Yesterday I taught for half the day, and then had a check up in the afternoon. I hate having to be gone and leave plans for a sub. Really, it's almost more work than staying. Anyway, my check up was quick, so it bought me some thrifting time. My most exciting purchase was a pair of rollerskates that fit perfectly. I'm a kind of sucky rollerblader, but I absolutely LOVE rollerskating! I might even put some cute little pom poms on them to bring me luck. I also scored one of Jane Brody's cookbooks, which really looks like a good one. Maybe it's silly for me to keep picking up cookbooks, when I know that pretty much everything is available online. I just really like the idea of one great cookbook that I use for everything, full of my own little notes.

In other news, if my calendar is serving me right, we should all shout a happy birthday over to Ugly today!

1. Whew, conferences are over. Lots of intense parents this round. I think they wanted me to define their child for them so they could decide where to send them off to college.
2. In between the 30+ parents that I saw yesterday, I was felting little balls to string on a necklace. It's extremely easy. I just felt a little ridiculous when some showed up early because I had to shake their hands with wet felty fingers. Gross. Oh, the cats found my stash of little felty balls in the middle of the night. They're EVERYWHERE.
3. Juno is going to the vet today to get his shots. He must know it because he's been a little bitch all morning long. He likes to hide under the bed and dig his claws into my ankle as I walk by.
4. My grandma is still in town and she's going to show me how to crochet today. Yeah, I know... Teachers are already way overpaid and then they give us off a non-holiday on top of it all.
5. We're getting some Grumpy's tonight and then heading over to see The Hopefuls. I haven't seen them before, so I'm pretty excited to hear what all the fuss is about. The music starts after I'm normally in bed.
6. Zander seems to be getting sick and I've got a sore throat. Ick.
7. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

So we went to see Jethro Tull last night at the State. I got the tickets for Zander's birthday, and quite honestly, I can't say that I'd ever heard their music before. We met the lead singer and flute player after the show. He's not a hand shaker, so here he is, rubbing elbows with Zander. The show was absolutely wonderful. It was great on so many levels, but especially the addition of Lucia. She's this young, beautiful, violinist prodigy that played in a frilly pink dress and bare feet. I've never heard a violin played like that, and if I had, I'd of surely taken it up as a child. Wonderful. The only down side of the night was the prissy State Theater. People needed to rock and they tolerated very little of it before sending down security. The rockers won in the end, there were just too many people that were moved and finally the security people just scowled by the back door and let us be.

Since my sister works for Parasole, she got us into their new, and not yet opened, place over on 50th and France tonight. I'm pretty excited. I remember when we opened Chino and had our first pre-opening event. It was really exciting. I'm also excited because Anthropology isn't far from there and I LOVE that store. No, not to buy anything, I'm far too cheap. Instead, I love to browse and then RIP OFF their ideas.


And speaking of stealing ideas, I'm definitely going to steal Martha's idea on making felt balls. I think you can buy the wool at Micheal's (I've got some left over coupons, you know) and then I'd like to string them into bead necklaces. Maybe even some dangly earrings. How cute!

A Reason to Knit

I found this little Yoda and it's rekindled my hopes of someday learning how to knit. I want to make one for ME!

Getting to school by 7am and getting enough sleep to make somewhat rational decisions while I'm here is proving to be a challenge. So I've been coping by making very few plans after work during the week and then cramming in every ounce of fun on the weekend. Monday morning? Sucks. Must create new system. We definitely need more weekend chill time. Next weekend there's Jethro Tull and virtually nothing else. I'm going to sleep in late and then read in bed. Oh, and drink coffee.

I'm stuggling putting together a witty and meaningful entry today. So here's some randomness:

