Senioritis: Not just for Americans anymore

I'm supposed to teach the 5A twice a week, Monday and Wednesday. I see them approximately every other week, as it works out. I'm actually supposed to be there right now, but as half of them have decided to stay home and the other half is watching a project presentation in the library, I'm sitting in front of the computer instead.

When I was in high school, I started having senioritis in the middle of my sophomore year. This is because the majority of my friends were seniors, I was taking a couple of senior classes, and above all, I disliked high school intenesely. I did everything I could to get out of class, from joining the speech team to claiming I needed an extra period to take classes at the local college. I tried to skip over classes entirely (something the administration was not so thrilled about—and actually remains bitter about to this day, I found out recently), and I started looking at colleges. My attitude was, "Get me out of here as quickly as possible."

My kids aren't really doing it the way I did it. They're mostly doing the classic senioritis, and as a teacher, I want to smack them and say, "You're not graduated yet, you know."

Guess that explains why my teachers were so impatient with me in my last two years of school.

Maybe it was just because it was late and I was tired

These jokes seriously cracked me up when my sister called and told me them last night at midnight:

1. Why does Snoop Dogg carry an umbrella?

Fo' drizzle.

2. What does Snoop Dogg use when he does his laundry?

Ble-atch.

Broccoli chic

I actually have a lot to tell you, but I'm still sorting it out in my head, so I'll just give you a run down of what happened yesterday at lunch.

Stefan, who normally sits at my table, and Philipp, who normally does not, decided it would be a good idea to build a tower on the table out of plastic cups. This left us without anything to drink out of, but they were unconcerned.

Anyway, things were all peachy keen until, in the middle of eating our broccoli cream soup, somebody from the first table threw yet another plastic cup at the tower, scattering cups with an impressive amount of noise, considering. Of course, a good number of the cups landed in soup bowls, and Stefan ended up with broccoli cream soup on his sweater. I was less than sympathetic.

Then an argument broke out over who was and was not a virgin, and the cup incident was forgotten.

Dear Women of Vienna:

It is not, under any circumstances, acceptable to wear track pants with high heels. Even if they are satin track pants.

Which brings me to my second point. It is not acceptable to own satin track pants.

Love,
Good Taste

Okay, at this point it's stopped being funny

Yeah, that's the third damned pair of slippers in a month. I'm going to booby trap the next pair, and then we'll see who's an idiot.

Spring is here! La la la la la la!

It's 75° here. Especial thanks go to my friend Sabine, who brought on this heatwave by painting her toenails last week.

Mostly I wanted to bring to your attention this article about introverts, which I find to be hilarious in the extreme. "For introverts, to be alone with our thoughts is as restorative as sleeping, as nourishing as eating. Our motto: 'I'm okay, you're okay—in small doses.'"

Mental midgetry, alive and well

To the ass clown who stole my new €0.79 pair of slippers:

Why? If you were so desperate for slippers, I would have given you a Euro to go buy your own pair. Gah!

Cold boiled potatoes: a sign of a healthy intellect

Today I'd like to explain to you the phenomenon that is Austrian salad.

When you eat in an Austrian restaurant, most entrees come with salad. This is not, however, your tame American iceberg-lettuce-and-ranch-dressing concoction.

Austrian salad comes on a salad plate, but that about ends its resemblance to anything you might find in the U.S. The plate is piled high with items that are only vaguely related to salad, including cold boiled potatoes, pickled red (or sometimes white) cabbage, cold corn kernals, shredded carrots, cucumber slices, tomato crescents and perhaps stuffed into a little wedge in between all that, a few leaves of romaine lettuce. Then the whole thing is covered with some sort of tangy dressing that resembles oil and vinegar but isn't, and you sort of look at it and go, okay, the chef was cleaning out the refridgerator, wasn't he.

I actually think the whole thing is some sort of disguised personality test: people who don't eat the cabbage are reserved, unadventurous, people who don't eat the lettuce are bold and refuse to comply with traditional boundaries, etc. I don't eat the tomatoes and the cucumbers, which means I'm intelligent and refuse to do things against my will, like eat gross stuff.

Notes from the weekend

Can it please stop snowing before I go insane? Six inches twice in one week is really just more than enough, thanks. Where was this snow in December? I wish it would go back there, frankly.

To whoever stole my house shoes: when I find you, I'm going to beat you to death with them.

I watched Schuh des Manitu last night. It's a parody of old western films, somewhat in the style of Blazing Saddles, but funnier. Why is it funnier? Two words: Flaming. Indian.

You wouldn't think that an Irish pub in eastern Austria would be the best place to get hot chocolate, but you'd be wrong.

How to get your bedroom to smell fantastic: buy 1/2 litre glass bottle of strawberry juice, drop it off window sill. Half-ass the clean up. You will cut both of your feet on minescule overlooked shards of glass, but the room will smell like strawberries for weeks.

Things that will never fail to make me laugh:

The beginning of “Easy (Like Sunday Morning)” where the singer says “Bring the lights down…this is for all the ladies in the house,” in this pseudo-pimp voice

The fat bird/fat guy comment my brother made five years ago, as recounted by me

Jim Gaffigan’s manatee voice

When Tex forwards me emails with his own sarcastic comments added at the top

My students’ inability to differentiate between w and v

The bit at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean where Johnny Depp says, “Well, I think we’ve all reached a very special place here: spiritually…ecumenically…gramatically.”

Bobble-head Jesus (especially the one at JMP, who has a Cornhuskers sticker on his toga-thing and is constantly trying to convert our bobble-head Houston Rockets)

My mom when she complains about the Bedazzler her mother got her for Christmas at some point in the eighties

Applying the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” to the French

The fact that some words in German can have three of the same letters in a row since the new writing reform. Example: Schifffahrt (boat ride).