Gracie

Bored? Listless? Help is at hand!  Pass away the pointless hours with our list of things to do when you're bored

THINGS YOU CAN DO WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

Blink wildly and then close your eyes really tight for an interesting light show
(Amusement Potential: 1-5 minutes)
See a variety of blobs, stars and flashes. Try to make out shapes and see if your subconscious is trying to send you a message (perhaps that funny shape is saying, 'send all your money to urban75.com'?)

See how long you can hold a note
(Amusement Potential: 4-20 minutes)
Not that much fun, but it sure passes the time. Play with a friend, or try to beat your own personal best. Inhale deeply and then try and make a noise for as long as you can. Earn extra points for making your partner laugh or ending on an amusing note.

Try to not think about penguins
(Amusement Potential: 1-5 minutes)
This is especially hard, because by trying too much, you remember what you were trying to avoid thinking of. If you try too little, you end up thinking about penguins anyway.

Use your secret mind power
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Pick a passing by and try to use your mind power to command them do something, like drop their bag or knock into someone. The law of averages dictates that sooner or later one of your mind commands will come true, so you can convince yourself that you really have super human powers and waste even more time trying them out.

Pretend you're a robot
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
Walk down the street with mechanical movements, adding 'zzzzzt' sounds with each motion. Pretending to have a motor broken in, say, your left hand can add at least 30 seconds more entertainment.

Scratch yourself
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
Go ahead, scratch yourself now. Even if nothing itches, go ahead. Doesn't that feel pretty good?

Rate passers by
(Amusement Potential: 10-15 minutes)
Secretly award passers by marks out of ten as you go along, offering (unsaid) expert criticism over their clothing, hairstyle and footwear choices.

Repeat the same word over and over until it loses its meaning
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
Pick a random word out of a magazine and say it aloud to yourself until it becomes a meaningless set of noises.

Pinch yourself
(Amusement Potential: 1-3 minutes)
What is pain? Why is it unpleasant? There's nothing physical about it - it's all in your mind. Plus, after pinching yourself for awhile, boredom will seem nice next to being in pain.

Try to swallow your tongue
(Amusement Potential: 1-2 minutes)
There's not much to say about this one. It is possible, but really stupid.

Pretend to be a car
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Make appropriate revving noises in your head as you walk along and add a racing commentary as you pass strangers in the street. Use blinking eyes as indicators for extra authenticity.

Make Star Trek door noises
(Amusement Potential: 1-2 minutes)
Stand by an electric door to a bank or something and make that silly "Scccccccchwop" sound heard whenever people popped on to the bridge to hang with Captain Kirk.

Look at something for awhile, shut eyes, study after image
(Amusement Potential: 2-5 minutes)
Another great time waster. It takes about 30 seconds of staring to create an after image, and the image is then viewable for about the same length of time. Fun to combine this one with pushing on your eyes.

Get yourself as nauseated as possible
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Best achieved by looking straight up and spinning around. Try to be so dizzy you can't even stand up. This is also entertaining due to the "makes boredom seem a lot better" effect (see "Hurt Yourself").

Invent a weird twitch
(Amusement Potential: 5-10 minutes)
Adopt a bizarre twitch (e.g. flicking your head irregularly, twitching with eye or busting out sporadic cough noises) and try it out when you go shopping.

Make a low buzzing noise
(Amusement Potential: 15-30 minutes)
Hours of fun in libraries! Keeping a totally straight face and looking nonchalant, make a low pitch humming/buzzing noise and see who reacts.

Brooke Fraiser will be in concert tonight at the House of Blues. This is going to be such a wonderful concert.

If to distant lands I scatter
If I sail to farthest seas
Would you find and firm and gather 'til I only dwell in Thee?
If I flee from greenest pastures, would you look for me?
Forfeit glory to come after
'Til I only dwell in Thee

If my heart has only one ambition
If my soul one goal? to seek
This is my solitary vision 'til I only dwell in Thee
That I only dwell in Thee
'Til I only dwell in Thee

 

This video is of the Perm State Ballet School which is very similar to the Paris Opera Ballet School (article below).

They call them the 'rats'. A handpicked elite who are driven to be the best, who suffer agonising pain in silence, who regularly bear humiliation, and for whom the smallest of weight gains can lead to expulsion.

But these are children, little dancers whose secret lives of terror have been exposed by a report into training methods at the world's biggest classical ballet establishment.

