Dancing with some people who are somewhat famous

Derrick Hough just won Dancing With the Stars... and, oh yeah, I guess his partner won too. If I was Brooke Burke, I wouldn't put up with Derrick's hogging all the glory. Sheesh. You'd think the professional dancers go through some sort of orientation where they're told, "Now, remember, the show is about the celebrities, not you, okay. Derrick? Derrick? Are you listening to any of this?"

...

In my Strategic Management class, I'm in charge of compiling the PowerPoint slides for my group. We have two presentations next weeek. On Tuesday, half of us are presenting an article regarding management at Google, Whole Foods, and W.L. Gore. On Thursday, the other half is presenting an analysis of Nordstrom. The first presentation is done and done. But our group is still working on the Nordstrom project. One of our team members just can't seem to be able to contribute. She can't research, think things through, or put together bullet points to speak on.

I just don't understand. Sure, she's an ESL student... but that's not an acceptable excuse in our 400-level class. (No, she isn't Asian) I know other ESL students in the class who produce excellent work. My teammate can't produce average work. It's frustrating because the rest of my group focuses on their areas, do their job, and send me what they have. That's that. But, for me, I basically have to do the work for our weak link. I'm forced to do so because we're graded as a group by the class based on our actual presentation. I can't let our group go down in flames - so I put in the extra work to make us all look good.

At this point in the quarter, I'm not really too upset about this issue anymore. I'm just disappointed and saddened that others have to take on the burden of her deficiencies. And when I say "others", I mean "me".

Oh, well. At least we have a chance to grade each other based on peer reviews. We had similar presentations at the end of October. For that round, my team gave me 39 out of 42... my other teammates scored anywhere between 35-38. But the weak link? She scored 19! I was able to figure out her grade from an online spreadsheet of everyone's grades in the class. I'm glad my team scored her similarly to the way I graded. She got the lowest score in the entire class for the peer review. Ouch.

...

I'm watching KOMO news in the background. I had to rewind a live report that caught my attention. A reporter is on location reporting on school budget cuts:

Mary, good evening. School district officials have said they're facing a $24million budget surf... uh... budget... ummm... they need to make up that money for the 2009-2010 budget year...

That might not sound so funny but this is actually how it ended up sounding:

Mary, good evening. School district officials have said they're facing a $24million budget surf...

[long silence]

uh...

[another long silence]

budget... ummm...

[decides to give up on saying "budget surplus" and instead says]

they need to make up that money for the 2009-2010 budget year...