September 1st, 2010

Yes that is my foot in the picture.


View from my backyard!

September 1st, 2010:

Had another Swell day at school, happy with the present crop of kids I have. Maybe I'm just getting better at whipping them into shape, but this seems to be a good crew. Came home and dozed for about an hour then went for a drive on the Kawasaki 1000. Stopped in to see my Hindu friends at the only Indian ran conveinience store in town, and bought the ingredients for "Bhindi Marsala", which is okra and tomatoes, cooked with the usual Marsala group of spices. "Marsala", is pretty much a Northern Indian curry powder, that contains some weird shit like "powdered mango". I plan to cook all this on Thursday or Friday, depending on the mood. I also stopped by "Pets Mart", to get a new powerhead, so the right side of my classroom, marine aquarium would get some badly needed circulation. I only have one small fish and a handful of crabs and snails in a 55 gallon marine aquarium, so its time to get the bastard back in shape. Turns out that our local "Petsmart", is about to be renovated so they had high priced objects marked down to nearly 90 percent off for some things!

I have always wanted one of the new high tech smalled acryilic aquariums, and they had the 4 gallon "Biorbs" FIFTEEN DOLLARS, marked dowyn from 85 dollars. The tank is a beautiful globe, with built-in power filter, high tech ceramic bio-gravel, and a halogen light. One could make a small coral reef from these fine components. I bought one. An hour later, I cam back to buy another one for my son, but they were gone. So I bought a larger 8 gallon "BiOrb", which costs $140 dollars, and I paid $24 dollars for it! I plan to make it into a coral reef, which I have never attempted before. I have kept many saltwater ("fish only" tanks, but never a reef. Coral needs strict water quality, and even periods of sun light, to moon light. This tank has most of the stuff to achieve, building a small coral reef system. Of course with salt water, I can only keep one tiny fish in it, but the corals will be beautiful. I need a hobby, and this will be a cheap one. (sept 4th: Had a change of plans an d decided on a guppy tank. Way cheaper and I want to breed some beautiful guppies. I can also put some frogs, crabs, and snails in the tank. Plus, Guppies are quite cold hardy and salt loving. My crabs and guppies will enjoy the same environment. I'll be growing a few plants in there as well.. The reef tank will be a later project once I'm not so busy.

I do have another 55 gallon, bowfront salt water tank in my storage, but it was too big of a hassle to keep running, so I can now sell it to someone who wants it.

Went to dinner at "Le Nonne", considered to be the finest restaurant in town. I've never been, its way to pretentious for this old guy, but since the bass player of the jazz group is an aquaintance of mine (I gave his family my llama), and a fellow teacher, I decided to stop in. I told the snotty acting "greeter", that I was here to watch the band. She looks at me and told me that "You will have to buy dinner to watch the band" WTF? I was pissed. I didn't react well to being talked down to by some snotty college girl on her first job. I asked "Do I look like I'm too poor to buy dinner?" I was dressed well enough, wearing a silk jacket and everything, but since I came alone, and mentioned the "band", she in all her ancient wisdom decided me to be a pauper of sorts. I realize I over-reacted, but dumb people have to learn who their talking down to. Directed to the "table that most couples do not want", right in front, was actually the optimum table for me. Although my friend wasn't playing tonight, I got to chill to some classy, cool. The world class Italian meal, failed in comparison to cheaper Italian places, like "Napolies" in Allen, Texas, or even in my own kitchen. I think the chef there was mainly up on making Gnocci (Northern Italian Potato Dumplings) and (Fagioli....which is Bean soup), his "Penne Bolognese" was ok, but wasn't anything, me or my father couldn't have improved upon. The wine was 1/4th of a glass for the card board stuff (5.99 per), so after the two partial glasses of wine, and the pasta, I left. I did spend an hour listening to the incredible music of a female jazz keyboardist, and a drummer and bass player. My aquaintance wasn't there, but I enjoyed their music just the same. Their rendition of "The girl from Ipanema", was touching as were many other songs that I was fortunate enough to listen to. I would have stayed there for another hour but the pretentiousness of the restaurant, and the speed of which the waitress gave me the check, made me feel a bit unwelcome. I plan to go back next week and be cheap and only order appetizers, while ordering a cola, which will make a fine vehicle for a few shots of flask rum.

The waitress, who was warned about my surliness from the greeter, was quite professional, did her job well without snottieness, and won a 35% tip for her courtesy. I will be back,

hopefully I can talk Logan or Larry to join me.

Came home around 9:30 and studied more of the works of "Dashiel Hammet", writer of the "Maltese Falcon". Now I'm reading his first novel entitled "Red Harvest", which is a good read. I am totally in love with the slang of the 1920's, and find it quite interesting. Hammet, apparantly (correct me if I'm wrong), only wrote 5 little novels all between the years of 1929 and 1934. He was born in 94 and died in 1961. What makes writers how they are? Some like Louis Lamour or Stephen King seem to write all the time, while others, only write a few and only then for a little while. Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Steinbeck, didn't really write that much come to think of it by comparison. Hammets' life works only consist of some 700 pages total, by far, the least amount of total pages for the group. But DAMN, he was a good writer. Maybe the star that shines the brightest, burns out the fastest? Seems to be the case here... Too bad he couldn't have gotten away from the detective theme. His writing style was the best in his genre, if not all genre's. Hammett, didn't mess around with character discriptions, yet his characters where fully described in such a little space of text. He didn't waste words. His 120 page novels, had as much info or more as the Epic novelists. I also read all Grishams works, but Hammett could easily tell all those stores, using 120 pages as Grisham does in 700. Funny, it tends to take me about the same amount of time to read a short Hammett novel as it takes to read of of Grishams' 700 pagers. Nothing against Grisham, or the other novelists. Maybe in the days of the pen and ancient typewriters caused writers to economize or something. Steirnbecks novels were short as well for the most part. East of Eden is pretty long, but sucks compared to many of his shorter works. Works like "Tortilla Flat" and "Cannery Row" seem to radiate from Steinbecks heart, where "The Red Pony" and "East of Eden", seemed like Steinbeck was trying to be a popular writer when he wrote those. "The Grapes of Wrath" was more of a news report than a novel. But a damned good read nonetheless. All of the above are probably turning in their graves at having a very novice writer analyze their works. And to the souls of the previously discussed, I do humbly apologize for misinterpreting your writings, but all criticizm is opinion, and hopefully I presented them as a view from my perspective and not in the absolute. Did I just stay up reading and writing to 2 AM again? Work should be painful in the morning. Maybe this winter when its dark around 5 PM, I will be able adjust my schedule to get to sleep earlier. Nite all.