The Paris Opera school has been exposed as a Dickensian closed world of 'psychological terror and medical neglect' in a new report into the training methods used on children who dream of being the ballet stars of the future.

The boarding school's 130 boys and girls, aged between eight and 18, hope to follow in the steps of stars such as former pupil Sylvie Guillem. But work inspectors allege their path to glory is paved with systematic humiliation and teaching staff's refusal to recognise or treat injuries.

The French school, the report said, had no infirmary, a doctor made a once-a-week visit, children were woken at 6.45am after performing until midnight, practised for four hours a day after normal school lessons and were expelled without explanation in notices pinned outside the school after annual examinations.

The Opera's director, Hugues Gall, and the school's headmistress and former étoile, Claude Bessy, reacted angrily to the allegations of a government-recognised independent team which condemned a culture of 'moral harassment'.

Suspicions that a nineteenth-century atmosphere reigned at the modern state-run ballet school, opened in 1987, were brought into the open by the latest étoile, Aurélie Dupont, who waited years for her nomination by Gall, a senior civil servant, who succeeded the late Rudolf Nureyev.

'What upset me more than the pain of exercising during six years at the school was the nastiness,' she said. 'The adults were so cold. We were children all alone at a boarding school. A little kindness and sweetness wouldn't have made us worse dancers.'

A union official at the school, Camille Fallen, said: 'Everything hangs on the terror of being rejected which has created a deep malaise. Talking to the outside world is a heresy. Obedience is the be all and end all.'

One 15-year-old apprentice dancer told The Observer: 'I'd be out on my neck in a minute if I was seen as a moaner.

'Aurélie kept quiet until she was assured of her star status and her pension when she's 40. I'm driven to succeed and I'm not going to destroy my chances by attacking the system. This isn't a place for cissies, fame comes at a price you have to be prepared to pay.'

With every starring role at the theatre fought over jealously, leading dancers spoke anonymously to avoid offending the hierarchy which said the investigation, commissioned by a left-wing union, was 'subjective'. But staff confirmed a rod-of-iron approach by the 30 teachers most of whom graduated when the school, founded in 1875, was still situated in the baroque nineteenth-century theatre in Paris.

'The favourite insult is to tell you that you're too fat,' a senior female dancer said. A weight surplus of 100 grammes merited a warning of imminent exclusion. 'That inevitably leads to many cases of anorexia and terrible anxiety. Some girls don't menstruate until they are 19 or 20.'

A male dancer, who spent 10 years at the school, claimed pupils as young as eight had been sent home for good after complaining of persistent pain, even though outside consultants later found stress fractures.

'I suppose you could say we were told to shut up and suffer in silence,' he added. 'On the other hand, you have to have exceptional resistance to pain to do this job.'

At the school in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, journalists are unwelcome and told to consult the Opera's lawyers. Bessy's response to the allegations underline her reputation as an implacable disciplinarian during 29 years running classes which have produced one of the world's best corps de ballet.

"I was brought up with the stick,' she told the inquiry team. 'Today, when you make a stupid mistake there is no punishment. The less you work the more money you earn. Everybody questions everything. I'll have nothing more to do with this type of society.'

An allegation that a child with a sprained ankle was forced to continue dancing for two hours was a 'lie', she said.

The Opera management supported her, saying the school had a level of excellence which could be achieved only by exceptional perseverance. But an osteopath, Alain Faugouin, who had treated stress fractures in former pupils, claimed that children were refused physiotherapy after injuries and had no continuous medical help.

'I know it's a grim world behind those walls, but my daughter would kill me if I complained about her treatment,' said one mother waiting to collect her daughter this weekend. 'She'll put up with anything to get to the top. That doesn't stop her from coming home completely miserable.'

Union demands include an overhaul of disciplinary policy at the Opera school in the run-up to Bessy's retirement in two years' time, when she will be 70.

By Guardian Unlimited © Copyright Guardian Newspapers 2008

Published: 12/8/2002

Last Tuesday I had a wisdom tooth pulled, well it was impacted so he had to cut it out. Everything went fine. I was numb and for the first time laughing gas made me laugh because this dentist started humming all serious-like to a Hannah Montana song on the radio.

Most of you know i can't have narcotics and Advil (4 at a time) was working great. On Thurs. it was obvious something was wrong. I went back to the dentist and he said it is definitely infected so he put me on a heavy duty antibiotic.

