The DN

Happy Birthday to my beautiful daughter Nicoley Boley Macaroni!!! Major Huggggs!!!

Say cheese.

1  Happy  Birthday Miss Harrington!!! You are the best teacher EVER, AND you are goin' to the chapel and you're gonna git married this summer! Good times, good times. Hey, remember the morning when you were all crabby and didn't want to go see the sunrise at Kiva beach in Tahoe and we all made you and we were all there and then Caitlin distracted you and then Matt pulled a ring out of a HUGE backpack and then got on his knees and before you knew what hit you you were engaged and then we had an early morning brunch celebration and had a party in Annie Gayle's cabin and then I made food? Yeah, that was cool...I loves me my Coley!!! Happy, Happy Birthday!!!

2  And Now, The News: Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeen Week!!!

 It is suddenly upon us. We are also having Spirit Week at school. I always thought it fun that Spirit Week has always leaned toward the same week as Halloween. 

3   That isn't by design, by the way. It is by the home football game near the end of October. 

4   It folds in beautifully with our ghost stories. 

5   The trouble is, I don't know how really prepared I am in all of this. I usually have several books to use for research scattered about, but there have been so many coincidences and odd occurrences this year that I have fallen off my old stories trying to keep track of these new ones. 

6  And say what you will, it isn't really something I wish to do in the later hours of the night. 

7   An odd thing occurred to me last night: my books that I usually use for this unit are no longer lined up on my bookshelves. 

8   I don't consider any of it THAT odd as we have flipped a few rooms in the house, and in so doing have clearly disturbed many of the bookshelves. 

9   I had kept all of my paranormal books in the same basic area, but in the past few weeks I have been on such scattered schedules and filled with so much nonsense that it has been difficult keeping my classic materials organized. 

10  A number of unrelated factors have played into a lot of this. 

11  I know where a couple of the books are, but I vaguely remember lending my only copy of Antoinette May's Haunted Places in California to a student last year. It never returned. It contains a lot of my "filler" stories: Sunnyvale Toys R Us, the CurranTheater, the Blue Lady at the Moss Beach Distillery in Half Moon Bay, the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego, and of course our own Winchester Mystery House, to name but a few. 

12   With everything that has gone on since the beginning of the school year I have spun backwards. 

13   I'm not alone. It's just one of those years. 

14   It's too late for me really to go into a lot of details as to why this year is a bit special and different. I do have to get places, white-rabbit-sort-of way.

15   I do know that I have been invited to tell the Heidi stories at the Homecoming Dance. 

16   Yesterday on the way home from Dad's I tried to put it all in the proper order, but kept falling off the tracks a bit. 

17   Fortunately I have the main notes on several computers, bulleted so that I could practice. 

18   I just had to spend so much time preparing lessons and keeping current that the stories ironically slipped my mind. 

19   The stories as they have existed in their classic form always worry me, but usually once I begin, I am able to tell the big stuff, the Abraham Lincoln stuff, the Titanic stuff, as well as the more recent stories involving Van Gogh, Starry Night, the black bird coming into my office at school late at night and landing on the teevee, and many more. 

20  And what I now dub most nobly The William Dream, a brand new edition to the stories. Thank you dude! You wrote a GREAT piece. It sounded like a short story.

21   Unfortunately this all occurred to me last night, very late. 

22   And once again, the past two weeks have seen a series of electronic devices acting strange. When you have a deadline and entire pieces have disappeared, you walk softly.

23   I tried listing them on this "blog" but had trouble at various times.  I haven't the time to put it all out there because I was at Dad's yesterday, which also throws off lots of my schedule. 

24   I could go back to Friday. On Friday I used some beautiful violin music when my students wrote their thoughts and visions of Annabel Lee. 

25   I had done so the day before and it worked beautifully. 

26   On Friday I searched for some nice music that would work, but it interrupted with some recognizable tunes, the most recognizable of which was A Time For Us (What is the Youth) from Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. A student stayed after class and spoke with me about it, and suggested I use Pandora.

