Thursday, December 23, 2010

Merry Christmas!

I know I'm a little early but I also know that things are about to get crazy so I wanted to update before I leave the country this weekend. We're spending tomorrow evening at my grandma's with the immediate family to exchange gifts. Saturday I head up to Oxford for Christmas dinner at my aunt and uncle's so long as we don't get all the snow they're calling for. Then Christmas night we're doing our gift exchange with my parents and my sister and brother in law and the kids. Then Sunday morning at 3 a.m. I leave for the Bahamas!!!

Things have been crazy busy for the last couple of weeks. I was finally allowed to run again last Saturday so I've been to the gym twice this week and I'm headed there in the morning for a long run before I leave for vacation this weekend. I only have to do four miles this weekend so it shouldn't take more than an hour to get my run in tomorrow. My sister is also joining Fitworks which is exciting!

Work has been pretty slow. Most of my kids were out this week because they either had parents who were teachers who were off this week or older siblings who were off of school. Many of my students brought me gifts and my favorites have been the home made ones that the kids have made me.

I've been in a funk lately where I haven't felt like being social but have forced myself to be social anyway. It also doesn't help that all of my friends are in relationships lately but me. I hate this time of year because it reminds me of how incredibly lonely I am.

I've been thinking of goals I want to meet next year. I don't want to call them resolutions because I always fail miserably at them so I want these to be goals that I know are attainable in the new year. I'll elaborate on those when I get back from vacation.

My vacation is the biggest thing going on right now! On Sunday two of my co-workers and I are driving down to Cocoa Beach, Florida to spend the night before we sail out on our four day cruise to the Bahamas on Monday! We sail out on Monday and then dock in Cococay, Royal Caribbean's private Island on Tuesday. Megan plans to lay on the beach all day while Michelle and I are going to go snorkeling! It's on my bucket list so I'm excited to cross it off! Wednesday we dock in Nassau and spend the day exploring. Thursday we sail all day and then Friday we dock back in Port Canaveral.

The girls and I are spending New Year's Eve in Orlando at Caribe Royal, this amazing hotel not far from Disney! You can check the hotel out: www.thecaribeorlando.com/caribe-royal/ We got a pretty good deal for one night and we're excited to ring in 2011 somewhere warm! We're going to House of Blues for dinner and then who knows what the night holds! I can't wait to actually do something fun for New Year's for once!

I'm not even dreading the 16 hour car drive each way because I know Megan and Michelle and I will make it fun. I can't wait for this bonding experience. The three of us need this.

For now, I'm off to clean up my room and start packing while I watch Beauty and the Beast on my new to me tv and dvd player from my parents. My mom got my stepdad a blu-ray player for Christmas and then they got a flat screen tv for their room so their bigger tv is now in my room and my tiny little tv from college is now in the kid's room for my nieces and nephew when they stay here.

Alright, I'm seriously off now. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! See you all when I get back from the Bahamas!!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

It's that time of year again

Well, it's officially that time of year again. The time of year I dread being a teacher. It's wintertime. And with winter comes snow. Words can't even describe the dread I feel when I hear the word snow in the forecast. Ever since I spun out and did a 180 and ended up facing oncoming traffic the Christmas I worked retail, I've been terrified to drive in the snow. Going off the road twice on my way to work last year didn't help either.

This year will be a little bit different because Andrea just got hired at my work and tomorrow is her first day. She's much more comfortable driving in snow and she has four wheel drive so she's going to drive us to work on days that it snows, like tomorrow. It's been steadily snowing here since about 3 this afternoon. It stopped for awhile but there's another band moving in around rush hour tomorrow morning which means it's going to be a nightmare.

The roads are already a mess. I ran to the grocery store before it really started coming down and I slid going around corners and then slid through a stop sign in my neighborhood. While I'm still not looking forward to having to be in a car in the snow in the morning, I'm feeling a little bit better that someone else is driving, someone who is used to driving in crazy weather like this.

All of the local schools are already delaying or closing, including the two districts closest to where I work. It'll be interesting to see if my boss decided to delay us or not. Typically we never close or delay, regardless of how bad it is outside. In the two years I've been at the preschool we've closed once and delayed twice I think. I'm hoping tomorrow will be different, but I don't expect it to be.

It does make me grateful that I don't live in northeast Ohio anymore. I never would have made it as an adult living in Youngstown with the way it always snows there during the winter. We obviously get snow here in Cincinnati because we live in Ohio but it's nothing like the constant snow that Youngstown and Cleveland and the rest of northeast Ohio get. Down here we get a couple of inches and you'd think the world was ending. I'm guilty of that too but I've already explained why I'm so terrified to drive in the snow. I would be perfectly content to move somewhere that it doesn't snow! Or to move to Denver where it snows, but quickly melts because of the higher elevation. I just can't handle driving in it. The thought of driving in snow literally sends me into a panic. I am going to be so grateful and I'm going to owe Andrea for driving to work all winter!

