My Parents Will Be So Proud?

Last night, I was rejoicing about finally getting my Jesus is My Ese t-shirt and I thought it would be a good idea to send the creator - Keziah - a picture of me in it. Seems like a good thing to do. Well, if you read my post from yesterday, I didn't get home until late and I'm not going to knock on the neighbor's door at midnight asking them to take a picture of me.

So I've seen...Uh...I mean...heard about these women who take provocative pictures of themselves using their camera phones and a bathroom mirror. So I figured that's what I'd do.

I'm either old or retarded or old and retarded, but I couldn't quite seem to make it work. So I guess the conclusion we can draw here is that I'd make a lousy slut. While my parents may be proud, it means it's just one more thing I have to cross off my list of dreams:

1. Pitch in the show
2. Hold a teaching job for more than 2 years
3. Get Grandpa Munster elected to public office
4. Open a Wiffleball bar
5. Be a great slut
6. Be in an off-Broadway musical with Jeff from the TV Show Taxi

Damn. I only have one left.

First Day of School

Yep. Today was the first day of school. I think we were first on the whole island. Today was the newbies. Mostly 6th graders who are just coming in with a sprinkling of 7th & 8th graders. They're a bit squirrelly (sic?). And while we had to go by the seat of our pants because the computers weren't working, we did OK. I had a pretty killer lesson in the afternoon. I didn't realize that some of the other teachers were paying attention and I got a few kudos after. Just like riding a bike. And during my lesson I did coin a new term: swirly death bomb. You had to be there. I swear it was academic. But the reference to vacuuming the cat...uh...not so academic.

Oh, and Mark greeted me with a gift today...a webcam! Tomorrow though...all the kids come back and the computers still aren't working. It's really going to be chaos.

After school I pretty much had to go straight to the Y. Then back to school to do seating charts, rule lists and my "killer" lesson that I have to improv because of the computers. So it's after midnight and after admiring my new "Jesus is My Ese" t-shirt, I'm having enough wine to make my jaw unclench, then I'm going to bed.

Tomorrow...chaos followed by a meeting with a playa in the community about Summer's campaign, followed by a workout and ending up with...probably going back to school.

And so it begins.

Another Update

So school starts on Monday. It's going to be relative chaos. But as soon as I can get on a roll with the kids, I'll feel a bit normal again. I have the approval to get a webcam, so I'm hoping to connect to other classrooms around the world. We'll see how that works out. I also want to have some lessons broadcast in general so you may be able to see some of the kooky stuff we do. Stay tuned.

I had the conversation with the folks at Penn Foster. I no longer work for them. I really didn't do anything for them yet anyway, but you get the point. I started to think about what it would take to create an online school that taught MY way. I think the hardest part for me would be the running of a business part of it. Hmmmmmmm.

The campaign continues to be the same nutty stuff. "Pro's" who send out bad press releases or argue with me about literature that is taking waaaay to long to produce. I will say, this fundraiser we have coming up on August 10th could be the coolest thing I've ever been involved with politically. The music seems like it's going to be pretty cool and the food should be great. And best of all, I'm not involved in planning it! It's not going to bring in all the money we need, but it should be a good $8000 or so.

The internal arguement continues to be if we should go negative and how. Of course I'm the one deal with everyone's opinion - which to each person is fact. I swear, this is the last campaign I work on.

That's really it. Nothing too new happening.

Foreboding

I know, if you looked at all my posts, most of them are of a whining nature, but we are a country of whiners...ask Phil Gramm...oh, you're not rich enough to talk to Phil Gramm. But I digress.

So, I guess I could start off with something more positive, like...uh...another beautiful sunset today.

OK, now that I got that out of the way...we're gonna have some problems at school. We had an official, yet unofficial meeting of all the teachers for the Charter school today. Not pretty.

Here's the deal. I'm sure I've talked about the structure of the school. There's the director and assistant director. Then there's Lead Teachers of each program within the school. Mark is the director, Gail is the Assistant Director and Dan is the Lead Teacher at my program (STEM). Gail & Dan live together. Where do they live? In an ohana behind Mark's house. Mark is their landlord. They're all nice people, but they're not administrators. Gail has no background in education. What basically happens is that the three of them make whatever decisions that need to be made then the results just show up one day in our day-to-day routine. In our meetings - where we're supposedly work as a team - we're given some lip service, but in the end it rolls their way.

In the beginning, it was pretty easy to get our ideas incorporated, but now it's gotten a lot tougher. Today, I was pretty much ignored. But I'll get to that later because there's another dynamic.

