Sanity Restored

Look where I was yesterday!

It was crazy crowded (we had to wait in line forever just to buy tickets to get on the Metro, which was packed so tight you didn't have to hold onto anything because you literally couldn't fall down), but I got special guest passes through work (I guess TFA is considered an officially sane organization) so we got to be in the front section!

Ben, me, and my awesome friend from work who is also my neighbor

There were lots of people with signs of varying cleverness.

"Red, White & Jew: Matzah balls, not bombs"	"Bipartisanship is not gay hook-up"
"Tea is the new kool-aid"	"We came from Kentucky...to escape Rand Paul!"

I was really impressed with the people who came all the way from Kentucky, until I saw a group with "Alaskans for Sanity" signs - wow! I hope they at least made a weekend out of their trip, and didn't travel all that way for a mere three hours.

It was really weird to be close enough to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to be able to view them with my own eyes, instead of on a TV (like usual) or a jumbotron (like most people at the rally). It was also really weird to find myself at a surprise Cat Stevens concert:

Stewart requested "Peace Train"

And then a surprise Ozzy Osbourne concert:

Colbert interrupted him with "Crazy Train"

Followed by a surprise O'Jays concert:

Everyone can agree on "Love Train"

Then Stewart and Colbert also decided to give a concert, and sang a song about loving America while wearing doofy flag sweaters:

It was at this point I noticed that I could see the teleprompter, and I had to restrain myself from spending the rest of the rally staring at it instead of the stage.

After some more surprise musical guests (a Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock duet?), a visit by the "dude you have no Koran!" guy, and other assorted shenanigans, Stewart and Colbert decided to debate Sanity vs. Fair in "Formidable Opponent" style

They were joined by a series of increasingly bizarre guests...

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (a Muslim!)	R2D2 (a robot!)
A giant, paper mache Stephen Colbert	John Oliver dressed as Peter Pan

The debate ended with Stewart giving an eloquent and impassioned speech pleading for politicians and reporters to engage in more reasonable discourse, which was quite moving, but unfortunately just preaching to the choir. Then everyone got on stage together to sing one last song, and hug each other and wave at the audience SNL-style.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is REALLY TALL

The whole day was incredibly fun - the weather was perfect, the show was great (although I wish they would have let Cat Stevens finish his song...), and everyone in attendance lived up to the rally's promise of sanity and reasonable-ness. Despite it being crazy crowded, everyone was so friendly and polite - people were chatting, sharing snacks with each other, and when someone bumped into you (as was inevitable) they were quick to apologize and make sure you were okay. Based on my experiences in other large crowds I know that is not the norm, so it was really wonderful to see so many people actually behaving like humans. And most importantly, there were more people there than at Glenn Beck's rally.

I'm rich!

You guys, it turns out I get to keep all that money Lehman sent me! I guess they didn't actually charge us TFAers the full amount of our AmeriCorps grants, so when we signed over all our AmeriCorps money to them there was extra left over, and they refunded it! I'm not actually sure if that's technically legal, because I don't think you're supposed to be able to turn an AmeriCorps grant into cash monies, but I'm pretty sure if anyone gets in trouble for this it'll be Lehman, since they apparently sent equivalent checks to all their 2008 TFA students. Except for poor Ms. L, who was the only one who realized that Lehman tuition was less than our AmeriCorps grants and only signed over the correct amount, instead of the whole thing. Now her extra $3k is sitting in an AmeriCorps fund, in case she wants to go back to grad school. Again. That's what you get for paying attention!

AND on top of that unexpected windfall, those awful movers saw my poor review of them on yelp, and asked me if I'd consider changing it for $100 refund. Heck yes I'll change it! I love the internet!

So because I didn't read the fine print at Lehman and I complained on the internet, Ben and I can now afford to buy a new dishwasher, blinds (which are surprisingly expensive), and still have pay our mortgage and condo fees for a month with the leftovers. If I'd have known that we'd be winning the lottery, I would have splurged for the whisper-close toilet!

Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza

(I had a friend who thought that's what Elton John was saying in "Tiny Dancer," so now I can't hear that song or the name Tony Danza without mentally singing those lyrics.)

Today was an exciting day at the office, since we got invited to attended a special Town Hall Meeting at Temple University, with Tony Danza, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Philadelphia Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, and a few others, to discuss Danza's experience teaching high school in Philly last year for the show "Teach," as well as the Department of Education's new "Teach" campaign.

I guess I don't know what I expected it to be like, but I have to say I was disappointed with what it actually turned out to be. They were incredibly disorganized, and the whole thing started almost an hour late, after lots of people with clipboards yelling and trying to shuffle around what was clearly way too many invitees for the size of the auditorium. We ended up sitting all the way to the right of the stage so we could only see the profile of the last panelist, who was just some random Philly teacher, but I shouldn't complain too much because other people waited around the whole time and then didn't even get in.

Once it finally got started, the first half was just various A&E executives giving speeches about how much they value education, and how A&E is going to solve the education crisis by donating DVDs of History channel shows to teachers. I don't really know why I was surprised by this excessive plugging, but I was. When it was finally time for the Q&A with the panelists, pretty much every question was some version of "I'm about to graduate from Temple, how can I become a teacher?" or "X is the most important thing in education, why don't you support it??", where X was anything from the arts to black male teachers (not to say that either of those aren't important, but those aren't exactly nuanced questions). Every answer was just re-arrangements of various talking points, like "we are working on that" or "race to the top!" Again, I don't even know why I was surprised at the lack of real, meaningful dialogue - I guess I should just be impressed that no one yelled "you lie!" or went completely crazy. Isn't it kind of sad that the bar for a reasonable discussion is that no one hurled insults at each other?

I think the most excruciating part, however, was when this Temple senior got up and introduced herself as working for TFA (I'm guessing she's one of the outreach people that Recruitment hires to get people to apply), then proceeded to ramble on incoherently for seemingly forever about TFA, what it is, how she's applying to it, and that anyone interested could meet her "at the bell tower" afterward. She didn't even have a question to ask, and she was a really poor speaker, so the whole thing was really embarrassing and made TFA look pretty bad. I could hear the people behind me making snarky comments about her and her "stupid program," and I really wanted to turn around and say "the program's not stupid, only she is!" I actually think she might be in trouble, since so many actual TFA staff people were there and were all equally appalled by her poor representation of us; Recruitment is probably going to get some complaints...

Anyway, despite it being pretty uninformative, it was at least cool to see Arne Duncan live in person. When we were leaving the campus, we had to pull over for a black SUV with a police escort, which I'm guessing was him on his way to his next gig...

What???

I got something in the mail today from Lehman. It was too small (and way too quick) to be a diploma, so I figured it was some sort of junk. I opened it anyway, and inside was a check for $3,390.

It's made out to me, and even has my SSN on it so I know it's not intended for someone else with my name. But all it says by way of explanation is "Student Stub - Semester 02/2010." I thought maybe somehow AmeriCorps (which paid my tuition as part of me being in TFA) had overpaid my semester bill, but when I logged into the Lehman student portal the "amount due" and "amount paid" were equal for all my semester billing statements. I am very confused.

As tempting as it is to keep the money without asking questions, I feel obligated to call the bursar's office on Monday and figure out what's up. I have a strong suspicion that this is another mistake on their end, but still...  wouldn't it be great if I'm actually supposed to keep it? It would more than make up for all the nonsense I've dealt with from them over the past two years!

Seriously?

After several aggravating phone calls with Lehman, I finally got something in the mail from them today. I was cautiously optimistic, until I opened it:

Diploma Mailing Request

Name:
SSN:
Address:
Degree:
Graduation Date:

If you wish to have your diploma mailed, please enclose with this form:

• A self-addressed and prepaid priority mailer from the US Post Office (cardboard 11.5" x 9.5")
• Two copies of identification with a signature and picture. Include a copy of social security card.

If your diploma is lost in transit, you must pay a replacement fee of $15.

