Monday, June 16, 2008

Week in the Life, Day 3

MONDAY, JUNE 16, 2008

7:26 a.m. (The clock is five minutes fast.) Leaving for work in a somewhat timely manner! I have the only car left in the world with a tape deck. The FM radio doesn't work so I almost always have my iPod in the car with me. I adore my iPod. I couldn't live without my iPod. I named it Jochen. There's a long story behind that but it's boring. Music of choice this morning? ABBA's S.O.S.

7:45 The cafeteria, just before the hooligans are released from their buses. My last moment of silence for the next seven hours. Each class has an assigned table and staff eats with the kids. Yes, I have the honor of eating twice a day with seven 12-year-old boys.

9:43 a.m. Music class. The kids are only playing the main melody and some of them are playing pretty simple songs - although even that is impressive consider how long most of them sit still - but this kiddo is working on Coldplay's Clocks and it's a little more complicated. He's doing a really good job with it. (I know, great shot of the back of the kid's head, right? I can't post pictures of my boys here which makes this whole thing probably a bad idea.)

11:24 a.m. I believe that you're either born a Yankees lover or a Yankees hater and I am firmly in the latter group. One of my best buddies at work however is in the former group and it's not unusual for me to open a desk drawer and find a little note like this tucked away for me. He's obnoxious just like most other Yankees fans. Me, retaliate? No, neeever. Also, that is sadly, hands down the most organized drawer in my desk.

9:18 p.m. Watching season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't know how well you can see it but the captions say, "Sure, in a fascist society (!)" I don't know what's up with the exclamation point in parentheses but there's at least a couple in every episode and they drive me batty. What is the deal? Is the exclamation point optional or what? That sentence doesn't even require an exclamation point. Usually the captions tag them onto sarcastic statements. Did I miss the lesson in school about punctuating sarcasm with exclamation points in parentheses? Would it help if I started using that here to signify sarcasm so you guys know for sure that I'm just kidding?

9:49 p.m. Time for my daily ankle exercises. In this one I pull my foot toward me, using a belt to help it along. When I first started walking again I'd been in some kind of cast for almost four months so I had a good bit of atrophy. I could move my foot around very little. This is to help loosen things up again. (Geez, my arm looks huge.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes the exclamation point with parenthesis is used to emphasize irony, I don't know if it fits in those examples.

Also the exclamation point with the parenthesis can be used exclaim a word within the sentence but of course that doesn't fit because they are at the end of the sentence where there should just be a regular exclamation point.

I don't know. Can't you just turn closed captioning off?

Heather B. said...

Sometimes the exclamation point with parenthesis is used to emphasize irony, I don't know if it fits in those examples.

Innnnteresting. I never knew that! That's probably what it is because it is usually irony or sarcasm. Huh.

Mark likes the captions and I've gotten kind of used to watching DVDs with them on.

Unknown said...

Before my car was totaled last November, it had a tape deck. If I wanted to listen to my iPod, I had to hook it into my tape deck using my old car adapter from my portable cd player. Very low tech, but worked really well.

Your ankle exercises look like you're turning your foot into a slingshot or something.

Patty (in Dallas) said...

You might have the second-to-last car with a tape deck. I have one of those tape things to play my mp3 player, too! So fancy.

Heather B. said...

In our previous car we had a CD player and I used a $40 FM transmitter to hook up my iPod. The tape deck with $12 cassette adapter sounds way better.

Eleanor said...

My car has a tape deck, too! The FM transmitters things suck; I'm so glad I have a tape-deck-adapter-thingie. My iPod battery died a while ago (before I thought to get a car charger) and I was forced to listen to the CDs in my car. It was TERRIBLE!

As for the pictures of the kids, I have a coworker who's a children's librarian who blogs. She has all these pictures of little kids lined up holding whatever craft they just made in front of their faces. It's pretty funny.