Week 1 of Summer Vacation

This Monday officially began my first week of summer vacation. Granted, we've been out of school since early June, but I've been doing ridiculous amounts of schooling since then. This is the first week where I'm not required to be at a school (either SJCS or SCU) during the day. This seems like it would be a great thing, and for the most part I suppose it is. The amount of time I have to myself accounts for the randomness of this post. Let's be honest, if a student turned this in as an essay, I'd hand it back and tell them to re-do it.

In the last two days I've discovered I don't have what it takes to be a writer. I'm supposed to be working on my Master's curriculum project, and I am generally excited about my topic -- teaching the Constitution to middle school students. However, I'm not very good at living the solitary life. After only leaving my house to go to the gym today, I'm not sure that I'm quite as sane as I was at 7:30 this morning when I woke up. Fortunately a co-worker is letting me teach her children to swim and this gives me some human contact during the day. I guess this gets back to why I like teaching so much -- it allows me to be the star of my own show.

I knew this summer was going to be interesting because I wasn't working. I cannot remember the last time I wasn't employed. I like being employed. As a proactive solution to potential boredom I decided that I wanted to try and make something new at least once a week. Last week, I made strawberry jam. Yum. I'm not sure what I'll make this week, but I'm hoping by making this public I'll have a better chance of actually doing it.

Another first for the week happened just an hour or so ago. Dave and I watched our first animated episode of Dilbert. I never used to understand Dilbert until I married Dave. Now I find it hilarious. An interesting thing that I learned from this episode is how much taller Dilbert is than his co-workers. I'll let you make the connection.

Finally, I've included a picture of the Mary Poppins umbrella I picked up at our Broadway musical. My mom asked for a picture, so this is for her. :) It's just like Mary's with the little parrot on the end. I'm hoping when I use it to direct traffic in January and February (since it will likely be raining) in the school parking lot that people will make the connection.