Contemplating Copiers

I spent several minutes during lunch at work contemplating the copier. It really is a wonderful invention. Double sided copying was really what drew me in today. I have to unjam the copier quite often, but the inner workings are quite amazing. (really, they shouldn't make me proctor the PSAT for 4 periods without even a bathroom break and then go straight into teaching my next class, eating lunch while coping papers evidently drove me over the edge today)

On a completely different note--I'm taking care of my sister's cat. The cat freaked out when Bethany got pregnant--started peeing on things. She's quite fine here at my house. Today I sorted my laundry, Mila sorted herself

My cat, the continuing saga

As usual, no posts for an eon. I think I should just write about my cat on my blog, there is plenty of material, but I don't want to be a crazy cat lady. But I'm not crazy, I just have a ridiculous cat. Reasons Bianca is ridiculous"

1. She stole my pillow this week, I wake up all uncomfortable and because I hear something. I open my eyes to see my cat sleeping on my pillow purring incredibly loudly.

2. She wakes me up at 5am to be fed. I get up and dump food in her dish. I go back to sleep. She wakes me up at 5:05. I get up and look at her dish to see why I am awake again. I have missed the dish with the food and she is refusing to eat it off the floor. I place the food in her dish and she eats and I get to sleep. (never mind that she has a habit of fishing one piece at a time daintily out of her dish and placing it on the floor to eat)

3. She wakes me up daily by tapping and petting my face--no kidding it is the weirdest thing. I am sleeping soundly when a small paw gently begins rubbing my cheeks, tapping my lips, and trying to open my eyes--fortunately she doesn't use her claws.

4. When I ignore the face tapping she takes it up a notch. She balances on my headboard and puts her claws out and combs through my hair until I get up.

5. She has to have the sink filled with water if I walk near the bathroom. When I filled it for her a little bit ago I returned to find her lounging alongside with her tail in the water--she was annoyed that I drained the sink. She is ridiculous, cats aren't supposed to like water.

6. She is scared of ceiling fans. I have to bribe her with cat nip to go in the den (which has a litter box so she has to go in there).

7. She is mildly obsessed with the furminator brush. Which is good to help keep down shedding, but she gets so excited it is hard to brush her, she can't stop rubbing her cheek against my hands and the brush.

8. She loves socks and underwear. She is in heaven right now because my laundry is sorted and on the floor waiting to go in the washer. I have to keep my drawers tightly closed, even an inch gap and she'll fish out all my underwear or socks and line them up from the bedroom to the front door.

9. She doesn't like my laptop, she thinks she is the only thing that belongs on my lap. To keep her occupied when I write lesson plans I grab a box of office supplies out of my desk drawer and let her fish them all out of the box while I type.

10. She whines like a toddler, but she is never going to grow up, I'd like to trade her in for a toddler if anyone would like to make a switch, you'd save money: no babysitters, college, car insurance etc. (although you do have a pay for boarding if you travel, she refuses to use her litter box even if you have someone come and check on her daily while you are away)

11. She gets annoyed with my Bible. It sits by my bed, but it also seems to be where her favorite sunbeam comes through the window. This has created a hostile relationship--I'm waiting for her to get struck by lightning because I don't speak cat, but I'm pretty sure she is cursing at the Bible.

I have unpacked my camera! (So maybe there has been this one box in the office since I moved in August, otherwise, I unpacked quickly, really I did.) We have snow, lots and lots of snow. Philly's official total at the airport was 23". I think we got around 18" here. The view out my kitchen window is at left.






Now here is what I can see from the office. So Christmasy.

Below is my tree. A snippet and then all 9 and a half feet of it.




















Since I would be inside for the weekend, I baked bread. They weren't kidding when they said to be sure the container was 6 qt. My dough popped the lid off!
I tried the No Knead Bread from Bakers Banter and really liked it. The dough was sticky, but not too hard to work with.



And the result was delicious!

well hello blog

Not so good at the blogging for quite a while. I feel like my summer vacation has finally begun--but it is almost August, so much of it has already gone by. My thought of the day is that I knew I was a planner and like to know what is happening when, but I'm not sure how much I realized it bothers me to not know. I don't know when I'm moving for sure. Some time in the next 3 weeks it seems. I really don't like this not knowing. I am sick of having things in boxes and I really didn't get much packed until Thursday so it has only been four days. Unfortunately it seems that my response to the unknown right now is to be whiny and complain. I'm trying to work on that.
In other interesting news, I have either hit upon the laziest or best way to clean the downstairs bathroom. There was a fair bit of mold and mildew in the shower--not having exhaust fans in the bathroom leads to this problem. I like using Tilex mold and mildew remover because you don't have to scrub and it really works. The problem is that there isn't a good way to rinse that shower because unlike mine upstairs, the shower head is fixed. Today I decided, after 8 years of living here, that I wasn't going to try to rinse the walls with a cup. Instead, I found the nozzle for the hose (which involved crawling under a nasty table in the shed--really gross) and decided to drag the whole thing inside through the dining room and kitchen to the bathroom. Once I found a washer and installed it to stop the nozzle from leaking, it worked beautifully, the shower is so much cleaner and it was fun to do. Of course I still have a hose running through the house which is not ideal--probably should go do something about that.

