bored

Nice to know that Colt's grammar and spelling skills are most definitely up to par (look below if you're saying "What?").

Anyway..... I'm bored. I would think about spending some time outside if it weren't for the fact that it's freezing outside and my toe and fingernails are purple already. Dad insists maybe I wear socks. #1: I feel weird wearing socks around the house if I'm not going anywhere that day. #2: They haven't fallen off yet, so I'm not worried.

The Lovely Esmeralda pooped in my bed yesterday. I know it was her because she avoided me the rest of the day like she was mad or guilty while Loki wouldn't leave me alone. Thank goodness it's cleaned up now.

Speaking of Loki, he just hopped up on the chair next to me. He says hello.

Alice In Wonderland (Tim Burton version) comes out on March 10 2010!!!!! Only bummer is that it'll only be in 3D. I hate that stuff. It gives me headaches.

It's been pretty lazy around the house I'm sad to admit. Dad finally graded a class period's tests yesterday though.
Lowest grade: 10
Highest grade: 65
Woo.

Hope you have a good day guys!!!!

HELLO!!!

Hay everyone how's it goin' I now its been a long time since my last post(I've.....been busy)<-It might be the truth. I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, an tell them I'm very excited for tomorrow's Christmas party at my Grandmother's house. I look forward to seeing all my aunts and uncles, Especially my aunt Mary from London and my aunt Theresa from Fort Worth who has my godson(YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!).

Well see ya'll 2moro everyone.

Working Away

Got my junk all spread out for CEU catching up, ONS newsletter posting, ONS annual report AND ONS powerpoint presentation update.



The oven is self-cleaning without smoking the house up. Ham is thawing.


Children are segregated.

The father is snoozing until he jumps up when he remembers he has papers to grade.

My present is waiting to be opened and cleaned by the female teenager.



Listening to Hearts of Space music - lovely!

Catching Up

The cold is fading. I sound more like a real person and feel much better.

So now I'm cleaning the house. Updating the computers to current function. Installing months worth of updates - not always a good thing.

I'm also catching up on months worth of CEUs (continuing education units, I have to have at least 10 per year for my license but closer to 50 each year for my certifications. Free ones are my favorite and I've got about 20 hours of CDs to listen to and complete the tests and evaluations.

And I still have to wrap presents.

Today we have to go get dog food and Amy's gifts, then we are going to Golden Corral for 'linner'.

Tomorrow will be a full stay at home day. I love it! Just me and my family hanging at the house.

Just Can't Get Along

It has only been two days of time away from work and school and already the natives are restless.

One making noise just to annoy the other and then the other making faces at the one.

I swear you'd think that they both regressed to ages 5 and 7.

Seriously, wouldn't you think that this would at least lessen as they get older?

And then we have the incessent moans of the eldest native about sleeping too much and his back hurting.

I'm surronded by bad moods and whining.

I'm ready to go back to work!

These people need to cheer up.

I'm going to cook and make me some Chocolate Cherry Biscotti. That will at least make me happy. And then a Polish dinner of Pierogis, Kielbasa and Sauerkraut for dinner. Yum!

"Crap on a Cracker"

A big, BIG apology to my sweet sister, Mary, whom i forgot to say "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" to yesterday.

Happy birthday, Mary! Hope this is the best year ever.

I can't wait to see you and your family.

Today is the big interview at Methodist. I'm not really sure whether or not this is where I am meant to be. The pay is the issue. For one dollar more an hour, I would be going back to weekends and holidays as well as evening or night shift. I'm not sure that is worth the money. We will see.

Have a great Monday!

Explanation

This is Vernon with Billy Billy Von Billy from the Mud Show at the Texas Renaissance Festival this past fall. This guy is fantastic and so fun to watch. He has been doing the Mud Show since 1978.

I explain as I put this picture in our Christmas card that I have yet to mail out to you all.

My obsessive compulsion and organization have been a bit behind this year. I usually have the cards out the day after Thanksgiving. Not this year. I'm not even sure what really happened. Suddenly, it is the week of Christmas and I am off for the week and looking around wondering what I have been doing with my time.

Thia week I have to update a presentation of oncology treatments I am teaching in January and go on a job interview tomorrow at Methodist Willowbrook. Then i need to finish my shopping. Poor Amy has NOTHING, so far.

And last but not least is for me to clean my house and get over this cold that has me wiped out today. Figures that Vernon and I get sick for our time off!

