Category: Holidays

For most adults, April 20th was probably just another day, but for my high school students, 4/20 is a day signifying marijuana use–whether they actually use it or not, it became one of the many distractions that they juggled while in class.  I had my own unintended 4/20 observance in the morning with my own special twist, which can only be largely summarized as Teresa’s On-going Bad Luck.

I woke up unusally early Wednesday morning.  I felt well rested, but knew that I’d be tired later on since I was up about an hour earlier than normal.  Nonetheless, I decided to make the best of it by preparing one of my favorite breakfasts: hashbrowns, beef sausage along with my usual bowl of freshcut fruit.  I even fancied that I could get in a little writing. Although I write everyday on my second novel, The Adventures of Infinity and Negativa, I don’t set any page limit on my daily writings; so I’m free to write as little or as much as both time and creativity will both allow.

Since I like to multitask, I have frozen hashbrowns and sausage just waiting to be heated up for 15 minutes in the oven while I do other things.  Like any good chef, (and teacher) I always let the oven heat up first before completing my daily morning bathroom ritual.  During that time, I thought I smelled something funny, but it wasn’t too alarming since I’d baked turkey casserole on Sunday and some had sputtered over the casserole pan onto the oven. I became alarmed when the actual smoke detector went off.

I dashed out of the bathroom to discover a steady stream of smoke billowing out of the stove burners.  I opened the oven and saw a healthy flame flicking in the bottom of the oven.  I’m proud of myself in retrospect that I hadn’t panicked. I reached under the kitchen sink cabinet where the fire extinguisher was, pulled the plastic band off it, aimed and put the small fire out.  I then opened my front door and the patio door to let the smoke out.  While the apartment aired out, I fanned the space under the smoke detector since that sound was the most annoying aspect of the whole situation. Granted, it saved my life and apartement, but I wanted to push some button or somehow “reason” with it that the fire was out and fresh air was flowing in.

The second most annoying thing was the fine yellow powder that came out of the fire extinguisher that covered everything in both my kitchen and living room.  Again, the fire extinguisher saved life and property, but I had no idea that powder would be carried in the smoke, coating everything.  I normally consider myself a clean person, but the one thing I hate doing is dusting.  There was no getting out of that now.  I can ignore a little dust, but the yellow powder mixed with the dust made my apartment look like one of those haunted abandoned houses one usually sees in horror movies.

I did a quick cleaning of the “essential” parts of my apartment, saving the rest for Good Friday, which I had off.  I laughed on my way to work about how I’d just celebrated the infamous 4/20 compared to how some of my students would celebrate it.  Fortunately, I got a proper, albeit belated 4/20 celebration on Good Friday.  I started my morning off by spraying oven cleaner in my little inferno, (which I should have done on Sunday after baking!), cleaning off my furniture and things with disposable polishing cloths and washing my throw pillows.  I looked on the bright side: this was the spring cleaning that my apartment would not have received otherwise.

I then swam 21 laps at the gym and decided to call up a friend to go out to dinner.  Coincidentally, we chose to go to a Lebanese restaurant that had shisha!  After a wonderful meal of lamb, hummus and pita, I topped the meal off with Bahrini flavored shisha.  Now THAT”S the way one should celebrate a day dedicated to smoking!  Nothing illegal or imminently dangerous.  Granted my nonsmoker’s lungs choked on the toxins a few times. I sat back on the patio, under the stars, passing the shisha pipe and enjoying the good conversation between my friend and I.

So, I’ll sign off with a much felt Happy 4/20 and Easter!

This year’s carnaval, featuring the Austin Samba School and of course, my fellow capoeiristas and me from Capoeira Evolucao, was better than last year’s.  We capoeiristas again formed a roda around the samba performers so they could do their spectacular thing twice during the night, which had the theme of Alice in Wonderland.  I’m so happy that they made our security job a bit easier by arranging the squared off barricades near the stage so that the stage itself was the fourth side. 

After both samba performances, we had our own little show on the side. Although I didn’t play capoeira, many Evolucao capoeiristas did, along with capoeiristas from other places.  I found it amusing that guys were obviously beginners would go aggressively against Mestre Metido and how he teased and taunted them before putting them in their  place.

Just like last year, many carnaval participants were in varying degrees of nudity, most relying on painted costumes whereas some just looked like inebriated people who’d drunkenly taken off their clothes during the course of the night.  Nonetheless, what can one expect from the biggest carnaval celebration in the States?