ready for the slowdown

at the behest of my mother, i am blogging again! i don't know why, maybe the busy-ness of this week, or maybe my somewhat recent introspective state of mind, but for whatever reason i haven't felt like broadcasting... or i guess it could be that a lot of my other fellow bloggers haven't been doing much posting of their own, and i'm feeling shafted in the reading realm - who knows!

let's see...

on the work front, i have now been given the title i have been trying to avoid all year - graduation project coordinator. somehow, the woman whose job it was to organize this convinced our headmaster to give it to someone else... and that someone was me. greeeeeat. so now i'm the english 4 teacher, the yearbook advisor, the "cross-eyed" club faculty advisor, and the graduation project coordinator. perhaps this is why i'm exhausted all the time. what this will really mean for me, i'm not sure yet as we've never done the graduation project, but who knows what it'll mean for my future at ewa.

on the home front, chloe is growing like a weed, and we're really enjoying hanging out with all the dogs in our gigantic yard. we're having trouble getting the lawn mowed though, so the grass is getting really, really high again. the interior our home isn't done yet (and i'm sure won't be for a while), but we did get some new paint for the living room so it won't look purple anymore, and for the exterior, we bought some azaleas and gardenias to plant around the front and side of the porch. maybe by christmas we'll be ready to have a housewarming party or something :-/ can you tell i'm getting sick of the place not being done?

other than that, the only really exciting things were food-related. i had a craving for daylight donuts (my preference over krispy kreme), and we drove all the way to cary for them... just to find out that unless you go EARLY, they have absolutely nothing left. major bummer. later though, we tried to make up for it by going to humble pie - which was awesome. we started eating outside on the patio, but the deluge from the hurricaine had us all running inside (even though we were under a covering), carrying our plates, silverware, and wine glasses to avoid being drenched. dinner was awesome nonetheless, and andrew and i enjoyed hanging out together.

that's about it. suffice it to say, i'm ready for life to slow down a little.

food for thought

“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.”
~Philippians 2:3

recent (little) renovations

today's blog is a few things we (mostly andrew) have been up to recently...

andrew put some laminate flooring in the office (and it's even almost done!) that looks like real hardwoods.
we got the guest bedroom ready for guests (and even had a few over!)... though we haven't repainted the upstairs yet, so it is still seriously blue with a game of tic-tac-toe on the wall.
andrew replaced the threshold for the kitchen, so the door now opens and closes!
we replaced all the nasty bronze-y chrome-y porch light with some nice aged-brass ones.
andrew has a chair to watch tv in... even if he thinks it's uncomfortable.
we have a fridge (and this one doesn't even have giant scratches or dents in it!)
i have a chair to sit in and read in the corner of the living room... though i have yet to use it.
our mantle has stuff on it.
the heinous "dressing room marquis" fixture is gone from the master bathroom.
the scary, clogged, used-by-hippies shower head has been replaced.
andrew wrote his feelings for me in his peas.
i used "simple machines" to help the tiramisu stand up so that andrew could better eat his portion.
... and oh yeah, as of midnight tonight, we've been married a whole year! woohoo!

tough week

this week at school has been a challenging one for sure. what with senator burr's visit (complete with an hour-long rehearsal on how to file into and sit in the gym), online yearbook ordering links messing up, fundraiser assemblies, student council speeches, and half-days... the weekend cannot return fast enough for me. teaching is a hard job, but it's especially difficult when all of the learning time is taken up with non-learning. my second unit, on medieval literature, was literally cut in half by losing a week of instructional time. this was made even shorter by the fact that the students do not seem to have a clear understanding of what plagiarism entails.
and yes, i did request permission to link to this page!

so rather than failing 85% of my students who didn't seem to understand what paraphrasing means (no, changing every fifth word to another word you found in a thesaurus does not equal paraphrasing.) i decided to make it a "teachable moment" and do a mini-unit on plagiarism. yay... this is my favorite thing to talk about! (not.)