1. Does anyone have the new Fiona Apple CD? Is it good?
2. I've got to get new paint brushes for my art room and I'm just cruising through my budget, so I've collected Michael's coupons from my students. I know that it's one coupon per transaction/per day, but do you think they'll really mind if I go through the line 11 times?
3. This weekend, Zander bought speaker guts from AxMan for 12 bucks and fixed our broken ones. So much better than throwing them away and buying new ones like Best Buy suggested! Besides, I use them for plant stands too.
4. My grandma gave me a large collection of vintage matching earring and necklace sets last weekend. They're absolutely adorable (she wore most of them to go square dancing) and special because they're from her. The clip-ons only bug me once or twice and day, and at that point I feel like smacking things with a baseball bat. Luckily the feeling passes quickly.
5. The students are super wired today. The Sadie Hawkins dance is this Friday and I can almost smell all of the hormones in the air. I even saw two students dry humping on a locker before school this morning. Barf city.
6. I want to make baked acorn squash for dinner this week with a scoop of something good inside. Any ideas on what would be good inside AND if I'd cook them together or separate?
7. Snow already? Please no.
8. I'm looking for a huge mirror to hang on the wall in the basement. Yes, so that I'll be able to watch myself practice my bad-ass belly dance moves. Instead of just imagining how stupid I look.
9. I love Method cleaning supplies. I especially love the one that kind of smells like almonds and is for wood. Oh yeah, and the grapefruit kitchen cleaner... ahh, so nice.
10. I've got to hem two pairs of pants this week. I'm so crappy at it. I really wish I could find a good sewing class that would cover basic alterations.

Wow, it's 5pm and already almost dark out. Today started out just gorgeous. I went for a long, fast walk down by the river and actually got hot enough to take my jacket off. Most of the leaves are off of the trees and I'm just loving that leafy smell. I keep thinking that it'd be interesting to take one picture a day of some kind of urban beauty. Today it would have been the little boy sitting in the corner of his yard, on my way back home. From about 20 feet away he had this goofy look on his face and when I got up closer I saw that he'd been grinning at me the whole time. "What doin'?" "Goin' for a walk." "It fun?" "Yeah, it fun." After I'd walked about a block farther, I heard him yell, "BYE!" Hey, I have slow reactions too sometimes... alright, alright, maybe most of the time!

Tomorrow my entire family is coming over for an early dinner and we're making waffles. We might even make everyone wear a robe. After all that we've eaten this weekend, that might be all that fits anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm slacking on the posts these days! No lack of love here, just lots of random busy stuff. Here are my highlights...

On Halloween our first trick-or-treaters were all excited to get their candy until Boo jumped out the door and they screamed "BLACK CAT!" and ran away. It probably didn't help that I kept yelling "BOO, get back here". They just ran faster and faster.

For Zander's birthday on Tuesday, we headed over to Rice Paper again. It was good, but not as good as before and I wanted it to be great for a birthday night. The server sat down the check with our meal! That's fine when the bill is under twenty bucks, but I was pretty irritated because we'd had wine and entrees and appetizers, how about offer us some coffee??? I got us tickets to see Jethro Tull for Zander's present. He LOVES them and I don't think I've ever heard their music. I'm kinda excited to check them out.

I had one of these on Thursday. It kinda really hurt. Thus, I missed my beloved Crafter's Conspiracy AND and chance to craft in a crack-users home. SHIT BALLS. By the way, despite my previous suspicions, my test results looked good and I've not recently peed out an ovary or anything.

I got two lovely vintage dresses at Value Village. One is brown two-piece dress that I adore for its conservity. Anna, is that a word? I'll wear it to conferences. And then there's a knee length, empire waisted, hot pink polyester number that I love for promising me the hottest christmas ever. Hot pink is the new red... or so I'm telling myself.

Friday I got to skip school and attend the art educators of Minnesota conference. It was a nice change of pace and I scored some great samples. It was like trick-or-treating except that I got scissors, construction paper, and Sharpies instead of Twix. The best part of the day was having a glass of wine at Thistle's afterward and bonding with my co-worker. All summer long I thought we were going to hate each other and I absolutely LOVE her. She's funky and funny and thinks I'm funny and she's 56 and got carded at the bar. We giggled a lot. I thought we were going to get kicked out.

Dinner last night was the most delicious I've had in ages. We went over to Julie and Brian's downtown swanky condo and just chilled. We drank, we played a fun game that I've forgotten the name of, and just chatted away while it rained outside. They built a fire. It was wonderful.


Today we're going to the school play and then heading over to my Mom's to make some soup because my Grandma is coming to town this afternoon. She thinks that Minnesota is the coldest place on earth, which is her version of hell, so I'm just doing my part to warm her up. I'm just dumping things together, but something with chicken, spinach, and tortelini.

Have a good Sunday!