I officially checked out of my room, turned in my grades, and completed district-directed professional development yesterday at 4 p.m. To celebrate, I went to Starbucks on that lovely, sunny, warm afternoon and then got my nails done. This time, I even got a design on my big toes just for the heck of it. Afterward, Justin and I went to Jalisco, a Mexican restaurant we like close to the theater. We ordered fajitas and enchiladas, but they charged us for two fajitas and one enchilada plate. After notifying them of the mistake, they just charged us for one entree! We walked several blocks to Intiman and went to Namaste Man, a monologue by a man who grew up in Nepal and a variety of other locations when growing up. He artfully and hilariously describes his experiences in international school and of his lack of belonging in Nepali culture and American culture.

Today is a room-temperature, yet cloudy, Saturday. We slept in (and I’ve been getting plenty of sleep lately!!) after leaving the bedroom windows open all night. I made raisin toast, eggs, and bacon for breakfast while we listened to This American Life. I worked in my garden; Justin went to Lowe’s. Today is laundry, de-clutter, vacuum, dishes, and all-around chores day. Tonight: a bridal shower (read: Mexican food and Wii games). Tomorrow, I anticipate reading and going to Ohana Project. Perhaps I shall even watch a movie (I’d love to go to Get Smart with Justin!). No grading or lesson planning awaits.

Monday (and for two weeks thereafter) I shall be attending a “Summer Institute for Biology Teaching” from 8:30-3:30 at the UW. I expect I will enjoy it, although I will be missing the home visit training and the AP Bio institute.

Well–it’s time to de-clutter. Hopefully I will blog again before two more months pass!

I should be doing so much right now…grading, cleaning, lesson planning, working on my application for grad school, enjoying the lovely sunny weather we are getting. However, the blog calls and it’s feeling rather neglected. I think my blog is jealous of twitter. This is how I’ve been keeping the world updated lately…one mini-post at a time. This post will be a BIG one about what’s going on in my life, and I think I will structure it based on the categories I have to the right here:

Books:
Currently reading Surprised by Joy (C.S. Lewis) and No One Belongs “Here More Than You (Miranda July)–both for book groups.

Music:
Just got DMB and Tim Reynolds: Live at Radio City and Grey’s Anatomy Season 3 Soundtrack for Christmas. In awe at Reynold’s guitar skillz.

Movies:
Depressed myself by watching A Crude Awakening about the upcoming oil shortage. Makes me want to live on a farm.

Trips I want to take in the near future:

I’d love to go to Portland for a long weekend trip to visit Powell’s. I also want to visit The Bridge church and stay at McMenamin’s Edgefield outside of Portland in Troutdale.
Quebec–just to feel like I’m in Old World Europe in the “New World”
New Zealand/Australia: it’s all about the wildlife and scenery….plus they speak English
Kenya or South Africa on adventurous days
New England/East Coast: we have lots of friends and family there
Idaho: visit J’s parents; ski or snowboard; play in snow; sit in hot springs in the cold weather

Knitting Projects:
Finished Anna’s Alpaca fuzzy black scarf. Still working on baby kimono. Might finish when baby is a teenager. Started making baby bib in purple and green jewel tones.

Seattle Weather:
Boring. Just boring. I prefer exciting weather, for instance snow and drastic changes in temperature. At least the past two days there has been some sun! I really should live further inland somewhere if I prefer such excitement.

Education:
I still have bitten off more than I can chew in my current teaching assignment: 3 preps in a high needs school is overwhelming, so I spend a lot of my “free” time working on school related work. Nevertheless, I am applying for a doctoral program called Leadership for Learning at the University of Washington (L4L at UW, shorthand). The program is mainly geared to people preparing for superintendent duties, but my focus would be on leadership for educators at the school-based level. My application is due February 1, and I still have so much to do on it. I have 2, 3-day weekends coming up.

TV:
Not much of this in my life, but I have enjoyed watching the Colbert Report and The/”A” Daily Show with John Stewart this week. I watch it online, though, which means it’s a day late.

Theater:
One of my new year’s resolutions is to actually get to the plays we have season tickets to. Seattle Rep won’t let you in late, and we inevitably get there 5-10 minutes late, at least the last few times. We have one coming up in February. Here’s to punctuality.

Technology:
Not much new in this category. I am working off of Justin’s old Vaio so we can both have wireless in the same room. Since the addition of Lesley’s cat to the household, we have not been working in the office, as we’d have to keep the door closed, and that’s a rather confined space.

