The Last Day of School

It is hard to believe that today was the kids' last day. I say hard to believe because it didn't feel like the last day of school. I'm not sure why it didn't. It may be because we had the kids all year and I am used to switching kids halfway through--I feel that since I didn't switch kids I'm only halfway through the year. It felt like a normal day.

I'm glad it felt like a normal day, though. The kids weren't crazy and the day went smoothly (except for the stinkbombs set off at the end of the day) and it ended as normal. I will admit that I did a happy dance at the end of the day--who couldn't after the year we have had? Honestly, these kids drove me crazy. I will miss a few of them, but, overall, I think my life will be much less complicated and stressful.

As I type this I realize I am not really in the mood to blog tonight--hence my overall lack of sarcasm and voice. I think I will wrap it up, curl up on the couch and watch a movie.

After all...it is the last day of school.

Today Show's Sizzling Summer Reads

As an English teacher and a general book freak I am always on the lookout for great book recommendations--especially for the summer (albeit short). I was watching the Today Show's weekend edition this morning and they did their Sizzling Top Ten Summer Reads. I wanted to share them with you. I have included the Today Show's summaries and added my thoughts in purple below the summary.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, spent more than 105 weeks on the Times list and has editions published in thirty-four countries to date. In his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, he takes us back to Afghanistan as he entwines the lives of his characters with the devastating events from the 1970's to the present. His characters guide us through the communist revolution, the Soviet occupation, the civil war under the mujahideen, the terrifying reign of the Taliban, the American invasion after 9/11, and the reconstruction since that time. It is a story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship and an indestructible love.

Hooray! I was waiting for his next novel. The Kite Runner was such a beautifully written novel that I was wondering if his writing style would be sustained through another work. I have high hopes that he will blow me away with this one as he did with the other.

The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants author delivers her first novel for adults in this summer read. It is the story of a beach-community friendship triangle among three young adults. Brashares takes us the town of Waterby, on Fire Island, and reminds us of the complexities that can arise when female friendship and young love all strike the same small group. Her plot twists carry us through the sting of friendship, the great ache of loss, and the complicated weight of family loyalty.

This intrigues me. She is mostly known for young adult works. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was a good story, but her style wasn't geared towards adults. I am interested to see if she can make the transition from young adult to actual adult fiction.

Drop Dead Beautiful by Jackie Collins
This is the 25th novel for bestselling author Jackie Collins. All 24 of her previous books have been New York Times bestsellers and many have been the basis for film or television miniseries. Collins is known for giving her readers an unrivaled insiders knowledge of the glamorous lives and loves of the rich and famous. In her newest novel, out June 26th, she re-introduces her readers to Lucky Santangelo, last seen in 1999's Dangerous Kiss. Lucky is proof that it's not always easy being rich, gorgeous, successful and a happily married mom, but Mafia princess turned Hollywood producer and real estate mogul again proves she is up to the challenge.

I will admit I have never read a Jackie Collins novel. I am not sure I will run out and get this--nothing against Jackie Collins--I just don't find the lives of the rich and famous all that interesting. It would be the last on my list of books to grab this summer. Now, if I stumble upon it and I can read it for free I may.

I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle
From the pen of a former Emmy award-winning writer and supervising producer of the The Simpsons, this book is an account of the 17 hours that take place after Denis Cooverman stands up to give his graduation speech, but instead uses the opportunity to announce his love for Beth Cooper. Beth, the head cheerleader, has only the vaguest idea who Denis is, but this homage to and deconstruction of classic teen movies reminds us all that we all once knew or were a "Beth" and a "Denis".

I will say that the fact this is written by one of the guys who did The Simpsons pushes me away from this one a little, but the concept is totally original. According to the guy who reviewed this on the Today Show, they get locked in the gym during graduation and that's when Denis proclaims his love. I will most likely check this one out due to the that fact that I feel I can relate to Denis: who hasn't had unrequited love?

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans
Fitted somewhere between horror and psychological drama, Evans' first novel explores the notions of demons - how real they are and how real we are able to make them. The novel opens in a New York therapist's office, where thirty-year-old George Davies is seeking help for a unique problem: He can't bring himself to hold his newborn son. Desperate to save his dwindling marriage and redeem himself as a father and a husband, George begins to delve into his childhood memories. From there readers become immersed in a world of demonology and subsequently themes of religion, psychology, and medieval history.

This will most likely be one of the first novels I read this summer. The reviewed said that Stephen King fans will love this book because it deals with psychological thriller themes. I am hoping that this novel is as good as the summary sounds.

Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon
Set in rural Vermont, Promise Not to Tell is Jennifer McMahon's chilling debut novel about a woman whose past and present collide when she returns to her small hometown to care for her aging mother on the same night a young girl is killed. The crime mirrors the murder of her childhood best friend who had been murdered in the Vermont woods thirty years earlier. The similarities of the crimes draw the stories protagonist, Kate, into the new investigation as she begins to realize old friends were never quite what they seemed, and the ghosts of her childhood are far from forgotten.

The plot seems a little redone (I think It by Stephen King anytime you deal with childhood trauma, etc.) Still, if McMahon can find a way to make the plot fresh this novel has great promise.

The Accidental by Ali Smith
Smith's last book, Hotel World, was the winner of the Whitbread Award for Best Novel and a Man Booker Prize Finalist. In her latest novel, Smith introduces her readers to Heather O'Neill, who plays Amber, a mysterious stranger who wangles her way into the lives of a vacationing English family spending the summer in a remote cottage. Her "accidental" encounter transforms the lives of four variously unhappy people. However, after a disturbing event, Amber is compelled to leave. The family is left to re-evaluate who they are post-Amber and to decide how to live with the changes she has brought about in them.

First, as an English teacher I have problems with the fact that accidental has no noun to refer to--it is an adjective, after all. That aside, the novel looks to be somewhat interesting. I am hoping it is not predictable or dry. Although it seems it could have a good plot, something tells me that I may walk away let down. Maybe not-who knows?

Damage Control: Women on the Therapists, Beauticians and Trainers who Navigate Their Bodies Various Authors Edited by: Emma Forrest
Traditionally, women share their secrets with their hairdressers. But what about their manicurists, masseurs, chi gong teachers, and tattoo artists? In Damage Control, women wax poetic about the experts and gurus who help them love themselves, sharing stories of everything from friendships born in the make-up chair to the utter dismay of a truly horrible haircut. In this book Minnie Driver finally meets a Frenchman who understands her hair . . . and tries to teach her not to hate it, Marian Keyes remembers the blow-dry that pushed her over the edge, Francesca Lia Block tells the ugly story of the plastic surgeon who promised to make her beautiful, and Rose McGowan explains why it's harder to be depressed when you're glamorous . . . and shows how it takes a village to transform from mere mortal to movie star.

Um...who cares? I guess I can't say that--many people are interested in what celebs think--I will not be reading this novel (er, book) this summer. Why? Because everyone has had a bad haircut (I once cut mine so short it looked like a boy's...and then I permed my bangs. That was a dark time for me), bad hairstyling experience (when I was a senior in high school I went to get my hair chemically straightened and the lady left the solution on too long and made my hair the consistency of straw)...and everyone has made friends in odd places (one of my best friends is my brother's ex-girlfriend). If celeb gossip is for you then I guess you would like this book--I just don't think it would be for me.

Poolside by Various Authors
A waterproof collection of fourteen stories about the satisfactions (and tribulations) of learning to swim, making huge splashes, and just floating, among other aquatic pursuits. The book includes stories from bestselling and highly regarded authors including: John Cheever, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, A.M. Holmes, Amy Bloom and David Foster Wallace. You can read it by the pool, in the pool, or even in the bathtub.

Amazing! A waterproof book. How often have I been in the tub and accidentally gotten my book wet? More times than I can count. And this book is really waterproof--they had it in a baby pool on the Today Show and they fished it out and it was fine. This book may be worth getting just to repeatedly throw it into the water to amaze your friends!

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
McEwan is the author of two collections of stories and ten previous novels, including Enduring Love, Atonement, Saturday and Amsterdam, for which he won the Booker Prize for in 1998. His newest book is set in July of 1962. Florence is a talented musician who dreams of a career on the concert stage and of the perfect life she will create with Edward, an earnest young history student at University College of London, who unexpectedly wooed and won her heart. Newly married that morning, both virgins, Edward and Florence arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their worries about the wedding night to come. Edward, eager for rapture, frets over Florence's response to his advances and nurses a private fear of failure, while Florence's anxieties run deeper: she is overcome by sheer disgust at the idea of physical contact, but dreads disappointing her husband when they finally lie down together in the honeymoon suite. On Chesil Beach is a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

A virgin bride and groom? What a new concept! Novels this day and age have everyone sleeping with everyone else--what a change to have the two main characters be a little different. Granted, it is 1962, but still...I think I will check this one out.

There you have it--The Today Show's list. How many can you read this summer? Or, if you have read a few, what did you think? Let me know.

