Cleaning Out the Funk

With a little extra daylight to look forward to I climbed on my bike at about 4:00 this afternoon and headed to Old Town Alexandria for a spur of the moment ride.  After a week-long funk over the health of a close friend I was ready to shake off a bit of sadness with a change of scenery and some fresh air. 

I rolled the bike right out the front door, pushed off and was on my way.  It's been about 5 or 6 weeks since I've used the biking muscles but thankfully my legs weren't too rusty.  In no time at all I was riding parallel to the Potomac River watching the planes make their slow ascent above my head. 

I usually like to stop and take pictures along the way but today the ride was so enjoyable I skipped the usual photo stops and kept on pedaling. 

Yes, Daylight Saving Time is pretty controversial but tonight I was happy to have a little more daylight to ride by.

Weekend Wrap-up

A short while ago I graded the last of the stack of papers I brought home with me on Friday.  Fortunately the grade book used by the county is on-line so all grades are entered as well.  I packed up my bag tonight feeling a sense of accomplishment; again leaving a stack of papers on my desk was a good call.

Yesterday's phone issue has also been resolved.  Resolution came as mysteriously as the problem had only 12 hours before.  When I awoke this morning the phone was working again.  It is with great relief that I report that as far as I know there was no strange intruder from a 70s or 80s slasher movie in my house.  That's a good thing.  However, I have to say, I would have never watched The Exorcist on Friday night if I knew the phone was going to be acting strangely on Saturday. 

Quiet

It's been a quiet Saturday afternoon, unusually quiet.  Somewhere around 7:00 tonight I figured out the reason for all that silence; my house phone is broken.  Those who call are taken directly to my busy greeting.  I might have never discovered the problem if I didn't happen to pick up my cordless handset and see a message indicating the line was in use.

The message creeped me out.  I live alone so if the line was truly in use that meant someone was upstairs using it.  Fortunately I've been home all day and was reasonably sure that there was no one else in the house. Thinking the cat had been upstairs knocking things around I climbed the stairs to check it out.  Yup, the phone was there, securely set in the charge station, with a message that stated line was in use.

Further investigation proved the quiet would continue...until Wednesday when the first technician appointment is available.

Friday

Friday afternoons are often productive ones for me in my classroom.  The afternoon is usually meeting free and since most of my teammates clear out quickly I find myself alone in our little pod of classrooms.  The lack of distractions and quiet is just what I need to clean up my desk and get ready for the coming week.

I stayed at work until about 5:00 today.  Goal number one was making sure all of my copies were ready for Monday's classes.  I then spent about 30 minutes clearing the books and papers that had been cluttering my workspace.  A little bit of planning was next on the agenda.  I'm starting a new unit next week, one I haven't taught before, so I spent some time thinking about how my ideas would align with the standards I wanted to cover.

I filed a few papers and in the process ended up cleaning up the team room as well.  Discarded coats, gloves and sweaters were placed in the school's lost and found and old papers that had taken up residence in the nooks of the area were recycled.

Finally, I gathered up the papers that I needed to grade. The stack was rather intimidating so I decided to be realistic and leave half of them on my desk.  I shut the door and walked out with my bag slung over my left shoulder, ready to face the weekend and Monday morning.

Cooking with the Relatives

I am now in possession of a fabulous cookbook. My aunt's niece made it a few years ago.  Anyone who knows my Aunt Joyce knows that lady can cook.  One of the first memories of food I have at her house was cinnamon toast.  I know, cinnamon toast is pretty mundane but really everything that came out of her kitchen (and my grandmother's kitchen up the street) tasted better than any food I've ever had.

Both my aunt and my grandmother seemed to cook without thought.  I remember going to see my grandmother in the nursing home a few years ago.  I had decided to stop and get some soft crabs on the way home and figured I could ask for her secret recipe.   Granny shrugged her shoulders and laughed when I asked about the best way to cook them.

"I dunno," she replied, "flour, pepper, push 'em around and fry 'em up.  That oughtta do it."

It did.  It wasn't the recipe I thought I'd hear, but it worked.

My aunt's way of cooking is also a non-exact science.  It seems when her niece was trying to get recipes out of her she'd give ingredients, a few cooking directives and end by saying, "you know, just cook it 'til it's done."

My mom has a few secrets as well.  She always had the best freshly brewed tea.  My high school friend, Phyllis, still asks about the salmon roll and oyster stuffing she would make each Thanksgiving and Christmas in hopes there are leftovers somewhere.  And just two weeks ago she made some real kick-ass crab cakes.

Staring Down the Cold Vegetables

I was never too fond of vegetables as a kid; so having parents who believed in the clean plate club meant there were more than a few nights that I had to sit at the table staring at broccoli that needed to be finished.  I'm sure it made sense at the time but in hindsight I can't be sure who would think that a kid who didn't like broccoli was going to want to eat it after it had sat on the plate for 40 minutes.  Besides eating it never seemed to be the point. There were many times that I shoved cold, mushy vegetables in my mouth long enough to get the okay to be excused from the table only to run out the front door and spit them out into the bushes.

I was thinking about those vegetables tonight as I metaphorically processed my day.  You see, I'm feeling like my plate is full of vegetables this week.  My teaching and the things related to my class take up a large part of the plate.  There are papers to grade, new lessons to plan and tomorrow's visitors to worry about.  Then comes the work stuff: paperwork for  special ed. meetings, emails to remind teammates about upcoming events, and after school meetings that I perceive as useless and unproductive.  There's the exercise I'd like to do and the decorations from Christmas that still haven't been stored in the attic. The plate is full and to tell you the truth I'm just not that hungry.

It's been a long time since I've had to sit at the dinner table staring down my vegetables.  Driving home I realized it would have been better to eat that disgusting broccoli when it was hot.  So tonight, even though I didn't much feel like it, I put the boxes in the attic and went out for a two-mile walk.  Tomorrow I'll try to get an early start on the day and make the best use of my time.  Hopefully I'll feel a sense of progress, but really I wouldn't mind a smaller plate.

Daily Savings

I got caught up on a lot of paperwork over the weekend.  The stack of open mail had been growing on the table near the front door.  There were bills to file and issues to resolve.  One of those issues was my bill for the Washington Post.

I've been a subscriber for almost 20 years but recently I took a good look at the amount of money I was spending and started to wonder if the money I was putting out was really worth it.  My bill was close to $50 every six weeks; it just seemed like way too much especially when I considered the papers that went unread.  By Saturday I was ready to make the call and change to a Sunday only subscription.

It took the customer service representative a few seconds to pull up my account.  When she did she remarked on the number of years that I'd been a subscriber, she also asked why I was changing my service.  As soon as I let her know the cost was too much she was ready with a new deal.  I could switch to the Sunday only service for $1.82 a week or I could get Sunday and weekday delivery for $1.81 a week.

Crazy, right?  Part of me was relieved that I wouldn't have to give up my daily paper, the other part of me was mad that I hadn't called earlier...like 150 dollars ago.