But anyway, where I was going, there was a more regional competition, you know, especially on the East Coast, called ECW, Extreme Championship Wrestling. And the lore is that ECW got bought out by one of the major circuits or went bankrupt because they overextended trying to compete with the major circuits. And according to lore, as I say, the championship belt was put up for sale.  Now, again, not gonna let the -- not going to spoil the story, but I, I think, again, having a fan with connections might have meant that maybe there was a replica version of this, as these things go. But, one way or another, the promotion belt got into the hands of one of the organizers of TRASH and it did actually become the championship trophy that was awarded each year. And the belt was actually something that we competed for and would be awarded to the champion each year, and you would get automatically invited back to defend the belt each time. And, in 2002, I was on a team that won the belt. 

I am going to tell you a grim situation. Could be grim could be not I'll let you decide that. And it has to do with a coffin, but from a way different perspective. Years ago, my aunt with no children was getting -- was in a nursing home and she wanted me to go through her things so she could have this that and the other thing and she needed some specific things from her bedroom dressers. And I am the kind of person that does not like digging through other people's stuff. So when I came back to see my Aunt, I said to her, “I can't find what you're looking for, but I did find this”.  What was this? Well, years ago, maybe, you know this from listening to this maybe you don't know this item, but instead of using CDs, this was in the cassette tape era, and I found a empty cassette -- well wasn't really empty -- but I did find a cassette box. So, when I told her I found this, I showed it to her, I opened it up, and there was a picture of a man laying in a casket. That actually was a picture of her husband that had passed sometime earlier but in a very young version of him. So I said to my Aunt I said, “So, tell me this.” I said, “What is this?” She said, “Oh, your crazy Uncle. When I was dating him, I asked him to give me a picture of him. At the time, he was studying to be a mortician and that was what he did. He decided because he was a jokester, that he was going to have a friend take a picture while he was laying in the coffin.” Air quotes “sleeping.” And he had the picture printed, and gave it to her so that she would have his picture. He never finished being a mortician or maybe she might have said she wasn't going to marry him if he continued that career path.

The English teacher in the eighth grade held a, kind of a championship tea and the tea that she did was something that was an honors thing. And so the kids had -- they got dressed up, and they read poetry, and they had tea, and they had treats, and they had all kinds of food and everything else. But you had to be invited, and you had to have certain grades. And I taught -- she taught mostly honors kids, but she did have some that weren't. And I taught all the kids. And some of those kids, when they passed out the Tea invitations, would be so crushed. And so finally, I realized that this was -- some of these kids were never going to, they were never going to achieve the A and the A+ gradings they needed to go to this tea and every year we had this, you know, kids got all dressed up and everything else.   And so, after the first year, when I got all these very crestfallen and angry kids in my class being mad because they had to go to class and these other kids got to do all this other stuff, and go get dressed up and have their pastries and all this. I decided, after talking to the principal, that I was going to just quietly do what was referred to as the ‘Untea.’ And I took the name of course, from the ‘Unbirthday’ from Alice in Wonderland. And the kids would be called out of one of the classes and they'd all go to the Tea and then after they left and the other kids would kind of look and I never told the, the kids I said, “This is the one thing you have to do. This is a secret. You cannot let anybody know that this happens. But it's okay. It will be all right.” And so, then I'd pull out the cookies and the -- some kind of drink, punch of some sort. And we would have not tea, not a fancy tea, but we would just have the ‘Untea’ and I would let the kids sit any place they wanted and I would let them sit any way they wanted and I would let them -- and then we would do, we would talk about other things and do different things and it was always kind of -- it was always kind of fun. And I felt like…

Um, yesterday, actually, a co-worker of mine was really upset about something and -- something in the news -- and was asking if I knew about it, and I was like, "Yeah, I have heard, it's freaking atrocious." Specifically about Blue Cross Blue Shield and what they are -- and Michigan Health not accepting it anymore, because Michigan Health is a big provider up here. And, of course, Blue Cross Blue Shield is the main provider for most insurance plans, including mine, and everything that our university offers. So like, everybody that works where I work has a form. They either have a Mesa plan which is Blue Cross Blue Shield, or they have ours.   And so she's like, "Yeah, like this is just absolutely terrible." And she's like, "I just, I feel like people had no clue this was happening." And I said, "Yeah, I think a lot of people were stunned." And I was like, "And they did this two years ago to the dentists." Because Blue Cross Blue Shield already did this type of crap to the dentists two years ago. It's why I have a whole new dentist 'cause my dentist stopped taking insurance because they won't negotiate.   And she got mad and was like, "This is not even the same." And I was like, "No- what?" Like, totally taken aback. And she's like, "We're talking about like cancer treatments, not like a cavity." And I was like, "No, I know that. I'm not saying those are apples to apples. I'm saying what they're doing to the medical providers is the same thing they did to the dentists." And then I realized she doesn't actually understand what's happening because she carried on with, I needed to get my facts straight, and I needed to really go talk to HR because, clearly, I'm unaware. And I'm like, "HR has nothing to do with this. You don't understand what's happening. Got it."   And, she's not at work today, she stormed off after that. And my one co-worker who was standing there was like, "What the hell just happened?" and I couldn't explain it either. So I look forward to whenever I see her next ‘cause she's one of those co-workers that like, she'll say something again, and I really hope she does it when we're in our normal space so that I can look at her and be like, "Girl, you misunderstood me completely, like I can't help you understand any better. I'm not saying that, that the whole situation with the dentist -- I'm not talking about the intricacies. I'm just talking about how Blue Cross Blue Shield has been doing this to providers of all kinds, for years now. I was…

