Oops

I keep forgetting to update this.
The holidays were good. Flickr is updated with pictures from the two week vacation. Speaking of having two weeks off instead of one, it is AMAZING how different it is. I figured it'd be about the same-- I was wrong! It's a lot more relaxing having two weeks off instead of just one. I am dreading tomorrow, though. It's going to be tough going to bed on time tonight and getting up tomorrow. Oh well.

New Years Resolutions?
1. Update this blog more.
2. Ride my bike and moped more when it gets warmer.
3. Try more stuff in Richmond.
4. Become a regular somewhere.
5. Take the GRE and apply to grad school.

My guess? I complete #3-5.

I tried the 50 book challenge again this year. I think I actually did it, if my Good Reads account is right. Here they are, not quite in chronological order, but close:
1. The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. East of Eden: John Steinbeck
3. Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte
4. Fences: August Wilson
5. Their Eyes Were Watching God: Zora Neale Hurston
6. A Raisin in the Sun: Lorraine Hansberry
7. Teacher Man: Frank McCourt
8. The Scarlet Letter: Nathaniel Hawthorne
9. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha: Roddy Doyle
10. Wide Sargasso Sea: Jean Rhys
11. Atonement: Ian McEwan
12. "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity: Beverly Daniel Tatum
13. Song of Solomon: Toni Morrison
14. Wild Iris: Louise Gluck
15. Praise: Robert Hass
16. The Awakening: Kate Chopin
17. The Magician's Nephew: C.S. Lewis
18. The Satanic Verses: Salman Rushdie
19. The Piano Lesson: August Wilson
20. Thunderstruck: Erik Larson
21. The Audacity of Hope: Barack Obama
22. The Painted Veil: W. Somerset Maugham
23. The Crucible: Arthur Miller
24. The Abstinence Teacher: Tim Perrotta
25. What is the What: Dave Eggers
26. No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories: Miranda July
27. The Road: Cormac McCarthy
28. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardobe: C.S. Lewis
29. Travels with Charley: In Search of America: John Steinbeck
30. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: Michael Chabon
31. The Best American Short Stories of 2003
32. Invisible Monsters: Chuck Palahniuk
33. The Pillars of the Earth: Ken Follett
34. Dandelion Wine: Ray Bradbury
35. An Atlas of a Difficult World: Adrienne Rich
36. A Streetcar Named Desire: Tennessee Williams
37. The History of Love: Nicole Krauss
38. Unaccustomed Earth: Jhumpa Lahiri
39. The Complete Persepolis: Marjane Satrapi
40. Choke: Chuck Palahniuk
41. Something Wicked This Way Comes: Ray Bradbury
42. The Canterbury Tales: Geoffrey Chaucer
43. No Country for Old Men: Cormac McCarthy
44. Water for Elephants: Sara Gruen
45. The Glass Castle: Jeannette Walls
46. The Reader: Bernhard Schlink
47. Macbeth: Shakespeare
48. Our Lady of the Forest: David Guterson
49. That Night: Alice McDermott
50. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife: Mary Roach
51. A Thousand Splendid Suns: Khaled Hosseini

Wow.

an exercise in hyperbole

'Twas the week before Winter Break and my Tuesday gave to meeeeee:

12 bazillion sick kiiiiids (thanks to the weather going from 70 to 40 degrees in a day!)
11 million "What are we doing today?"s
10 million "Do we HAVE to do something to day?"s
9 thousand students whining about having to read Macbeth or Into Thin Aiiiiir
8 hundred more essays to graaaaade
7 thousand questions about Macbeth Act II. (Honestly. Did they not listen at ALL?)
6 hundred more whining students asking "Do we HAVE to do this? Do we HAVE to do anything today?"
5 mooooore days until we leave for Michigan!
4 faiiiiiiiliiiiing Poetry test grades in 7th period (you have NO IDEA how amazing this is!)
3 times Bryan called Stephanie a bitch.
2 cars I almost hit trying to parallel park
1 New Haircut!:



