Mood:  down

I wasted the day just doing things like computer games, cooking and listening to the sports talk radio.

Nonetheless, I still feel like this

  I think the cartoon is from Calvin and Hobbes, but I'm not sure, it was sent to me in an email by a friend who had been listening to me whine.  It's not just kids who feel this way, ya know!

Mood:  celebratory

My wonderful Patriots are on their way to the Super Bowl again!  They didn't have their best game of the season, and Tom Brady looked un-Bradylike, but they won.  They now have a chance to go undefeated for the season 19-0.  It certainly won't be easy, the Giants played well yesterday, but I have faith in this team.  Green Bay also made really dumb mistakes that cost them a score or two.  I don't look forward to the hype for the next two weeks, though.

Of course, the Patriots won because of my Karmic contributions.   I wore the right sweatshirt and the Pat's jammie bottoms.  I ate cheese curls - so what if I'm orange and my ankles are swollen from the salt. I cooked a chicken dinner with the same side dishes as I have the last several Sundays.  Obvioulsy this all makes a difference to the team and I'll have to be sure that I am at the same level of preparation for the Super Bowl.  I also scream at the television.  So does the guy upstairs.  The problem with him is that he tends to stomp around really loudly and it makes me nervous.

I have lots of things to get done around here today, but for the moment I just want to listen to sports talk radio.  I love game post mortems when we win.  I have already heard Brady and Bruschi this morning, so I'll have to wait and see who else comes on before the Celtic's game at noon.  I start listening again after the Celtic's play.

My friend John, who lives in California, keeps insisting that I join the Celtics bandwagon, but I just don't have the same kind of passion for that game as I do baseball and football.

I need to find something to do that I care about today.

Mood:  not sure

I have not managed to get my class back on track since we've come back from vacation.  Our schedule has been totally disrupted with changes due to a snow day, an author in residence, assemblies, and chorus concerts.  This kids are so back to what they were in September, which is not good.  I feel like all forward progress was lost.  They need routine, and so do I.

I'm liking this time away from grad school, and don't look forward to starting again.  I'm still waiting for one grade, I got an A from the wicked witch, and from the professor of the class that I liked.  I hope I can get into the swing of it when it starts up again.  I need to print out the pay scale to act as a motivator.

We have a day off tomorrow for Martin Luther King day, which is fine with me, but doesn't help with our lack of schedule.  It does give me a chance to try to get somethings caught up, both around here and with school.  Of course that means that I need to get the tote bag out of the car.  Hmmm.

It's too cold to do that right now, it's only 24 degrees out, but feels like 10.  I think I'll stay inside and stay warm.  I'm dealing with a cold that I keep trying to fight down with Advil and Emergen-C.  That's a really good product, seems to work well for me.

Mood:  not sure

So it's the end of another year.

I've never been a fan of New Year's Eve, it seems like a stupid holiday to me, and just a reason for people to act like morons.  I don't get why everyone gets so excited about a new year.  It just makes me feel older and when I was young it made me feel sad.

I'll go to my brother's tonight, have Chinese food, watch a movie and go home.  Big whoop.  I'd like to totally stay home, but they give me a ton of grief about doing things like that, so I won't.  Don't want to be thought of as anti-social.

The good news of the weekend, is that the Patriots finished their season a perfect 16-0.  I know it's only the regular season, and that without the Super Bowl win it will mean nothing. Yadada yadada yadada, it's still a huge and wonderful achievement and I wish all those negative idiots would just shut up and accept what they've done as being impressive.

I don't know how I let these days fly by me, but I have.  I've done a few things, but not what I had planned.  I got distracted by doing things on the computer and created a couple of photo albums to have printed through Walgreens.  Only because I had a coupon.  It took forever to put them together, but both are nice.  One is of generations of my family, the other is on the author I am researching.

Now I have to go and fix my stupid vacuum cleaner - again.

Mood:  chatty

I am a huge fan of Christmas decorations.  I think they look really tacky in the daylight, but when night falls and the houses light up, I just love drving around to look at them.  Especially if there is snow on the ground, which around here has been plentiful this year.

There is an exception to the decoration thing though, and that's the giant blow-up deals.  One is OK, but it's the homes that have multiples that I just don't get.  They have about 20 feet of front lawn and there is barely an inch of room available because there's a giant snowglobe, a santa (or two), soldiers, snowmen, elves, and who knows what else.  It's even worse when they have them on the porch, and they practically block the door.  In some cases the decorations are even close to being as tall as the house.  I guess some people think it's attractive, but it's just not my taste.

I kind of long for the retro decorations from the 50's and 60's.

Mood:  rushed

So, here it is, Christmas Eve, and I am so not ready!  I have no idea what I need to buy, what I have already bought, and where it is.  I've been looking for the wrapping paper that I bought last week for the last 24 hours.  I finally found it, leaning against the entry table.  Craftily hidden among all the stuff I've just flung as I walked in the door.

