Monday, May 21, 2007

I've Been Tagged!

...wow, now I know what the Constant Whiner meant when she was tagged...I feel... I feel so... popular!!...

Jessica at Jessi's Crochet Cafe has tagged me! This means I have to write seven random things about myself. I think I'll write seven random things about my blog.

1. I angst a lot about the grammar and spelling of this blog. Usually when I read a published post over the next day, my heart sinks a little because something is not right. In my last post, it was my use of the word "span" instead of "spun" that had me freaking out. Hyperventilating while frantically turning the pages of a dictionary is never the easiest of tasks, but I managed, and discovered, much to my relief, that "span" is an archaic past tense of spin, and so technically correct to use. Still...

2. I try not to swear too much in my blog, but sometimes a good F bomb just has to be thrown into a sentence for effect. Having said that, this, too, can sometimes be cause for some serious anguish. Do you say:

a) For fuck's sake?
b) For fuck sakes?
c) For fuck's sakes? OR
d) For fuck sake?

I know only one is proper (probably "a"), but what can I say? I love them all.

3. I occasionally hate my blog. This feeling usually crops up after I've read something by David Sedaris.

4. For all you doubters: My buddy Nitroglycol took up the challenge and mentioned ussell-Ray owe-Craye on his blog too, and guess what: HE GOT A HIT FROM ARIZONA FROM SOMEONE GOOGLING THE BIRDMAN'S NAME TOO!!!! I know it's him. I mean, if you were famous, wouldn't YOU want to know what the blog world was saying about you??

We need a third mention for total confirmation. C'mon you guys, humour me!!

5. That last point wasn't really a random fact, was it? The problem with me is that, despite being a math/science teacher, I'm not really a fact person. I'm a head in the clouds kind of person.
That's why a lot of chemistry experiments have gone awry in my classroom. Grease fires spring up and I'll say, absent-mindedly, "throw some water on that Billy, hey?" It's not a good thing. When my principal told me that working part-time next year might mean teaching classes outside of my area of "expertise", i.e., math and science, I agreed, saying, "I'll teach wood-working if I have to!!!" Then I went home and freaked out a bit: What if they gave me home-ec? But, as Mr. IQ pointed out, a recipe is really no different from a chemistry lab, and I don't know what I'm doing when I'm running one of those either, so it should be OK. If nothing else, teaching cooking will probably make for a good blog post or two...

6. A memory: One day my brother was recording songs from the radio while simultaneously having a massive fight with me. We were about twelve and ten, and the fight, I am sure, was all my fault: Being older and more obnoxious I'm sure I was tormenting him about something, but I've forgotten now what it was all about. While recording Don't Go Changing by Billy Joel, my brother suddenly decided he couldn't take it anymore and totally snapped, smashing a bowl that lay on the counter and screaming hysterically, "I HATE YOU!! I REALLY REALLY HATE YOU!!" This outburst was recorded along with the song and, over the course of the next year or so, played so many times around the house that even today if Don't Go Changing is playing in a mall or something, it sounds all wrong when, at the critical moment, you can't hear my brother freaking out on me in the background.

7. The thing that my brother smashed was a bowl containing friendship cake batter. My friend gave it to me. The idea was to add more ingredients, distribute some of the batter to five more friends and make the friendship cake with what was left. Needless to say, the chain was broken with the smashing of that bowl, and I faced seven years of bad luck, i.e., the fun-filled teenage years.

I'm sharing this story because, um, another chain is about to be broken here. Forgive me Jessica, I totally enjoyed BEING tagged, but I... I just don't feel comfortable tagging others. What if they don't want to be tagged? Then I would feel bad.

Although I DID toy with the idea of tagging Dooce...

6 comments:

cce said...

I always have fits about typos and grammatically errors on my blog and find it hilarious that you do too. Needless to say we all cut everyone a great deal of slack. Having been a newspaper reporter, I can say that even with editors and spell checkers and seven layers of protection, lots and lots of professional journals run with misspellings and imperfect punctuation. Without all those checks in place, you're still doing a damn good job. And, yes, Sedaris is brilliant and brother's can be difficult.

cce said...

I love that I just made a 'grammatically errors' on your blog, in your comments about making mistakes while blogging. ROFL.

Jill said...

I don't need no stinkin' dictionary. Dictionary.reference.com is my friend. (And Thesaurus.reference.com is cool too.)

Jessica said...

LOL! for the record, I prefer option a) for fuck's sake. But really ... are there grammar rules concerning the word fuck? I didn't learn about those in school. Why don't they teach us the important information such as this in school?

And also, it's okay that you don't tag anyone. I felt bad tagging people too. In fact, I think most of the people I tagged are ignoring me. :-) But thanks for the seven random things -- you crack me up!

mmichele said...

friendship cake SHOULD be smashed, quickly, before it's passed on.

it gives me the creeps, thinking about how it's moving around, growing things (you're the science teacher, after all, you should know what it grows).

plus it makes a really heavy cake.

Linda said...

Friends don't give friends friendship cake batter.