Three Cups of Tea...

The best book I have read, by far, this summer has been Three Cups of Tea. It is the true story of climber Greg Mortenson and how he has built over 50 schools in Pakistan (pre 9/11) and now in Afghanistan (post 9/11). I loved this book for several reasons... mainly because he believes education is the only way we can truly combat terrorism. He started out building his first school as a way of thanking a small village for saving his life as he failed to summit K2. After building that school, he realized the need for others and has made it his life's mission to build as many schools as he can. He especially focuses on remote villages... ones like where the Taliban found it so easy to educate boys of the values of warfare and jihad. I would highly recommend purchasing this book. A portion of the proceeds go to help his organization, Central Asia Institute, so that he can continue his work!!! Happy Reading:)

June Is Almost Over...

I can't believe the month of June is almost over... I've only posted one other blog this month... Hard to believe how fast time flys. 

I won't bore you with the nitty-gritty details of the events of the past month, but would like to highlight a few of the more important ones: 

First... I had two more interviews for AP jobs... no luck... looks like I'll be back in the classroom come August 6th. 

Second... I just returned on Wednesday from a week in Mazatlan with my Principal, Blanca, and my BFF, Julia. 

We had a GREAT time. The weather was perfect, which is hard to believe this time of year. Usually it is too hot for my liking, but it was actually quite bearable this go around. Here is a picture I took of myself while on the beach: 

Third, and probably my greatest accomplishment for the month of June was climbing my first 14ner!!! As many of you know, GKL is quite the accomplished mountain climber. Well, she was down to climbing her last of Colorado's 54 high peaks, and invited a group to go along with her to celebrate. The event consisted of a 5 mile bike ride in preparation for the climb to the 14, 264 ft summit. 

I can easily see why folks get addicted to climbing. It was such an exhilarating feeling once we reached the top. I can't wait to do my next one. The next best part was that Honey and our 10 year old Golden Retriever, Tybee, joined us the top for the celebration. 

A Reason...

I am one of those people who believe ALL things happen for a reason. I have experienced this time and time again, so I know that this is true, however, there is a problem with this belief. The problem comes from being patient enough to find out what the reason is. 

I interviewed for another AP job last week, and didn't get this one either. Apparently I was the second choice, which I'm taking as progress, due to the fact that there were over 60 applicants for this position. The good news is that there are several other opportunities out there, so I haven't resigned to returning to the classroom next year, just yet. 

Patience isn't one of my strengths, but I know that I'll be happy regardless of what the next few months brings. 

Last Few Days of School...

I'm supposed to be grading papers and working on report cards, but I can't seem to bring myself to get these things done. I've been "playing" Assistant Principal at our school for the past week (and still teaching my 6th graders), because the looser they sent over from the High School has proven to be fairly incompetent. I love what I'm doing, and it has proven to me more and more I am ready to make this career change, but I still have to finish up this year!

To make matters worse... this week has been "Camp Bug O'Death". I bring in my HUGE 8 man/3 room tent and my kids bring in their camp chairs and sleeping bags and we build roller coasters, and perform Shakespeare for the other classes in the school.  It has been an awesome week! Today, we spent the day at Elitch's (our amusement park like Six Flags), tomorrow is I Love to Read Day, next Wednesday is their Continuation Ceremony, and Thursday is our annual raft trip. 

Really is seems like school is over and out, but I have these last few things that have to be done before I can close the books on another year. I wish I weren't such a procrastinator!!!

The Virus Amped Up...

So I got tagged by Mathman again... This one is pretty fun...

Here's the deal:
Here's what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don't know how realistic it is, but that's what I'm aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.

If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it's okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that's five interesting threads the story spins off into.

Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours. -Splotchy

I had been shuffling around the house for a few hours and already felt tired. The doorbell rang. I opened the front door and saw a figure striding away from the house, quickly and purposefully. I looked down and saw a bulky envelope. I picked it up. The handwriting was smudged and cramped, and I could only make out a few words. (Splotchy)

"Meet me at two o'clock at Grisham Square. Don't be late!"

What? I already had an appointment at that time. In fact, that was the only reason I had even taken off work that Wednesday. But, when I saw the photos, I knew I had to go and see what the hell was going on. Oh gosh, now I wish I hadn't, but how was I to know then that Elizabeth would take this whole thing so far? (Freida Bee)

The thing with Elizabeth began innocently enough. She was my first love but in high school seniors girls are not supposed to date freshman boys and she told me so in a yearbook message that is captured in time, "If you were only older... hang loose and have a great summer."

Now, all these years later age did not mater and the photos proved it. But I still was unsure of exactly what was going to happen. Wednesday could not come soon enough. (Mathman).

Wednesday morning, I awoke early. I had laid out my clothes the night before. I wanted everything to be perfect. After a long, hot shower, in which I tried a new shaving gel, I was off on my adventure.