 I do have some of the cooking done.  The shrimp dip and the pickled knockwurst are done, as is the kielbasa (three different kinds this year).  I still have to get the onions ready for boiling so I can finish them with the milk and butter tomorrow.  Peeling those is a pain, and painful - I hate all the tears.

 At the moment I'm watching "Love Actually" on the television.  It's such a great movie, and full of so many good feelings.  I love happy endings.  Next I want to watch "White Christmas".  I always cry at "We'll Follow the Old Man".

I got a very special Christmas gift from the family of the child whose father plays for the Red Sox, an autographed ornament!  I was so so excited!  I almost cried when I took it out of the bag, I know that this is not something that he does regularly, and I'm the only teacher to have recieved one of these so far.  I also got one of their Christmas cards and a couple of other gifts from them. 

I got other nice things from the kids in my class, lots of baked goods, chocolate, candles, gift cards for books, coffee and I-tunes, and books (even one autographed by the author).  It was a nice day.  Now I have to get those thankyou notes done as well.

I'm really irritated that I haven't received a grade or the paper returned from the professor from hell.  The deal was that we were going to get them back by Friday, and we got a lame email on Saturday saying that wasn't going to happen.  She even said they might not be done before grades are due.  And this should be MY problem???

Guess I'd better go start peeling the onions.

Mood:  irritated

I took today off as a personal day, as I needed to drive 100 miles to go to the cemetery where my parents and grandparents are buried.  I needed to put holiday arrangements on the graves.  I do this every year and it's very important to me.  I don't do it on weekends because the drive is just miserable.

But I didn't go.

The stupid weather is prediciting a major, very fast moving snow storm, and I knew that I'd never be able to be up and back before the snow hit.  Besides that, I do like to spend some times stopping in a few favorite stores to do some shopping for gifts, so I didn't want to just rush my way through everything in an attempt to beat the storm.

It has started snowing up there, my cousin sent me an email saying that it had started and was snowing sideways and fast.  Both of those are not good things, and it would have made it a really awful drive home.

I don't know how or when I'm going to get up there now.  I thought that maybe I'd bite the bullet and go on Saturday, but there's yet ANOTHER storm predicted.  I know it's wimpy but I just hate driving in snow storms.  I'm not even fond of driving in the rain.

So today has been a waste of time.  I'm sort of just wandering around here, not really managing to get anything done.  I did sit and knit for about 45 minutes, but I even stopped doing that.  Maybe I can at least get some laundry done.

I have school work to do, but I'm feeling too jumpy to settle and do it.  I think that my system tends to react to changes in the atmosphere and storms coming in.  In some ways I hope we have a snow day tomorrow.  But then, in others, I don't want one at all this year.

I just looked out the window, it's now snowing, not too hard yet, but snowing.

Crud.

I think I'll go watch reruns of Red Sox games........

Mood:  bright

This was a mess of a drive kind of day, both coming and going to work. It started to come down as freezing rain at about 2:30 this morning, then it went to snow or rain.  So when I left for work it was sort of crunchy slushy, but some of the roads had been treated.  But the Hoity-toity town that I have to drive through doesn't believe in treating the road, and doesn't do much clearing the road to the pavement, so it's always like being on an amusement park ride when I slide through that town. I clench my teeth all the way through town.

We had indoor recess today.  That always is enough to make me want to cry.  The kids need an outdoor break.

 It started snowing again in the afternoon, and pretty much kept right on going.  It's still flurrying.  So the ride home wasn't much better.

 The cool thing that happened today was that the child in my class whose father plays for my Red Sox brought me a copy of the new World Series DVD. I was more than a little excited!  Every once in a while I feel the need to pinch myself.

Mood:  irritated

They are prediciting a mess for the commute tomorrow morning.  Rain.  Freezing rain.  Sleet. Snow. I wanna gag.

It's already snowed a bit, but just a dusting.  Apparently as the night goes on it's going to get worse.  This is the storm that has been marching across the country for the last several days.

 I do not want a snow day.  We're already getting out of school way too late in June as far as I'm concerned. 

Of course, on the up-side I could use the day to work on those papers that I need to finish.

 I hate writing papers.  I'm so far out of practice when it comes to this kind of thing.  I like to write for myself, but not for this pressure of a grade. The good news is that my typing is years faster and better than it was when I had to use a typewriter to pound these things out years ago.  Then I had a little white portable Olivetti that jumped when I had to pound on it to make the keys hit.  I couldn't touch type then either. 

I actually pretty much have one paper finished, just needs a few tweaks, which is a good thing seeing it's due on Thursday.  I still have to fool around with the lesson part of it that I have to present along with it.

I still have two others to get done by December 20th.  One of them is going to make me choke over having to do it at all. It is a waste of my time and serves no purpose.  At least the other two have a bit of a point to them... I think.

This weekend has just gone by too quickly, and all I did was work on this one paper.  Meanwhile, I still have things that need to get done for school, including my report cards.

I'm feeling swamped.