Alright, I'm off t oget to bed because I have to be up 45 minutes earlier than normal so we can leave earlier than normal to make it on time. Still crossing fingers for a delay or a closing!!

Friday, December 10, 2010

Excitement!

Since my last bitter and upset entry, things have actually started to turn around. I got an e-mail while I was at work today saying that my computer was ready to be picked up! I picked it up from the Geek Squad at Best Buy on my way home from work and was pleasantly surprised and ecstatic to find out that they had managed to save EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING! I didn't lose any of my music, my pictures, or my documents! This is great news because I was devestated at the thought of losing all of my pictures but luckily that didn't turn out to be the case!

The other night I spent three and a half hours at Megan's house taking my Stats final since my computer was at Best Buy. After I had submitted it, our scores were made available and I had failed. And I don't mean by a little. I got a 49% on the final which gave me what I thought was a solid C+ in the class. For our program, we have to get a B- in every graded class we take so I was distraught at the thought of having to retake Stats because I had missed a B- by three tenths of a point.

Imagine my surprise tonight when I logged into blackboard to send my professor an e-mail and found that she had posted our final grades and I got a solid B in the class. Not a C+, not a B-, but a solid B! This means I won't have to retake the class this summer like I thought I would! This also means I won't have to cancel my trip to Denver!! WOO!!

I'm not really sure how I wound up with a B. It looks like she added a point in somewhere but that still should have given me a B- but I'm not complaining. I am so excited that I don't have to retake this class because I hate math so Stats was the bane of my existence this quarter. I'll have to review it a little bit this summer before I take the comps exam to graduate but otherwise I AM DONE FOREVER with Stats! Sweet!

Since school is now officially over for the quarter, I can start looking forward to spending Christmas with my family. I'm also looking forward to Christmas Eve services at my church. We have a candlelight service each year and it's my favorite night of the year to be in church. Then the day after Christmas two of my co-workers and I are headed to Florida for our cruise to the Bahamas on the 27th! We sail from the 27th through the 31st and then we're spending New Year's Eve in Orlando before heading back to Ohio on the 1st. I can't wait because I'm ready for a vacation and because I think it's going to be an amazing bonding experience for Megan, Michelle, and I. :-)

Now I am off to snuggle under my warm fleece blanket and watch The Santa Clause on ABC Family. I love Christmas time. :-)

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Rotten timing

So let's start with the good news shall we? I went to the doctor yesterday and after three and a half hours and a set of xrays, the doctor told me that I was just having muscle spasms. She put me on a steroid package for a week and gave me muscle relaxers to help me sleep shall I need them. I took the first dose last night and I woke up PAIN FREE this morning! I've taken two doses this morning and I'm feeling pretty good. No pain, nothing.

That's the good news. Let's move on to the bad news shall we? I was on runner's world reading an article about marathons and my computer went spastic and started telling me that I need to defrag my computer and that it couldn't find my hard drive and I had no space on my c drive. WHAT?!? So I defragged like it told me to and nothing worked. I started to suspect that I had a virus so I backed up all of my school files and took my computer to the geek squad at Best Buy.
Sure enough, I have some virus that masquerades as a computer program saying you need to scan your computer and as you scan, it slowly wipes out your hard drive. I had to pay $212 so Best Buy can wipe out my hard drive, scan it for viruses, and fix everything. I'm going to lose all of my pictures, files, and music. I don't care about the files because I backed those up since I need them for school. But I'm pissed about the music and the pictures.

Vince says my Itunes should restore itself so I'm hoping that's the case. Most of the music on my Itunes is stuff I uploaded and very little of it is stuff I actually paid for so if that's the case it'll just be a tedious task to reload some of my cds on there. The longest task will be putting my Vince mixes back on there because he doesn't give me a playlist so I have to google all of the lyrics to figure them out! :-P

What rotten freaking timing for this to happen. I still need to take my Stats final so I'm going to use Megan's computer tonight when she gets home from work since my parents computer (which I'm currently using) is super slow. This would happen to me during finals week. Ughhhhh.

I had to wipe out my vacation fund for my cruise the week after Christmas to pay for my computer so now I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to pay for gas and the hotel on my way to Florida. I have a financial aid refund coming on the 27th which will help on the way back but I don't know how I'm going to pay for gas and the hotel on the way there. I cried on the way home from Best Buy because I was so angry.

Why does this kind of stuff always happen to me during finals week?? Something bad happens every quarter during finals. Last quarter I had strep, this quarter my computer crashes. Ugh! I hate my life today.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Pain

I should be in bed sleeping because I'm exhausted but I'm waiting on the cd Vince made for me to finish uploading to my Itunes. For whatever reason the last three songs have taken about two hours to upload. Ridiculous! Luckily I don't have to be up early because I called into work so I can go to the doctor's in the morning.

