Hello. So, remember when I said MEA is the 3rd weekend of October in my last post?? Well, I think it's supposed to be the second. Regardless, I guess it doesn't matter.

On to my ramblings.

Today I went to Fargo for a doc appt, got a hair cut (don't know yet if I like it....tomorrow morning will be the test). I couldn't get into my regular stylist because she's only there a couple saturdays a month and a few weekends evenings after 4pm. That's a REAL bummer for me! She's awesome. So I made do with another person, who may be ok. It's weird going to a different person to have your hair done. They cut different, they even "set up" your hair different. Then, the smart ones will be constantly communicating with you, making sure that they are cutting the way you want them to. The dumb ones just go ahead and cut how they THINK they should and how they THINK I want it. I had a smart one today. Very nice person and she gave me a $5 off coupon too. So...I set up my next color with her. :-) We'll see how the cut works out. I didn't change anything (at least, I didn't want to), so if tomorrow morning goes well, I'll feel good about going back to get my color.

I obsess about my hair sometimes. Truly I do. I am a product snob and have become an appliance snob too. I will only use salon quality straighteners (the Chi (Farouk) brand has really become my go-to brand for appliances) and salon quality hair dryers. There IS a difference and frankly, I don't care what anyone says. Suave is NOT the same, neither is a Clairol or Revlon straightener or hair dryer. Nope. Not at all. And do NOT get me started on styling products. I know you don't have all night/morning/afternoon to hear about it. :-)

So today I was in Fargo in the morning, then I had a dentist appointment in Halstad. I decided to keep my dentist through this year. I like her and it's just two days a year that I have to go there. Completely manageable. My next appointment is on my Birthday. WOOOOO EEEEEEE! Fun times. Maybe I can score a whole case of Sensodyne travel size toothpaste. Haha. Then I went to my friend Jami's house for a visit. Their little girl is about 10-1/2 months old and it was fun to play with her and visit with Jami.

Right now I'm pretty tired. Driving will do that to a girl, I guess! :-) I was in the car for about 8 hours today. Ish. Got a lot of radio/ipod listening in though! So I've got that going for me, which is nice. :-)

Gonna sign off now. Gotta get to bed, maybe do some chatting on the phone still. We'll see. Tomorrow I have a MOUNTAIN of work to do because I've been gone to workshops and other appointments since last Wednesday. Ugh. I totally do NOT like some parts of this job -but as a whole, it's been pretty awesome.

One last thing: the conference I went to last week was the "MASE Leadership Conference" which is the conference for MN special ed administrators. MASE stands for Minnesota Administrators of Special Education...I think. What a great group of people. I'm very glad to be in this career/profession if only because of the nice but really smart people I met and hung out with at the conference. It was just awesome and I had a great opportunity to do some networking as well. Gotta keep one foot out the door at all times, I say, so keeping my eyes and ears open for new opportunities in sped administration is quite important for me. :-)

Ok, now I'm going. Falling asleep as I type. Not a pretty picture, I'm sure.

geez, what vacation??

This is MEA weekend. Essentially, that means that most educators get Thursday and Friday off. This is a union holiday. We still call it MEA weekend, which stands for Minnesota Education Association, but in reality it is EM weekend, which stands for Education Minnesota. Prior to the millennium (and I'm not sure when...in the late 1990's at any rate), there were two teacher unions in Minnesota: MEA and AFT (American Federation of Teachers). For some reason that escapes me now, both unions merged to form one huge mafia -er- I mean- union, and renamed themselves "Education Minnesota". I think nationally, the two unions are still recognized as separate. So since the history of unions in education, Minnesota schools have had the third Thursday and Friday of October off, so that teachers could attend the state union conferences. Let me emphasis this: the reason was to allow teachers to attend the union conferences/workshops without penalty in their teaching contract. I'm not sure if it's in MN statutes, but it is definitely past practice and I'd be incredibly interested to know that if it ISN'T in statute, if any school districts have the balls to NOT have MEA weekend off!

I won't get into my thoughts and feelings on unions, mainly the educational unions. I have to say, however, that my thoughts and feelings are NOT improving as the years go on...especially in this area. It is absolutely nuts and I am amazed at this.

