CONGRATULATIONS to Steph (former student extrodinaire) on being accepted to Drake University!
I'm so proud of you.

Anyone have a recommendation for a few completely fantastic books?
I'm out of excellent books to read, and am searching for something new
Fiction is preferred, and it has to be something really really really good.

Comments are open!

Last night I dreamed about cardboard
It was white cardboard – a little heavier (and shinier) than the poster board that kids use for science fair projects.

I didn’t do anything thing with it –
there was just cardboard.

Last night hundreds of people dreamed about exotic romances, fame, or fortune –
Meanwhile, Julie VW dreamed about cardboard
(And then blogged about it!)

Quirky charm?
Or just weird?

Do you remember the episode of the Chipmunks where Dave goes to buy some of his favorite music and the clerk tells him that those songs are in the "golden oldies" section?

* * * *
The local "oldies" radio station is playing '80s music.
Not just early/middle '80s - but late '80s music --
(aka: The stuff that was popular when I was in Junior High!)

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, let me just admit that I was a dork in junior high and spent most of my time listning to classical music or early Amy Grant.

BUT I did try to be cool, and would occassionaly sit down to listen to Z95 with the hope that I might magically become popular and pretty. BUT STILL . . . there is something awfully disconcerting about having your junior high pop music on the Oldies station!

So . . . I just submitted my first proposal to present at a professional conference.

They basically just needed a title and a 100 word description of the presentation.

Coming up with a 100 word description is easy –
(particularly if you have a list of Educational Jargon hanging by your desk)

The submission guidelines are very vague.

So my proposal is a vague description about one of the programs I manage.

They might want something more related to their theme – but my boss encouraged me to take a chance.

(I’m not sure if she meant I should take a chance and do a presentation, or if the program should take a chance with this conference).

They’ll notify me in December if the proposal has been accepted.

It would be spiffy to say that I’ve presented at a Conference.

But I’m not completely sure that I want to go through all the work of creating a presentation.

Fantasia

Yesterday was the birthday of Fantasia.
Learn to a whole lotta Fantasia Trivia by listening to the composer's datebook !

Failure is a Good Thing
From NPR Morning Edition's This I Believe series, a piece by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll:

Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and, as is conventional, I wished her success. I was lying. What I actually wish for her is failure. I believe in the power of failure.

Success is boring. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematical victory. First-time success is usually a fluke. First-time failure, by contrast, is expected; it is the natural order of things.

via The Questioning Christian

Let's Get Toghther yeah yeah yeah . . . .

I'm thinking a McCain/Obama ticket would go over really well in 2008.
(I'd vote for it).

Right now, they seem to be the only close-to-normal politicians we have. Why ruin their "almost normal-ness" by running (fighting) against each other?

Cinderella's Diary

I miss my stepmother. What a thing to say
but it's true. The prince is so boring: four
hours to dress and then the cheering throngs.
Again. The page who holds the door is cute
enough to eat. Where is he once Mr. Charming
kisses my forehead goodnight?

Every morning I gaze out a casement window
at the hunters, dark men with blood on their
boots who joke and mount, their black trousers
straining, rough beards, callused hands, selfish,
abrupt ...

Oh, dear diary—I am lost in ever after:
Those insufferable birds, someone in every
room with a lute, the queen calling me to look
at another painting of her son, this time
holding the transparent slipper I wish
I'd never seen.


From this morning's Writers Almanac

Yep.

[Kerry] clearly didn't write his own joke, and was too slow-witted to get the joke he was supposed to deliver. . . .

He certainly should have understood instantly what he was saying when he said it, and realized how smarmy it was. What we're left with is the unavoidable conclusion that Kerry doesn't know anything about what he's saying when he says it. Like Bush, he's just reading a script, and like Bush, he's bungling it badly. . . .

In the end, the joke's really on us, because ever since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, we Americans have accepted uncritically the idea that our political leaders will be simply animated noisemakers for transmitting the carefully scripted "talking points," sound bites, polemics and yes, even jokes written for them by a backroom group of political strategists--all presented as though they were coming from the brains of the people doing the talking.

We get the government, and the politicians, we deserve.
Let's at least be thankful for the laughs they give us, inadvertently.

Read the entire article