Critical Mass

Sean and I have found ourselves a bike posse! Thanks to David and Ashley Pulsipher, we have started attending Critical Mass bike ride every first Friday of the month. We meet at the Santa Monica Pier with about 200 other bikes and hit the streets. It's a big group of vigilante cyclists as we take over the streets with our large mass--not breaking for such things as stop signs, signals, or cars. It is meant to promote "more bikes and less cars", which we all know LA could use fewer of. But I just enjoy the ride. There is no set course, whoever happens to be in front simply steers the group. This month's cruise ended up on the Venice Pier after about a 2 hour ride. Radical man.

Mind Bottling

Sean is thinking of becoming a men's doubles partner. He was wondering if any of you want to tear up the ice with him?! He is considering a name change as well, from Sean Michael Young to Sean Michael Michaels...

Booze Cruise

The UCLA Dental School hosted the Annual Boat Dance on Saturday. We set sail out of Marina Del Rey and took a little evening cruise.

When we first arrived, we saw this boat, the Marina Hornblower and we were pretty excited.


Then we realized we were actually boarding the "Shoreliner" and were not quite as excited.


But all 110 of us squeezed onto the boat and had some good grub, good drinks--hey, it was open bar! --and some good dancing...


Jake & Celeste.........................Paul & Sunny

Sean & Marissa cutting a rug!

At first when I see you cry...

...it makes me smile, yeah, it makes me smile.






I saw Lily Allen again Tuesday night. She is quite entertaining, but she is a naughty/spicey little Brit. She curses like a sailor and smokes like a chimney, but wears really cute dresses. I went with the school librarian--Claudette, the hippest librarian I have ever met! The concert was at the Wiltern (at the intersection of of Wilshire and Western--hence the name.) What a great venue! The show was great too. I love the horns! Most of the Lily Allen concerts in a America have been cancelled, luckily, she came to Los Angeleez (as she calls it).

Population of Egypt

So, today we are working on our country reports and I get to Seth's, who is doing Egypt, and he has listed for the population:
"First there were 76 people, then there were 117, and now there are 421."

I am thinking to myself....hmmm...I wonder where he came up with this. Was he looking under ancient civilizations or something???

Then I say, hey Seth, let's look in your book to make sure this is accuarte. We turn to the quick facts page and sure enough...the population of Egypt is 76,117,421. I almost cried laughing! He thought he was pretty funny too. But logically, he had remembered learning that commas are used in a list, so the numbers must have been listed in the order of population changes!

**Note: He had also listed "I Rock" as a neighboring country.**

Meet Pig Pen...

Meet my student Jesse. Seriously, he is the real Pig Pen. Each day, the kids bring in their homework for me to check. There has not been a single day that Jesse has brought in his homework without some sort of food stuck to it, or wadded up like a piece of garbage, or soaking wet from who-knows-what. He often forgets to put his name on his paper, but that is no problem, because identifying it a cinch! Great kid, just a bit of a piggy. The nice thing is, my school creates a pretty accepting environment, and he is not viewed as "the stinky kid" or "the dirty kid." They all just like eachother for whatever they bring to the table. Maybe we could each take a lesson from the kiddos!

Funny Student Story

I have always thought I should keep some sort of journal about the funny things my students do and say, so here is the first entry....

....a couple of days ago, I was standing in the hallway talking to a parent when her son, Benny, walked up.

He freezes and says, "oh my gosh...who is wearing Satsuma?" (The lotion I had just put on!!) Mind you, Benny is in 4th grade.

I was like, "oh, that's me."

Benny responds with, "Don't you love it, Mrs. Young? I have the same kind. Have you ever been to Larchmont Beauty Supply?? Because you would love it. They have the best scents and you can even create your own!!"

This wasn't totally out of character for Benny considering he is the only boy in the after school Jazz class and is usually seen on the yard braiding the girls' hair, but even most girls at that age don't recognize such smells and things! What a funny kid! :)

I need this dress!! Do you think $500 is too much to pay??

Husband of the Day

I woke up this morning to Sean saying...."want some coffee cake?" I was like, "yeeeeee-ah!" He then got on the internet, looked up a recipe, and whipped this baby up! DEEE-lish!
So this award goes out to Sean, for Husband of the Day!

