Guideline the first: don't call it Gaelic. It's Irish.

Dude. It is Galeic. The Irish happened by a long time after the lingo was in place.

Hi folks! [Waves at ita!] The Lost party was fabulous and it was wonderful to see the beautiful ladies that are Allyson, Kat, Lori and ita live and in person. I snagged a Carlton Cuse interview that'll be up on the Kristin message boards in a few hours and she mentions EMA in the chat. So yay. :)

Sophia, that is brilliant! I'm not sure if my cats would acclimate to it but I am bookmarking it and will definitely be giving it a shot.

Just brilliant.

With this? If they got thumbs? They could flush, open their own food and get jobs. Extermination is the obvious calling. Or anything that requires a lot of napping. Perhaps government work.

Cass, I'm sorry , but no thumbs for cats. because what is mildly annoying now, would become very scary and evil.

and today we got to pet this cat

[link]

That's not a cat. Interesting critter, but not a cat.

I don't think I actually want cats to get the opposable thumbs. Because, evil and *able* is a bad combination. But the toilet training? Would be crazy beautiful. Even better than self-trimming claws.

My cat's is so fascinated with flushing toilets now that I wonder if she would ever grasp the concept of toilet training for herself. Ever since I moved, my new bathroom has provided hours of entertainment for her, since she can now perch on the sink's edge and either (a) scratch at the mirror, (b) watch the toilet flush (I'll leave the seat up while the water's running for her delight), (c) stare at the water coming out of the tap, or (d) wait for me to get out of the shower, laying on my towel and forcing me to fight her for it while I drip in the tub. Oh, and she can almost get the cabinet door open, but the drawers are currently beyond her. Give her opposable thumbs, and they'd be open in a heartbeat.

beth, you need to tell me, what exactly does a hairless cat feel like? I've been annoying Mister Kitty by poking at his shaved spots but I don't think it's quite the same.

Kravvers don't bring you tributes of dead mice. Wait, I was trying for a positive spin on cats, wasn't I? OK, cats don't argue back. In english.

Tangental, but I wrote this on the spur-of-the-moment, and am going to give it to my students after their finals. I just sat down and thought about how much I have loved my first year of teaching, and all I have learned from my experience.

What I Learned From My Students This Year:

How to say “shut up” in Spanish

Reggaeton is really cool music

How hard it is to be a teen mother, and how gracefully and well some girls do it

What a coyote is

That hot Cheetos, lime juice and hot sauce is really good…and KILLS my stomach!

You taught me about 17 new cuss words in Spanish…my freshmen next year will hate you!

That teenage girls can put one more makeup in one 50 minute class period than I did from age 20 to 30

That not all teenage boys are jerks – some like to learn, love their parents, and are secret romantics

How important good parents are to everyone…and that I am more grateful than ever for mine

How cool a quincenera is, and how much I wish I’d been a Latina girl so I could have had one!

That grammar still puts all high school students to sleep

I finally figured out why my high school Chemistry teacher hated me for sleeping in his class

I learned so many fabulous things about Latinos, including the importance of family. All kinds of family.

That my Spanish accent sucks, that you will ALWAYS laugh at me when I speak my awful Spanish, but that it’s cool that I try.

That my car is a hoopdee.

What MiGente is

How to say “Your son/daughter is very smart, but is very lazy. S/he needs to study more” in Spanish. To about 8 million parents.

How much fun dancing is…and that my body simply doesn’t MOVE that way anymore!

That Mexican schoolgirls in telenovelas dress kind of…well, DARINGLY

How to hold my temper better

How to think before I speak

That what I say and do affects other people in ways I didn’t think of

That it’s really darned HARD to go to school and learn in a new language

That I love being a teacher, even when my students make me want to strangle them

How much one student can grow in 10 short months – physically, emotionally, intellectually

And finally, and most importantly, I learned to care – a lot – about what happens to all of you. You made my first year of teaching really wonderful.

Gracias y te amo, Ms. G

Reggaeton is really cool music

Joe asked me a couple of weeks what type of music Raggaeton is. I told him that, to the best of my knowledge, it was a sort of Latin-based raggae. He asked how one culture could take over another culture's music and make it their own. I reminded him that it's been happeneing since music was invented. He pondered that, and decided he was going to create Irish-based reggae and call it Reggae-ish.

Oh, Erin, that's beautiful!

For sarameg: FAQ about Ripley the Hairless Cat.