[Quick note: At least for the moment I am on Twitter. If I find it a useful tool over the next couple of weeks I’ll add a feed to the .org; follow me at your own peril.]

Today is the 32nd birthday of actress Melissa Joan Hart. While the students I teach are more familiar with her turn as the titular character on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, people my age will likely always remember her as the titular character of Nickelodeon’s Clarissa Explains it All. That makes her exactly one month younger than me, which begs the question, what in the Toot have I been doing with my life? On that depressing note, let’s play the friday5.org Friday Five.

1. What’s a buzzword or catchphrase that gets overused at your workplace or in your classes?
I’ve been too busy with other things to spend time talking with the other instructors at MCCC, and I can’t think of a phrase my students have used a lot in class lately. Given how much I try to encourage original thought in my students, I hope this is a good sign that I’m doing my job.

2. What item in your house has seen too much use lately?
My French press. I’ve been so pooped lately that I’ve developed the biggest coffee addiction I can remember having in a decade.

3. What’s a word or phrase your friends would ask you to use a lot less, if you were to ask their opinion?
The moment anyone who knows me asks me to talk less than I currently do is the moment I become a monk.

4. What’s something in your life that’s pretty much been used up and needs replacing?
I had to replace the black ink cartridge in my printer last weekend; does that count? Seriously, I overuse everything to death, so I can’t come up with just one thing here.

5. In what way have you been overused lately?
Trying to figure out answers to the millions of questions Dad’s death has raised, for the family and our lawyers and seemingly everyone else on the face of the planet.