Michael Bolton AND David Hasselhoff on the same TV show? Both of them dancing in fringed shirts? Both of them vying for the coveted Mirror Ball Trophy? Really?
Isn't there some kind of legal limit to how much late 80s/early 90s craptacular testosterone can exist in one place? I mean, it's like some kind of perfect storm - Knight Rider, Baywatch, "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay," "Time, Love, and Tenderness," Baywatch Nights, and dating Nicolette Sheridan -- I mean, eeek, right? All of that combined with the inherent cheesiness of celebrity ballroom dancing? I'm not sure if I'm really happy and giddy or if I'm filled with profound, existential dread. Probably more the latter than the former. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I'm sure it's the latter. And why? Take a look:
This guy
aaaaannnnnd this guy.
Gives you the chills, right? And not the good kind. Not the "ooooh, the concert is about to start" kind of chills. No. The feverish, infected, last-rites kind of chills. The "Go toward the light" chills. You hear what I'm saying?
I wasn't able to make it to class today as I had to make an emergencey Dr appt. I have a bad UTI and needed meds. What did I miss and what homework is due on wed???
Seriously. I could eat two or three of these for lunch every day. It's the perfect food. A couple of these with some hot, salty fries just out of the fryer and a sweet, icy diet Pepsi. For the one hundred and twenty seconds it takes me to eat it all, I'm in heaven. Chicago may have produced Al Capone and the Cubs but it also produced the greatest hot dogs known to man. Thank you, Windy City. Thank you.
I'm teaching a film class for the first time this semester. It's an overload class the school's making available at the new satellite center in Ottawa. The film class on the main campus pretty much belongs to my colleague who has had it sewn up for the last several years. I get this one only because she doesn't want to drive the 17 miles to teach it over there. I don't mind the drive and am happy for the opportunity.
What's weird, however, is the fact that I don't know how to teach it. I've been teaching one thing or another for over ten years now and yet I'm really not sure how to approach teaching a film class. I've got the syllabus together, the schedule, the basic assignments, etc. but I still feel as though I'm making it up as I go along.
Tonight was the first class and I was surprised by how many students, when asked why they signed up for the class, simply said, "It fills a slot" or "I need a a GPA booster." I appreciate candor about the academic process as much as the next teacher but, seriously? That's a little too honest for my taste. I realize that a lot of the students taking classes at the satellite center otherwise may not attend classes at all so they are a little rough around the edges - but jeeze.
Anyway, tonight we watched John Sayles' 1996 murder mystery/Western/social exploration of borders, Lone Star. I chose it as the initial film because, in many ways, it's a perfect example of what movies are capable of. It tells a story in ways that only a film could pull off. You couldn't replicate some of the effects in Lone Star in any other medium. There are lots of flashbacks and the transitions between past and present are so disorienting and yet cool, they knock me out every time.
Next week, we'll talk about Photography and watch sequences from Apocalypse Now, Tucker: A Man and His Dream, Days of Heaven, and possibly Saving Private Ryan.
Yes, it's been so hot in Illinois, Satan passed through and said, "Holy crap, it's bad here!" It's been in the 90s all week with humidity in the 70s - all this equals a heat index of over a hundred every day for over a week. Gah, right?
The thing that makes it really bad is the fact that we don't have central air. We bought our house in December and didn't have a full understanding of the cosmic suckitude of Illinois summers. They slap Michigan summers in the face and steal their lunch money. They kick sand in the face of Idaho summers. They generally spit on other summers - they spit pure humid air.
So even though the house doesn't have AC, we thought, "Aw, we'll be fine. How bad can it be?"
Famous last words. How bad can it be? Bad enough to break a sweat while changing a diaper. Bad enough to turn our bathroom into a sauna -- without any hot rocks or anything. Bad enough for me to feel like I should be basting in a pan and served with stuffing and sweet potatoes. Bad.
So even though we love our house and love our yard, we also hate it. We want to care for it and make it nice but we also want to smack it and say, "Why?! Why were you built with no AC? Why did we buy you?!" It's complicated.
Anyway, today was supposed to be the hottest day of this most recent stretch of surface-of-the-sun heat. It's supposed to start cooling down to the low 80s starting on Monday but today the weathermen didn't even offer a projected temperature - they just put a picture of a red- skinned, horned man with a pointy beard and a pitchfork standing over the state of Illinois.
So we surrendered and took off. Yep, we retreated. We loaded up a change of clothes and a few other things and we came to Bloomington. It's about 45 minutes south and has fun things to do -- a children's museum, good shopping, good restaurants, an excellent comic book store, etc. We bid for a nice hotel room for half price on Priceline, got it, and are now safely installed in a Holiday Inn with a nice pool and very effective AC. It's cold in here and it's awesome. I've set the AC on "Hoth" and it feels pretty great.
Tomorrow we'll go back in time for Maryn to go to an evening birthday party for a friend and for me to mow our Amazonian lawn. And we'll look forward to seeing temps like 82, 81, etc. I'll let you know if we melt into puddles of no-AC-house-hating goo. Wish us luck.
So we had a mold scare over the weekend. Suzanne went downstairs to clean up after the girls and discovered little black and green splotches on things. The more stuff she pulled out of the storage room, the more upset she became. We had boxes, furniture, papers, blankets, etc. covered in mold. Eeek, right?
So for about 24 hours, we were convinced we were breathing in toxic black mold and that our house was a forever-unsellable poisonous nightmare. Not a pleasant feeling.
Fortunately, a guy from a local mold remediation company came over and calmed us down. He basically said, it's not that bad, you can clean it yourselves, if it were really toxic you'd be vomiting right now. He was a wonderfully decent guy who not only gave us 45 minutes of professional advice for free, he threw in a free jug of professional grade anti-microbial solution. I never want to have to use any kind of professional mold removal service but, if I ever do, I'm calling that guy.
So for the last several days we've been scouring, cleaning, bagging, rearranging, and burning. (Yeah, our neighbor has a burn pit and I've been indulging the pyro in me by burning the living heck out of some really satisfying stuff - a card table and chairs, old files, some old shelves. Burn, baby, burn.) We also bought a couple of dehumidifiers which we have going 24 hours a day. The basement smells better than it ever has and definitely feels more welcoming. We're still only about 80 percent done with the cleaning. We've got most everything wiped down and put away but we still need to put a few stragglers away and then sweep and mop the whole thing. It wouldn't be a big deal except for the fact that the basement floor is like the length of a football field. Mopping it will be like swabbing the deck of the U.S.S. Enterprise. It's big.
(This is a shot of me cleaning the basement.)
As long as I'm on the subject, I should publicly own up to what caused the mold in the first place. We have extenders on our rain gutter downspouts - they're about four feet long and they carry the water away from the house and down the hill. Before we left for our family reunion, I mowed the lawn and took the extenders off so I could mow the Amazon jungle of weeds growing under and around them. After I was done with that part of the lawn, I moved on without replacing the extenders. Yep.
We left for five days and, while we were gone, it rained. Because water takes the path of least resistance, it went down around the foundation of the house and seeped its way into our basement.
The mold? My fault. Entirely.
And that sucks. It sucks to be the cause of so much stress and work and inconvenience. It's bad enough for bad things to happen but to be the cause of bad things happening? Way worse.
Anyway, as I say, we're nearly there in terms of cleaning and restoring. I'm grateful it wasn't as bad as it could have been. We lost a few precious things but, in the end, they were just things. Everyone's still healthy, we still have a home to live in. We are very blessed.
Anyway, in the spirit of making the subject of mold a little more pleasant, here's a nice ditty you all recognize from the Juno soundtrack by the band known as The Moldy Peaches:
