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.

Mood:  rushed

Ok, in my true-to-form style I am realizing that it's going to take me forever to make any progress at all on these papers that I have to finish for the grad classes.  I'm so out of the "writing papers for college" scene that I feel paralyzed as I sit in front of the processor.  So I'm going to have to find a way to crank them out this weekend.

 I went to a friend's chorus performance last night, and it was pretty good.  There were several numbers that made me cringe because they were out of tune, but overall it was OK.  She really wants me to join this group, but I don't think I will, at least not for now.  Part is that I don't have time to add an extra night out to my schedule, but the other part is that I think I'll go back to the group I was with last year, I enjoyed it, and it's closer, and it's in the community where I teach.

 What was nice about last night was that there was a sing-along and after we finished the first song, the man sitting next to me asked. "Why aren't you up there singing in this chorus?"  That was nice, I don't get complimented for my voice very often these days.

They are prediciting possibly accumulating snow for the Boston area tomorrow night.  Oh crud.  I don't want it to start this early, and I certainly dont want a school cancellation.

I did an awesome, almost spontaneous lesson the other day using primary sources.  I sort of last minute planned it, and it was a huge hit.  I used the schedule that Bronson Alcott made for his daughter's daily routine and two diary entries for a young girl living in Massachusetts in 1836.  For whatever reason, it totally worked, and the kids will be ready to start our new book on Monday.  We're going to be starting a great story called Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix.

Guess I should stop avoiding the inevitable.

Mood:  incredulous

Holy mackeral!  It doesn't seem possible that I could have forgotten to write about one of the most important events of this century - MY RED SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES - AGAIN!!!!!

This has been another one of those magical times, though not as heavy with emotion as it was in 2004 (hey, 86 years is a long time to wait!).  I didn't go to as many games as I would have liked this year - tickets are near impossible to get.  I did manage to get to my first playoff game, and that was the one where Manny Ramirez hit a walk off homerun.  That might have been the most exciting moment that I've ever been in Fenway to enjoy.  It even beat being at the game when Big Papi broke the Sox homerun records the year before.

It was even more exciting as I have the child of one of the players in my class this year, so we were all even more involved than normal.  It was great for the other kids to see their classmate on the field after the win, and then to see him in the parade.  The entire class was given a championship hat by the family.  That was a really exciting day.  I keep telling the kids that this is something they need to remember and pay close attention to, as it doesn't happen as often as it seems.

It was a wonderful baseball season, and a great fall.

Now it's time to watch the Patriots.  This has the potential to be another historic year.

Mood:  don't ask

I am a co-ed again.  Four of us who teach together have decided to go back to get our Master's of Education degrees.  I'm doing it for the pay raise, it's pretty substantial.  It's expensive to do this, but there are long term benefits, especially as I head towards retirement.

We chose Cambridge College in Boston, mainly because it has a reputation of being for the working professional, and that it takes into account that the students have demanding full time jobs.  For the most part, this has been true.  But not in the Saturday class from hell.

The person who taught this class (I refuse to call her professor, as that implies an amount of professionalism and ability to impart knowledge in the given subject area) was nothing short of useless.  The class was supposed to be about alternative assessments, yet she never spoke of any assessment and had no idea what the life of a public school teacher was like. There are many more things I could go into, but I don't want to relive the horror.  I still have a huge paper that I need to write for that class. And it's all about writing in APA form, has little to do with content.  More than that, I resent writing a paper for a class where I learned NOTHING!!!!

 The other two courses that I took have been quite good. One is on Accelerated Learning, and I've already started using those techniques in my class.  The other is a required Professional Seminar, and it's been useful.  That one is on going until I finish writing the big paper that's required at the end of all this (called an ILP). I have a short paper, and the first chapter of my ILP due for this as well.

There were ten hours of Saturday workshops to attend.  The first four hours were great, the last two were OK (relaxation techniques).  But the two on the middle were useless.  Something about using art in counseling (there were no education workshops available, so we had to take these to get the hours in).  We made things.

