It’s almost 8, but I’m not ready for that yet. I have been working on the same thing all day–a lesson for AP biology–with lots of little distractions (an hour nap, working out, making lunch and breakfast, laundry). Our day started REALLY late (12:30, but really 11:30 to our bodies…). I always get in a bit of a funk on Sundays in anticipation of the next week, and it gets worse when I don’t leave the house all weekend or when I sleep in late (and nap). I feel like I am wasting time or wasting opportunities that the weekend somehow offers. I don’t feel great, so that is making all of this worse.

At least yesterday was productive and the house is (somewhat) clean. Just don’t look in the office. Heh.

Yesterday I started eggplant, mint, basil, tomato, and peppers in those little soil pods. I also turned my compost bin for the first time. I have about 3 inches of soil (yay!) and lots of maggots/fruit flies on top (boo!). I think I need to add more dry leaves or something to it to up the carbon level. Anyway, I can’t wait to get my little garden started again. I see a great Spring Break project coming up.

Time to finish this lesson and get started on something else…

I am staying home pretty much all weekend because a) the weather is “supposed” to be bad–we don’t want to venture over the passes for a hike; b) it’s the end of the month and there’s no extra cash; and c) I have a new semester starting Tuesday and I am ridiculously behind on grading (even though it’s been my life lately).

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I am working on this online bible reading plan to get through the bible in a year. Somehow I like reading it online, and then I thought about getting it emailed to me. However, the site charges $9 a year for the emails, so I guess I need to find another site.

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I finished the Miranda July book, and now I am working on 3 books: Holly Springs, Surprised by Joy, and Omnivore’s Dilemma. I want to get more seriously into reading, hiking, and knitting after my grades are due. Right now those are on hold, like just about everything else (house cleaning, hanging out with friends, etc.).

I am concerned about how stressed I am about work, especially since my visit to the ER last weekend with chest pain and trouble breathing. I still have a dull ache all around my left chest area, but I don’t know what to think about it. I had bloodwork done, and EKG, and a chest xray, but they didn’t find anything (they were worried about clotting). They suggested anxiety and internal bruising from soccer. I don’t know what it is, but it’s still bothering me and I’m worried about playing soccer this Thursday.
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My grad school application is due this Friday. I’m pretty much finished; I just need to print out all of my materials and take in my immunization records and transcripts. I will feel much better about life when all of that is done (as well as my grades).
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Paul, the guy who has lived with us in our garage for the last two years, is in a coma in the hospital. It’s not looking promising that he will get out of it this time. Please keep him, as well as his family and friends in your prayers.

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So that’s the news from around here! I know–it’s all rainbows and butterflies, right? I really am happy–I just have a lot on my mind. That seems to happen as I get older. I want to focus more on the beautiful, positive aspects of life. It’s hard to walk the line between being Eeyore and Pollyanna.

So I haven’t blogged in a while, but it’s not because nothing is going on in my life. Oh no. Perhaps too much is happening. I don’t blog as much as I twitter lately, so you’re probably getting my news in little tidbits.

Right now I am in the HW center at my school and sun is streaming through the window onto my monitor. I should have brought papers up here to grade, but I will have to wrok on those later this evening, sometime before my soccer game at 9!

I haven’t played soccer in a few weeks, mainly because so much else is going on related to school. I have a student teacher, and I’ve been at a technology conference the last three days. Since I’ve written last, we’ve had an open house, as well as a walkthrough called “Data in a Day.” I’ve been to science professional development, Spamalot, a movie, and much more. This weekend holds a play at the Rep, and a birthday party for Dawn (happy birthday, Dawn!), as well as lots of grading.

I’m working in my room to get ready for tomorrow, which includes a quiz, a lab, the start of a new project, a field trip, and an assembly. Tomorrow makes up for today, which was rather light on my duties as I had a guest presenter regarding BioTech Expo. I also have a student teacher, which makes life a bit easier as well.

From my room I can see the thunderstorm progress across Boeing field and I-5, There are showers here which surge at various rates, and the lightning a moment ago caused the lights to flicker and caused my monitor to get a greenish hue, which is bothering me and is persisting.

Tonight I hope to get a bit of grading done, but I don’t want all evening to be about school. Perhaps some exercising and knitting will be what I need.

