So I'm working on this cookbook that we're giving out as the favor at my niece's shower which is OH MY GOD IT'S IN TWO WEEKS AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M WEARING AND I DIDN'T GET HER A GIFT YET OR ORDER THE BALLOONS OR GET THE OTHER FAVORS WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME ... ahem. So I've been working on the cookbook.Something like 52 invitations were sent out. (I didn't make up the guest list, folks. I don't even believe in showers, bridal or baby. I just believe in my niece.) I suggested that people sending in recipes send me more than one, since it was unlikely that everyone would do it. I've got 30, which includes three each from me, the Sibs, and the Chum. Which is not a great turnout, but it's enough for a book. It looks like it's going to turn out cute. What's amazing me the most is how few people are better cooks than I am. I did get some excellent recipes -- less than 5 -- but some of those are my grandmothers' or mother's handed in by me or the Sibs. One person sent in something from the Food Network, and a bunch of people sent photocopies of pages from real printed cookbooks. Weird, huh? Apparently everybody's favorite family recipes these days really are everybody's favorites.
The SCM is going to be out tomorrow; he's having dental work. He hasn't been annoying me all that much lately, but a day without him is usually somewhat peaceful. And when one of us is out, the other one is automatically on the early shift, and since Wednesday is usually a late shift day for me, I'll get out earlier than usual. Which should also be nice. Turns out it was nice enough to walk after school today, but I didn't realize that until I was already out doing errands, but I'll see how tomorrow shapes up.
No plans for the traditional March 17 meal this year, since I'm not eating fatty stuff like corned beef and cabbage and heaven knows what R is even eating these days. Anyway, since it's her birthday, she's working early and then hanging out with friends in the evening. 24. I couldn't possibly have a 24 year old child, could I? The Colleague's daughter is due any minute now, and she's hoping for a St. Patrick's Day baby. Holy Full Circle, Batman.
I just went out and rented Babe, which I'm supposed to watch for someone's final presentation in my online class. I've never been interested in watching it, although I hear it's good. I am fed up with this class. There was really no need for this professor to come up with so many obscure and difficult to find films for us to watch. (Not Babe, that wasn't the professor's choice.) Get this, the next film we're supposed to see, according to the syllabus, is one of two versions of The Secret Garden, one from the forties and a Hallmark TV movie from the late eighties. The earlier one was impossible to get, and I got the other one on eBay, on VHS. I watched it -- it was horrendous -- and wrote up my whole assignment on it, because, you may recall, I was obsessed with getting all the assignments done as soon as I could. So this weekend, the genius professor emails us and says that oops, she meant the nineties film instead. We never needed to look for either of the earlier two, her mistake. Oh, crap. The film I watched was so awful that I can't even bear to watch another Secret Garden, let alone re-write my whole assignment. Even though this is the version I just happened to have before the class even started, because I picked it up cheap someplace so I had it. I tried watching the beginning of it but I just don't want to. And then there was the Nicholas Nickelby that she had us watch and then never even brought up again. Talk about living in your ivory towers. This is certainly the most expensive class I've ever taken that I never needed for anything, and turned out to be not quite as personally edifing as I'd hoped. Not entirely a disaster, but still.
A kid asked me in the library today why he couldn't get to websites on tattoos, and I told him it was because tattoos are repulsive and innappropriate for polite society and that it's disgusting for him even to be thinking about tattoos in school. (A kid I know well, with a good sense of humor.) Then I said it was the censorship-leaning filtering software on the network and so I can't do anything about it, and I showed him my tattoos. It doesn't come up often, but when it does, I always get an amazed look or two from the surrounding kids, hey, an old lady with tattoos! Heh.