NEW CLASSROOM

Welcome to my new classroom. It is huge. I had trouble deciding what to do with all the space. I took these pictures really quickly on my way out Friday. I had good intentions of organizing a "tour" around my room, but we're gonna have to go with some quick snapshots of the various areas. When you are seeing the blackboard, you are "standing" in the front of the room. When you see the Smartboard you are in the back of the room. My plants are not usually on the table, they live on the window sills, except for when they move into buckets on the table for spring break. I haven't gotten posters up in the front yet, excuse the vast blue emptiness.

Spring Pajamas

I'm wearing my spring pajamas. I find this very exciting (mind you the heat is currently running in my house--but it is April 6th and I want spring). Also, if you saw me you might point out that this top and pants looks an awful lot like my winter, fall, and summer pajamas, but you would have missed two very important details. This top doesn't have long sleeves and it is SPRING GREEN! I love the color green that everything turns in the spring, you only get to see it this time of year--bud green is my favorite color. I stood outside in the rain today just to appreciate the green. Now I'm going to switch computers and post pictures of my new classroom!

Productivity

I've had a very productive evening. Wanna know what I did? (if not you can stop reading and find something better to do, I'm not offended--remember, I don't like writing, I just keep trying at writing a blog because I think as an English teacher I should write more and try to enjoy it. I actually write in here more than I ever did when I tried with pencil and paper--which tells you how bad I was at that.) I'm worried that I'm going to write everything down and look at it and feel less accomplished, that I will compare it to my to-do list and realize that I still have way to much to finish. But, I asked if you wanted to know so I better be willing to tell. I finished work and...
-went to Whole Foods and picked up some groceries that I've wanted for a while (I think their candied ginger tastes better than anywhere else)
-went to Home Depot to get new insides for the upstairs toilet (more on that later)
-took out the recycling (forgot things, ended up making 2 trips, visited with the adorable Greek neighbor lady for a moment)
-emptied the dishwasher
-reloaded the dishwasher
-scrubbed out my water bottle, including taking the cap apart and cleaning every little crevice
-made chicken salad (got distracted and ate all the heart of the celery, I love pale yellowy green celery hearts, they are so tiny and sweet)
-made corn and black bean salsa (made way too much and have been forcing roommates to eat it)
-packed my lunch for tomorrow
-fed and got water for the kitties
-scooped 3 litterboxes
-took the trash out from 3 rooms
-emptied the vacuum
-cleaned the dining room
-emptied the vacuum again
-replaced the water intake/float valve on the upstairs toilet as a piece had broken off and you had to turn the water on and off manually at the pipe before and after flushing
-lint rollered all the fabric in the living room to remove cat hair (curtains and chairs)
-refilled 2 humidifiers
-finally ate the chicken salad (and jelly beans, I love Just Born Jelly Beans, and there were 5 black ones left in the little handful from the bottom of the bag, I like black licorice jelly beans)
-ordered bridal shower gift and black cocoa for a baking project
-checked email
-washed hair
-wished for hot, chocolate chip cookies to appear, shared this with roommates, they liked that idea, we want the "oven" from Fifth Element that you just stick in the magic little item, push the buttons and out comes your food (not that I don't love to cook, just at that moment, I wanted cookies to appear piping hot with nothing to clean up)
-and now I wrote a blog post.
My to-do list still is way too long, and there is a small mound of items sitting behind me waiting to be taken care of, but I did get a lot done. In other news, my school decided to have another big cop turnout--I stopped counting at 30 cars. (no pics this time) Last Thursday we had two separate fights on the 3rd floor about an hour apart. One of our school police who almost never calls for back up, called, so between knowing that he doesn't call often and the shooting of the detective nearby (also within the hour), there was a serious turnout out of police. Several students were arrested and we had to be in "lockdown." Which we've never practiced in the 8 years I've been there. Don't worry, they wrote the procedure and we got it today. So helpful. As our roster chair says, "It's not the wrong way, it's not the right way, it's the Franklin way."
Alrighty, I better dry my hair and go to sleep.

I got a MacBook to use for work, I'm pretty excited about it. On Friday we were diagramming sentences last period and the kids loved the activexpression flipchart on the smart board. They were ooing and ahhing, they were excited when I messed up and wrote preposition instead of adverb because then we could click the spray bottle and watch my mistake jump into the trash. Have you ever seen people excited about diagramming sentences (except my mom of course)? The kids loved it--can't wait to plan this week's lessons incorporating our new fun technology.
I just started playing with iPhoto (as you can see)

I also created a podcast with images and a book and now I'm going to play with Keynote (while my Dell laptop sits and looks forlorn)