I got this new crockpot to replace one that died when I was making lunch for me and Pious B (it’s OK, a Dutch oven saved the day). I like it because it’s programmable so when I make a shabbat cholent, which is a stew that cooks forever, aka, 12-18 hours, I can have it just keep warm for the rest of it. My first recipe, unless there’s a big sale on brisket, will be this one from Alfa’s blog. I love baked beans.

FYI, the disembodied hand did not come with the slow cooker.

I also received some money and so I finally purchased a decent phone, the Galaxy SII from Samsung. I spent five days setting it up. I didn’t really use my last Android phone as anything but a phone and wireless hotspot for my Apple devices so there was a steep learning curve in how to configure this thing to be The Device. But I put all my music on it and it has Freecell and the subway app, so I guess I am good to go. By the way, if you remember how much I complained about the ineffectual indicator light on my last phone, you will be interested to know that this phone has no light at all. I no longer have any dealbreakers with phones; I just go with the best of the lot that’s out there. Or maybe I’m still sort of in “whatever” mode.

This book about the history of MTV is fascinating if you are a person who watched a lot of it back in the day. I have it on Kindle and I have taken to reading right on my computer which means I can watch all the videos as they talk about them. It’s really important so that when the guy from Ratt says he nailed the landing on the table, you can check that out, or for when Martha Quinn says she had a cameo in Going Back to Cali. So far, the thing that amazed me the most is that the woman from the Kajagoogoo video ended up marrying Dennis Miller. Did not see that coming.

Funny thought:it is a good thing I no longer do iPod Song of the Week, as for the first time since 2002, I am not using an iPod to listen to music on the go. Weird. And speaking of former aspects of this blog, it’s David Nalbandian’s birthday. He has hit the ripe old age of 30. To mark the occasion, I’m taking down his page, since I no longer update it and there are far better sites on the web to find out his schedule, which there weren’t when I started. (This is my favorite site and it has a good listing.) But it had a good run, and God knows it brought me far weirder searches than I would have expected (or wanted). ¡Adiós!

I leave you with this video, which Billy Squier says destroyed his career. I don’t remember it at all, but it would seem that’s a good thing, since Squier would like everyone to know that he is heterosexual. Happy new year!

1. I got re-elected to the co-op board. As we have discussed, this is not a good thing. Especially because this year, two people who are suing each other are also on the board. The first meeting of the year was exactly the disaster you are picturing. The managing agent actually walked out of the meeting. The president told me he’s had it and next year, I should be president. The only prudent solution, I think, is to move to the suburbs. Can I live with you?

2. The holidays are coming! This means one thing for me: seasonal candy, cookies, and drinks! I already had some peppermint bark. Also, a pumpkin pie Clif bar. For the nutrition, naturally.

3. Why is it that they release all the cool phones when your contract is about 6-8 months from being done? By that time, T-Mobile will probably be out of business, so I don’t know what I’m waiting for. Oh right, I can’t bring myself to pay $500 for a phone. In the meantime, my iPod has a battery which lasts an hour and is utterly out of space. I should wait for the new phone instead, shouldn’t I? Sigh.

4. Jorge Posada. Sigh again. Why must we get old? On the plus side, there are finally dates for pitchers & catchers to report. Without baseball, and with tennis sporadic, I am stuck watching reruns of Friends in the evening. I think this is why my health has been so bad lately. It has been suggested that I have whooping cough by some and this is not implausible.

5. Pious B and I are looking to travel to Europe (UK? Italy?) for Jesus’ birthday and attached break. The fares are miserable! Goyim, don’t you want to stay home by the hearth with your families? I have seen this on a million TV specials! It has to be true.

6. It’s a gorgeous day today. Before I knew this, I planned to go to Ikea. Am I mad? Yes, surely. If I make it out alive, I am getting a seasonal beverage, I don’t care if it’s 65 degrees.

Have a nice month! I’m pretty sure that’ll be the next time I post.

It’s “it’s been 20 years since 1991″ month on JBall as in life and to celebrate, title comes from a song on Pearl Jam’s Ten, an album I wore out in my flannel days. Did you see Pearl Jam’s 20? Oh, please do. Great documentary, great band, a reminder that we’re the first mammals to wear pants.

Pearl Jam – Oceans

Anyway, I can also tell you that there probably won’t be any more posts until New Year’s. That is, Jewish New Year’s, which is late next week. Probably more likely the week after that, which is the period of repentance where I try to think deep thoughts. So I apologize in advance and leave you with a picture of David Nalbandian pushing his luggage cart through the airport in Buenos Aires. I know you’ll find it as fulfilling as I do.

