My Trite (TM) Weekend

Today I learned how a drain snake works: remove the pipe elbow and jam in the thingie, then turn the other thingie when it gets stuck, then swear and generally telegraph your frustration until a man comes to bail you out. It may be an imperfect system, but now I can do dishes, and we've both fulfilled our gender-normative roles for the day.

I also butterflied and high-roasted a chicken. The inside of a chicken is gross, my oven only heats up to 475 degrees, and my so-called kitchen shears didn't stand up so well to scissoring up a chicken, but it was still very tasty. It turned a very lovely gold color and because I brined it, it was very juicy. I also made sauteed zucchini with nutmeg.

I "paid bills" yesterday by checking my bank balance online then finding a heavy-duty Kitchenaid mixer on sale on Amazon and ordered it. (I am making pizza this week, and watching Alton Brown use his fancy-schmancy dough hook Friday night made me jealous and also ambitious).

I roughed in lesson plans for American Lit for the rest of the year.

I finally figured out the password to set up my email on Tyson's laptop. I am confused and perplexed by the new operating system, and I don't know that I won't just have to write it off for good.

I looked up Masters' degree programs and different state licensure standards. I want to learn about computers, specifically in the area of educational databases, so I'm checking out what it would take to get an MIS (Masters' of Information Systems), a library science degree, or a curriculum and instruction degree that would also complement National Board certification requirements. Right now, they are pretty prohibitively expensive--too much so for immediate consideration.

Tyson and I had a stellar dinner last night at Todd's. I really, really love food, but hate mediocre food. We had a great watermelon salad with cayenne, feta, and toasted pumpkin seeds, and split a great steak.

There is a chicken in my neighbor's juniper tree that showed up in the neighborhood on about Wednesday morning. Nobody knows whose it is or where it came from. I also found out that she is the grandmother of one of my students. Now I'm paranoid when I go out in my pjs to put trash at the curb or get laundry from the dryer.