A good mail day!

Today was a great mail day! Peter got me several magazine subscriptions for Christmas, and I've been waiting for my Lucky to show up. Both the January and February issues came in the mail today. My Edutopia teaching magazine showed up as well as my tax forms for my doctorate program and from my school district so I can finally file my taxes! Ooohoo! Man do I hope I get some decent money back this year.

Tonight is my first night teaching straight through without being able to have dinner with Peter. I did manage to do a half hour at the gym before lifting weights with my trainer for another half hour. Peter's verdict on tonight's roast crock pot dinner was "tasted good", "potatoes could have been cut into smaller pieces to cook a little better", "needed some salt/pepper/some flavoring", "too much broth left over when it got time to make the gravy", and "i wished for some sort of sauerkraut in it". Over all I guess that's not too bad of a review for the first crock pot meal.

I'm still at work right now and it's 9:25 PM. Ugh. I'd forgotten how long it takes beginning students to master some of the basic tasks with computers. I had anticipated it only taking them an hour to take a pretest and training session on some Microsoft Word basics, but as I write this, I still have one student plugging along 2 hours later. I don't want to rush them, but I sure wish I was home right now. I guess I got spoiled by last semester when I was able to leave earlier because I only had one student.

Yea! It looks like she is on the last one. Phew time to pack up and go home.

A pink external hard drive!

A rainy Sunday

My Mom graduated with her Doctorate degree today in Educational Leadership. Peter, Dad, and myself went to watch her graduate. There was a lot of people graduating even though this was a winter graduation and only those receiving their Masters and Doctorate degrees so the whole process took a while. This is the first time I've had an opportunity to watch my Mom graduate. She finished her Masters degree while I was in high school (or maybe it was middle school, I'm not too sure) but it was through a distance learning program, so she didn't get the opportunity to go all the way out to the west coast to attend graduation.

Her graduation went off without a hitch, and I even managed to get up close by the stage to get what would have been some great photos, but two things went wrong: #1. My digi camera has a massive delay. As in click the shutter button, and wait, no wait, no wait, OK, now I took the photo!, and #2. I was so excited for my Mom my hands couldn't stop shaking so they were massively blurry. I did manage to yell "Go Mom!" and heard me and looked really happy.

Throughout the graduation, Dad and I were "arguing" about where we should go to lunch. I love my Dad, but he is so old man grouchy. At 70, he is pretty set in his ways, and wants to do things a certain way. He originally wanted to go to the Iron Hill Brewery right across the street from where graduation was, but it was totally booked up. So I spent the graduation text messaging Google (did you know you can do that? Just text the number "46645" from your mobile phone with the name of the place, the city, and state, and really quickly Google texts you back with the address and phone number of the place - I have unlimited messaging though, if you don't your carriers costs per text will apply) and trying to find a place for us to eat. Well we ended up deciding on Italian Bistro, which is about halfway between the graduation center and our home.

After graduation, we drove to Italian Bistro, Peter and myself pulled up and this is what we saw. Through the rain, a very, very, empty looking Italian Bistro. There were no cars in the parking lot, and it was decidedly deserted looking. We also noticed that the sign they had out front was still advertising a New Year's Eve buffet. Hmmm....We're wondering, did it close? So once Mom and Dad pulled up, because I couldn't get a hold of Mom on her cell because she never turns it on, we gave Dad the bad news that we had to keep driving until lunch. We ended up going to another Iron Hill Brewery.

Lunch was really good. Mom loved her gifts and her Mimosa. She looked incredibly happy to discover the restaurant did in fact make mixed drinks, lol.

I'm in the same doctorate program right now, and am currently in class 3. I have about 2.5 years to go. I've been feeling rather apprehensive about the whole process because there seem to be so many obstacles to enjoying the process right now.

The first is that I have to drive an hour each way to class each week. There's a pro and a con with that. The pro is that it means I get to see my Mom pretty much every week because the college campus is across the street from where Mom works. We almost always have dinner together. That's really nice, because a couple of years ago, we'd go weeks and even a month at a time without seeing one another because of schedules, etc... The con is that I have to drive an hour each way. The hour down at 3 PM in the afternoon isn't so bad, but the hour back, when my teacher lets us out, almost always 9:30 PM or later, is definitely bad. I'm always exhausted and it's hard to make it home safely.

