Random things from my life…

• Cleaning carpets sounds like an easy job, but it really takes a long time and a lot of effort…especially getting the living room to dry in time to watch the OSU game!
• My husband carved our pumpkin to have a “smiley” face.  It’s the punctuation marks that turn into a . He’s so funny!  (Eric, not the pumpkin)
• A former student who joined the army this summer dropped by to say hello on his way through Ohio yesterday.  The Army seems to be just what he needed.  It’s always good to see a student find his way in life.
• Why is it that I can clean my kitchen 2-3 times a day and STILL not have clean counters?
• You know it was a good idea to make the appointment when it takes the chiropracter a couple of tries to get your back to pop into its proper alignment.  
• October has been one continuous month.  I mean non-stop, one-thing-after-another from 31 days.  Boy am I glad tomorrow is November!
• I can’t believe that tomorrow is November already!  It’s almost Christmas!

Catching up is hard to do!

Yesterday was a LONG day!  Not bad, just long.

I made it to CU early to get stuff done. Got my classes done, spent an hour preparing the Powerpoint for a presentation I do for the Writing Center which went from 4-5.  Then I closed up my office, went to the library for a few minutes, and finally headed home.  I arrived at about 6:40.  Eric and I made dinner together.  The rest of the evening was spent working and watching MythBusters.  I was beat by 10:00 when we wen to bed.

This morning, I slept in a bit today.  Yeah for me!  I have a lot of writing to get done today.  The pieces have to be emailed tomorrow, and since I work all day tomorrow, I need to get them done today.   I also really need to run some errands, pick up some groceries and other items.  It wouldn’t hurt to do a quick load of laundry or two and clean the bathrooms.  But we’ll see…we’ll see.

Today is crazy busy for me, and I won’t be on much, but I figured I could spare a few seconds to post. 

Yesterday, I didn’t go anywhere.  I sat in front of the computer
and worked on a piece that I’m writing that has to be sent out on
Friday.  Okay, two pieces, but I only got one “done.”  I have
tomorrow, though, so that’s good!

I graded in the evening.  I made it to CU early this morning, and
I’ve been doing class prep and grading since I got here.  Now I
need to run to class since it starts in about 8 minutes!  Such fun!

This afternoon, I have to give a presentation on how to craft a
reasoned/logical argument.  I really need to revise my powerpoint
before then…wonder when that will happen!?!

Here are some pictures from our road trip!  We begin with a rainy drive through Pennsylvania…

Next came a stop in New Jersey (a scenic overlook to stretch our legs) and a traffic jam in Connecticut.

Finally we arrived at our hotel and got up on Saturday morning to see the sights of New England…

The castle is Gillette Castle, built in the early 1900’s by William Gillette, the original Sherlock Holmes.  The last pic is looking out from the castle.

So I’m back in Ohio and back at work.  A friend needed a ride to
CU this morning, so I got up at 5:50 and left the house at 7:20 so she
could be here by 8:00 (or close to it!).  That actually is a good
thing because I needed to do some class prep before I actually get to
class today!

The weekend…I will get to pictures tomorrow.  The road trip was
certainly that (a road trip), but it was a good time away with
Eric.  We left at 4:30 on Thursday and drove into PA, stopping in
Dubois (as you probably saw on Friday).  On Friday, we drove the
rest of the way across PA (rain), into NJ (rain/clouds), around NYC
into NY (clouds) state and then onto I95 which is the New England
Turnpike.  Things were moving along just fine all that way, until
we got into CT on I95. Then we hit a traffic jam.  We went 10
miles in 2 hours!  
So we should’ve gotten to our hotel at 4:30 and instead didnt’ get
there until after 7:30.  YUCK!  So we went and got some
dinner and tried to unwind a bit at the hotel.  The one nice thing
was that the wind blew all the clouds away while we were sitting on 95,
so there were blue skies in CT for us to see!

Saturday was a leisurely day for us.  We drove around the
coastline on a scenic highway, stopped at a beach/state park for
pictures and to walk around.  Then we headed to our only
“official” activity: a ride on a steam train.  We were supposed to
also go on a riverboat on this ride, but the boat wasn’t running that
day because of the wind.  It was sunny, but very windy!  So
after the ride, which was very cool, we did some more driving
around.  We went up and saw the Gillette Castle (originally the
home of William Gillette, who was the original Sherlock Holmes) and
walked around there for a bit.  Then we stopped at an outlet mall
to wander around and get some supper.  Then we headed back to the
hotel and watched tv and relaxed.

Sunday we left the hotel at 7:30 to come home.  We did NOT drive
on 95 back towards NJ.  Instead, we headed up 84 into NY state and
then down into PA near Wilkes-Barre and Scranton on I81.  We got
back on 80 to come home (and then it clouded over and rained again) and
drove it all the way into Ohio (cloudy/no rain) where we picked up 76
in Youngstown, then back to 71, then back to Columbus (about
6:30)!  It was lovely to get home.  My butt hurt so bad from
sitting for so long that I decided to lay on my stomach on the floor to
watch TV and veg out.  But it was just nice to be home and sleep
in my own bed!

Overall…the views in CT were no better than the ones in PA and NY
(actually they were probably better overall). The train ride was fun
(we bought Kelly and Holly engineer hats and train whistles…won’t
Chris & Deb love that!). We got some good pictures and had a good
time together.  And we won’t be taking another road trip for a
while! 

So we are in PA (Dubois, PA to be exact) and are packing up to head out again.  We drove about 4.5 hours last night, so today’s jaunt will be much more bearable.

Thanks for the affirmation about the haircut.  The funny thing is, a couple of years ago, I went in trying to get this haircut and ended up with something completely different.  This time, I asked for something completely different and got this cut.  So, Gail…I think you and I have the same problem!