Solo and Ensemble

It's that lovely time of year again. I get to pay $10 for a judge to listen to me play a piece of music and then give me a rating and a medal. Really stupid, that whole $10-to-hear-me-play thing but I love to play with other people. This year, instead of a quintet like normal, I'm doing a duet with Arryn (said like Erin). It's the first two movements of Canonic Sonata No. 2 by G.P. Telemann.
The cool thing is that this music is played like a canon and I found it on Youtube and it sounds amazing!!!!

The first movement is Allegro (which means fast, for those musically-challenged people out there). The only problem I think I'll really have with this is the trills, which is where you transition from one note to the note below it really super duper fast. I suck at trills. Every time I try to do one, my fingers scream "NOOO!!! ANYTHING BUT THAT!!!".

Here's the link I found for it. The thing about these two guys is that I think they're playing it an octave above what I am so, if it sounds really high, just know that mine's not that complicated.

The second movement I could only find with a bass and a cello playing it and again I think the cello is an octave higher. It's called Larghetto (I think it's funny that it has GHETTO in it!) CLICK HERE!! (Ashley, let me just say, if Sean can play like this, remind me to give him a big hug next time I see him!) They pause briefly and then start again much faster and that's the third movement, which we aren't doing because we only need 2 to make a Class 1, which is the highest.

I was going to do a solo, but I couldn't find one in time because we were working on the concert which went wonderfully Monday night. My two friends that went wouldn't stop talking about it Tuesday morning.

We haven't decided who's going first. I think Arryn wants to go second, but I'm not sure.

Did you guys ever go to Solo & Ensemble?

I am Awesome - a little bit*UPDATE*

Amy had to serve at the Advent Family Breakfast at our church.

Dressed as an angel. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find an angel outfit in December?? I mean one that doesn't make you look like a hooker or slut?

Needless to say, we weren't able to procure one through retail access...soooo.. I made it.

Like, bought the pattern, material, thread and lace, cut it out and sewed it together in under 4 hours on Saturday night for her to wear Sunday morning, made it.

Here are some pictures to show you how cool it came out. With gathers at the neck and lace trim on the sleeves and front half of the bottom. Yeah, I ran out of lace for the entire hem line.


Amy looked like an angel, minus the halo and wings. I had her tell everyone that humans can't see the ethereal portions of an angel's anatomy.



This is not how she was dressed, she had a white shirt and jeans on underneath and a pair of black shoes. So sorry, Aunt Theresa, she did have on some black. Overall pretty angelic to me!

Stupidity 101

I was going to buckle down and do some deep cleaning today.

You know, catching up on the things that you never have time for during the week.

Like actually mopping the floor, cleaning the toilets, vacuuming more than the tread pattern on the rug, cleaning the kitchen so that everything is where it belongs and clean out the oven where the turkey decided to drain its grease to the floor of the oven.

Like I said, cleaning that needs to be done.

That being said, I really did not consider how much the turkey had dumped onto the oven floor until about 30 minutes into the CLEAN mode. I looked up to see smoke pouring out of the front of the oven vent and streaming into the house. I jumped up from the Sunday paper frantically turning on all the fans, and shooing the kids and animals out the back door "hurry, find the cats!", and turning the CLEAN off.

I am hoping the smoke detector doesn't go off. My eyes are burning and I am coughing.

I holler at Vernon, "You may want to step out of the house." He comes out of the house complaining that his eyes are burning.

Colt and I dashed back inside as the smoke began to pour less profusely from the oven. We opened all the windows and turned on the fans in the upstairs bathrooms to help vent the risen smoke.

After about 45 minutes of cold air and multiple fans evacuating the smoke from the house we were able to go back in and get on with what we were doing.

But it will not be that cleaning I wanted to do.

Why? Because I'm stupid! - see above.

Exemptions and Confirmation

Finals are just around the corner.

Next Tuesday, I have my 6th period final, which is BCIS.
Wednesday, I have 1st and 7th: Algebra II and English.
Thursday, 2nd and 3rd: Health and WHAP.
And then Friday which is an early dismissal: Chemistry and Orchestra.

I'm not too worried about BCIS, because I just have to do a PowerPoint and then a Word document, which is easy-peasy.
Algebra II is an entire cake, rather than a piece. English could use a little work, but I'm sure I'll do well.
Health is going to be a bunch of words we've never seen that we have to figure out the meaning from our vocab. words we've had throughout the semester. I'm pretty sure I can do well on it, but I'm not sure how to describe it. I'll probably end up just writing what each little word means and it won't make sense. WHAP will need some serious studying, but we got an L-level review which is basically the test questions without answer choices. And all the questions are questions we've had on previous tests, just copied and pasted onto the final until she hits 100 questions.
Chemistry isn't that difficult. I think the only thing I'll have trouble with is Significant Digits, and, if we have to, remembering all the equations. Other than that, it's IPC and Algebra. Mrs. Robicheaux says that our concert will be our final unless we fail behavior- and requirement-wise.