This is the most expensive artsy-craftsy project I've ever done, when you take into account what the price of the workshops was!

Mood:  irritated

I spent yesterday working on getting the bedroom and closet torn apart and put back together.  I'm still not done, and I really want to see if I can focus and finish it today. I still own way too many clothes, even though I continue to make donations of older items.  I can't fit all that I have in the closet. 

I am addicited to research.  Part of being a history geek.  I'm still researching my children's author and poet of the early 1900's (and now his daughter and her friends), and I continue to be obsessed with them.  But now I've added a new search.  I want to know who owned my recently purchased powder horn.

I want to see if I can track down the man who owned it and then order his Civil War documents to use them with my class.  But I'm not having any luck yet, and I don't know if the man fought for the Union or the Confederacy.  I sort of hope it was for the Confederacy, seeing my author fought for the Union and I have all his records.  It would be nice to have things that represent both sides of the conflict.

Guess that's all for now, I should get back to cleaning.  I've released a bad allergy attack in myself with all this, so I should just keep going until it's all finished and then I can take a ton of pills.

Mood:  surprised

Hey, two days in a row.  Maybe I really am going to keep this up.  I think that part of what I need to do is not pressure myself to write a lot in one sitting.

I spent yesterday putzing around, then met my brother for dinner.  That was unexpected as I had just planned to go and drop off some pastry that I'd gotten for him at Mike's Bakery in Boston's North End. (I was taking a class at the Paul Revere House and the bakery was on the way home.)  He mentioned going to a small restaurant near the house where we grew up, so I went with him.  Better than the two of us eating alone.

I came home and watched the Red Sox game (they won 10-5), and spent time doing some school work.  I've tried to do a lot of summer reading that might be good for my class.  I finished up the cover of a reading journal that I want to use as a model for what I'd like the kids to do.

I modeled the journaling for the novel The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs by Betty Birney.  It's a cute book, and one that we encouraged all the kids to read this summer.

I have many things I'd like to get done around here today, but I don't really know if I'm going to get even a tenth of it done, but at least I'm sort of in the mood to get going.

Now all I need to do is actually stop sitting at the computer and get to the projects.  Avoiding distractions is always a challenge!

Mood:  not sure

Gee, it's only been three years since I posted.

I love inconsistency.

Actually I don't love inconsistency, but I did forget my password, so there's one excuse. Lame, but an excuse nonetheless.

There have been huge changes since I last wrote, I am no longer a special ed teacher, I am now in the classroom.  I totally, totally love it.  The change came two years ago, and it was one that I wanted for ten years, but couldn't convince my principal.  He retired, new one in, at the end of the first year, SHE approached ME about making the move! I was stunned, and had sort of given up the idea of that ever happening, because my former principal had been such a jerk.

It was a great year with those kids, and an equally good with the class I had this past year. I enjoyed this year's class because they were really smart and into school and projects, and were funny and always happy.  I'm going to miss them.

My incoming class appears to be a bunch of fireballs, I met them for an hour in June.  Several kids with learning issues, which is fine, and a bunch who appear to be on the ADD side. They were really active and chatty the first day they met me, and that's really unusual. One of the kid's dad plays for the Red Sox, so that has the potential to be cool.

I am also going back to school this fall to get my master's.  Four of use are going together, so we found a program meant for working professionals and are all hoping that we can handle it. We are all doing it to get the pay increase.  It's going to be a big task to take on, and it may mean that I don't do some of the other things that I usually do like chorus.

We shall see.

Mood:  energetic

It's just dawned on me that I haven't bought any new music in a long time. The thing is that there doesn't seem to be anything that's calling to me. Unfortunately B.J.'s has cut the CD selection down to nothing, and I would often make an impulse buy while I was there.

Gonna have to go to a store and see if there's anything out there that I must have.

These weeks have been speeding by. The beginning of the school year is always wild when the kids and teachers are all trying to get used to each other and settle into a routine. I feel as if I'm moving at light speed each day, trying to get all the things that need to be done squared away.

