Diversity & Cynicism

My boss was chosen to sit on a committee assigned to advocate diversity within the college that our department lies. This committee, committed to diversity, is made up of woman faculty from the other departments within the college....with the exception of ours, as we have no women faculty. Thus, my boss (who is renowned campus wide for his 30+ years of support and encouragement of woman in our field) was chosen along with a young, soggy, long haired, South American male professor.

My boss says to me, "I can understand why the dean chose me, but why that other guy?"

I said, "Well Professor, you are known for your "minority" outreach, and that other guy clearly has breasts, so he was the closest thing to a woman they could get.

At this point, my 69 year old conservative boss with a pulmonary problems laid his head on his desk and started shaking violently. I thought that I had killed him! When he lifted his head, his face was red and his eyes were tearing with laughter.

He said, "You are far to young to be such a cynic.....but I appreciate every minute of it."

Confessions of a 7Year Old

Standing in the hair care section at the market, looking at hair dye:

Mom, I used to have a crush on you when you had long hair. Your long hair was beautiful.

Well, I guess it is a good thing that I cut it then. I don't think that kids are supposed to have crushes on their moms. We'll just have to find some other older lady with long hair for you to have a crush on.

I'm really bored with your brown hair. I think it is time for a change.

Oh really..... and what do you suggest?

Blonde. You really should go blonde.

Love Child

If Elliott Smith



and Aimee Mann had a love child



it would sound a lot like Emily Haines.



Her ability to convey palpable emotion via lyrics and music is very familiar to that of the aforementioned.

**Neither the Aimee song or the Emily song are my favorites, but I took what youtube had to offer as they seemed safe bets for a girl lacking a sound card.

Volcanos Melt Us Down

The boy had been talking about building a volcano for while, so I bought him a kit for Christmas. One morning over the break we woke up and decided to blow some shit up. What went down was as follows:

Being a very responsible parent, I insisted that we both wear safety goggles....even though we were only reading the instructions.


The next step required expert precision; adding water to the sand-plaster mixture for the exterior of the volcano. *Please note the serious look of "Holy shit I am totally building a volcano!" on the boy's face. **P.S. his safety goggles are squeezing his brain.


Step 3, mix it up!


Step 4, apply sand-plaster mixture to the exterior of the volcano mold. * Boy's face says "This is going to be totally awesome! My mom rules!"


At this point we were told to wait 20 minutes for the sand to dry before we can blow the baby sky high.

30 minutes later : still wet, like soggy wet.
2 hours later: still wet and tacky.
6 hours later: Fuck it, we're going to have to let it dry over night.

After 24 hours of drying, I look at the boy and say "do you want to paint it or anything?" He replies with, "I just want to blow it up!" I agreed. The anticipation was too much for either of us to bear any longer. The following video documents what happened next.

Everything that could have gone wrong, pretty much went wrong. It was a bit of a letdown, but I look at it now more as building a memory rather than a volcano. I'm sure we'll find more things to blow up in the future. For now, this makes us laugh out loud when we talk about it. Freaking volcanoes.

This Morning

Getting dressed for work:

"How do these pants look? Do the pockets make by butt look weird?"

"No one cares."

"I care!"

"Ya, well you aren't trying to fuck yourself....."

Baby Steps to Something Big

Baby Step #1

He buys a new bookshelf that we assemble and place at my house.

Then he moves 90% of his book/magazine collection and 100% of his record collection to this bookshelf.

Totally not as scary as we may have thought......More baby steps over the next handful of months, will find more of his things here, but more importantly, him. I can't wait.