I Heart Sports!!

Cinco de Mayo proved itself to be a day full of sports action. First we started out with the most exciting 122 seconds of a jockey's year in Kentucky at Church Hill Downs for the Derby, then we moved westward to Houston where the Jazz took on the Rockets in Game 7, and finally ended our day in Sin City with the Mayweather vs. De La Hoya fight at the MGM Grand.

Luckily, to juggle all of this, we have our buddies Kevin and Hoppa, with their side-by-side TVs that allowed us to view the fight and the basketball game simultaneously.

I am happy to report that the event I care about most, the Jazz game, came out in our favor! First play-off series win since 2000--it's about time! At least now they have home-court advantage for the next round.

I didn't care much about the fight, but after listening to Mayweather flap his gums for about 3 seconds and watching his classless act of parading out of the locker room wearing a sombrero and t-shirts that said Mexico loves Mayweather, I was sorry that he beat out De La Hoya in the split decision especially on Cinco de Mayo.

As for the Kentucky Derby, it was pretty exciting...Street Sense came from 19th to win the $2,000,000 prize! (seriously!) My money was on Scat Daddy, only because I liked the name.

All in all, a good day for the sporting world!

Call Me Crazy...

...but I really enjoy going to the dentist. I love my dentist's office--it is right downtown Beverly Hills, so I get to go shopping whenever I go, but even more than that...I love the feeling it leaves on my teeth after a cleaning and polishing. My hygienist is totally rad. I even wrote a letter saying how much I liked her to my dentist--who is not bad to look at himself!! Maybe I have just grown to appreciate oral hygiene because of my hubby who constantly tells me how important brushing and flossing is, but regardless, I feel I am one of the few who digs going to the ol' Dental Office. In light of this...I thought I would post a couple of dentistry jokes and cartoons.

What award do they give to the dentist of the year?
Just a little plaque.

What did the tooth say to the departing dentist?
Fill me in when you get back.

What time are most dental appointments scheduled for?*
Two-Thirty (get it, tooth hurty!!)**

* I think I stole this joke from Cody Walker, so make sure he knows I give him credit for it.
**I actually just overheard Sean scheduling an appointment with one of his patients for 2:30!!

Training Pants

Some of you know that we both tutor high school students to earn a little side cash. Sean got his tutoring gig from the Dental School Dean, No-Hee Park. Dean Park hooked him up with a couple Korean families.

One day he was over at the Kims' (owners of a Korean Karoke Bar), when Mrs. Kim came in wearing sweats and asked Sean, "do you like my training pants?" When Sean answered with a "yes, of course," (what else would you say?!?) she ran into the other room to get something for him. She returned with, you guessed it, 2 pair of sweats, or as she calls them Training Pants. "Here...for you and your wife," she says upon handing Sean a silver gift bag. He graciously accepted and brought them home to share.

Sean and I have found these to be the most comfortable pants around--complete with drawstring waist, elastic ankle bands, and front side pockets with one wallet pocket on the rear. So thank you to Mrs. Kim for our Training Pants. They are "numbuh wun" (right Dean Park?! :)

(This story is even better when Sean tells it with his finely tuned Korean accent!)

Scrubs...

I got to go up to UCLA to watch Sean give a lecture to a beginning dentistry class last week. He was teaching them how to do an amalgam (metal) filling. He started with a great slide of Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg (from SNL) doing the D*** in a Box skit--only he substituted the dental process:

Step 1:You cut a hole in the tooth
Step 2: You put the junk in the tooth
Step 3: Then you smooth out the tooth

He got the whole class giggling...especially me. (If you don't know what I am talking about, you are either more wholesome and less corrupt than I, or you can go to YouTube and watch the SNL skit.)

Anyway, it was nice to see him in action!!

Tonight's Cake

I made this cake for a friend's dad who just fell and broke his collar bone. Ouch!! Anyway, the new techniques we learned tonight were the bows and drop flowers--the little orange ones. Ashley made a HAPPY MAY DAY cake with darling little drop flowers and sweet peas. We both refused to do roses...mostly because they are too hard, but also because they are too ugly!