Dan comes from Florida. He went to one of the biggies...I think it was Florida State. One of his professors is this Dr. Jones chick. Well, now that he's here, they've gotten Dr. Jones involved in our program. She comes once a year to see how we're doing and make her benevolent suggestions. Peggy and Renee spent a lot of time collecting data on our kids over the last school year for her and Dr. Jones never bothered to look at it. So now she has all these other suggestions that deal with data gathering, blah, blah, blah. All these decisions are made in the summer which I guess I have to live with, but to be honest, I still haven't been given a lot of details about a lot of them. Oh yeah, school starts Monday.

Dr. Jones was on the island last week. I had the chance to meet her for maybe a total of 10 minutes and I got a really, really weird vibe between Jonesy, Dan & Gail. I mean, as a trio, they seemed...uh...really close. It was a bit on the creepy side.

So we had 48 kids last year. We add a grade and 2 teachers this year. And we have no idea what we're doing next week. Oh sure, there's vague shit. We have to give them surveys and test them in math and show them the rules, etc. But the actual 5W's...who, when, what, etc hasn't been decided. Every time we ask Dan he gives a "we'll work it out" or "no worries". Did I mention that school starts Monday?

I've only met the new teachers once and they seem...uh...new. But the deal with the other teachers (including me) is this: we're all really good teachers. We can pull lessons out of our ears at a moment's notice. We're all good with kids. But we're used to doing this alone, where we don't have to rely on other adults. You can't do that when you're sharing space like we are; where someone taking care of their stuff directly affects what happens with the other teachers. Dan's not good at either planning, communicating or delegating. That was THE frustrating thing about last year and it's going to be worse this year.

There was this weird day last school year where Peggy & I were talking about this upcoming year - how the day was going to go with 72 kids, 5 teachers, 2 vans, etc. I don't know how, but I had this Rainman moment where I worked it all out on the board. I copied it, digitized it and shared it. It sat around all summer. Today, Dan kept commenting on how we have to figure out what to do about PE and Art. I had that solved. I mentioned it once, it was promptly dismissed and moved on....followed by more comments about how we don't know what to do about PE and Art and that we're not sure what to do in the afternoons. My thing has it solved, but it's pretty much toast.

Pardon my language...it's going to be a clusterfuck. I'm going to get mine, educationally speaking, and get out of there. I have some great ideas, stuff I've always wanted to do. I'm going to give them a go, add to my portfolio and get out.

Woe is My Career

I know the title sounds a bit mellow-dramatic, but it was all I could think of to tie the two things together.

First: I'm calling the people at Penn Foster in the morning and getting out of doing that online teaching gig. It's horrible. It's everything that's bad about teaching with all the excitingness of online text. It's a text book you can read online, complete with those ridiculous, vacuous test questions that's nothing but memorization. I was going to stick with it until I started looking at the assessments. I have to be honest, I couldn't pass the tests because I don't have that minutia memorized. I've been fired from gigs for refusing to teach that way and I gave up my family and friends to move 6000 miles away so that I wouldn't have to teach that way and I'm sure as hell not going to start doing it because it's the internets. I'm just going to use all my experience with women blowing me off to do this: It's not you, it's me...I'm just at a point where I have to focus on my career...I don't deserve a school like you...your pedagogy just doesn't satisfy me. So let's just be friends.

Second: Oh, Lord have mercy. Today I woke up at 3:30am to get on a plane to Oahu for an online class that I'm taking on how to use online learning to teach Hawaiian Culture. Too early...way too early. I didn't wake up until...actually, I think I was in a fog all day. And I was surrounded by...ew...teachers.

I may have blogged on this before, but as a group, teachers bore the hell out of me. I don't find them to be a very creative group, intellectually speaking. Oh sure, they'll know 101 uses for a glue stick, but none of them are very kinky and involve a spatula and a midget. Sorry, Mom. I meant, Little person. So I was stuck on a plane, on a bus and in a classroom with teachers. I couldn't tell what was making me nod off more...getting up at 3:30 or the vacuum of excitement from the class. We had laptops and the class itself was so slow that I worked on campaign stuff for half the time. I actually got some stuff done!

And just about everyone in the class, including some of the instructors were either Hawaiian by birth or by living here forever and they all spoke pidgen! Seriously. Educators. I'm thinking - no wonder these kids suck at English, dey owe kine teecha doh nevah no use it, yeah?