The photos only told a piece of the story. Elizabeth had undergone some sort of drastic operation, and surely something had gone wrong. Was she expecting me to help her out of this mess? (Bug O' Death)

Do your creative best my tagged friends:
GKL
Qween B
Cheer 34

Why I Don't Have Children...

I didn't go to college 1500 miles away, but the day after I graduated from college I moved 1500 miles away from my family. Growing up in the south, this is unheard of. You just don't stray too far. When I left, my mom told everyone I'd be back in 6 months. I've been gone for 15 years. 

Today, I was on the phone with my mom talking about my half-sister. She's 17 years older than me, and a few months ago, she decided she was going to leave her husband of 30 years. I was a bit shocked by this, but the more I've been thinking about it, the more it makes sense. We've always thought my brother-in-law was nuts for staying with her. She's incredibly mean and self-centered. Everything bad that has happened in her life has always been someone else's fault. She's extremely competitive over material things. Recently, she inherited $250, 000 from her grandparents (unfortunately, not my grandparents), and decided she didn't want her husband to get any of the money, so she left him. 

This may sound pretty crazy, but in my family, this makes perfect sense. I believe there is some whacked out gene floating in the females in my family. My grandmother was one of the craziest people I knew. She was always doing things that shocked the crap out of us. My grandma passed the crazy gene on to my mom... When I was getting married (the first go around), my mom told me a story about how she ran off to NC with some guy one weekend and got married because she saw her boyfriend out with another girl one Friday night. (The girl ended up being the boyfriend's cousin who was in town for a visit, and now my mom is married to that old HS boyfriend, but that's for a different blog)... When she returned to Atlanta on Sunday, they got the marriage annulled. My mom has definitely passed that crazy gene on to me and my two sisters, and my two sisters have passed the gene on to their daughters, who unfortunately have daughters as well, who will probably end up with the craziness themselves. 

So thankfully I have stopped the craziness from my end, by not having any children, and hopefully my great-nieces won't perpetuate it either. There are too many people who get hurt by the crazy things we do. 

What A Week...

It's been a while since I lasted posted... actually, I've tried to write a few things, but none of them came out the way I wanted, so I deleted them, and now I'm going to try again. 

The past week has been, well pretty typical for May. On Thursday, Honey and I had to put our Sweet Terra girl down. She was just in too much pain to let her continue to suffer. It was the hardest decision I've had to make in my life. This incredible woman came to our home so that we wouldn't have to take her somewhere, and she was able to be comfortable on her own bed, with her sister, Tybee, by her side. 

Terra was a talker, she barked all the time, and sometimes it would drive me crazy. We had several disagreements with our neighbor about Terra's barking, even to the extent that I slammed the door in his face once, and now our house is so quiet. Tybee, being the good Golden Retriever that she is, hardly says anything. She's perfectly content just lying around. I never thought I would dislike the quietness so much. 

Over the weekend our hockey team played in a tournament. We play in this tourney every year, and every year we vow to never come back. Unfortunately, we helped host the gawd awful event, so we had to participate. It's called the Front Range Face-Off, but it should be called "Our ringer is better than your ringer"! We entered the lowest division this year, because we had a couple of skaters returning after being gone for awhile. We played really well on Friday night and Saturday morning, then Saturday afternoon, got our butts handed to us by a team from Gunnison. Really it was just a few of the girls, and not the whole team, but it was a loss nonetheless. So on Sunday morning, we played the other host team for a chance at the Championship. The game was at 7:30 AM. This was a problem to begin with, as I don't think in our 5 year history, The Monkeys have ever won a game that was played before 9, but I digress. The other team didn't have a goalie and wanted to hold off play until she arrived. We didn't agree (it was their fault for picking a goalie who shows up drunk, if at all, half the time) and took the ice. Now, it seems like this should be a no brainer, we should win the game, but it's not the same game when there isn't a goalie, although our coach would tell you it is. The team put an ex-college player in net (with no face protection) and the game was on. We scored an early goal, and things looked like they were going to go well, but then their current college player took over and dominated the remainder. Grant it, we weren't playing well, we couldn't control the puck, our shots were missing the net, we weren't/couldn't skate... it was a bad scene. In the end we lost. Looking back I think we didn't really want to win. A win would have meant we played again at 11:30, and I think we were all just tired. I know that I was ready to just go home and spend some time with Honey, and had had enough of the ridiculousness of the tourney organizer. 

On Monday, I had my first ever interview for an Assistant Principal job. The interview didn't go very well, so I wasn't surprised when the principal called yesterday to tell me the committee had chosen someone else. She told me I did great during the interview, but she didn't think it was the right fit, meaning, "I don't have enough experience in Title I/ESL schools". I have some other applications out, so I will be more prepared for the next interview, but I'm starting to get concerned about next year. There are not many AP positions out there...

So I'm taking Friday off for a little R&R, and to regroup for a better week, next week. We only have 10 days of school left, and several of them are field trip days, so things should be looking up.