I love my little groups of kids that I pull out for reading. One is a group of girls, the other is a group of boys. It's really odd that it's worked out that way. It's a scheduling fluke, I usually have mixed groups. I was giving the kids choices about what books we might choose to read this year, and it was funny how it really did break into a gender thing. The guys were into the books about aliens and Jackie Robinson and the girls were choosing the ones that seemed that they were going to be funny. It didn't matter if the main character was male or female (the main character in the Jackie Robinson book is a Chinese girl), it had to do with the topic.

I think it's going to be fun no matter what they choose. All the kids have a sweetness about them, and are full of personality and humor.

I have lots of different things I want to get done around here, and am making my usual small dents. I wish I had a cable hookup in the craft room. That's where I'd like to organize today, but I have to watch the Red Sox game. (OK, I know I don't HAVE to but..... I HAVE to!) I think I'll see if there's a way to haul the stuff out to the living room, organize it there, and then put it back into the craft room.

Doesn't seem too practical though.

Watching all the home improvement and organization shows inspires me to greatness. Maybe I'll get there eventually. (Said with tongue in cheek and humor in the voice)

Mood:  lyrical

I guess writing in a blog is no easier than writing in a daily journal.

At least not for me.

It's been one of those "where did the summer go???" kind of summers. I know where it went, but I didn't go anywhere or do half of the things that I wanted to get done for myself.

Basically, all free time from the end of January through July was dedicated to getting the family home ready for sale, on the market, and finally sold. There were lots of little things that we needed to do to spruce the place up, and then years worth of stuff had to be sorted.

We rented a dumpster and tossed tons of stuff, but kept so much more. And a lot of it is in my garage! Just when I thought I had it cleared out and unpacked, it ends up being filled again.

Actually, I wanted all the file cabinets so I could move some of my stamping magazines and things that I want to be able to refer to out there. But I hadn't counted on the Christmas decorations and the stamp collection that was my father's. He collected postage stamps for about 70 years, and it was all meticulously cataloged and put into book after book. I think I have something along the lines of 26 paper boxes full of albums that are all organized by country and year. We took them to a so called "appraiser" who told us they weren't worth anything, but that he'd happily take them as a donation.

Yeah, I'm sure. He didn't even really look at what we brought, he sort of leafed through them and dismissed them as not worth his time.

So now I can't get the car inside again.

I'm going to have to start shoving stuff around, because I don't want to have to scrape the windshield this winter!

Going through everything in that house was so painful. I wasn't ready to really throw things away, but my brothers were ruthless - and they threw out stuff that should have been kept - things like address books. I wanted to kill them when I heard that the things had just been tossed.

I have a few small bookcases that I took, and have brought inside, but still have a dining room set that belonged to my grandmother and a desk from my parent's bedroom.

I haven't figured all this out yet.

I did a couple small things in my condo, painted the hallway deep "Victorian red" and started painting the dining area and the living room two different shades of blue. I know the color choice is on the dramatic side, but that is me. I smile when I walk in the hall and see the red. Everyone who has been here has loved it, and when I first said that I was doing that half of the world shook their heads to indicate that I was nuts. But my sense of drama knew that it was right for me. And it's only paint, easy to undo.

I must say that I did have some nerves when I first started painting, as the primer was Pepto bismol pink. Then it took four coats of the red.

The blue is only requiring two coats. I still have several walls to finish. It's sort of a piecemeal project.

The most intimidating thing was hanging the mirror that is in this picture. It's over 50 years old (it's from my parent's house) and weighs a ton.

The only room that's really together is the bedroom. I spent several days getting it really squared away, as I decided that when work started I would want to go to bed and wake up in a tranquil(ish) environment.

I still own way too many things, but I feel as if it's all put together in there. I haven't attempted to paint in there because I can't decide what color I might want.

I love blues and purples, but I may already have too much blue in here once I finish the dining and living rooms.

I will probably just buy some paint on impulse and go nuts some day.

That's a brief update.

Maybe there will be another someday soon.