And of course every single thing I ate today was a big lump of carbohydrates. This class had nothing but carbs...I swear the water I drank had more protein than my lunch.

Oh, and just to top it off...on the plane on the way back...you know how the flight from hell is you surrounded by a bunch of screaming kids? Well, for me it was worse. Me surrounded by teachers and honeymooners. I swear, there was one couple who giggled and took pictures of themselves making out the whole flight. Luckily it was only a half-hour flight, but if TSA hadn't have confiscated my weapons and shoe bombs...

Third: Oh...and at the YMCA today, a few minutes after I got there I was talking to the new supervisor and one of the members, and I saw way down the hall, the Mom of one of my students. And I accidentally said out loud, "God damn!" Bad form. But the Mom and kid were pretty needy last year. There were a number of afterschool meetings - the kid is pissed off and pretty mean. Well, the kid's not my student anymore because Mom got laid-off and can't make the daily drive from Upcountry. So Mom pulled her out of the program to go to a closer school. And because of their financial situation, they got a scholarship to the Y so they don't have to use the pricey fancy-schmancy gym Mom was going to before. So I still get to see them all the time...special.

And I guess I'll just continue in Y-mode. My new supervisor is starting to get to be a pain. She's nice enough, but for being so pro-Hawaii, she's not very laid back. The fact that a lot of members do not bring their cards in when they come has become her number one purpose in life. She spends most of the time she works either complaining about it, or trying to figure out ways to fix it. She really treats it as if it's Maui's version of Darfur. And she's my boss so it's not my place to tell her to chill the eff out.

I really thought I had blogged on this before, but looking for the link, I couldn't find it. I guess I hadn't, but I know we talked about it on the Award Winning podcast. About 2 weeks into my starting at the Y, there was this woman who would come in and use the facilities. She's pretty old, sounds like Carol Channing and has seriously leather skin. Way too much sun. For some reason, she thinks my name is Roy. At first I thought it was funny so I didn't say anything. But after a month or so went by I realized that the joke was now on me because it was waaaay too late to tell her tht my name isn't Roy. So everyone's been teasing me about it. Today I received something that I never thought I'd be happy to get before...a name tag. It's not really my style. But since the whole Roy situation has gotten intolerable, I knew it was time for a YMCA name tag. That way I can just SHOW Leather Channing that my name is not Roy. So one of the big cheeses decides it would be funny to order me a name tag that says "Roy". I guess I'm one of the gang now. So now I sign all my internal paperwork, "Roy". Looks like we're gonna have a Roydown.

You Dirty Bastards!

Google: Louisville, KY Is The Most Obscene City In The U.S.
Eric Krangel | June 28, 2008 10:56 AM

Ambitious prosecutors are now trying to shut down Internet pornographers by trying them in towns where conservative "community standards" make an obscenity conviction more likely. A novel defense now being tried in a Pensacola, Fla. obscenity case: Using Google Trends to prove that the town's "community standards" are more prurient than prosecutors are willing to admit.

The idea: If Google proves that local residents search for "sex" more than they do for, well, anything else, then the defense can argue that Internet pornographers are just satisfying a local need, not corrupting innocent minds. We like this idea, though we're dubious that the courts are going to go for it.

But suppose they do? Where then, according to Google, does an obscenity defendant stand the best chances? In other words: What city's residents are most interested in looking up dirty stuff on the Web?

Google Trends says: Louisville, Kentucky.

We know! We were surprised, too -- almost as surprised as we were to see neither New York City or San Francisco in our top 10. The full list:

The 10 American Cities Most Likely To Search For Obscene Material

1. Louisville, KY
2. Rochester, NY
3. Philadelphia, PA
4. Newark, NJ
5. Los Angeles, CA
6. Irvine, CA
7. Pittsburgh, PA
8. Las Vegas, NV
9. Albany, NY
10. Orlando, FL

We're Number 2! We're Number 2! I want a shocker foam finger!

Here's the rest of the article.

Casing the Joint

Well here's a new one. We were supposed to have a whole bunch of camapaign volunteers show up to go door-to-door. No one showed but me and the candidate. So we talked shop for a while then each went to do our own areas of Pukalani. Today sucked. It was nothing but hills. Every driveway looked like this:



So as I'm making my way down the street, I see this guy outside giving me the look...you know how he's got that look...that "this guy just took a dump on my lawn" look. So I keep makng my way closer & closer. And I finally get to him and before I can even say hello he asks me why I'm casing the neighborhood. When I explain to him who I am and what I'm doing he tells me that he doesn't believe me. So I gave him my card. So now he believes me but complains about people putting stuff in his mailbox. I inform him that we know that's a federal offense so we don't do that. He told me about the 2 guys he has pictures of doing it. I moved on...the poor bastard. Living on the mean streets of Pukalani, needing such security.