Title comes from:
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Souvenir

I had the title of this post in my head for months, maybe a year, but never the content. Despite all my tennis posts, this will go down for me as the year I couldn’t really pay attention to what was happening once the sessions I actually attended were over. I spent the last week and a half at my new job and each day got progressively more layered with “realness.” First, new staff orientation. Then the return of all faculty. Then the middle school kids started. Then the upper school students joined them. Finally, the lower school kids came, but just their regular classes, not mine. Finally, today, I begin.

I’ve spent a lot of time setting up my computer lab and getting to know my new co-workers. If last year was a total delight in terms of the fun school I was placed at, this year is an extension of that and yet different. It is utterly, utterly surreal to find myself employed in a school. The lab is my classroom and it replaces all the offices I ever had at record labels. It is so different from anything I’ve ever done, from any situation I’ve ever found myself in, that I don’t even know how to approach it. It really feels like those dreams you have where you find yourself called to the board in front of the class to do a problem out of nowhere. It’s like I woke up and I was in front of a class of children and I’m not wholly sure how I came to be here. Sometimes, when people knock on the door of my lab and ask me a tech question, I want to say, “don’t you realize I’m just a music business executive?”

The people I work with are mostly wonderful (no one’s bad! Just some are good and some are great) and finding myself with new co-workers in a new job are things I do have experience with. Even when I went around on the first day of classes to introduce myself to the kids I’d be teaching (“Hi! I’m Ms. Jewball, your new technology teacher. I can’t wait to see you in the lab next week!”) it echoed moments I’d had last year at my old school. But today it will be just me and them.

~breathe~

By the way, today is also the anniversary date of my Bat Mitzvah, so, today I am a woman and all that.

Both the title and subtitle come from this song, which I mentioned yesterday. The post title line doesn’t even appear until the second half of the song and then dominates it. The sweep that comes up behind it, at about 1:40, has always reminded me of a bird taking flight.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And remember, remain calm! You will all have a chance to be gouged!

Stay safe, everyone!

My Commencement Day was just wonderful. Amazing, even. For starters, those of us without Big Life Transition Events rarely get a day where it is all about us. But beyond that, I was surrounded for the first half of the day by my cohort and some of my professors, all of whom I love dearly, and the ceremony itself was fabulous. Bob Herbert from the NY Times spoke and said great things and they called my name and my friends’ names, and I sat next to one of the funniest guys ever and he made me laugh the whole time. Then for the second I was with my family and we had a lovely dinner and I got flowers and balloons and gifts. The one downer on my day was that I was stressed about a demo lesson I had to do two days later. If you don’t know the horror of the demo lesson for new teachers (tech specialists do teach some classes even though they’re not titled as teachers), it’s this: you walk into a strange classroom with kids you don’t know and teach an entirely out of context lesson while 3-4 administrators watch you. If you’re in tech, it’s worse, because you have no idea what equipment they’ll have or what the layout is and very often, something will break (three of the kids’ PCs kept going black during my lesson, for example). But it went OK, mostly. And they don’t all. Some day when I’m over it, I’ll tell you about The Disaster. When people tell me things went so easily for me, I try not to mention The Disaster. You know that job interview that Elaine has on Seinfeld where she just gets up and says, “I have no chance, do I?” and the woman smiles broadly and says, “no” and shakes her hand? It was kind of like that. The Disaster convinced me that I am not ready quite yet for what I had planned, that is, to work in a public or charter school with kids who need the most help. But that day will hopefully come once I get more experience.

But this demo and interview did go well and I knew I had a shot, but just a shot, because, quite frankly, this school is one of the best in New York. I know this because the parents on Urban Baby, who have together built the worst, most obnoxious forum I could ever imagine (if you know me from a forum, it is worse than the one you are thinking of), even they always agree that they’d kill to get their kids in to this school. So I really have no idea how I got this job. Really. It’s not false modesty, I really just don’t know. But I’m not complaining! The school is fancee, even fancee’er than my placement school (who, by the way, liked me very much but still wouldn’t give me a job, so you can understand my amazement now) and will herein be known as Fancy Pants Prep, or FPP. I even started a new category for it! (And last time for the Student life category – I think.) Every time I wake up and realize they want to hire me or that once I sign a contract I will officially work there, I can’t stop grinning. Is it really happening? All I wanted was a job. I didn’t ask for THE job. I should say that the position is awesome for all kinds of other reasons: the people I’ve met are fab, the school is open to new technology use, and I get to be part of the community of tech people which includes the fine folks from my placement school plus lots of others.