changing my plans meant that i stayed at school for an extra SEVERAL hours last night and didn't actually leave until 6:30ish. andrew went out to get dinner so we could cook together (something we used to do that has fallen by the wayside with our big move), and while on his way home was involved in a pretty major accident. he is fine, but the tank... may have more damage than we'd originally thought. the other 3 cars in the accident were pretty much totaled, and 3 of the people involved were taken to hospitals, while one lady was even cut out of her car using the "jaws of life". andrew has pictures, but they're on his phone, so who knows if they'll make it on here.

there are two redemptive qualities to this week, however:

1. we made an awesome dinner last night, complete with salmon covered in a crab bechamel (fancy word, huh?) sauce that i made from scratch, wild rice, and oven-baked asparagus. yummy! we even popped open a bottle of our honeymoon champaign. why? because we could... and because it needs to be drunk soon.

2. today is a half-day. that means that classes are 45, rather than 90 minutes long, and that if i work it right, i can sneak home early. technically the second half of the day is for either staff training or grading (since interims go out wednesday of next week), but i figure staying late all the time and getting my grading done on my own time can be substituted for sitting around here all afternoon. usually i'm quite good about not disappearing on workdays and actually working, but i think i need a break.

anyone doing anything fun this weekend that we can join in on??

seek first...

"Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They're filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people's lives." -Stephen Covey

i try to take this approach with my students, and i'm so glad that i'm teaching high school again, because i really think they're where my heart lies. middle schoolers are nice kids, but i don't hurt for them the way i do for my high schoolers. these kids just tear at my heartstrings.

but in general, whether dealing with teenagers or just friends, i think this is a pretty good rule to live by.

saturday adventures

so, i thought i'd blog about how awesome and adorable the dogs were yesterday, running around, catching the frisbee, or just being goofy...


but then i got my hair cut! so i thought i'd talk about that...

and i got my eyebrows waxed and thought i'd include that (but don't have a picture of it).

but THEN...

i got another tattoo! woohoo! if you know me, you know i don't do these things lightly, and i think about them for a long time before going through with them. so no, this was not some drunken escapade, it was just about time. so happy anniversary (a few weeks early), hunny!


ps... that's my foot, just so you don't get any crazy ideas.

i got tagged!

jennifer tagged me for this meme (i also have no idea what this means); the rules are that you have to answer each question with only one word, then you tag friends to get them to post it on their blog.

1. Where is your cell phone? floor
2. Your significant other? sleeping
3. Your hair? greasy
4. Your mother? cute
5. Your father? wink
6. Your favorite thing? coffee!
7. Your dream last night? weird
8. Your favorite drink? coffee?
9. Your dream/goal? veterinarian
10. The room you’re in? boxes
11. Your hobby? riding
12. Your fear? failure
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? comfortable
14. What you’re not? sleeping
15. Muffins? yum!
16. One of your wish list items? horse
17. Where you grew up? durham
18. The last thing you did? eat
19. What are you wearing? comfy-pants (it's one word when i say it)
20. Favorite gadget? computer
21. Your pets? cute :-)
22. Your computer? old
23. Your mood? meh
24. Missing someone? nah
25. Your car? dirty
26. Something you’re not wearing? underwear!
27. Favorite store? lowe's
28. Like someone? husband
29. Your favorite color? blue
30. When is the last time you laughed? dinner
31. Last time you cried? yesterday

so ummm... i tag monica and my mom!

calling all teachers

if your school is a normal school and uses ncwise for grades, this will not help you at all. but if your school is silly like mine, and has no grading program for you, or encourages you to use the awful, awful edHelper... i am here with good news!

i was searching for a good (free) online grading program, and i came across engrade. engrade allows you to set up your whole gradebook and calendar online. you can enter classes, weighting of grade types, take attendance, etc. it will print off student progress reports, missing work reports, gradebooks, and even has room for comments. the program has been easy to use (took me about 10 mins to set up two classes), and so far seems stable. i always keep a paper gradebook just in case, but this seems legit.

