A New Year Begins

I have to say, that our New Year began very pleasantly. In fact, I think it was the most fun I've ever had on New Year's eve!!! We started out by going to Olive Garden for dinner. For those of you that don't know, Olive Garden is my favorite restaurant... I love their salad... YUM! From there we headed to 19th Avenue and Camelback, to the "park and ride" lot for the new light rail system in Phoenix. This, we decided, was the best way to get to the Tempe Fiesta Bowl Block Party.
1. Riding the train was safer than dealing with party going drivers
2. The train dropped us off right in the middle of the block party, and
3. The ride was FREE!!!
I have wanted to go to this block party for years! We drank hot spiced cider, watched an illusion show, saw motocross bikers doing air jumps (those people are crazy). We had our picture taken, and then bought crazy new year stuff. We celebrated with fireworks, at 10:00 PM, with the people on the east coast, and listened to a local band, which was pretty good! But, better yet, at 11:15 PM we were treated to "STYX." I really like Styx, in fact I have both records (yes LP's) and 8-tracks (okay, I just dated myself) of their music. The entertainment was GREAT! After the second firework show we began heading back toward the train... Talk about a crowd! But, the light rail system worked great! And, the entertainment continued on the train. Oh my gosh... I had such a good time watching the people! Apparently, some of them had a pretty good time at the block party, and their antics were hilarious! Literally, everyone was very friendly and having fun! Surprisingly, the car ride back home was not near as frightening as anticipated. The traffic was pretty light and well behaved. We got home around 2:00 AM... Ha! Usually that's about the time I wake up!

The video below is a bit grainy, but it'll give you an idea of the concert and surroundings, under the bridge, at Tempe Beach Park.

Christmas 2008

Brave, huh?!?

Yesterday, Jesse and I ventured to the mall. We hadn't been there for a while, and we still had a couple of presents to shop for, so we made the courageous trip! Fortunately, we were smart enough to go EARLY, and the crowds weren't too bad.

Any trip to the mall wouldn't be complete without a visit to the food court. Jesse didn't eat breakfast, so it wasn't long before he was looking for something to eat. Did you know Panda Express isn't open at 9:30 AM... Weird, huh! However, Cinnabon is!!! I didn't get one, but man, that cinnamon roll looked GOOD!

While tooling through the mall we saw the "big guy," himself. Keep in mind this was before noon, and the line was already enormous... Seriously, it was comparable to the line for Space Mountain at Disney Land! We saw one little family of 3 getting their picture taken, and the smallest one did NOT want to be there, and he was giving the photographer quite a workout!

The most exciting purchase of the day was a totally unexpected one. A couple of months ago we went to the Arts in the Park fair, and while there I had my eye on a carmel apple; it looked so good! But, they also had chocolate covered strawberries that grabbed and kept my attention. I vowed, right then and there, that the next time I saw one of those apples, I was going to buy one! Now, I bet you can already guess what I found... A white chocolate, carmel covered, coconut and macadamia nut apple... Mmmmmmm! We shared it, and it was so yummy!


We walked the whole length of the mall, and then headed back; that meant another stroll past the food court, but this time I was ready for lunch. I went to Bourbon Street BBQ, thinking I could get some BBQ chicken... I was waaaaaaaaaaay off. The food was more like Panda Express. I ended up getting the BBQ chicken (not like you'd expect, with BBQ sauce), and mandarin orange chicken, with noodles. It was okay, but the price was great... I got a lot of food for less than the price of the apple.

We decided to exit the mall by going through Mervyn's, which if you didn't know, is going out of business. That place was a mad house. Seriously, there were some "deal-hunting" people in there. The place was pretty picked over, too; kinda reminded me of a turkey bone, after all the meat has been pulled off. We did get a good deal on a dress, though; it was originally marked $40, but we got it for $11, and it's CUTE!

On the way home we were watching the traffic on the other side of the freeway. The exit to the mall was backed up at least a mile (we were pretty glad we went when we did). We also saw an accident happening. Don't really know what happened, but a car was going down the freeway SIDEWAYS, and there was a lot of smoke! That's just too scary!

We also stopped by Wal Mart. Seriously, I don't know why they just don't make my pay check out to this place, since it seems like this is where most of my money goes. Any way, I found some cute shoes. I found out this week, while it was raining, that my other slide-on black shoes are cracked on the bottom, which makes for cold, wet feet. Obviously, I had a perfectly good reason to buy more!

The big goal now is to stay out of the stores until after Christmas, and avoid all the last minute, crazy shoppers.

Fiesta of Light Parade 2008

Work... UUGGHHH!

I "hate, hate, hate, double hate, loathe" (The Grinch Who Stole Christmas) my job!!! I just don't seem to be able to please any one. All I'm trying to do is teach, but instead I have to play police officer in my classroom. Why? Becuz the same old students continue to make distractions which take away from the learning process. That means I have to take teaching time to write behavior reports, or recovery room tickets, or office referrals. What makes things worse is that the administration is aware of the students causing the problems, but nothing (and I mean NOTHING) seems to ever get done about it. That means the problem students remain in my room, disrupting everything and everyone, and the vicious cycle of writing them up continues, over and over again. And, frankly, I hate that! I have never had such an awful bunch of students, along with an odd combination of parents. On one hand I have apathetic parents that don't do anything at home to change their child's behavior. On the other hand, I have parents that don't think I'm doing enough for their child (which may be true, but then again, I'm spending my time writing behavior tickets). Seems I'm caught in a catch-22 that I can't get out of, especially with NO support from the administration.

So, what's the solution? I would be VERY surprised if I continue to teach at this school next year. I really didn't want to return this year, but a couple of people talked me into it, and now I'm truly regretting it! Actually, come to think of it, I'm pretty tired of teaching altogether. I don't know what else I can do, but surely there is something else out there that will be less demanding, and provide for evenings free and weekends without taking a ton of work to do at home, unpaid. And, the behavior control, well, that can be left for someone else to do. Seriously, stocking shelves at Wal Mart has got to be better than what I put up with now!

I guess that's enough ranting and raving. Hopefully things will improve.

winter

Best Laid Plans

Since I have so many critters, I thought it would be nice to get a few "holiday pictures" of them, and possibly a picture for this year's Christmas card. Suffice it to say, that idea did NOT work. I think the following pictures say it all...








I tried the Santa hat on a couple others, and the results were weren't much better.