And so it begins.
This morning, Mom and I made our way (with very full cars) to my new abode, all ready to sign the lease and begin settling in. After I signed the lease and received my keys, the first thing that needed to be done was inspect the place for faults and record it. Being that my mom is much older than I (and more thorough), gave her that job while I unloaded our cars.
First of all, I stepped into my apartment. Ahh, home. I love it! And I was greeted with two surprises: I have vaulted ceilings AND a fireplace. The model apartment didn't have either. Yay! It's even cuter (although it might be a bit more cramped since I can't put the loveseat along the wall where I wanted to because I don't want it to catch on fire).
So Mom inventoried the place while I unpacked. My apartment is on the 2nd floor. I walked up and down the stairs over 20 times (no gym for me today!). The boxes kept getting heavier and the temperature kept rising. I know I'm a packrat, but I can't believe I own this much stuff. And this is only day 1 of moving!
Overall, the flaws in the apartment were minor and thus recorded. The main problem that needs to be fixed immediately is the patio. It's very unsafe - the wood is rotting and is leaning so badly that the railing is no longer attached and is therefore wobbly. I put in a request to fix it and I am going to bother the manager every day until it is fixed.
While unpacking the boxes, Yvonne and Stephen came over and chatted with them. We went out for lunch and then I kidnapped Yvonne and she helped me unpack some more.
Finally, I came back to my mom's house to continue packing. And packing. And packing. I have too many glasses. I bought some before moving out of my last apartment and just bought a bunch more because I forgot about the others. I found things that have been in the garage for years - this is like Christmas!
The worst part (other than the going up and down stairs) is the constant dust. I've kicked up so much dust while packing, moving and finding. I just want to peel off my skin - my face itches that bad.
I'm sleepy. A bit more packing and then I'm hitting the shower and my bed.
Cheers!
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
:( I'm Sad
I'm sad.
I can't take my sugar gliders with me to my new apartment (there's not enough room for them AND the dog), so I have to give them up. Mom knows a good home for them (they even have two of their own sugar gliders), but I'm still sad. I've had Hero and Kate for three years and on Sunday I hand them and their gigantic cage over. The adopted parents live about three hours away, so I don't know if I'll see them again.
I'm sad.
I can't take my sugar gliders with me to my new apartment (there's not enough room for them AND the dog), so I have to give them up. Mom knows a good home for them (they even have two of their own sugar gliders), but I'm still sad. I've had Hero and Kate for three years and on Sunday I hand them and their gigantic cage over. The adopted parents live about three hours away, so I don't know if I'll see them again.
I'm sad.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The Sand is Falling Fast
Ah! I just had a realization: the movers come in two and a half weeks. Three weeks from today will be my second night at my apartment.
Let's see what I've accomplished...
Hired movers... check.
Packing... nope. Well, I started, but barely made a dent in my belongings (I own too much crap).
New couch... check.
New dining table/chairs... check.
New vaccuum... check.
Completed change-of-address form... nope.
Ordered my electricity... nope.
Ordered phone service... nope.
Signed CCISD contract... check.
Bought new placemats... check.
Bought new flatware... check.
Bought a trashcan.. nope.
Bought a lamp/torchere... nope.
Bought new towels... check.
Bought new sheets... check.
Bought new bed... nope (that will happen two days before the movers come).
I still have quite a bit to do. I'm going to put off shopping until I move in, so Monday July 2nd... I'll be down at Target for a while.
And I'm buying lots of new stuff because I don't like my old stuff. New apartment, new part of town, new job, new start.
Cheers!
Let's see what I've accomplished...
Hired movers... check.
Packing... nope. Well, I started, but barely made a dent in my belongings (I own too much crap).
New couch... check.
New dining table/chairs... check.
New vaccuum... check.
Completed change-of-address form... nope.
Ordered my electricity... nope.
Ordered phone service... nope.
Signed CCISD contract... check.
Bought new placemats... check.
Bought new flatware... check.
Bought a trashcan.. nope.
Bought a lamp/torchere... nope.
Bought new towels... check.
Bought new sheets... check.
Bought new bed... nope (that will happen two days before the movers come).
I still have quite a bit to do. I'm going to put off shopping until I move in, so Monday July 2nd... I'll be down at Target for a while.
