mcm1610

This has been a fantastic season. I would love a Hawks win in 6 with two easy games, but if it went to 7 games, all three being OT, I would love that, too. Fuck the Bruins hard, though. Really hard.

My phone is failing at downloading the new hacked version. Sucks.

I started Emile Zola's Germinal[/i] last week and like it a lot more than I thought I would. I'm in book (or is it part?) 3 right now. I want to read more Vonnegut, the Game of Thrones books, whatever they're called, and the full Les Miserables book, as well as finishing a lot of the non-fiction I've started (Wealth of Nations, Power in a Union, General Theory...).

I'm not about to pay for it, but I've liked a lot of their acoustic renditions of songs so I would like to find a bootleg of it.

Like 45 minutes before this update, I had sent EVERYONE in my town on a 24 hr task, so.... see ya tomorrow, squidport storyline.

Aw there's two in there I want, but I'm the poorest motherfucker on Sesame Street.

I'm happy with the west, and so sad with the east. I can't stand the Bruins... top to bottom, that organization bugs the shit out of me. Owner, anthem singer, coach, Marchand (especially him, that fucking scumbag weasel), Chara, Lucic, McQuaid, Thornton... Their equipment manager is probably a dick, too. Before either series started I would've wanted either team out of the West over either team in the East, but I wanted Boston to get knocked out here.

Hmm, so much to address in that post. First - with teachers, a child's performance has so much more to do with his or her home life. The biggest predictor of a child's school performance is the parents' income, so how do you prove a teacher failed? You can take the same teacher and switch schools, or even just periods, and they'll have dramatically different outcomes. Is it the teacher's fault? Second - good luck on your rise to riches. Seriously. But SES mobility is lower here than in dozens of other countries. So much for the American Dream. I got bored, it's 85* outside, I'm going out.

Re: unions: I have a fantastic union in my district. There's a support network behind every decision that's made and they're there to actively check the district if they try to push something that is against the contract. I love my union. I just wish I was a permanent member of it, but that's because of my in-and-out employment situation. I agree with the point about being in front of the kids. Every day, even in really negative ones like the last couple days, when I'm actually in the room with kids, I love everything about it. I love when they ask questions above and beyond the curriculum, I love being able to give them advice, I love watching something new click for them. And that's what makes it so discouraging. I've never wanted to do anything except teach (besides coach, which is essentially teaching), and due to the shitty political climate and morons making budget decisions, I can't do it. It's fucking terribly depressing and frustrating. I've considered jumping careers many times as I'm 27 and can't have an unstable employment situation forever, but I can't bring myself to leave entirely.

Let's go Hawks!

I'm glad my friend's near-death was as entertaining to some of you as it was me. I'm going to try to access this site from my phone and see if I can upload the picture of his truck from his other near-death experience.

