Dat wud be US!

I Can Has Cheezburger? always has the best kitteh pictures—and this one perfectly sums up my sister and me! Bestest friends EVAR!

This is a costume?

The local party supply outlet has Halloween costumes galore, and I noticed this one while browsing the aisles. (I'd already found what I needed, so I took a few minutes to simply enjoy myself.)

Among all the usual silly costumes, though, this "Rehab Kit" costume gave me serious pause. And this is coming from someone who, every night for nearly three years, played "dress-up" and her own sort of costumed role.

I just...I, I—words fail me.

Still blooming

This morning glory is still blooming away beside the loading dock of a local antiques shop. Do they hang around through the first frost? I'm not quite sure.

Sorry again for the lack of posts lately. Burnout has finally caught up with me—for real this time, no mistaking it for anything else. So as I figure out what to do next, I'm just trying to get through the semester one day at a time. More later on the drama (or lack thereof).

Sitting on the porch...

...because it's actually raining, and there's nothing to do! Clark and Ernest act as if they've never seen rain before. But it's been so long since we last had a storm in Small Town, I can't say I blame them.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PIXIE & GUY!

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

As El Seebeno would say, HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY to the best goddamn sister in the world! And the best goddamn brother-in-law in the world!

Betty White shows us how it's done...yet again!

At first, I thought it was just a parody video, some kind of joke—but Betty's for real!

Via ROFLrazzi.

If I can be half as awesome as Betty White when I'm her age, I'll be doing pretty well.

Chicken Monday: 9/20/10

Good thing I'm working from home today! I checked on the chickens around 10:30am and found that one of the Peeps (pictured) had managed to fly out of the pen! She was upset and confused, stuck in an 18" area between my fence and the neighbors' garage. When I finally caught her, I trimmed the flight feathers on one wing to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

Whew! That was a close call.

Lucky has a friend

It's a long story (which I'll save for later), but Lucky now has the buddy he's long wished would come along and share his back yard. Bella came to live with us on Labor Day. Isn't she a cute little thing?

Friday Kittehs: 9/17/10

Moo renders her judgment on the kind of week this has been. Now that I look at the photo again, Squirrel (aka Martha Ann) might be doing the same thing there in the background.

Student Essay Insanity™ #70!

I never, ever thought it would happen—but it has!

Division II University students are no longer required to take the Regents' Essay Exam. This means no more teaching remedial Regents' Essay Exam courses—and, sadly, no more grading the awful Regents' essays produced by said Essay Exams. (But at $1.25 per essay, the impact on my pocketbook is minimal.)

So what does this mean for Student Essay Insanity™? After all, it's the only reason some of you even bother to read E&P. Don't worry, blooperophiles. I have dozens of old Regents' essays stockpiled in my office, and of course there are always the gems I find while helping with the Freshman Writing Improvement Project (FWIP). Oh, and my own students' (anonymous) errors. Yes, the snarkenfreude is alive and well here at E&P, folks, even though D2U no longer has to suffer through the Regents' Essay.

I shit you not.

**********

"American family life would be more stable if parents, not the couples involved, arranged the marriages of their children." Agree or disagree.
In the Seventeenth Century people did not marry for love, but for money or were arranged.

What is the dumbest thing you ever did? Explain why you did it.
Regret is a feeling that occurs often throughout life after decisions are made.

Why did you choose the career for which you are preparing? Explain.
In the article they were also talking about how much that they need more geriatrics because geriatrics are very short.

Last but certainly not least, here's a gem from one of my own students. He wrote in his class journal about the upcoming poetry essay:
This assignment will be very difficult for me, considering the fact that poetry is not in my best interest.

Ikea + kittehs = EPIC WANT

Ikea's flagship U.K. store was recently the set for the company's new TV ad...featuring over 100 real cats. I hope they'll use more footage from the all-night, multi-camera shoot for additional (awesome!) commercials.



Via I Can Has Cheezburger? (who else?)