Right now, I’m having a tough time focusing on what the job entails, because it doesn’t really start until the end of the summer. That’s right, I have the summers off! I’m not even thinking about that yet, though. I am just thinking about how lucky I am to have hit the scenario I wanted the most: to know that I have a job in three months so that I can enjoy this summer and actually do fun things. I still have my part-time (ugh) job through the end of June. Or July, but I’m saying June. I’d also like to take a class in July, since I’ll be dealing with kids younger than I really trained for. Then in August I hope to take a trip I’ve been planning for a long time, to Western Canada to see some special things and some special people. And then I come home to my new job. Yikes! Yay!

But the stuff I am focusing on is weird and surreal, too. Finally, after two years of keeping a bastardized version of my analfinance spreadsheet, I can put back the cell where the income goes, rather than calculating how much I have to pull out of savings. I can turn on the A/C and not feel bad about it. I can restart Netflix. I can order the sushi deluxe. I can buy an unlimited Metrocard. My whole mindset is shifting and each thing I remember that I can do makes me happy all over again.

The past few weeks, when there were periods of no job listings or no one responded or an interview went nowhere or I got a rejection email, I’d have dreams about going back to my old job at The Record Label. Really! Just right back to my desk as if nothing had happened. You don’t have to be Freud to get that. But I think I’ll stop having that dream. And I can unsubscribe to all my job listing feeds. And throw away my extra resumes. And hide the label “Job Search” in my Gmail. And plan. I can finally plan. For a person like me, knowing what I’m doing next month and next year is the greatest relief, even though the details will be slowly uncovered. If this were a movie, like Working Girl, they’d end it here. Girl quits unsatisfying job, drops out of rat race to go back to student life, graduates and gets prestigious job. But it isn’t really like that. It is more the end of Side 1 of the concept album (remember album sides?) and now we’ll start with Side 2. I hear it’s complex and has its ups and downs but is totally worth a listen.

Title comes from:
M|A|R|R|S – Pump Up The Volume

However, I did have this experience with a third grader today. She was doing a Powerpoint (remember how everything I hated about my old job was symbolized by smarmy Powerpoint decks I had to put together? Yeah, now I teach little kids how to use PP. Hello, irony!) about polar bears and the question her slide was supposed to answer was, “what are some related animals to your animal?” Her answer (in all caps, but I won’t duplicate that) was:

Polar bears have mothers and fathers and kids and aunts and uncles and cousins who are related to them, just like people.

Then I had to break it to her gently that she had misunderstood the question. She insisted that’s what Wikipedia had said. Yeah. Someone hire me to have experiences like that every day. Please.

Title comes from another slide. In my head I pronounced it Ma’am-lay.

Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced?

• Decongestant
• Antihistamine
• Tissues
• Chicken soup
• Matzo balls
• Chicken pot pie
• Apple juice
• Brown sugar*

*I promised chocolate chip cookie cake to the fine folks putting up with me at my internship school later this week. There is no medicinal value, despite what Mick Jagger says.

As you can tell, I’m illin’. But I plan on being drugged and full of assorted chickeny foods very shortly. I just hope I’m better in time for my favorite holiday, Half-Price Chocolate Day.

I really wanted to call this post “Puffs plus one.” But that made no sense. Still, this song is in my head.
Haircut 100 – Love Plus One

When I typed that first line of the post, I hesitated at what job description to give my mother because I honestly never knew her title until her last one, and that’s because I have her old business card. As an adult, I am able to label her job as “educational consultant.” You may wonder what I told people my mother did when I was a child and didn’t have a handy term like “teacher” or “lawyer.” What I would tell people was, “my mother teaches teachers how to teach.” Just like I told people my father was a doctor who treated sick computers. In reality, he had a Ph.D. in engineering and worked at IBM. But doctor has a distinct meaning to kids.

This blog is focused quite a lot on the ongoing dialogue between me and my past. I’m always sort of reaching towards it, sometimes tussling with it, often trying to make my peace with it, and always trying to figure it out. Tomorrow, that is, today in a few hours, I go back to my old high school to give an introductory presentation which will eventually lead up to a series of workshops. Many of my former teachers still teach there and will be in the audience. If you imagine I am freaked out by this, just jack that image up a bit and that’s where I’m at. You may even wonder why I said yes to this (especially as it’s a holiday and my day off – and I’m not getting paid). In the 30 seconds I had to consider it, my line of thought was this: the only reason I wouldn’t do this is because I’m afraid to do this. And that’s not a good enough reason. But that doesn’t make me less afraid.

