Apartment news

So, we've been here for a week now and the place is still a mess. Until yesterday we didn't have any sort of containers to hold things like books and clothes (both of which I have way more than the average amount of). Now we have the IKEA pieces of dressers and bookshelves in the apartment. I really wish it would not snow one weekend so we could go and pick up things like the bed, couch, etc. I went home yesterday to pick up Waffles and bring her to the apartment. While I was home I managed to pick up a lot of stuff I meant to like my computer, cocoa, tea, bath stuff, and cat. However, I forgot to pick up really necessary stuff like more dishes. For the past week, Ben and I have been working off of my dishes from college. It's hard to last more than two days without having to run the dishwasher if you only have four plates and four bowls. I was going to go back home today to get them, but it's like snowing outside. I remembered I forgot the dishes last night when I was about a quarter mile from home. I attempted to make a turn down a side street to turn around, and my car kindof spun out in the middle of the road. I decided that I could come back and get the dishes later. Once I got the a major road (New Hampshire), things were fine. Well, they were fine until Waffles decided that she was too good to sit in her box. She managed to tear the cardboard carrier she was in and pop out of the top. This led to interesting situations with her trying to sleep on the dash in front of the windshield, or climb through the steering wheel. Luckily, we both made it to our apartment alive.
I have got to finish grading all my stuff. I let kids turn in things late. How dumb of me. Too bad I know a lot of them aren't going to do it.
Time to clean and grade and plan menus and go grocery shopping and clean...I think I need a whole other weekend to get all this stuff done...

So, what are you doing on Saturday and Sunday?

If you answered nothing important, then you can have free pizza! Yes, free pizza! How can you get this wonderful and tasty food, you ask? Well, it's simple. You just need to help Ben and I move into our new apartment on Saturday and Sunday. Or one day or the other. It's not too far away (it's in Alexandria), located right off the Beltway (our backyard is simply a parking strip and a row of trees away from I-495).
Yeah, we are either signing our lease tomorrow or Friday. We originally scheduled for Friday, but since I'll be in Baltimore, it's probably going to be a lot easier to change it to Wednesday so I can stop by right after school.
It's a really nice place. One bedroom and one bathroom with a loft. The loft is fantastic because it means the living room is like two stories tall and has a large window looking on to the beltway. The bedroom has a vaulted ceiling and the loft is big enough to make a nice office for both of us. The kitchen is really small, but it does have a full sized washer and dryer. There is a lot of parking (and it's not parallel parking, either!). It is about $300 more a month than we wanted to spend, but after looking around Alexandria, we were going to be paying about as much as we are now for any sort of really nice place. I like this place because it has outdoor hallways (it really reminds me of an apartment building or condo community at Ocean City). Also, for Kayla's benefit (and jealousy), it has a Roman soaking tub. The complex is only 2.5 years old and they have a really nice cardio theatre (think about three of each treadmills, elliptical, and bikes each with their own plasma screen tv with cable). There is also an outdoor pool, picnic areas, free metro shuttle, and it's located on Van Dorn (the whole area over there is like Rockville Pike with overpasses). Also, there is a minigolf/water slide park nearby, and we are about five minutes from Landmark mall. So, I'm pretty excited, and really stressed. I'm going to be out of town on Thursday and Friday and I will have no time to pack up any of my stuff. My plan is to get all my stuff from storage and my basement and move it in this weekend. If you do help us move, you'll be happy to know that we probably won't be moving in anything really really heavy. The bed, couch, and big chair are in storage in Ocean City. So, you'll just have to move like boxes and bags (and maybe a TV, computer, and chair or two). Also, it's on the fourth floor and there is no elevator, so you will get all of your cardio workout done for the week in one day while helping friends!

Illness caught from sick students: 1

So, I've had this annoying cold all week. The beginning of the week it was okay, I just had to cough a little and I couldn't hear because my ears were congested. But now, I'm so sick. My nose is stuffy and my sinuses hurt and I'm so exhausted because I can't sleep well. I have to cough a lot (which gives me headaches and makes me feel like vomiting). My throat hurts and I can't breathe out of my nose. I've gone through one full big box of tissues just at home. Also, I've been taking cold medicine all week to try to prevent getting a cold/getting something worse like a lung infection or something, and now I'm getting to the point where taking any more medicine than twice a day is going to make me dizzy.
I hate being sick. I'm not grading papers. I'm going to try to sleep and drink water, juice, and tea and try to feel better.

How to feel like you've lost your mind....

