Five years down, two more to go!

I finally made it through Year 5.  See my review in the link above.  It was tough. So glad it's done.  I was going to take a break and read The Time-Travellers Wife but I didn't feel like investing in new characters just yet, and that book is rather confusing in the way it's written.  I will read it some time soon, though.  Instead, I'm about 20 pages into Year 6.  I will be really happy to finish this up!

On a teachery note, I got my unofficial pink slip last week from the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources of all people.  It was positive though, and it was not a surprise.  I'm on a temporary contract, so they have to do this.  I have to wait until April or May when all the retirees have said "See ya!" or other people move around.  They seemed hopeful.  We'll see.  I'm still going to start collecting letters of recommendation and keep my eyes open for other opportunities.  Who knows?  Maybe this our chance to get out of the valley for a little and go explore new, warmer places (that all have Sherwin Williams stores, of course).

God bless my KitchenAid mixer

I just had to share the adorable cupcakes I just made for tomorrow's English Dept. potluck!  I used a red velvet box mix, but I used this recipe for the white vanilla icing.  Super easy and pretty darn tasty.  Then I bought a tube black frosting and piped the punctuation marks and parts of speech abbreviations. 

To read or not to read: That has never been the question! ...'til this year!

The first grading period of the second semester of my first year of teaching (phew!) is almost done.  There's talk of possible layoff but also of adding more sections of English next year, so who knows.  I have until March 15th to hear the news.  I don't get a raise next year, and I don't suck (at least I hope I don't), so I feel somewhat secure.

This reading thing had been going really well!  I love reading all this young adult fiction and then gabbing with my kids about wizards and things.  Okay, actually NONE of my students have read Harry Potter and are not interested in the slightest.  Thankfully, I can still talk Twilight with a few of them.  I've been keeping up with my resolution, but it's been an excuse that has caused my grading pile to grow to an obscene height!  I have not grading ANYTHING besides the couple of tests and qizzes I've given.  I was supposed to complete about six hours of work over break and have just started it today.  It's due next Tuesday!  Too much reading!  So, since I read Crank this weekend (See "One-Book-a-Week in Review" at the top for my less than impressed review), which gives me TWO books for last week, I'm going to admit now that HP Year 5 will not get finished until next week.  Way too much grading.  So Crank counts for this week, okay?  Okay, good.

Update on my ear (see previous post): I went back to the doctor yesterday.  He said it's still infected but definitely better.  I had a fever and Strep-like sore throat, which completely confused them since I was already taken antibiotics, but that has seemed to subside.  He put me on another antibiotic, so hopefully by next week I'll be good to go.  It only hurts when I burp, cough, sneeze, or yell at my sixth period class.  :)

Can you hear me now?

As if the stolen truck wasn't enough...

Monday was the Graham-ster's birthday, and in tradition, we went to Olive Garden.  I stayed home sick that day because I was miserably exhausted all day Sunday and absolutely could not handle my 5th period class on Monday.  I rested more, ate some fruit, and went for a walk.  I started to feel a lot better.  I took a shower to get ready for our dinner-and-a-movie date, which was a fabulous shower, and began my daily hygiene routine, which ashamedly includes carefully cleaning my ears with a Q-tip.  This day, I had the overhead ventilation fan on as I'd just taken a shower and was rustling through my medicine cabinet while I carefully swabbed, when I thought I heard a soft knock at the door.  I was a little jumpy but thought it must have just been the sound of the bottle I'd just put on the counter top.  All of sudden, Graham comes pushing through the door, "Babe? Are you..." and I start screaming and shrunk to the floor clutching my head.  The Q-tip had slipped and stabbed me square in the eardrum.  It took me a while to calm down, but the pain was still there, with sharp throbs every few seconds.  My hearing started to go a bit fuzzy, like I was driving in the mountains, but there was no plug like in higher elevation.  I decided to fight through it so that we could have a great birthday date.

We went to dinner and it started to feel better.  By the next morning, my hearing was still fuzzy but the pain was almost completely gone.  My dad, who has Meniere's Disease, was emailing me every hour telling me to go to the doctor.  Everything online said it should clear up on its own, no problem.  I backed down, though, and went to a walk-in place after work.  "Traumatic Middle Ear Infection," he says. I got a shot, two antibiotic prescriptions, and some all too expensive ear drops.  I'm now fighting this very drippy ear, but at least my hearing's back.  I go back to the doctor on Monday.  Hopefully everything will be okay.  For now it's just messy and a bit inconvenient.  My students think it's funny, though, that I have a snail trail of drops and drainage running down my neck half the time.  Yummy.

Officially married with pictures to prove it!

Graham and I are officially married!  Okay, yes, it's been over 6 weeks since our wedding, but we just got our official wedding pictures back!  It was so fun going through them together, reliving such a great day.  I'll post a few at the end of this post.

Along with our photographic proof, we recently experienced what I like to call our first "Us Against the World" predicament.  Last week, during the middle of our liquid+soup diet, we decided to cheat and go to dinner at Chili's.  We went into the restaurant around 5:30, came back out around 6:20, and the truck was gone.  Graham's precious baby was stolen from the complete well-lit and very busy Chili's parking lot around 6:00.  We filed the police report and hoped for the best.  Graham got a phone call early the next morning saying they found it in a field about 25 miles south of where we live.  It was missing both doors, the carpet, and the odometer as well as the really nice bed cover.  Didn't take the wheels, left the engine untouched and all the pieces they didn't need like the seats, were neatly put back where the belong.  Other pieces were thrown in the back.  They left loose change, my old debit card, a couple gift cards, things that could have easily been taken without us really noticing.  (That bank account was closed about 6 months ago, so no major threat there.) 

So now we're waiting to hear the damage and how insurance will work out.  We planned on trading in my old Focus in a year or so and getting me the SUV I want, but we didn't plan on getting rid of the truck for at least 4 or 5 more years.  It's really sad.  We'll see what happens with insurance and everything.  It might not be totaled.  We'll see.  He's enjoying his Impala rental right now.  :)  We were successful, though, us against the world.  It was/is extremely stressful, but we did it together!  Those are good moments.

Here are a few more great moments!

Glad I Hopped on the Band Wagon

Finished Year 2 this morning!  I am so glad I finally got around to reading these.  I'm going to start Year 3 tonight and might possible finish it before the weekend is up.  You don't understand how big of a deal this is!  Aside from the last Twilight book and the novels I actually taught last semester, I read NOTHING last year.  That's why this resolution is so great for me!  I decided that if I lumped up all the hours I spend watching TV shows on Netflix, I could get a LOT of reading in.  It's been great!  I'm already noticing an improvement in just my daily vocabulary, and, even though Wuthering Heights was SO dull, I started using THOSE kinds of words in normal conversation.  Most obscure, to say the least.  :)  So here we go!  Another week down, another book read (book and a half actually), and I'm ready for more!

and Failure

I can't do it.  Wuthering Heights is just too boring to do in one week.  I'm about exactly halfway, and I've decided to put it down. It will get finished some day, just not this week.  All my Harry Potter  books came in the mail yesterday, so around 7, I quit Bronte and picked up Year 2.  I'm a bit over 100 pages in and will certainly finish by Saturday.  This means I haven't broken my resolution yet. 

I'm sorry, but those Heights characters just won't shut up!  And about the silliest things, too!  I honestly can't see why this is such a classic.  Sure, there are some shining moments where the wording is just superb, but bleh!  The plot is just annoying as can be! 

So Harry Potter it is!  Be back Saturday with a review of the second book and an udpate on my total pages read for the year.  Happy Friday!!