Unemployment blog: Day 36. Have taken to wearing no underwear in hopes that will go through underwear more slowly, thereby saving self laundry $. Also is bloody hot here. Scarcely goes below 100 in daytime and below 70 at nighttime. . Magazines not buying my articles. "Ran that one two months ago" (No you didn't, liar; am not stupid, do in fact read magazine back issues for that very reason) "Like your style but we're just not interested right now" Actually, am making those up: rejection s...

Prior to college I was a pretty good conservative/moderate Christian girl. Post-college I am an okay moderately liberal agnostic woman. All the education, from religion to philosophy to history to literature, has done one thing: Complicated the whole damn world. People on JU often like to point out (with some degree of arrogance, it seems), seeing things in black and white is for simpletons; to be an intellectual, the whole world must be a massive gray area, a continuum from the lightest ...

It's past midnight so can now say am getting married today. V. surreal. Had the rehearsal and the dinner--which were fine. V. v. surreal. Just like a dinner with best friends. (Should have those at other times, too, besides weddings and funerals.) Tried calling Fiance, as have yet to finish writing vows. However, Fiance is out with friends at bar, even though bachelor party was last night, so guess am writing vows alone. Oh well. In lieu of an embarrassing bachelorette party, sister ...

20. Shut up. Please, for the love of everything pure and beautiful, SHUT UP. 19. Yes, sometimes I assign subjective grades, and sometimes I don't grade things as closely as I should. And it’s okay if you question me about grades—better than than bitching about it behind my back. 18. The word "while" is not a relative pronoun, like I told you, but rather is a subordinating conjunction. My bad. 17. I don't like some of you. No offense. 16. I think some of you are hilarious even thou...

One of my students is a know-it-all. When I test my students, I make the tests hard (see other blogs about that) and I make sure they apply what we've learned in class to everyday life. This class is all about seeing all sides to arguments and using them well. Then there's the know-it-all. She picks on any question if it's not exactly how I told them it would be on the review, and she'll correct multiple choice questions so that they're correct, then circle the letter. I make multiple choi...

This week my freshers are doing debates. The topics the class chose were legalizing gay marriage, death penalty, and reparations for slavery. One student missed the day we decided on topics and gave debate group preferences, so I assigned her to a group in need of a choleric. It was gay marriage. Two weeks later, debate week, she tells me a day before her debate that she doesn't feel morally comfortable debating gay marriage. I explained to her, as I had previously explained to the clas...

And like most crimes of that category, it's by someone I know. Someone who knows me. Someone who knows my husband. Someone who will probably read this, and to whom I say, leave. Leave now. You're not a JU and never have been, you're not interested in the site, you're not brought here with referrals or any simple curiosity or altruistic reason. You're come here to keep tabs on me and report to others what I say. Others who have no business in my life, like yourself. To my JU friends, I don'...

My aunt (in law) sent us a Christmas package--very sweet of her. In it, she included candy, a little sled knick-knack, and some wooden blocks with letters and pictures on them, the idea being that they're supposed to spell out "Merry Christmas." They don't. Hence the blog title (they do spell that). * This began promisingly: A few minutes ago, H was tugging my pants down around my ankles on the living room floor. There was some biting involved. Perhaps a few rugburns. Alas. He doe...

H got a bookkeeping job here in town--yesterday was his first day. The business is in disarray and he's quite pleased about helping them get everything organized and back on track. I would die if I had to do it, but that's what he's good at. Ironically, the dream job H applied for and did not receive was for Marsh & McLennan, the embattled insurance company who announced today that they're laying off 3,000 workers. And he probably would've been one of them. Funny how things work out in way...

Today is a good day. Today I lined up two interviews and H lined up one, and I heard of what may turn out to be a freelance writing job. Today we're happy. There will be days that aren't like today, days where we'll cry and feel let down, feel as though the bottom has gone out from under us. But not today. Today we're hopeful. Another Forum-Free Post

These are mine, in no particular order: #10 Canterbury Road -- Oxford, England This is where I lived the semester I attended Oxford. There were 20 of us Americans squashed into three upper floors; our resident director Greg "Grendel" lived in the basement. We shared a kitchen, three bathrooms but one shower, a common room, a computer room, and a payphone in the lobby. It was grand. My two roommates and I lived on the top floor and we had one of those windowboxes/balconies, the kind that...

1) ...click on a blog with an interesting title, then wish you hadn't when you've read its contents? Wish people would stop commenting so the little blue flag would go down in the queue? 2) ...just want to write and not want comments, so you mark it as "private"? 3) ...wish some bloggers would get off their high horses or come out of attack dog mode? 4) ...misspell something egregiously and correct it before anyone can notice, except you weren't quick enough so they make fun of you? ...

Was phoning my former bosses, a married couple, for whom I worked as a rafting guide for several summers. They're listed as references for many of the jobs I've been seeking. We've become good friends and they came to H's and my wedding this summer (we scheduled it especially for their availability). Good people, they are. The three summers I worked for them were the best in my life, hands down--if I could make a living as a rafting guide, I would. Er, anyway, I was phoning them: In the ...

I love tea. It's something I picked up from my brief stints in England. I love the teapot, sugar and cream, the cup--and mostly just sitting for a few minutes being contemplative. I love McVities Hobnobs and the caramel biscuits to munch or dip as I please. Sometimes I read a book. Sometimes I just look out the window. I never blog, and I never watch TV during teatime. Simply, I enjoy the time and don't want to be upset or excited, which makes me wonder: If I were to sit down for tea with ...

Have you ever taken the time to write a pretty well-thought-out article, only to have someone steal it and rewrite it on their blog? It's a little irritating. Not bad, but kinda like a fly in the room that won't leave irritating. In the literary world it's called "plagiarism" but I wouldn't describe it as such in the blogging world. That happened to me a couple months ago. The offending user replied to my article, then someone addressed her/his comment, and rather than responding to that...