Random Thoughts!

* I have made marked improvement in my scorekeeping ability for middle school!

* Support groups are dangerous - I belong to one online for people with migraines and one of the members wrote today about wanting to commit suicide. I suddenly realized how much we can influence other people.

* My students are actually excited about writing poetry and making poetry books. Personally I think it is more about not wanting to write essays than anything but I will take what I can get.

* I spent over 14 hours at work this weekend and still didn't get all caught up - and people say being a teacher is easy, please!

* Good news on the tax return front, I came out about 600 dollars ahead which is great, now I can pay my car insurance next month

* I tried to exercise this morning and the same thing happened as the last time I went to the gym, my head almost exploded. Apparently I cannot handle the blood flow so I have to think of somehting much slower to make me lose weight, any magical tips???

* We are no longer boycotting Wal-mart, but our relationship is tense. Our grocery bill more than doubled when we stopped for a month so back to the large, horrible, noisy store we go. I went shopping yesterday all by myself and I wore Sarah's ipod. It helped cut out the noise and make the experience more tolerable.

* Only 3 more weeks until vacation and one more observation for the year, the last one was terrible, I really don't know why people bother telling you when they think you are bad at your job, I think they should just fire you. It would be easier. There is a new Wal-mart opening in Yuma, the 3rd one! I was thinking about applying, I thought it would be less hassle than my job but then I went there and remembered how much I couldn't stand it.

* Had a great time with friends Friday and Saturday, it was nice to kick back and laugh about nothing for a while.

Good night (it's only ten but I am sleepy!!)

Service with a Smile????

Today Sarah and I were out running errands and we stopped into Olive Garden for what we thought was going to be a quick lunch. It seemed like a no win situation, Sarah wanted salad and that is one of the only places around to get good salad. There was wait, even at 2 in the afternoon and then we sat...for almost 10 minutes before anyone came to see if we wanted water or anything. Then we waited some more and some more, we dodn't order much. Soup and salad and water and it took us like an hour to get it and eat it because of the very sloooooowwww waitress. By the end of the meal we were both pretty preturbed and I did something I have never done before, ever. I didn't leave a tip. I always tip, over tip even. I strongly believe in paying for good service. But not today. I left exact change for the bill and walked away.

As we were walking out I saw the manager so Sarah and I stopped him and told him what we thought of his service. He was very apologetic and offered us a gift card to come back and try it again sometime. We accepted. He gave us a card worth $40! That's alot of money considering our bill for lunch was only $15.12 we were pretty impressed and now we can afford to go out to dinner with friends some time. I don't like to complain at restaurants but this was truly bad service and I felit we were justified. So next time you feel like your service was subpar, make your grievance known, you never know what you will get!

Cupid's Craze!!!

School was crazy today! Down here Valentine's Day is the biggest holiday of them all, bigger than Christmas and Halloween put together. Our principal was out today and her office was used as storage for all of the bears, balloons and candy that were delivered to school. They couldn't be passed out until the last hour of the day because they are distracting in class, go figure! Her office was full, there were bears that were bigger than me!

The day went well, the kids were a little crazy but since we were all letting them eat candy I guess we had only ourselves to blame:-) I subbed for P.E., that was fun. We played Love Ball, otherwise known as dodge ball with the twist of whomever you hit is your Valentine. It was cute to see the boys try to hit the girls as hard as possible and then turn away sheepishly.

In other news, we were learning how to use our thesaurus' today to write descriptive essay's and I asked my class to come up with synonyms for the word hot. One student said pimping hot. I thought this was weird but we take all answers in my class so I wrote it on the board, it wasn't until later that I discovered the entry actually read piping hot which is entirely different and doesn't fit with the sentence we were working on at all. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

I know I have been out of the blogger seen for a while but Sarah was sick, then I was sick and my headaches and anxiety are not cooperating. I am now taking adavan which is pretty heavy duty because I had a major panic attack last week and had to be relieved of duty from my room because I was having chest pains. I then spent the next 36 hours in bed with Sarah periodically giving me shots in my butt. My doctor wants me to get counseling I cannot imagine why.

Let's see...I have started taking Flintstone vitamins because Sarah's doctor said that was still good even if you didn't take real adult vitamins. I remember them tasting alot better. I am trying to give them to a person who has children but Sarah says I have to eat them, yuck!

Right now I am working on a presentation for Friday. There is a big professional Development Day on Friday that the whole county attends. There are lots of workshops and all the teachers show up and go to three. I am presenting at one with a colleague about vocabulary. We started working on it today, nothing like waiting until the last minute.

Jewel Qwest! If you don't have this game for your computer you have to get it! It is fantastic. My mom got it for Christmas and I loaded it on my computer here in Arizona and it is addicting. I love it, seriously you have to play it!