Me Racist?!

So I was giving a quiz to my students one day and one student was taking a particularly long time to finish. After the other students had been sitting waiting for several minutes, while the last student looked at his paper not knowing anymore answers than he did several minutes before, I announced that they had two minutes to finish. The student who had yet to finish looked at me and said you can’t put a time on this, and I said this is now a timed quiz. Then he told me I was racist. Slightly surprised at the accusation, I asked how putting a time limit on a quiz made me racist. He looked at me in all seriousness and said “it is racing against the clock, that’s racist.”

Congratulations, you have just made it to my forward list!

I woke up this morning for whatever reason thinking about this e-mail I got that had about a hundred names in the “to” list (ok, maybe only 15 names). Really people, I do not have a lot of pet peeves, but this is one that I do have. Why do people have to list everyone for all to see? Haven’t you ever heard of bcc? It stands for blank carbon copy. It means you can list a hundred names and everyone who receives the message will not see everyone else’s names and e-mail address.

Needless to say when I woke up this morning I was very tempted to write a letter and send it in an e-mail to everyone who was on the list of people receiving the original e-mail. I had it all thought out and finally decided that it would probably be safer to put it in a blog. So if you are friends with Juan Ramon, you are lucky you are not receiving the following as an e-mail.

Congratulations, you have just made it to my forward list. I am so excited to have new friends I hardly know what to forward to you first. Perhaps some special angels spelled in parentheses and zeros that will answer all of your prayers if you in turn forward it to all that you have ever come in contact with.

Or maybe I can send you a list of cute things children say so that you will have something important to do with all the time you are not doing anything important.

Better yet, I am sure I can send you the cutest bears and babies and hearts and puppies and things that you have ever seen, don’t worry they will take up your whole allotted inbox for only as long as you choose to leave it there. Which I am sure you won’t be very long because you will be dying to read it and forward it on to 18-20 people to prove that you really are loved unlike those of us who only have you to forward it to.

Or perhaps you haven’t seen the children dressed randomly in red, white and blue to come together to form a very patriotic display you are sure to use on your next Christmas card, I know I will.

Don’t you just love forwards?!!!! Don’t you just love all the things you gain from not ignoring them?

What you don’t know who I am?! Well, I don’t know you either but you are now blessed by Juan Ramon* because he is apparently a common friend and has agreed to share your e-mail address with me when he sent out that last group e-mail. * The name here has been changed, not to protect the innocent but because I couldn’t decide whose guilty self should be listed first. Juan Ramon is actually the name used for Sam in the Spanish version of “Green Eggs and Ham”

To thank Juan Ramon, please put his name on the list of shame and forward it to everyone you know. Here I will start it; you just have to copy it into an e-mail.

Juan Ramon

When you receive it back (as you will if those you send it to you will send it back, if they really love you) then add any other names that you wish to curse to the list. Do not delete any other names listed, add a star to repeated names and forward it again to everyone you know. Do not break the chain if you get it. Keep adding names and keep sending it. If you keep it going, someday everyone in the world will be on it and you do not want to be responsible for single handedly breaking up the bond that could connect everyone upon the planet.

To unsubscribe to my forwards you must ignore them forever by opening a new e-mail account and never sharing your new address with the one who listed you in the list of persons to receive a mass e-mail in the first place.

You gotta love foreign stationary!

I have been getting letters from my friend on mission in Korea and the stationary she writes her letters on is so random it cracks me up. My favorite is the whole milk project, not because that is my milk preference, but it is just funny to see cows flying around giving facts about whole milk and telling you to drink it.

Other than the whole milk project, I get a lot of things with cheesy pictures and poorly translated thoughts. For example there was one with a country scene in the background and in the foreground was a wooden post with signs going different directions with different sayings like
Cheer up
Love way
I’ll miss you
Don’t give up hope
It’s just a flesh wound
I know it hurts

… how random is that?

So I got a letter the other day with a bear with his head in a tea cup and here is the poem that went with it.

I love tea
Ocean breeze, Open sky,
Snow, Victorian house,
Terrace, Flower,
Girl friend, Boy friend
& midnight.
All are going with tea…

Come on, that is better than my poem about crickets! Well, I think it is anyway.

Have a happy What?!!!!!