Anyway, Eric is ready to go.  Have a lovely Friday!

EDIT:  I put a pic of my new “do” below…I’m still learning how to add pictures…

EDIT: I’ve had a rough morning.  I got a haircut, which didn’t turn out like I really wanted.  And I missed the FedEx guy who was bringing Eric’s new toy which we were hoping to take with us this weekend, and since it requires a signature, who knows when we’ll be here to get it from them.  Hope the day gets better… End Edit

It’s Fall Break, and I caught up ALL my grading before I left work yesterday!!!

Okay, so I actually have a couple of miscellaneous things, but those are quick so I won’t count them.  I even graded my huge stack of bonus work from Basic English.  I was very proud of myself.  Of course, I didn’t leave my office until almost 5:00, but it was so worth it!

Eric changed the oil in his Jeep last night so we could take it on our trip.  We’ll probably leave sometime later today and drive a few hours.  That will cut the drive tomorrow (it’s about 10 hours total), which will be nice.  My students said that the area should be really pretty right now, so I’m getting excited.  And a road trip with Eric will be a nice change of pace, too. 

Of course, I have lots to do before we go…cleaning the house a bit, running some errands, packing…all that fun stuff. But I’m on Fall Break, so what else do I have, right?

     

Last day of class for the week!  Yeah for Fall Break!  And
I’m going to let my classes out early (since a number of them will
leave early anyway and may not be in class at all) so it should be a
good day.

I got my papers read (but didn’t get grades put on them…I’ll do that
this morning) yesterday morning.  Then I went to the church for a
meeting about Christmas.  Then a trip to Sam’s Club and Meijer for
a few things. Eric was home when I got there, so I went back to work on
the laundry that I’d been slowly chipping away at all day and helped
him update our new website.  We had supper and then he wanted to
watch a Netflix movie we’d had for 3 weeks or more.  I had no
desire to watch it (it wasn’t as bad as I was expecting), but it meant
that I didn’t really get much else done while the movie was on. 
Once it finished, I acutally put away my laundry
before getting ready for bed.  Spent some quality time with Eric
and then we went to bed (and actually slept in some this morning!).

Oh, and on a positive note, Eric thinks they might have fixed the
broken machine that’s been causing him SO much trouble at work for 6
months!  And today, a bunch of people (not him) are at a meeting
in Dayton, so he’s expecting to get LOTS of work done.  Yeah for
happy husbands!

Okay, I need to get on to my grading and such!

So yesterday was a lot less exciting than the weekend.  Classes were fairly uneventful.  I gave a chapter test in Basic English, and I had a group presentation scheduled in Comp.  So I had a light day!  Mom and I even made it home for lunch about the same time so we had 45 whole minutes to chat yesterday…that’s just craziness!

Other than classes, I graded like a mad person yesterday.  Mid-term grade reports were due (actually today, but I needed to do them yesterday before I left), so I was trying to get some of the grades recorded to help some of the students if I could.  Mid-term reports are warnings that students are not doing well in class, and they are sent to advisors and deans who then are supposed to call the children in and start working with them.  I have a larger than usual number of low students, but it’s pretty much their own fault.  And the grading rush I did actually did get one of them off the list before I submitted them!

Anyway, I just got in a grading mood, I guess, so I spent most of the evening working on that as well.  I did make dinner (meatloaf, baked seasoned potatoes, and veggies), but then we both did our own thing last night (Eric on the computer, me grading).  Such fun! I also worked on laundry which I need to finish today.  And I have a few errands to run as well.  But I really do want to get most/all of my grading caught up before we leave this weekend, so that will be a primary focus!

So I missed some great discussions on Friday on Xanga (Kimberly’s book list was great…thought Madeleine L’Engle is NOT a Scientologist like Tom Cruise, nor is the Christian Scientist the same thing as Scientology…but that’s another discussion!).  Unfortunately, I was booked solid for the entire day.  There were 4 sessions during the day; the first one started at 8:30 and the last one ended at 5.  I started toward home at about 20 after 5.  In each session a number of people read papers they had written and then there was 30 minutes for discussion about the topics each person had addressed.  My first paper was a rationale for the benefits of using popular culture in the writing classroom, and then most of my questions in the Q&A time were about how I do that.  My other presentation was a workshop about the importance of critical thinking and how we might get ourselves and our students to do more of it!  There weren’t very many people at my second presentation (a number of people left early and skipped the last session), but it went well anyway.  And the best part of all was that it was DONE!

So I tried to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing a bit and unwinding.  I was still crazy busy, but I think I’m starting to let all the stress go.  Friday night, we had meatloaf and vegged out for a while, before I took a bath to relax and then read a book in bed until I was too tired to keep my eyes open.  Saturday morning was actually pretty low-key.  I decided to clean my house because people were coming on Sunday, so I did some of that.  Eric & I also loaded up the recyclables we’d been accumulating for weeks and dropped them off.  I stopped at the grocery quickly on our way home.  Then we had a wedding to go to at 1:30 (the poor groom fainted!) but skipped the reception. We watched the first half of the OSU game before heading to Cedarville for Erik’s birthday party which took the rest of the night.  It was actually a good time and not too overwhelming, although we are a very LOUD group!

On Sunday, Eric’s brother, Alan, and his two cousins, Mark & Michelle, came out to visit our church and have dinner with us.  So we slept in and went to the second service…how nice!   I put a chicken in to roast while we were at church, so of course, Pastor ran long.  But the bird was falling off the bones and was very good!  Our company stayed until about 3, so then I had the rest of the afternoon to just relax and unwind.  I did clean up the kitchen so that was done, and we went to small group about 7:00.  Our group was pretty small last night, but it was one of the most refreshing and enjoyable times ever…lots of beneficial sharing.  God is so awesome!