things swirling around in my brain right now:

1. Susan is almost 7 hours into her drive. Suckerrrr. Except it's really cool that she's moving so far away, and I'm going to miss her.
2. I need to reply to Didi and Wendy, but I have so much I want to tell them, so I don't know where to begin.
3. I left my phone in Matt's car which simultaneously sucks and is awesome.
4. Whoa. I'm starting school in 3 weeks.
5. I'm SO excited to spend my afternoon reading English Journal (There's an article called "Teaching Ethnography: Reading the World and Developing Student Agency." And how good does, "Walking the Talk: Examining Privilege and Race in a 9th Grade Classroom" sound? So good.)
6. I also continue to be enthralled with How to Interpret Literature. Just about to head into the chapter on Marxist theory. Yessssss.
5. I want to make a poster for my classroom that asks these questions that I found in an EJ interview with Linda Christensen, social justice educator extraordinaire:

key questions:
Who benefits?
Who's marginalized?
Why is a practice fair or unfair? How could it be different?
What kind of society would I like to live in, and how could I get there?

6. Bobbie Fein is so cool and hilarious.
7. How the hell am I going to pull off this move next weekend with no vehicle?
8. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I don't want to pack.
9. The Cranberries are so underrated.
10. I wonder when Michael's coming home.
11. I hope my teaching certificate comes in the mail soon. Really soon.
12. I am so happy I started using Google Reader.
13. I'm feeling a major life shift coming on, and I don't really know how to feel about it.
14. I don't know what to do with myself right now.
15. I want someone to tell me what to do with myself right now.
16. How can I justify showing Do the Right Thing in my World Studies classes? Can I?
17. I want to start reading Sherman Alexie's blog, but it's overwhelming. I don't know where to begin.
18. Wouldn't it be cool if there was a way to quickly inject all of the thinking that happens when you read something into you so that you could "have" all the reading that you want to "have." Except that you don't "have" reading; you read. It has to be a process, and it has to be an effort, otherwise we wouldn't even think it was cool, and we certainly wouldn't want to be injecting ourselves with something uncool. Now would we?
19. I've probably been called "Ms. Burrito" for the last time. Sad. I hope the kids arrive safely back in Texas this weekend.
20. Whenever I'm having a bad day, I think I'll look at this:

Brotherhood 2.0

My big brother Johnny (Hi Johnny!) called me last night to tell me about a video he thought I should see since I had been making fun of him and my little brother Neil for their excessive excitement over the newest Harry Potter book.

But I'm intrigued by the video's opening, "Two Brothers, One Video Blog, 365 Days of Textless Communication." The two creators call their project Brotherhood 2.0. And their video messages to one another are hilarious. I especially like all the "in my pants" jokes. I can't help wondering, though, if this kind of communication is really satisfying for them, or if they actually miss each other. Yes, they're responding to each others videos, but it's with the knowledge that other people, and a lot of them, are watching them communicate. It's so un-intimate. I'm a big fan of YouTube and the kinds of things it can make possible, but as a way of keeping in touch, it seems sort of disjointed.

You know who's not a fan of You Tube? President Bush, apparently. In an article titled "Will the G.O.P. say No to YouTube?" TIME reports that many of the Republicans running for the presidential nomination have decided not to attend the Republican version of the YouTube-based debate in which the the Democratic hopefuls participated earlier this week. They think it's silly. "White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters that the President had not even watched, saying Bush was 'not big on YouTube debates.'" ...That cocky son-of-a-bitch. Too cool for those new-fangled technological advances, Mr. Bush? Especially those that allow real people to ask presidential candidates their real questions? Shocking.

Anyway, I'm leaving Mobile now, and I have some new close friends to keep in touch with. Maybe I'll give this "Textless Communication" stuff a shot before I decide how I feel about it.