There are three things on my list today; all three made my life a bit more interesting!  At church, Rob and I have helped out with the worship team once or twice.  We both have done this sort of thing in the past, but we haven't had much chance to get involved at FCC.  This Sunday, I was in the middle of sword drills in the jr. high sunday school class that Rob and I teach, when a young girl came in and asked, "Donna wants to know if you're still singing this morning."  Ha!  Still singing?  I haven't mentioned yet that our worship leader, while lovable, hasn't proven herself to be particularly on top of the planning details.  I asked the girl to send a message back: I didn't know I was singing this morning, but I'm happy to give it a shot!  When I got to the service at 9:58,  Donna was apologetic but excited, and we all went up front.  All was well...I even learned a song while I was up there.

Then, this morning as I was getting ready for school, I flushed the toilet.  At that moment, I must have shaken the metal shelving above it, because a bottle of foundation fell off the shelf and into the pot just as the water was swirling.  I have never had anything like this happen before!  Unfortunately, it flushed.  Mostly.  That means it isn't in sight and can't be plunged, but the toilet clearly has issues.  So I have called a plumber.  That's what you do, right?  Not flushing heavy objects on a regular basis, I don't really know.

After the slight toilet trauma, I came downstairs to find an email from Rob (who comes home Friday!  The separation is almost over!).  I had been looking forward to hearing from him, because he had lucked into going to London during the singular international NFL game this year....which meant, of course, that he went!  I knew there would be stories, but I had no idea it would be this good: 

( I'll let him speak for himself )

My husband is in London.  For eighteen days.  At least he will be, at around 2:25 a.m. EST.

I've gone through a crazy set of emotions in the past few hours.  It started with grateful, last night, that I got to pack with him and have sweet moments together, not to mention that my principal allowed me to come in late.  I have first block planning, which allowed me to stay home, make a big goodbye breakfast, and take him to the office.  Of course the goodbye turned immediately to tears, despite my self pep talk about having a happy last minutes together.  I don't do no tears....lol.  (If you remember, I couldn't even say "yes" to the proposal because I had teared up so overflowingly)

I am determined to enjoy these three weeks, for the chance I get to be a bachelorette again, visiting girlfriends and doing happy errands around my house (like finally finishing the honeymoon scrapbook!).  But right now, I'm torn between two emotions that can't really exist at the same time: the first, terribly lonely.  It's not this exact moment that makes me sad, but the idea of 18 days without my man.  The idea of facing it takes a lot of gumption.  Meanwhile, I keep reverting to really, really jealous.  He is going to LONDON!  Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye.....why could this trip not have happened during the summer?! I could spend a day at Westminster Abbey itself.  Instead, I'll be talking to my English 12 class about all the cool sites my hubby is visiting without us.

In addition to five late nights at school (uuugghhh), I'm looking forward to sleepovers with my sister, plans in Charlottesville with old friends, and maybe even a trip up to D.C.  Hopefully a few Skype dates, too.  :)

These should be an exciting 18 days, on both sides of the ocean. 

Hello again. 

I always journal here with the intention of making it a semi-regular occasion, but things happen.  Like life.  And I have had no time to say anything since July.

At the moment, we are exactly four weeks into the school year, which puts us at two weeks away from the first third of the first semester being finished.  That feels like a lot of class done, considering that we just started!  My class load this year has a different feel to it than in years past.  My bright, shining, wonderful moment that happens every single day of school now is the English 12A class.  One level below AP, it's for the smart kids that were either just a step below or too lazy to take the alternative.  I LOVE THEM.   I could say it all night and my point still wouldn't be strong enough.  Not only do I get to teach British Lit, which I was groomed for, but they are academic kids.  They do homework!  They want to get good grades!  Good students + the most wonderful canon of literature = happy Mrs. Morgan.  Yesterday I got them into the idea of Christopher Marlowe as the Renaissance bad boy.  Once they realized that he was killed in a tavern brawl at 30, it also made sense that he wasn't a boring old man poet.   This class makes my life, every day.  It helps that the teacher who taught 12A before me had a reputation for being a mean old woman...so in a sense, I saved these students.  We also played Vocabulary Football today, which had the jocks eating out of my hand.

And now it is bedtime.

