Bueller....

I'm still here... pinky swear... Girl Scout's honor...

Here's a quick rundown of what we've been up to...

1 -  Summer vacation officially begins!

Which means we are living the dream.  There is finally time for things like haircuts:

(for the first time since February)...  and lots of time for books!!!

We have taken several trips to the library and used bookstore over the past few weeks and that is a small sample of what I have brought home. I am excited to start devouring books again. Ryan and I watched the movie version of One for the Money (and enjoyed it) so I decided to start reading the Stephanie Plum book it was based on. Ryan is further ahead in the series (I think book six). We have also recently watched and enjoyed The Time Traveler's Wife (almost as good as the book!), Madagascar 3 (da duh duh duh duh duh AFRO da duh duh duh duh duh CIRCUS),and 50/50 (really well done but so sad).

 Other books I have enjoyed include A Journal of Mortifying Moments: A Novel by Robyn Harding which was great fluffy chick lit, I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella which was EXCELLENT fluffy chick lit, and a book about Stepparenting which was "eh".

I am teaching summer school a few hours a day (super easy), taking a grad class (also not too bad if I keep on top of all of the work and don't procrastinate!), writing some summer IEPS for extra cash and trying to take care of the house a little better.... maybe one day I will be domesticated... maybe...

2. Ryan has been home!

I can't remember how much I have blogged about this in the past, but Ryan's new job has been requiring him to travel for extremely long periods of time.  We were lucky to have him home for about 10 straight days this past week.  He had requested some time at home to go to his cousin's wedding, and then was able to stay a little longer.

Among other fun things, while he was home we made good use of our Dorney Park/Wild Water Kingdom Season Passes (heading up twice).

That's Isaac on the right....

We made it to another Reading Phillies game-- this time a double header that ended up going into extra innings.  An eternity for a non-baseball fan like myself, but great fun for Ryan and Isaac.

Although we had great fun when Ryan was here, there was a little bit of pressure to make every moment fun and exciting and thrilling before he had to leave again.  Our life has sort of become dealing with being apart and then trying to cram over the top fun into every second before he has to leave again.  I miss regular life as a threesome.  Unfortuneatly, it looks like once he wraps up his current assignment in Charlotte, his next stop will somewhere in Wisconsin until mid-September.  So looks like we will be in the current cycle of saying hello and then saying goodbye for quite a while.

3- Isaac Updates

Isaac has officially finished first grade, which I suppose makes him an unofficial second grader.  I can't believe how grown up he is.  His summer is consisting of soccer, soccer and more soccer.  His travel team is having twice a week practices (I just bit the bullet and ordered him over 100 dollars of uniforms for travel!). 



He is one of the tiniest ones on the team, playing with nine year olds, but he is fast and scrappy.  He was very frustrated playing intermural soccer this spring, so I am excited for him to play more competitively with kids at a higher skill level.  He is also enrolled for about 5 different soccer camps  so he will have lots of opportunities to hone his skills, run around and get out of the house. 

Hope things are well with all of you!!!

I'm an awkward and uncomfortable thing

I can't seem to embed this video (maybe cause it's unlisted) but here is a link to a little bit of Isaac playing soccer. After we were done with soccer he took off with his dad and I headed into the city to meet up with Becca and Jamie. We did the following:

• Rode the El into the city
• Caught up with the Occupy Philly people who were marching around for bank transfer day
• Went to a whole bunch of stores but niether of us bought anything
• Finally decided what I want to do to celebrate my 30th with friends
• Went to Sephora and tried on a bunch of outrageously expensive makeup. (Seriously, who would buy a 30 dollar single eyeshadow?!)
• Ate dinner at El Camino Real (SO YUMMY)
• went to a Barcade that featured tons of video games from the 80s like Ms. Pacman, Tron, Double Dragon, Tetris, etc.
• Ran into someone I knew from Pitt there.
• Made plans for Thanksgiving Eve to see my old friend Nicole.

I finally decided to sign Isaac up for the winter Saturday soccer clinic. If you've talked to me at all this weekend, chances are I probably hashed this to death with you, but it's been weighing heavily on my mind. Isaac was invited to this winter Saturday soccer clinic that runs from the end of fall soccer to the beginning of spring soccer.

• Pros
• it will help him improve as a player
• it is recommended for kids who will probably play travel soccer, which Isaac probably will
• It will give us something to do on Saturday mornings when he is with me
• He loves, loves, loves soccer.

• Cons
• we have to buy him indoor soccer shoes
• it will mean a Saturday commitment for 75% of the year
• it means that our visitation schedule is reduced to only Saturdays for 75% of the year instead of whole weekends.
• It makes me miss having occasional Friday nights to myself.
• And then it makes me feel terribly guilty and selfish for missing Friday nights so much.

