Stop, Drop, and Hide Under a Blanket

If someone is coming up your driveway, the obvious action that you need to take is to hide from them. My sister and I did this all the time growing up. I was reminded of these antics last Saturday night when I was at Jessy's house watching Robots on TV. Jess was working at her desk making dog collars and every time a commercial came on, Travis would change the channel back to football. We heard a car door shut outside.

"Somebody's here." Jess said. "Quick, hide!"

I laughed and we continued to joke about when we were children left home alone in our country house. Sometimes I think Travis has no idea who he married. He sure learns a lot about his wife's quirks when I'm around.

Jessamy and I grew up in the boondocks. Our private road was a half mile long and made of gravel, which made for bumpy bicycle rides. Our house sat tucked safely on the other side of the hill, nestled among mighty oak and fir trees.

People didn't drive to our house often. If an unfamiliar person made his way to our house, it was either someone who was A) lost or B) there to rob or murder us. My mother would leave us for an hour or so when she had to go to town and buy groceries or whatever and Jess and I would be in the living room playing Legos or building model horse barns out of cardboard boxes when we would spot a car driving down to the house. "Quick, someone's coming!" One of us would yell.

We would then make sure the door was locked, flip off all the lights, and go hide. Most of the time we would hide in my parents' bedroom and spy out their window, because there was a giant bush in the way and it prevented us from being spotted from the kidnappers.

[You better believe when my sister and I finally attended public school, we were experts at the armed intruder drills. We dropped to the floor out of the line of sight of the window and spoke not a word.]

We sat breathlessly listening for the knock at the door. It would come, and we would wait, wondering if the person was going to start picking the lock in order to get in and steal my mother's Cherished Teddies collection. When we heard the car start up again and leave, we breathed a sigh of relief but waited an extra minute before emerging. You know, in case it was a fake-out.

It may be interesting for you to know that I still do this at my house, even though I am a grown woman. I will be sitting at my desk (which is near the front window) typing an e-mail to an associate, when I will see someone coming down the lane. I might immediately drop to the floor and army crawl behind the couch since I don't want to be spotted. Or maybe I won't have enough time to get out of sight from the window, so what I'll do is lay on the floor and throw a blanket over me real quick. Because a long green lump isn't suspicious at all.

I don't really know why I still do this. Habit, I guess. Or maybe I just want the element of surprise. When the FedEx guy drops off my package, I want to be able to pop out from under the window and yell "Ha! I can sign for that!" Or maybe when someone is breaking into my window, I want to throw the blanket back, reveal my face, and terrify the intruder.

Basically, I blame my repeated viewings of Home Alone. I've never heated up my door knob, put pokey things under the window, or tar and nailed the steps coming up from the basement, but I fully have a protocol, should the need ever arise. I am not going to post it here, because for all I know there is a stalker who reads my blog everyday in hopes that I will reveal the location of my home and the hours in which I am alone.

I'm telling you right now, it's probably not worth your time to kidnap or rob me. My computer is a desktop from 2004, I own a very limited DVD collection, and the nicest thing I have are my couches which weigh as much as a baby elephant, so getting away with them wouldn't be easy. If you were to want them, you'd have to at least bring a U-haul because there's no way they're fitting in a pick up truck. And good luck trying to back that U-haul out of the driveway--you'll be sandwiched. But I wouldn't put it past a thief to ram through my wooden fence, mow over the neighbor's garden, and make a break for it in the opposite direction.

You don't want to kidnap me because I'd ask you for an interview on your life of crime, so that I could blog about it. Plus, I'd want to get my phone and Tweet about it as it was happening. My update would probably be something like "In the trunk of a car blindfolded, but don't worry, even though I can't see I can still text via voice commands on my smart phone." Only wait, I don't actually have a smart phone (another reason it's not worth it to rob me).

Covert Affairs

From high school through half way of college, Alias was my favorite show ever. Then I didn't have one for a while. Eventually I became a Lost addict. Let me tell you about the new show I'm trying to get in to. It's called Covert Affairs and stars Piper Perabo on USA on Tuesday nights. I watch it on Hulu the next day because I don't get cable.


How Covert Affairs is like Alias:
*both have a young woman who progresses quickly in the CIA
*both have tech guys
*both go on missions
*both have to lead a secret double life

Main Character
Alias starred Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow
Name: Sydney is a regular name but not one you hear all the time. I know like, two Sydneys. 
Hair: Brown, shoulder length
Lips: jealous
Love interest that sparked her double agency: her fiance got killed in the bath tub.

Covert Affairs stars Piber Perabo as Annie Walker
Name: Honestly, the name is so blah. So incredibly common. Couldn't they think of something better? Like Jolie Rossen?
Hair: blond, past shoulder length
Lips: jealous  
Love interest that sparked her to work for the CIA: some shirtless dude on a beach that gave her a matching bracelet. She knew him for like two weeks, then he disappeared.