When I was in high school, I often came in unprepared. I’m a procrastinator and, like most teenagers, I liked to slack off. Well, I still like to slack off. I did wait till the last day to put together my presentation, but it was more because I have so little time. And the fact that I finished it the night before and not in the car on the way to school (or in the class before… or in the class) already puts me ahead of where I was then. But I do wonder if the teachers will look at me and think, “wasn’t she the one whose grade I lowered because she had a bad attitude?” (That actually happened.) Or, “I really think that girl nearly failed my class.” (That happened a few times, too.) Why the hell should they listen to me?

Well, for one thing, because I know technology and they don’t. But mostly because if I’m old, that means they’re really old and probably don’t remember that I actually even sat in their classrooms. One can hope, anyway.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I went to see West Side Story, the Broadway show, on my birthday eve. If you haven’t kept up with the blog, it’s my favorite musical and possibly my favorite movie of all time. However, I am not a theater person so there was a bit of a risk there. If you really love a movie, it’s always hard reading the book after or seeing a remake and noting all the differences. I tried hard not to do this and just to enjoy it being performed in front of me but there were some places that I think they really messed up. For starters, they rearranged things so that Officer Krupke was after the rumble scene. I don’t know about you, but I kind of think jokey songs are out of place after a big death scene. Also, it was hard to have Riff sing it after he was dead.

The worst thing was Tony, though. The actor who played him and also the rearrangement of some of the lines made him seem like a guy who had left gang life because he felt the Jets were has-beens, not because he had grown up and moved on. Tony’s essential goodness is what makes you root for him and the reason you believe Maria fell for him across a crowded room. This Tony seems like he just wanted to get into Maria’s pants. That really changed it for me. But I loved the music and the dancing; that made it worth it. And Bernardo and Anita were both wonderful.

Almost everyone I know has seen WSS or at least knows the story (hint: it’s nearly the same story as Romeo & Juliet). We were probably the only New Yorkers in the theater. WSS has been there a long time and it’s not Wicked or The Producers. It was obvious lots of people were from other countries where maybe it’s not as big? It was nice to see their reactions. There was an audible gasp when Chino shoots Tony… wow! I’ve never seen that happen, even when seeing it in the movie theater.

***

I went to work on my birthday day and I didn’t tell them it was my birthday. I don’t really know them and didn’t want to share my day with anyone there. While I was at my desk, thanks to someone’s tweet, I found a site which streams old airtapes from WLIR, my station of choice in the 80′s and early 90′s. It was pretty nifty listening to the “radio” exactly as I did then, with the old DJ’s and music. It didn’t feel sentimental, it felt like I could see my life as a continuum from then till now. I’m the same person, after all. The funniest part was that when they’d play a song I really liked, I’d get that familiar tingle of, “they’re playing my favorite song on the radio!” But, of course, it was just a recording and if I played it again, they’d be playing my song again. But you can’t help that feeling.

***

I like to celebrate other people’s birthdays via Facebook, because it saves you a lot of effort in writing an e-mail or sending a card or making a call. I’m just that lazy. But it pays off like a chain letter on your own day. It was lovely to get pinged on my phone every few minutes that someone had posted on my wall. On the other hand, it’s weird when people you know from your childhood say things that are then read by people you know now. And more than a little embarrassing, sometimes. People, that was for cards, not my public wall.

***

Just as I was going to dinner before the theater, I got an e-mail from someone whose blog was on my blogroll to tell me that no, really, his blog is actually dead. I had left it there after the purge anyway, because I like him and hoped he would bring it back. But he wrote some kind things about this blog in the note and that was a great birthday present. Maybe the best. If you are him, I will write you back soon, and I removed the link, per request.

***

I never go to Starbucks anymore. It’s too expensive and frivolous for someone who had their first overdraft on their birthday (more on this in a moment). Back when I was at Big Wealthy Record Company, my boss bought us Starbucks every day. Now, I get Seattle’s Best coffee for $1.25 including tax at my school cafeteria. But I did have a Starbucks tradition on my birthday where I would get the fanciest drink they had on the day. It usually cost $6 and had 1600 calories. This year, I got a Chai Tea latte, formerly an any day drink for me. While I was on my way to Starbucks, I ran into a friend from my job last year and we went together. Naturally, I told her it was my birthday, because I am a birthday person. That is, I like people saying, “happy birthday!” in that way that acknowledges, “this day is about you!” She insisted on buying me my drink, which was really kind of her, since she doesn’t make much either. But that’s the great thing about birthdays: it’s OK to admit for one day that it’s all about you.

