should you encounter a tornado on your way home with nowhere to stop for miles and miles

a) check into a hotel right away or
b) make sure you have your phone with you so you can just call and tell them to turn the tornado off or
c) just hide under the seat of your car

These are all excellent options...and these were all given by my five year olds during the Red Cross presentation on tornadoes.

Today when we were waiting for parents to come pick up, a little guy who had spoken to me in Spanish the entire day was stacking legos to make a tower. As he placed his last lego on top he threw his fists into the air in triumph, looked at me and said: "I win!"

que hotdog

I have been lucky enough to spend all of the afternoons this week at a different MSCR day camp site until Safety Town gets started in the afternoons. This means that I've spent my time playing with an entire class of pre-K hispanohablantes.

I tried to make friends with them by dropping compliments like your shoes are so cool, que cheveres tus zapatos. Only to be greeted with an inquisitive/confused look every time. I was wondering why my compliments were not succeeding when I suddenly recalled that "chevere" might be just a colombian word. I double checked with my guatemalan friend who informed me that it was only colombian, and sometimes used in chile. "In some places chevere actually means hot dog." Oh.

No wonder I was getting weird looks..."what hot dog shoes you have." I love my colombian slang but I need to start being able to distinguish between it and widely known spanish.

Hot dog shoes or not, I knew I had triumphed today while working when someone asked me, "Wait, you can speak english, right?"

can someone get this on camera?

I used to always say I wanted to wear a hat with a little video camera on it because I knew my life woulhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifd make an excellent reality show.

Today I decided I want to get all of this on camera for nobody's pleasure but my own...I want to be able to go back and watch all of this.

I smelt his cologne creep up on me before I actually saw him cross from his bus stop to ask me what bus I was waiting for. He gave me a quick rundown on which bus I should wait for and why, told me he takes the bus everywhere, told me where he lived, told me his name and that he's 20, told me he's an old fashioned traditional fellow which is why he does not wear pleated khakis or button up shirts, he's also a moderate which is why he would never cheat on a girlfriend (?), come to mention it, he isn't waiting for a bus at all, he's waiting for his date Stephanie, whom he met online 30 minutes ago (Plentyoffish.com I learned from inquiring, with the obligatory follow up: "Why, are you looking for a boyfriend?"), told me about how they took their relationship from IMing to the telephone in 10 minutes, and from the telephone to him cooking her a steak dinner that night because she also wanted to see his "little tiny baby kitty" and she had to work for the next 2 days straight, plus it's the first time that anyone on this site has wanted to go on a date with him so he even had to call his best friend to break plans with her (when he got off the phone he assured me that it was not his girlfriend, and if this date went well and she wanted to see him a second time he would immediately get on plentyoffish.com and update his status to in a relationship), it's a great site, free, but make sure you don't post any personal information in the instant messenger or they will kick you off.

With only instructions that he was standing in front of the DMV and wearing khaki shorts and a black shirt, soon enough a white VW bug pulled up. He ducked his head in and asked if she was Stephanie, success, she was, he jumped in. Off they drove into the sunset.

Stephanie and Randall, I wish you all the best.

Per Meena's request

I don't know if that's even a grammatically correct phrase, but I feel like I hear people say it.

Meena I miss your face, too. Here's that life update you wanted:

-I bought a bike a few weeks ago, I've been riding it a lot to work, etc. it's convenient. I will ride with you when you come home. Today when I was riding home, a middle aged man had a jolly smile and ring of his bell ready for me as he passed on his bike...the next man I passed asked if I could spare him a baby bottle. Ummmm

-I went to the classiest wedding I had ever been to last weekend at the Milwaukee Art Museum. There were fabulous guests in attendance, including 2 of my 6th grade teachers, one of whom told me they would definitely be sitting in a bar with me on my 21st birthday, the other of whom told me the story about his 4 year old daughter calling 911 on christmas morning (after receiving her presents, and while her parents were downstairs working out) to tell the dispatch that santa claus was dead. hahaha

-I've been waking up at 6:45 to go to work...about a full 3-4 hours earlier than I woke up most days during 2nd semester. BOO. I've been getting home at about 4:30, only to start in on more work from Grassroots Leadership College and my professor. Most of that work's done on my computer, which is terrible to do in your own apartment when you could be outside...and normally results in me being coaxed onto the terrace, like tonight.

-The kids come next week to Safety Town, I've got fabulous reading lined up for when I might get a spare moment, and all of these 60 hour work weeks will end August 1st...so that's what I'm looking forward to!

"When you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing democracy"

A developing cities consultant...that's a job I would like.

"Back for another day of abuse?"

The janitor said to me as I walked into work this morning.

Well, I'm glad he noticed.

Crabby Packages

Packages delivered that sit waiting outside doors have started going missing in my apartment building.

I got a package yesterday where the top had been ripped open just far enough to slide the book inside, out and see what it was. The Dispossessed, Chronicles of the Desterrados of Colombia by Alfredo Molano.

Clearly it had been slid right back in as it was still there when I got home...good thing I read books that our package thief doesn't like.

In other news, I started my internship hours on Monday for Safety Town. It's basically just me working as a volunteer until the program, and my pay, start because I need to fill out 300 hours for the internship to count. I haven't exactly been loving the pumping up kickballs, washing toys and bins that have been soaked in bubble juice, stapling 350 packets together by hand, counting how many letters of scrabble games are missing, etc.

But what I love even less is the concentrated population of (mainly) crabby middle-aged women. The fact that they are middle-aged and women is actually irrelevant, it's the fact that they're so crabby that makes me sad.

Today I politely asked someone which printer the computer would print at, and she just glared at me and pointed to the other side of the room without saying a word.

To everyone who is reading this, hold me accountable: Please allow me my crabby days, but don't ever allow me a crabby life.

The dreamer is the real me

The other night Nathan called and I told him I had to stay in so I could study for my computer class (which is finally over! and where, by the way, on the last day I received a tour of the UW data center from a Terry Bradshaw). Nathan told me that soon enough summer would pass me by and I wouldn't know where it went. That made me sad, so I'm just going on record that I'm going to make it (summer) mine.



"Reveling in energy that everyone's emitting
I don't wanna wait no more
No I wanna celebrate the whole world
I'm gonna make it mine"