while on the phone with Mom:

Mom: I've called the guys who are supposed to install my new toilet twice and they haven't called back yet.

Me: It's OK… they're probably just backed up.

Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Oh, I did a photo-editing exercise with the photo students last night: I put four of the pictures of me and my son up on the computer display and showed how I figured out which one I liked the best. When I opened the final shot (the one that I posted here on the blog), the class gasped in a “dang, you really *are* better than us at this stuff” manner. It's probably best they find this out early in the semester, you know, to keep them in their place. And once they saw proof of my photo prowess, they listened more closely to what I had to say!

I handed back the self-portrait assignments my photo students gave me last week, and, with permission, posted the top four on the bulletin board in the student union. One is of a student in her T.G.I.Friday's work regalia, complete with “Can I take your order?” cheat sheet and a sly look in her eyes; another is of a woman in full Patriots regalia, head down, in mourning; another is of a woman under an industrial-salon hair dryer, green foils in her hair, and a sickly green cast across the entire picture. But my favorite is of the woman who put on big sunglasses, lit herself with orange gels, and snarled her face so you can see the c-word tattooed on the inside of her lower lip. Honest: c-u-n-t (not hyphenated!) is TATTOOED inside her lower lip. Talk about hardcore!

“It only took 30 seconds and didn't hurt a bit,” she told me. “It was the easiest tattoo I ever got.”

I printed an extra copy of the photo for my collection. I'm going to ask her to sign it once class is over. It's awesome.

Well, Monstro isn't feeling well so we didn't go to church today, and I've graded the photo quizzes and the writing homework but not the writing interviews (though I've read them all and they pretty much make me want to swill a large and potent cocktail) or the self-portrait assignments (see sidebar). Oh, and I'm leading Bible study tonight so I have to read parts of many of Paul's letters.

The bummer is, all I really want to do is cruise around my friends' blogs and maybe take a nap.

During February 2008, I wrote in this blog every day. Every stinkin' day, people! So no matter how sporadic my posts may be later on in the year, you can look back fondly on the good old days of February, 2008. I think this particularly notable because there are two things I'm not blogging about, and they're pretty big things. So yaaaaay, me! P.S. Oh, and it snowed again last night. Calgon, take me away!

So today's been a lousy day, partly because we're getting another 10 inches of snow tonight, but mostly because it's the anniversary of my darling Grandma's death. It was so typical of her to die on Leap Year Day, “Oh, I don't want you to be sad about me except once every four years.” In any case, when I left the house this afternoon to run errands, I had a letter in my mailbox from a California State head honcho, letting me know I have unclaimed property in a retirement account that totals more than six hundred bucks! And this could not be more oddly coincidental because yesterday, I wanted to send tulips to my mom, to help ease the hurt of the anniversary of her mother's death, but the promo code didn't work and I do not have it in my budget to spend fifty bucks (!) on tulip delivery, so I had to trash the order. And now I find out that fifty bucks is less than ten percent of the “free” money I get to claim (if I didn't know about it, it's considered free).

So thanks Grandma. I miss you more than once every four years, I assure you.

LOST just keeps getting better this season. Tonight, we get to see Desmond with short hair. Ya know, he kind of looks like Ty Pennington!

Not much happened today except when we were in the car to get the boy from nursery school, I squirted what I thought was the contents of a sample pack of hand lotion into my palms, only to realize it was actually hand *soap*. Who gives out samples on hand soap, anyway? Monstro wanted to pull over but I had some napkins in the center console and was able to wipe my hands clean. At least it smelled good.

Rami's in. Chris is out. Human hair = nails in coffin.

I took my boy for lunch at a Chinese restaurant, after an ill-fated attempt to get his hair cut, and he was quite fascinated by the chopsticks on the table. “Open! Open!” he demanded, so I separated them and he had a lovely time stringing pretzels on them. The waitress noticed his progress and brought him some chopsticks that were rubber-banded together with a bit of paper serving as a fulcrum. She helped him eat the first bite of tempura, and then he went. to. town. By the end of the meal, he was successfully eating rice! Rice! The hostess, who was in her 50s, said, “I can't even eat rice with chopsticks.” Very cool. And then, to cap it off, the fortune in his fortune cookie read, “You have a deep appreciation for the arts and music.” Truer words were never written; you should see him color and dance.

Today, it snowed. Again.