Somewhere in Canada

Some time soon I'm taking a family vacation to Banff in Alberta, Canada. How's the picture for getting excited. I hope I have some like this to share.

Check out this cool photo

You can find it here.

How to Start a Blog

From the queen of bloginess!

Geeper Creepers

I'm sitting on hold with the vision insurance division of our insurance company while they try to wriggle me out of a $68 bill for something that I shouldn't be paying for. I'm listening to fake classical music hoping that my insurance representative is ripping the eye care "professional" a new bum hole.

Ten years ago, I stumbled out of my local Lenscrafters with a slight prescription for nearsightedness. Now as I near the age of thirty unable to read street signs or computer screens without my glasses or contacts and I'm constantly sticking my fingers into my stigmatized eyes with the latest and greatest in contact lens technology. Don't get me wrong, contacts are amazing. But just like ever thing else these days, solution is a bloody fortune (a $17 bottle of the premium stuff for allergy prone folks like me lasts a little over a month). And while glasses are all the rage (I mean Tori Spelling wears them), there's just a lot to them. It's tough to run a marathon while your sporting your artsy black plastic million dollar please-don't-let-these-fall-off-and into the oncoming traffic specs.

And with contacts...you should have to have a license to own those suckers. Cleaning and disinfecting, remembering to take them out before you sleep, realizing that you can't open your eyes underwater when you're wearing them.... Add in the fact that I'm prone to pinkeye, have eye dandruff (eww, but really it exists), and have dry eyes to boot; contacts are just a huge pain the butt and in the wallet.

My insurance company just called me in the middle of this post to tell me that they will not pay nor will they have me pay the price the eye care professional is asking me to pay. There was talk of supervisors and official reports and all kinds of crazy things.

Really this is just a post about how if I wasn't a teacher with the summers off, I'd totally have to pay the $300 in illegitimate bills because I wouldn't have time to sit on the phone during business hours to listen to fake classical music (while running up my cellphone bill).

Life Altering

Would a Starbucks drive-thru opened on your 45 minute commute change your life?

It's changing mine.

I know I know Fair Trade, local coffee shops. I know. It's just that I've never been through a Starbucks drive-thru. I'm a little excited.

PS: I only have three more days to commute but that's 6 lattes if you consume one each way!

School's out for the Summer

Readers' note: This entry is soaked in sarcasm and could come across as angry...it's not.

Now that school is out for the summer, I'm getting the usual question "What do you do all summer?" This question is usually said with remarkable disdain that someone may take a three month long vacation whilst others work their tail ends off.

My summer routine is usually really mundane. I get up around nine or ten, stumble into the kitchen and fix myself a tropical drink, eat lunch, take a nap, go to the mall, and watch cable until 2 AM.

REALLY, that's NOT what I do. I think that people ask this question out of genuine curiosity but their assumptions are generally misguided. They think that teachers enjoy a 3 month long hiatus after working from "eight to three" each day during the school year and soaking up government holidays and snow days. My new answer to this question is, most teachers do what other office-type people do all year round. Here is my top ten list of what I do during the summer.

10. Check email Many public schools block websites or frown upon teachers checking their personal email accounts or doing personal business from school. I spend the summer responding to email in "real time" (like a 24 hour return rate) rather than having to wait until after 5 to write back to people.

9. Restore my bodily functions to healthy intervals My trips to the restroom are like trying to run the wrong way through the flow of traffic in the mall to make it to a "onner" (it's only one stall) only to find out someone beat me to the tinkle. Change the mall traffic to a swarm of disgruntled teenagers and you'll understand why I'm very strict about my liquids intake during the school year.

8. Detox I know I made a joke about drinking up there somewhere. I'm talking about caffeine here. While I'm careful I don't drink too much before my fifty minute break, I do drink "a few" cups of coffee each day. I usually try to kick the habit once the summer starts.

7. Personal maintenance It's difficult to schedule appointments in the middle of a school day unless the office is close to school. Your liable to find your substitute gagged and tortured in the corner of your room when you return. Various and sundry appointments (dental, vision, doctor, etc.) get scheduled during the summer.

6. Go on a vacation EVERYONE is trying to travel during Winter, Spring, and Summer breaks making travelling during these high demand seasons a little more expensive. The summer time is a great time to get away but it would be nice to take off some time during the great white depression of February.

5. Make money Most teachers supplement their income by working during the summer. I'll teach a summer class at a local university.

4. Go out to lunch This is kind of like trying to go the the restroom. Since our lunch is only twenty-five and half minutes long, I relish the summer time when I can go out to lunch and see friends during the week.

3. Read for fun

2. Forget the cares of the world Often public schools are blamed for the rising rates including crime, drop outs, teen pregnancy, etc. I like to take the summer to think about things like 'what should I wear with my hot pink flip flops?' and other shallow things like that.

1. Plan for next year Teachers are constantly thinking about how their curriculum could be written to better meet the needs of their students. I'll spend my summer test "driving" new books, rewriting syllabi, and reflecting on the previous year of teacher. I think most teachers do.

Busy-ness

I've been super busy lately. School is wrapping up, I've been working in the garden, and we've had something going on for the last three weekends. It's all good but I'm all tired out. When I get tired and overwhelmed, I become absent minded. Today, for example, I rinsed my contacts in a solution that causes chemical burns to the eye despite the warning on the red sleave around the tip and the bright red tip warning me that this is a solution that must be neutralized first.

I've also been losing my phone around the house. I put it down in the strangest places and I keep asking Mr. Pete to call it so I can find it.

Tonight, I'm looking for our checkbook. We're in the process of organizing the office so it's been misplaced. For a second I thought about asking Seth to call it so I could find it.

Wouldn't that be cool if we could call random stuff to find it? I would have the random Post-It note list that I keep and lose at least three times a day on speed dial.