Science:
I’m teaching AP Bio this year, so this week I will be working with Sordaria in a mitosis/meiosis lab. Woohoo!

Grrr…
I have too many for this category. Let me first state that I began to dislike being asked how my break was, because overall, it was a pleasant experience with friends and family, but a series of unfortunate events seemed to befall us. Let me explain.

The first leg of our trip went fine, except that I got sick the day after Christmas with a cold, right after having a sinus infection earlier that month. Being sick again meant that flying, which we did 2 days after I got sick, became ridiculously painful on my ears….and we had to do it twice that day. I couldn’t hear normally out of one of my ears, and a few days later (New Year’s Eve) I went to the doctor in my hometown. I ended up having an ear infection and got put on antibiotics that I just finished. Justin got the same bug, but it wasn’t as bad.

The next Grrr….comes from our flying experience. We just made our connecting flight from Salt Lake to Cincinnati, but our luggage apparently didn’t make it. My sis picked us up from the airport (and we got pulled over for speeding on the way to my Papa’s), and we decided to make our return trip to the airport the next morning, since our next stop would put us through Little Rock anyway. No luggage. Flight didn’t make it. “We’ll deliver it,” they said, “between 3 p.m. and 3 a.m.” 3 a.m……still no luggage. We called them. “We’ll deliver sometime today.” 4:30 pm: we got our luggage…2 days late. All of the presents I had for family I wouldn’t see again that trip was in there. Thanks, airline and baggage delivery service, for your convenience.

The time had come for our trip home. I called the night before to confirm that we had a 7 a.m. flight, which meant getting up at 4 to leave for Little Rock. “Yes,” the live person at Expedia said, “that’s correct.” 5:30 a.m. at the airport: “Your flight has been changed to 2 p.m.” Justin discussed this with an agent for an hour; they both made many phone calls. 2 p.m. remained the departure time. The glorious byproduct of this situation is that my parents were able to take us to Cracker Barrel and we has a scrumptious country breakfast (I, of course, had biscuits and gravy).

More rants: Why does UPS try to do deliveries that require signature confirmation on M-F during normal working hours? If I wasn’t there today between 10-2, why would I be there tomorrow at that time? And then, why are you not open on Saturdays?

Running:
Can we skip this one? OK, so I haven’t done much of this since Aaron, my running buddy, left. Also, I don’t have a gym membership anymore, and it’s dark before I get home (any more excuses?), so this isn’t so much part of my life right now, although I’d like it to be.

Church
So since our group isn’t meeting on Sundays anymore, we’re trying to figure out what to do next. For some, it means individual spiritual time on Sunday mornings. For others, it is visiting churches. For yet others, it is a combination of the two, depending on the week. That’s where I fit in. We’re still doing our other activities, but we’re trying to figure out what Sundays should really look like.

Exercise
I’m getting this some days, thanks to exercise videos for abs, buns, arms, and cardio. Yay! I like being sore, as it means I am making progress and working hard.

Food
I like cooking, but I don’t like HAVING to cook. I like being creative and I like having a choice. I think sometimes getting the pioneer organics box stresses me out because it’s like the fruits and veggies are a ticking time bomb that need to be cooked…RIGHT NOW!! We postponed our order for the last month, and I’m a lot more relaxed, although I haven’t been eating as many fruits and veggies. This AM I made blueberry pancakes and meatless bacon. I want to eat more healthily, so I like planning my menu ahead of time.

Friends and Family
I love you all and I don’t see you enough!

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.

Today has been a busy day already, and it started with the smell of baking bread. This time of year–when the days get a little shorter and the nights get a bit cooler–is great for baking bread. I use a bread machine for this task, which allows me to dump everything for a delicious loaf of bread into the machine and set the timer. I could smell bread at 5:30 this morning, which, on a cool day, is quite a motivator for getting out of bed. My school colleague at our meeting this morning asked if I liked the smell of bacon and if I knew of such a device that could cook bacon each day like my machine does for bread….excellent idea! At any rate, my delicious, fluffy, warm white bread was a filling breakfast after the addition of butter and honey on the thick slices. I had a glass of milk along with it to add some more protein, too.

After breakfast and my morning meeting, I had a lab with my AP students and a lab with my Biology students. My Daphnia finally came in, and students were able to observe them under the microscope and carry out their self-designed experiments with them today. The ones that were left over got added to my aquarium–and so did the beautiful male betta that a student bought for me over his lunch break!

