Officially Technological

Brian has consented to going to my big, fancy work Christmas Party! EEEEEE! I LOVE Christmas parties!

1. Bought all the Christmas decorations for 2006
2. Started new classes (both Professional Development classes)
3. Sam has started a new bone
4. I'm down to three messages in my email inbox (an all-time low)
5. I'm caught up on school work (in my own way)
6. Brian has "warmed up" (from a frigid zero to an ice cold two) to the idea of going to my work Christmas party
7. We have started recieving the newspaper (words I never thought I'd speak)
8. I'm tired of leftover turkey (we have about 3 or 4 pounds of it)
9. We have gone on an orange juice strike (we haven't bought it for weeks)
10. I have gotten myself addicted to riddles
11. I have learned (the hard way - might I add) never to mess with my father-in-law in Fast Scrabble
12. I have recently switched to all Christmas music all the time (by recently I mean since the middle of October)

You know how people create legends by telling stories over and over until they've become so amazing and so incredible that they couldn't hardly be called anything but a legend? Well, even though we neither live in a time nor a society where story-telling is necessary to pass information, we still story-tell and we still create legends. Call me cynical, but I listen to people to talk (and sometimes my own self talk) and I hear legends being created. You can tell when story is going to become a legend often by the way that it's told. You know, with the flashlight under your chin, or and lots of adjectives, and facial expressions.

I was recently working at Science Central where they have a high bike (like the one at the circus with a thin track for the bike and a netting underneath). I was manning the high bike when this kid (probably 12ish) came up to ride the bike. He wanted to ride it forwards and backwards, with hands, without hands, again, and again. When I'd kick him off, he'd get back in line and do it all over again.

In my head I could almost hear him talking to his friends at school the following Monday, "Yeah, man, I rode the high bike like 80 times. I even did it without holding on. Nope. It wasn't scary. Only a sissy would be scared." See how we do that? Legends. The next thing you know, his friend is sitting on the bus telling his friends, "Yeah, my friend rode a high bike like 100 times this weekend. He said it was sweet."

I was thinking about this mostly because I just scored half of a desk at work, which is a big deal at Brown Mackie (for an adjunct to get a desk - or even part of a desk). As I, along with several other adjunct faculty members were cheerfully stashing stuff into our newly acquired desk halves, I heard people saying things like, "Now I won't have to carry fifty pounds of books everywhere or use the phone in the lounge (which is one of the noisiest places on earth), and I could hear myself, telling my friends and family, "Back when Brown Mackie didn't give us desks, I would lug around tons of books in my satchel, and I would walk in from the back of the parking lot, and my shoulder would feel like it's about to fall off and....."

Legends.

I have aggressive bangs. They do their own thing. They lay where they want to lay, they grow how they want to grow, and they have a history of attacking my face when they're too long. The only way to allieviate myself from the anxiety of having another bang attack, is to either keep them trimmed or get rid of them entirely. The agression generally occurs when I want to change my bang-control tactics and go from trimming to losing. This is the change that I have recently made. I have stopped the trimming and started the agonizing process of the growing. It goes without saying to tell you that my bangs have revolted to the new tactic and are now boycotting all conventional bang fasions, and have even started acting out violently. I has chosen, of course, the most vulnerable part of my face to attack - my eyes. The killer bangs tangle themselves into my eyelashes, they poke at my eyeballs, and they have even been bold enough to tickle my nose. Complete anarchy is inevitable. I now face a desicion. Should the violence be tolerated as part of the growing process? Should the antagonistic bangs be subdued with a scissors? I admit I am not adept to bang politics. I am ill prepared for this conflict.