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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Why Thursdays are the best days

I love Thursdays! I know it's not usually a favorite of the days of the week; however, like Friday, Thursday represents an ending of the work week. I still work at my full-time job on Friday, but Thursday is my last day of teaching for the week, so it's a relief when I get home with pizza from Little Caesar's for me and the fam and am able to just relax. Thursday is the only day/night of the week that I don't do anything related to my class (other than check email just in case) - no grading, no prepping, nothing. The kids and I share some pizza for dinner, Spencer and I watch Wow Wow Wubbzy, and after I get her bathed and in bed, Christian and I watch Survivor. My vegetative evening continues with Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, if I can make it all the way through! The only problem with Thursdays is that I am so tired from all the late nights during the week that I rarely can finish my shows. And that's why I also love my DVR.
Tomorrow is Thursday - I can't wait!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Teaching - 12 weeks down!

Wow, how the time flew after those first few weeks! There were a few weeks there right in the middle where I thought I wasn't going to make it through the book and teach everything I need to teach, but we pushed hard and now the rest of the semester will be fairly smooth sailing. I had a total of 5 students drop the class and another 4 or 5 have stopped showing up, so I'm down to about 19 students. Unfortunately, of those 19, several are not going to pass this class and move on. I'm amazed at some of these students who actually think they will pass the class when they continually show up late, don't come to class, don't turn in work, and obviously don't read any of the chapters! Then I have the core group of students who are doing very well - and of course, they're the ones who worry about their grades, and they have absolutely nothing to worry about!

I do get frustrated with the students who think they can just slack off and do nothing. I gave my students grade updates, and I had a couple students who were failing. A couple of them dropped, but several stayed in the class, even showing up sporadically. I just don't get it. Either get to work or get out of the class! And the thing that really gets me is that although I am pretty strict, I do give a lot of extra credit and chances to improve your grade. I gave a quiz that was pretty tough for everyone - even my best students. So I gave everyone the chance to get full credit on the quiz by taking it home and completing it, and I gave them a week to do it. Surprising, not even half the class did it. Not surprising, my A and B students were the ones who did.

This is not to say that I don't enjoy teaching - I am still loving it, and I wish I could be doing this full time. It's so great that I get to help these students improve their English and writing skills. I put in my request for Fall 2010 - I can only request 2 classes because I'm part time, but I basically requested everything! The Department Chair did suggest that if I request 7am classes, I'll most likely get at least one class - no one wants 7am! I am so not a morning person, but I've gotten used to it, and I know my students wonder how I can be so awake that early! I wonder sometimes, myself. Still no word on whether there's a class for me in Spring - keeping my fingers crossed!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Now this just makes no sense...

I finally have enough music on iTunes to do one of those music shuffle surveys - yeah! OK, so most of these answers make absolutely no sense for my life. Some of them are just plain wrong! My answers a bit skewed toward the Red Hot Chili Peppers (you'll see) - I swear I have more music than that on there! Oh well, it was fun anyway!

Here are the rules for anyone who has no idea what I'm talking about (how could you not know - if you've been on MySpace or Facebook for more than 5 minutes, you have to have seen one of these):

1) Open up your library (iPod, Winamp, iTunes, etc.)
2) Put it on shuffle
3) Press play
4) for each question, type in what song is playing
5) hit next for each question

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And now for this insightful glimpse into my life via my iTunes library:

1. What do people assume when they first look at me?
Road Trippin’ (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

2. What will be a big challenge in life for me?
You Won’t Be Mine (Matchbox Twenty)

3. Am I a good boyfriend/girlfriend?
The Man with the Dogs (The Dead Kennedys)

4. Do I have a Secret Admirer?
Around the World (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

5. Will I ever become manically depressed in my life?
Women and Men (They Might be Giants)

7. Is someone trying to kill me?
Pretty Little Ditty (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

8. What is my sexual preference?
Organic Anti-Beat Box Band (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

9. What am I afraid of?
Wonderwall (Oasis)

10. What will I be doing in a few years?
Man with the Hex (The Atomic Fireballs)

11. What is some good advice for me?
The Loved One (INXS)

12. What should I do instead of this quiz?
We Want a Rock (They Might be Giants)

13. Will you get married?
Smoke Two Joints (Sublime)

14. What is the story of your life?
Skinny Sweaty Man (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

15. How can you get ahead in life?
The Righteous & the Wicked (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

16. What is the best thing about your friends?
Love Trilogy (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

17. What song describes you?
Warm Tape (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

18. How does the world see you?
The Sounds of Silence (Simon and Garfunkel)

19. Will you have a happy life?
40 oz. To Freedom (Sublime)

20. How can I make myself happy?
Chica Me Tipo (Sublime)

21. What should you do with your life?
Underneath It All (No Doubt)

22. Will you ever have children?
Dosed (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Monday, November 2, 2009

Our Journey to Financial Freedom and more...

Well, it's just like Dave says in the book - things are going great and then something happens. In our case, it's fortunately nothing bad, just a minor setback on our journey. Let's just say we're taking an unexpected Thanksgiving trip to Phoenix this year! It's actually really cool (other than the initial outlay of cash) that we're going to be doing something so completely different for the holidays. The only bummer is that Christian won't be with us - he'll be with his dad in Illinois (his dad is getting married that weekend).

The coolest thing about this trip is that we're only paying for the airfare and the rental car! Howard has been working out of town since August (5-6 days per week), and he's a Priority Club member at Holiday Inn. He has so many points saved up that we're able to get our hotel free for our trip (5 free days in a hotel - how nice is that on a travel budget?) and still have enough points left over and left to earn to possibly get free rooms in SF for Bay to Breakers in May!! Oh the paradox of Howard's out of town schedule - I hate that he's gone, but it has its perks. And for food, we've really hit the jackpot. We were given $50 in Chili's gift cards last year, Christian "cashed in" a $25 gift card at the Bank of Mom, we had a couple of Starbuck's gift cards from somewhere, and Howard got a $100 gift card as a safety bonus on this job he's on right now. I also cashed in points on MyPoints for another $70 in restaurant gift cards, so just about all of our food will be covered while we're travelling, too. You never realize how much the food costs when you travel and have to eat at a restaurant for every meal! This will definitely keep us on a tight budget.

So, our journey to financial freedom continues. Because we had to pay for the plane tickets in October, we wiped our emergency fund. Yes, I know travel is NOT an emergency on the plan, BUT we knew that we'd have it back at the beginning of this month. The other perk to Howard working so much over the past several months is that he gets a bonus for his billable time - I won't tell how much the bonus is, but I will say that it's been extremely helpful! And I get my check from teaching each month (OK so I make about $4 per hour when you consider all the time I spend prepping and grading, but still), which really helps for all the little expenses that seem to pop up every month (school pictures $54 - wtf?!?!).

We started our journey on September 1 and have paid off 4 of the smaller things we had hanging over our heads, including one car! Granted, the car only had 4 payments left when we started, but still - we made 4 payments in 2 months! Even with this unplanned vacation, we could still be on track to pay off the next credit card bill by the end of the year. And not only that, but we've gone completely credit card free since we started. I thought it would be a lot harder than it's been (again, that bonus has been a life saver), but we have really made an effort to change our charging ways! I don't even let Christian borrow his allowance anymore - no more credit from the Bank of Mom!

Even though we still have a long way to go, and it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we can already see that first pinprick of light, and it's good!