Un, Half, and Whole

24 January 2010, 6:24 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Happy Things

A person does not have 364 un-birthdays in a year. They only have 363. Because they also have one half-birthday in addition to their one whole birthday.

Yesterday was my half-birthday. This is not a holiday that Brett celebrates. Which is unfortunate. It is, however, a holiday that I celebrate. And he humors me. For the last many years I have gone to a movie for my half-birthday. In fact, our first date after I moved to Tucson was a movie for my half-birthday. I was fully prepared to count us going to “Where the Wild Things Are” last week as the movie for my half-birthday.42D

Instead, he took me out to dinner last night, Chipotle since we needed to go to the mall to get one of Brett’s Christmas presents that I told him we’d get when they went on sale (calendar). And then we rented “Toy Story” to watch today.

You’d think that someone as in love with Pixar as I am (don’t worry Brett, I love you more) would have seen all of the Pixar movies. Sadly, this is not true. I did not discover Pixar until “A Bug’s Life” (at which point I contemplated becoming a computer animator instead of a teacher I loved the movie so much), and missed Toy Story (I even own all of them, including the DVD of shorts, except for the Toy Story ones). Since our trip to Disneyland though we have decided that there are certain Disney movies that we should probably watch, especially the ones that have a ride themed after them. And we’re starting with Toy Story.

He talks & sings!

2 Shared thoughts

Wild

23 January 2010, 11:03 am by Giggles
Categories: Books, Education, Work

We went and saw “Where the Wild Things Are” for a date last week. As it ended I knew that even though Brett and I had been sitting right next to each other throughout the whole movie, we’d had very different experiences with it.42D

First off, it is definitely not a children’s movie. It is a movie for people who were children and people who have children.

Looking back at childhood, and at the children who have been a part of my life, it was an amazing reflection on that time of life. I could have renamed Max and all of the Wild Things with names of students I have known. Each of them represented an issue that children face and the way children often deal with the world around them. I could see the students I’ve had who had those issues in the characters in the movie. And the presentations of them were fascinating to me. I actually had the idea that someone could write a whole dissertation on that movie and how it represents childhood issues and development. It caused a lot of reflection for me and I’m wondering how I can include it while I’m teaching pre-service teachers.

Especially the short scene where Max is in school. That teacher was horrendous! Awful! Oh my goodness he was bad!

1 Shared thought

Finding something that works

20 January 2010, 1:47 pm by Giggles
Categories: Random, Relationships

I recently heard someone compare the consistent need to review the basics in a topic to her needing to remind her husband weekly to take out the garbage and how to do it correctly. The reasoning was if we need to review things like that regularly, then we probably need to review other things we study regularly.

My thoughts on the topic of the example were slightly different, but I kept my mouth shut because there was no need for that tangent there. But I can be tangential all I want here.

Perhaps if she’s the one remembering the garbage every week, and apparently knows how to do it correctly, she should do it. And then he can take care of the things he remembers to do regularly. And then they only have to worry about the things neither of them can remember to take care of. Wouldn’t that work a lot better?

Why does there need to be a hard and fast rule that the man takes out the garbage? What’s wrong with a woman taking out the garbage?

Nobody has to do things the exact same way everyone else does, just find something that works for you! They might want to look into a better garbage system.

2 Shared thoughts

I belong!

19 January 2010, 2:36 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Family, Relationships

I moved to Arizona two years ago. I’ve paid taxes. I’ve served jury duty. But last summer the University insisted I wasn’t a resident of Arizona (not sure where they thought I was a resident of if that was the case). But, they told me if I got married, they’d classify me as a resident.

And they were serious. 😮

Last week I applied again. I filled out the form with the same information and brought in the same forms. Only this time I indicated that I was married. They wrote on it in green indicating “husband” and “h” in a lot of places.

And then they stamped me approved to be a resident! So because I married Brett I am now a resident of Arizona. I wonder if I’ll get a card to match my new residential status. I wonder what color it will be.42D

Of course, government paperwork being what it is, they aren’t even going to look at any forms for updating my name or marital status with the university for another week. I’m hoping they can figure those two out before I graduate.

1 Shared thought

If I could

18 January 2010, 11:18 am by Giggles
Categories: Relationships

Yesterday, Manolo for the Brides had a post with just that title. The idea was to think of what you would do for your wedding if money and time were not an issue. They had prompts about location, dress, decorations, music, food, activities, and the honeymoon.

As I looked at those prompts, and thought about our wedding, and then showed it to Brett, maybe the only thing we would’ve changed was having Billy Joel live instead of a recording. Otherwise, it was just what we wanted. Which is good since we picked it. Why would we pick stuff we didn’t want?42D

Share your thoughts

Prime Parking

13 January 2010, 2:17 pm by Giggles
Categories: Venting

Brett and I both have sedan sized cars. And with the water heater and heater being in the garage, there’s really only room length-wise for one of our cars (unless we want to risk one of us accidentally running into the heater and water heater every time we pull in, which we do not want to do). So we park one car in the garage and the other car in the street in front of our house. Except on Monday nights when we both park in the drive-way so that we can put the trash can and recycling can on the street for pick-up Tuesday morning.

There is one house on our street that has about five cars too many, at least. Extra-car-house likes to park their extra cars along whatever curb they can find. Many people on the street leave their trash cans out on the street all week long so that nobody can park in front of their house.

In front of our house must be prime parking though. Because yesterday when I went out to pull the trash cans back and put my car on the street, they’d put our cans up on the sidewalk and parked in front of our house! Who does that? xD :angry:

10 Shared thoughts

Your mission…

12 January 2010, 1:00 pm by Giggles
Categories: Books, Challenges, Random

… should you choose to accept it, is to write a story. It doesn’t have to be a long one. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a good one. But it does have to follow a certain format.

Remember seeing stories where they used pictures in the place of words? Like this one, “The Magic Window.” Some times they use a picture. Some times they used a rebus for the word.

The images for your story are the smilies/emoticons I have available on my blog here. If there are some other ones you think I should have that you could also use in your story, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. You can label/rename any of them that you need to for your story, like how they labeled Pedro and Mother in “The Magic Window.”

Stories will get points for creative use of smilies and for the percentage of smilies to written out words. Stories will also get points just because I like points, especially brownie points.

Ready, Go!

6 Shared thoughts