First Day of Classes Fall 2010

The first day of classes has come and gone. I've officially entered my 3rd year as a full-time teacher. Get this year over with, and I'll officially be off my probationary period as new faculty. This semester finds me teaching 6 classes (seems to be typical for my Fall semesters now) and serving as a faculty mentor for a new instructor in the drafting and design program. That's pretty cool I think. I'm surprised (and flattered of course) that the Teaching & Learning Center considers me worthy of being someone's mentor as I've only just completed the process of being mentored myself. It's a two-year commitment, so I guess I'm in it for the long haul.

I had 4 Writing I classes today, and I'm happy to say that none of them seems to be "the one" that every teacher dreads. Of course, it was only the first day, so we'll see what happens on Wednesday when the real work actually begins. The afternoon classes each had 4-6 students absent. Can you believe that they would miss the first day? Oh well, I'm sure several will show up on Wednesday and act surprised that classes started on Monday. My favorite was today when a student told me she wouldn't be able to attend on Wednesday (the second day of classes!) because she had to work. Imagine that! Already missing! Gee whiz. I wonder how she'll make it the rest of the semester. Oh well, not my problem I guess. Just not a very good start to the semester, I'd say.

There were a few students who looked completely clueless. I couldn't tell if they were half asleep, fully asleep, high on something, or if that was their natural appearance (I'm sorry for them if it's the latter). I do have to say that there were several who seemed good natured, smiled, spoke up in class, and seemed normal. Alas, I'm sure everyone left the class thinking that I'm weird and perhaps even a little crazy. So I try to make English fun and lively. Is that so wrong? :-)

Nap Anyone?

Today I had high hopes of accomplishing those few extra things that I really wanted to get done before returning to work the week before classes. For example, I was going to write out my first 2 weeks of lesson plans and upload all course material on the Angel site. What did I get done, you ask? Well, I went to church with Ken this morning, came home and quickly picked up the house so that my Aunt Beryl in from Chicago could see the new place, then sat down in the screened porch to read the Sunday paper but fell asleep.

Yes, fell asleep. It was lovely to doze in the fresh air. I'd cleaned the room heavily last week as it hadn't been touched since before we moved in. It was pretty dusty and had its share of dead bugs on the floor. But now it's all clean and spiffy -- a great place to take a nap. The cats were roaming around inside with me enjoying the sights and sounds of birds, so they were happy too.

When I woke up -- about 30 minutes later -- Ken was on his way to Illinois where he was going to help his sister Lisa move into her new house this week. It certainly is the summer of moving! I'll be helping out later as I have to go back to work this week. Yes, I know, poor me.

We discovered one bad thing about the house today. I should say that we actually figured this out just today. It appears that one of our air conditioning units in the house is kaput. We wondered why part of the house was so much warmer than the other part. See, our house has 2 furnaces/central air units: the one that goes to the older part of the house and the one that goes with the addition that was put on in the 50's. They are both relatively new furnaces, but the Home Inspector said that this one wasn't putting out as much cold air as the other. We gave it some time as we were settling in the house. But today, we realized that it was only blowing air, and it wasn't cold air. Ugh. Of course, this would happen right before Ken leaves. I hate this stuff, but I guess one of my jobs this week will be to call the heating/air people and get them to come out and take a look. Thank goodness this week is supposed to be much cooler than the past few.

So that's what's new here. I'm trying to be a lot better about posting. Gotta get myself back into a routine, you know. :-)

The New House

We have officially arrived in our new house. It's wonderful! It was a busy couple of days moving all the stuff out of the duplex and into the house, but thanks to many friends and family, it all came together. I don't have my pictures together yet to show it all, but am planning to do that soon as we get more of the boxes put away.

We're mostly settled in, but there are still some pesky boxes and things lying around that I have no idea what to do with. Don't you hate those things? Keep them or get rid of them? Most of the items are ending up in the basement again to be used at a future date. However, we are proud of ourselves for having gone through much of our things and given them to Ken's sister Maria so that they can try to be sold at her garage sale, the proceeds of which will go toward a new snowblower this year (keep fingers crossed we at least make a little).

It's been such a busy summer that I can hardly understand where the time went. I feel bad not keeping in better touch with friends and family, but I feel as though I've hardly been home. Once Ken came back, we bought our house within 1 week, the next day I left for the AP English Reading in Louisville, KY and was gone for 10 days, then I returned home only to start packing and then leave a few days later for our honeymoon trip to Hawaii. Again, we were gone for 22 days, and once we returned home, we had to get down to business and seriously pack up the house for the big move. I just hope we can get most of the things we need settled before I return to work in a week and a half. The craziness of the semester will set in quickly enough (especially with the 6 classes I'm teaching and my new faculty mentor role I've been asked to take on). Thank goodness Ken will be around home through October when he'll eventually have to go back to work!

More updates and pictures to come later!