A Crazy Cat's Life

Last night as I was watching TV, the local newscasters did their "tonight at 11" commercial. Normally I ignore those because they usually tell me about murders or hit and runs or something along those depressing lines. This time they got my attention. Why? I heard "Washington Mutual" and "big news" and I knew I had to get on my computer to look up what was taking place. It is now official: we have our first major bank failure. My students have been asking all week about the financial crisis taking place. After explaining to them about sub-prime mortgages and credit default swaps, I always get the "what do you think is going to happen?" That's when I sigh and dread my answer. I am a historian. I've studied the recessions of our country throughout its existence as well as those of other countries. The big ones usually have triggers that cause a meltdown of a country's economics. In 1873 (what I'm teaching my U.S. history st...

Sorry I haven't written in a while. My schedule makes my life feel like it's the last few weeks of the semester during the entire semester. Every waking moment is devoted to prepping, teaching or grading. Man I need to learn to say no. On the bright side, there are only three students that I already hate but an entire class is on the way to that distinction. I don't know what it is about Western Civ I classes. Every semester now it seems I get one class full of idiots. Not all the students are idiots, mind you, but a good majority of them are. They aren't stupid but it's clear that they don't want to be in class and that they are in college just to appease mom and dad. These are the type of students who do the minimal amount of work and expect to get A's. Namely, they are a professor's nightmare. I have to put up with their lame attempts at "work," babysit them for the three hours that I have them, and then explain to them why they di...

...NOT! I decided to teach six classes this semester. Why? Well, the extra money is always nice but the main reason was to teach a current events class. I used to teach the class when I was an adjunct many moons ago but since it's not a "priority" class, I haven't been able to teach it since I became full-time. With this being an election year I desperately wanted to teach it. It would mean a heftier work load for me but after I talked to Bear about it, I decided to do it. On Wednesday, I get a frantic call from the dean's secretary. There's a class that needs to be covered. I'm thinking "no fucking way." Seven classes is just nuts. Also, I already have five different class preps with the six classes I had. Adding this class would mean an additional prep. Nope. Nada. No way. It's Thursday and I'm walking to my office when I hear the dean calling "Cat! Cat!" Uh oh. The dean pleaded with me to take the class. Part...

The other day I was having a conversation with my parents about the upcoming election. They are staunch Republicans so they say "you're voting for McCain, right?" Honestly, I don't like either of the candidates. I liked McCain eight years ago. Today? Nope. Too damn old. (ironically, one of my favorite websites is Things Younger than John McCain ). Mind you, Obama isn't thrilling me either. However, after watching some things about McCain, I'm getting pretty scared about the guy. For example, today, John McCain said he doesn't know how many houses he has. How do you not know how many homes you have? They are rather large expenditures to not remember. In his case, they are rather large with the cheapest is worth over $800,000. And he has SEVEN of them! Showing off these beauties is a video I found off of the The Real John McCain website. Geeze. The $520 Farragamos and the private jet just make McCain just an "average joe." Bah. You w...

Today in the New York Times , it was revealed that the cute little girl (the one on the right), did not sing the Chinese national anthem at the opening ceremony. It was actually the one on the left. I had heard about this a couple of days ago and it still pisses me off. Why wasn't the girl on the left standing in the Bird's Nest? She wasn't "cute enough." Her teeth were too imperfect. “The reason was for the national interest,” explained Chen Qigang, general music designer of the opening ceremonies, who revealed the deception Sunday during a radio interview. “The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression.” Oh for pete's sake. That girl is adorable! Her imperfect teeth make her look perfect to me. Little kids aren't supposed to have perfect teeth. That's what orthodontists are for. LOL I realize that China is trying to give the world this perfect image of itself. And to the ignorant, they are probably doing a...

Someone posted a comment on my Carlin post about my torn peroneus brevis tendon and I missed it so I apologize for the delay in responding to you. My advice, get a good doctor (whether ortho or pod) and get it fixed now. My current doc (the best ankle/foot surgeon in the state), told me he would do the conservative approach for the first three months. If a person was still in pain, he would have done surgery to correct it at that point. I wish he was my doc from the beginning. :( I walked on my bad foot/ankle for almost a year before it was fixed. I would say about 1/2 of that year was spent in a walking cast on and off. I should not have waited so long for treatment because by the time surgery was done I was told that 50-60% of my movement would return if I was lucky. The surgery itself was successful and I am in considerably less pain now than I was beforehand. However, my mobility is still very limited. My injury was not nice. Not only had I torn the tendon, it had been almo...