Pas de drapeau, pas de pays!
Today started out as a crap day. Absolutely crap. I had a wonderful dream last night, lots of fun, quite lovely, so waking up from that and realizing it wasn’t true sucked ass, and then of course I stayed in bed longer than I ought to’ve and relished the lovely dream, tried to get back into it, and was consequently late getting out of the apartment. Nothing new there.
I was to proctor a four-hour test and teach a two-hour private lesson, almost back-to-back. Couldn’t find my proctoring bag, spent five minutes looking for it, figured it was in the car, found out it wasn’t, came back in, eventually found it under a pile of clean clothes (the new hampers are working well, yes, thanks), and so was even later. Exit gate for my apartment complex stuck shut (makes a person feel safe, doesn’t it?)—later. Some unknown hold-up getting my Chick-n-Minis—later still.
All told I was about forty minutes late getting on the freeway, but I managed to be only two minutes late to class by skipping a trip to the office I’d planned to make on the way there. Huge class (~15) of kids, could only get a couple of them to talk (though I did make them all get up and do a group stretch during the break, which I’m sure they LOVED). Couple parents showed up with questions and hey, this isn’t even my class, but sure, what can I help you with? (That part wasn’t actually crummy, it just added to the lateness a bit.)
Then to the office, for the trip I’d skipped earlier, a trip which I barely had time for and thus had to skip lunch for, a trip which turned out to be entirely unnecessary since my afternoon student hadn’t even sent his test in. Didn’t stop me from spending too much time looking for it, though. The internet directions to his house also mentioned a street that would be handy if it did exist but in fact does not and is apparently just wishful thinking on Google’s part. End result: fifteen minutes late to lesson. Oy.
BUT THEN.
The lesson itself went much better than I expected: friendly student, eager to learn, conscientious, prepared. Pomegranate frappuccino to celebrate. Heard some excellent (and yet ridiculous) news about another tutoring student. Dinner and chocolate cake and coffee and the hilariously multilingual Eddie Izzard* at friends’ house. Eddie on video, I mean. He wasn’t there in person. Heh.
On the way home, wonder of wonders, I saw a meteor, which (hello, astro dork here) totally made my fucking day.
So. Crap morning, fantastic late afternoon and evening. I’ll take it.
———
* If you’ve never seen his stand-up, you really should. It’s both ridiculously funny and, avec sous-titres, a great way to learn how to curse in French. I know I’ve blogged about Eddie at least once before, but it’s been a while. Tonight we watched Dress to Kill, which I think is my favorite. Funniest. Transvestite. Ever.
P.S. No one’s interested in the “random paragraph” post? Fine. I understand. I love y’all anyway. It was a good video idea, methinks, but the text version wasn’t that exciting.
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:22 pm
I happened to spend that saturday (The 12th) at Tanglewood listenting to the Boston Pops play John Williams music (War of the worlds, close encounters, memoirs of a geisha (with Yo-Yo Ma), and 9 movements of starwars, narrated (poorly) by James Earl Jones. (John Williams conducting, Steven Spielburg in plain clothes in the audience) The encore was ET. So, great music… but better show.
During Close Encounters, a really big bright meteor streaked through the sky (around 8:50PM ET). During starwars, we got the best of the meteor shower, and I counted at least 5 good shooting stars, and about a dozen other suspected meteors. Then, during the encore, while sitting on the lawn beyond the music shed, the moon rose over the shed. I was half expecting to see ET on a bike floating across the sky. (There was a spotlight with this image that went across stage too… cute)
Of course, I had no idea we were in the midst of a meteor shower…. It was quite a pleasant surprise. Glad you got to share in its magic.