Tech guys
Alias had Marshall, who was super nerdy and socially awkward but made wicked devices.

Covert Affairs has Auggie, who is blind, but manages to save Annie's butt through technology.

Sound Track
Alias had genius musical scores composed by Michael Giacchino. They were seriously awesome. So awesome in fact, that I bought the soundtrack to season one even though there are NO LYRICS-- just spy inspired beats. I listen to it in the car when I'm trying to be bad ass. He did the musical scores for Lost and Alias, and for films like Mission Impossible III, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Up. Plus he's gotten an Emmy, some Grammys, and an Academy Award. Because he's that brilliant.

Covert Affairs has....who knows, I didn't even care enough to look it up. It's not awesome. It still sounds spy-like, but nothing gripping, you know? Nothing that makes you want to wet your pants with excitement.


Other Cast Members
Alias had Victor Garber as Syd's father and Michael Vartan as the oh so sizzling Agent Vaughn.

Covert Affairs sometimes has Peter Gallagher, who used to be on the O.C. Didn't he?

In conclusion, Alias was quite obviously better, but Covert Affairs is helping to fill that empty hole in my heart. Though I'm very excited about two upcoming TV shows this fall, which I will tell you about sometime soon.

Being Followed

I've watched enough Alias episodes to know that I should have been more suspicious of the guy who came into my classroom to do something to my computer, because yes, he's probably a district employee, but most likely he was planting a spy cam, or a computer file tracker, or something malicious.

I was on the phone with my mortgage guy, with the classroom door shut so I'd have some privacy. I never shut my classroom door. I was talking away when I hear the door open. I figured whoever had enough balls to open the door when it was so clearly shut had something important to tell me. I looked up and saw said mysterious man. He was holding some computer hub thing, and I was having an important call, so I just waved him in. I got away from my desk and walked to the other end of my room. The guy was there for all of three minutes and then left. After he left, I realized maybe he wasn't a computer maintenance guy at all, maybe he was a spy. Maybe he was pulling a Sydney Bristow and had just put a business card sized device on the back of my computer so the district could track my every move.

They are watching. Everything.

Go goole yourself

I occasionally Google myself just to see what sort of things stalkers/employers can find. I Google my first name and last name and find info about stuff I did in college. All of it's positive, so that's good. Then I Google blog my first and last name and find other stuff. But I kind of doubt my employer goes home and Google blogs my name--unless of course they are utterly fascinated with me (which they should be, but I'm glad they're not). However, my employer did track me down via Craigslist, and that kind of freaked me out.

I shouldn't be so mad about people talking me, because I do my fair share of stalking internet researching people too. For example, there is this kind of cute guy I know. Okay, well, I don't really know him that well, but I found out his first and last name, and that's all you need to get started stalking researching someone. I started just knowing his first name, but I am a trained detective, and so I was able to find out his last name by using other clues. Asking would have been easier, but not as clever. Anyway, I can't believe I am admitting all of this to you, but whatever, who cares. It's not like it's about you. So I found out his name, which then gives me the ability to find out his age. I went to this stalker background checking website and entered his name. Problem was, it gave me two results, one for a 22 year old, and one for a 32 year old. At that point, everything I thought I knew changed. I thought he was about 25 or 26. So I guess he could easily be 32 and just look young for his age. Or he could be 22 but I kind of doubted it based on the other information that was attached. Only today I was talking to him and he told me last week was his birthday. Someone else who was involved in the conversation asked him what age he was celebrating. I could have sworn he said 23. But maybe I misheard and it was 33. Maybe I should just quit stalking people and make real friends.

P.S. After I got my job, I on-line checked the ages of a large handful of people at my place of work. Because I wanted to know. Now I know when they are lying. They are not really 32. And they don't weigh 125 either.

E-mailing this post

I am trying something out where I write my post in an e-mail and just mail it to Blogger. That way I can blog from work without a paper trail of the sites I visited. However, I am pretty sure the district stalks people and they have one of those keyboard stroke recorders, so they know exactly what you type, even if you backspace and erase it. It's like I'm Sydney Bristow being watched by Arvin Sloane. The bastard.

Detective Work

I am now practically a detective. I’ve been thrown into this teaching job with absolutely no information about my students, their abilities, what they’ve been doing all year, what they still need to learn, where everything is, etc. The teacher before me literally left me one lesson plan. I used that up on the first day. Since then, I’ve been snooping around the classroom when my students are gone, trying to gain helpful information. I’m looking for any clues to help me figure out what’s happened from September to April. I’ve peeked inside all of the drawers and cupboards and found that we have an extraordinary amount of graph paper in a cupboard that I cannot really reach without a ladder. I’ve also found that files are not kept in the filing cabinet closest to the desk. All of my snooping and peeking has so far provided me with six helpful facts. Which is a lot, I think. Next week I think I might venture into the office and look at student files because I know virtually nada about my kids. Oh, and the computer was extremely dusty. So much that I was coughing as I was brushing it off. No finger prints, though.