Par-tay

On Saturday night, Julie, Mike, and I went to a party. It was at the house of Jolie Laris (nee Weaver), one of Julie's fellow teacher's at Joy Preparatory Academy in Detroit; Marcy Nussbaum -- another teacher there, who happens to live three doors down from Jules et Mike -- was there as well, so I had a good time. Jolie and her husband Seth had their old couch in their garage, so they pulled it out for the party, and set up the snack table behind it. It was a little chilly out, but that meant that the incidence of bugs was reasonably low.

The other guests tended to mostly be teachers if they were female, or engineers for Ford if they were male. I was one of the few people there who was neither. What's amazing is, if you put teachers together, even if they don't work at the same school, or even the same district, they will just chat about teaching ad infinitum, trading amusing anecdotes about the kids, coworkers, or parents.

The school Julie works at just opened a second building, and expanded the grades they teach. The old principal moved with Julie and Jolie to the new building; the new principal at the old building is named, I shit you not, Michael Jackson. What an awful thing for an elementary school principal to be named! He used to be a kindergarten teacher. Right now all the teachers are trying to figure out his age, to try to determine which Michael Jackson came first.

One of the other teachers there, whose name escapes me, was just a riot. Julie, Jolie, Seth, Nussbaum, Mike, and I were sitting in the driveway for a long time, waiting for other people to show up. A car pulled into the driveway, hesitated, and then backed out and drove back the way it came; then we get a call from Blondie asking where we are. She eventually figures out that she had had the correct place, and pulls into the driveway, around the couch and the barbecue, and onto the grass. She gets out of the car and locks it, and then asks if it was OK to park there. She THEN launches into a story about her day: apparently, she had been locked out of her apartment earlier, while walking her tiny dog Nemo. The story involves a number of men being bedazzled by her -- they were making jokes about Blonde-Jedi mind tricks -- including the locksmith, who didn't charge her for his services. At first I thought that was silly, but the next thing I know, I'm unwrapping her brie and Havarti for her and setting it out with some crackers. They really weren't kidding about the mind tricks: if she ever decides to use her powers for evil, we are all doomed.

I left reasonably early, because I had a practicum seminar earlier, and had woken up earlier than I otherwise might have on a Saturday. Not much to say about the seminar, except I immediately hated the teacher, since she snapped at me when I tried to pull up a chair, and made me sit in the center. Also, I was the only male there: the rest of the 24 students were female. While the majority of LIS students are women, this is the first time in any of my classes that the gender split was quite so lopsided. Hell, even in my Women's Lit class as an undergraduate, there was another guy there. It was vaguely uncomfortable, especially since I was in the middle of them all. It also meant that the teacher already knew my name.

It was also my mother's birthday on Saturday, although she had to work 12 hours, which is why we had to go out to eat last week. I bought her a bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans, and the Definitive ABBA 2-cd set. Happy Birthday, Mom!

Song: ABBA, "Fernando".