This is kind of ridiculous, right? It takes them six months to get it together enough to have diplomas, and then if you haven't been hanging around in the Bronx unemployed the whole time you have to go to the post office, buy a special priority mailer, make and send multiple copies of sensitive documents through the mail, and hope they don't manage to fuck up because otherwise you'll have to repeat the whole process over, plus an extra $15. Given that they claimed to have sent me this form three times before I actually got it once, I am extremely skeptical of me not having to pay that $15.

The Time I Poked My Eye Out

Our third grade girl scout camping trip got off to an inauspicious start when we realized that it started on Friday the 13th. We spent the whole ride up to the camp ground nervously whispering about the ominous date, vaguely convinced that we were all going to die as a result of our troop leader's blatant disregard for the laws of nature. Our chaperons' attempts to quell our fears were somewhat dampened by the fact that it started downpouring as soon as we arrived at the cabin, officially quashing our plans to make a campfire, roast s'mores, and do other soothing, girl scout-ly activities.

Resigned to staying inside the cabin, we stood in a circle and listlessly kicked a ball around as the adults sat in the kitchen and strategized about the weather. I have never been coordinated in my life, which combined with the wet floor and small ball resulted in me pulling a Charlie Brown-esque mis-kick, except somehow I wound up falling flat on my face instead of on my back. I was mortified to have fallen so comically in front of my peers, and even more so when I saw my broken glasses on the floor and knew I would have to wear them taped-together for the rest of the weekend. I tried to pick myself up as nonchalantly as possible, as if I had meant to face plant on the floor, only to find the ring of girls all staring wordlessly at my head. Finally, one of them broke the silence and said, "why is their ketchup on your face?"

Ketchup on my face was even more embarrassing than nose-diving on the floor and having broken glasses, so I got defensive and retorted "I don't eat ketchup!" (which was true, but not really relevant to whether or not I could have landed in a puddle of it). But all the girls just kept staring and nodding, "yes, you have ketchup on your face, a lot of ketchup." I reached up to touch my face and investigate, and pulled my hand away to find it was indeed covered in red liquid, but I recognized it for what it was: blood. I was bleeding from a gash my broken glasses had cut above my right eye, and while it didn't hurt (yet) I knew enough to know that it would, so I started to cry as a clutched at my wound.

At this point all the other girls realized the ketchup/blood mix-up and started to yell for an adult. The troop leader looked over to see me sitting on the floor, crying and cupping my hand around my eye socket with blood streaming through my fingers. She let out a shriek and screamed "Oh my God, Caroline poked her eye out!"

At this point complete chaos broke loose. The rest of the girls started hysterically screaming and running around, while the troop leader called 911 and I began sobbing uncontrollably and rocking back and forth, distraught at the knowledge that I would be blind for the rest of my life. Never mind that I could feel my right eye was still in my head, and that I could still see fine out of my left eye; an adult had said that I poked my eye out so it must be true.

In my memory this pandemonium lasted for a long stretch of time, but it probably went on for less than a minute before one of the calmer moms came over and gently pulled my hand away from my face to inspect the damage. Realizing that my eye was still firmly ensocketed and that the copious amounts of blood were just a result of the fact that head injuries bleed a lot, she got the troop leader to cancel the 911 call and started rounding up and calming down the rest of the girls. Still, it was decided that I needed to be returned home, given my broken glasses, blood-soaked clothing, and general patheticness.

Someone called my parents, who drove up to get me. My father the doctor inspected the injury and decided that, while not eye-gouging, it did require stitches, and we would have to go to the hospital. The stitches actually ended up being the most traumatic part of the whole experience - I remember being held down as a terrifying doctor made his way towards my eye with a giant pointy needle, and then having hideous black stitches on my face for the next week at school. Fortunately the damage was mostly contained to my eyebrow region, so once the stitches came out and the surrounding hair grew back there was no visible reminder of my klutziness. But if I were to shave my right eyebrow for some reason, I would have a pretty wicked scar.