The second obstacle is the fact that I'm essentially working a second job to help pay for the degree. I've been teaching night classes since September on Monday and Wednesday nights. In the fall it wasn't so bad because I could still eat dinner with Peter before hand as class started at 7:30, but now my class starts at 5:30 and runs til 9:30 so there won't be time for that now. I'm so sad right now thinking about that. That means between teaching Monday night, class Tuesday night, and teaching Wednesday night, I won't be eating dinner with Peter until Thursday night.

I've always been busy, ever since I enrolled myself in college while still in high school. I've constantly pushed myself to the max. I'm not sure if that is because I wanted to prove I could do something, or because I simply like to be busy, but lately, I'm really feeling the strain. I actually miss the opportunity to be able to clean my house. Peter has been keeping things up and running and our house is so nice. There's been the running joke that the house is so clean because I'm not home to mess it up, which I guess is true, but it's sad as well.

I just thought of the fact that I'm not going to eat dinner Mon-Wed with Peter this week and I have no idea what he is going to eat for dinner. I'm searching All Recipes right now for something for him to eat tomorrow. Right now I"m checking out the Roasts because I have one in the freezer. I ended up finding a decent looking roast recipe from About.com and have browned the beef roast meet, and chopped up that potatoes and carrots so all I have to do tomorrow is toss it all in the crock pot.

Peter took a ton of photos, goofy and serious, at Mom's graduation today. I'm so glad, because sometimes I have a tendancy to just take serious photos. I'm off to do some scrapping. I haven't done that in ages!

Tofu Shmofu

Bleh. I'm not loving Tofu right now. I was super proud of myself after last night's adventure to the supermarket to pick up all organic veggies for salads, as well as a new snack called "Tofu-To-Go". Well that stuff is truely nasty. I'm not sure if it is because I just don't like tofu, or if it was that particular flavor, but it was gross. Yuck. Gross. Ok, moving on.

In my quest to take better care of myself, I worked out with my trainer last night, had a big salad with dinner, passed on dessert because I wasn't hungry, and got up early enough today to make myself breakfast without rushing. I even made myself a salad with that Tofu stuff. But I barely managed to eat half of it... EWWW!

So right now I'm drinking a vitamin water and thinking about dinner, lol. What I need to be thinking about is statistics, so my goal is to spend the next 2.5 hours until 2:30 studying. I would like to take my quiz first thing tomorrow before we go to the gym but I need to study some more first.

Another good quote...

"Modern life is remarkable, but we’re still human beings with basic human needs. We need real community. We need satisfying and compelling work. We need health, play, love, and companionship. A century of remarkable technological advances can’t undo the millions of years of evolution that have made us who we are, and to pretend otherwise is to do ourselves a huge disservice." - Moby, musician.

I think I need to remember this. Sometimes I get so caught up in all the techie things that I forget to live "off-line". (As I say this, I'm surfing the internet and watching TV, alone. - I know, I'm a contradiction, but at least I'm thinking about the situation, right?)

So I'm surfing the net while watching episodes of General Hospital that I've recorded on the Replay TV. I keep finding these neat sites... the first I found is: Secret Agent Josephine . She's this really talented freelance artist, with links to all kinds of cool sites. One of the first I found of her site is Illustration Friday. It reminds me of a website that I always see digi scrappers talking about, Self-Portrait Tuesday. This week's theme for Illustration Friday (well I guess it is the theme for this past week) is cats. I'm going to work on a scrapbook page of my two favorite kitties, Jasper & Jasmine.

One last thought for the night: "Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality"- Ralph Marston

A rainy Monday

Today was overall a really good day...I feel like I got a lot accomplished today. I was nominated by a colleague to be our school districts' technology instructor of the year. It was a really awesome and welcome surprise. I get to go to a celebration dinner on February 21 (and I get to bring along Peter!), as well as attend and exhibit at a technology showcase in April. The association that sponsors the showcase is having a two day conference in April, which I plan on attending, and I even decided to put in a proposal to do a 45 minute workshop on using Blackboard while instructing. I've never put in a proposal before, but I just held my breath and submitted it. Hey, what's the worst that could happen?