But anyway, I had yesterday and today off because my contract follows the fiscal host calendar. I do have work to do and I did bring it all home with me, but I did not go in. Instead, I got up at 4am on Thursday to get to Detroit Lakes by 8am for a car service appt. Am I crazy? Yes. But let me tell you what's even crazier. I knew that the weather would be messy in the morning. I knew there would be a snow/rain mix that would likely result in very slushy and icky roads. I COULD have gone to DL Wednesday evening and stayed at Albert & Jen's no problem -I could have just showed up there unannounced and it would have been ok. I COULD have. But...I didn't want to. I wanted to spend the evening at home, doing practically nothing but reading, talking on the phone, and watching TV. What it really boiled down to was that I was just way too stubborn to go early -no matter how much common sense I tried to inject into my head. I did not care. As it was, I had a LONG drive that morning. My car was built for power and performance. NOT driving through slush at senior citizen speed. Anyway, I got my car in, visited with Albert, and we went for a test drive in a 2010 Buick Lucerne they have on their lot. Holy technology Batman. It was AWESOME. And they really improved the look so it doesn't look like a grandpa car -although, it still drives like one. It was nice and I was glad I got to drive it and monkey around with all the stuff inside. Very cool. Then after they were done with my car (which was the cheapest full service/repair job I've ever had there...those guys are VERY nice to me), I took Albert out for dinner at Country Kitchen and went back home. By then the roads were very nice, just wet. Lots of cops out though.

So I read a great book for a while before I had to go to my stained glass class. "Downtown Owl" is the name of it and it's a fiction novel by Chuck Klosterman, a ND/MN native. I used to read his columns when I was in college while he was working for the Forum. I absolutely loved this book. It reminded me SOOO much of living in Ada and for me, I thought the book was hilarious, reflected real life, tragic, reflective, and very insightful. Loved it. I don't know if I would recommend it to anyone who has lived in small town rural ND or MN and really like it...because I don't think you'll really "get" what he's trying to communicate throughout the book. Maybe you will. I have become a true Chuck Klosterman fan and can't wait to read the rest of his published stuff -especially his collection of essays. Incredible, relevant, and stuff I can really relate to.

I got all of my glass pieces cut out for my stained glass project and the next step is grinding the edges to ensure they are to pattern size. Then I get to put it together. I am soooo very excited to see how it all settles out. I hope I like it and I hope that it looks like I've imagined it to look like. Or, in my mind, this is what I say: I hope it communicates the feelings and thoughts I wanted it to reflect. I really dig the stained glass stuff and hope to do more in the future.

Today I slept in, as I was up late yesterday talking, talking, talking on the phone. I was up for literally 21 hours yesterday and I could really feel it this morning. I finally got out of bed (was up actually at 8am, but snoozed and just laid there reveling in the warmness of my cocoon of blankets & pillows until after 9:30). Coffee drinking ensued, as did catching up on tv programs I've recorded. Then I went grocery shopping in anticipation of some of my family coming up for lunch/dinner on Saturday. I decided to cook roast beef with potatoes and carrots. Holy crap is that stuff expensive! A 4.7lb bottom rump roast is over $12.00!! Geez! oh well. If it was just for me, that would be enough meat to last at least a week, if not longer! Then I did some cleaning and started typing in this blog.

Tonight yet, I have to do some office work that I haven't gotten to yet, should make a casserole for tomorrow (I'm gonna make a big batch of chicken broccoli hotdish for both tomorrow and my lunches for this week).

So yeah. I don't feel like this has been a "vacation", but I have been able to get finished lots of stuff that I usually don't have time for. I really don't take time to go grocery shopping anymore, and I spent quite a long time in the grocery store just pushing my cart around. I really like grocery shopping sometimes!

I'm getting kind of miffed at the school district that cuts my checks (my cooperative has a "fiscal host" which is one of the school districts in the coop and they actually are the ones who hold my benefits and payroll). I've got quite a substantial reimbursement check coming to me from September and I don't think I should have to wait all month to get it when I submitted on the first day of the month. This district does NOT need approval from their board to cut a check for me since I've already secured approval from my boss, which is good enough because my checks do not come out of that district's budget at all...they only manage OUR funds for us. Man that makes me mad. I paid all of my bills and would LIKE to buy a dlsr camera (which is on sale at Target this week)...but I don't want make that purchase (It'll be about $800 for the camera and additional telescoping lens) until I KNOW I have that reimbursement check in my bank. BUT, actually, in reality, I think I'd buy it off of Amazon cuz the whole package is about $40-50 cheaper than what Target has on sale right now. And ACTUALLY, I SHOULD wait until closer to Christmas or at least Black Friday. But I want it now!!!! That's what's making me crabby: I am acting like a petulant child who cannot have what she wants when she wants it. *sigh* oh well! ;-) Good things come to those who wait....right???