My big decision is figuring out which two subjects to exempt.
I'm thinking Health, but I'm not sure what else.
Any ideas?

NEWS FOR CONFIRMATION:

I will be Confirmed on May 2 :D
My retreat at the moment is January 15-17. As we've already found out, Debbie Hawkins, who's in charge of that, is a little comfuzzled with it and I was almost put on the second retreat. I'm crossing my fingers against that or being put on the third retreat because that will be the weekend of my birthday.

Just thought I'd update you guys.

LOVE YOU SO MUCH!!!!

It's a Shame

My eyes started watering yesterday afternoon. I was flummoxed as to what was happening. Just all of sudden, the tears started building and falling out over the edge of my eye, too much for the tear ducts to handle.

My lovely co-worker, Shontan, came to the back of the office to ask me some question and immediately stopped and asked what is wrong.

I said to her, "I'm not sure my eyes just won't stop watering!"

We moved on the the business at hand, then she asked what that smell was. Had I put out some branches or sprayed some scent? I told her no, with a smile, and pointed to the Renuzit Gel Scents of pine and Christmas.

She looked at me and asked me if i had lost my mind. Then she took me to task, as she knows me so well and said "It's that gel thing that is irritating your eyes."

*shit* was my first thought because I really love that smell.

*crap* was my second thought as I walked the offending odor to the other side of the room.

I love scents, especially when they don't irritate my allergies. But, alas, another scent banned from my immediate vicinity, *crap*.

It's A Competition

Who can get to the Internet first?

We have only one computer attached to the Internet in my house.

But as I have two teenagers, the competition is fierce for rights to get on the dang machine that links us to the world wide web.

It is my computer, where I keep all my forms, email, links, recipes, menus, ONS stuff, programs, etc , my computer world and reference brain. So I must exercise my patience with my children and my spouse who vie for the access to the outside world.

I think I need to link up with at least one more site in the house, but then comes in the fear of unauthorized access to various sites of questionable morals and indecent pictures.

Currently, I can see what is on the screen, no going to strange sites or funky locations when Mom and Dad could walk by. And I have activity monitoring. Checking up on where and when they wander over the web. The computer is in the front room of our house.

If, BIG IF, I set up another site it will be in the sewing room upstairs, with a door and no one likes to just wander up there to see what is happening. It just is my paranoia jumping out and saying to me that strange things could assault my kiddos IF they are unsupervised in the sewing room.

Yeah, I know, the parental controls and limiting log on time and site access is a viable option. But the downside is that the parental controls bar so much access that they can't even use a search engine like Dogpile, nor can they go to science sites for homework.

Ahh, it is a dilemma for the ages, how much do you dare trust your offspring?

I trust my teens but I also know that they are not always thinking clearly with hormones and emotions raging through their growing teen bodies. I swear, stupidity is a common affliction in my home.

Despite oft given warnings, my two still download crap that I then am forced to clean off the unit of Internet access.

Uh-Oh, the line is forming behind me and my blogging.

Like I said it is a competition.

Little Messages ... I Think

I have this song that I have been humming all day. It just speaks to me and to my soul.

First, it makes me feel good to be humming this tune.

Second, it really does speak to my soul and comforts me.

Third, it make me think of others and how God takes care of us and our lives.

And lastly (is that a real word?), it makes me feel like God is encouraging me to wait calmly for His work in my life. Just a little message for me.


We sang this song Sunday in church and it really affected us all.

Vernon said how it really gave him hope that God will take care of him and that he needs patience.

Amy voiced that she wants to learn this song, it is one of her favorites.

"For you, O Lord, my soul in stillness waits, surely my hope is in you."

It is a great song as we wait for Christmas and for God to provide those things we need. The simple melody hovers in your mind and really makes ME calm and hopeful for whatever God has in store for me.

My Thoughts on Christmas

I have a feeling I'm one of those few people that could care less about Christmas as a holiday other than at Church.

First of all, I HATE Christmas songs. Sunny 99.1 is the worst station on the air right now to me. The songs are basically the same things over and over and over again except with a different beat, artist or in a different key. That's it.

I think it's ridiculous that some people start putting up Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. It's not even December!! Really?

I really don't care about giving and getting presents. To me, it just means lugging myself outside to go wait in outrageously long lines to get things for people that I don't generally see.

Maybe it's just me. You can call me insane all you want, but the whole Christmas spirit and stuff like that makes me shiver.