Oy.

Summer better win.

Cynthia McKinney Speech

Just thought I'd do my civic duty here. The mainstream media won't report on the Green Party's National Convention...hell, even the so-called Progressive Media won't either.

So here's Cynthia McKinney's acceptance speech of her nomination for GP Presidential Candidate. (Note: it's 28 minutes long, but worth it)

Cynthia McKinney Green Party Presidential candidate speaks at the Convention By Craig Seeman
View in HD  Download 720p HD Version  Visit Craig Seeman's ExposureRoom Videos Page

If they gave an award in the forrest...

...would anyone know about it? Not if you're in Maui.

Here's the good news: The Stuart Bedasso Show was named Best Locally Produced Podcast (you have to scroll down a little) by the Maui Time Weekly. Cool, right. Well, yeah...but...

In a fitting show of just how my luck as been going on this rock...First, they spelled the show's name wrong: The Stewart Bedasso Show. Fine. Whatever. But the kicker was when they gave our website: www.stewartbedassoshow.com.

Say wha? Someone pulled that out of their ass. They reviewed our podcast last year and had the website address. We have a blogspot blog for a webpage. There was never any kind of stuart bedasso.com...ever. So people are going to read it, go to a made up website and...nothing.

So tonight I had to buy the freakin domain name, www.stewartbedassoshow.com and redirected to our actual podcast site. Jeez. I don't get no respect...no respect.

On another semi-podcast note:

Talking to Keziah today, she told me about a T-Shirt she made for Tachi (did I spell that right?)...a take off on the "Jesus is My Homeboy" shirt. She made "Jesus is my Esse". Of course I have to have this shirt so she sent me the graphic and I put it up on Cafepress.com. And now YOU TOO can own an original Jesus is my Esse shirt like the one below:



Buy this shirt and others here!

This Sure is a Pretty Glass House

Today I had a meeting with someone whom I've been corresponding with about Summer's campaign. I already had a really long phone conversation with her and how much campaign experience she has and blah, blah, blah. So she offered to help - particularly with the press, as that's her specialty.

So I went upcountry, to my meeting. This person preceded to tell me the exact same thing about how experienced she is and this is how she works and kept repeating the same cliches about what she does and...it was obvious she could help, but she had a mental agenda for our meeting and I wasn't leaving until she covered everything 3 times.

It was just one of those times that you keep your mouth shut, nod your head a lot and realize that you're never getting that time of your life back. As torturous as it is, if you're good at the head nod and the "yeah, you're right" you usually get a couple of benefits down the road:

First, because you haven't told the person to shut up they think you're pretty smart. There are a lot of people in Rochester who think I'm waaaaaaay smarter than I am because I've kept my mouth shut in meetings. (Shut up. It's true. I've been to meetings where I've kept my mouth shut.)

Second, you can usually get the person to do what you want them to do...or at least get something out of them. I know that seems pretty calculating, but depending on the circumstance, it's appropriate. Today, we both knew that the meeting was to see if this woman was going to help with the campaign. She is, and she's happy about it. I just paid for it with a slightly smoother brain.

I'm pretty sure I do the same to people when I talk about teaching...can you say "School Board Campaign"? Sure. I knew you could.

**********************************************************

Summer School continues to be...just an all-round cluster-f. There's only 3 days left, but I did get a call from the person who is dealing with the money/paychecks. It's the same person who does the financial stuff for the Charter School. If I understood her right, the taxes for my 2 summer school checks are coming out of my first Charter School check...which should leave me with about 10 bucks that pay period.

And they say that no good deed is left unpunished...I'm firmly in that camp.

**********************************************************

I haven't done much with that teaching online gig. I just can't get motivated to bore the shit out of people, whether it's in person or online. I'll end up sucking it up and doing it...like a cheap whore - for the money.

**********************************************************

Hot Dog Update: They're gone. I'm on the last of the hamburgers. The Tahou Hot Sauce made it to the birthday plate.

**********************************************************

Went to GNC today. It looks like they don't carry my Die Hard Battery Pudding anymore. I hope Sylvester Stallone is OK.