Epilogue: The rest of the trip ended up being equally disastrous, with another girl falling off the cabin porch and spraining her ankle, and one of the moms accidentally backing into a tree and then breaking off her passenger side mirror as she attempted to get out of the campsite. The moral of the story is don't go camping on Friday the 13th. Or at least, don't go camping on Friday the 13th with a bunch of superstitious eight-year-old girls.

Reminders

Someone at work today came back from a classroom observation and said that the school was so out of control that kids were literally playing hide and seek in the hallways, instead of being in their classrooms. Nothing like a reminder of the past two years to make me all the more grateful for my calm, happy desk job!

Disgust

I had seen a few news blurbs about the recent gang attack on a gay man in New York, but only this morning did I read a full article about it - only to realize that it happened around the corner from the school I taught at in the Bronx.  Makes me worry about my old students, one in particular, who would be particularly susceptible to that type of victimization. I always hoped all my students would be able to make it out of that neighborhood okay, but now I hope hope hope that particular kid (who was afraid to apply to a specialized theater high school for fear of appearing gay) gets out first. Ugh.

The Latest Excitement

Our most recent fascinating project as new homeowners is getting a new toilet, since ours is apparently broken beyond repair. Anyway, it turns out there are an infinite number of toilet features and combinations thereof, and while trying to figure out which is the best for people who just want a regular toilet I came across this awesome video:



(You can also watch it in its natural habitat here.)

I don't even know which part I like best - the gently falling feathers and soothing music, the promise to "promote neatness and good habits," or the fact that it's on the "What Women Want" section of the toilet company's webpage.

Gentlemen, if you're looking for a present to impress your lady this Valentine's Day, why not give her what every woman really wants - a set of Easy•Close™ toilet seat hinges!

I'm famous!

Okay guys, one of the things I do in my new job is send out a weekly "email blast" to all the Philly corps members, to tell them about current TFA goings on. I was pretty excited to learn about this part of my job, since for the whole two years I was in the corps I always wondered about the mysterious person who sent out the blasts and who, as far as I could tell, existed only in my inbox.

Fast forward to today, when a corps member had to come into the office to make photocopies or something, saw my name on my cube, and said "wait, are you the Caroline who sends out the email blasts?!"

Yes!! I am finally famous!

New Standards of Excitement

Remember when I wrote about getting really excited over new overhead transparencies, and then sort of depressed that I was at a point in life where overhead transparencies were exciting? Well, being a new homeowner is like that times a million. Things I have actually been super-excited, and then retroactively somewhat embarrassed about in the past week include:

• Getting an appointment with a good plumber
• Installing new light switch plates
• Finding a coupon for blindstogo.com
• Looking at various closet doors online (who knew there were so many varieties?)

I sound lame even to myself. And because of a birthday gift I received in the mail the other day (which I do like, but probably wouldn't have actually bought... yet), we sort of have a catalog living situation going on over here:

Excuse the exposed sockets, I forgot to get those plates at the hardware store.

Don't judge me.

Epiphany

All the managers at my new job have company Amex cards they use for making purchases, and one of my duties is submitting their receipts to document they are spending money on work-related things. I've been doing this for over two months now, and actually using various people's Amex cards to make purchases multiple times a week, and only today did I realize that "Amex" stands for AMerican EXpress. Even then, I didn't independently figure it out, I saw it written out in an article. I am an idiot.

Anyway, I somewhat abashedly confessed my incredibly belated epiphany to some office friends at lunch, and a few hours later I received this in my inbox:

      You are...

     Amazing
     Maiden
     Exemplary
     Xylophonist

I feel special. In more ways than one.

Birthday!

Yesterday was my birthday, and my parents drove up from Maryland with this awesome cake for the occasion:

You can't really tell in this picture, but that weird dusty stuff on it is actually sparkles!

 This other picture shows its colors better since the flash isn't washing it out, and you can also see our pretty new walls and floor:

We're not usually this messy, we just haven't completely unpacked yet.

