You are so jealous

Yes, laughing at the soo sounds like fun. Getting up at 2 a.m. to go to Best Buy, not so much. Being stuck in a snow storm--no thanks. Adrienne made the turkey in three hours and it was sooo good. I tried to keep my portions small, so I was done eating first at our great Thanksgiving Dinner on Sunday. When I was done, I held Caitlyn. Such a good baby. She started falling asleep in my arms and then out of the blue with no warning at all, she smiled so big and beautiful and then just as fast it was gone. OMG, I thought Jackson was pretty cute, but he don't have nothing on that big smiling baby. She's going to be a big star--bigger than Shirley Temple. I'm surprised the Gerber people haven't been knocking the door down. It was a huge cosmic event. Ris says that she's smiled before, but boy, oh boy, that one should go in the record books.

40 Hours

So for my Level 1 teaching class I spend six or seven hours every Friday night tavelling and attending the class, and I have homework every week (read an incredibly easy chapter and answer incredibly nonsense questions) and there are in class presentations (next week is 15 minutes "lesson" on critical thinking, I think I'll teach them how to do sudoku puzzles). There's only three more weeks to go and I'm thinking, this was easy--cool. So I look at the syllubus and I realize that there is another bigger project than the in class 15 minute presentation due at the end. No problem, I can handle big projects--big projects are my middle name. I must spend (and log) 40 hours completing my big project. Now I know I've spent at least two hours thinking about it already (on the train coming into work, I even mentioned it to a co-student (sic "The Firm")--that counts right). So 38 to go. I sat down with my calender and mapped out the next three weeks. I don't have 38 hours available. I'll have to put hours in the evening and eight on all available weekend days. Yuk. Brainstorming is good--I'll start brainstorming all the time in the car from now on. That'll be good for another six hours or so on the drives to and from class. That's the ticket.

In other news, Caitlyn started crying at 7 a.m. today. What a nice baby, I was already awake. I went out to see if I could be of assistance, but Mommy and Grandma already had her happy. She's very inquisitive--has to look around at everything and I know she can't see very far beyond her nose yet, but she still seems to give the old scout try. I have only seen a couple of mouth expressions that can be remotely described as smiles, but I'm still looking.

soduko crazy for Harry Potter (before and after)

I haven't read a book or played spider solitare since I picked up my first soduko puzzle. I love those things. I had some old tv guides and I've done all the puzzles in them. I was mad at myself for paying $10 for the puzzle book I bought, but now it is so worth every penny. I hope that I don't come to the end and not be able to find more (like reading every book by my favorite author and then there's no more).

In other news, there is no snow here. We have beautiful, 80 degree weather, sunny skies. Unfortunately I have to work, but still if I was able to go outside, it would be lovely.

Adrienne got me out to the midnight opening of Harry Potter on Thursday. I was so tired at midnight and I was afraid I won't be able to stay awake. I'm no spring chicken anymore. But Harry Potter was soo fantastic, I didn't feel tired at all during the movie. It was really good. In the book, I had skimmed over one scene because I was squimish, so I didn't really understand how it had come off--now I know. In the first book, I didn't really understand quidish and the first movie made it so exciting. This movie was the same way--whatever I did not have the full imagination to appreciate, the movie filled in wonderfully. There was one part where Harry walks into a very sad looking little tent that he is told 10 people are going to stay in and he walks into an oppulant huge setting with so much space and comfort. He says "I love magic" with so much relish and awe. Me too, I was cheering in my head. Thank you J.K. Rowlings!

Long Weekend at the Resort

My ABWA conference was at the Gaylord Resort in Grapevine Texas (right outside of Dallas). What a beautiful resort and great conference we had. Those of us from Southern California were there to advertise our upcoming conference in 2006 at Anahiem California (disneyland). We all wore purple suits and did a dance on the last evening. Two whole people (out of about 1,000) came up and told us we did a good job.

It was soooo hot in Texas and now it is going to be so hot in California--what is going on with the weather. I was freezing in Tennessee a couple of weeks ago. The resort was climate controlled (it was all indoors, like Sam's Town in Vegas), so I wore my coat in the hotel (I'm always cold). When it got too cold, I went outside where it was quite toasty. The last day was very pleasant. Diane's daughter lives in Dallas, so she drove us to the airport after we stopped for breakfast. It was so nice, I wanted to move there. She allowed that the weather was unusual, but still.

On Thursday we has Scott McClellan's (Bush's press secretary) mom as our speaker. She's the Texas comptroller and a republican. She said that she was a single mom raising four sons who got mad and went to a school board meeting. Pretty soon, she was elected to the school board and later she became the first woman mayor of Austin. She's running for Govenor of Texas next year. Again, I wanted to move there to vote for her (I mean you have to be republican if you live in Texas--that's some kind of law I think).

It was so nice to be at a resort, I treated it like a real vacation. I read two dumb books and I bought a logic book on numbers called Suduko or Soduko or Sodoku or something like that. It is blocks of 9 and lists of 9. It is really engrossing because there is only one right answer. I'm a wiz at the easy ones, and I've done about five medium difficulty ones, but I'm stumped on a medium right now. It's haunting me--I must figure it out. I was giving my class logic problems, but I think I let them stick with the word puzzles so we can pretend that it's reading comprehension. Not a lot of academic skills involved in counting to 9.

Murder in Glendale

OMG, someone was murdered in the house behind our house. We live in Glendale for heaven's sake--one of the safest cities in the country. I happened during the day, before Adam got home from school, because the police had the street taped off when he got home. The news said that a 21 year old was shot and died at the hospital (USC--we have three hospitals in Glendale, why did they go all the way to USC. Adam thinks it was by helicopter and maybe they were the only ones with a gunshot trama unit--I mean Glendale is one of the safest cities in the country so maybe Glendale doctors aren't experienced enough with gunshot victims--OMG).

The paper also says that there were two unrelated shootings in Glendale--Western and the 5 freeway (8 blocks away) and Glenwood and Alameda (12 blocks up the street) OMG. One kid was hit, but he was treated at the hospital and all of the participants in these shot outs were arrested.

Meanwhile, back on the farm... I handed out grades in my class yesterday to disbelief and quiet resignation. I also handed out all the extra credit I could think of--I think it would be pretty cool to give out all A's, but if they don't learn anything, what's the point. We'll see.

One project was to learn the new bankruptcy laws, which I think is really cool, but the kids, not so much interest. Go figure.

Finally, I gained two pounds but lost .60% body fat--my biggest loss of body fat in a month. I think that is good news, but the two pounds is weighing down my elation.