And I'm buying lots of new stuff because I don't like my old stuff. New apartment, new part of town, new job, new start.
Cheers!
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Make the Lambs Stop Screaming!
Whew. I am so much better today than I was yesterday. Let me explain my week...
Monday: Summer school started. I was pleasantly suprised with 9 students total. Out of three classes.
Tuesday: Summer school day two. I gained 5 students. Yay. So I have 14 students. Two are in both my first and second period because they failed both fall and spring semester. But I still have only 14 students. And since I have so few, they're going to do fine (I hope) AND they will now be reading a novel. I never told them that summer school was going to be all easy.
Tuesday night: I flew to Dallas for a three-day professional development for pre-AP teachers. (one of my co-teachers had my kids for the three days.) Luckily my roommate for the development is a middle school English teacher that I had some HISD classes with last year. We got along swimmingly.
Wednesday: 8am. The pd (professional development) began. There's this fantastic organization called AP strategies, and they have a sub-section called Laying the Foundation for pre-AP and LOTS of districts in Texas participate. We attend seminars, participate in professional development trainings, etc. and at the end of the year our students take an end-of-course exam. They read a nonfiction passage and had to write an essay on the rhetorical devices that the author used to support her purpose (and they had to figure out the purpose of the speech... and it's NOT to inform, entertain, or make the reading easier). This week was for a chosen number (maybe 500) of us to come to Dallas to score the essays from that exam - all 50,000 of them. So most of Wednesday was for training purposes - how to score the essays. We saw some great ones, we saw some terrible ones. In the late afternoon we began scoring the "live" essays. I began a paper clip chain to keep track of how many folders I completed (25 essays per folder). I finished a folder and a half. The first day was fun - I was learning a lot and was happy to see that my students weren't as behind as I thought - the majority of the essays were either 2s or 3s on a 6-point scale). I figured out some new essay instruction approach and I saw some really fantastic writing.
Thursday: 8-5 was ALL essay scoring (with maybe an hour or two of refresher training). One of the women at my table brought bags of Hershey kisses, and another woman brought other chocolate to the tables, so we were all on a major sugar high by the end of the afternoon (plus they fed us VERY well). I think I finished maybe 9 paper clips that day. My table was fun - every time we read a crazy essay we shared it and kept our spirits up (many kids knew that this test didn't count so they wrote other stuff besides the actual essay). But even with the fun, my head was pounding by the end. I began to be grateful for the blank essays or the essays that were off-topic and entertaining or the essays that were only one or two paragraphs. I was tired of seeing poor writing like "she used metaphors to compare stuff" or "the writer used imagery to support her purpose" (and then not explaining what the purpose was) and I was a mental mess by 5pm. I wanted to just go up to my hotel room and lay on the bed in a daze.
Friday: Day three. We scored from 8-12:30. I finished a grand total of 13 paper clips. I was grumpy, dizzy, frustrated by the end. I spent over an hour on the last folder - I kept losing my concentration and had to read some of the essays two or three times. I was sick and tired of the crappy essays. Let me tell you, good essays were far and few in between. After lunch we had a closing session in which the question leader from each age group (grades 8-10 were represented; I was in the 10th grade room) presented the passage the students had to read, the essay the kids had to write (did I mention it was a timed essay and they had 40 minutes to read, plan and write the essay?) and the best essay from each age group. I am proud to say that I was the pirate that found the buried treasure of the 10th grade essays. And it was the only 6 I saw. Again, I saw mostly twos and threes. And the occasional essay in which the student was cursing the assignment or asking for a "break" because that student had a rough week (seriously). And then there was the one in which I decided the writer was high on drugs and the one in which the student wrote that he wasn't going to conform and bow down to the educational ******* who waste their time writing essays to bring students down and enforce even more restrictions upon them. He ended his quite lengthy rant with "f*** this essay and f*** society." Yeah, we flagged that essay. He probably wears trench coats to school.