***

In case you think KP and I have abandoned our tradition of going out for cupcakes in the week between our birthdays, you would be wrong! But only partially. We had brunch, instead. You can’t really have dessert with brunch. But it was OK, biscuit with strawberry butter is an awesome alternative.

***

The day before my birthday, at work, I played phone tag with the help desk about a system I couldn’t get into. My password was supposed to involve the last 4 digits of my SSN but it never worked. The help desk kept saying, “it works for us!” That really put the “help” in help desk. Finally, five minutes before I was to leave for dinner and the theater, they called me and said, “So…… it seems there are two Becca Jewballs in the system. Are you the one who was born in 1970 or the one who was born in 1980?” This is really the question everyone wants to be asked on the eve of a big, round numbered birthday, isn’t it? Needless to say, they had figured me for the other one.

***

Between work and dinner on my birthday, I went to class. I had told my professor that I might not come, or that I might take it online (several people do) in the hopes that the Yankees would play at home and I could spend my birthday evening at the first play-off game. But the Yankees failed me in that one respect and so I had to make other plans. But my plans still involved taking the class online so I could leave from home and arrive on time. I didn’t mention my birthday, despite my previous story, because there didn’t seem a place to work it into the discussion of education and change. At the end of class, the professor said, “what a great class! Good discussion today.” To which I couldn’t help myself, and said jokingly, “I’m so glad it was a great class because it’s my birthday and I almost didn’t come.” Everyone, and this is really hard to do via webcam hookup, spontaneously broke into “Happy Birthday.” That was pretty kick ass.

***

On my last round-numbered birthday, I did an amazing thing and right on that day, I clicked the button on my bank’s website to make the final payment on a debt that had sometimes been as high as nearly $20k. Anyone from my youth will tell you that I was a frugal spendthrift. That is, I bought decently-priced things, but way more of them than I could afford. I really like to buy new things and thought I could never change. But one day, I did. I set up a spreadsheet in Excel and was horrified to see things as they really were. Through that spreadsheet and a good budget, I was able to change my ways, though. I have never since carried a credit card balance and was able to buy a home.

This year (and last), as I’ve said many times, things are different. I have little income but the same expenses. Rather than showing a paycheck on my spreadsheet, the majority of my income comes from savings, and I move it over bit by bit as needed so as to maximize interest in the other account. I mistimed my transfers, though, and when I went to take out cash from the ATM on my birthday, it said, “balance exceeded” and wouldn’t give me any. That was unsettling.

But today I found out that my transfer came in later that day and I incurred no fees after all. Still, I heartily wish you never get that message from the ATM on your birthday. Or any other day.

***

I spent a long time, probably too long, thinking about what I wanted to do on the day and who I would do it with. In the end, though, I settled on the birthday week idea. But once the Yankees had settled on Minnesota as their destination, I still had to come up with something to do that evening that involved the game in a way that made me look forward to it all day. I decided to go to my favorite restaurant downtown with my dear friend, The Appliance Guy. I knew we had done that many years during the play-offs, because I can recall seeing many of those games out of the corner of my eye while eating there. So we did. While at dinner, The Appliance Guy said, “you know, they always lose while we’re here.” Oops, I had not remembered that. At the time we left the restaurant, it was 3-0 Minnesota. By the time I got home, it was 3-1 Minnesota. Within ten minutes it was 4-3 Yankees. The Yankees ended up winning 6-4. I may rethink my plans for next year.

***

When I walked out of the restaurant into Times Square, it felt magical and great, and I was listening to magical and great music on my iPod, Simple Minds. Listening to the line, “she would like to make a wish!” while feeling great and high on your birthday surrounded by the lights and people of Times Square you just have to…. tweet. So I did. The picture ended up being, basically, of a large Dunkin’ Donuts sign. They may have to work on that whole “ability to share magical moments” thing.

***

Are you noticing something missing from all these stories? Yes! Cake! Where was my birthday cake? It didn’t arrive until yesterday when Brother1 took me out to Butterflake for a slab of layer cake. I got Apple-Walnut with cream cheese frosting. I am eating the leftovers right now (when I said a slab, I meant a slab). When the last crumb is gone, I think the week will be over.

Simple Minds – Speed Your Love To Me (YouTube)