The Blahs

Today was not a good day. Every last thing got on my nerves and I am just cranky (Cranky Librarian I am taking your adjective for the night--just call me Cranky Shan).

We are two days away from finishing the school year. Normally that would make me jump for joy, but, for some reason I am just "ick" about it. Am I looking forward to not having to get up at 5 am? Sure. Am I glad that some of the shithead kids are going to vanish from my room and never return? Amen. But, I have to go back to work starting July 26th (for site based training) and August 3rd (for department day) and August 6th (for more professional development), August 7th and 8th (for freshman academy stuff) and August 9th (for test score stuff). So, technically, I get less than a month and a half off. To most people that is a lifetime off, but, when you are used to getting out in June and not going back until the end of August, this sucks big time.

Some people would call me a whiner for this (namely TJ who would kill for two months off), but THIS BLOWS.

I am also cranky because I am lonely today. TJ went out with my brother (and he does that often on Friday nights). Normally I don't mind, but, for some reason, today I am lonely. I have also been trying to call one of my best friends for the last couple of days and sent her numerous emails but she isn't returning my calls or emails--so now I am wondering if I did something to piss her off. She is probably just busy and I am probably just paranoid, but I can't be sure.

Plus the fact my computer died and I am hunchback over my laptop right now does not help my mood any.

Cranky Shan.

That has a nice ring to it. I think I will go to Blockbuster, get the saddest damn movie I can, get a bottle of wine and curl up on the couch and have a good cry. Maybe that will help. Maybe a hit over the head with a rubber mallet would help. Maybe not having an "alternative calendar" nest school year would help. Who knows.

Hopefully I won't be cranky tomorrow. This mood seriously conflicts with the new centered life I am tyring to lead.

Until later...

My Worst Nightmare (continued)

Well, readers--it looks like a computer funeral is in the works at Rambling Shan's house. TJ tried to load my hard drive into his computer last night to see if he could recover any files. After about 20 minutes the computer told him that the drive was not formatted (computer speak for: you're SCREWED).

So, he called a data recovery service. They said they would be happy to try to get files off my hard drive--I would just need to send them a $100 deposit and then (depending on the amount of information they could recover) the final charge would be between $800-$2400. Considering that is more than I paid for my computer, I said no thanks, and then proceeded to have a mini breakdown at the thought of losing all of our digital wedding pictures and such.

Husband to the rescue! TJ did find all of our wedding pictures, pictures of the dogs, family, and our vacations on an old hard drive from my old computer. He also said there are some documents on there as well, so I will be weeding through those tonight. Looks like super heroes don't always have to wear capes. Thanks, babe!

I just spent the last hour and a half downloading documents from my graduate portfolio onto my computer here at work so I at least have some of those major assignments. I have an email into the university to see if they have the rest of my stuff on their server somewhere. I am waiting on them to see what they have to say.

TJ says I will most likely need two new hard drives and a copy of Windows XP. Just what I wanted to spend $250 on--software that I didn't know I even needed. So long digital camera (that was going to be a graduation present to myself)--hello new computer crap. I can't wait.

I guess I have learned my lesson. I also didn't realize how much I was on my computer until I couldn't be on it last night. Weird how something can become such a part of your routine, you know? Maybe it is a blessing in disguise...I may see that in a few years, but, for now, this is just a pain in the ass thing that I need to have fixed.

Yoga will be so great tomorrow--hopefully I can meditate all this stress away and thing happy thoughts about my computer again.

Until then, I am disconnected from cyber space at home. I may have to break down and hook up the laptop tonight--I hate to think of how many emails are waiting for me. Until I can access again, have a great day!

My Worst Nightmare

I woke up this morning (slowly, since it was after a long weekend) thinking that my biggest problems of the day were going to be (in no particular order):

1. I lost my favorite lip gloss
2. I need to get my hair trimmed and I can't find the time
3. I need a new yoga mat (mine is doing a stupid curl that needs to go away)
4. I need to make an appointment for the dogs at the vet (they are due for shots and nail trims).

So, as I got dressed thinking those were the biggest problems of the day I thought I could make it through. After all, the lip gloss was $2.00, I can squeeze in a hair cut tomorrow afternoon, I found a yoga mat on clearance at Gaiam.com, and I can most likely get the dogs into the vet on Saturday. Crisis averted.

As I finished getting ready (holding onto the naive belief that I had solved my biggest problems) I wandered into my office to turn on my computer to check email and my other morning websites (Myspace, blogger, channelcincinnati.com) . As I waited for my computer to start up I went about my morning routine (feeding the dogs, giving them their medicine, getting my coffee, etc.) And then it happened.