the even cooler part of this program is that you can give your kids access to a portal for students where they can check their grades, check the assignment calendar, and (if you want) send you messages with grade questions. it could alleviate a lot of the "what's my grade now?" questions that are so obnoxious for us to hear all the time, and when you print off a report, it even shows what category each assignment falls under, and what percentage of the total grade that category represents.

i don't know if this is helpful to any of you, but it gets a mrs. korhonen thumbs-up so far!

landscaping, lifescaping

i am a firm believer that your outlook shapes your life. now, thanks to our cleaned off, cleared out porch, my outlook is that much brighter!

before:

after:though it's kind of hard to tell from these pics, we removed a huge holly bush, as well as several small bushes and a tree from just the front of the house.

we cut trunks and hauled sticks, raked leaves and swept cobwebs, banged mud-dobber nests and cleared the junk from our house. we no longer look like white-trash with several appliances littering our porch! yay! i had to take a moment and bask in the wonderfulness of it.
throughout the day, our trusty companions (brown dog, red dog, and spotted dog) ran around picking up sticks, digging holes, and chasing the ducks halfway across the lake. lillie swam out so far (with her glazed-over-i-can't-hear-you-cause-i'm-chasing-birds expression) that i thought she might become exhausted and sink in the center of the lake. the ducks were hilarious though, they somehow became an organized gaggle (or whatever ducks in a group are) and spread out, each one going a different direction across the lake. it was too funny to watch lillie, huffing along as fast as she could, zig-zagging in all directions and not knowing which duck to follow. after that, she was content to be hosed off for quite a while, and by the time we left for the rodeo, they were all snoozing in their pen.

the rodeo was fun but not as... rowdy as i'd hoped. the bull-riders were good, but the bulls were better, and i was definitely glad no one got seriously injured after watching several of them get raked under the hooves of those giant animals. the biggest casualty seemed to be the lady who got dirt in her eye. we headed over to rachel and mike's apartment-warming party after that and chatted with the crew over there before calling it a night.

i guess it was pretty late when we got home, because we fell right asleep, and we couldn't get out of bed until after noon today. luckily, the cracker barrel is open all day and has coffee. after our breakfast... at 2pm... we headed to see byron's show, give it up, turn it loose, which was a quite entertaining collection of related monologues, a few of which had me nearly rolling in the aisles (it was one where an english teacher was in prison, and i felt like the man was speaking my life with every breath)! we got back, and i sat in my rocking chair on the porch, planning lessons with the dogs, while andrew slept some more. despite the whole lesson planning part, it was a nice afternoon sitting on the porch with the girls while the drizzle began.

hopefully i can keep my positive outlook throughout this week.

if you start it right and end it right, what's in the middle doesn't matter... right?

well i haven't been the super-blogger i could be as of late... mostly because i'm so exhausted by the end of the day that all i want to do is sleep! but let's have a recap of the week... that is... if i can remember what happened past yesterday.

monday - the new week began again - yay for teaching high school! i was sick of staying late all last week, so i came home ON TIME!!! (meaning i left at 4). i decided that it was a good night for sushi, so we made our way out to sushi blues in raleigh. it was an extra-special sushi night because dr. mhoon (allison) and her husband joined us! unfortunately, i didn't take any pictures, but we had a really good time and went home pretty late.

tuesday - i left work late, around quarter to 6, and came home to the hubby. we didn't do much, and i was tired. that's really all i remember.

wednesday - the work week was getting more stressful, but i was doing my best to remain calm (IN A SEA OF CHAOS THAT IS THE SCHOOL!), and i tried to improve my coping skills by returning to yoga for the first time since summer began. i stayed at work until after 5 since it didn't make sense to drive home and then back out to raleigh, and i was lucky enough to get an actual parking space at the gym. i reunited with the gym scale and was pleasantly surprised that it did not tell me i weighed 8 million extra pounds.

