I live in LA, which is famous not just for its celebrities, but also its traffic.  It's the only city in the world where people consider needing to drive more than 2 miles to work a commute because it will probably take 30+ minutes, and that's only if you avoid rush hour.

Lately, Lex has been expressing disbelief that we (people) are still driving cars at all.  He thinks technology should have already allowed for cars to drive themselves.  I'd imagine that the right to privacy activists will probably fight this one off for a while; if the cars are driving themselves, then somewhere there is a computer that will know where we are going at all times.  Fortunately for Lex, The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is leading the way in the development of autonomous vehichles - and paying quite a pretty penny for it.  I knew I should have gone to MIT. 

Word of the Day:

heirloom (noun) - a valued article handed down from generation to generation

What a day! 

I started off kind of bummed over some personal stuff I won't get into here.  Went off to work, same old, same old.  Had a nice chat with my mom this morning - I love her so much! - so that kind of lifted me back up and made me happy.  The kids came to school, and we actually got to all parts of my lesson plan for Language Arts, so that made me happy, but then things were a bit difficult for my Reading group, so we ended a little behind.  That happens sometimes, so I wasn't too bummed.  I got my students ready to line up for lunch and then stepped into the hall to ask another teacher a question.  When I came back one of my students was throwing a tantrum that eventually involved him grabbing my arms in an attempt to drag me down the hall.  Kind of a bummer.  He's only 82 lbs., so not too much physical damage to me, but any aggressive incident means lots of cumbersome paperwork.  Lunch was great - one of the other teachers and I set up this great Social Studies project for our kids to work on later - so I was happy about that.  Social Skills and Math were without incident.  Science was kind of tough due to student behaviors - bummer -  at the beginning, but half of my group got pulled out for independent services, so I let the two I had left catch up on some assignments while I wrote the incident report from earlier - definitely happy to get that out of the way.  Social Studies came around, we got the project going and it was fairly successful, but then one of the students (thankfully not mine) got really frustrated and threw a calculator at me, hitting me in the stomach - big bummer, it HURT!  More paperwork, of course.  The kids went home soon, yadda yadda yadda, I eventually left work and drove through traffic to my evening masters program class (which is a constant bummer, but we won't get into that here) and then I found as I walked into the classroom that it was cancelled!  Though I was bummed that I had driven there in the first place, I was so happy that I didn't have to spend 3 hours listening to the idiocy that is a constant factor of my program.  Plus, now I get to spend the evening with Lex (if he'd ever get home from work) and Charlie!  Definitely happy.

I hope tomorrow is a little more constant!  I don't particularly like rollercoasters, emotional or otherwise

(I realized the above is not quite true - I actually do enjoy many rollercoasters.  Ah, well.  I can't even spell Britney.  Clearly I make mistakes.)

Word of the Day:

My darling husband Lex is an addict.  He cannot get enough of it.  He cannot stop, even when he has a bad experience with it.  He cannot admit that he has not gained pleasure from it.

 I'm talking about television, of course.

 Yes, Lex is a television addict.  He loves to watch TV, and this time of year is especially hard for him, what with all of the new shows coming out.  To his credit, he also reads a lot.  And I'm so proud of him - he finally cancelled the TiVo season pass to Seven Days after 6 horrendous episodes, and he was able to turn off Twins after the first five minutes!

Even with our two TiVos, he still can't manage to record everything he wants to watch.  He needs our support to let go of bad TV - it just doesn't come easy to him.  Let him know you're there for him, and that it's okay to let go.  Admitting the problem exists is the first step!

LOVE YOU, LEX!!!!!!! 

I saw The 40-Year-Old Virgin last night (check out my review!) with Lex, my friend Heather, and her boyfriend Matt.  After our 7:15 showing concluded, we discussed what to do next, and since none of us had eaten dinner, we thought, "Hey, let's eat!" (How bizarre is it that we share a collective consciousness?)  Eating out with friends can often be a bit of a challenge, because I keep very strictly kosher, and apparently most other people don't 

 There happens to be a kosher Chinese/Persian restaurant called Kabob and Chinese near Heather and Matt's apartment, and since all of the other kosher restaurants are further away, we decided to go there.  Lex looked up the phone number on his Blackberry and called.  He got a recording that said the number had been changed, call this number instead, so he did, and they were open, so off we went. 

 Lex and I arrived first, somewhat confused; we couldn't find the restaurant.  Heather and Matt joined us shortly.  We finally realized that the restaurant was not there; it had closed!  Who had we spoken to on the phone - was it the Ghost of Restaurants Past?  No, it turns out the recording had directed us to the other branch of the restaurant, the one that's with all of the other further away kosher restaurants.  Apparently they didn't feel it was important to alert callers to this fact on their recording.  So in the end, we had to drive down to the far away Koshertown after all, and we learned the true meaning of the Kosher spirit.  G-d bless us, everyone.