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 much has been going on since I last posted. I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since I blogged last. Since then, prom has happened (quite well, really) and the seniors presented their senior projects. For those of you who don’t know, these are (sadly) my most stressful school-related activities of the year. Prom is stressful because of money (do we have enough?), ticket sales (have we sold enough?), and dirty dancing (will our dance get shut down?). Speaking of dancing, I have gotten my 15 minutes of fame in this article on freak dancing, of all things.

Senior projects are stressful because we involve the community members as judges of student projects. I have a hard time getting 60 judges organized, in addition to getting the students ready to present. I couldn’t have done it without my coworkers (and my husband) helping with certificates, cleaning up, judging, listening to practice presentations, and picking up food.

In other news, I’ve also:
started a reproduction unit with my bio class
started a poetry unit with my seniors after senior project
hosted a clothes swap party Sunday
admired Justin’s work on our new patio
chaperoned a trip to Eastern Washington to Ellensburg Saturday for a HERO Institute
helped judge M.Ed. students’ culminating portfolio
bought 4 books I will have to wait to read (grrr)
bought Brandi Carlile tickets for June 1 and Bela Fleck tickets for August 1
dealt with allergies/sinus infection
met Cherry Banks at UW Bothell
made a chocolate cake with icing (tonight, while procrastinating)
watched Deja Vu, the season finale of the Office, the latest Lost, and several episodes of 30 days

Here are my plans for this week:
read more NTPOG
actually go to my soccer game
read for fun
grade like the wind!
plant my sprouting carrots, etc. outside (I must post photos of my almost-mature broccoli!)

Less than 25 days of school! w00t!

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!!

This week might be pretty awesome. I never thought I’d say that about WASL (our state test), but it is working out well. First of all, we have block classes, which makes for more meaningful lesson plans. Second, I get two hours each morning to work with seniors who elect to come in on any work they are missing, which means they are working in my room while I run errands, file papers, answer questions, or grade papers. Progress reports are coming out, which means kids are rather focused on getting work done. I have no after school meetings this week, and no evening events, save Friday’s date with Justin.

So….last night Justin and I got caught up on Lost, I made dinner, rode the exercise bike, and did no evening schoolwork. Today I left school by 3, worked in a coffee shop for a while, and came home. Tonight I hope to get some laundry done after making some dinner. I vow to grade papers, read NTPOG, and exercise again, as well as go to bed within 3 hours.

It’s nice to have some balance and sanity in life for once. This makes me wish that I was a part-time teacher again, except that I would rather have classes from 11-2 than have morning classes from 8-11. I don’t know if we could afford for me to be part time, but I might be a better teacher with 90 students vs. 165.

Tonight we went to Daniel’s for the Academy Awards party. It wasn’t a dress-up event this year, but the food was themed by the best picture nominations (for example, tea and crumpets for The Queen, etc.). I mainly graded and knitted, but I did have fun. I wish I had seen more of the movies beforehand. From the nominations list, the only ones I had seen were:

Pursuit of Happyness
Pirates of the Caribbean
Little Miss Sunshine
The Departed
The Illusionist
The Devil Wears Prada
An Inconvenient Truth
Jesus Camp
Marie Antoinette
Click
Borat
Superman Returns

I should have seen Babel, Dreamgirls, Pan’s Labyrinth, and The Queen, from the looks of it, but I’ve put them on my Netflix for future watching. I probably wouldn’t watch the Oscars if there was no party for it, but it’s fun to get introduced to movies that one wouldn’t normally watch through people you know.

There are some things in life that I really enjoy when I get the chance. My friends would say that they “rock my face off,” in the best possible way.

Though they may be trivial, here are my items/experiences:
*being finished with grading, left to enjoy an evening at home
*fire in a fireplace
*$5 chocolate bars that last me the whole week (right now, I’m working on an Italian dark chocolate with cinnamon and orange)
*my comfy clothes
*Wasabi peas, Pocky, Japanese sticky rice, and bubble tea
*sleeping!
*being sore from exercise
*feeling accomplished
*learning something new
*having a “good teaching day”
*YouTube’s hilarity/Arrested Development
*looking forward to a week off next week!
*baked brie/homemade bread
*getting really into a book

Gotta go…Wasabi peas burning my nostrils……

I believe in hearing the bad news first, so here goes…..

Here are some not-so-good experiences I’ve had this week:
I’m just ridiculously busy, so much so that between Justin and my schedules, we don’t seem to have time for anything “fun” to do together. I think everything will slow down during midwinter break so we can get caught up.

I stayed home with the beginnings of a cold today. I had a sore throat and fever yesterday, so I came home at around 1. Today I slept in until 9:30, took a hot shower, and drank some juice. I’ll probably grade papers today, as grades must be posted Monday. I don’t know what kind of mess I’ll see when I get back to my room tomorrow (given I feel better).

And the good news….

I got to eat pizza with and talk to 8 of my students who plan to go to BioTech Expo with me on March 5. I am so excited for them!