It was an extremely awesome birthday, consisting of a trip to Ikea for a table (and meatballs!), walking around Center City, and delicious dinner at a great restaurant recommended to me by a coworker. Also, as a birthday/housewarming present, my parents got us the most beautiful mezuzah I've ever seen:

(This picture is from the company's website.)

The real birthday treat was that Ben got a snake and cleaned out the tub drain, since after about five minutes in the shower the water would be up to your ankles. I think this is the grossest household chore there is, what with all the disgusting wads of hair and soap scum involved, which is why it was so nice for Ben to do it. Among the typical gross drain junk, he actually pulled up a dime. Wonder what those old owners did in there...

The Big Move!

After our somewhat disastrous move from NYC to Philly (the movers straight up didn't show), I was very diligent about researching potential movers this time around. I picked a company that had excellent ratings, and in the process of making the moving arrangements with them I was very impressed by their customer service. So I was pretty annoyed when they ended up sucking pretty much as bad as the last guys.

The first problem was that they didn't have an actual moving truck, they just had a big van. Meaning all our stuff couldn't fit in it, so we had to do multiple trips. This was a problem for two reasons: first, we were paying them by the hour and more trips means more money. Second, our new condo building has pretty strict rules about when you're allowed to move in - you have to be done by 4:30, or finish the next day. Since we scheduled our move for 10:00 am we didn't think we would come anywhere close to 4:30, but we ended up almost not making it. When I called the moving company's office to register my discontent, the guy said, "I don't know what you want me to do, that's the vehicle we have." I convinced him to send an extra guy to help speed things up, which he reluctantly agreed to do - after telling me it would cost an extra $15/hour.

The other, and I would argue bigger, problem is that I'm pretty sure the guys who showed up weren't actually movers. They were scrawny kids that looked like they had just been plucked from some college campus with an offer of free pizza (one of them was even wearing skinny jeans!), and obviously didn't really know how to move stuff. On multiple occasions I had to direct them on how to fit stuff through doorways/onto elevators, after they claimed they couldn't do it (despite the fact that everything on our apartment was moved in there three months ago by us, and in fact did not magically appear there after bypassing the elevator and door).

They were also just incredibly slow; it took them two and a half hours just to load the van the first time. Part of this was because they kept taking breaks to smoke, talk on their cell phones, etc... I finally got so frustrated that I started moving stuff, and I think I ended up moving more than they did. I think my favorite moment from the whole move, and the one that sums it up the best, was when all three guys went in the elevator with a load of stuff (don't ask me why it took three of them to go in the elevator), and during the time they were gone I single-handedly moved the entire rest of the contents of our apartment (which was not a trivial amount of stuff at that point) to the area by the elevator. When they finally came back up and saw me waiting there with all our stuff, they said, "wow, you're fast!"

My other favorite moment was when I saw one of them awkwardly struggling to carry a table we have that has casters on it. I told him it had wheels and he could push it, and he said, "Um, not anymore" and produced one of the wheels from his pocket. That thing's casters were drilled into it; I have no idea how he managed to rip one off - I'm almost impressed. Almost.


The whole time this mess was unfolding, I was mentally fuming but forcing myself to stay calm because I didn't want to piss them off when they were in the middle of holding all our earthly possessions. I was also steeling myself for the mighty conflict I envisioned happening at the end of the move, when I would refuse to pay them full price. So I was quite delighted when their own incompetence took care of the payment issue for me - I guess the office guy didn't pass the memo on to the moving guys that they were supposed to up the hourly rate because of the third person, so they didn't. They also displayed a spectacular inability to do math, and flat out incorrectly multiplied the hours by the rate. So they ended up charging me the amount that I was planning on paying them initially, which I was happy to pay without argument!

The whole thing ended up taking six full hours, which is pretty ridiculous compared to the seven hours it took us to move here from NYC (once we found real movers to show up). We haven't acquired any new possessions in the three months in between moves so we were moving literally the exact same set of objects, but it took basically the same amount of time for these guys to go 30 blocks as it did for real movers to go 110 miles. Amazing.