Emotion Overload

The weirdest thing happened about 2 weeks ago. I was sitting on the kitchen counter talking to David and I could NOT stop laughing. I was crying I was laughing so hard and I could barely catch my breath. I have (had) no idea what was so funny. I just kept laughing and laughing about nothing in particular.

Well, tonight we watched Click (highly recommend it!) and it was kinda sad so I was crying. Well, after the movie was over, I just kept crying. And crying and crying. I was crying so much that David was laughing at me, which made me cry even more. Which, in turn, made me laugh til I cried some more!

Late for Saturday

I had a great morning... went to the gym for the monthly 5k run. I did 20 seconds better than I did last week AND I made 2 new running friends. One of them invited me to join in on some Saturday morning distance runs with her and a group of ojavascript:void(0)ther runners! That should be fun! So I ended up running about 7 miles on Saturday because I ran 2 extra miles with this girl just so I could talk to her.

Saturday night, David and I went to a costume party. We had a super-easy costume (just saying that just now reminds me that I was supposed to wear a costume TOMORROW for school... oops!) since we (I) found out about the party at the last minute. The party was SO not my scene, but I definitely had fun getting our costumes together

David as the Publisher's ClearingHouse Prize Patrol and me as the surprised early-morning winner. Too bad you can't see my pretty pj pants and fuzzy slippers in this photo.

Good Eats

I just have to pat myself on the back about some of the super-fab meals I made this week... They were SO easy and absolutely delicious!
Monday- Tuscan Halibut- yum yum! Halibut steaks (pretty pricey at the commissary -and frozen to boot- but worth it) cannelini beans and tomatoes with lemon and basil. YUM!
Tuesday- Pizza Hut. Blech... Who would've thought that I'd turn out to be a better cook than Pizza Hut?!?!?
Wednesday- Smoky Black Bean Stoup (a Rachael Ray recipe from her latest cookbook). Wow, I thought this was great! I can't get enough of it! Although I need one of those mortar and pestle thingys because I could not grind my coriander for it. I had enough for dinner and 2 lunches and those 2 lunches made me very happy!
Thursday- Chicken and Sausage Paella. Loving my crockpot lately! (Last week it was chicken curry in the crockpot) I love the way the chicken just falls apart when it's cooked all day in the crockpot. Especially because I've been feeling a little weird about chicken lately. Anyway, the commissary didn't have any turmeric, but they did have saffron, which happens to be one of "the most expensive spices in the world". I couldn't bring myself to buy the saffron, so I had to look up a substitution. The box of saffron-flavored rice was way cheap and it made a great accompaniment!
So, what's on the menu tonight??? I'm thinking maybe broccoli cheese soup, but maybe I'll save that for later. David and his bud went to see some large-men-blowing-up-everything-in-their-path movie so I'm on my own until Survivor. Maybe I'll just have some of my delish leftovers!

Nice People

The day before yesterday, my car wouldn't start. I realized this as I was leaving for school and already running a few minutes late. Luckily, David was home from PT and getting ready to go to work. So he dropped me off at school with relatively few complaints (nice person #1).
Yesterday, I arrived at school late just because I was putzing around being late at home. One of the parents from my class had been looking for me and went to Ms. Wiles' room. Ms. Wiles (my classroom neighbor) told her that usually I'm there by that time, but I was having car trouble so maybe I was waiting for my ride. Can you believe that that mom said, "Oh, she needs a car? She should just take my car!" (She's leaving for a few months). I was just amazed at how nice she was-I might think that a good friend would offer this, but I'm just her kid's teacher! She stopped by later to talk to me about leaving and the first thing she did was ask if my car is okay. (nice person #2)
It is. It just needed a battery recharge because someone (coughDAVIDcough) left on the interior light that gives off relatively no light (which is why I didn't know it was on) and since it was on for 2 and a half days, it kinda put a strain on the battery. Darn, no more excuses for being late to school!

It's been awhile!

My life has been pretty boring for the past 10 days. Actually for about 8 of the past 10 days, but the other 2 the internet was acting all funky!

I must take a moment to toot my own horn---I am SO proud of myself for being so good at working out lately! I've also been cleaning up after myself more than usual. I'm really growing up



On Saturday, we ventured off-base in search of "Okinawa Fruits Land". Took us a while to find it since the sign says "Tropical Kingdom". Anyway, I wanted to go because we NEEDed to get our Christmas card picture taken! So we dragged David's troop along with us to carry our camera!

