March 2006 - Posts
This morning's wake-up call...
"Be exceptional. Make tremendous efforts to be extraordinary. What a privilege to be here on the planet to contribute your unique donation to humankind. Just make sure you do so." -
Shelby Lynne (from the side of my Starbucks mug this morning.
I'm listening to Joss Stone this morning as I'm getting ready to motivate myself to work on my "Being Exposed to Diversity". It's due today so I better hurry up, lol. I won't have any classes today with the exception of my 5th period senior academy class. They are practicing creating web pages, because they are going to be making an Electronic Career Portfolio. I made them Reeses Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies this morning as a treat for coming to school on the DSTP days - even though it's not required as they are co-op students (ok - made might be a stretch - but I did break that little cookie dough squares of the block and plopped it on the cookie tray).
I can't figure out why I can't get my Insert Picture from Flickr to work from BlogJet while I am at work. I keep getting this message: "Error: Socket Error #10060 Connection timed out."
My temporary way around this is to go to Flickr and choose the photo I want, then pick the appropriate size and paste the code into BlogJet.. However, b/c I'm extremely limited in my code knowledge, I don't know how to make the text wrap, hence the picture is at the top of my post, with the text below it. Grr. I've e-mailed our text support guy to see if I can find a port that will let me in. Hopefully he'll have some advice.
Ok, need to motivate myself now. Byebye BlogJet..
This weekend has felt like it was a lot longer than it was. Let's recap:
Friday night: Kildare's Irish pub for dinner - so many people! Had a great dinner, didn't have to wait too long, even if we did have to pay a $5 cover each - that stunk. Why do you have to pay cover if you are going for dinner any way? One of my favorite parts of dinner was the cheese plate - yummy! Isn't it fantastic looking?After dinner, we saw the V for Vendetta movie on the iMax - I really enjoyed it, even if I did think it was a little weird.
Saturday: Lunch was at Quiznos with dessert and Cold Stone Creamery. I so do not need to be eating that stuff (Cold Stone, that is, lol) but it was very very worth it. My "creation" was called "Cookie Mintster" and was so good. We stopped by Costco and picked up some Apple Streudel bread that they haven't carried in ages, and I found the cutest cropped gym pants. I also had some photos enlarged of my students to hang up in my classroom, and got those too. We stopped by the mall, and I ventured into Yankee Candle. I got this close to picking up a tart warmer and some tarts, but the tart warmers that were on the cheaper side were so ugly. More on this later.
Peter and I drove down to Dover and had dinner with my parents at this Mexican restaurant they like and then we dropped Daffodils off at my Mommom's grave. Before we got home, we stopped by A.C. Moore, and get this, I found a cute tart warmer, with apples no less - very teacherish! - for $3.99. I also picked up several tarts. Apple Vanilla, Pink Lemonade, Berry Cinnamon, Hazelnut Coffee, and Fresh Linen. Granted, they were cute flower shaped tarts like the ones at Yankee, but they were also two rectangles of a scent for $1. I'm burning the Pink Lemonade right now, and it smells really good! There are certain things that I won't go generic in - purses and soda for example. But for candles? As long as it's safe and smells nice, then it's generic all the way baby!
Sunday: Went to the gym first thing this morning, was pretty proud of myself about that. 45 minutes on the Elliptical machine. Then I went to church as part of an assignment for my doctorate class. I was supposed to attend some type of cultural function that was different from what I am used to. The church was definitely something different from what I am used to (it was a Baptist church, technically, I'm Catholic - but I don't go to church all that much), but I enjoyed it. Now I need to write a paper about it. I wish I could say that is happening tonight, but I'm not feeling real studious at the moment, lol.
I scrapped two pages this week too:
Credits: Papers are from Gina Miller's Finger Painting kit. Flower is from her Dew Drop kit.
Credits: Papers and elements are from Heather Ann Melzer's "Lucky" kit.
Tomorrow's Plans: I've been thinking about getting up early to go to the gym before work. But then I thought about the fact that I can get an additional 45 mins. of sleep so I decided to scratch that thought, lol. If I make sure to leave work at 3, I can be at the gym by 3:10, and if I change before I leave work, I won't have to waste time changing at the gym, and can get a 50 minute work out in before I lift weights with my trainer at 4. If I were to go to the gym before work, then I'd only be able to work out for like 35 mins. before anyway.
Tomorrow also starts me being really serious about watching what I eat again. I'm mostly happy with my weight/size, but I do have on major goal for the spring/summer: to sport a pair of size 0 skinny cropped jeans from the Gap. I can't find a pic of them online right now, but they are super cute. I figure I have about 10-15 or so pounds that I'd like to lose, so I'm going to start keeping a food journal again, that really seems to help. Time to kick my cat out of lap, because my legs are asleep!