UPDATE: Via YouTube, here's the 60-second commercial in its entirety. I nearly cried with kitteh-induced love and happiness.

Friday Kittehs: 9/10/10

Joy's had a little too much inspiration. Better take a nap break now, and read more later!

Life is indeed good!

How could it not be when you're lounging around all day in your blue fuzzy with your kittehs in the pockets?

Just had to share this with all of you. I Can Has Cheezburger brings a smile to my face every day.

Chicken Monday: 9/6/10Labor Day Holiday Edition

Posts here at Educated & Poor have been kind of pitiful the last few months, and I apologize for that. There's been a lot of stress and turmoil around here, and I haven't had the mental energy to spend even more time in front of the computer and put together a halfway decent picture-story post like I did when I first started this blog. So now I'm taking the picture-laden posts as they come. Posting also helps me keep my writing skills sharp, which Lord knows I could use as I plod along on this novel I've been writing. But that's another post unto itself. [deep sigh]

Okay, where was I? Oh, Chicken Monday, that's right.

The peeps are now ten weeks old, and cute as can be. They and Henrietta are out of the chicken coop during the day, and the not-so-babies are slowly becoming full members of the flock.

Adorable!

Henrietta, meanwhile, is back in business—even on Labor Day.

Thinking about jumping...

Can I make it?...I dunno...gotta get up there...

Yessss!

Sadly, my little Nikon point-and-shoot camera wasn't fast enough between pictures to capture the moment when Henrietta finally whffffooooffffff! spread her wings and ascended to the chicken-coop shelf.

This shelf is where all egg-related business takes place: thinking about laying eggs, rolling the wooden "decoy egg" out of the nest, actually laying real eggs, eating crushed oyster shell for extra calcium, clucking loudly to inform everyone of our Hen-culean efforts, and so on.

Check out the curled-up-chicken-toes action.

Here's she's settling into the nest, which she's moved from over in the corner to right behind the little precariously-perched fan at the edge of the shelf. It's a cheap little dollar store fan that I put out here to help circulate air around the coop during the hottest days of summer, and it helps some. Every time she gets up here, Henrietta has to investigate her whirring plastic nest-mate, resulting in a brief cheap-plastic-blades-on-beak whrrrrrrddddt. Don't worry, though! Flimsy plastic blades in a $7 fan are no match for the hard, surprisingly sharp keratin of a chicken's beak. Don't believe me? Try messing with a broody hen—or her angry rooster. (I have the scars on my calves to prove it.)

Can't...get...comfortable...

There! All better.

Henrietta turned around and around in the nest for a few minutes, much like a cat or dog turning circles on a cushion before going to sleep. She pushed the wooden egg out of the nest with her beak, then brought it back in, then turned around a few times, then "beaked" the wooden egg back under her feet again. This repeated three or four more times before she finally ditched the decoy egg and settled down to lay her own.

Leroy knew exactly what was going on, and did not appreciate in the slightest my nosing around while Henrietta was on the nest. He came in to investigate, prance about, fluff up his gorgeous glossy feathers, and glare at me with first one dinosaur eye, then the other.

Oh, and crow at the top of his lungs. Naturally.

I didn't get the chance to capture everything on camera, since I had to leave for work in half an hour. But I found this lovely brown egg when I got home that evening and checked the coop.

Here's a video I took in between photos that same morning. Maybe next time I'll be able to hang around for the brk-brk-brk-brk-b'GOCK! that Henrietta lets loose as soon as she's done with that day's egg.

Found in the bank parking lot

I don't know what it is about random notes, but they're fascinating to me, these little slices of other people's lives that appear (seemingly) out of nowhere.

Friday Kittehs: 9/3/10

Joy gets back to her Egyptian cat-deity roots as she luxuriates on Mama's new satin sheets.

Monday Thursday Chickens: 9/2/10

The babies are two months old, so Henrietta began laying eggs again last week. Hooray! (I'll post pictures and video of the Peeps next week.) In the meantime, Mom and I are happy and thankful to have fresh eggs again.