So tomorrow I'll be ms betty crocker -slash- martha stewart as I entertain my family. I'm excited to have them here and I get to meet Amelia's boyfriend's kids. I also get to see Grace again, who is getting so big and it will be SOO fun to interact with her. She's like 2-1/2 and I LOVE kids that age! If Skyler and Drake are feeling better, they might come too (I offered to go up to Palo/Aurora to get them for the day because Andy's working and Amy's got to get her deck finished before it turns into winter....again). Anna and Benn aren't coming from Mankato. Hopefully they can come up here sometime. It is quite a ways to go, so I understand when they can't make that trip. And Tony's got a Navy Ball to go to. I still don't really get WHY he goes to that stuff...cuz he hasn't been active for years, but I think he still identifies with that "sub culture" or whatever. -and that's cool.

Sunday is getting stuff done for work. I have a full day of CPI training on Monday and I have to review all the stuff and remember how to teach all the "non-violent physical restraint" stuff. Fun times.

Now that I've written a book, I'm going to get busy making my chicken broccoli hotdish and start in on the stuff I brought home from work. Thanks for reading, and thanks more for clicking on the ads! :-)

SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The first snow of the season is here. Yesterday after work I raked the leaves on the patch of lawn in front of my house. That took about 2-1/2 hours!!! geez! Well, I'm glad I did it because I knew that snow was coming, and yessiree, it delivered. Last night about 11pm-ish I noticed there were some flakes falling so I went out onto my back deck and watched it come down. So nice. And then went to bed, knowing my yard would look different when I woke up.

I don't know why, but this snowfall makes me very happy! It's my first snowfall in Grand Rapids, and ok, so it's not a big one, and it will probably not stay around very long at all, but still... I get to see another season change! That's why I LOVE Minnesota and would have a difficult time leaving, unless I moved to a place that was similar in climate/seasons. Now, the extreme cold I CAN live without, but the four seasons? Nuh-uh. I even think it's much more pronounced here than it was in Ada. It's more natural. In Ada you knew the seasons by the crops being planted or harvested, or what parts of fields were being burned -rarely by the natural environment around you. Here, you only have to look outside and see a group of trees and know what season it is. It is just absolutely gorgeous!

So, I am one of those weirdos who likes snow. I don't like shoveling it or driving through it, but I like it nonetheless. I like the smell of it, I like the look of it and I like the texture of it -and how it can "hush" everything when it falls silently or stir everything up when there's some wind mixed in with it. How exciting will it be to watch the lake freeze-over here and then the subsequent thaw?? Holy cats. I can hardly contain myself. :-)

Today I'm palling around with a friend who's visiting and I hope we can go up to the Suomi Hills area and maybe not hike (owww, my toe!!!), but drive through this awesome scenic route I found through there one day. I bet that is absolutely beautiful right now!! I need to get myself a camera that can take pictures in the way I see things...Almost every day there is something I wish I could capture on film/digital that is impossible to do with my blackberry or my cheap-ass Kodak easy-share black friday special. I think I just thought of a Christmas present to myself. :-)

The Trees Are On Fire!!

Geez....it's been a very long time since I blogged last. I have been pretty busy. Seems like all I do is go to workshops, go to meetings, field phone calls and emails, and fly by the seat of my pants to help solve problems I have no idea the answer to! It's been AWESOME....and very exhausting at the same time. But, still, totally what I've been looking for.

I think right now my favorite thing is the look of fall here. It's sooooo incredibly beautiful around here and I am so very thankful every single day that I have the privilege of looking at trees, lakes, and wildlife. It's just been amazing. Right now the trees are turning orange, yellow, red, rust, brown, brick colored, you name the fall color, I've got it anywhere I go. It's amazing. Now, I DO have a crapload of leaves to rake up in my yard and I should really cut the grass one last time, but I've got to wait a bit for several reasons.

Reason number one: it's been very rainy and "october-ish" lately and mowing lawn is not very conducive to that! Plus, raking is not very easy with that either. And, lastly, I ripped the toenail off my big toe this weekend and walking is painful! Sitting around and just LIVING is painful! :-) It's a long story, so the short story is that I was moving furniture, got my toes under a couch & pulled out my foot...but my toenail decided it wanted to stay under there. VERY gross. Very painful, and a pain in my butt right now. In about a year, I'll have a brand new toenail. HAHA. Ewww.

So otherwise, things are going well. I finally got some of my revisions done on my study and am waiting for that to get "approved" from my advisor...like that will happen anytime soon. So hopefully I can finally "graduate" in December and have a specialist degree. Good times!! :-)

I got new furniture...a couch and a lazyboy recliner. Plus, I finally put up some curtains in the living room. Now I am completely set and moved in...feeling very at home and very comfortable here. I'm still not sure if I'll be here more than a year, there are just sooooo many variables going on to decide that right now, but it would be a nice place to "park" for a little bit.

So, if you have a chance in the next two weeks, I strongly suggest taking a leisure drive up this way. It's absolutely beautiful.