So far St. Patty's day has been great! My day started off proctoring for the DSTP again which although a bit boring, wasn't too bad. I'm feeling lucky for a couple of reasons: First, Peter and I had a traditional Irish lunch at A Taste of Ireland in Newark. That's lucky because we rarely get the opportunity to have lunch together. I had Shepherd's Pie and Peter had some kind of corned beef and potatoes dish. Both were really tasty! Makes me want to start looking for recipes to make Shepherd's Pie at home. (Until I think about how many calories must be in it) There was a lot of people there too, along with a guy playing bag pipes. Great atmosphere, good times.No drinking just yet, lol, but we do plan on having some Irish beer later tonight.
The second reason I'm feeling lucky is that despite us running over on how long we were out to lunch, I managed to get home before the Sears service person came to fix our dryer - again. It looks like it may be fixed this time - I sure hope so. It is getting mega expensive taking our laundry to get it done. $1 a pound adds up. I can't believe I'm actually looking forward to doing laundry again, not that I ever do it all that much. Peter always does it for us - ever since I turned some of his things pink back in 2001. LOL. So much for me being the perfect homemaker.
I'm looking forward to scrapping some this weekend as well. I plan on taking a bunch of St. Patrick's day pics and want to use the papers and elements from Heather Ann Melzer's latest freebie "Lucky". It is so cute! (The element at the beginning of this post is from it). I found out about some other cute freebies in some of blog feeds today. Ashley Olsen has a cute paper pack freebie and Carrie Stephens has a kit with gorgeous colors - Truly Delightful. Don't forget to leave some blog love if you decide to download!
Right now I'm burning one of my favorite harvest candles. Every scrapper I read seems to be on the Yankee Candle Tart band wagon right now - most recently I've read about these yummy sounding tarts in Gina's and Amy Edwards' blogs. I'm so ready to hop on that band wagon myself. I need to find a tart burner first though. I like the idea of battery operated ones. Then I could have one in my office at work.
In about 30 mins., I'm heading over to pick up Peter and we're going up to King of Prussia. I hope we will have some time to stop by the mall - I'd like to check out Sanrio (a.k.a. Hello Kitty's House) and maybe take a look at some new Coach shoes. We're going to have dinner at Kildare's and then we are going to see a new movie - V for Vendetta in the iMax theater. Sounds like a perfect St. Patrick's Day to me!
I just realized that my subject sounds rather whiny, and I don't feel whiny, truly I don't. But, I am tired. Yesterday before going to my doctorate class. I crashed on the couch in my Mom's office for like an hour. Today after work I crashed on Peter's couch in his office for 30 minutes before going to work out. I did manage to work out though, so I don't feel like a "total" bum. I lifted well, but was exhausted afterwards.
Then, in the locker room, it happened. I got one of my foot cramps. I'm somewhat famous in my household for these. It's the worst experience ever. Almost always happens in my left foot, but occasionally in my right. It's like the worst pain you have ever experienced in your foot. My whole foot clenches up and it hurts like heck. I haven't had one in a while, over a month I guess, so I thought they might be gone, but not tonight!
I'm not really sure why these happen. I've read that it can have to do with potassium levels, but I just eaten a banana. In general, though, I have a large problem drinking enough water throughout the day. Now that I think about it, I didn't drink anything really in the morning, with the exception of like 8 oz. of OJ, half a Coke Zero at lunch, and then a water bottle while at the gym. So maybe that's why it happened. I just drank a Mountain Dew a few moments ago in night school. That's liquid, right? That brings my liquid intake to like 20 some ounces of something. That's good, right? Ok, I know it's not. Grr. I need to find a way to get better about this. I'm like a camel I guess, I just don't get thirsty. Or when I do, if I don't think about it, it goes away so I don't bother with it. I'm going to make myself work on it though because those foot cramps are NO fun.
Tomorrow starts DSTP testing for all students in the state of Delaware. I will be helping proctor the exam with two other instructors, I don't know one of them and the other is a very good friend, so I'm actually looking forward to the experience. Because of our changing schedules, I won't have any students tomorrow, so I intend on getting some serious grading done.
I'm still at work and it's 8:48 PM. I actually don't mind this evening, though, because I had a long conversation with a student whom I know has been struggling and I feel a lot better about the situation now.
I got a new Vanity Fair in the mail today. Cool article about Teri Hatcher. Go check out this video of Teri Hatcher's photo shoot.
9:41 PM
Finally home. Yes. On the couch with my fat cat, Jasper. Oh, and Peter too, lol. Who's attempting to reinstall Pocket Breeze on my phone again. It spontaneously reset itself for some reason so I had to reinstall everything. But Peter let his computer run out of battery, lol, so hopefully it's not totally not screwed up. I must find a backup solution ASAP!
It's definitely been a scrapping kind of day! It's felt like ages since I've actually scrapped something, but somewhere between all my TV watching today - I watched a ton of "In Justice" shows, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate SG1 (yes I like SciFi) - I managed to get three pages done! I was going to be done for the evening, because I have some grading that I want to do, but my school's Blackboard connection doesn't appear to be working, so I just might have to scrap some more. Shucks. LOL.
"Turning 71" Credits: All elements and papers are from Gina Miller's Dew Drop kit.