I graded a whole stack of papers from my senior class today immediately after they left. I even entered them in our online gradebook and have them ready to give back tomorrow. This is the second day in a row that I have done that. Felt really good to do that. I'm desperately trying to stay on top of things with grading this semester. My juniors took a computer test today (an excel test which they submitted through Blackboard) and I need to look at those still.

I met with my current instructor in my doctorate program to talk about my progress thus far. I was really kind of nervous about going because I really felt like she didn't like me all that much. But the meeting went surprisingly well. We actually have some interests in common. I never would have seen that coming. I've taken notes for all of Chapter 7 in my reading to prepare for my Stats quiz. 5 more chapters to go. I'd like to get the reading done by Thursday night so I can take the quiz Friday afternoon. It's an online quiz due Saturday by midnight. I'm practicing the examples as I go along. I think I have z scores figured out. Next is T- Scores.

I took a power nap on the couch this evening with my head in Peter's lap while he watched tv. He's so sweet for letting me do that. My stuffed animal, a.k.a. Mr. Kitty, kept me company as well (ok to be fair, he didn't have an option because of my power grip on him, but he didn't try to get up, so it must not have been that bad).

I found some neat scrap papers online last night. I discovered the Digital Scrapbook Place online last night. They had some pretty awesome freebies which I downloaded last night and plan on playing with tonight or tomorrow sometime. I really want to scrap our New Year's and CES trip before Valentine's Day is upon us and I get farther behind. My Mom graduates with her doctorate this weekend, which means even more picture taking opportunities.

Off to read some blogs!

A really nice weekend...

Peter and I have been together non-stop since Friday afternoon. That may sound silly, since we do live together, but because of my hugely busy schedule, its been a while since we've spent massive amounts of time together. After work on Friday, we had "date night" and went to see the new Underworld II movie and had dinner at Cafe Riviera. It's the cutest, hole in the wall, pizza place inside of the Concord Mall. Last summer, we went there nearly every single Tuesday because they had all you can eat pizza (of which I usually only manage two pieces) and a movie for like $8 a person. Now that I'm in the doctorate program, and my classes are on Tuesday nights, that pretty much eliminates that option for this summer, which makes me sad, unless they happen to change the day of the week.

So anyway, yesterday we spent the day up at the King of Prussia Mall, after having lunch at the Concordville Hooters. Yes, I said Hooters. I know that most women hate Hooters, but it's not that bad I guess. The food is actually pretty good, and it's always amusing to watch the guys leer at the women in their skimpy shorts and tight shirts with massive amounts of cleavage. I had a really good hot dog, a.k.a. "Gourmet Hot Dog", and Peter had some kind of sandwich that he usually gets with their chicken sauce. There was this guy there, father I"m assuming, with 4 young boys, had to be pre-teen, and those boys looked thrilled! LOL. I told Peter that when we have kids one day, there is no one he is going to be "that father". He laughed and said he would definitely bring them. I asked him what would happen when all their mothers found out? He responded that if they wanted to go again, they wouldn't tell. Grrreeeaaattt. Good thing we are a long way off from children, lol.

Last night we saw The Matador. I was totally unaware as to what we were going to see, since Peter refused to fess up, but he seemed to know I'd like it. Even if that was simply because Pierce Brosnan was in it (which is true, but that's besides the point!). I really enjoyed it. It was a funny movie about a hit man losing his touch who runs into this salesman who can't seem to catch a deal. Really really good movie.

Today, I'm studying. Well at least that's what I'm supposed to be doing. Instead I'm drinking coffee (more Cupid's Kiss coffee, yum!), listening to XM Radio online, and blogging. I just can't seem to get focused. I've made a list of everything I need to do, but I want to do everything but that. Hmm, well, coffee's all gone. Time to decide whether I want more or not!

