Weekend Wrapup

I thought I'd take a cue from Karla over at Forever Newly Wedded & do a quick Weekend Wrap Up post.  (And omg I might have 3 posts in 3 days yall, big deal!!!)

Friday:

• I got a super exciting mid-afternoon text message from D asking if I wanted to go out to eat with our friends S & S and their hilarious little boy W.  I may have texted back an answer while turning on a timer on my cell phone for my students to study before a quiz.  I don't think anyone noticed, but the minute I did it, I felt guilty.
• So off we headed, after a quick post-gym shower, to Buffalo Wild Wings to enjoy a night.  From there, we ran over to Toys R Us looking for a very specific monster truck W has been wanting.  No truck was found, but I wanted to show S the app on my phone that I use for price checks & price matching.  My phone? Nowhere to be found.
• Back to BWW we went, and the waiter had my phone in his pocket.  He seemed nice enough, like in a, "Oh, as soon as I saw it I knew you'd be back way."  It just seemed strange that he didn't give it to the manager or the hostess.  I probably wouldn't be so cynical if S hadn't had a stolen cell phone at a nearby restaurant.  (The story: she left her phone at a restaurant I'll leave nameless.  She called later that night asking about it.  They identified exactly what it looked like, where it was found, and where it would be, so she could pick it up the next day.  When she arrived, they "looked everywhere" and it was gone.  They suggested she must have left her phone somewhere else.)

Saturday:

• Pretty easy day for me!  I spent the early morning straightening up a little & doing our finances.  I snagged a free box of delivered snacks from Graze.com using a coupon in our mail.  (Try it, use code VALPAK, or check my facebook/twitter feed for a sign up that gives me $1!)  I'll cancel the shipments once our free box arrives.  I don't want to pay for delivered snacks.
• I also ran out to Advance, the bank, & Wendy's.  Again with coupons from the mail, I snagged $10 off at Advance, and 2 free chicken sandwiches.  I also deposited a hefty $1.50 check at the bank.  Woohoo.  Moral of the day: check all those obnoxious coupons you get in the mail & in your newspaper.  They pay off.
• The afternoon consisted of me cleaning & fixing my laptop (thank you Google!), while D & his dad worked on the beater truck we bought a few weeks ago.
• Saturday night we cuddled up and watched Into the White, about a couple of German & English WWII fighter pilots who shoot each other down in Norway and then have to work together to survive.  It was really neat, though not the best movie I've ever seen.  It also has Ron Weasley in it.

Sunday: 

• We started off by heading out to breakfast & to buy some new mechanical something.  A saw of some kind?  All I know is that we saved 50% on it, again with a free coupon in the mail. 
• Breakfast set my stomach on a bender, so I spent most of the rest of the day lesson planning and working on graduate school between bouts of laying down and taking Tums.  Seriously, my stomach is insane.  
• D made me some nice hot chocolate, because I thought I was feeling better.  Turns out, that was not the recoverer's best choice, but I haven't had hot chocolate all year, so oh well!
• D did random garage things most of the day, and he washed the disgusting salt off of our cars!

So there's our weekend in a quick summary!  How was yours?

Wow...That was a lot.  Here are some fun pics I took with my cell phone, in an attempt to not do work.

Random Ramblings

Hey everyone! I'm going to apologize in advance for the complete lack of a general theme for this post. I basically have a handful of random thoughts, and about 30 min to kill, so here goes.

- I feel like my life has taken a weird circle backwards. Currently, I'm sitting at a hotel about 30 min from my parents' house waiting for a conference to begin. Sometime in the early 2000s, I attended a different conference (or the appropriate word is probably convention) in this. Exact. Hotel. The difference: that one was for Beta, this one is for my state education association. Also, I'm choosing to stay at home tonight rather than at the hotel, and in high school I certainly chose to stay at the hotel. (My friend S & I may or may not have attempted to make coffee, then ice it down, then add the hard peppermint candies to make it taste better. It was disgusting.)

- I've hit an invisible wall of sorts where my students are driving me insane at no fault of their own. They're done with this semester; I am done with this semester; we have 12 more class periods before our state SOL and another 5 more before Christmas Break. 

- You know what I'm hoping cures that? The fact that I left work today after 2nd block. I took a gorgeous backroads drive to my parents house on a 70+ degree day. I then got to swing and ride bikes and play with a plastic toolbox and a matchbox car for a few hours. I also got to be greeted by 3 running children, grinning & shouting my name. That's true therapy. 

- I hate that my baby boy is growing up. My oldest nephew is in 1st grade. He has adult conversations. He has lost teeth. And today, I had to actually pedal quickly to keep up with him. What happened to my little mini me? The one that exhausted me by chasing me with the plastic popper all through the house? I definitely want to freeze time. Today though, as we put the bicycles up, he pulled on my hand, and when I looked down his little lips were puckered up for a kiss. Heart melting. 

- I have been riveted by the JFK coverage recently. I find it so fascinating and so saddening at the same time. Thankfully, I teach high schoolers, so I can do things like show actual assassination footage and discuss the implications on current security. And they ate it up. Standardized testing can be on hold. My freshman learned today; it didn't have anything to do with Renaissance Europe. It did, however, have 20 14 year olds riveted. Some went googling more information on their phones. Some of my sophomores have on their own watched Kennedy footage that I suggested in class. That changes lives. That infuses a lifetime love of learning. Not a forced discussion of economic interdependence, regardless of it's relevance. 

- I am a born and bred don't decorate until after Thanksgiving girl. It angers me to see commercials and decorations, and especially hear Christmas music before Thanksgiving. I will fully embrace Christmas the minute I wake up on Black Friday (though, I will not attend shopping events. I have a horrible crushing panic in that environment). I just want people to appreciate Thanksgiving. You know that picture of the Turkey yelling at Santa to back off? I am on Team Turkey. 

- I have a piercing and crippling fear of stingrays. It's bizarre. It came up in class this week as we were discussing global food supply and a student said he wanted to move to Australia so he could eat kangaroo and those horrible sea creatures. I cringed involuntarily. I was then called out on it as a 15 year old asked if I was aware that the fear was irrational. I'm now that teacher who is afraid of something my students thing is stupid. Yep. Yay me. 

That's all for now, my conference will start in a few minutes. If you are still reading this, thanks for sticking around so long!