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Today I was making some hot sauce* and I started thinking about my high school art teacher. We had a watercolor project - it was blending 2 images together - and I remember that she liked what I did, but someone pointed out that I had not followed the guidelines by including text in mine. It was from a Tabasco bottle. She didn't seem to care, and that's why I like her. At the time, I wasn't wild about art class, but looking back - she was probably my favorite teacher. My high school art is awful - I used too many colors. There's this weird relief sculpture that my mom keeps and I hate it.
My high school had one set of the "smart kids" classes - there was only one calculus or physics class. The result was that these were scheduled around band or orchestra classes. Since I didn't play an instrument, my options were limited. So I wound up with odd classes sometimes - like I had "independent study" art a couple of times. I had two classes where we used AutoCAD** - that was when I thought architecture would be neat. And a creative writing class where the teacher showed us monster truck videos.
I also had a stage tech class, in which one of my first assignments was to figure out how to dispose of some old paint that had accumulated over the past 15 years. It turns out that it costs money to do it safely, so I was told to put it in some black garbage bags (double or triple bagged) and toss it in the dumpster.
* - jalapeno (coarsely chopped), some small sweet peppers, some dried chilis de arboles, few cloves of garlic, dried or fresh onion, soy sauce, salt, sprinkles of all-spice and cinnamon. For a base, I use cider vinegar, though I suppose you could use something tomato-y or oil. Run it through a blender and put it in a container. I microwave it for a bit, until it gets simmering, and then let it sit in the fridge for about a week before using. It's good - deep, toasted, rich, spicy.
** - I distinctly remember one of the teachers being very into bodybuilding and having some odd websites featuring unusually proportioned ladies pop up when he was demonstrating something. There were also some boys in the class who spent most of the 90 minutes looking at pornography.
