Diet Pepsi Auditions

Best/Worst of Life

I promised everyone at Paige's Birthday Bash that I would find the trailer for "that troll movie" that I was trying to explain. Well, I found it and here it is. It's called "Troll 2" and it's known as the best worst movie ever.



Great isn't it?

Speaking of best and worst, I finally have a class of my own at work. It's great to be able to hold my own classes but the structure of this place is killing me. They have these regulations that I need to enforce but they haven't explained them to me at all and my two bosses are both out of town for the week. So class started yesterday and I had to make do with what I had. It went really well though. I just feel that it all is just so unorganized (they even have me going through their lesson to correct the many errors - some lessons are even incomplete and I have to come up with my own homework questions). I just hope this is a one time thing because if I have to do this again in the fall, I will be doing too many lesson plans between this job and my teaching practicum. Maybe that is where the trolls come from in the movie - people had too much to do so they hired umpa-loompas that rebelled and went mad. That could be an excellent sequel to Charlie and Chocolate Factory.

Tutor Teaching Trial

So yesterday I had my first experience running a class at my job with New Century Learning. Normally I am just in the homework lab helping people with all sorts of random questions they have. But this time I got to be the one running the show. It was a review session for people taking the placement test at the state college. There were six people signed up to come but there was only one single student - Fernando. He was an older gentleman that dropped out of college and is now going back to finish. But just having one student wasn't the disappointing part - in fact I prefer smaller classes. The sad part was that I was so excited to teach the Quadratic Equation to the "Pop goes the Weasel" song and he had never heard it before! There I was - all excited to make a fool of myself for the sake of my students - only to realize that if I make a fool of myself, it isn't going to help him do better on the test! Sadness. So I sang it anyway. :)

Hello?! Is anybody there?

So - as many of you have seen, I have not used my blog for anything more than videos on youtube that i find amusing. Though I find this all to be an excellent use for a blog, I think that the time has come for my blog to be restored to its original purpose - writing. I know this may come as quite a shock ("shock? My Philip a SHOCK?!" -Sleeping Beauty) so I will try to soften the blow by explaining why this is happening. I have a new job. It is a very exciting job when I am actually working. You see, I run the open tutoring lab and New Century Learning. It is there for people enrolled in our tutoring services to get a little extra help with the homework and stuff. But if they choose not to come, I have plenty of extra time. With it I do many great and marvelous things - i.e. tag everyone in Paige's two new photo albums on facebook (100+ photos), interrupt Elisa while she is trying to finish a paper (which she did with 8 mins to spare - Congrats), check my email four times or so, explore the official page of the Prince Caspian movie on a computer that doesn't have sound (not so cool), and stare at my facebook notifications and wait for a new one to pop up. So I am dramatically adding to the list - da da da da da da da da! - Blogging! Unfortunately there wont be many pictures to suppliment the reading but I will try to throw in random things like this to liven it up a bit.

Be on the lookout for more bloggings!

Best Way to Learn French!

This is the coolest video of all! My friend from my mission, coincidentally the same one who taught me to break dance, sent it to me though facebook. Oh, I love it!

Except Snape and . . . Who was that??

Look I am on youtube!! For more of me check out Alina's blog.

Dough? Next on Broadway?

My friends showed me this one. It seems like something that should be my life story and i almost said that it was but that would be a lie. It isn't. But it is cool. So watch it.

More from Youtube Surfing

Oh man. I don't know if it is because it is late right now and I should be in bed or what but I found this Whose Line clip to be so amazingly funny. It's all pretty good but I put this on here for one specific part. Collin's comment about the arctic tern almost killed me. I was seriously on the floor and in tears. I had to put my computer down because I was doubled up laughing. The laughing fit lasted for a good fifteen minutes and I think it might have even lasted longer that the Angie/MacCools incident. I love the fact that that will be the memory of Angie that I will always have whenever I think of her. Her parting memory. Best of luck to you in Seattle!

Oh, YES! Wyoming!

This one is one that I got from my dance partner - Krista Mangan. You have to check out the other ones with Jerry and Superman as well. I wish that we could find the whole soundtrack the Oh, Yes, Wyoming song. Maybe it will appear in a future post.