So, I turn on the radio this morning and flip through the dials. I hit the station number 3 button and expect to hear the Sports Junkies complaining about unimportant stuff, but instead, I get some music. I think, whatever, this must be an intro or something. Then, they play another song. This song is all in Spanish. Okay, I'm thinking it's like a practical joke. I was totally listening to the Junkies yesterday when I was driving in to training and they didn't say anything about switching formats or something. So, I listen some more because Spanish pop music is catchy, and I hear a station break. Yeah, all in Spanish. And it's not like my radio is messed up because they clearly say "Noventa-nueve punto uno" (which means 99.1). Yeah, I felt like I was going crazy, but no, it was like a completely secret station format switch. And on a Thursday, none the less. Anyway, earlier that morning I had hit a stupid tire tread in the road that got caught under my car. Now there's like a broken part of my front bumper and part of the plastic undercarriage is broken, too. It's okay to drive on, and I'm not going to deal with it until later tonight after I get home from Great Beginnings. And I feel like crap. Stupid cold! But not bad enough to make me feel okay about skipping a meeting. But, I keep like having to cough and I'm congested and gross stuff like that. STUPID BEING SICK!
Anyway, off to do things before I go out and try to fix/jerry-rig my car so it doesn't break any more.

It's nice not to have to teach

So, I've had a nice, relaxing week so far. Monday I stayed at school for 12 hours (got there at 6:30 in the morning and left at 6:32 that night). I had to clean my room and prepare for a sub on Tuesday afternoon and all day Wednesday and get everything ready for Thursday and Friday since I wouldn't be able to stay after school either day to prepare. But, this means that I'm ready (well, mostly ready) when I go back to a regular schedule tomorrow. Too bad I won't be able to stay after school tomorrow since I have Great Beginnings. This means I won't get home until 8:30 tomorrow night. That sucks, but it's fun to go out to eat after the meeting with other new teachers. I'm excited because I'm going to have mac and gruyere cheese. MMM....tasty cheesetastic. It's sad because I really don't care right now about gruyere cheese (which is my new favorite thing). I guess I really am sick. I guess that really means I don't have to grade papers! Maybe Ben will have to work on Monday and I can spend the whole day grading, or maybe he won't have to go to work so I can spend the day apartment shopping with him so I can live closer to school and get home earlier and be able to grade during the week (or atleast not have to wake up so early so I can go to bed later and not be as tired all the time). Or maybe I'll just be good and spread my grading out a little bit each day. I did a little grading yesterday before I went to sleep, but I don't think that's going to happen today.
Anyway, I have nothing of interest to add because my life is exceedingly dull. Sigh.

How to tell that a new student is trouble

Have the new student start this morning around 9:00. By lunch, have the kids from a different team all talking about her in class. Have rumors spreading that she is racists and easy. Have the counselor on her team call an emergency after school meeting for her team the same day she comes to school. Yeah, she's bad news.

GRRR!

So, I am totally trying to make "archival copies" of some of my DVDs. But, to my annoyance, my computer does not have a DVD copy program. I have tried to download a free trial version of a program, well, I have suceeded in downloading and running said programs, but none of them work. Two of them do not copy movies and the third only copies movies onto DVD-RWs (which I don't have). So, I need a DVD cloning/copying free program soon. Maybe I should have just bought the trial program I used last year that did exactly what I wanted. Too bad I can't find it again this year.

Fun with VA DMV

So there is a function on the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles that allows you to pick you specialized license plate and check to see if your vanity plate is available. Here are the available plates that Ben and I found while looking for a vanity MBC plate for me:

1. MBCGAL


2. POOP


3. MBC HO


4. MBCLUG

The last one was Ben's favorite.

Ben liked to use this tool to make the most ironic plates possible. He came up with some pretty good ones. I told him to blog about it. Let's see if he does, or if he simply retorts with, "You're not the boss of me!"

Happy New Year

Here are my New Year's goals.

• Find an apartment closer to work. Bonus points if it is with Ben.


• Move to said apartment without breaking up with Ben. (He HATES moving and I LOVING bossing people around when moving.)


• Be able to spend a week without dreaming about work/my students/horribly losing control of my class during an evaulation.


• Make time to go to the gym.


• Set up a better system to talk to friends since I've been a hermit since September.

I could name a whole bunch of other things, but I think this is probably enough for now.

How I spent January 1st:

• Sleeping in bed until 11:00 am.


• Eating pizza for brunch.


• Watching "Napoleon Dynamite" (Don't bother, it SUCKS)


• Wathing the "Monk" marathon.


• Going to Staples and Office Depot (which closed today at 5:00 pm so I didn't get to go)


• Wathing more "Monk"


• Blogging

But now I think it's time to cuddle with Ben more and eat some cookie dough ice cream. Yum.