On a mission

I'm on a mission to find a way for Peter and myself to have yummier and healthier dinners. I'm gone a lot during the week between teaching night school and going to graduate school. We only have time for dinner together on Monday, Thursday, and Friday nights (the weekends too, but we usually go out on those). We have ended up having these rushed meals lately. Ones that I don't think either of us like. I really want, no need, us to eat healthy as well. It's really no secret to most that know me that I have struggled with my weight most of my life. I was always above average growing up, and then lost mega amounts of weight last year. I've kept most of it off for over a year, but I'm about 10 pounds over where I want to be right now. My downfall seems to always be dinner and snacking. So, I figure by finding some good recipes that we both like, I'll be able to solve the dinner problem. The snacks problem isn't so much of an issue provided I have some healthy options.

I also want to find a way to make Peter something yummy to eat on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I'm teaching a longer night class this upcoming semester, so I won't be able to make him dinners. I'm trying to come up with some recipes that I can put together on the weekends that he can either assemble or just put in the oven on those nights. It just suddenly occurred to me that the crockpot might be a good option for those nights...Then he could just serve himself something up out of that. Ok, well I'm going to try that this week. Let's see what recipes I can find.

I did a quick search on All Recipes, and found Tuesday night's recipe, a yummy looking Chili Recipe:

This looks easy to make, doesn't it? I'm going to keep hunting for Wednesday night's recipe...

Finally made some new digital layouts

I finally made a new layout tonight. It's been ages since I actually found the time to sit down and scrap. I really love scrapping digitally because there is absolutely no mess! Sometimes, though, I find myself doing more reading about Scrapping then actually scrapping! The first layout was created used Photoshop Elements 4 and Shabby Princess' free Urban Kiwi Kit. I really loved the greens in this photo that Peter took of me and I think the digi elements compliment it nicely. The second layout is of our first day at the convention. I used Gina Miller's Fab Freebie mini kit. I absolutely love the colors in this kit! It's funny, it looks like this layout is more complicated than the first, but it litterally took me like 15 minutes to complete. It would have been faster if I hadn't fiddled with the font so much. This kit rocks, Gina! I'm still working on another layout, but I'm getting tired, so I figure I will go ahead and post these two.

 

Conquering my Clutter

So I have a problem with clutter. I'd like to say that it is a small problem, but it is a major problem. I am a major pack rat in all areas of my life. I have this book that I purchased last year, or maybe the year before that called "Sink Reflections" by Marla Cilley. I had skimmed through it in the past, but never really read it, but I've decided to try reading it again, and thoroughly this time. Right now I'm working on one of the tasks where you are supposed to set your timer for 15 minutes and working on decluttering as much as you can in one spot and then stop. I've decided to work 15 minutes on and 15 minutes off. Which is why I'm typing right now, because I'm on the 15 mins. off portion. I got an amazingly large amount of decluttering done in my first 15 minutes. Almost the entire window sill which is where all the magazines, bills, and junk mail collect is sorted through and either tossed or sorted into relevant piles on the dining room table. I need to find a spot to put these piles though. I've made a magazine pile, a money related items pile (bills, financial records, etc...), a person pile (pictures, stationary, etc...), a books pile, and a coupon pile.

Once I finish the rest of window sill, I'm going to tackle one shelf of our built in. The build in is this IKEA system that we found about 6 months after moving in. We designed it ourselves in terms of what components we wanted to use and it really fits well in our dining room. However, it quickly became a repository for junk. I think it would be a fantastic organization system if only I could clean it out first. I'm going to work on starting the cleaning tonight. Peter and I had a nice, lazy day today. We had lunch at Mrs. Robinos, a fantastic local restaurant that we go to every so often and then spent the afternoon going to a couple of stores and reading at our Barnes and Noble. We even picked up a small bag of coffee called "Cupid's Kiss" (how cute!) that smells fantastic! I plan on brewing some first thing tomorrow morning before going to my study group meeting for my doctorate program.

Oh the beeper just went off, which means I have about 45 seconds left until I begin cleaning again. Back to decluttering!

On tap for today...

