Saturday, March 04, 2023

Now I know how Brad Pitt feels

Last month we were up in the snow teaching our kids how to snowboard. A friend of ours sent a news article warning of an oncoming blizzard and when we got back home I checked it. Turns out we were pictured in the article! Even crazier is that the person who sent us the article didn't know were in it! Here are the pics. (I'm the guy in the blue jacket in the first photo and my wife is girl in the beige jacket in second.) I can confirm that what followed was indeed a blizzard.



Wednesday, February 08, 2023

This could have been an email* (Room Email #9)

*But instead it's just a forward.

Hey y'all,

When Pope Julius built a basilica over St. Valentine's grave to honor his martyrdom during the persecution of Christians by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus, he was almost certainly thinking "this dude is going to sell so much candy."

Here's another forward for your infotainment!


Saturday, January 28, 2023

Wasted On You

Really enjoying this song/video.

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Possibly the Single Most Important Event of the 21st Century: The Gala (Room Email #8)

Hello everyone!

If you've been paying attention to my emails you'll have realized by now that, just like a spoiled college kid calling his parents after spending all his book money on a beer pong table, I only reach out when I need money. Fortunately this time it isn't too much. 

Our teachers would like to attend our school's annual fundraising the dinner, The Gala, and we are going to try and flip the bill for their tickets using our classroom fund. I have been assured that all proceeds will go to our school, but if anyone sees our principle roll up in a new Tesla after The Gala I promise to stage a formal inquiry. Please contribute if you can. Continue reading for a first hand account of my experience at last year's The Gala!

My wife and I attended The Gala for the first time last year and it was quite the ordeal. Allow me to begin at the beginning.

Early in the day I saw a bouquet of flowers for sale at the local supermarket. My daughter shares her name with this particular flower, so I thought it would be a sweet gift. Fast forward to the night of The Gala. Our babysitter arrived and noticed that our cat had been helping himself to the bouquet, nibbling little pieces off at his leisure. We didn’t think anything of it because, to be honest our cat is kind of an a-hole and does whatever he can to destroy our home on the regular. Our babysitter, however, seemed very concerned and informed us that, “gato comiendo estas floras no es bueno” which was weird because she is a white girl with no Hispanic heritage or discernible accent.* Nevertheless, I ran it through a translator app and found that she was trying to tell us that “cat + eating these flowers = bad.”  This is true whether you use the old-school math we learned in the ‘90s, or the “solve it using 127 different methods that your parents have never heard of” way our wonderful team of teachers are currently instructing our young’uns to employ.

*Okay fine, I admit the Spanish part didn’t happen, but that’s how I remember it in my head.

Once we heard the news, I went straight to the World Wide Web™ to find out what to do. Well, you know how when you have a cramp and the internet is like “it could be that you need to stretch, or it could be that you need to amputate your leg” and you just sit there doom-scrolling, regretting that you even looked up the information? This was not that thing. For the first time in human history the entire internet came together to offer one unanimous opinion, and that opinion was that our cat was about to kick the bucket.

My wife and I were very concerned and rushed to the nearest pet hospital. The theme of last year’s The Gala (yes, I am calling it "The Gala" every time because I get paid by the word) was "Roaring '20s," so I was sporting suspenders and a pageboy hat, while my wife had on a flapper dress complete with feathers sticking up out of her tiara. Honestly how did people own cats in the ‘20s? Women were literally dressed as walking cat toys!

We eventually arrived to The Gala, late and stressed out. During the party I received no less than six phone calls updating me on our cat’s status. As a result, I spent most of my time standing on a dark golf course dodging sprinklers while authorizing more and more treatments for our cat. Prices soared, with the bill eventually totaling close to $1,500 American dollars. Now many of you might be thinking, “why would anyone spend that much on a cat so dumb that he eats poison for fun?” To that I would say, “fair point.” I even touched on this while on the phone with the vet. When she (that’s right SHE—if you were assuming that the doctor was male the whole time you need to take a good hard look at yourself), informed me how much it was going to cost I replied that we paid $100 to adopt the cat and then asked, “so you’re telling me that it’s going to cost 15 entire new cats to fix this one used cat?” She was not amused.