I was terrified when I was there because we went into this room with big birds. They could just move around wherever they wanted and I'm not really sure what kept them from pecking my eyeballs out.
Well, then we went into the next room where birds absolutely attacked us! The birds were pretty, if you can keep your mind off all that avian-flu business. You carry in a little cup of sweet bird juice or something and they just flock to you. I was really afraid because I have a teensy-weensy bird phobia. But I wasn't about to not do it. Just like when I was SO afraid to go to the tippy-top of the Eiffel Tower, but I had to do it because how could I not? Anyway, I went in and while I was in there one bird even landed on my head!! But David accidentally pushed the power button instead of the take-the-picture button on the camera. Arrrgghh.

Got Gas?

Okay so I really take pride in the fact that between August 29 and October 9, I only used 1 tank of gas. That includes going to work every day and miscellaneous errands after work--for 40 days! So how is it that during the 2.5 days that David used my car while his van was in the shop over 1/4 of a tank disappeared?? Bizarre.

Hooray for mail!

Yesterday we had 3 package slips! But David didn't want to stand in the looooooong line at the post office to pick them up (I would have- packages are what I live for!)
He went and picked them up today and hooray--they were all for me!
Here's what I got: 1- a package of stickers/pencils/bookmarks that I had ordered for my class. Conveniently, this package that I've been waiting for for over a month arrived just one day after I wrote an "I'm very disappointed" e-mail to customer service. Oops...
2- The other half of 2 bathing suits. I received the top halves a few weeks ago and was beginning to worry about what I would do with them if the bottoms never arrived. Unfortunately, one of the bottoms doesn't match the top anyway, so I'm back to square one on that!
3- Britt sent me a book! And just in the nick of time too, because I finished the book (The Men I Didn't Marry- quite entertaining and a super-fast read) that I checked out on Sunday just this afternoon. Britt gave "Middlesex" her stamp of approval, labeling it seemingly odd, but "really very good". I'm on page 2. So I have no real opinions yet.

Lazy Weekend

Well, Monday night and the weekend is almost over.
I had big plans for this weekend--they included lots of running, lots of cleaning, some scrapbooking, and lots of work in my classroom. I did NO running (but I'm about to do a quick workout), very little cleaning (a load of laundry and vacuumed under the comptuer desk), NO scrapbooking, but I ordered some SB stuff, and 1 hour of work in my classroom.
Here's what I did do--went to the library and returned an overdue book. Checked out a new book. Went to see a giant tug-of-war rope that's in the Guinness Book of World Records. (But we got there 3 hours too early--definitely not MY doing, that's typical David--and didn't see any of the actual tugging).
I need another long weekend...

One More Day...

Wow, it's tough having a day off in the middle of the week. Seems like today should've been Friday, but there's still one more day of work. Hooray though because it will be a long weekend.

My class had a Fire Safety lesson today. The super-enthusiastic firefighters talked to the kids, then we got to crawl through a smoke-filled trailer. It wasn't as cool as Survive-Alive house, but the kids enjoyed it--especially getting to go in the fire truck! In a brainless moment, I forgot my camera, but one of our class dads is a firefighter and was there with his camera! He took quite a few pictures and said he'll get some to me.

My leave got approved for Cabo, so I won't have to quit my job to go to Maria's wedding. I almost had to get a second job in order to go... can you believe I was inadvertently charged TWICE for my $2,000+ tickets??? Ugh...

Uphill Both Ways

Maybe this is weird, but I have always wanted to walk to school. When I went to Forest Ridge Academy when it was in Hammond, my dad would drop me off in the morning and usually my grandma would pick me up. We would often walk home, I remember because she didn't really want me to run through other people's sprinklers.
But it just wasn't the same. I wanted to walk TO school in the morning. I never lived close enough to do that, except for college, of course, but walking from the dorms to class just doesn't count.
Today, my dream came true! There was a special teacher training day and we all met at Kadena HS, which happens to be just about 1.25 miles from my house. I knew this was my chance to walk to school! I popped right out of bed this morning, I was so excited!
So there wasn't 3 feet of snow, and I was wearing shoes and they didn't have holes in them... but believe me when I say it really WAS uphill both ways!

It's the little things...

Today after school one of my students from last year stopped by my classroom to visit. She showed me her Mad Minute math test, her assignment notebook and all of her other 3rd grade things. She told me about who she sat by and how she sat at a desk instead of a table and kept all of her things in her own desk too and that she knows all the cursive alphabet now. She came in and looked at the new arrangement of furniture, asked about what we're doing in class. Even though I had lots to do after school today, I talked to her for about 20 minutes and it was fun! I've never had the opportunity to have old students come to visit me-- after Prairie School, I left for Italy; after Edison, I left for Okinawa... When I realized how long she had been standing at my room, I asked her where she was supposed to meet her mom (she subs a lot) and she said she was probably waiting at the office. So I walked her down and saw her mom along the way. I told her Bailey had been visiting me and she said, "I know, she told me that she wanted to go talk to you today". It really made my day to know that she had made a special point to come and see me!