I had made the decision to NOT have him do it after I recieved the inital e-mail invitation. There are plenty of other years for soccer clinics. But of course the coach came over and mentioned it in front of M (Isaac's dad) and of course he thought I should for sure do it. This of course made me insist that he shouldn't, just to be contrary and disagreeable. Anyways, his dad agreed that he would take him some extra Saturdays to make up for missed Friday nights. So I think that's a good compromise. And I swear I won't talk about it anymore.

ANYWAYS.

Back to my birthday. The big 30. I will be blogging more extensively about that sooner or later I'm sure. In the mean time I stumbled across this vlog about it that I loved and thought I would share. I thought I found a grey hair the other day, just in time for the big birthday and that freaked me out way more than the age bracket change does. I called Isaac into the bathroom and demanded to know if the hair was white or blond. He declared it to be white and then helped me rip it out of my head. Hopefully ten more don't grow in it's place. I'm not ready for that. Anyhow, I will begin celebrations this Friday with a family dinner at a local Hibachi. We went last year and had so much fun, but Isaac was at his dad's. This year I wanted to choose a time when he could come too, cause I think he will love it. More birthday plans to come.

I guess I better wrap this up and go to work. Happy Tuesday all!

Can we talk about...

How much I loved this movie?

We read this one for my book club. The book, by Kathryn Stockett, was amazing, and the movie didn't disappoint either. The movie was very faithful to the book, but still read the book, because there are so many good details and they can't put it all in the movie. All of the major and important scenes were there though and the characters really came to life on the screen.

These two were perfectly cast as Minnie and Abileen:

These two were fabulous as well. I love Emma Stone and I thought she played Skeeter just right.

But she was my favorite as Celia Foote.

I know there is a fair amount of backlash against the book and the movie. I acknowledge that some of the criticism may be valid. I think it's pretty unsettling that the HSN has come up with a line of products based on the movie. But it is thought provoking and entertaining. Check it out!

...Summer is fleeting...

I'll do my my beach update soon. I have to mentally prepare myself for all of the time it takes to get all the pictures over here in blogger. It was a lovely week at the beach and so fun to have my sister and brother in law in town for as long as they were. It was so sad to say goodbye to them again. Anyways, here's one of our groups shots on the roof deck:

While we were down at the beach one of my cats had a bad health scare. Cody Pablo (the cat with 9 lives) had a urinary tract infection which is a very dangerous thing for a male cat. I lost a day at the beach to drive back and take him to the vet. Fortuneatly, he didn't have to be hospitalized and after I dropped about 100 bucks i don't have on prescription food and meds but he survived. My dad keeps telling he that Cody is more trouble than he's worth (which I know is true) but I like to keep him around.

Isaac and I have been watching some movies that I loved as a kid. It's funny how much he loves making microwave popcorn, and snuggling up together on the couch. Sometimes I get so obsessed with planning the big, grand things for him to do, but he really is satisfied with the simple things. We have seen Sandlot, Rookie of the Year, Robin Hood, Pete's Dragon, and The Muppets Take Manhatten.

So I had this wacky thing on my head that I thought was ringworm (I know-- SO gross). It wasn't going away with ringworm cream and so they referred me to a dermatologist. She thought it might be, like, an out of control mole and removed a little piece of it. Turns out, it is an "atypical nevus" that was "moderately" concerning. Last week I went and had a piece of my scalp the size of a nickel removed and a ton of stitches. Next week I go back in to have the stitches removed and a full body exam for any other troubling moles. They already identified another one on my scalp that I will be having removed in a few weeks. It was a little bit scary, because a girl I knew in college just recently died of melanoma. I'm glad, at least, that hearing about her gave me an increased awareness of the risks and a better push to get things checked out. I'm glad to be dealing with it since people with atypical nevus have a much higher risk of developing melanoma. It's scary. But anyways, enough about gross health issues.

I'm pretty excited for the weekend. Isaac's dad is meeting up with me at some place that sells super cheap tires and he is replacing a few of mine tomorrow. This is long overdue. It's been raining lately and I've been slipping and sliding all over the place in the puddles on my bald tires. It sounds a tad on the shady side, but at this point, I am so broke, I'll get tires from a shady place if I don't have to pay for them. After that Isaac is going with his dad for the weekend. I'm not sure what I will get into, but I will definitely be heading to my parents for a bit to help out around the house and to visit my friend Nicole, who will also be in town.

I still have another week of summer vacation left before I have to head back to school for inservices and stuff. I've popped in a few times this week to get the room together. It's going to be a really interesting year since we have lost so many services and things with the government cuts. Sometimes it's just hard to work in an impoverished area in a place with so few resources. My sister and I were commiserating about this on the phone tonight. Well, that's about it for right now. Things are going well more or less.