Today is the last day of the 2nd semester in my school district so I kind of have a lot going on. Not with students per se, but mostly in preparation for the next semester. I decided to totally clean out my room and am starting a project with some of my boards. I have two large white boards and and have some little chalkboards around that I don't use for anything, so I've decided to paint them with some inspirational quotes. I posted on TwoPeas about it, and one lady recommended using water soluable paints so that it will be smooth and I could still use it, but could wash it off later if necessary. I'm going to head to AC Moore later to get some of those. Some quotes I'm thinking about using are

"Well begun is half done" - Aristotle, quoting an old proverb

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Money’s a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. " - Henry James

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. " - Booker T. Washington

I haven't decided whether or not I'm just going to use the paints or if there might be some type of spray that I could use on the chalk to make it stick....

Some things I'm lovin' today...

Tea...I have an on-again, off-again relationship with tea. I'm definitely a coffee drinker, and a devoted Starbucks one at that. As far as tea goes, I've really only liked it when it was honey with a little bit of tea, lol. However, as part of my new year's resolution to try new things (at least once), I'm giving tea another go. I picked up several of these packets of Tazo tea, this one's called "Joy" when Starbucks was giving away free drinks at the King of Prussia over the holidays. It's fantastic! I have a Melitta Coffee pod maker that I use in my office, and if I leave the pod out, but brew a cup, just hot water comes out. So I plopped the tea bag in my mug, pushed the large cup button, and voila! Hot tea! And in an effort to continue my never-ending quest to leading a more healthy lifestyle, I only sweetened it with a couple of tablespoons of Splenda. I loved it! Even ended up having two. I don't have any more, so I'm going to have to pick up a couple. I'm not sure who carries it (outside of Starbucks) but I want to see if our Acme might.

Vera Bradley...Now I really don't need an excuse to go buy more Vera. I don't own very much, but I really do love the prints. The quilting on the bags reminds me of some things my Mommom used to make. My co-worker and I were working on a project today that is coming to an end, one that I've been somewhat stressing out about. She was really sweet and totally helped me put things together, so I wanted to pick her up something as a thank you, and decided on the Petal Pink coin purse for her and the same mini coin purse for me, but in my new favorite color of Java Blue. I so love this new brown/blue combination. I'm got extremely close to picking up the new laptop bag as well. Tell me that isn't adorable?! Peter cracked me up tonight, because after I told him I was looking at bags and asked him "Guess what new kind of bag they have?" he guessed it on the first try! There was something cute/freaky about that. He swears he didn't look at the web page (in kind of a "What guy looks at the Vera Bradley web page?" kind of way), but it was just odd that he came up with the exact bag on the first try, lol. I love that he knows me that well though. I might still go back and get it, I haven't decided....

Tracy Miller's Photo Tiles... These are adorable! Check them out and see ordering information here. I'm definitely ordering one of these. I'm going to go through all of our recent pictures and see if any would look really nice converted to black and white. I'm thinking one of our silly self-portraits together would look cute. I'd love that as a necklace.

Apple MacBook Pro... Oh my gosh, I WANT one of these! This new Apple is absolutely beautiful! I haven't used my Mac PowerBook in ages, mainly because Miss Kitty a.k.a. Jasmine chewed her way through my power cable in September or so and I've been too cheap to get another one despite the fact that I can get an educational discount. I have 3 other computers (Apple tangerine iBook, HP Tablet PC, and my current selection, an IBM (Lenovo) X41 Tablet. But I really did love using my Apple.

The main reason I'd like to get this new Apple is because with the new Intel chips, it would actually be fast enough to run a PC Emulator with Office. It use to take FOREVER to start-up. Peter just told me this evening that out of the box Windows will run on these new Macs! Can you believe it? Windows on a Mac? He told me that there needs to be drivers though, but it probably won't be long until those are written. I agree with him that it's probably not a good idea to get a first gen one as there will no doubt be a ton of bugs that need to be worked out.

New Vera Bradley color!

Home again and busy already

I can't believe the 4 days in Las Vegas went by so quickly! Some highlights: 1 AM dinner/snack the night we arrived at the "Little John's" snack bar, that I quickly dubbed, "Little P*I*M*P's", lol, waiting for the shuttle to arrive in the mornings to take us to our desired destination (the main convention center or the Sands convention hall), only to have the shuttle we don't need come over and over again, seeing more new technology in one place than ever before - my favorite- the new Palm Treo 700 (YEA!- Windows operating system! BOO!-Verizon's price gouging on data plans), watching the Bacon Brothers in concert LIVE (Kevin (the actor) & Michael) from the XM area and taking lots of pictures (to be posted soon!), attending the ScanDisk Breakfast for educators, checking out Microsoft's techie house (I can not remember what this is called! anyone?), riding the Monorail, visiting more hotels than I can count in between shopping, getting some cool techie girl gear from CES, saving a billion of receipts for my school district for reimbursement, and watching the Tournament of Kings dinner show, it was a busy couple of days!