A blue screen with the words "FATAL ERROR" emblazoned across the top.

No...no, no, no, no, no...this was NOT HAPPENING...

I did the only thing I could do. I woke TJ up (he is my resident computer expert) and he wandered into my office and sat down, took one look at it and proclaimed that he had no idea what was wrong, but he was pretty sure that the hard drive had crashed. Crashed--as in died. As in took all my documents, pictures and files with it--crashed!

I will admit I am the world's worst when it comes to backing things up--well, I used to be okay (when I had two drives in my PC), but now I only have one so I haven't backed up in about 6 months. That means all my graduate school work could be gone. All my pictures from my wedding could be gone. All of the pictures we have taken of the dogs over the years could be gone. Gone--as in vanished for all eternity, don't pass GO, don't collect $200 GONE. The documents I don't care so much about. Is it a bummer--sure it is. Is it the end of the world? Nah--grad school is over (Thank GOD) and I can type new documents.

The pictures, however, are irreplaceable. As much as I love my digital camera, this is the downfall. At least with film I would still have copies and the negatives. With digital, I got nada.

TJ said he is going to try to look at it tonight and he has a plan of attack. I can only hope that some things can be salvaged--if not, I am big fat SCREWED.

As I sit here (on my work PC since my home one decided to take a vacation), I can't help but be reminded of a Sex and the City episode where Carrie's laptop crashed (the infamous "sad mac" episode). At the time I thought that episode was humorous and I was thinking "man, is she had only backed everything up she wouldn't have lost all her work." I laughed when she took it to the tech place and all they got off her hard drive was something that looked like it was written in computer code. I laughed because it wasn't happening to me.

I'm not laughing now.

Pan's Labyrinth

Looks like I am slowly turning my blog into my own personal movie review station.

I want to start off my saying that I have wanted to see this movie since it was in theaters, but, because it was a foreign film I knew I would have a hard time convincing TJ to go. He is not a subtitle kind of guy. The trailer intrigued me. Honestly I knew nothing of the plot (strange that I would want to see a movie based solely on effects--that seems to go against my very English teacher nature).

When I heard it was coming out on video, I knew I had to see it, so I placed it in our Q at Blockbuster.com. I placed it there a week before it came out and I moved it to space number one as soon as I could so that it would get here ASAP. Unfortunately, it seemed that everyone had that idea because it immediately was given the "very long wait" label (which means I would have to wait up to 6 weeks for it to get here). I waited a few weeks and got restless (although it did go from "very long wait" to "long wait"), so yesterday I took The Prestige back to Blockbuster and exchanged it for the only copy of Pan's Labyrinth that they had. (I love the Total Access thing--movies come by mail, you get them and then you can exchange them at the store for nothing--fantastic!).

I finally got the opportunity to watch it last night and it was worth the wait. It is a Spanish film with subtitles (which did not bother me in the least, although the guy at Blockbuster said many people put it back after hearing that)...and the effects were everything that I had hoped they would be. Turned out that the story was pretty good, too.

A girl (Ofelia) comes to a mill in Spain to live with her mom and her new step dad (who is an EVIL Spanish captain). The mill is next to an old labyrinth that intrigues her from the beginning (since she is into fairy tales and fables). One night a fairy visits her and takes her to the labyrinth where she meets a faun (Pan) who tells her she is the reincarnated spirit of the princess of the underworld and to prove that she has three tasks to complete. Between the tasks and dealing with her evil step dad and her sick mother she has quit a road ahead of her. I will admit that I watched some of it between partway opened fingers. Back off--I was alone, it was dark, and some of it was just downright creepy...like this, for example:

I really did enjoy this film. The story was moving and the character depth was evident. Even the faun who appears a bit menacing at first:

Grows on you as you find he really seems to care about Ofelia:

The soundtrack added to the film and it was never distracting. Too often films use too much music or music that is too loud. This was not the case here. The music was calm and yet mysterious all at the same time.

I do recommend this film to anyone. If you are going to watch it, be aware that it is a foreign film. I don't think that the dubbed English version would retain the charm of the original. (If you have ever seen the dubbed version of Life is Beautiful you know what I am talking about). I will own this film solely to have it because I do think it is one of the best works to come out of the last few years. Films don't have to have explosions and blatant nudity or foul language to be entertaining, and Pan's Labyrinth proves that hands down.

If you have seen it, I would like your thoughts, too. Let me know.