Note: There is language that is excluded in the transcript but not excluded in the audio.   So when we went to Spain a few years ago, two things: I hate London Heathrow. If you can avoid London Heathrow, do it. Go to like, some other country or a different, whatever you can, but like, avoid doing a layover there.   A belt broke with my boyfriend's checked bag. It was funny because like, I work with a lady. I worked with a lady from Spain, and she was like, you know, "There's so many uneven roads and you're gonna be in an Airbnb with a washer / dryer, so, just take -- just take a little like, carry on bag with clothes and do laundry." And he was like "No, no, no." You know, so he got a checked bag. And we were stupid and like the night before, someway, somehow, we took my medicine and put it in there, which was really stupid.   The belts at London Heathrow broke. And then, Europe is really good at going on strike, which is awesome. But, they -- there was some sort of like airport, some sort of like, strikes related to airports or whatever. So less people, and then the belt broke and sh**. So, he didn't get his checked bag until like, three months later. And they sent it back to Michigan. Um, but, but, but we learned 'cause like, I didn't have my anxiety medicine and if you don't have that, you are going to be so f****ed. So bad.   So I called my doctor and the receptionist lady or whatever, nurse, whatever, was like, "Hey, I don't know about Spain." But when, when she went to Italy, there were all these little market -- like, corner pharmacies. And you don't need a prescription for the most part, and it's cheaper. So she's like, trying to see if there's a corner pharmacy and see what they can do. So I went in, and I just told them the name and the dosage. And it was like six dollar -- no prescription, no appointment. And it was like six dollars for a month's supply of that medicine. Yeah.  

When you came into the building in the morning, you would sit in the bleachers in the gym until about seven minutes before the first class. Normally it was just a time where you'd catch up on homework or say hello to friends. Kind of, you chitchat a little bit as long as you weren't, you know, being disruptive. But one day, with everybody sitting in the bleachers in sections, there were some kids in one section of the gym that for some reason or another just started throwing pennies onto the floor. Which, okay, looking at it with an adult's eye, was something that shouldn't have been allowed. But things went back and forth with this group of students and one of the teachers who was on duty that day to supervise things, I remember her last name being [teacher name], Ms [teacher name] was trying to get some of these students to stop. Then things got heated. And they started yelling at Ms [teacher name]. Then there was a response, because they wouldn't stop cutting up, that everybody was to be held back when the bell would normally dismiss us to go to our locker and get out to first period class. So we were in this tense freeze for two or three minutes. Then people relented, we were released, we got to class, but the rumor mill had started. And it's not impossible that something was said that may have been offensive to one party or the other. But the rumor mill had gone through, and then all of a sudden by fifth or sixth period that day, the word had spread that there was going to be a walkout at the end of sixth period class going into seventh. And again, I'm never gonna truly know what was said that sparked it, who started it, because the main students that were involved in the original altercation, they weren't in my circle. We were a big enough school that you had circles, and different socioeconomic classes, different academic classes. Even, you know, three or four elementary schools feeding into our junior high. So being what it is, people just start milling around at the main hallway. Which, given the design of the school being mostly ‘50s construction, you just had a mass of people in one area and then the administrators trying to maintain order and remind…

