Friday, October 15, 2010

Hi my name is Mary and I'm a first time blogger.

Yep. There's a lot of pressure to trying things for the first time. While blogging may not be a Twelve Step Program, I think it will help me manage my time and communication better. I miss all my peeps back home but I'm also busy enjoying the kids and making new peeps up here. A girl only has so much time! So I'm going to leach, I mean learn, from following Jill's blogspot example. (Though I find that kind of intimidating because I think that she is very clever and hilarious.) That way y'all can keep up with my general goings on. So I thought I'd start by taking a page from Jilli's url: averychillywinter.blogspot. com. I'm old and my bones are creaky so I thought I'd just leap straight to dangnabitscold.blogspot. com for my url.  I know, I'm like a genius, only different. (Thus concludes my lengthy preamble.)

So here's my moderately recent haps: Night before last, Jill, Amy, and I walked up to the park on Jewel Lake to watch more of the filming of Everybody Loves Whales. (Check it out on IMDB.com) It has been interesting watching Hollywood turn our little lake into a scene from the Arctic. It was a beautiful evening for a stroll. Apparently, the meese (plural for moose, duh) agreed. We were a block away from home when we saw a juvenile moose between us and the house. Then on the other side of the street we saw its momma. Conventional wisdom says "Never get between a momma moose and her mouse (mouse is to moose as fawn is to deer, duh). And these two were going nowhere. So we called Renee and she got in the car to drive an entire block away to pick us up. It is actually true that a fairly common reason for being late to work in Anchorage is "I can't come in yet, there's a moose between me and my car." (This actually happened to Jill once last winter. It only made her about five minutes late, though.)

Speaking of work, I had my very first sub gig yesterday. Yay! Gainful employment makes me feel waaay better. I am so very good at goofing off. I was worried I would forget how to work. Also, I had not yet fired up my maximum brain capacity since the big IQ dump of 2010 (I lose 12-20 points the day after school is out every year). Normally, I recover most of them by mid-August when I start thinking school-like thoughts again but I'm late this year and it has been a bit scary.  Yesterday, in the middle of a fairly lofty explication on job security in the AP Economics class I was teaching, I found myself struggling for just the right word when explaining how rather than working for just one company for 30+ years and then retiring, their generation is likely to work for 8-10 different companies, even wthin the same, uh, uh, the word, what is the word?--don't worry a student filled it in for me: field. I know, right?!

But I digress. I believe that after one day in the classroom, I have already recovered two of the aforementioned lost IQ points. The day went very well (though my teacher taught all six classes with no prep and the day ended with a PE class! What?! I've never supervised PE!), my sub report ranged from excellent all the way down to very good, and as is consistent with my motto, "No one was injured and some learning occurred." I'm very glad to have the first one under my belt. I had a wicked case of night before insomnia, waking at 1:49--thank you digital precision : ( and did not get back to sleep 'til 4:30. Boo. No matter how old or experienced I get generally, I always have some measure of anxiety when approaching new experiences and it typically presents in my sleep patterns (or lack thereof). I trust next time shouldn't be as big a deal.

As it happens, there is a beautiful golf course offering late season rates right on my way home from Chugiak H.S. The weather has been very cold but very beautiful this last week. So I decided to take advantage of one last opportunity for a round of golf. Smitty, the nice fella who works the desk at Jewel Lake Bowl (where I substitute on leagues) is also a golfer, of sorts, so he joined me for the round. In the interest of daylight we decided to do a scramble format (where we both hit but then take the next shot from the best of the two). We finished the front with a very respectable 42 and the back with a lyin', cheatin' 46. It was great fun. As I left the course, the sun was just dipping into the horizon and the temperature was 26 degrees. Yep. I'm pretty sure that's it for golf this year.

Stayed up late last night with Jilli getting caught up on the first season of Glee (thanks to the good people at Netflix). So with today being a teacher prep day,
I am having a pajama day which is the very reason you are being blessed with this rather lengthy update. My future blog postings will be of varied length and will most certainly not appear daily (it has taken me much of the day just to decide whether or not it is really appropriate to bathe on a pajama day. . . I admit I'm having some gumption issues).  So tune in here from time to time. And if you want to talk to me, call me up! (There's a 94% chance I'll call you back but only 37% that it'll be in a timely manner. . .) Also, once I figure out how to take and or get pictures and make them be here, I will. (I know, my use of technological jargon is quite impressive.)

I love and miss you all and hope that you are well.

2 comments:

  1. Hey Mary! I'm glad you are doing this! Yay!

    A side note, I know three people who graduated from CHS in 2000. I had to check though, but the name sounded right. Sounds like the subbing was an adventure, I'm sure the teachers up there will be happy to have you!

    Stay warm!
    -Briana

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  2. Hey Mary! Awesome way to keep everyone connected :-) Can't wait for Alaska to discover what a gem of a teacher you are!

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