FBI and your Mama

You can breath easy now, my FBI file went through. I just got a letter from ucla letting me know that my "background check for professional and personal fitness for supervised fieldwork in the public school system has been cleared through the Department of Justice and the FBI."

As if they were going to find anything. "Ooops, she broke into the campus jacuzzies after hours freshman year. She obviously is not fit to teach."



In other news, I got the new Kanye West CD and it rocks. I love how he decided that it was time to release his Mama song. That's how you know you've made it big -- 'stead a bein' aSHAME of yo' Mama, you done sing 'bout her to da worl', LOUD.

daylight savings

I was fairly certain that I didn't enjoy the increasing morning darkness as I woke up, got dressed, and started driving to school. HOWEVER, the sun setting just after lunchtime is even more obnoxious.

the big apple pie

I can't believe that this story was in The New York Times, and not The Onion:

GOOD SMELL PERPLEXES NEW YORKERS

An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome.

"It's like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes," he said. "It's pleasant."

The odor had followed Mr. Padilla and his friend along their walk in Lower Manhattan, from a dormitory on Fulton Street, to Pace University on Spruce Street, and back down again, to where they stood now, near a Dunkin' Donuts. Maybe it was from there, he said. But it wasn't.

Mr. Padilla was not alone. Reports of the syrupy cloud poured in from across Manhattan after 9 p.m. Some feared that it was something sinister.

There were so many calls that the city's Office of Emergency Management coordinated efforts with the Police and Fire Departments, the Coast Guard and the City Department of Environmental Protection to look into it.

By 11 p. m., the search had turned up nothing harmful, according to tests of the air. Reports continued to come in from as far north as 112th Street shortly before midnight. In Lower Manhattan, where the smell had begun to fade, it was back, stronger than before, by 1 a.m.

"We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there's nothing hazardous," said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. "What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don't know."

There were conflicting accounts as to its nature. A police officer who had thrown out her French vanilla coffee earlier compared it to that. Two diplomats from the Netherlands disagreed, politely. Rieneke Buisman said it smelled like roasted peanuts. Her friend Joris Geeven said it reminded him of a Dutch cake called peperkoek, though he could not describe that smell.

By KAREEM FAHIM

Published: October 28, 2005

roommates

behaviors and incidents which completely exasperate me:

• the fact that we just got ants again in our kitchen, yet when I arrived home tonight to an empty apartment there was a half peeled banana and cooked yam sitting on the counter
• the fact that we purchased and set up a basket for mail and a coat/purse rack next to the front door, yet there are constantly jackets and handbags and mail on the couches, coffee table, and dining room table
• the fact that the other toilet was broken all last week so we were all using the little bathroom ("mine") and for some inexplicable reason, the sink surface was continuously covered in puddles of water, as though one roommate had decided to bathe standing up, leaning over the bowl
• the fact that crickets linger on our front stoop waiting for any opportunity to jump inside (and hop into my bedroom), yet the door is frequently left agape when retrieving laundry or talking on the cell in the driveway
  

a family correspondence

MOTHER: Now the question is, who is the only one among us with a very old pillow? Isn't it you, my sweet clean child?
-Mums


DAUGHTER: I THREW THAT PILLOW AWAY A YEAR AGO AS SOON AS I NOTICED DUST COMING OUT OF IT, sweet, clean mother.
(When I sent this, I was thinking of Daddy's hard-as-a-rock pillow.)


MOTHER: I threw Daddy's sandbag pillow away about two years ago! It is true that I broached the subject gingerly, every other month or so for several years, and your father always grumbled in response that he liked it, but he finally gave in and let me toss it. Now I buy new pillows about every year and a half or so. The thing is, whatever I reject, Aaron gleefully grabs and adds it to the many on his bed.


OBLIVIOUS FATHER: This made me laugh...I had a pillow from camp ramah in canada that I loved and had it for years and years. It was incredibly comfortable. Mommy hated it, I think.
-XOXO Daddy


CALLOUS AND UNCARING DAUGHTER: HAHAHAHAHA Daddy's take on the old, hard pillow.

MOTHER'S RESPONSE: His email is really funny!!

a short list of things that have changed my life for the better

1. Reefs
2. The Pill
3. Costco's balsamic vinegar

Backstreet's back, alright!

Remember back in the day during USY regional when we were all waiting outside the ballroom for the doors to open and our dance to begin, and we started the entire five-hundred teenager crowd singing Backstreet Boys' "I Want it that Way?" And remember how everyone knew the words and at the chorus our voices joined together to demand, "TELL ME WHY?" This will bring you back.


ps Check out the boy's cast. Awesome.