A couple weeks ago I took a workshop at school led by one of our amazing philosophy instructors, Timothy. The topic of the workshop was "Get Things Done," and one of the time/life management techniques that Timothy talked about was the Pomodoro Technique. The technique asks you to divide your working time into twenty-five minute boxes, separated by short breaks. These timed chunks of work allow you to focus completely on just one task and are easy to squeeze into a bit of time between meetings or stack up into a longer period if you have a few hours to work on a project. I tried my first pomodoro today and loved it so much that I did four more. I kept track with hash marks inside of a little tomato I drew on my calendar.
Fake Cake is Delicious
Last Wednesday I baked a cake for a class end-of-semester pizza party. Ever since my Easter lamb cake experiment, I've been bitten with the cake-making bug, and I used this party as an excuse to bake the students a POGAC cake. What's a POGAC? Well, it's a monster who loves pogo sticks, and it's also a way to help students remember the rhetorical situation (purpose, occasion, genre, audience, and context). Here's the actual cake:
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| Where's my pogo stick? Where are my arms? |
But, as with the lamb cake, I sawed off the tops of the cakes to put them together and was left with two perfectly good and perfectly useless cake tops. So I plopped them together and I've been snacking on them every since. They're not really cake, so the slices are okay to eat for breakfast. It's fake cake. But it's still delicious.
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| Um, why is it still delicious? Because it's CAKE. Jesus. |
Don't Use Pureed Spinach in Your Quiche
Tonight I made a quiche for dinner and I added some prepackaged pureed spinach along with diced tomatoes. I'd picked up the spinach on a whim last time I was at the grocery store and used one of the pouches in a fruit smoothie. The smoothie turned out well, so I figured, "why not use it in this delicious quiche?" I SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE THIS.
Now, let's be clear: the quiche tasted very good. But the puree turned the whole egg, milk, and cheese mixture a dark brownish green, and because of the extra liquid, it was also a bit runny. So, imagine eating a quiche that was a runny, dark brownish green. Oh, you didn't want that image in your head? TOO BAD; THAT'S WHAT WE HAD FOR DINNER. I did not take a picture. You're welcome.
I Choose the Day's Outfit Based on Last Night's T.V. Shows
Frequently I get sartorial inspiration from whatever show it is I'm watching before going to bed. It's clothing that keeps me watching some shows, like Melissa & Joey, that are not good, but terribly fun to watch because of the actors' clothing. Now, this works well on a weeknight when I'm swooning over Melissa Joan Hart's fantastic, color splashed dresses and ridiculous heels (swoon), or one of Stana Katic's many splendiforous jackets, coats, or blazers (double swoon). But it doesn't work so well when we're watching GOT and I'm doing a super-swoon over Daenerys Targaryen's neck-piece. Luckily, tonight was a Castle night, and I am inspired by simple denim. Thank you, Kate Beckett.
Flowers are Pretty,
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| Aren't they? |
Gnomes Like to Read
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| And they hang out in our backyard. Trevor wants to spray to get rid of them. |
Okay, other than it's obvious I watch too much television (this is not a surprise), I also learned that a female police officer in San Antonio gave the perfect response to a man's grotesquely misogynistic comments after his wife took their baby and walked out on him: she said, Well, sir, we can't solve the world's problems tonight, so I'm going to make sure everything here is okay and then I'm on my way. Good night. And she was so calm, so serene, when I'm sure she wanted to beat his ass bloody after he said that women need to be taught to submit to their men. But she didn't. And of course, she was right, because she is a professional.
Luckily, this kind of appalling rhetoric doesn't rear its ugly head in my classroom, but I occasionally get a student with an out-of-left-field remark that needs to be addressed. And now, thanks to Cops, I have the perfect reply. No, we can't solve the world's problems right now, but we can talk about run-on sentences and make sure that we never, ever write them again. Good night.
So what did you learn today?
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