Wedding Dresses and Wizard of Oz

Today I realized that I hadn't tried on my wedding dress this year. Which is normal for most normal people, but I'm kind of a freak. Every anniversary (not necessarily on the very day) I dress up in my wedding dress and flounce around the house for a few minutes. Here's the evidence.

I love this dress. I know that if I got married today instead of nine years ago when I was a silly 21 year old, I would pick a different dress, but that's kind of why I love this one.


I also stopped by Staples (and resisted the urge to buy more pens and binders even though I love them) to pick up the DVD conversions of my ancient VHS copy of Wizard of Oz. Not the Judy Garland version. The Kincardine Theatre Guild circa 1996 version. And then I watched the entire thing, giggling at the bad singing and sloppy choreography. We were all so young and silly. I think the star was the dog though. I sat there watching and thought, "My god! That dog is reacting to everything in the scene." I'm flouncing around (apparently flouncing is not a trait you grow out of) and moving completely unnecessarily and the dog is quietly emoting his Toto-ness, probably thinking "I'll thank you to not upstage me, human." (The sound won't really work because I did a screen cast of it running on my computer.)



I also had lunch with my good friend and former associate teacher, Wendy, who has my life all planned out for me which is very helpful!

All in all it was a great day full of fun, kitsch, and nostalgia.

Tomorrow I'm going to check out the street painting and all local BBQ at Covent Garden Market. I love summer!

Banned Words and Phrases

I was watching/listening to/tolerating the fact that it was on in the background while I was working City Line the other day. They were doing one of those designer themed shows and talking about . . . wait for it . . . kitchen benches! Couldn't you just die? Anyway, the designer was talking about this one bench that was from Ikea, and so it was "a good price point." I got a little irritated, as I am wont to do, and thought "price point"? Why not just say "price"? Do you think it makes you sound fancy to say two words when one will suffice? No! It's stupid!

So I got on Twitter and asked my Twitter friends what words/phrases they would like to see banned. I think it's interesting when looking at these words/phrases to see the reason why the words irritate my friends so much. I think some people hated words that were mispronounced or misused while others were sick of hearing over-used and jargony phrases. Here they are:

price-point (Although my husband has pointed out its "business" use, I don't think that's really how they were using it)
In these tough economic times (So sick of this. EVERYTHING can apparently be explained by these tough economic times or can have added weight because of these tough economic times)

My charming and intelligent husband @reed_man would like irregardless banned. I think what makes it all the more annoying is it's a word that is frequently used by people in positions of authority. If my principal uses the word irregardless I will be very uncomfortable. Here's an interesting wikipedia article on this unword.

@Jason_Cobb would like to ban the phrase one stop stop which I have never heard and so can happily promise never to utter. I think it may be a UK thing.

@zollinhoffer added: libary and fustrated because of their non-word status. I think I could also add ambleance instead of ambulance, expresso instead of espresso, and (although it may get me in hot water) axed instead of asked. He also added could care less (because of its misuse).

@cordym would like let's touch base banned. I was probably particularly guilty of using phrases like this over the past year at the board office just because everyone else did. Don't even get me started on the edujargon that spouted from my mouth.

and my friend and font guru @muckapedia would like these banned: metrics, leverage (the dubious verb), and crutches in terms of, as per & worst case scenario. I would like to heartily endorse the banning of in terms of. I worked with a lovely colleague who used that phrase so frequently, I started counting in one meeting and then stopped when I ran out of fingers (because math is not my strong suit).

So there they are folks. These words and phrases are hereby banned. Use them at your peril!!!!

(After reviewing this post I think I should ban the excessive use of parentheses and exclamation marks!!!!! !)

After 11km it's all poop under the bridge

I decided it was time to push a little further than my habitual 5km. There was a time when I usually did a 10km run at least once a week and it was no big deal, but, well, there was also a time when I listened to New Kids on the Block.

Anyway, so I was feeling pretty strong today and I decided to try for 10km. I actually ended up going a little farther than 10km, probably 10.7 km but I'm going to round up to 11 ok?

Here are some of the things I experienced on this run:
4 shady under-the-bridge-dwelling gentleman
3 piles of excrement (1 that was almost definitely human)
2 unleashed dogs
1 unleashed smoking pregnant teenager
5 chipper runners (two of whom waved cheerfully whilst passing me, two of whom were elderly men who were thankfully running in the opposite direction and saved me the humiliation of being passed)
1 hippy mom on a bike with a baby trailer who nearly took me out because she seemed to forget that the baby trailer was much wider than her bike.
1 wasp sting.

Other than that, it was a fairly uneventful run. I should mention that one of the older runners was Steve, a former colleague of my husbands. I believe I've written about his deceptive running style before. He's got that shuffling little gait that looks slow until he whizzes by you leaving you stunned and confused.

On the topic of unleashed dogs: I HATE unleashed dogs. Not so much the dogs as the owners I guess. Yes, I'm sure your dog is friendly and would never bite anyone, but that's the same thing the owner of the last dog who bit me said. Your dog's right to run free as the wind should not supersede my right to run through the park without fear, especially when you don't actually have the right to let your dog off-leash since there's a bylaw about that. Take your dog to the dog park. I was about to unleash (pun completely intended) some righteous indignation on one of these dog-owners until I realized I actually knew him--and so I wussed out.

On the topic of smoking pregnant teenagers: It's bad enough to be running and taking in huge gulps of air and have some of those gulps tainted by nicotine and arsenic (the pot smoke just gives me the munchies), but when you see that it's coming from a pregnant woman it's also infuriating. I know. I know. It's none of my business, you say. But to you I say "HA!" It is SO my business because I'm a teacher. I could end up teaching your cognitively delayed child. Also it's just so tacky.

I think that's about all I have to add. I really don't think I need to comment on the human poop under the bridge.

Hello blog! Missed me?

I've been blogging pretty regularly on my teaching blog, but I have to admit I kind of forgot about this one and then some lovely person commented on my love-hate relationship with running. Thank you, person!

I had a really challenging year and I'm hoping this year will be better (since I'm a teacher, my year runs September to September). I'm making a fresh start at a new school and I really feel like this is going to be a turning point in my life. I'm thirty now, and I want to be a hip, confident, healthy thirty-something--with good shoes (husband bought me a really cute pair today. I love that he doesn't begrudge me cute shoes or Lululemon hoodies).

So I did a body pump class today at Goodlife with my pioneer babe friend Andrea, and her sister Lisa. It was a pretty good class except for the evil planks we had to do. Maybe a little hot yoga tomorrow? We'll see. Until then feel free to ogle my cute shoes.