Oh yes...you read that right. I have to drag my butt all the way downtown to campus to go the student health center because I can't use my health insurance anywhere but there. I managed to pull or twist something in my back on Thursday or Friday and the pain has been getting progressively worse over the weekend to the point that I literally could not sit up this morning when I woke up. I've been wearing icy hot patches since yesterday afternoon and taking aleve and extra strength excedrin like it's candy. With the patches on I can function and my back just feels stiff, as if I've sat in a car too long, but without them, I can't sit, stand up straight, or bend over without being in excruciating pain. I thought it would go away by the time the weekend was over and instead it just keeps getting worse so off to the doctor I go tomorrow. Ugh. I wouldn't care so much if I could use my insurance somewhere closer instead of having to drive the 30 minutes to campus just to see a doctor.

I spent the weekend in Athens visiting Vince. I hadn't seen him since my birthday and he's stuck in Athens over winter break working so I drove up to see him for the weekend. He was such a good sport putting up with my whining and taking care of me when I was in so much pain last night and today. He's the one who insisted on the excedrin and the icy hot patches and for that I'm grateful because they made it so I could actually enjoy my weekend.

When I got in on Friday night we went to Wal-mart to get stuff to cook dinner together, which actually turned into Vince cooking dinner because I had set the fire alarm off at work that afternoon. Oh yeah, you read that right too! I was heating up my kid's lunches and my own and managed to set the fire alarm off. We're still not sure what happened because I hadn't burnt anything but it still went off. At least it added some excitement to the day and like my boss said, it got our fire drill in for the month!

So back to Friday! Vince cooked us dinner and then mixed up our brownie batter while I washed the dishes from dinner. Once he had the brownies in the oven, he ran out and picked us up a bottle of wine for our movie night. We spent Friday night just laying on the futon watching Eat Pray Love while drinking the wine he had bought. After the movie we laid in bed and talked until we fell asleep. It was the perfect start to the weekend.

Saturday I had planned to stay in my pjs and work on a paper while Vince worked but our friend Krys wanted someone to get food with and persuaded me to get dressed and go out in the cold with my two favorite words in Athens: The Diner! She knows my weakness because I love The Diner and their breakfast food. It's definitely an Athens thing so of course I was persuaded to get out of bed for that! We sat and chatted for over an hour over brunch and it was so fun catching up with her. It gave me so much comfort to know that no matter how much time passes or how far apart we are, most of my college friendships have remained the same and for that I am grateful.

After brunch I worked on my paper for a couple of hours until Vince got off of work and dragged me to Wal-mart to return our Red Box movie and to get the icy hot patches. We stopped to pick up pizza for dinner and then it was right back to my paper I went. By 7:30 last night it was finished! I changed clothes and we met up with Krys and headed out to one of the local bars to celebrate me being done with my paper and to hang out. I had four drinks over the couple of hours we were there and the three of us had fun laughing and catching up. There are some ridiculous stories from last night but all in all, it was a much needed night out with two of my favorite people.

When we got back to the apartment, we laid in bed and watched Rent, after which I fell asleep and had the best night's sleep that I've had in over a week. For whatever reason I just sleep so much better when I'm in Athens than I do at home. I wonder why that is??

I woke up today and my back pain had gotten so bad that I literally could not sit up because it hurt so bad. I was in so much pain that I was in tears walking around the apartment. After taking three aleve and putting the icy hot patch on, it finally started to fade. Sometimes the pain feels like there's a giant knot in my back just above my butt (sorry tmi I know) to just being sore across my lower back from hip to hip as if I've bruised it. That's how it feels right now. I have an icy hot patch on it right now that I plan on sleeping in so that I can actually move in the morning, though I have a feeling I'll be sore anyway. I just honestly do not know what I did to it.

Once the pain started to fade, we headed uptown so I could pick up a couple of OU t-shirts. Vince also talked me into buying some extra strength excedrin which has helped immensley with the pain I'm in. Then we headed to lunch before going back and flipping between the first half of the Browns game and the first half of the Bengals game.

I got home around 5ish and have done nothing but sit around for the most part. Megan took me to Wal-mart earlier so I could get some more icy hot patches and some stuff for my lunches this week. I took a nice long hot shower when I got in which helped loosen my back up a little but now it just hurts again. I'm really hoping there's something the doctor's can do for me tomorrow because I can't take much more of this pain.

I'm so glad my boss was so understanding about me being out tomorrow. She even turned it into a joke and made me laugh, which was good because I felt horrible about calling in on a Monday of all days. I'm going to try and make it into work after I go to the doctor but we'll see how it goes tomorrow. Right now on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being no pain and 10 being excruciating pain I'd say I'm about a 6. I'm just miserable so I think I'm going to go sleep it off.

What a way to start my week. At least I had a good weekend with one of my favorite people, even though it was slightly pain filled. I'm just grateful that Vince took such good care of me and put up with all of my whining over the pain I was in. Just another reason why I love him. :-)

Ok...bedtime for real now.