The Good Word

"This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams becoming more fervent and vivid." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

It is officially the Halloween season. I slept with a bag of candy corn under my pillow and when I woke up at 1:17 I nibbled on a handful of the waxy kernels before continuing to dream of Heroes.

Words, Words, Words

Last night I played the closest game of Scrabble that I have ever witnessed. I compliment Eva, my opponent, and admit that I underestimated her abilities.

Our scores were within 20 points the entire game, we both easily broke 300 points, and the final four words played were "one" (on a triple word score), "furl," "jeer," and "oven." I ended up winning (after the adding and subtracting of Eva's final letters) by 1 point. Wow. A good omen for the coming month.

Mallory arrives tomorrow, which means a week of insanity for all parties involved. Expect pictures. Expect it to be good.

Also, expect October to rock your socks with:
1. Daily quotations from Frankenstein, Dracula, or the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
2. A YouTube video every day, increasing in spookiness and nearness to my heart as the month goes on.
3. Either a new decoration in my house or a new element on the blog in preparation for my 100th posts on November 1st (All Saint's Day).
4. Good reasons why you should never dress your kid as a princess or a cowboy.
5. A simple, progressive explanation of why Jesus loves Halloween just as much as Christmas or Easter. And finally...
6. The absolute denegration of every secular Christmas song and tradition.

Today I just want to ease you into the season with a short video from National Geographic on the history of Halloween. Enjoy.

At the library again. I haven't been able to get on the internet (outside of school hours) for the past couple days, so I'm cashing in my credit from the day I got in my car accident and double-posted. I won't count it if you won't.

It seems as though I devoted a bit too much time this weekend to leisure, because I have felt disgustingly unprepared for class every day this week. Every day I manage to pull through, but I feel like I'm just barely getting by.

On the plus side, it looks like my car will soon be fixed. I got a check in the mail from the insurance company of the woman who hit me, and tomorrow I'm going in to talk with the mechanic who will be doing the repairs and he's going to see if he can cut down on their estimate so that I can keep a little bit of the insurance check for myself. Hopefully that conversation goes well.

Also, last night was my first RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) class. After having some trouble finding the building, I sat down in a semi-circle with about a dozen other individuals including three instructors, two sponsors, and a handful of candidates/catechumens. The average age in the group was probably upwards of thirty-five and I was the only unmarried adult (there were two sixteen year-olds). So, once again, probably not the place I'm going to be making friends... The class itself was alright, though a bit too touchy-feely for my tastes. I don't want to circumvent the system or anything, but I wish there was a more rigorous route I could take. I expected homework out of the Catechism, saints' lives to read, rituals and historical data to memorize, etc. Instead the meeting was really just the sort of "feelings" session that I have previously found so refreshingly absent from the Catholic church.

Oh well. I'm sure I'll find a way to get what I need to out of it.

In the near future I'd like to:
1. Respond to Pat's comment on yesterday's post.
2. Comment on Mike and Maggie's blogs.
3. Put down some thoughts on Sarah Palin.
4. Explain what I meant when I said that Julia Child and I disagreed about the nature of art.
5. Attempt to start a blog centered around reading and reacting to essays by notable authors a couple times a week.

One last thing: yesterday a student told me about a website called FreeRice.com where you can identify vocabulary (in English, French, Spanish and German) and for every word you get correct, the sitemakers donate 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.

While I have implicit trust in neither this website, nor in the UN, it is fun, and it couldn't hurt. My best vocabulary level is 51. Let me know if you beat that. These words are HARD.

Fun Fact: I've tagged more than one post with the label "empty promises".

I've decided to save my interview with the friendly cats at Obama headquarters for tomorrow in favor of a more timely post. For those of you who are sick of waiting for the first in my much alluded to Campaign '08 series, just listen to the song "Apathetic Way to Be" by Relient K and rest assured that it will be up by 10am tomorrow.

For those of you who don't know already I've been working at a small cafe in downtown CSprings this summer and after previous summers spent working at a car auction (now closed due to severe cocaine-related bankruptcy), a moving company, and campus security, I can say that washing dishes, waiting tables and deep-frying the crap out of whatever crosses my path at The Corner Cafe has been, by far, my favorite summer job. And today was my last day.

After arriving in CSprings this summer I spent a half a week just waiting to move into my apartment during which I slept on the ground in a state park. But, after I finally moved in it only took one day of job searching before I got a call from Bob and Virginia at The Corner Cafe and before I knew it I had been interviewed and fitted for a shirt. I was working the next Monday, two days after moving in.

I have an almost miraculous tendency for finding good people wherever I go (maybe there are more of them than I thought) and Bob and Virginia are thus far my favorite Coloradans (Colorodians, Colodites?). They gave me a great job that allowed me to spend a lot of time reading and getting to know the city, they let me eat breakfast and lunch every day on the house (they even sometimes fed me on Saturdays), but most of all they asked daily how I was doing, had I talked to my family, what was my apartment like, etc. They have been no less than surrogate parents this summer and today they really went above and beyond and got me a going away present:

A nice card, a coffee maker, filters and coffee.

I mentioned to Virginia about a week after I started work that I hadn't had coffee a couple weeks. What followed what a mom-like one-sided argument about why me being happy and having coffee every once in awhile was worth the money I would be spending on it. I, however, being the cheap, loan-encumbered teacher-to-be that I am never did get around to buying a coffee maker.

Their gift was a total surprise and it really showed me how even two months spent with someone can really have an impact on them. For better or for worse. While I will miss Bob, Virginia, Steve and Marquina, I won't have too much time to bemoan the loss of my apron: tomorrow is my first day of training at Cheyenne Mountain Charter Academy. If you didn't know already I'm going to be teaching 8th grade English and an introductory Latin class to a combination of 7th and 8th graders. So, if you've got any sweet classroom ideas, leave 'em in a comment.

And now, your moment of Zen:

Since I'll be officially starting at Cheyenne tomorrow it's going to get harder and harder to keep daily posts coming. So, if you're actually reading this stuff, give a shout out in the comments and let me know that I'm not just throwing around the bits and bytes for my own narcissistic enjoyment. Also, if you're sick of me talking about myself feel free to give me something to talk about. Just leave a comment that says "Zach, what do you think about Nutrigrain bars or human/unicorn relationships?" and I'll be sure to give you my 2 cents.