I hope to have a more low-key day after all of the labs today. I got some more new students, which makes it hard for them to participate in lab on their first day. My language arts students are going with me to see Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Woman of the Year award for her reforestation of parts of Africa and for helping the rural poor in east Africa. We were able to get free tickets through a writers program, so I’ll be going to that and then to Lukas’ birthday party.

Before all of that, however, I am going to enjoy a hot cup of tea–a variety Bethany gave me when she was visiting. Here’s to 20 minutes of relaxed lesson planning.

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!

1. I am very tired for a Tuesday.
2. Good teaching day today….I love seeing the seniors somewhat nervous about their presentations. They produce higher quality work and are much more focused. Also, my bio students are getting to be much more self sufficient at writing lab procedures. In “grading” news, my seniors almost made me cry with their touching dedication sections in the letters to the judges.
3. I want to eat more fruits and vegetables, and I want to be working out more. Justin and I took the first steps (pedal pushes?) in doing this by riding our bikes today and yesterday. We also upped our Pioneer Organics
deliveries to weekly rather than every other week.
4. I also want to live more frugally, which was further reinforced to me while watching the first episode of 30 Days, a documentary by Morgan Spurlock. It followed Morgan and Alex, his fiancee, as they tried living on minimum wage for 30 days in Columbus, OH. Dang, that was hard. And they had a lot going for them, too….I must say it makes me think our health care system and our rate of minimum wage are utterly ridiculous if you can’t work two jobs and pay for an emergency room visit.

Recent Media/Events:
Lost
Gem of the Ocean (play at Seattle Rep, directed by Phylicia Rashad)
Driving to Graham, WA to visit Justin’s dad
Lesley’s B-day party
Justin’s extravagant school auction
awesome video archive website
Watching a 1948 online video of 2 cats reproducing and raising kittens (I know, I’m a weird science teacher)
seeing Justin on our local PBS station, KCTS, on All About the Money tonight!
The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Upcoming Events:
Ogle baby sitting
Anna’s graduation May 5–I wish I could be there!!
watching The End of Suburbia
Soccer game this Thursday

I hope to come back to some of this. So much is going on!!

Today I had a long prep period and a long talk with a student who has run away from home.
Today we finished reading Othello in class, and the students acted out the last scene.
Today the sun came out for a while.

I presented “Multicultural Science Teaching Strategies” to science teachers around the district….and got paid for it!
I had a double Americano from Uptown Espresso.
I got my order of new products from Mary Kay, as well as my online order from Old Navy.

We walked in the rain to a nearby Pho noodle restaurant and shared tea and lemon wafer crackers while we waited for our food.
We ate take-out in front of the fireplace while watching the rest of Syriana.
We sloppily slurping our soup with noodles, beef brisket, lime, Thai basil, sprouts, jalapeno, and cilantro.

Lesley and I fawned over cute overload, looked at her jewelry creations, and inspected my new MK products–thoroughly girly things to do, I know.

Today was a satisfying day, and even though my house is kind of a mess and all of my papers aren’t graded, I will rest tonight and be happy that I am able to do all of these wonderful, beautiful, simple things*.

*caution: weasel words present!

So today I was at a training for MESA (Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement) which was in a 100-year old building with creaky floors and original blackboards. My lunch was free and the training didn’t start until 8:30. We got finished at 2:30 after playing with clay and sun shadow points, so I walked to the coffee house across the street to grade papers with an Americano.

I picked up Justin a couple of hours later after running some errands and we grabbed some dinner at Kidd Valley burgers. We got an early meal because we had FREE entry* to see the Dead See Scrolls at the Pacific Science Center! After some light, though unnecessary snacks (d’oh–we should have known they’d feed us well!) culled from the tables of cheese, crackers, fruit, pitas and dip, cookies, and more, we started our windy voyage through the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. The processes used to date, preserve, and piece together the scrolls amazed me, as did the information provided to us as background. I stood amazed once we reached the room with the scroll fragments. To see Ezekiel, Genesis, Psalm 119, Isaiah, and Exodus written on parchment or papyrus from over 2,000 years ago felt surreal. To see coins and clay jars that were from Jesus’ time transported me to that biblical era.

These times are when it’s great to be a teacher.

Did I mention our free, cheesy IMAX “experience” that capped off our evening, “Mysteries of Ancient Egypt”?

Here’s another great reason to be married to a man who appreciates the Old Testament AND Science–when free dates to the science center to see ancient scrolls come along, we both get excited and consider it a night out!

*this would have been a $15 ticket each otherwise.