Last night and this morning the pain is horrible. I put an ice pack straight on my jaw, take 4 advil and am just about doubled over until the medicine kicks in.

I have been taking the antibiotics religiously. Oh, this morning I was achy feeling so I took my temp., it was 100 and that was after taking advil.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Any home remedies? Do I need to be concerned? One website scared me b/c it said the infection is so close to the brain. I'm very careful to not blindly believe every bit of info. on the internet.


~GG

Conversation Translated. . .

I found Lucy sleeping like this. . .

I wasn't successful in embedding the photo so I'm trying again.

 

 

Last night Mr. Grace and I were watching a little TV when we heard our five year-old yelling, "OH NO!  NO LUCY NO!" and then both girls were laughing and squeling hysterically and running after her.  Lucy had jumped on the counter (we had just finished dinner) and grabbed a "man sized" portion of roast and made a bee-line for her safe spot where no one can get her underneath our king size bed.  We sat laughing and watching in amazement as this little bitty kitten devoured the meat in about three bites!  This is the same kitten who just 8 months ago weighed 9 ounces.  She got so sick that I had to keep her in a box with a heating pad under it to help keep her from going into shock.

After her feast her eyes were glazed over and I swear she had a smile on her face.  When I woke up early this morning I heard her meowing and she was trapped in the hall closet.  She had gone in their to sleep off her binge and someone shut the door to the closet last night.  I thought she would run to the litter box, but first she went to her food bowl and ate like she had been fasting for a week!

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Ok, this is pretty good considering that most of my little girl's jokes are pretty lame and typical of a five year-old.  Many of them are like this. . .

Knock knock

Who's there?

yellow car

Yellow car Who?

Gimme some pancakes, I'm hungry!!  And then her contagious belly laugh.

But today she got me good.

"Hey Mama!  How many animals did Moses put on the ark?"

"Well, he told him to put every animal and two of each!"

"Hey Mama, Noah's the guy that did the ark!"

 She was delighted she cracked me up.

Also, her favorite thing about kindergarten so far is when they go to music and warm up their "vo-co" cords.

I haven't been on here too much because last Sunday morning before church Marvin, my sweet 15 year-old cat had another major seizure. He had these back in October and I thought he was a goner, but he came out of it and has been living pretty comfortably the past 2 months.

He hasn't eaten since Sunday and the only water he has had is what I give him with a medicine dropper. The mobile vet's coming back out in the morning, but I know there is NO way I will have him put down. I just can't do it because when I pick him up he purrs and looks at me deep in my eyes as if he's saying, "thank you my friend, I love you."

I hate that animals are with us for such a short time, but their love is so intense and for me, adds so much quality to my own life. One attribute that I admire so much in my pets is their ability to live in the moment. Oh to be able to take each moment and not dwell on the past or worry about the future. I plan on having one feline and one canine at all times throughout the different seasons of my life. . .I can't imagine life without these special friends.

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Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge.

When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.
There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together.
There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross The Rainbow Bridge together....

Author Unknown

A fellow blogger mentioned a song that got me in a short-lived down mood. I have a slew of songs that I label "divorce songs" because they remind me of my parents divorcing in the early 80's. Other songs that creep me out by reminding me of this horrible time in my life are:

1) Anything by Toto (Africa, Rosanna)
2) All out of Love (Air Supply)
3) Always Something There to Remind Me
4) Another Brick in the Wall
5) Cindi Lauper
6) The Macarana (ok, not a divorce song but it still creeps me out)

What and why are songs that creep you out?

I was waiting in the pick up line at the school last week and I saw a fellow mom who also has a daughter in kindergarten. She was walking back to her car very pregnant and stopped at my car to chat. I commented on how many people seemed to be pregnant right now and she nodded enthusiastically and said, "I KNOW!! It's incredible how many pregnant women are walking around and I honestly think it's because of Hollywood!" My jaw dropped and I'm sure I look very confused so she said, "you know, so many people in Hollywood are pregnant right now and I think people just follow suit!" I think I muttered something like, "oh, yeah. . .hmmmm. well it's really good to see you."


What????? Who is pregnant in Hollywood and what on EARTH has that got to do with anything? Does this mom really follow who is pregnant in Hollywood and do people really plan their families around actresses? Are people really this shallow or am I overreacting? I'm at a loss.

Thought I would copycat Sally and share my email address.

gratefulgrace78@yahoo.com