The 25th Hour ~karenjcardoza.com~

I just finished watching the last Biggest Loser episode before the finale and once again, the contestants ran a marathon. Talk about coming a long way in almost no time! It’s a testament to what can be done with hard work and dedication. Granted, working out like they do is like a full time job but they were home for 60 days and still had to keep it up.  Makes me look at my challenges through new eyes.  Anything can be done!

Now that I’m feeling better, I’ve been starting to head back to the gym. (Special thanks to Big Al, who has been faithful right along and has encouraged me to go with him.)  I’m also looking forward to getting back to my Yoga practice and will be starting that up again this week as well.

It’s a busy week with another school Thanksgiving and a small one here on Thursday. I got my shopping done tonight because I want to avoid the market at all costs on Wednesday!  It’s been another week of meetings but thankfully, there’s only 2 days of work left then a 4 day weekend!

Bed, book and pot of tea is calling!  TTFN!

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I’m not a big TV fan but I do have a weekly date with my favorite show, The Biggest Loser each Tuesday night. I can always be guaranteed a boost in motivation and a good cry each week.  No reason for tears yet in this episode but the cast is in the White House kitchen right now eating a salad picked from the First Family’s garden. It makes me pine for my garden right now and sad that it’s run it’s course for this year. Nothing beats fresh, organic vegetables grown at home!

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It’s  Patriots Training Camp  Eve and I can feel that familiar excitement building…!  It’s going to be strange not attending every single session because of work but I’ll get there as much as I can. With the advent of technology and “Old Media” embracing “New Media” and the fact that I won’t be there every session, I’ve decided to forgo my traditional Mrs. B’s Training Camp Reports. I still may make some posts but the sense of urgency and need to rush home and drop everything to post is no longer necessary.

The PFW dudes will be live blogging from the tent and many people will likely be tweeting as well. Naturally, Mike Reiss and the other reporters will be posting from camp too and it’ll be all over the message boards and dissected and discussed before I even make it to my car.  I’ll literally have nothing to say two hours later when I finally make my way through the traffic and get home.  Besides that, there has been a ton of stress and other RL (real life) things to fill my mind these days and I really need to just go and enjoy camp without the stress of being “on duty”.  So, I’m not saying that there won’t be ANY reports or podcasts but I’m giving myself permission to just play things by ear and enjoy myself.  Fair enough?

School has been going well and even if I hated it I would still need to do it from a financial standpoint this year.  But… I don’t hate it at all.. I actually Love It!!  I’ve got a great group of students and while I love teaching my Severe Profound class during the year, I’m enjoying teaching academics to a higher level group this summer.  It’s a treat to be able to cover different material and work with them. The hours are also great and who can beat a 4 day weekend all summer?

Yesterday, I took a nice long ride on the Blackstone River BikeWay and it was great.  I’m lucky to have it so close by and it’s beautiful.  I had planned on riding my bike back and forth to school a lot this spring and summer but unfortunately, we’ve had so much rain, it’s been hard to plan it.  I hope to get back out on the path again soon.

As for right now, I’m hoping do some reading before crashing tonight because once camp hits it’s Patriots and nothing but Patriots for me from here on out!

Without getting into much detail, I must say that the past few months have been a blur…. We had a medical scare here and while we still don’t have all of our answers and know exactly what was wrong, we now know that some serious, scary things have been ruled out. With the coming of spring and the good news, it’s time to get back to a normal life and schedule here. I’m hoping to be able to finally get a good night’s sleep without spending hours tossing and turning. I’m so ready to finally wake up rested for a change.

Tomorrow will be Day 130 at school, with 50 to go!  It’s that time of the year that I have lots and lots of paperwork and various individualized plans and assessments  to do for my students. In order to make it, I’ll be staying at school late and bringing work home a lot. April vacation starts on Good Friday, 4/10, and I’ll likely be working every day  on it during the following week.  I’m not going away anywhere and I have an appointment every day but the agenda will include  school work, working out, and yard work. I’m really hoping to have a good chunk of work done before vacation starts so I can do some relaxing too.

I finally was able to get my Pats website updated this week, after spending time fixing the bugs that prevented me from automatically updating. I also banged out a real quick Podcast after school today and hope to be more consistent with the draft approaching. The one thing that I’ve managed to do a lot of these days has been reading.  Since I’ve not been online much at all, I’ve been banging out the books!

I’ve also been able to go to the gym quite a bit, have been working out at home and after school with coworkers, and may run a 5k this weekend…. we’ll see how it goes! Meanwhile, despite the craziness in my life of late, I’ve personally been trying to take very good care of my health and balance it all.

It feels good to be back….

It was nice to see The Pats turn it back around this week and win the first of their two West Coast road games. While not the perfect game, we succeeded where it mattered most.. in the W/L column. Also sweet that the Sox beat the Angels for the ALDS and will be moving on to face Tampa Bay in the ALCS.

It’s a crazy week for me, loaded with meetings and appointments and we’re taking off  on Thursday to head out to San Diego. It’ll be a busy weekend and an enjoyable one even though the timing isn’t the most convenient with state testing at school this week. I’m also beginning the assessment window for my alternate assessment kids which is the cause of MAJOR stress in my life. I’ll just have to do the best that I can and not beat myself up over not being able to be superwoman.

I am looking forward to being able to do some reading on my flight, something that I hardly get to do during the school year. I just finished Educating Esme, an enjoyable diary of a teacher’s first year and could relate to many of the challenges that she faced in her inner city school.  She truly was a great teacher and an inspiration.

I’m still continuing on my early morning gym routine and since I’m going to bed earlier these days it’s getting easier to wake up before the alarm. Of course, it doesn’t allow me much time at night after getting everything packed up for the next day so my posting and podcasting has certainly dropped off.  (Sorry, but my health is a priority so bear with me, folks!)

It’s been an INCREDIBLY busy week and I’m feeling like I’m behind the 8 ball. I’ve yet to produce any content since last Sunday’s home game at Gillette (a game I’d like to forget but a tailgate worth remembering.)  My life has been all about school and meetings this week. Between new RI  IEPs, Alternate Assessment, parent nights, Teacher Support Team and staff meetings, football and dabbling in social media is far from being on the radar.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get somewhat caught up this weekend since it is the bye week and I have an extra 7 days before the next game. I must admit though, during regular (especially home game) weeks, the demands of my job may make it difficult to keep up. I know there are people that look forward to the Tailgate Reports and Podcasts but I can’t make any promises right now.

One of the appointments that I had this week was an invitation to the new Hall at Patriot Place. It was an awesome night and I definitely need to go back when I have more time to actually look at everything and watch all of the multimedia presentations.  It’s a hands on interactive place and is unique and unbelievable.

Part of the issue is that I’m also back to my early morning gym routine and in order to head there before school at 5:00 AM, I really do need to adjust my bed time back to a decent hour so I’m not going to be pulling any late nights at the computer.

I do love my Pats.. but real life is more important.

Although I’ve turned the corner after the Jets game and our sweet 19-10 Cassel-Debut win and am now thinking of the upcoming weekend, I have been talking lots of Pats football all week. Yesterday afternoon, I did an interview with The Producer of Pigskin Pundits and this afternoon I posted my  own current podcast.

I’ve had a super busy week and have needed to take my bike back and forth to school every day because we’re down a car which is in the shop.  I’ve also added going to the gym at 5:00 AM to my repertoire so I think my body is telling me that I need to get more sleep. It’s pretty early, but I’m going to listen and hit the hay as I can barely keep my eyes open.

Good night, kids… and … Go Pats!!