Its been awhile

I totally thought I updated this week, but I guess not.

This weekend I did a lot of errands, walked a lot, baked, and mowed the lawn.

I made Amish Friendship Bread, which is basically cinnamon coffee cake. It was so addictive that I ate most of it over the weekend. I gave away the 3 extra starters that were made from the starter my friend gave me. I will have 3 more on Monday, so If anyone would like Amish Friendship Bread Starter just let me know. I'll mail it to you.

Work is getting more and more frustrating. No one knows exactly how we are going to assign the standards to each level, so we can't really do anything. This means that we will most likely be working long hours this winter, again. :(

I'm not sure if I can handle another winter like the last one...

Good Weekend

Saturday-
My friend came down from Cleveland. We met at Martini's (Polaris) for lunch. Then we went to Easton and bought tickets to see "Knocked Up". We wasted the hour before the movie walking around outside, checking out various stores. (Both to cheap to buy anything) We watched the movie, which I already saw with Pan. It was even funnier the 2nd time. We finished the evening by eating dinner at Martini's (Polaris). This consisted of nothing other than their awesome Hazelnut Chocolate Bread Pudding. It was heavenly!!

Sunday-
I got up at 8:30am and went for a walk to get rid of the Bread Pudding weight. At 12noon, Troy and I drove to a resort near Salt Fork State Park. Someone entered me in their drawing to possibly win $25,000 or a new car. I could use either one, so we thought what the heck. We toured the resort and listen to the sales pitch. There is no way would could pay for the lifetime membership, so we said NO. (We knew that was our answer before we even went.) I tried the 1 out of 80,000 keys in 1 of 3 locks and didn't win. We walked away with a really cheap camera and round-trip airfare to Orlando. I figure we can use the camera as a Christmas gift and the airfare to visit my parents in Florida next winter. It was a beautiful drive, so it was no big deal. However, I was exhausted by the time we got home and went to bed at 6:30pm. I know, I'm old and boring! :)

Sensitive!

No the post isn't sensitive, but my employer is overly sensitive. Jeesh can we get a little more sensitivity around this place.

Okay, so I have to come up with a fairy tale that fits in my Friendship unit. I thought "Beauty and the Beast" would be perfect, because she looks past his appearance and becomes his friend. Well apparently that is too romantic, includes magic, and portrays Beauty as a passive female protagonist.

We are rewriting the fairy tale, so why can't we gloss over the romance, exclude the Beast magically turning into a prince, and show how strong Beauty is in the way she fearlessly goes to live with a Beast that she thinks could eat her at any moment.

The next suggestion I gave was "The Three Little Pigs," because it includes no magic, no romance, and they out-wit the wolf to avoid any violence. Oh no, we can't use that fairy tale because it is too babyish. Hello!!! Aren't all fairy tales pretty juvenile?

The standard clearly asks for "classic" fairy tales. I think they understand what is included in a fairy tale. They should know what to expect.

I am going nuts in this job. If I stay here too long, I am going to start talking like an overly PC crazy person. "Did you happen to notice if that ethnically diverse Native American male ( that does not look too stereotypical, but with dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, wearing long pants and a yellow shirt, appearing to be around 13 years of age, wearing framed lenses to assist in his visually handi-capable-ness) is headed into the cafeteria to consume nutritious food items?"

Busy weekend

I had a very busy weekend...

Saturday
I got up at 7:45am, because I couldn't lay in bed any longer. I started the first of 2 loads of laundry, made 2 loaves of banana bread, washed every dirty dish by had (because the dishwasher was going to be replaced later in the day), and cleaned the kitchen. I took a shower and cleaned the bathroom. When Troy got up I went to the library, the bank, and the grocery. Then I made frozen chocolate souffles to take to my parents. I cleaned up the living room, and had Troy vacuum. Finally, at around 3pm I sat down and we watched "The Witness" (I think that's the name) on Spike (it was Ford weekend). Around 3:30pm I heard the mail truck drive by, so I got the mail. While I was walking up the driveway, the dishwasher installer came with the new dishwasher. We continued to watch the movie while he replaced the dishwasher. (Sometime I packed the car for our trip to my parents'.) At about 5:30pm the dishwasher was in and running. By this time all we had eaten was banana bread, so we were starving. I placed a pick-up order at dominoes for 2 of their new subs. We picked them up and were on our way to my parents' by 6pm. There we visited, watched "Zathura", ate souffles, and went to bed around 11pm.

Sunday
Got up at 8am, ate pecan rolls, edited 9 articles on my dad's laptop, read, showered, and prepared food for the family reunion. At noon we drove to the swimming pool, where we have had the last 3 family reunions (my mom's dad's family). We ate way too much, visited a little, waited until we were soaked with sweat and sufficiently board, and left to go visit my grandfather in the hospital. (he had a hip replaced and is still recovering)
At the hospital, grandpa was asleep and dreaming. When we woke him he said that he has been having very vivid dreams, which makes it hard for him to know what really happened or what he dreamt. He was so heavily medicated that he couldn't stay awake, so we decided to leave him to get his rest. (It was so hard seeing him out of it, but at least I know it was just the meds.) Then we drove the 2hour trek home, and did nothing for the rest of the night.

I'm going to need a few days to recover from this busy weekend.

More fun at work...

This morning as I checked my work email, I found an email that says that we have to count every word on every fluency reader. I have to count the words that are in 12 readers for each of the 6 units for my grade (72 readers), with about 200-300 words in each reader. You do the math. Included in the count are captions, charts, and illustrated text boxes that add content. Today is going to be so much fun it makes me giddy ! NOT

AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGhhhh

I had a great weekend of being lazy, running errands, baking, and watching movies.

Unfortunately, I had to come back to work....
Awaiting me was a long email of everything that we have to get done this week. There isn't enough time in a month to get it done. There are 4 genres that need to be added to the Student Reader, so I will have to have at least one retelling of each genre (fairy tales, fables, myths and legends) written. Once they are written I will have to edit them, find 6 vocabulary words in each, and create art specs. Then, the illustrations will need to be drawn. All of this needs to be done in less than 3 weeks, along with several other things that I don't even want to think about yet.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Arrrrrby's

MMMMmmmmm....
Mags and I decided to use my coupons to get Arby's for lunch. I just downed my beef n cheddar. It was soooooo good. I'm already planning to have another one for lunch tomorrow.

We tried to tempt EzB, but she was being good. How could anyone resist Arby's?

Gpa update

My grandfather was scheduled to have his hip replaced at 2:30pm yesterday, but they didn't do the surgery until 6:30pm. My mom called at 8:30pm to let me know that the surgery went well. She was tired and hadn't seen my grandfather who was in recovery. We'll have to see how he does with the new hip. That's all I know for now.

Country life

Troy and I both really want to live in the country, surrounded by trees and plenty of land. He keeps finding places that we like, but can't afford. Here is one that he found, but we could make money by boarding horses. The MLS # is: 2736761. If you can afford it, buy it and we'll become squatters. :)