today

1. 

2.  Today is the last day my parents have a land line.  My Dad is taking the number as his cell phone number.  For some reason, I'm really tripping on that.

alternatively...

There's the advice that my Dad has oft delivered in my times of need: "Fuck the fucking fuckers."

I mean, do these look like people who give a fuck?

"please god don't let someone come outside right now." "please god let someone!"

Last night as Jess and I were about to get out of the car after dinner, Delilah played The Pretenders' "I'll Stand By You." So we didn't get out of the car. She turned off the engine and the lights and turned up the volume and we sat there in the dark behind our apartment building singing.

It reminded me of a time about twelve or so years ago when I was coming home from somewhere with my Dad. It was nighttime that time, too, and we pulled into the garage just as Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" came on the radio. We did then exactly what Jess and I did last night.

Weird parallel memories. Not afraid to admit to liking both of those songs.

(This video is ridiculous, by the way. Ridiculous but awesome.)

brain is on overload

I'm pretty excited for school to start. I've been working in my classroom a lot -- setting up, selecting materials, making copies, writing plans, trying to be preemptive about dealing with the annoying parts of teaching like constantly having to catch up kids who have been out the day before. More pleasant has been skimming back over the stuff I've read this summer in preparation for trying something new with writing instruction, and getting re-energized with all of the good ideas I came across and now get to try out with Real Live Teenagers.

So far I've had the seemingly compulsory:
"How's your summer been?"
"Pretty good! How's yours?"
"Oh, great. Too short of course. Ha. Ha. Ha."
conversation quite a few times this week. So boring. I wonder if every workplace is as riddled with this conversation as mine is. During the school year, it happens every Monday, and has a hyper-presence after any 3- or 4-day weekend or fall or spring break. I've also had some genuinely-happy-to-see-you conversations with colleagues I know a little better and really like.

I want to start a The Wire watching group that gets together twice a month or something and watches a couple episodes and then discusses over beers or coffee or pizza or caramels. I suppose Kasey, Jessica, and I could do this but (1) Kasey and I pretty much agree on everything besides the relative importance of Americorps, and (2) Jessica would think it was boring. Maybe there's one on campus.

I'm actually looking forward to cashiering for Dump and Run this weekend. (And anybody in town -- if anyone is still reading this -- should come and spend cash money. Lots of cool stuff this year.) Doing so reminds me of the Saturdays and weeknights I used to spend working with my Dad in the concession stand at St. Laurence High School football and basketball games. All the hotdogs with delicious just-add-water onions I could eat.

boring, boring, WHAT?

I asked my dad for some advice regarding flex something or other that I keep hearing about at work. An excerpt from his response:

In your case, because you are generally healthy you may not want to participate in the Flexible Spending Health plan unless you know that there will be certain predictable health care outlays during the next year. For example if you know you want new glasses or contacts, or if you want your nose shrunken down to a normal size in the next year you have to try to determine how much your insurance will cover for these procedures so you know how much you will be out of pocket.

Michael's the one with the big nose, Dad!

"When people get married, they should prepare for dying," Delaney said.

My Uncle Bob is home from his post in Poland with the State Department and is staying with my Grandma. He's been helping her go through all of her stuff, and shared with us at Christmas dinner an old San Antonio newspaper article called, "Body to Science Called Realistic Way to Go," featuring my Dad's Grandpa, Hubert Delaney. Here are my favorite excerpts:

Although Delaney certainly isn't against philanthropy or helping the field of medical science along, it wasn't basically philanthropy that led him to donate his body to medical science.

It was money.

Delaney reports that under the agreement his widow won't have any funeral or burial expenses in connection with his death. The medical school, he said, will pay all the costs of transportation and costs incident to the preparation of his body for the medical stint.

That can come to a sizable sum, Delaney avers. He pointed out that a body in a coffin costs double the fare in transportation rates.

Two factors primarily triggered Delaney to will his body to medicine. The best-selling "The High Cost of Dying" started him thinking, and a short stint as a cemetery lot salesman after his retirement transferred his thoughts into action.

...

"I listened to salesman sell people cemetery lots in the shade, and I wondered what difference it could make after you're dead," Delaney observes.

But Delaney admits he had been thinking of ways of beating the undertaker long before he took the medial school route. Seven years ago when he and his wife took a cruise from New Orleans to Europe aboard a freighter with no doctor aboard, he told her if he died enroute, he wanted "to be sewn in a canvas and thrown overboard."

"I told her I didn't want to be carted around the world dead in a freighter," Delaney reports.

A Catholic, Delaney reports he checked out his after-death plans with his parish priest and that it has his okay.

"When people get married, they should prepare for dying," Delaney said.

...

Delaney didn't make any points with his personal physician when he suggested after his (Delaney's) death that the doctor go by and see what mistakes he had been making, if any, in his treatment.

"I just thought it might teach him something," Delaney chortles.

Pretty funny stuff. There's also a type-writer produced letter he wrote to my Grandma and her sister. The best part:

I have been writing to congressman, senators, and influential people all over the country asking them to pressure Congress to put a limit ON THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ASSETS THAT ANY ONE PERSON MAY HAVE AT ANY ONE TIME IN HIS LIFE WHETHER THAT LIMIT IS ONE MILLION OR FIFTY MILLION JUST SO SOME LIMIT IS SET. It may be raised or lowered as seen fit. As to birth control I am for quality control. Anyone contemplating marriage should submit his health record and if his or his family record shows any incurable diseases, insanity, or pronounced physical defects he must submit to an operation so he or she could not bring children in the world so I am with the Pope on birth control. I might add the latter suggestion of mine was published in the paper here and some guy called me Hitler and Kay told me if he hadn't she would have so you know how she stands."