The Italian Stallion

Paulie: [about Adrian] She's pushing thirty freaking years old, and if she don't wise up, she's gonna die an old maid.

Rocky: I'm thirty myself!

So Philadelphia has a huge celebration around the fourth of July with tons of free events, concerts, food, fireworks, etc. They do a few outdoor movies at different parks and one of them is Rocky that is shown at the Art Museum Steps.

I've always wanted to go, but I never had before. I decided this was the year. My friends Becca and Jami were game. We had some yummy vegan burgers at the Belgium Cafe and then headed over. It was a gorgeous night. We didn't have prime seats as you can see (the screen is that tiny rectangle) and it was a teensy bit hard to hear. But at least now I can say I've seen that movie, even if it turned out to be not terribly exciting to watch Rocky train by pounding the crap out of slabs of raw meat and hang around with his socially awkward girlfriend Adrian. But it was a fun atmosphere and during his training montage everyone was clapping and cheering. Fun times.

"Different, Not Less"

Now that it's summer and I'm enjoying "funemployment" (to steal an expression from the Mormon Child Bride) I'm finally working my way through my Netlfix queue. i'm great about he watch instanly queue but the DVDs seem to sit on my counter for months.

Anyways, I recently watched Temple Grandin, an autistic woman, which originally aired as an HBO special.

.

Here is a great review of it. It is based on her book, Thinking in Pictures which I read ages ago. Temple perseveres through life in a time when mother's were being blamed for autism in their children and were being told to institutionalize their children ASAP. Being an autistic support teacher, this movie has been recommended to me by many different people. Our classroom assistants even got to watch it as an inservice one day. It didn't disappoint and of course I found myself crying through it as she struggles to be understood and especially in some scenes with her mother. I definitely recommend it and I love that it could give people a more realistic looking depiction of a person with autism, beyond the Rainman. Claire Danes really captured the nuances of her behavior: her loud unmodulated voice, the difficulty of sustaining eye contact, even her odd gait.

Anyone out there seen it? What did you think?

Movies...

When you are as broke as I am, Netflix is like your best friend. Here's what I've seen lately.

White Oleander I'm always up for a good drama but this one was sort of weak. It was about a girl who's mother commits a crime of passion and goes to jail. The girl floats from foster care home to foster care home. I might read the book, but I felt like the movie was sort of cliche.

The Business of Being Born This is one that came recommended by quite a few of my friends. It's basically a big advertisement for midwifery and home births. Although some of their views bordered on over the top propaganda (just because monkeys that are c-sectioned don't care for their young, doesn't mean that women who have sections are going to be less attached to their babies!), I thought it raised as lot of interesting points about how women in America view childbirth.

Paper Clips This was a really cute documentary about a middle school in rural Appalachia who decide to collect a paperclip for every child that was killed in the Halocaust. It was really good.

Bridesmaids

I saw this one in the theater with friends. There are parts that are raunchy and over the top, but overall I really enjoyed it. I totally related to the main character, a single girl navigating the world of dating and dealing with blows from life. It was hilariously funny. I found myself laughing the whole time.

National Geographic: Solitary Confinement

I like documentaries about psychology and this was about the psychological effects of solitary confinement. I thought it was interesting and featured footage and photos of Eastern State Penn, which is a Philly landmark.

Tupac and Biggie

This one was all right. I was making 50 cards for a bridal shower and just wanted something on that I could half pay attention to while I was working on them. It brought up a lot of the loose ends of the cases of the murders of the two rappers and highlighted the corruption in the LAPD that caused the murders to do really be investigated. However, Biggie and Tupac is pretty much old news.

Man on Wire

This is a documentary about Phillipe a tightrope walker who does daring stunts such as walking between the two towers of Notre Dame and ultimately between the two towers of the World Trade Center. His stunts were interesting but the documentary was a little slow, mostly talking head type interviews and awkward reenactments.

Movies That I Tried to Watch and Just Couldn't Get Into

Brokeback Mountain and Chasing Amy

Have any good recommendations for me?

LOVED this

Last night I watched another documentary on Netflix, this one called "The Human Experience". It was a film about two brothers who had rough upbringings in New York City, who are trying to find the answers to life's fundamental questions "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" "Why is there suffering?" "What common threads of humanity link us together across cultures, race, and zip codes".

They spend a week in New York City in February living among the homeless. They spend time with the lost children in Peru (a segment I don't think any person could make it through without bawling) and then the film ends with them visiting a leper colony in Ghana. In between there is really uplifting and inspiring commentary by priests, rabbis, philosophers and humanitarians. The film also has plenty of happy joyful moments that provide a nice balance to all of the suffering that is shown.

The trailer kind of takes makes it look over the top cheesey, but it wasn't cheesey, it was so inspiring!

Definitely, definitely recommend.

