It's calendar time!

As much as I deplore the 'holiday shopping season' and all of the attendant nightmarishness surrounding it, the holiday shopping season is also calendar buying time. I know that with all of our smart phones and tablets and various gadgets sporting electronic calendar apps, the traditional wall calendar is not as popular as it once was... but I still can't handle not having one. And since it's that calendar buying time of the year, I'm offering you three to choose from! Surely there's a calendar option for all tastes here, right? And you're probably going to be buying a calendar, so you may as well buy one of these, hint, hint... Anyhow:

For those of you who are Charlie and Mochi fans, I bring you twelve months of mustaches and underbites with the Charlie and Mochi Calendar! Click here or on the images below (which are, as you might have guessed, the ones featured in the calendar.)

Or, if you prefer, how about twelve months featuring the stunning beauty
of Kyrgyzstan? Click here or on the images below!
And lastly, if you're a fan of Desolation Travel, the last calendar I have on offer was put together my me and my DT companions, and it's filled with photos from our various trips to desolate locations throughout the past year - and the pictures it contains were selected by DT fans. Click here or on the images below.

Rocky Horror! Halloween! Grammar! The Inhumane Society!

It's been a busy couple of weeks around here, mainly because it was Halloween season - which, in my opinion, is the best time of the year. This year I was able to rock three different costumes, which made me incredibly happy. I do love a good opportunity to dress up.

On Friday, October 25th, a group of us went to go see the Rocky Horror Picture Show film and interactive performance put on by The Rich Weirdoes. 

Security made M. take off his "FBI" jacket, because "someone might think he was a real agent." Um, OK. The show itself was pretty fantastic though. I've seen RHPS put on in smaller venues, but this was definitely the largest and most interactive version I've ever been to.

Saturday one of my classmates threw a kickass Halloween party.

I went as a flapper.

Mr. Green and Miss Scarlet from Clue, if you were wondering.

And then of course, I taught class on Thursday dressed as a Dalek. As you do. I'd say about half of my students knew what I was immediately. The others were like, "What's a Dalek?"

ED-U-CATE!

Thursday I also finished up my fifth and final lesson to my students on teaching English grammar to EFL/ESL students. Yes, we spent five days on grammar. You want someone to talk for six and a half hours (thirteen if you consider that I teach two sections) on English grammar, I am apparently your girl. The PowerPoint by itself isn't quite as great. For one thing, SlideShare has mucked up my formatting, and you can't see my animations. Plus, as I've mentioned before, I do NOT write every word I say on my slides - I hate it when teachers do that. As a result, reading the slides won't give you as much information as sitting through my class would have. However, if you're an EFL/ESL teacher new to teaching grammar, it should give you some useful pointers.

And lastly, due to the combination of some really horrific animal-shelter related news that I read on Facebook and all these people posting about NaNoWriMo, I've become inspired to get back to work on The Inhumane Society. I started by editing the existing 140 pages - you can read the edited first part here - and by finally picking up where I left off. Once you're all caught up, you can read the latest installment of The Inhumane Society here.

Oh, and you know I'm still posting about my summer's adventures over at Cat Lady in Kyrgyzstan, right?