Today begins the start of our 6,000 mile road trip. It’s beginning kind of late because of our procrastination in getting things packed, cleaned, and ready to go, but hey–that’s why we’re taking a car and not scheduled for a flight.

Tonight we hope to end up somewhere in Montana–as far as we can drive in 10-12 hours, at least. Our car is ridiculously full of everything we’ve packed, but I hope to spend very little on eating fast food, hence the cooler and 2 bags of food we’ve stashed in the car.

Some tasks I’d like to accomplish while Justin is driving include:
read the rest of Love in the Time of Cholera
knit baby bibs and washcloths for Joanna’s baby
work on AP Biology curriculum
grade papers and notebooks from Upward Bound Summer School
read lots of other delicious books

The weather here has been ridiculously cool, so I hope we get some not-scorching weather in Arkansas, although the last I checked, it was going to be over 100F each day we’re there. Better swimming weather, I suppose.

We’ve had an excellent visit with my friend Bethany since she’s been out here from Missouri. We’ve gone blackberry picking, we played soccer with my team, we went to my book club with Dawn and Erin, and we went to the Farmers’ Market and Pike Place Market, the Elliot Bay Book Company, Andaluz, Fireworks, and Cafe Ladro. She got to come to my classes with me and went to the UB summer banquet and picnic. We’ve had an excellent time and I’m sad to leave her here, but I know she’s going to have a great time with Dawn and the rest of the gang here in Seattle.

Oh goodness! We’ve got to go! Hopefully I’ll be able to make some updates from the road.

I posted more photos to flickr recently–they are of wildlife from when I went with my students to Northwest Trek. I tried to link there but my site got switched to a different server and well, it didn’t work. Anyway, check those out!

Right now I’m just enjoying summer (or what’s left of it). We’re cleaning the house today, or at least doing all those de-cluttering and purging things that people do when it’s summer. We’re getting rid of lots of tech stuff we’ve been keeping for no real reason and I’ve started some new filing systems. All in all, I’m feeling more organized, even if it feels like we’re moving and a million boxes are still in the hall.

On a more fun note, I’ll probably work on one or more books this evening and possibly lesson plan a little for this week. I recently started Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book Love in the Time of Cholera, and I’m almost finished with Eat, Pray, Love. I’m reading so much more this summer than I usually do, and I hope to be finished with 10 books by the end of summer (I’m only at almost-4 right now).

Other plans for this week include:
Wii game night (and chicken curry dinner) Monday
Bela Fleck concert at the Zoo Wednesday
New Soccer Season starts Thursday
Film night Friday at Daniel’s

I want to start knitting again, as this stopped for me in April. I have plans for a baby kimono for Joanna’s little girl, but I think I need yarn for it. This will be a perfect project for our road trip.

I also want to start running again, which is not perfect for a road trip…I haven’t really run since last fall. I’ve been relying on indoor bikes, 10 lb weights, exercise videos, and soccer to serve as my workouts, but there’s nothing like a good run. We’ll see how that goes.

Well…until my next post…adieu!

This is because I can cook on a whim (biscuits and gravy at 9 p.m., anyone?), go to free museum nights without the guilt of not grading papers, sit outside in the SUN, read books for long stretches of time, nap at the drop of a hat, tend my verdant garden, and…did I mention the sun yet?

I am obviously enjoying my summer off. By off, I mean not full-time teaching. My part-time job still requires work, but it’s SO much fun to teach these students. I’m also finished by 11 each day, which means I take the bus home and can take my time if I want to. Or stop at the Bubble Tea place nearby. Or get my nails done at the South Seattle Community College training salon. Or….do anything I want :).

Upcoming Events: Film night Saturday, Camping for 2 nights with students of Upward Bound, travel to Arkansas for my cousin’s wedding, host book club, and more.

Recent Activities: Free night at Seattle Art Museum. More on this to come when I feel inspired. Walked to movie (Ratatouille) and dinner (Tutta Bella) with Justin in Columbia City for birthday (movie was a grand total of $7 for both of us!). Uneventful, yet productive, 4th of July. Recovered from food poisoning Monday. Watched Volver.

That is all. More summer deliciousness to come.

Whenever I don’t blog for a while, I end up with Monster Posts (TM), so I will try to make my update brief, yet entertaining.