Tuesday was okay for it being the Tuesday-before-winter-break. My eyes hurt, but we think we've figured out that it's the contact solution I switched to causing it and not an infection or the contacts. If it's not the solution, then I will have to go back to the doctor. My eyes hurting so bad has really put a stop on reading essays. I got 6 of them done today, but I have about 20-30 more to go. That's not too bad, but I'd like to get them done before Friday. I'm going to work my butt off tomorrow to get as many as possible done. My throat also hurt today because apparently, Virginia's weather gods want everyone to be sick for winter break. It was not a pleasant day for me or most of my students and our sinuses. But. The day ended up okay, I'm making some mini cupcakes now. Who doesn't cheer up while making cupcakes? Seriously.

I'm looking forward to going back to Michigan, but worried that we're going to miss everybody. We barely know anyone that lives there anymore and the dates that we have to travel back and then switch between east Michigan and west Michigan seem to be different from everyone else's. I'd like to see some friends while we're there! It's bumming me out thinking that I'm not going to see anyone.
Also, Megan and I (and now David and Mike) have been enjoying playing together on iminlikewithyou.com. If you're on there too, or you decide to join, let me know! I'll challenge you to a game or two.

getting stuff done (finally)

This week I was at school until 3:45-4 PM four out of five days. I had three or four different meetings, progress reports due on Wednesday and Thursday (and the whining & complaining that comes along with them), an armed intruder drill (and only a drill), tests, projects, poetry readings and essays. This means I ended up with the biggest stack of Papers To Be Graded ever, all while trying to start a new unit on Nonfiction Essays which will straddle the winter break.
But. Somehow I managed through the week, I got a lot done and I was determined to have a productive weekend (last weekend I felt exhausted and lazy, which probably added to how much I had to do last week). Yesterday started off the productivity. We did some holiday-related shopping, finally. We started with giving ourselves gifts since we decided on trying to figure out something to get the both of us and we're never good at keeping gifts secret from each other. Then I wanted to go to a few places to figure out a treat I can give my students for bringing back their signed progress reports. The last time they had reports due back it was Halloween, so I gave them Halloween candy and pencils. I was thinking of making a little holiday-related/more-winter-than-Christmas-related bag of candy and other goodies, but I found these and got a brilliant idea:

I'm making mini cupcakes! I also went to the dollar store and picked up boxes of cherry and peppermint candy canes. I think that'll do. I figured the cupcakes were a special reward for my 10th graders since I just about killed them with the end of the poetry unit: a poetry portfolio of 10+ of their poems typed, a poetry reading where they had to read one poem, a test that was pretty long and difficult on poetry AND a poetry essay that was pretty challenging for 10th grade. Most of them survived, thankfully. For my 12th graders, it's a thank you for reading Macbeth out loud and acting in front of the class twice.

I also wanted to see if I was inspired to participate in the Secret Elf bag exchange the faculty was invited to do on Thursday. I did this on Halloween with the Phantom bags and it turned out pretty fun. I didn't have anything in mind though, but thankfully, Target has a ton of winter/Christmas/holiday gift sets that teachers would love. So I made one:

My bag's pretty cute for not really being prepared to decorate it. You should see some of the other bags both this time and last--they were amazing! My Phantom bag had a witch pez dispenser, some office supplies, cute pens, and cold/flu season supplies (airborne, cough drops, lip balm, etc). I thought it was pretty useful. My Secret Elf bag this time is a lot more in line with a specific theme. I hope whoever gets my bag likes hot cocoa. I got them a cute mug with a penguin (or was it a snowman? I can't remember) drawn on the mug with another one sitting on the handle, some chocolate and a set of four different types of hot chocolate (tiramisu, creme brulee, and two others I can't remember).

After all that, I relaxed for a while and then made myself work on school-related grading or planning from 3-6. I actually did it, too. I got a lot of grading done. All I have left are essays and the short answer part of the poetry test.