The setting: Buffalo, NY in early February of 2010. Matt and I are both managers at an ice rink, and President's Day weekend we have a pretty big tournament. We sign up for extra shifts for events like these, so Matt takes the Saturday morning shift. Matt is a known partier, so our one boss already is skeptical about whether this is a good idea for an early shift, but Matt is actually really good about showing up to work no matter what. The build-up: A new strip club just opened, and Matt has been frequenting it quite a bit because, well why not? Who doesn't like strippers, especially when the place actually serves good steak, too? Friday Night: Matt has an open-bar fundraiser around Happy Hour. He goes and starts drinking hard because it's an open bar. Afterwards he ends up going downtown with one of the strippers who he had befriended, but at the one club, they kick him out because he threw up. He and the girl go to another club. After hanging out there for a bit, he goes out to his car for something. While he does that, his stripper friend waits around the corner of the bar smoking a cigarette. Matt is walking back from his car and sees three guys around the girl. He assumes they know her and thinks nothing of it at first. As he gets closer, he sees that the girl is upset and they seem to be giving her a hard time. He walks up and says, "what's going on?" One of the three replies, "you better get the fuck out of here if you know what's good for you." (just like any character in a movie would say, right?) In his mind, Matt goes, "alright..." and starts walking away, then clenches his fist and takes a HUGE charging 5-step swing at one of the guys and just blasts the guy in the jaw. The guy drops. Matt starts to turn toward the next guy but BLAM! He's hit hard by something from behind, blacks out, and drops to the ground. Saturday morning: ~6:45am. My phone rings, and it's my boss, but not the one who questioned whether Matt should work that morning. A different boss. Call him G. [we'll call the other boss M.. that comes later] I squint at my phone, because I'm blind. G - "Hey, uh.. do you know where Matt is?" Me - "uh.. no.... he didn't show up?" G - "No, he's not here and he usually calls if something comes up or he's going to be late. He's never just outright missed a shift before." Me - "I dunno.. he's probably dead in a gutter somewhere." G - "Well, I'm actually a little worried because like I said this is unusual, he never no-call-no-shows" Me - "Alright, I'll call around and see if I can find him and I'll let you know." I hang up, try to call him and it goes right to voicemail. I send him a text saying G was looking for him, then call one other friend who doesn't answer because it's not even 7am on a Saturday. I figured it was pointless to keep calling, so I go back to sleep. About 45 minutes or an hour later I get another call. It's G again. G - "Any word?" Me - "No, no one answered. His phone is off, but I'm guessing you knew that already." G - "Yea, we tried calling him. We're short a person right now, though, so can you come in?" Me - "uh.. yea, I'll be there in 20 minutes" I'm thinking, what an asshole, you better be in a gutter now. I work the shift til mid-afternoon or so, then go home, still no one has heard from him. About 8pm I get a text from a co-worker: "Holy shit! Matt was really almost dead!" Matt, without his phone, showed up to work just to check in. Here's where we learn the rest of the story. Back-up to Saturday morning. Matt wakes up in the hospital, turns his head and opens his eyes to see his mom, his dad (they're divorced), and the stripper sitting in the room. His mom immediately stands up and with angry-yet-disappointed-while-still-relieved tears leaves the room quickly. His dad actually starts laughing. The stripper just sits uncomfortably and then a nurse walked in. The nurse explained that he had been knocked out, broke his nose, had a gash over his eye, dislocated a wrist, broke two ribs, and took quite a beating otherwise. . The nurse goes through the standard check-out stuff, then goes, "oh, do you want this?" She holds up a bag filled with a bloody pen. Matt responds, "no, what the hell would I want with that?" The nurse adds this info: "We had to cut this out of you. It was jutting out of your chest; we had to siphon the ink out of your blood." Matt: "Wait... you gotta back up." From here, the stripper tells much more of the story. Back up again to Friday night as Matt is first hit and drops to the ground. As soon as he hits the ground, the two standing guys start stomping the shit out of him. The stripper runs around the corner to the bar to grab the bouncer. When she comes back, the three have done a good job on Matt, rifled through his pockets trying to take anything of value. His wallet was stolen, and they went to take his phone but it was a shit flip phone so they spiked it back at him. As they ran away, one found a pen on the ground, stopped, picked it up, then turned and stabbed Matt in the chest right over his heart. The stripper gets back to him, the bouncer went back in to call 911, and Matt is in and out of consciousness. He's alert enough to know he doesn't have health insurance so he convinces the girl to help him into the car and drive him to the hospital instead of taking the $1000-taxi ride. Then he blacks out for good, probably bleeding out because his BAC when they measured him at the hospital was about a .35 at the time. They couldn't even give him medicine because they were afraid his blood was too thin as it was. Now up to Saturday morning again. The stripper is gone, and he's walking out of the hospital with his mom and dad. His dad laughs and says, "at least you left me with something to look at." His mom, again near crying, says, "do you know what you said in the middle of the night?" Matt obviously doesn't. While the nurse was talking to him and everyone was in the room, he goes, "this means she's gotta put out, right?" His mom wasn't a fan. When Matt gets home Saturday night, he calls his voicemail. M, the other boss, had left him about 5 voicemails, each one progressively angrier. He was swearing in the last couple, actually yelling into the phone, meanwhile, Matt nearly was dead in a gutter like I joked about. Prologue: Matt saw the girl exactly one more time and never did get to hook up with her. I have since made sure that every new employee we get at the ice rink hears this story. He has since had 2 or 3 other near-death experiences, one a texting-while-driving story where G texted him bc Matt had told him he was going to be about 5 min late to work. G responded "ok" and while Matt was reading it, he drove up the front of a snow-plow and completely rolled his truck, which was totaled. He had a MASSIVE concussion from that one and had headaches months later from it. But he's still alive, somehow. Around the time of this story, his "catchphrase" was "living the dream!" Anytime anyone called him out for doing something not-smart, that was his response. I had always told him he should write a book about his life, so when this happened, I told him that the title for this chapter of the book was pretty obvious: "The dream nearly ends."

