The Wildcat's Den

The Greater Cosmos(tm) has henceforth decreed that I shall never again be well.  I woke up yesterday with an obnoxious tickle in my throat that has now expanded to coating my lungs with sandpaper.  Every time I cough I feel like some vital organ is going to make an appearance.  Not amusing.

I have a conundrum - they asked the Relief Society presidency to speak in church next week, which I'm actually excited to do (I think I mentioned I was called as the second counselor).  I left church yesterday feeling like I'd hit the jackpot of Relief Society groups because the girls in my branch are AMAZING!  I love them so much already (and it's only been two weeks) and I'm really excited to get to know them.  But, I have a problem - Sunday is Mother's Day, which is one of two times in a year missionaries can call home (the other is Christmas).  My brother has been out on his mission for a year now and I'm really excited to talk to him this weekend (our missions overlapped, so I haven't actually seen him since I went to the MTC, but I did get to talk to him last Christmas).  The only problem is that he's calling at 3:00 and I don't get out of church until 4:00 (stupid 1:00 meeting time).  Well, I say he's calling us, but we're the ones that have to dial the number.  Anyway, the phone call is slated to take place at 3:00, but I don't know if we're calling from the ranch or our house in town.  If we're calling from town, I could give my talk, skip out on Sunday School and Relief Society (I know, I'm a bad second counselor - but phone call with brother on a mission trumps everything in life) and go talk to my brother.  But if we're calling from the ranch, there's no way I can give my talk and call my brother because it takes me 90 minutes at a minimum to get out there.  It's no big deal if I back out of speaking because the rest of the presidency lives in town and they'd be okay with it.  But I have to know soon so they aren't counting on me if I do have to bow out.  sigh... I'll figure it out...

Oh, and the prom was good over the weekend.  I wound up being the "limo" driver (the limo was my mom's Chevy Suburban with all the seats folded down and a blanket over the top.  And I was the yearbook photographer and I got some great shots, if I do say so myself *pats self on back*  I unearthed my old prom shoes for the occasion - they still fit AND they were actually pretty darn comfortable (you know, for being dress shoes).  The other girls had on this wicked-looking stilettos and none of them lasted the entire night.  I was pretty impressed with myself for keeping my shoes on (well, I didn't dance very much, so I guess I shouldn't rub it in too much).  I do not envy the clean-up job they had to do, though.  Some enterprising individual thought it would be cool to spread glitter all over the dance floor and in the hallway leading into the commons area.  Well, it's their prom, their decoration, their mess, so they got to clean it up ^_^

Speaking of yearbook, the kids are in the home-stretch.  They have until the end of this week to get all their pages done if they want their yearbook before the end of the school year.  I'm thinking of starting a betting pool on the outcome of this.  Right now, it's 2-to-1 odds that they won't get it done (is that right?  I know nothing about gambling...)  I did have the pleasure of telling the two most obnoxious boys to go away because I didn't want to deal with their idiocy anymore (I was a little nicer than that - their other teacher needed them for something else and I was only too happy to oblige him).  Anyway, yearbook - they have four days to finish about 20 or so pages (three, actually, since there's an all-day Pentathlon event on Friday).  It'll look great when it's done, but we have to get to that point.

And just so it doesn't sound like all I do is rag on them, they did get over $1,000 in sponsorship advertising on their little outing last week, so I have to give them mad props for that.  They really do want this to be good, it's just they let all their little drama crap get in the way of doing something really amazing.  Which, I guess that's just how high school is, so I shouldn't fault them for that.  Doesn't help that most of this kids are related to each other, which probably gives them some kind of license to treat each other like dirt.  Don't ask me what it's all about - I have a directive and it's not to referee hormonal teenage spats (I must be in a bad mood - I tried to complement them and I wound up being mean and crotchety again).

There is one 8th grade girl who kicks all kinds of butt in the page-layout-task-finishing department.  She reminds me a lot of me when I was in the yearbook and knew we had to get all these pages done.  And she does a really good job!  When I was showing the kids how to use PageMaker, she took right too it and she loves it!  Everyone else sticks to doing their pages in PowerPoint ("that's the way we've always done it and it works just fine" And your yearbooks have looked like something Coco the Ape threw on the walls XP), but she's a PageMaker whiz!  Anyway, she's awesome and I love her to death in only a way that a yearbook adviser loves the yearbook staffers. ^_^

I've finally picked up some Brandon Sanderson, since a few on my flist have been mentioning him as someone worth reading.  I found "Elantris" at the library and after a pretty slow start (that almost had me setting it aside for other things), it's become quite the compelling little read.  ( Spoilers )

And "24" is tonight, so look for that as well (if I'm still awake for it - this cough is killing me!)

I'm just sitting here watching the Giants-Eagles game. Iiiiii... guess I'm cheering for the Giants. Yeah, Eli Manning beats the way-over-hyped-and-full-of-himself Donovan McNabb any day (besides, I'm playing my cousin in Fantasy Football this week and he has McNabb at quarterback. I'm not terribly worried, though. I've got Eli's older brother Peyton on my fantasy team and he had a great game today (pauses for a gloating moment - I've got Peyton Manning on my Fantasy team - am I a lucky little twerp or what?). Now I'm praying that Joseph Addai will be okay to play next week - I wasn't supposed to have to play the running back shuffle until week 6 when the Colts have their bye week.  Ugh).

I can't help but feel sorry for the Chicago Bears - they had Rex Grossman and he sucked, so they started Brian Griese instead, but he sucked too.  It's too bad - maybe they could coax Dan Marino or Steve Young out of retirement (yeah, neither of them played for the Bears, but they're desperate).  But Brett Favre is doing wonderfully, what with now holding the record for career passing touchdowns.  I've liked him for a long time.  It's kind of nice to have a player that I cheered for when I was in the third grade still playing and doing well (and I don't mean that to be sarcastic - I'm being sincere).  Green Bay being 4-0 and all - that makes me happy.  But whut the -- the Lions are 3-1?!  Of all the random crap to come out of Detroit...  Not that I'm not pleased, just surprised.

(Somebody just fumbled the ball and in the ensuing scramble, the ball "squirted" out. I love when the ball "squirts" out. Anyway, random thought).

JK Rowling updated her website today and since it's a new month, there's a new Wizard of the Month. It's Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived himself, which is cool. Except the picture of him is kinda creepy. I can't look at it very long without getting the jibbilies.



Good news!  I got a call on Friday from the temp agency I signed up with and they got me a position starting tomorrow.  I'm going to be a receptionist for a property management company.  According to my job-agent-lady-person (they have a fancy name, but I can't remember what it is), they said that it could be kinda slow, so I could bring a book to read while I was there.  I'm not sure how many days I'll be there (it is a temp position, after all).  It could be a week or a month or however long they want me to hang around there, but it's good that I'm not going to just be hanging around here all day.

(Geez, someone else just got hurt.  You'd think football was a rough game or something...)

And after being in the ward for three months, I finally have a Visiting Teaching partner, which I'm excited about, especially after the General Relief Society meeting last night (I always marvel that the guys get a full two hours of their general meeting twice a year, but we women can get by with a mere hour and a half once a year.  That's 'cuz we're wonderful ^_^).  They talked a lot about being good Visiting Teachers and some other things that I need to work on.  I have no excuse, other than I've been lazy, which really isn't an excuse.

(McNabb just got sacked for the ninth time.  That pretty much speaks for itself.)