i was really psyched to see my teacher and had even double-checked the schedule to make sure she was still on it for this week. she was! and then i got upstairs and thought it was a little odd that the normal crowd wasn't waiting outside the door for her at quarter after - until the monday-night instructor showed up. bummer. i almost left but decided to stay since i'd planned it all week long. it was actually a good class, and though i'm not as strong as i was 3 months ago, i haven't lost as much as i'd feared. i even did pretty well on my splits, though now i'm having trouble moving hahaha. i stayed up late when i got home, reading 1984 in preparation for the quiz i gave thursday.

thursday - i got up late, but rushed around like a crazy person and actually got to work early. i was all ready to go in my room and hide with the lights off (because otherwise people keep coming in and asking me to do things for them, and i can't get anything done), when i saw the 2 students who were at school early and another teacher huddled around a lump in the parking lot. i couldn't resist going over and ogling this:
it was seriously the biggest snapping turtle i've ever seen! sitting right there in the EWA parking lot.
i didn't think to get anything else in the picture as a size-reference, but it was at LEAST 1.5'x1.5' just on the shell. check out those talons, too!
after blinding it with my flash several times, i headed back inside and got my work done in time for students to arrive. thursday went poorly, with most kids completely bombing the reading check (because they hadn't read), the yearbook not going anywhere (because we still have no press passes, cameras, or computers), and a rather non-productive meeting about the senior project (that apparently I ultimately sign off on). i left work discouraged and bedraggled, and i fell asleep on the couch at 9pm.

yesterday - school didn't improve too much. one of my students copped and attitude, and i had to send her out in the hall - that sucks. and then yearbook was the same predicament as before, and by the end of the day, it was all i could do to will myself to the car. once there, i sat for a few minutes until that bit of solitude was broken with someone asking me the code to get into the building. i battled traffic, and the only thing keeping me going was the thought of the rodeo we were going to. yay for rodeos!

unfortunately, after i poured myself into some tight jeans (that i hadn't been able to fit in for about a year), and we drove out to the j.c. livestock arena, we realized the rodeo is tonight! oh well. instead, we went out to porters in raleigh, over near state, and had a great dinner and great conversation. it was a really enjoyable night and put me in a much better state of mind.

this weekend is so promising. i woke up and enjoyed some time in commune with our little piece of paradise. the dogs were out, i dragged the rocking chair downstairs and outside, and i enjoyed some coffee from my french press while the breeze blew across our little field. ahh. now that's what i'm talking about :-)

nothing to complain about

school's going pretty well, andrew's home in the evenings, but i'm kinda bummed tonight! i think it's because my puppies live outside now ::sniffle:: i miss them laying on top of me on the couch and raising hell all over the living room! perhaps one day soon i'll just say FORGET THE NEW CARPET! and let them all in! ... or at least lillie and chloe... i don't know if i can handle bailey drooling on thousands of dollars worth of new flooring.

a long way

so after our huge move and our exciting trip to california, we've both gone back to work. yuck!

lucky for me though, for the first time (knock on wood) i don't dread going to work. i'm teaching 12th grade english and yearbook, and so far it's gonig pretty well. i enjoy the fact that my students don't come in with their parents attached to them anymore, and i enjoy knowing that my courses don't have EOC's at the end. the only thing the kids have to do is pass MY assessments. that's a nice change. it also means we have more freedom to study what we want to while working within the curriculum. as far as the yearbook is concerned... i'm sort of flying by the seat of my pants, but i'm trying not to stress about it!

andrew is really enjoying his new job at point concepts, making cool stuff for lots of different companies, and he even gets home around 6 every night AND is home on the weekends! what a difference it is to have my love home every day! we are so blessed to have come so far.

just a year ago, we were about to get married, and our situation was not good. andrew was working all the time, we were renting a house, we both had jobs that were going nowhere, and we weren't really happy despite the joy of getting married. now we're both in jobs we enjoy that pay pretty well, we have bought our house, we've added to our family (with chloe), and despite the punches that will come along the way, we're rolling right along! it's a good feeling.