27   "I LOVE Pandora," I said. "That's a good suggestion!"

28   She left, and I thought it was a good idea, using Pandora. 

29   Just before lunch, my fifth period class finished their vocab tests early. I asked if they would like to sing happy birthday to my sister Linda. Of COURSE they did!

30   I called Linda on my cell. She teaches also, so I knew I was probably interrupting her class, but I let it ring. In the scheme of things it makes for a fun memory. You learn these things. Here is the convo:

31   Speaker: "Hello?"

32   "Linda?"

33    "Well, yeah!"

34    Class: "Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you..."

35    I grabbed a pink marker and wrote "Linda!" on the board so they would sing it in unison. Worked famously. 

36   If you know Linda, you know she laughed. She had her class say, "Thank you!" I then cut it short, told her I loved her, and hung up. 

37   The bell rang and everyone disappeared. 

38   There is no better peace than that moment. My room was lit like a Starbuck's: ambient window lighting and three lamps. Delicate silence. Delicate peace. Delicate moment. 

39   Suddenly the Four Tops' I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) started playing. 

40   I looked arround. My cell was definitely playing that tune. And I KNEW what had just occurred.

41   I took out my iPhone. Either it had hit a quarter, or a set of keys, or something, but Pandora was lit up and playing that classic! Here are the words, since I already got you started. It's a grand old song:

The Four Tops

"I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)"

Ooh, sugar pie, honey bunch
You know that I love you
I can't help myself
I love you and nobody else

In and out my life (In and out my life)
You come and you go (You come and you go)
Leaving just your picture behind (Ooh)
And I've kissed it a thousand times (Ooh)

When you snap your finger or wink your eye
I come a-running to you
I'm tied to your apron strings
And there's nothing that I can do, ooh

I can't help myself
No, I can't help myself

'Cause sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
I'm weaker than a man should be
I can't help myself
I'm a fool in love, you see

Wanna tell you I don't love you
Tell you that we're through and I try
But every time I see your face (Can't help myself)
I get all choked up inside

When I call your name
Girl, it starts to flame (Burning in my heart, tearing it all apart)
No matter how I try
My love I cannot hide

'Cause sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
You know that I'm waiting for you (Waiting for you)
I can't help myself
I love you and nobody else, ooh

Sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
I'd do anything you ask me to (Ask me to)
I can't help myself
I want you and nobody else, ooh

Sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
You know that I love you (Love you)
I can't help myself
No, I can't help myself, ooh

Sugar pie, honey bunch (Sugar pie, honey bunch)
You know that I love you 

42  You do realize that I have officially put this DN at risk of changing fonts and disappearing. 

43  Happens. 

44   All the time. Last week you might recall that everything on my computer suddenly went offline when I tried saving this, and I had to write a ridiculously fast DN the following morning. 

45   That hasn't stopped. 

46   When I turned this computer on last night I had to uninstall the LAN setup in order to get back online. 

47  I may stop this one while I'm ahead. Or behind. Or I don't know. I just know that I haven't listened to Pandora since summer; it gets mentioned, and within an hour it plays, without any help from me. 

48  Delightful!

49  Do I care that I don't remember all the details of the Antoinette May stories?

50  How could I? That book is clearly gone. I ordered one last night, special delivery. It should be here Tuesday afternoon. Do I need it? 

51   I work a stone's throw from Barnes and Noble. They tend to have the book, especially this time of the year. 

52   And there's always online...

53   Time for me to disappear. 

54   Great start to a classic week. The Phantom of the Opera is on TCM right now. Lon Chaney. Or is it Lon Simmons? 

55   I thought of the Phantom of the Opera just today. Long story. Involves other ghosts and other mysteries. 

56   The wind just blew leaves to my doorstep. 

57   October is in full swing. 

58   Let's go with it. 

59   See you again. 

61   And Happy Birthday, Coley. Hope you have a Spooktacular week!

62   Peace. 

~H~

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