apologies

If you haven't noticed, I more or less suck at keeping on top of the whole blogging thing. Really, someday I have plans of totally rocking it, but until life allows me the occasion to do so, please know that my life is anything but boring... or at least anything but uneventful. BUT, while I'm here, I might as well compose some kind of genius right? :)

Lately:

I checked out ten juvenile fiction books from the library the other day and have been working on nibbling my way through them. So far, I've finished "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, "The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E.L. Konigsburg, and "The Matchlock Gun" by Walter C. Edmonds. My favorite of the the three was probably the Giver just because it presents some ideas that were completely new to my mind such as not knowing what a hill, or snow, or birthday is... but it definitely left something to be desired at the end. I've discovered the Newbery book shelves in the children's section and am going to continue working my way through those. I'm currently partially through "The View From Saturday" by E.L. Konigsburg, "The Tale of Despereaux" by Kate DiCamillo, and "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh" by Robert C. O'Brien. Some of them I've read, some I haven't, but can't remember the gist of most of them, so a reread is definitely in order :)

I plan to hike the "Y" tonight with Hillary and perhaps some other people if they can stop whining and think about how cool it will be to watch a movie on my laptop once we reach the top.

I got a new cell phone: A black Sanyo Katana II.

My fourth graders will be taking their CRT's next week (pray for them. they need all the intellectual, spiritual and any other kind of help they can get.)

For the first time since school started I have all of next week planned to a "T". This is due to the fact that I had less to plan because of all our testing, but nevertheless it feels great to not have the guilt hanging over my head of "you should probably finish planning or you're going to hate yourself next week when you have to stay four hours after school to finish planning because you didn't on the weekend and you are already exhausted because your kids were off the wall today because you didn't plan and they didn't get it." All I have to worry about is that stack of probably 200 papers on my desk that I have to grade. Ah teaching.