Last night we went with Shannon and Dan to a cute boutique to see two bands play.
While we were waiting for the second band to start, Dan and David looked at some of the records they had for sale in the store. That's when Shannon and I realized that they looked like twins once again:

The second band was just okay, so we dipped out early and headed next door to the Village Cafe, which we'd all heard a lot about. The guy that does the Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives went there apparently. We didn't try the food, just had a few beers and talked until we all got tired.

Oops.

I keep meaning to update this, but then I get distracted by something else.
Recently, I've been trying to hit my 50 books in 2008 goal. After the 2 books I have left to read from the library, I have 2 more to read to reach my goal. I think I can actually do it this year!
I've finally caught up and gotten on top of things school-wise. That feels amazing. My to do lists are shorter and get done quicker.
We went to Michigan for Thanksgiving. It was kind of a crazy idea, but this year we could actually afford to do both Thanksgiving and Christmas and we had no plans in Richmond, so why not, right? It was nice to get a few extra hours with both families.
Speaking of Christmas/winter break, we will be in Warren from December 20-24th and Kalamazoo from the night of the 25th-29th. I hope to see some of you then.

why Halloween was just okay

I know that most of you that read this have not had the joy or opportunity of being in a room full of teenagers on Halloween, let alone a Halloween on a Friday.
Let me tell you, it can either be incredibly fun or a living hell. I had both yesterday.
The day starts off calm, but then they start eating sugar and more sugar. By the end of the day, they are rabid animals ready to kill you if you don't add to their sugar intake.
Add that in to a variety of ignorant (mostly racist) things coming out of my 10th graders mouths this week and you can maybe understand why my Halloween spirit was killed.
There is a longer post in all of this, but I mostly just wanted to let all of you (all 2 of you!) know that I'm still alive and at some point in time will update you on how this school year is progressing.
Real talk, I feel like I'm in Gorillas in the Mist, studying a species I've never had the chance to meet up close and personal before. I'm not sure if I like it. (BTW, I miss having kids that preface their serious chats with me by saying "Real talk, Mrs. P...")

surprisingly productive.

Whew! What a few days!
Yesterday, we had a 12 hour drive from Warren to Williamsburg. It went smoothly, the weather was perfect and we made really good time. Our cats had survived the days without anyone, since I gave Megan K. (aka "Megan Senior") the wrong key. There were cracker packages chewed through and left all over the floor and an empty cat treat can. Poor kitties! They drank water for about 10 minutes, took a break, then drank some more. Last night, both the cats slept with us, cuddled nice and close. Gabriel has been purring and near us all day long.
We spent last night with Megan and Corey, watching a SNL special and making fun of all the other NYE specials. David and I were exhausted from the drive, the clean up of the house and then staying up past midnight, so we didn't stay too long after the ball dropped.

Today has been very productive. I got up earlier than I have all break (mostly because it'll help with getting up tomorrow, ugh.) and made a to do list. I unpacked my bag, washed the trip off of me, and reorganized stuff in my bathroom to accomodate all the new bath/beauty products (and cute cosmetics bag from mike). We headed to former Food Lion, now Bloom (think Farm Fresh or D&W with a Harding's past, for those of you outside of this area) and as we were heading in, we saw a few people leaving with those reusable grocery bags from Ukrop's and Trader Joe's. We started discussing how we should've gone to Meijer when we were there and picked a few up. When we walked in, though, bam! 3 Bloom reusable bags were sitting right there, for $1 each. Awesome. The good day continued when we went to New Town to use up some gift cards and find a weekly planner I saw at B&N with Frida Kahlo artwork (it was still there and 50% off- yesss!!). We got home, rearranged the computer room so it works a lot better, put the Christmas decorations into storage as well as suitcases and other random stuff, cleaned up and whew! Most of my to do list is done and it's only 4. Thank goodness, cause I'm tired and need to figure out what I'm going to do with those students Wednesday-Friday. I don't know how many kids (or teachers, for that matter) are going to show up for a 3 day week--a lot of them don't show up for Thanksgiving week.
Right now, though, we're watching the hockey game between Pittsburg and Buffalo, played outside in the snow. Later today or tomorrow, I'll share pictures and a run down of the holidays. I still have a few things on that to do list to finish.