And then last night I was at the airport for WAY too long. The hotel shuttle dropped us off at 3:30, so some friends and I wandered around until 5, which is when we made our way to the terminal so that we could get good seats (first come, first serve at Southwest). After sitting on the floor, an employee said that our 6pm flight was now delayed until 7pm. Groan. 10 minutes later, the same employee said that our flight was now delayed until 7:40pm. Double groan. I spent the next two+ hours chatting with the guy next to me, so time went by quickly. By the time the plane got to the airport and we were allowed to board, it was 8pm. Some of the other Houston flights were also delayed, so our flight was brimming with people trying to get to Houston ASAP. When we finally landed at Hobby, it was 9pm. I went down to baggage claim to get my bag and ran into teachers that took an earlier flight. Their bags were on my plane so they had to wait at Hobby. But when I walked away from them, I happened to look at the pile of luggage that arrived earlier. There's my suitcase. So I was delayed but my luggage was not. I don't understand. I assumed that the luggage went on the plane that I was on.
But now I'm home, catching up on reading BOOKS, and trying to brace myself for the reading of 14 essays tomorrow (my students' work).
Cheers!
Monday: Summer school started. I was pleasantly suprised with 9 students total. Out of three classes.
Tuesday: Summer school day two. I gained 5 students. Yay. So I have 14 students. Two are in both my first and second period because they failed both fall and spring semester. But I still have only 14 students. And since I have so few, they're going to do fine (I hope) AND they will now be reading a novel. I never told them that summer school was going to be all easy.
Tuesday night: I flew to Dallas for a three-day professional development for pre-AP teachers. (one of my co-teachers had my kids for the three days.) Luckily my roommate for the development is a middle school English teacher that I had some HISD classes with last year. We got along swimmingly.
Wednesday: 8am. The pd (professional development) began. There's this fantastic organization called AP strategies, and they have a sub-section called Laying the Foundation for pre-AP and LOTS of districts in Texas participate. We attend seminars, participate in professional development trainings, etc. and at the end of the year our students take an end-of-course exam. They read a nonfiction passage and had to write an essay on the rhetorical devices that the author used to support her purpose (and they had to figure out the purpose of the speech... and it's NOT to inform, entertain, or make the reading easier). This week was for a chosen number (maybe 500) of us to come to Dallas to score the essays from that exam - all 50,000 of them. So most of Wednesday was for training purposes - how to score the essays. We saw some great ones, we saw some terrible ones. In the late afternoon we began scoring the "live" essays. I began a paper clip chain to keep track of how many folders I completed (25 essays per folder). I finished a folder and a half. The first day was fun - I was learning a lot and was happy to see that my students weren't as behind as I thought - the majority of the essays were either 2s or 3s on a 6-point scale). I figured out some new essay instruction approach and I saw some really fantastic writing.
Thursday: 8-5 was ALL essay scoring (with maybe an hour or two of refresher training). One of the women at my table brought bags of Hershey kisses, and another woman brought other chocolate to the tables, so we were all on a major sugar high by the end of the afternoon (plus they fed us VERY well). I think I finished maybe 9 paper clips that day. My table was fun - every time we read a crazy essay we shared it and kept our spirits up (many kids knew that this test didn't count so they wrote other stuff besides the actual essay). But even with the fun, my head was pounding by the end. I began to be grateful for the blank essays or the essays that were off-topic and entertaining or the essays that were only one or two paragraphs. I was tired of seeing poor writing like "she used metaphors to compare stuff" or "the writer used imagery to support her purpose" (and then not explaining what the purpose was) and I was a mental mess by 5pm. I wanted to just go up to my hotel room and lay on the bed in a daze.
Friday: Day three. We scored from 8-12:30. I finished a grand total of 13 paper clips. I was grumpy, dizzy, frustrated by the end. I spent over an hour on the last folder - I kept losing my concentration and had to read some of the essays two or three times. I was sick and tired of the crappy essays. Let me tell you, good essays were far and few in between. After lunch we had a closing session in which the question leader from each age group (grades 8-10 were represented; I was in the 10th grade room) presented the passage the students had to read, the essay the kids had to write (did I mention it was a timed essay and they had 40 minutes to read, plan and write the essay?) and the best essay from each age group. I am proud to say that I was the pirate that found the buried treasure of the 10th grade essays. And it was the only 6 I saw. Again, I saw mostly twos and threes. And the occasional essay in which the student was cursing the assignment or asking for a "break" because that student had a rough week (seriously). And then there was the one in which I decided the writer was high on drugs and the one in which the student wrote that he wasn't going to conform and bow down to the educational ******* who waste their time writing essays to bring students down and enforce even more restrictions upon them. He ended his quite lengthy rant with "f*** this essay and f*** society." Yeah, we flagged that essay. He probably wears trench coats to school.