Ultimately I ponied up the scratch (haha, animal expressions!) because I couldn’t let our cat die from eating a flower that shares its name with my daughter. That kind of trauma was considered A-OK for ‘80s parents, but in today’s woke culture it would be highkey weak no cap fam okurrr? Plus, I’d undoubtably end up having to pay more than $1,500 in therapy bills for my daughter to lie on a couch talking about how her dad is a callous cat-hating cheapskate. So, long story long I broke down and paid for the cat to live and eat poison another day.

The moral of the story is that you should come to The Gala because you will almost definitely have a better time than I did last year. Hope to see you there!


Sincerely,

Ryan, member of Team McGregillyims and owner of a 
$1,600 cat

P.S. What's a book's favorite color? Tune in next time for the answer!

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Gifts (Room Email #7)

Hello everyone!

It's Ryan from Team McGregillyims. I'm forwarding a message from Sarah (the "illy" of Team McGregillyims).

Thanks everyone for pitching in! And the few that gave the last few days! Here is what we bought:

TEACHERS
Gift cards to Nordstrom’s 
Anthropology throw blanket 
Stanley 40oz water cups

TEACHER AIDES
Gift cards to Nordstrom’s
Stanley 40oz water cups

Thanks again and have a Merry Christmas and a great break!

Hi it's Ryan again. Looks like we got them everything but the Olde English 800 to put in those 40oz "water" cups!

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Happy holidays and hope to see you at the class cookie party tomorrow!

I'm pretty sure that I'm the first room mom to include a reference to OE in a classroom email. So I've got that going for me . . . which is nice.

Thursday, December 15, 2022

Holiday Party Sign Ups–and lots of random memes! (Room Email #6)

Hello families,



Tis' the season to kick in for some sweet holiday treats to spoil our awesome teachers and classroom aides. If you have already contributed, thank you! If you have not, here's your chance to make things right before Santa comes to knock down your door and drop a fat chunk of coal in your sock drawer, ya filthy animal.



Or, as Sarah more diplomatically puts it:

"As we are wrapping up 2022 before leaving for break we would like to give each of our teachers and classroom aids a holiday gift from the classroom. This is totally optional, but if you would like to contribute you can Venmo me. Thank you so much for those that have already given. We will make sure to note that the gift is from the entire class and deliver it to them on either Wednesday or Thursday of next week so the students can see what the families got them. Feel free to do something on your own if you would like."

We have a real good cop, bad cop situation going on here in our room mom circle and I am here for it.



Angela, who is also a good cop, has created a sign-up sheet for parents to volunteer in class on the last day before winter break. All parents except one (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE)* are invited to come celebrate with the class!

*This is a joke. Unless you immediately thought I was talking about you, in which case you may be the problem. Nevertheless, you are invited.

One more thing! We are doing a Secret Santa gift exchange this year where each parent has been assigned one other parent to buy a lavish gift for.



Your person has been randomly selected and will appear in the box that follows this sentence: [Ryan Sims]  Whoever you got, make sure you really spoil them this year!

I look forward to seeing you at the celebration!

Happy Holidays,

Ryan of Team McGregillyims

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

These Colors Run (Room Email #5)

Hello room peoples,

I have been asked to remind everyone that the Color Run is tomorrow! I didn't know anything about it but I assumed that it involves dipping kids in vats of paint and chasing them around until they find a pot of gold-covered chocolate coins at the end of a digitally projected rainbow hologram beamed directly above a glitter covered finish line, triggering a live band playing Händel's Messiah (The Hallelujah Chorus) at an earsplitting volume, simultaneously blowing out all of the windows in the school.

Then I read the attached flyer and it turns out I missed a couple of small details.

Also, if you would have approached me during my undergrad while partying in Isla Vista and told me that in the future I would be a room mom tasked with forwarding URGENT Bingo information to a group of parents I would have done a Natty Ice spit-take and told you you were crazy. Nevertheless, here we are. Attached is the info I was implored to forward along "ASAP."