Something’s fishy
[ 4 Comments ] Posted on 10.30.04 in IB, friends
Today I went to lunch with some folks from my alma mater, John F. Kennedy Middle School. Ying organized it so that we could eat at Chili’s with my eighth grade Spanish teacher, Señora Segovia, and see the kid she left us for half of a year to have. I got to meet her mom, too. Nice folks – they sent pictures, too (though by the time Lucia’s grandmother took them, Kyle G, Caitlin, and Lauren had left).
On another note, I started the IB-required Group 4 Project today with Kyle B, Doug, and Zach. We were initially going to catch fish and put them into containers of varying population densities, but when the fish that we caught were about the same size as the food pellets that we bought, we decided that it would probably be best if we just bought the fish.
We went to the pet store and met the smartest fish man on God’s green earth. He told us what to do and how to get started and then rambled on into a fifteen minute speech about nitrates and nitrogen gas and ammonium and this and that to the point where I just stood there and said, “yeah” and “uh huh” for lack of a better, more educated response. I couldn’t put together my answers to his oration because I was so taken aback from his outrageous knowledge of everything to do with aquatic life. I think if there were an Olympic event in the subject, he would win the gold, silver, and bronze without any sort of contest.
Thank you, fish man. I will never forget you.
Two Quart Quandry
[ 4 Comments ] Posted on 10.27.04 in food
My priorities have recently become tragically skewed in a dilemma comprised of two entangling devotions.
Today, the lovely Ms. Lauren Parker instant messaged me with the oh-so-wonderful news that she had her first glass of eggnog of the new autumn season. Particularly excited about the fact that T.G. Lee has bestowed upon all of society the sweet nectar that is nog, I rushed to Publix to pay for my $3.69 half gallon jug of the essence of God.
But then I began to think as I stepped onto the scale in the store. Since summer, I lost 20 pounds. And because eggnog is particularly fattening and I love it, I reached this inevitable conflict of interests: do I disregard my outward appearance for the sake of the tastiness of the nog or do I watch my weight and drift daily through life depriving myself of my one true love of the winter months?
Oh, woe is me.
Memory Monster
[ 1 Comment ] Posted on 10.25.04 in random
The elbows are the dirtiest places on my body. The only rationale behind this assertion is that, because the skin on the elbow is continually stretched and constricted with arm movement, the skin forms little pockets of dirt that cannot be washed off without some pretty extensive lathering.
For the past three weeks, I’ve been telling myself, “Self, you must wash your elbows!”
I remind myself of this only when I am high and dry. It seems that whenever I step into the shower, I enter a realm of the supernatural. The only logical hypothesis is that some memory-draining, awareness consuming monster must live in the shower pit and is kept in its blue and white cage with only a thin sheet of plastic hanging from a rusty aluminum rod.
I’ve failed to remind myself to pay special attention to these spots every day for the better part of a month. My ‘bows have gotten so grungy, fellow classmates in Spanish class could today see the brown spots and took no hesitation in pointing them out to me. Thanks for the reminder, folks.
I’m hoping that consciously explaining my situation will raise public awareness (and lessen notions of my ill-hygiene) while at the same time wedging into my subconscious a command to abscond from the memory monster in my bathroom.