So I have wanted to do this for a long time but I hesitate because it could be potentially embarrassing to anyone who does not wish to hear about feminine issues and/or products. In the end I decided that since nobody reads this anyway it couldn’t hurt to go ahead and write and post it. So if your are finally reading this, be now to forth warned that it could be potentially embarrassing and you may want to move on to another blog entry. In general it is very general and not to specific, so it isn’t too embarrassing on the whole.

Honestly I hate seeing commercials for feminine products, they are generally stupid and often slightly embarrassing when you are watching TV with your dad or perhaps even your new boyfriend.

I did see a funny commercial, that didn’t air in the United States, which had some little boys saving money for some product they heard their mom talk about. The boys were actually overheard, by the mom, discussing how she always said that she could swim and ride horses and do all sorts of fun stuff while using it. Of course they were excited to get their hands on such an item. It was a cleaver commercial and presented more humorously than I am now recounting it.

But this is not what my blog is about; it is about the slogan of one company to “have a happy period.” So here is the story…I will not give the details of when I first saw this slogan, but I will say that it blew my mind to think they would even attempt to tell an ornery, in pain, uncomfortable and in the works for a potentially embarrassing situation, woman to have a happy period.

After I first read this I tried to think happy…potential to have children (but you are on your period it means your are not having a child, which I guess is happy for those of us not in the right situation for having a child)…um what else is there happy about it?

So it got me thinking, who came up with this slogan? I have come up with two possible solutions. Option number one: A man, one who doesn’t understand how it actually feels to be ornery, in pain, uncomfortable and having potential for an embarrassing situation… or option number two: A woman who has been though menopause, someone who has been there, done that, and wants to mock the world of women still dealing with it.

So the next time you see me and I am ornery, or in pain, or uncomfortable or even worse in the middle of an embarrassing situation, leave me alone, because I am probably trying to have a happy period.

Check out my Slide Show!

Towels, Soap & Drinking Glasses

Ok, so Kirsten thinks that someone should do a blog on hotel cleanliness. I am not sure if she is wanting funny or informational. (probably the latter)

I looked at a few articles online hoping for some inspiration but just didn’t find what I was looking for. I found articles that claimed the more expensive the hotel the cleaner it was and I found articles showing studies that were done on all ranges of hotels that were equally dirty regardless of price. Some surveys claimed that most people use the cleanliness of the bathroom as a barometer; referring to the stock of soaps and towels and toilet paper and such as their tool of measurement. I think that the main conclusion I can draw from my big 15 minute research was that some can be clean and some can be dirty and you might get a bug but usually nothing worse that a stomachache or a cold. Many articles did suggest don’t use the bedspread (take it off as soon as you get there) and bring some sanitizing wipes for the TV remote and for the phone. One guy also suggested to rinse the glass in the bathroom in hot water for 2 ½ minutes.

So there you go Kirsten, since you were so curious after your summer of cleaning rooms. I do hope that your curiosity however stays within the realms of your work because I would hate to think that you were asking people to write blogs about the cleanliness of my house.

In my defense, while my kitchen table is probably covered in mail, my towels are clean my soap is sometimes full and if you need a drinking glass…go to the kitchen.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

I will never forget it…my first dance. I had been fourteen for just over two months and it was New Years Eve. My mom had worked many hours on a new dress that I thought was beautiful.

There were threats of some snow, and I was a little fearful that I would miss my first dance, and on at the New Year no less, but I imagined and hoped that it would all work out.

We got the snow. And we got ice. And we got more snow. In the end I had to settle to going to the movies with my sister and two of her friends.

So there we have the setting for my first introductions of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Although I don’t remember a lot about the movie it is a phrase that comes in handy to describe people that make up stories and secret blogs and such.

This particular blog would be the perfect example of that. I have mentioned to various friends that some of my thoughts could be found at my “secret blog” but for some reason no one is buying it. I am sure this has nothing to do with the fact that I aided a friend in starting such a blog. (see http://ottofina.blogspot.com/2007/07/bad-blog-beginning.html)

So… tonight as I stood trying to decide how much to push her in a search for my blog she said she wasn’t buying it. She said to me “I know when I am being scammed.” HELLO!!! That is the beauty of a scam!! People don’t realize what it is until it is all over!

I simply said to her that I was scamming her into thinking I was scamming her that I have don’t really have a blog when I do. She laughed and left.

So here I sit, as the dirty rotten scoundrel, laughing that she hasn’t found my blog. The only problem with my scam is that I am sitting here alone, with no one to appreciate my work.

So I ask myself, who has been played now?