My orchid bloomed this week for the first time in a few years. It’s lovely!

Two of my students presented in the Project REAL exhibition yesterday after school. They were entered in a contest to win an i-pod. I don’t know how it went yet, but one of the guys dressed up and had a pros and cons list all written out on a wrinkled sheet of paper. So cute! I love it when they put time in effort into non-required events.

We started a new semester, and all seems to be going well. When doing a Shakespeare ppt. for my 5th period, they clapped for me at the end. So sweet!

I called Bethany and Joanna–it was so good to talk to them!

I baked a cake last night. Made my own frosting. Justin liked it.

Lost came back on TV . Haven’t seen it due to needing to go to bed last night, but I will!

I have awesome friends! Lesley, Dawn, Justin, and I had a four-way IM-gmail chat, for one, and for two, Lesley brought me juice so I could feel better.

We’re going to a play Friday night! It’s one we were too exhausted to attend last week.

Well….that’s the news….I will have to update this more often, methinks.

Today we stayed home from school due to an unexpected amount of snow. After missing out on the predicted Tuesday night/Wednesday morning snow, I had given up hope completely until I saw a few flakes swirling out of the sky while I sat in a vast-windowed Starbucks downtown. It snowed from 4 p.m. to at least 1 this morning, raising my anticipation of the cancellation of school. Since I didn’t think we’d have school, I read a book by the fire after watching 2 episodes of Lost with Justin by the fire.

We probably got 3-4 inches in Rainier Valley. Beacon Hill got 5 inches, but the North End of Seattle got a measley 1″. I don’t know if we’l get another day off tomorrow. The roads are rather dry due to a couple of hours of 32-34F temps and a full day of sun, but there are patches of ice in shady spots all around town. Shady as in not seeing the sun–not seedy.

I slept in from 5 a.m.-10 a.m. after finding out whether we’d have the day off or not. I finished my book, ate some cereal, and drank some coffee. I cleaned up the bedroom a bit, and then Justin and I went for a photo-taking walk to the post office, the bank, and the library. We decided to stop for lunch at Tutta Bella where we split a Mediterranean pizza (mushrooms, eggplant, chicken sausage, goat cheese, basil, and kalamata olives) and caesar salad.

I just put in a peach cobbler and we’re about to play Scrabble. I hope to catch a glimpse of the comet tonight! I suppose I’ll watch more Lost and grade papers until I find out what tomorrow holds in the way of school.

Oh, sleep. Thank goodness for you and the weekend to catch up with you!

Since Friday, I have slept from:
12-8 a.m. (Friday ‘night’)
3-5 p.m. (Saturday afternoon)
1:30-9 a.m. (Saturday ‘night’)
2-5 p.m. (Sunday afternoon)

I have really needed it. In other fun news, we went to the basketball games at school Friday night after an exciting excursion of using our gift cards. We went to Staples and got the best shredder ever (TM), which was shamelessly featured on The Office one episode. We spent way more than our gift card on items for our classrooms and household, but we still had fun because we both like office supplies.

We went to dinner at a Thai restaurant in that same shopping area–I got soup and tea, but I ate some of Justin’s Swimming Angel (peanut sauce, spinach, and chicken) and rice.

We stopped at Target for a moment and then went to the games. After the games, we went home and watched Lost on DVD . I knitted mom’s hat contentedly while doing so.

Saturday Justin dropped me off at the UW for a workshop from 9-1. Afterward, we went on a quest to use the other 2 gift cards my parents bought for us. We went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond downtown and bought a fancy crockpot–black and stainless steel, 6 quart–and an ice scraper. Last night, I made roast chicken, potatoes, and carrots in it for church this morning.

As I slept in the car, Justin went in to Lowe’s and bought a fancy new toaster oven, which is also black and stainless steel. That pretty much used up the gift card, surprisingly, but he was also able to get a new water filter for our fridge.

Saturday night we did some housework, and then we went to our friend Joe’s going away party. We played some games and hung out until he had to leave to catch dinner with another friend. Justin and I came back and watched some more episodes of Lost while I knitted again.

Church was at our place this morning and we discussed what we would like to do in the future, and we also talked about Epiphany.

It’s now time to prepare for the week ahead. They’re calling for snow showers on Wednesday!

I was reading a friend’s blog and he mentioned a TV show, Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. I remember watching what must have been reruns of this before school started. I remember thinking how cool high school must be if someone like Parker Lewsis was in it. Anyway, this led me to look for other cool TV shows that I remember from growing up, which led me to Punky Brewster. Apparently she’s all grown up and has had breast reduction surgery, but that’s another story. I found this cool website called Retro Junk that lets you see commercials from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, as well as TV shows, movies, and other interesting “memories” you can relive.

How well this connected to the article I am reading in Fast Company about Microsoft’s Gordon Bell, a guy who records every part of his life and uploads it to computer memory. Creepy, yet useful, though somewhat incriminating, at times. He needs a better website.