**********************************************************

Went to the podiatrist today to get the achilles checked. She basically told me if I just stretch it every day, it'll will be fine. Thanks. You could have told me that before I spent a month in my medieval torture boot. Oh, and I also have to wear this weird splint when in bed. (she didn't tell me for how long) What she didn't tell me was that I was going to have to get it "fitted". So the doctor leaves and the nurse comes in - what is it with Hawaii and cute medical chicks? And the nurse tells me that I have to get up on the table on my stomach.

Uhhhh...I wanted to say: I like where this is going, but you know I'm here for my foot. Instead, I just sat there with this really stupid look on my face. It was then that she realized that I was either there for an injury I sustained in the Special Olympics or that no one told me about the fitting. So she explained how it was done. I was relieved, yet disappointed.

I wonder if when I finally get my first colonoscopy, I can bring my own tech? Sorry, Mom.

*************************************************************

And speaking of colons...the other day, my candidate told me that she hates going door-to-door so much that when she does it she can't shit for 2 days. I thanked her for sharing and told her to let me get back to her as she's given me yet another issue I've never dealt with in a campaign before. I consulted with Jimena who advised against me giving her bran muffins. I know she's a Urologist, which is the front end and not the back end, but she had a good point - I'd then be sending a gassy candidate out to knock on doors. Not the best campaign strategy.

*************************************************************

I think that's about it for now. The pictures people have been sending me from the family stuff over the holidays has been amazing. Marcy's was the best about the JAP's. Oh heck...for those not in the know, here's the pictures. Notice how over time, the 3 JAP's all take the same position. In each picture we have: Auntie JAP, Cousin JAP & Sister JAP.

Couldn't Help Posting This One

I love science

Who Are These People?

A couple of things went down today that just made me understand why people live in caves. It just makes sense.

I'm on the air right now at Mana'o. I'm filling in for this guy named Darryl. So dude decides to call me...and he starts giving me shit. "Do you know who this is? You're doing my show. Are you intimidated? Blah, blah, blah."

What the fuck - is in my head, but there's no use in actually saying it. So dude's feeling pretty good about himself. I tell him to hold on because it's the top of the hour and douchebag should know I have to do a break. I come back and he's "seriously man, you've filled in for me before and I love the job you do and blah, blah, blah been in this business for 33 years...blah, blah...I love my listeners...blah...love you. I think the guy was loopy on Ny-Quil. Then he requested Frank Zappa.

{sigh}

This morning we were supposed to have a bunch of people in Pukalani going door-to-door. It was raining all over upcountry (except Pukalani actually) so it was canceled, but I went up there anyway and hit a few houses. So, I do my usual weekly, "Summer, have you been getting out (doing door-to-door) this week?"

"Uh...no...not really."

"OK, let's talk about it later."

So later we meet and start talking. That's when she tells me that going door-to-door makes her physically ill. She feels that it's like an invasion of people's privacy, knocking on their doors that it makes her physically ill. Then she told me that one time, after going out she literally puked.

Wait. That's not the best part. Then she shares this nugget. When she goes door to door, she can't shit for 2 days after. Campaigning constipates her. What on earth am I supposed to do with that? I'm not lying...we now have a serious problem. If we win this, I deserve a fucking medal.

Here I Come to Save the Day!

The reason why I thought of this isn't important.

The End is Near?

I'll just post you the e-mail exchange I had with campaign guru today. It all started...well, it's been going on since Day 1, but this part started when he started tweaking about campaign lit that's not due to go out until early September. He kept talking about some deadline which only he seems to know about. So first is his reply to my question about this mysterious deadline:

In my 30 years of doing this i only contact the candidate directly when i get no response from the candidate's staff.

At the moment the Starr campaign needs at least 3 classic cliche "endorsement" photos: one with jim langsford, 2 more with whoever. the more well known the better but anybody is better than nobody. endorser and endorsee smiling at the camera.

also, it is likely that the ohana photo (with Obama's sister) has a quality problem and we might not be able to use it. if that is the case we will need another one.

What is the situation with your printer? any deadline or scheduling problems? when is the latest you expect to get the photo's done?

Lay out draft should be emailed to us tonight. critique it.

awaiting your response, j

And here is my response:

Here's my response. I don't answer to you. I work for Summer. If you would like to consult with me that's fine, but I don't do what you tell me to do on your schedule. Yes, you are donating your time. So am I. Yes, you have more experience than I do, but I have done this before as well. If you feel that things aren't going right, you're more than welcome to consult with Summer about having me replaced - that is totally your right, but in the meantime, I'm running this campaign and I'm a bit busy making sure everyone is doing what they're supposed to be doing than to report to you on everything you think is important.