And then last night I was at the airport for WAY too long. The hotel shuttle dropped us off at 3:30, so some friends and I wandered around until 5, which is when we made our way to the terminal so that we could get good seats (first come, first serve at Southwest). After sitting on the floor, an employee said that our 6pm flight was now delayed until 7pm. Groan. 10 minutes later, the same employee said that our flight was now delayed until 7:40pm. Double groan. I spent the next two+ hours chatting with the guy next to me, so time went by quickly. By the time the plane got to the airport and we were allowed to board, it was 8pm. Some of the other Houston flights were also delayed, so our flight was brimming with people trying to get to Houston ASAP. When we finally landed at Hobby, it was 9pm. I went down to baggage claim to get my bag and ran into teachers that took an earlier flight. Their bags were on my plane so they had to wait at Hobby. But when I walked away from them, I happened to look at the pile of luggage that arrived earlier. There's my suitcase. So I was delayed but my luggage was not. I don't understand. I assumed that the luggage went on the plane that I was on.
But now I'm home, catching up on reading BOOKS, and trying to brace myself for the reading of 14 essays tomorrow (my students' work).
Cheers!
Monday, June 04, 2007
Play It Again, Sam
Summer school has begun. Yes, I'm temporarily back at my HISD school - they need me for summer school and I need money for moving. See how well that works?
Although I began Friday, today was the first day for students. I'm teaching three classes and I expected to have around 60 students. Being the first day of a semester, many kids assume that no work will be done and they don't come, so I didn't get an accurate number of how many I actually have. I think it's safe to say I don't have 60. I had a grand total of 9. Hopefully I won't have more than 15-20 more come in tomorrow. If I retain 9, everyone will pass because I'll be able to spend adequate time with each of them.
In other news, I took my first ballroom dancing lesson yesterday. The Sailor and I, despite ending our relationship, are going to remain friends and when I told him about my lessons yesterday, he summed it up by saying, "You're a dork." And I replied, "Pretty much." That's ok - I embrace my dorkiness (is that even a word?). And I had a great time! The first hour was tango and the second hour was cha-cha. Of course, the women seriously outnumbered the men so they had to alternate with the women, but it was a great time. I even knew another classmate - one of the actors from Company OnStage and his new wife are learning to dance for a reception they're having soon. AND every other Saturday night the studio has a crash course/dance party. This month there will be a salsa night and later on a swing night. Yes, I will be there.
Anyone interested in joining me? It's too late to join the ballroom class I'm in, but the crash course/dance parties are on a night-by-night basis? Any takers?
Cheers!
Although I began Friday, today was the first day for students. I'm teaching three classes and I expected to have around 60 students. Being the first day of a semester, many kids assume that no work will be done and they don't come, so I didn't get an accurate number of how many I actually have. I think it's safe to say I don't have 60. I had a grand total of 9. Hopefully I won't have more than 15-20 more come in tomorrow. If I retain 9, everyone will pass because I'll be able to spend adequate time with each of them.
In other news, I took my first ballroom dancing lesson yesterday. The Sailor and I, despite ending our relationship, are going to remain friends and when I told him about my lessons yesterday, he summed it up by saying, "You're a dork." And I replied, "Pretty much." That's ok - I embrace my dorkiness (is that even a word?). And I had a great time! The first hour was tango and the second hour was cha-cha. Of course, the women seriously outnumbered the men so they had to alternate with the women, but it was a great time. I even knew another classmate - one of the actors from Company OnStage and his new wife are learning to dance for a reception they're having soon. AND every other Saturday night the studio has a crash course/dance party. This month there will be a salsa night and later on a swing night. Yes, I will be there.
Anyone interested in joining me? It's too late to join the ballroom class I'm in, but the crash course/dance parties are on a night-by-night basis? Any takers?
Cheers!
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