So, first things first. I will go in backwards chronological order, starting with right now. I am sweaty and I just ate a banana after our soccer game tonight. I did NOT get hit in the face this week, and I did play hard defense (especially against the guys in the blue and orange socks), but we did not win. Phooey.

This week I’ve gone to an amazing AP Biology workshop where I get to do fun labs all day, get free lunch, breakfast, and 2 snacks, plus all the coffee I can drink **twitch**. I came home today with Nasonia, a tiny wasp with apparently a lab advantage over using fruit flies in genetics activities. We got to make them mate and lay their eggs in flesh fly pupae. I brought some home for future use, as they can be stored in the refrigerator until needed. We also looked at stomata, made respirometers to find out how much water plants lose under different conditions, and ran DNA through gels (like in college!). Oh, the thrill of being a science teacher! I can’t wait for tomorrow–our last day–as I hope to get a plan for how I can implement what we have learned.

I am NOT looking forward to the Friday afternoon traffic, though. I’ve been driving to and from Bellevue each day, and I’ve gone a different route each time, as the commute involves going on I-90, 405, and 520 *shudder*. It’s notoriously bad anytime, but Friday is going to be horrendous.

I don’t have anything planned for tomorrow night, but I hope to do something fun. Last night I fell asleep by 8 p.m. and the night before that, I went to a Chekhov play (Uncle Vanya) with Justin at the Intiman theater. I must say I enjoyed it–it contained elements of both a comedy and a tragedy–and it made me glad that I have the life that I do, which is always good.

Sunday and Monday night we spent on the road to and from Spokane for Justin’s principal conference. We had wonderful weather and a pretty good time in Spokane. He had almost 50 interested participants in his seminar on productivity for school administrators, so that made our trip worth it. We got back super late Monday night/Tuesday morning, which probably contributed to my sleeping so early last night.

Speaking of sleeping…it’s about that time. Oh, and if you see little blog blurbs come up, it’s because I joined twitter, this crazy service that lets you blog from your phone or a computer more often about even more mundane aspects of life in even less detail. Sweet!

…and we’re off again, this time to Spokane. Nothing too exciting. Justin’s got a workshop presentation he’s doing at a Principal’s conference. Tuesday thru Friday I’ll be doing an AP Biology workshop, and then I start working again!

Perks of going to Spokane with Justin:
Our hotel has a hot tub, 2 pools, and a fitness room, and it’s right by the river
I plan to indulging in one of many books I’m going to read this summer
Time for summer curriculum planning while he’s at workshops for principals

(In case I didn’t say, I’ll be teaching environmental science to Upward Bound students at South Seattle Community College for 5 weeks this summer–it’s a pretty sweet part time job!)

Here’s a brain blurb of what I’ve been doing lately:
Got a new phone…Red Blackberry Pearl.. yummy sweet technology goodness
Awards Ceremony for 9th-11th graders Wednesday night
Packed my whole classroom and stayed ’til 7p.m. Thursday working on it
Got my grades finished early Friday
Played soccer and got hit in the face and my collarbone
Went to our staff party Friday night
Stopped by Justin’s school’s lock-in and watched Night at the Museum with 4th graders
Went for a walk with my hubby and saw a sign with the realtor’s name “Anita Hearl”–hilarious!

Well, it’s time to go to Spokane. I just wanted to update people on what I’ve been up to before I forget.

It’s been a rather cool and drizzly weekend even though the end of the school year is quickly approaching. We have only 5 days of school left, but a stressful 5 days it will be! This is mainly because tomorrow is graduation and rehearsal, which is hectic as I have to make sure the show runs smoothly. This year I created documents with directions. It took me all afternoon, but it will be worth it.
Also, I’ve spent part of the afternoon working with a student who is trying to graduate and has resubmitted his paper about three times today. Sheesh. The other factors that make this a hectic week are that we’re going on a field trip Tuesday, and finals are Thursday and Friday. I have to be packed and checked out, with all grades done, by Friday afternoon. As you can tell, I’m a bit concerned about this.

In other news, I may be running in a 24-hour relay with a team in late July. It will be a bit pricey, but I may decide to go ahead with it for the adventure. Plus, I’ll have something to start training for when I run again this summer.

Lastly, I just bought tickets for my cousin’s wedding back in Arkansas. I’ll be there July 11-15, although I leave and arrive at ungodly hours.

Well, gotta go grade. I’ve been putting it off all weekend.