So, I went to this new cafe that I've never been to before. It's like a new cafe. And it was really nice inside, and I was like, "Hey, this place is nice and cozy." And they had a list, they had a menu, you know, on the wall. And there was a list of lattes, and they all had cute little names. And I decided I wanted to get the one called the Buddha. And so I said to the barista, "I would like a small Buddha." And I saw her type it. She took a really long time. She's like typing a lot of things in, and she finally typed in my order and it popped up on the screen. And it said, "Green Buddha." And I was, like Green Buddha? I didn't say that. So I looked at the menu again and way off to the other side of the menu there was a thing that says matcha, and one of the things you could get was the Green Buddha, and it had matcha in it. And I said "No, no, sorry I didn't want the Green Buddha. I just want the regular Buddha." And then she was like, "Oh." And I was like "Yeah, I don't want -- I don't want any matcha," and she's like, "Oh." And so, then she starts typing in some more stuff, and I see it change from Green Buddha to regular Buddha. So I thought she understood what I meant. So I paid for it.  And then she hands it to me, and it's matcha! And I'm like, "I'm sorry. I, I said I didn't want matcha," and she's like, "Well, you said you wanted the Buddha." And I'm like, "Yeah, but you typed in Green Buddha, which is the matcha, and I said no, and then you changed it to the regular Buddha, and that's what I got." And I said that, and she was like, "Well, the Buddha has matcha in it." I'm like, "No, look at the menu. It's listed under lattes. It's a latte." And she's like, "Well, that's what it is." I was like, "But it doesn't say it has matcha in it! It's listed under lattes, which in my definition is espresso. Like it's made with espresso, not with matcha." And she was like, "Well, um, the Buddha has matcha in it." And I'm…

One of my new, newest students lost her brother in a car wreck on Friday night and that was really, really difficult. I have not seen my student, but his girlfriend also went to our school. He had graduated last year, but his girlfriend went there and she always sat at our, at our table with us and she was kind of a, very much a friend and ally of our, of our program, was pretty involved with a lot of the kids, knew a lot of the kids, and she had been a link previously. So this morning they gathered our students at our program to let them know, ‘cause this happened Friday evening, so we hadn't seen our students yet. And we gathered them, the two rooms full of kids and so that we could tell them about -- that their friend had lost her brother, and so that they were aware of it. And some of them might know -- and they definitely knew his girlfriend, and so that they knew that people would be sad. And when she came back to school, she would be sad. And, and just so they were able to process that a little bit.  But when they did it -- and our kids are cognitively impaired at different levels. They said that he, that he passed away. And there was some confusion with some of the kids and I -- they as- -- they were, wanted me to read the paper before they read it out loud, and I should have done it, 'cause I would have caught that. Instead of saying that he died. So they were very confused, like some people weren't really sure what that exactly meant. And people don't want to say the word ‘died.’ So, it's just kind of -- it makes us feel better to say ‘passed away,’ but little kids, and I suspect the same is true with a cognitive impairment, if you're not clear, it leaves you a little bit confused. That you use those euphemisms and in your, and in your mind, you don't really know what they mean, and it can be very confusing. It sounds like they just went somewhere. Which is, again, it's a way to make us feel better, but it's not, it's not really an accurate way of saying it and it leads to a lot of…

I went to a small Catholic middle school, and they were very strict on the dress code. Like green polos, pants if you were a guy, skirts if you were a girl. Skirt length had to be a certain distance from the floor. They would actually have the teachers measure this with a ruler in homeroom, which was so annoying. Knee-high socks. Like black shoes. But here's the thing, it’s like, girls were technically allowed to wear pants, right? Just none of them did. Like the one girl who wore pants, she was like basically one of the guys, if you know what I mean. But the boys thought that this was unfair and some of the girls were like, "Yeah, this is unfair," too. That if girls can wear pants, guys should be able to wear skirts. So I remember it was my eighth grade year, and me and this one other girl, we decided to bring a bunch of skirts to the school for the guys, because it was funny and it was like our eighth grade prank. Yeah, the teachers like did not tolerate this at all, and basically all of the boys that did it got detention. However, they didn't rat out the girls who provided them skirts. So that's really all you can ask for. 

What's the difference between a sweatshirt and a sweater? Material, obviously. And I dearly love sweatshirts. I have a whole collection of sweatshirts, and I wear a sweatshirt to work every day. Usually wear a t-shirt underneath them so that if it gets too hot in the office, I can take this sweatshirt off, but yeah. And I used to have a large supply of sweaters, also. I used to work in a very old building that had a very large bank of single pane windows that was right beside my desk. So, yeah, I would wear a sweater in, in the winter, especially. I would wear a sweater every day. And then when I discovered that I was allergic to wool, I had a lot of wool sweaters, so I'd make sure I wore a turtleneck underneath them so the wool didn't actually touch my skin, so I could still wear all these. I have since gotten rid of all the wool sweaters. I took them to be cleaned and donated them all. And I hope they're all living good lives with somebody who loves them as much as I did, ‘cause I used to have some really nice ones. I still have a few cotton sweaters. Very rarely wear any of them. Wear sweatshirts every day in the winter.