, I worked at the store from 11:30 am to 7:30 pm, and that pretty much ate my day. I guess it was early enough to go out and do something Friday night, but I couldn't seem to rope anyone into doing something. I could have updated my blog Friday night, I guess. But I didn't.

Saturday morning, I woke up in a bad mood. I was trying to figure out how to get a Pennsylvania driver's license, but according to all of the paperwork I found, they require proof of residence that we don't have. The house is not in our names, none of the utilities are in our names, and we haven't been here long enough to get tax returns yet. But, I decided that I could write up a residency agreement of some sort to establish that we have permission from the homeowners to reside at this address, and that cheered me up for a bit. Until I went upstairs to get the in-laws to sign it and remembered that they had gone to a flea market for the day. So I went back to bed.

I went in to work in the afternoon, and that cheered me up. I had a good shift, even though it was really busy. I had invited some people over to hang out after work, but one of them had backed out and I hadn't heard from the others, so I just assumed no one was coming. So I waffled around at the store for a bit after work, and finally got home about 30 minutes late. I got home and discovered that everyone I had invited had ended up coming over, so that was a nice surprise. We had a nice time hanging out, and caught a late showing of Mission: Impossible III. I'm not hyperlinking it, because it was only meh. It was a good evening though, and good times with friends.

Today, after church, we headed to Chestnut Hill for a big street fair festival thingy. It was a blast. We saw a bunch of people from church, because one of our friends had a booth where she was selling some of her photography. Note to self: get some matting for my photos, it looks so much more professional that way. We had a blast, and I took a bunch of pictures, but I can't share any of them because they are all on my film camera, which has a backlog of about 6 rolls of film to be developed whenever I actually have spendable money to develop them with. It was a really fun day, and my legs are tired from the walking. I think I might need a Sunday nap. It is the day of rest, right?

The highlight of the day was one vendor who was selling really neat copper sprinklers (similar to these). I tried to take some pictures, but I'm sure they won't come out because the background will be too busy, even with my focal length set as short as I possibly could get it. I started to cry when I saw them, because all I could think of was how much my father would have loved them, and how much I wanted to take some pictures to show him so he could make one for himself, awkwardly and uniquely, using materials scrounged from a dumpster. Maybe I'm just hormonal, though, because I cried this morning on the way to church because my in-laws made the beef stew without me, so I didn't get to use my mom's recipe and I didn't get to make dumplings. Yup, I'm gonna go with hormones.

When I was in my church youth group, we watched this movie called Hell's Bells, which was all about how rock and roll is EVIL and when you play songs like Stairway to Heaven backwards they tell you to WORSHIP THE DEVIL! I was 12 when I saw the movie, and I don't recall being appalled either by the evilness of rock music or by the movie's journalistic weaknesses. I do recall thinking it was pretty cool that you could play music backwards, and I decided that I wanted to get a machine one day that would let me do that. Now that I have such a machine, I will confess that I have not used my computer to search for hidden messages in rock songs. But some people have. In fact, this one guy spent three months memorizing Stairway to Heaven's unique backwards sound, then filmed himself singing it backwards in a public place. When he got home, he flipped the video back around the "right way" and set it to the karaoke track of the song. The video is simply incredible, and the mystified looks from the backwards-walking pedestrians are priceless. I can only imagine what a bizarre sight it must have been to see a guy rocking out in backwards talk in front of his camcorder. Link

6 comments:

Kate said...

Jule Ann! That's not just some place, that's Saint Paul's Cathedral in London!! You've been there...

Anyway, that guy was pretty funny.

When I went on my teen missions international trip to Venezuela, one of my leaders gave us a long lecture about how rock music will lead you to drugs, promiscuous sex, and ultimately hell. I sort of tuned him out, but I think something must have stuck because I went through a four or five year period of not listening to non-Christian music. Somehow, I changed his words from "rock music" to "secular music."

Anonymous said...

i think that I missed something somewhere...does this mean that you're not working at Starbucks anymore, and now you're teaching part time and working part time in a store?
~Marlene

lisa b said...

Isn't substitute teaching fun? I had moments when I loved and when I thought, oh to have my own class again :) What grades do you sub in?

Jule Ann said...

Kate:
Hmm, I thought I replied to this, but I don't see my response. I did recognize that the dude was singing in front of St. Paul's, but I chose to leave some secrets to be uncovered by those who clicked my links.

Marlene:
I am still working at Starbucks, but I usually call it "the store" for ease of reference. See below re. teaching.

Lisa:
I do enjoy subbing, but I can see how it would get old fast, especially if I was trained as a teacher. It's nice as an occasional gig, though, but I care more about my Starbucks job, because of the benefits and the potential for becoming a manager someday. I teach middle school, mostly, but I guess I could theoretically get a call from the upper or lower school some day, especially if they need someone for French.

lisa b said...

My sister in law was a manager at a starbucks, she started working for them in college and was in her thirties when she quit. She seemed to enjoy it and really liked the perks. I think the family really liked the easy access to coffee. I don't drink coffee, so I couldn't care less...but now she manages the Christie cookie outlet store in Toronto, now that in my books is awesome. Every time she comes she brings animal crackers for emma-rose! Yummy! Anyhow, all that to say , I agree, yes starbucks has great benefits and moving up potential!

Kate said...

I really really really really wish that blogger allowed replying to comments.