"Valentine's Day 2006" Credits: All elements and papers are from Holli Dunn's Strawberry Shortcake kit.
"A mild obsession": Credits: Most elements and papers are from Gina Miller's Spring Thaw kit. Pink flowers, white buttons, and white bows are from Heather Ann Melzer's Spring Flowers Mini Kit.
It's 11:25 AM and I'm in the middle of making Peter's breakfast. It's sad that he's going to eat so late today, but I was lazy getting up (the result of taking Nyquil before bed, ugh) and then we did our weekly grocery shopping at the Acme....so I'm still making breakfast right now. Oops.
Yesterday was a fun day. We had yummy burgers at Five Guys, and then visited a little store called, grr, I can't remember what, but there I picked up some cute Easter decorations for the house. Peter also got us a painting done by a local artist of Jessop's Tavern. We celebrated my 20th birthday there back in 2001. We drove down to Rehoboth Beach and checked out a few outlet stores. I picked up two new Puma shirts for $10 a piece that I really like - new work out clothes. We had dinner with Mom (not Dad because he decided he didn't feel like waiting for us to get there to eat, lol) and then crashed at home.
Back to the french toast making. Peter always cracks me up. He's playing a new xBox game in the living room, Burn out something or other and every so often he'll come to the kitchen for a new piece of french toast that he insists I just shove in his mouth for him to munch on. No waiting for the whole batch for this guy. Oh, he's crazy but I love 'em anyway. I'm currently enjoying a Gevalia signature blend coffee pod from our Tassimo machine. I love that machine - makes the best coffee. I picked up two new International House creamers at the Acme today - Amaretto and Irish Creme (in honor of St. Patty of course!) and tried out the Amaretto today - yummy! I'm on cup #2. Something tells me there will be a 3, lol. I'm also trying out a new South Beach meal for breakfast. I don't follow the South Beach diet plan, but I do like their frozen dinners and lunchables items. This one is a breakfast roll-up.
Update: that roll was tasty! Back to blog reading...
I spent about an hour in the gym this evening, 30 minutes on the Elliptical trainer and 30 minutes lifting weights with my trainer. I don't have too many more sessions with him. Mom has been super nice helping me out paying for that, but it is definitely not cheap. I think there are around six sessions left. The coolest transformation, I think, is that I actually have arm muscles. I feel so buff - but in a girly sort of way of course.
I found out today that I've been accepted as a presenter at the DCET conference that takes place next month. My school district nominated me to be the district's technology educator of the year, and I got to attend a dinner a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to be presented a course called "Blackboard 101".
Here's the description: "Have you thought about using Blackboard-an online course management system? In this session, you will learn how to create our first course in Blackboard. See how easy it is to upload important course documents, post daily announcements, as well as manage assignments and grades. Integrate and simplify effortlessly with Blackboard." Pretty catchy, huh? I can't talk all the credit though, because my sweetie Peter helped me come up with it.
I'll be presenting on April 6, so that gives me about a month to figure out how I want to present the material - this is my first presentation as an official conference "presenter", so I'm pretty excited.
Interesting. I'd be interested in seeing what they charge.
The funny thing about this article was that Google's plans were actually discovered by a blogger. He/She discovered some notes in a slide show presentation published on Google's site after the executives' presentation.
Schmidt, a Chief Exec, said that his goal was for Google to store "100 percent" of consumer information. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm all for online storage, in fact I rely on Blackboard and our district's intranet to store tons of info. that I don't want to bog down my hard drive with. But 100% of my data entirely housed by Google? I don't think so. But still, it's an interesting concept. Let's see how much it is though.
Wow, have I been busy! It's been exactly 14 days since my last post. Man, am I a slacker! :)
I have not scrapped one single, solitary thing lately.
So, what's been going on? On the 23rd and 24th, my students and I (along with 3 other chaperones) went to our BPA State competition. This is a business organization where students get to compete against other students in various computer/business-related competitions. Long story short, there was a bit of excitement - I ended up spending the night in the hospital with a sick student and two students ending up placing for the nationals competition! Ohhhoo! Yea!
I also found out today that myself and the other Business teacher will be able to take the two students to nationals! Our money worries are solved! This year's nationals competition is in Orlando on the Walt Disney World property! Talk about excited - I'm not sure who's more excited - the kids or the teachers!
I've been attending Czech class for three weeks now. I have an awesome teacher named Lucie that I actually found off the internet. My textbook came in this week, and I've really been working hard at learning my vocabulary. It's actually kind of difficult/fun at the same time.
Saturday was my Dad's Birthday. Mom, Dad, Peter, and I went out to dinner at Maynard's Piano Bar in Middletown. Fantastic atmosphere, great food. My only complaint would be that our table was so long for just the four of us that it felt like we were playing the telephone game to communicate, i.e. "So, Mom, Peter said, now you tell Dad". LOL. We got some really good pictures. Will post those as soon as I've uploaded them.
There's at least 4 things I ought to be doing right now, but I've decided that I'd much prefer to blog as I've been grading all evening, talk about a "responsible" choice, right? :)