I'm addicted want to jump inside your love

I think I need to do something to shake up my own life.

It's spring BREAK for crying out loud and I can barely come up with anything interesting to blog about.
But... I can't stop listening to this song: And I'm not usually a big fan of those guys.

So let's see... that's music. I've been on a big documentary kick lately. Netflix has so many great ones available instantly. I think Netflix is the best 10 dollars a month I spend. At least, if I am going to continue to be as anti-social as I have been lately. Neflix has informed me that I like "cerebral" documentaries. Here's what I've seen lately:

* Very Young Girls - which is about human trafficking in the United States. Not super uplifting as you can imagine, but pretty crazy to think about. When you think of girls being forced into prostitution, you think about young girls in Thailand but it happens in the US all the time. In the US, the average age a girl is caught up in that life is 13. Very disturbing, but informative.

* Exit Through the Gift Shop - all about street art. Really good. Highly recommend.

* Confessions of a Superhero - this one was just okay. It's about 4 people who dress up as characters on Hollywood Blvd. (I've never been to Hollywood Blvd, but they do the same thing in NYC, basically panhandling in exchange for a picture). It was a little too long and the camera work kind of made me sick to my stomach in some scenes.

* Easy A - that one wasn't a documentary, but I really liked it. The writing was very clever. It was sort of a modern take on The Scarlet Letter, a book I am actually pretty familiar with. I had it as a summer reading book the summer before my senior year. I bought the Cliff's Notes and had absolutely no intention of reading it. My mom was not having that though and she would corner me daily and make me lay on the couch while she read me a chapter of it. It's not like, one of my top favorite books or anything, but I am happy that we did read it.

* In the spirit of full disclosure, I have also watching at 22 episodes of Glee that are available. This is very hypocritical after all of the smack I have talked on Glee. I still maintain it is an overrated show with pretty bad acting and ridiculous plot lines. Honestly, I fast forward a lot of the musical scenes because they are just so dumb. Anyways, I have been suckered into a few of the plot lines, so last Saturday after Isaac went to his dad's I sat on the couch and finished off all of the episodes.

Still in my queue: Freakonomics, The Business of Being Born and Tupac and Biggie. Also, I have had Waiting for Superman on my counter for more than a month, but I can't make myself watch it just yet. I'm at about my limit for criticisms of teachers for the time being.

That's all for now. Happy Easter!

the cheese inspectors beat the crap out of us

Day 2 - Favorite Movie Again, how do you choose just one? Well this is one of my favorites. I just love it. It's very weird. Which is part of it's appeal. (Also, yes, it is about a guy and a sex doll, but there is nothing sexual or inappropriate about it).

What's your favorite movie?

Despicable Me

Was awarded six thumbs up by me, Isaac and my mom. I liked it even better than Toy Story. Check it out!

Movie Reviews

Avatar

• Visually stunning. 3d effects were really cool. But the storyline was cliche (white man goes native) and full of holes, the dialogue was cheesey and the whole thing (pushing three hours) was unbearably long. I took a 40 minute nap in the middle of it and didn't really miss anything.

Sherlock Holmes

• Saw this with my sister and parents and I wasn't really sure what to expect. There was lots of action which wasn't really how Holmes was in the books but also a lot of witty dialogue which kept me engaged (I have a very low tolerance for action). RDJ played him just right and Jude Law kept me salivating.

Alvin and the Chipmunks - The Squeak-quel

• I thought it this very cute. Isaac loved it and I'm sure sooner or later I'm sure we will add this one to our DVD collection. I predict a third Chipmunks movie.

Almost Famous

• Yeah, I know I'm pretty late on this one. I just saw this recently and really liked it. My friend recommended it as his "all time favorite movie". I don't know if I would take it that far. It did have a fanastic soundtrack and it did sort of make me want to travel the country in a big tour bus.

Sherlock Holmes

Fantastic movie. Go see it!

Interesting...

As expected...

New Moon was total and complete drivel. I knew what I was getting into having read the book. Bella was equal parts annoyingly helpless and viciously heartless to Jacob (and a dash of horrible acting) and has a habit of going cross eyed every time she is in a tight shot. Edward actually managed to not come across as much as an abusive boyfriend as he does in the book. As in Twilight, his lipstick is so dark and obvious it is distracting. The music was loud and melodramatic. But I still give this movie two thumbs ups. I give this movie TWO ALL CAPS THUMBS UP!!!! (with exclamations). I give this movie TwO aNnOyInGlY CaPiTaLiZeD tHuMbS Up!!! And that is because for most of the movie you are treated to this lovely sight: A closer look... and from the side...

I don't think there is much I can type that can adequatley express my appreciation for the fact that he is shirtless for 80% of the movie. I can definitely put up with Kristen Stewart's heavy breathing and overacting if it means more Jacob time.