Now...I'm taking care of the pictures, our layout person is fine and we have to have the lit in our hands ready to be in the envelopes in 7 weeks. If there's not much interference, we can have it done in 2. We don't even have the money to get it printed yet anyway which is another issue I'm still having to deal with. Meanwhile, I need another piece developed to use for the second round of door-to-dooring and I need that well before the piece that's going with the potholders.

I have it covered, Jay.

I have to admit, some of this on my part is ego, but it really is a small part. Most of it is that I just don't need this guy breathing down my neck and he's not helping me do my job. He has good ideas and he's had success with them...and we're using them, but he sucks in managing people...especially people he's not supposed to be managing at all.

What the hell happened?

It looks like I'm going to have to reach into my emotional fallout shelter and grab one of those cans of Whup-ass I've been saving in case of a nuclear emergency. In the last two days, the campaign I've been running has run...uh...way of course, and I'm really pissed.

I just had to send an e-mail to campaign guru guy that "nicely" told him to chill out and that he needs to go through me to get to the candidate. We'll see how that goes over.

I also have Starr family members planning fundraising events that they refuse to call fundraisers. They're calling them "friendraisers". We don't need friends, we need funds. But besides that, the planning e-mails are giving me an ice cream headache. The people who are supposed to be "chairing" this committee are not chairing much and looking for me to deal with everything...oh, and expect me to tell them everything that I'm doing. Daddy don't roll that way. I went to school with an empty e-mail box and came back at noon with 23 e-mails...about nothing.

Where's my f-ing can opener?

****************************************************************************

Well, I'm already on a rant, so I may as well finish it up. I don't remember all the details I laid out, but I was hired - technically as a contractor - by Penn Foster to "teach" social studies classes online. So today, I went online and checked out what the "classes" were like. I have to say, if this is what online education is, then I really want no part of it. It's just the Holt-Mifflin textbook online. Uh...isn't that why most of these kids/adults drop out? Because it's just teaching from the lame-ass book? I'll see how it rolls...but I'll probably get bored, try to turn all my students into socialists and get fired.

Wouldn't it be cool if I could develop my own curriculum and teach it online...but it would never get accredited. Jeez, I'd just tell everyone to go read Zinn and get a life.

Roundup

I haven't had much to blog about, so I guess enough little stuff has built up where I can post a little update.

*I've pretty much just gone into auto-mode where summer school is concerned. It's really a waste of time for the kids and there's not a hell of a lot I can do about it. I'll just wipe it clean from my brain.

*Things are getting kinda lame at the Y...I could insert a bad sex joke there, but you can do it yourself. Since I've been there they haven't had a Front Desk Supervisor. I really hadn't noticed. Well, they finally hired someone. She seems nice, but she's learning everything from scratch and she pretty much spends every one of my shifts asking me why I do everything I do. It doesn't seem to be in a "gotcha" kind of way, but it's really annoying. And I've only been there a couple of months myself, and this place is so bureaucratically inclined that you can't learn everything until it just happens to you. It has made it a little less fun to work there.

*Still enjoying hot dogs and cheeseburgers - sans buns.

*It appears that the campaign guru likes me and has told Summer that he wants to "take me under his wing." I'm...flattered? But at least Summer agrees with me that he is a bit obnoxious.

*The campaign is going OK. Money is still the one factor that I'm worried about. We have the strategy, we have an...OK amount of volunteers. We just need the cash to pay for the mailings we need to make. If you have any spare change laying around, feel free to send us a few schillings.

Not much else happening. I'm just trying to put my head down and focus on getting through the next year. I promise, I'll try to find something on the positive side to post on next time.

Garbage...Wonderful Garbage

It's been a long, long week. A lot has been going on, a lot of it pretty frustrating, but I'm really trying not to use the blog as a place to just bitch. So I'll just do the quick rundown...

Summer school is really a bummer. Not as it was billed and it's a lot more work that it's supposed to be. The campaign is...well, a political campaign and it's just been work.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from DHL...I had a package waiting for me...something perishable. Well, I instantly knew what it was and from whom.

So, if my Dad gets to read this any time soon...I just finished one red and one white Zwiegle...with onions, mustard and Nick Tahou's meat sauce. Just what the therapist ordered.

I'm still staying away from carbs, but next Friday...a full-blown garbage plate...with a big-ass candle in it.

They don't have Cookie-Puss here.