The 25th Hour ~karenjcardoza.com~

It was an incredibly busy but productive week and weekend. I had appointments or meetings every day after school since coming home from our Miami getaway last weekend. This weekend started off with Sushi with my coworker then dinner out with Al and MJ and Louie on Friday night. Al and I had penciled in this Saturday as our shopping day. Man, did we ever!  It’s not a secret that I don’t enjoy the commercialism of Christmas and that the whole hustle and bustle and shopping stresses have gotten me down over the years. Since we’ve pared down, I’ve enjoyed The Holidays so much more.

We got our tree and some nice greenery for our door at our favorite place, Phantom Farms,  then set out get the shopping done in one day. After a full day out and about, we accomplished what we set out to do. We watched a few movies last night, Four Christmases, which was horrible, Julie/Julia, and Confessions of a Shopaholic which were based on novels and were good.

Today, was football Sunday and we enjoyed watching the boys win from our warm, dry home.  Al made a delicious lunch and I was able to knock off some writing projects from my endless To Do list; one of which was posting all the reviews for books read in December.

Tonight we need to decorate the tree and then I’ll be getting ready for another extremely BUSY week ahead.

One of my favorite reading spots....

While I’ve made it a point to specifically post here every day in November for NaBloPoMo, I don’t have to TRY to post at my book blog since I post pretty regularly. So, if you’re a reader or curious about my books, check out Karen’s Book Nook. Thank goodness for audio books to help satisfy my craving because my “sit down with a good book” time is limited during the school year. I am able to plug in and multitask to read while working out, working around the house and yard and running errands. And now, I am actually going to open a paper book and make a pot of tea before bed while I have some time. Happy Reading!

NaBloPoMo 22

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….

…. and here I am 7 days later.  My entire class has been sick (and still is!) and I’ve yet to have a full crew since early January. All of their coughing, sneezing, boogies, and less than stellar hand washing finally caught up with me last Thursday and I was hit with a nasty  cold/bronchial/sinus thing. (Thanks to my Neti-pot, it didn’t develop into a sinus infection; something that I usually get each year.) I barely made it through last Thursday, put on my pjs when I got home from work , and literally stayed on the couch all weekend. I’ve still got the tail end of the cold but at least I’ve been able to work and only needed to take Friday out.

On Saturday, Jake had a wrestling tournament in NH but started with the stomach bug (I’ll spare you the gruesome details) and ended up out of state sick as a dog, unable to wrestle and longing for his bed. He was laid up all weekend as well. On Monday evening, Kelsea started vomiting and Al got sick at work. Both of them are still home nursing it.  So far, I’ve escaped that lovely experience and I hope to keep it that way.

One good thing about being couchbound was that I was finally able to finish Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I loved that book and didn’t want it to end and just found out that he wrote a sequel,  World Without End, which I’m definitely looking forward to reading.  It’s likely another epic read so in the mean time, I’m going to bang out a few short books to whittle away at my endless TBR (to be read) list.

I’ve still got a skeleton crew at school this week and we’re going swimming today so I hope that the real sickies stayed home. I’ll find out soon enough as they’re due in soon.  <achoo!>

So, we’re in the midst of a deep freeze and the ground has been white for weeks. Not that I’m a particular fan of cold but I AM a fan of SNOW!  I’ve always felt that winter should be white from the December-March and in order to do so, the temperatures need to stay below freezing. We’re expecting a couple of small back to back storms over the next couple of days which is fine with me!

I’ve been out of the online loop a bit but have been trying to get through Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett which I started on the plane trip back from San Diego but hadn’t been able to pick up since. Because it was so long ago, I needed to reread the chapters that I read because I forgot everything.  I’m setting a goal to read at least 2 chapters a day so that I can make it through some time this century!

In the meantime, I’m still trying to find some quiet time (without barking dogs) to get a final Patriotworld podcast posted for this past season. Yes.. it’s VERY weird that our season is already over, but football isn’t. Still, I’m very proud of the team and while sad about missing the playoffs, I’m not grieving like I was last year after the game that shall not be named!

As for me, 2009 is here,  I’m staying home a lot and have a major goal in mind:

Making a vow

Sometimes you need to just blow off a whole day and relax. Since there was no camp today, it was rainy, AND my book is severely overdue, I lit some candles and curled up on the couch with my girls, a pot of tea, and read all day!

Nice to finally (re-start and) finish my book The Seduction of Water.  I loved it and it’s by one of my favorite fiction authors, Carol Goodman. Glad it worked out for me today because starting tomorrow, I’ll be heading into school to begin setting up my classroom and getting things ready for the upcoming school year.

Naturally, I’ll be at Gillette for the Ravens game tomorrow night, I have a very busy weekend planned, and camp resumes next week. Looks like today was the only day that I actually could blow off so it worked out well that I did.

Tonight is the final Oprah webcast of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. This book definitely makes you think about life and yourself in a much different way. I’ve never thought about the Ego is quite this way before. I’m definitely going to have to re-read it though because it is so deep and there’s a lot to digest. It’s the kind of book that requires full attention and my presence …. not my usual multi-tasking self. Meanwhile, I’m all tucked in and ready to go.

Here it is Sunday night and my vacation is just about over. I must say, the weather was great and although I didn’t accomplish everything on my list, I got a lot done and had a great week.

Here’s the initial list:

(Here’s the agenda for next week:

• Keeping my fingers crossed that my new gym will be open. It’s supposed to be ready this weekend and it’s perfect timing to hit the gym every day. DONE! The gym opened on Monday and I went 4 times this week. I’m very sore but that’s expected and it’s a good feeling.
• Take the dogs out every day for a walk in the woods. DONE! We walked either on the nature trails at the Monastery or around the pond at Lincoln Woods every day. The girls are getting much better dealing with cars, bikes, motorcycles, and other dogs since going to the state park.. especially on a busy, 70+ degree day.
• Pedicure and Manicure DONE!
  
• Yardwork and gardening, including clearing the backyard so I can start using my clothesline and shut off the dryer until October. DONE! Check it out. :-)
• Scrape and paint the bathroom. Not done… but I initially had plans only one day this week which turned into a commitment EVERY DAY since my original post.
• Continue the move to wordpress for as much of my website as possible. DONE! And changed over the landing spot for the personal pages on the website.
• Get caught up with Pats news, update site, and podcast.DONE! Website is up to date and podcast is posted.
• READ, READ, READ!) DONE! I ended up setting up my Book Nook and read 5 books this week.

Overall, I got lots of exercise, read lots of books and took lots of walks with my girls. I also had lunch with a friend, went to a demonstration, took my son driving and fishing , kept my house clean and went to two appointments.

I worked a few hours on my assessment and planned on working on it one hour a day but never anticipated all of the other things that I would be doing this week when I set that goal.

I’m happy with my decision to spend time outside taking care of my dogs and my own health and between the exercise and the hours of reading and relaxing, it served to recharge my batteries so that I’m ready to head into the homestretch with the assessment deadline coming up May 8th. It’s going to be an intense 3 weeks.

As for right now, I’m heading downstairs to watch John Adams and The Tudors which will round out my vacation nicely. Later kids!