Where My Voicemail Comes From

My brother showed this one to me. It has since become a family favorite. So much in fact that we have replaced each character with a sibling and have the Ripplinger Mysterious Ticking Noise Song. Very Cool - I must say. My voicemail song was made especially for it. Each of my siblings instead of saying their name says mine. Quite enjoyable. I already have people calling me hoping that I wont answer so they can hear it again and again.

Now Clap Like This

This may freak you out. Possibly. But get over that fact now, watch it five times straight through, and you will love it! And you might even pick up on some German vocabulary. My favorite part is the guy in the "German" beenie that says "Oh" as he break dances.

Plant Diversity Latin Words

Latin Words - I expect the most comments on this post. I don't have the full list nor do I expect them to all be correct. :)

An - not
Angium or Angio - vessel
Anth - flower
Apo - open
Arch or Archae - ancient
Asco - sack
Atacto - confusion
Auto - self
Bacillario - rod
Basidio - club
Biant - life
Bryo - moss
Cero - horn
Chlor - green
Chloro - green
Chytridio - liquid
Cleisto - closed
Copros - dung
Crypto - hidden
Cyano - blue
Cycad - palm
Cyte - cell
Dendron - wood
Deutero - second
Dino – to spin
Ecium - apartment
Endo - within
Er – male
Eu - true
Eugleno – good eye
Flavus - yellow
Gamete - marriage
Gens or Genesis - creation
Gymno - naked
Hapto – to bind
Hepato – liver
Hetero - different
Idium – very small
Iferous - bearing
Iso - same
Ium – “office” ending
Karyot – nut or nucleus
Lepedo - scaly
Lyco - wolf
Lysis – break down
Mer - unit
Meso - medium
Morph – shape, form
Mycota - fungi
Necro - death
Nema - thread
Oid - resemblance
Oma - growth
Oo - egg
Ophore - bearer
Ose – “sugar” ending
Patho - suffering
Pencil - brush
Peri - around
Petal – flower leaf
Phaeo - brown
Phyco - algae
Phyll - leaf
Phyte - plant
Plastid - body
Poly - many
Proto - before
Ptero - wing
Rhiz - root
Rhodo - red
Saccharo - sugar
Sapro - rotten
Separ - different
Sperm - seed
Stamen - thread
Stele - pillar
Stigma - spot
Stoma - mouth
Stroma – bed covering
Sym - together
Thec - box
Troph – nourished, nutrition
Zygo - pair

Plant Diversity Phyla

Phyla - This is to the best of my knowledge. Add a comment if you want a change made.

Fungi
Chitridiomycota
Zygomycota
Ascomycota
Basidiomycota
Deuteromycota

Algae
Dinophyta
Euglenophyta
Cryptophyta
Haptophyta
Bacillariophyta
Phaeophyta
Rhodophyta
Chlorophyta

Mosses
Bryophyta
Hepatophyta
Anthocerophyta

Bryophytes
Rhiniophyta
Zosterophylophyte
Lycophyta
Trimerophyta
Pterophyta
Equisetophyta

Gymnosperms
Coniferophyta
Cycadophyta
Ginkophyta
Gnetophyta

Angiosperms
Pteridospermophyta
Arthophyta
Magnoliophyta

Blog in Use???

Hi everyone! I am now using my blog! But not for the purpose I had oringinally intended. It is now for school! (*Blech!!) I know - super lame - but I wasn't using it and we figured it would help us out. So, though there will be a lot of posts about school stuff, I will honestly try to put in some fun stuff too. (though it seems like that starburst commercial didnt get the response i expected)

Thanks!!

Berries and what else??

I'm a little lad who loves cheezy commercials such as this. :) Hope you enjoy it! I enjoyed it so much that I had to make a post on my blog about it - and that is saying something. I don't just post on my blog for anything.

The Long Awaited Capt. Vegetable!

I finally found it!! Hooray! Every time I see Eddie ask, "Are you some kind of weirdo?" I always answer Yes in my mind. I mean, come on, his whiskers are so wierd! Some are curly and some are straight. It makes him look like some sort of genetic freak accident. The red/orange hair from Telly and the eyebrows of Bert combined into a rabbit with transforming powers. Silly. But I love the song so much that it makes up for the weird characters. "Crunch, Crunch, Crunch!!!"