I really didn't log on much while I was away. I lugged my computer all the way to Vegas, only to use it for about 2 hours going out, an hour in the Vegas airport ( because they have free WiFi), and about 2 hours going home. I don't think I'm lugging it next year.

Now that I'm home it seems like there are a million and one things to do. I was really spoiled last week by the fact that I only worked 2 days. Prior to that I had been on winter break from teaching, so it really hadn't felt like school had started again. It sure does now, though! Today it was back to work teaching high school, back to my trainer at the gym (and groaning about how much I ate on vacay), back to teaching night school twice a week, and back to going to school for me - my doctorate classes start up again tomorrow night. I'm wasting time writting right now when I should be reading for tomorrow. But seriously. Writing OR reading about statistics. Writing OR reading about statistics. No choice there, right? lol.

My students had a pizza delivery today from their fundraiser last month. This is the first time I've done one of those in a while. The company sent too many of the calzones (philly cheesesteak style) so I ended up getting 3 boxes to take home for free. Peter and I had one a piece for dinner tonight, and thought they were pretty good. Only 22 more to go. At least they are in the freezer. I figure they will be nice quick meals for nights when I'm teaching or going to class, or even for Peter to take for lunch since they can be microwaved.

Two of my magazines came in the mail today. I love getting magazines! Last birthday, Peter had ordered me Red Book, InStyle, Vanity Fair, and Cosmopolitan. He added Lucky and MarieClaire to the mix this year, so I'm going to be getting 6 mags a month. Whoohoo!! RedBook and Vanity Fair came in today, so I'm going to be doing some serious reading in bed later tonight. He is such a sweetie. He knows how much I love reading magazines but am way to cheap to ever order any for myself so I end up reading them for free at the Borders or Barnes and Noble. This way I can curl up at home and read them without being glared at by staff.

I also got some literature about my Czech classes in the mail. Those start up again soon, too, I think the last weekend of this month, I have to check their website again. I really did enjoy going to those, even if I didn't learn all that much. To be honest, that was because I didn't study all that much. I'm seriously putting in more effort this semester.

Wow, I'm zoning out. My coffee mug is almost empty (a vanilla bistro pod for the Melitta coffee maker), and I really don't think I should have any more because this is like cup 3.5 for the day. Ok, I'm going to focus now and work on some doctorate stuff. Well, I'm going to "try".

Leaving for Las Vegas- CES here we come!

Today we are leaving for Las Vegas! Ooohoo! We are attending the CES technology conference. I haven't been before. Peter went back in 2004 (just for one night- he flew out went to the show and flew back the next day), but this year we get together.We are staying at a hotel called Excalibur. I think it's kind of neat looking- sort of like a LEGO Castle. Our flight out leaves tonight just passed 8 PM and gets in way late. I packed last night, with only two bags. I think Peter is a little annoyed about the two, but hey, I girl's got to have "products" (hair stuff, make-up, jewelry, etc...), right?

I'm bringing my laptop, with the intent to actually do some reading of student work, grading, and reading for my doctorate program, but something tells me I'm just going to end up scrapping my digi pictures! That's way more fun anyway. I'm going to check out some digi designers this afternoon to see if there is anything new worth downloading. I also brought some chicky romance books, so between my laptop, mp3 player, Nintendo DS (with my current favorite game- a Mario/Luigi game- time travelers (or something like that), and chicky books, I'm all set. I desperately tried to fit my PowerPuff girls blanket in my carry on bag because I hate those itchy airplane blankets, but to no avail, it had to come out to fit the rest of my stuff. Humph.

I'm not sure if I will be able to upload pics while I'm away, but definitely will blog along the way, even if I just upload everything all at once when we get back.