Squee!!!!!

For some reason, getting through the first part of the day was like trying to cross Mass Ave wearing a thick, wet Indian blanket. I just could not get out of my own way. (Nor could I find the absolutely cricital folder of Important Stuff [tm] for the National Honor Society meeting).

Things got better . . .

1. Well, some kind soul did find said folder and put it in my mailbox (Huzzah for kind souls), and when the meeting did come, it went very well. I have a great group of kids, and they elected a great bunch of officers. (Yes, evilnicola, yet another boy president -- Matt Akre. Lana's the VP.

2. I got the following e-mail from the professor who ran our writing fellowship this summer:

Dear Bill,

I have just finished reading the large chunk of Premier Service that you completed for the Calderwood Initiative. It reads wonderfully, enlivened as it is by your natural writing voice and easy sense of humor. I think your group steered you in the right direction by urging you to begin with "A Day in the Life." That chapter does exactly what you promise it will: narrate and presage topics to come in later chapters. And even though the chapters you include here--III and VI--don't follow in order from the first, there is a feeling of continuity and building competence that gives one a sense of tremendous promise in the project as a whole.

Once your readers understand that you were a sports writer turned teacher and community service guru, they will especially enjoy the distinctive attitude you bring to your work and understand your success with these youngsters. Moreover, I think your saccharine-free enthusiasm will earn a reader's trust and offer alternatives to existing texts which I would guess rehearse all the platitudes about service in predictably tiresome ways.

I can sense the momentum you have gotten going here and I urge you to finish a draft of this book while you are still in touch with that energy--something that is very hard to recapture--but not impossible. It has been great fun working with you over the last year. My childhood was made happier by having a funny father and so, as I think you noticed, I am very comfortable around a table with a wise-cracking guy. We needed it; the Athenaeum needed it. And in the end, you produced a substantial piece of your book project that unmistakably stamps your goal as achievable. That and the Sox in the Bronx in first place--it's all good!

3. When I got home, there was a freshly delivered copy of "Pretty Little Dead Girls" by "Seanan McGuire and Friends." Check it out here . . .

Favorite lyrics, you ask:

From "I Am (The Doppelganger's Song)":

I am . . . Honey on a razorblade . . .

From Vampire Slayer’s Blues:

I can’t find a boyfriend, I keep,
Keep breaking my dates.
On my last Career Day, my
Results came back ‘minion of fate’.
There’s no retirement,
And you’ve never paid your dues.

I have been chided ;)

My sweet housemate, hawkegirl, met me at the door this afternoon and gave me, "The Look," then told me "We need to talk."

Remember, it's *her* house I live in. ;)

I thought to myself "I swear I put the toilet seat down."

Nah, it was worse than that.

As those of you who read her journal already know, her kids wanted to listen to "Liam Music," so she pulled down some Arrogant Worms and Great Big Sea.

Apparently, her son's favorite lyrics are the same as mine, and come from the Worms' classic, "I am Cow."

Emphasis his:

I am Cow, eating grass
Methane gas comes out my ass
And out my muzzle when I belch
Oh, the ozone layer is thinner
From the outcome of my dinner

And she muttered something about the two-year-old saying, "I like hockey. Heh. Heh. Heh."

I am really, really thankful she didn't find "Use of the F-Word in Canada."

Post The Third

1. What's longer? Serenity or a Boeing 747? Answer here

2. By the way, thanks to the ever-lovely alethea_eastrid, I know have all five seasons of B5 available for my summer entertainment. I have finished Season 4, which is mine, and I am gonna start on Season 5, which, like the rest of them, is hers.

3. Arrrggggghhhhhhhhhh. I just checked the score. We are so hosed.

4. Like many of my friends, I am rather peeved at the whole DOMA thing, especially the whole, "We're doing it for the children baloney).

Follow me here: A woman and a man, together, are excellent parents. So women are excellent parents and men are excellent parents.

It follows, unless women are super-excellent and men suck or vice versa, that two men together or two women together would do just as great a job as a man and a woman.

Need I start linking to all the horrific child abuse perpetrated by heterosexual married couples? Bah!

This one's about high schools . . .

All news stories from the Greater Boston area in the last few days


( This one's strange . . .  )

( This one teaches a lesson . . .  )

( This one is kinda scary . . .  )

( This is kind of depressing . . .  )

( This one is *really* depressing . . .  )

Now, my thought is this: On the TV show Boston Public, all of these things would have happened at the same school in the same day.