Cookie's Philosophy

I tried to find captain vegetable but to no avail. The closest I came was captain breakfast which I considered posting and probably will post in a later post (I can't seem to find a synonym for "post"). But this one actually made someone other than me laugh while watching it - strong evidence that this was a good movie to post. Plus I think that there is some truth to Cookie's way of thinking. Plus I really like how he says, "Arrivederci, Frog."

This is one of the coolest movies ever!

I am in the process of finding the song about Captain Vegetable. Maybe that will be the next post. I also hope to be able to put some of my homemade videos on here too. If anyone has any hints, let me know! A la prochaine!

Where do garter belts come from?

So, I am at a certain holiday party at a certain someone's house, who will not be living at this certain house for much longer because the lease is almost up, and a certain someone pretty forced me to update my blog after I so lovingly frosted his/her eclaires. But being forced isn't so bad a thing. For one thing, I update my blog. Secondly, I rediscovered my blog's password that I will most likely forget again sometime in the near future. Thank goodness for technology.
So we, and when I say we I mean those who were with me and myself including the eclair-making, blog updating enforcer, were at a certain someone's wedding reception, who married a certain someone who a certain someone else has a lot of good stories about which include what this certain someone else thinks is wearing in the wedding photos and what this person dropped in the reception line at the wedding, when a question came up about garter belts. Silly me and my nonsensical nature got curious about the origin of the tradition of flinging the garter and posed the question that is now the title of my blog, "Where do garter belts come from?" This statement didn't exactly match my ponderings but when one is deep in thought, one cannot be expected to speak as fluently as his/her thoughts are flowing. In response, I recieved a wide array of snappy retorts. "Garter belt heaven," and "Well, when two garter belts love each other very much" where the responses that got the most laughter. But nothing leaves an imprint on our minds like the story that the certain someone else previously mentioned told about how much he/she loves the color purple.
Since I am at a party and since forced results are never as good as those carefully and creatively planned over time, I think I will conclude the ramblings of the evening. Sorry for the lack of french vocabulary. How'bout I just give you a french proverb and create a race to see who can give me the correct equivalent expression in english. Here we go.

Vouloir est Pouvoir.

Good luck! Bon chance!

Story Time (it's long and will put you to sleep) - L'Heure d'une Histoire (c'est longue et va te faire dormir)

So here we are - Dec. 15 - and I am finally, after many discussions deliberating about delay, posting my second post. Today marks a special day for many reasons. 1) My old post reached 25 comments, thus I am writing this second post, and 2) I talked with someone from France in France and in French for the first time in about a year. I was quite an experience. Yesterday at work, my supervisor told me that we have an invoice that we need to pay and that we have had some trouble communicating with the vendor - the French vendor. All previous attempts had failed - whether from the language barrier or the long distance separating us, I don't know. But I do know that I am the only one that speaks French in my department and they decided to utilize that asset. So after she broke the news to me, I was excited and nervous. It was hard to get to sleep last night.

SIDE NOTE: Have you ever tried to go to bed at 7:30pm? I did it this past week or so and I must admit - it is quite nice. Pulling on some nice warm socks and bundling up in the covers. Socks are a necessity and I can't sleep with my feet exposed - hence one of the reasons why I am looking forward to McSomethingkins' Christmas present. Thanks in advance, Something.

So I wake up this morning and riffle through my French/English dictionary looking for words I might have to use. I end up bringing it with me to work. I show up 10 minutes early and listen to the French radio just to make sure that I haven't forgotten what it sounds like (that really didn't help because it was news radio and they were talking about something way over my head like politics or something just as annoying that I know little about and even littler French vocabulary). So I give up on that just as my supervisor shows up and says we should get started. So we sit down at the phone and realize that we don't know how to call France. So we spend five minutes trying to figure it out from experimentation, on-line sources, and the University's help line. So we figure it out and dial the number. This lady answers with one of those unreal voices that seem like you are calling some infomercial or talking to an airline stewardess. She was uncannily nice and very clear. The conversation goes fine until we get close to the end and she rattles something off that I am sure she has repeated a million times like she is a car insurance representative or something. I missed it - and all those lessons I learned from the mission to ask if you don't understand something just flew out the window. Hopefully it was unimportant and we get a receipt in the mail.