Oh, I haven't read anything but the last post, but boy do I have a story! It's my favorite to tell. It involves strippers, pens, one of my best friends for almost 20 years, two different bosses, and a lot of supporting cast members. It's really a great story when my friend Matt and I can be together to tell it from both perspectives, but I'll just piece it together. I can't decide if I should tell it chronologically by what occurs when, or chronologically by what we find out. I'll just start typing and we'll see how it comes. The story will follow in the next post I make.

A year or so ago a girl I used to coach messaged me on facebook out of the blue and asked if I had a gf, and since I didn't at the time, I said no. She then gave me the number of a girl she knew from gym who was thankfully a lot closer to my age and told me to text her. I didn't for a while because I thought it was awkward, but it's really not. Just tell her straight up your story. "Hey, my friend blahblahblah gave me your number and said I should text you." My conversation quickly moved to the computer to talking to almost dating until she went to Taiwan or some weird country for like 6 weeks. When she came back it wasn't the same, but the beginning part went fine. Just do it. If she doesn't respond or thinks you're a weirdo, what'd you lose? It's not like you already know this girl and would lose a friend or anything.

I know there's a few on here. Just want to see what it's like in your neck of the woods. Around here, it's test-test-test, data, budget cuts, and worrying about who will have a job next year. Do you guys face heavy cuts like NYS (and particularly WNY)? Do states that don't have Regents exams like we do focus so much on the testing? What's the climate like where you are? Here there's tons of negativity, a very heavy feeling of teachers-vs-administration combativeness, and the feeling that we aren't trustworthy as professionals. Is it like that everywhere? I hope not, but if it is, that can't last forever, can it?

What's everyone's thoughts on the penalty shot there? I'm happy with the outcome, but that was an iffy call.

I wish Pierre Maguire would take a puck to his shiny fuckin forehead. He's so irritating.

I've only seen the first and Tokyo Drift. I don't know if I've seen all of Tokyo Drift, actually, but I certainly refer to all drafting-type racing as Tokyo-Drifting.

I got the hack back, so it's out there. Just search it. I'm growing corn, about 60 some days into it. I've had a task to grow something else for about 45 days now but what are you gonna do.. Oh well!

My town is starting to get pretty huge. When the Whacking Day session ended my hacked version didn't work anymore so I'm a little sad I can't get the Duff Blimp but I'll be really sad to miss out on some of the awesome stuff coming in the near future if they are premium things. I got tired of whacking snakes and giving eggs, but I haven't lost interest in building up my town. I've got a semi-long term plan going because I'm a nerd for organization. Some of my early builds and decisions bug me, but I chalk it up to a realistic "this is how towns develop" mentality to appease myself rather than going full-on rebuild. For the new guys, you're all free to add me - mcm1610 in the game.

As cheesy as it can be, I love the 7".

Did this have a DL code? I love the album, but would love it more if I could listen to it in my car as well..

I can't wait for this to come back. I have been asking around because I finally have time to watch TV. I've been watching Break Bad (never watched, on season 2 now, episode 11ish), watched one ep of Mad Men but haven't seen more yet, and last night watched the first episode of Shameless which appears to be a ridiculous show.

I've got the first 13 seasons on DVD/Blu Ray and it's great. I love watching with the commentary on. If I ever get disposable income again, I'd like to buy the rest.

Who is still hunting for Tatum and/or the Motel? Every so often I feel charitable.