This is too a blog

Like a pupating caterpillar about to emerge, I am finishing up my last day as an ATR today. My school is creating classes for me - three in my subject area, two wild-cards - and on Tuesday I get to pretend it’s the beginning of the semester.

Yeay? (throat clear) Yeay.

I do feel bad for the classes I leave behind, who innocently bought my bluff that I was the real teacher no matter what it said on their program card. They’re getting my least favorite colleague as their teacher, if and when she ever decides to return.

Ah, public school…

The MTA has some interesting items for sale.

Calculate your life expectancy here. It said I would live to be amost 92. (It didn’t ask about my habit of playing in traffic.)

I unwittingly had a self-curated mediocre film festival this weekend.

2 Republicans in Senate Vow to Block F.D.A. Pick

(F.D.A. Warns Against Eating Bag Spinach)
Debate Grows as Colleges Slip in Graduations

(Stores Throw Out Bagged Spinach After Warning)

Rebuff for Bush on Terror Trials in a Senate Test

(Possible Source of Bad Spinach Is Named as Outbreak Widens)

California,Taking Big Gamble,Tries to Curb Greenhouse Gases

(Tainted Spinach Traced to California)

1. I’m totally uninvolved in the school’s phase-in of Small Learning Communities, and therefore am forced to attend neither daily planning meetings nor Saturday staff development.

2. I get to do the crossword during my prep.

3. I’m still getting paid and still have my benefits.

That’s all.

I had no idea when I saw Quinceañera yesterday that it was a big 2006 Sundance winner (Grand Jury and Audience Awards). I’d originally gone thinking I could show the film, which is mostly in English but has some Spanish in it, to my classes.

That ain’t happening.

Drug use? Check. Sex? Check. Profanities? Check.

I will say this: if I decide to quit my job and go out with a bang, I will indeed show it.

I tried three flavors/prescriptions (”Calm” olive oil/feta [salty but good with some prosecco]; “Jet Lag” French Onion [fine, my favorite of the three, but not very onion-y]; and “Empower” New York Cheddar [super salty, not cheddary] of these low fat/high vitamin/got-some-protein-and-fiber chips.

My advice? Stick with some Kettle Bakes.

The actresses in Hollywoodland lift do the heavy lifting. Diane Lane is excellent as Toni Mannix and even Robin Tunney, who I hated when she was on
Prison Break, is great as Leonore Lemon, George Reeves’ erstwhile fiance. Okay, it’s hard not to love Bob Hoskins as Diane Lane’s husband. For the sake of argument we’ll call him an honorary actress. Bennifer was fine but dull. Perhaps that’s what the real George Reeves was like? And, while I usually love the pointy proboscised Adrien Brody, something about him as a private dick just didn’t quite wash.

Who killed George Reeves? The filmmakers are coy, yet if you pay close attention it’s easy to figure out whodunnit: the Kennedys.

I had taken a break from teaching and was in the habit of walking to the temp job I had in the file room at SEIU Local 32BJ. Somewhere along Grand Street I noticed a plane flying really really low. Thinking it was probably just my faulty depth perception, I decided to duck into a shop for tea. It being SoHo, and my being an impecunious temp, I came out of the shop without anything.

When I made it down to Canal Street I could see that I’d been right about the plane, and that it had smashed through one of the towers. A horrible accident.

I went into work a bit dazed. All we did was talk about the horrible accident.

Until the second plane hit. At this point, perhaps in my innocent optimism, I was still thinking that maybe it was just that the air traffic controllers at Kennedy were asleep. Luckily, other people at the office were more alert and we all got out of Lower Manhattan.

The subways were closed, as was the Brooklyn Bridge. Feeling trapped on the island, I remember the rest of the day in snippets:

Running to the East Village with a bunch of people from work.

Trying to get someone on the phone.

Finally getting through to my grandmother, who said “These things happen.”

Meeting friends of friends in the West Village and having lunch together at a restaurant that had stayed openn to preserve some feeling of normalcy.

Finally walking home over the Manhattan Bridge with a group of people I’d never met before.

Walking around Carroll Gardens at night with friends, surrounded by charred paper and smoke.

Somehow getting to sleep.