So I call the first person on my tutoring list to set up a session.

I couldn’t talk to the parent because of language barriers, and the kid didn’t know what I was talking about.

It’d be nice if I knew what I was talking about. So I dropped an email to hopefully get some answers.

1. Pan’s Labyrinth
2. Royal Tenenbaums
3. Cold Mountain
4. Kill Bill 1+2
5. Howl’s Moving Castle
6. Donnie Darko
7. Whale Rider
8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
9. Batman Begins
10. The Prestige
11. Unbreakable.
12. 28 Days Later
13. Nacho Libre
14. Shaun of the Dead
15. Kung Fu Hustle
16. House of Flying Daggers
17. Constantine
18. The Illusionist
19. O Brother Where Art Thou
20. Lord of War
21. Lord of the Rings Series
22. Hero
23. Cowboy Bebop
24. Flyboys
25. Brotherhood of the Wolf
26. Bubba Ho Tep
27. The Score
28. Pirates of the Caribbean
29. A History of Violence
30. Warriors of Heaven and Earth

Discuss amongst yourselves.

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO ME!

to tea. Specifically Green Tea, Tazo zen blend. I started feeling sick on Monday of last week, and heard that green tea was beneficial for clearing that up.

And since the coffee is horrendous at Pacifica(but it’s free) I tried a few glasses of green tea there(it was some off brand) each day. Now I”m addicted.

I had received some Green Tea for christmas and despaired over ever drinking it, because at the time I couldn’t stand tea. It tasted like sewage water, and I wasn’t having any of it.

Now, though, I’m up to two glasses of tea a day(on top of my coffee habit). It still tastes like sewage water, but it’s a nice balance to the sweetness of my coffee(I add creamer and sugar), but the tea is straight up boiling water and tea. And I like the smell of the tazo stuff.

Any other tea that I should try?

I can’t believe that I’m drinking so much sewage water.

A graveyard shuts down when an advertising scheme for Dr. Pepper brought a bunch of different people.

I’m starting to think maybe Boston has a problem with advertisers?

So I begin tutoring in March for these folks.

It’s the kind of job I was looking for last october.

Oh well, things come in their own time.

Minnesota taxes are back.

So tonight I get chewed out by one of the parents at the job.

She’d been having issues with paying the bill for as long as I’ve worked there, and this is the second time in less than a week that she’s blown up. The problem is the database that is being used(why a database? why not pencil and paper? because technology makes things easier, duh!) and she doesn’t understand it, employees working there for more than a year don’t understand it, and that just makes it more irritating when she needs an explanation of why money is owed.

So she unloads on the nearest representative of the business.

This happens, in almost every job I work at. This isn’t going to be a “Oh God, why does this happen to me” post, however. I do enough of that weeping into my beer.

No, it’s instances like these that help me understand a small part of why I need to either teach or own a business. That way I can take responsibility. As it stood tonight, I couldn’t say much. The best I could do was to say “Look, I understand your problem. this is irritating, but the most I can do is say once you’re paid up tonight, you’re paid up until the next time your child is brought in”(which was more or less true(and for the 2 or 3 bucks that she may hav owed extra, the boss could take out of my check)), and I told her I’d tell the boss exactly that.

But in instances like that, or when patients have to wait at a hospital, or when customers can’t understand why their pictures didn’t turn out exactly like they should have…all of these I’d have no problem with if I had anything to do with formulating the situation in the first place. But my hands are tied by the situation that I’m working in. I have no power.

I can make things better, if I’m given enough responsibility to make things wrong in the first place. That’s what teaching offers, that’s what owning your own business offers…the chance to own up to problems and say “yes, I made them this way” and then either stick to your guns or make things right.

But a problem pops up that I can’t FIX or had nothing to do with CREATING, and my hands are tied by both? That just irritates the living shit out of me.

I can’t offer a working solution to a problem that I didn’t have anything to do with in the first place, and which I don’t have the power to change in the future.

I’ll take responsibility for any failures that I’ve made, but don’t make me take it for things that I’m not given the ability to fix.

of class meetings left. That’s 10 more papers, including my two incompletes.

The light at the end of the tunnel is so bright that you can actually taste it.

yes, it’s that time of year again.

This year I’m giving up World of Warcraft.

I’ve got too much to do between now and next session at pacifica for me to be playing that.

I really really like Turbotax software. it’s painless, and it’s quick.

he was in an episode of Eerie, Indiana.

bwahaha, what a dork.

That’s how I blogged everyday for the last 5 months of 2006 to win $17.68

$10 or which was the entry fee, so in all actuality, I only earned 7.68.

Overworked and underpaid. A metaphor for adult life.

You know you’re eating something spicy when tobasco sauce tastes nice and cool.

let me explain:

So I make chow mein, the canned kind because I’m lazy. But instead of just rice, I put the rice on a plate, sprinkle on some curry, some onion powder, and a lot of dried mustard. Then I sprinkle on some drops of tobasco, and pour on soy sauce. I mix it all together, and put the chow mein on top of it.

Let me tell you, the mustard is INSANE. It makes the tobasco sauce seem nice and cool.

Bizarre? Yes, but oh so tasty.