Since Rob and I got back from the honeymoon, I have really been enjoying the chance to be mildly lazy.  Mildly, because most days I accomplish a pretty long list of things, grocery shopping, cleaning and organizing, finishing thank-you notes, cooking supper for my new husband, and other odd jobs.  I've also been dreading the return of school.  I don't dislike my job, but my assumption has been that is not going to be a fun transition, from cute housewife with time to busy teacher without.  Today I went into school for my third, and final, summer workday.  In the last week, I have been truly surprised to discover that I am excited to be going back to my classroom!  A few reasons.  One, mildly lazy is nice, but with the extras of organizing wedding gifts and writing thank yous, etc. virtually finished, it has its boring moments.  It will be nice to have a significant daily purpose to accomplish again.  Also, my classes are going to be fantastic!  

This year I will be keeping two sections each of the classes I have taught before: English 10 and Composition.  I'm glad for that, because it means four classes that will require lesson planning without too much extra lesson creating.  Creating is the awful time-intensive part.  I'm also getting two sections of a new class: English 12A.  Despite the "awful time-intensive" work it means...I am SO EXCITED.  If you don't know, English 12 is British Lit, which of course is the best literature out there.  I have spent a good bit of time during each workday going through the textbook, outlining for myself a course schedule, thinking through specific lessons.  Even better, this year we have adopted new textbooks.  So I have in my possession a giant stack of supplementary material, worksheets, reading guides, etc. that I don't have to make from scratch.  Not to mention the Examview testbank CD.  (I had no idea how excruciating it is to make a good multiple-choice test until my first year, with no test banks to draw from.)  The class is going to be beautiful.  I can't wait.  :D

It is incredible to me the progression of Christianity over the past 1600 years or so.  This thought started with lesson planning today, I was browsing through the beginning of the Medieval Period, with Bede's "History of England."  400 years after an obscure, wandering preacher got crucified and led his disciples to a lifestyle that in turn ended in martyrdom, the Romans were sending missionaries out to Christanize everybody else.  A few hundred years laters, the Scots, Franks, Anglos, and...there's a fourth one, I know....could get on the same page with Latin, the language of the Bible.  So it was spreading.  Eight hundred years later, the Catholic Church had both religious and political influence over the Western world to the extent that Henry VIII had to break away with the Church of England just to get a divorce.  And now gatherings of hundreds and sometimes thousands of people occur to hear about the same God and worship Him en masse.  Not exactly a thesis, but it's cool to me that Christianity has not only lasted but gotten revamped every time it strays away from the orignal point.  Love God.  Love your neighbor.  Live forgiven.

One of our wedding gifts was a 5-piece set of Tupperware bowls.  They're practical and also pretty cute (a surprise, considering the 2-decade-old stuff I grew up with!).  Unfortunately, we recently discovered that one of the lids is the wrong size.  The others are very tight on their respective bowls, but it is easy enough to force them on.  This one isn't even close.

So this morning I called the Tupperware customer care.  I explained the situation: we received them as a gift, so we have no purchasing info, but we would like a replacement lid.  It seems like a reasonable request, considering that they have a lifetime warranty on their products and have a reputation to uphold.  The lady first determined the product number and size, sounding just a little offended when I told her the bowl was pink.  "We call that watermelon."  She then very nicely started giving me their recommendations, explaining that the lids are often very tight when they are first being used.  "I'd like you to submerge the lid in very hot water for a few moments and see if that helps."

Seriously?  I told her, again, that this lid is way too small for the bowl.  It falls down inside it!!!  There is no way stretching it out just a little bit is going to remedy the situation.  "Yes, ma'am, I understand that it is too small.  But I would like you to try this first, and if it is still a problem, you can call us right back."

"Is it like a magic pill?" I asked.  "Because if the lid doesn't grow by at least an inch, it's not going to work."  I had my handy Chefmate chop-n-scoop nearby, which has a ruler on the edge.  I thought maybe with official data she wouldn't treat me like a moron who thinks hot hot water is going to resize my lid.  "The bowl has an 8-inch diameter; the lid is 7 inches across," I told her.

Thankfully, that got the point across.  "Would you like us to replace the lid?" she asked.  Thanks for asking.  She explained that this would be a warranty replacement.  The lid will be free....but I have to pay the $5.95 shipping.  I tend to be a passive people-pleaser, but it's something I am working at overcoming.  Kind and gracious is one thing, getting walked over is another.   And I am not paying a company to remedy its own mistake!  If they send me the wrong lid, they need to pay the shipping to send me the correct one!  I told her so.  "You mean you included the wrong size, but I have to pay to get the right one?"  Their phones open at 8:30 EST; I called at 8:40.  It probably wasn't the happiest start to her day, but she took it well.  She wouldn't budge, but she probably doesn't have the authority to do so anyway.  Now I have to contact the friend who gave us the set to get the name of the consultant that she bought it from.  Hopefully that person can do the replacement, because Tupperware customer care is not going to pay $5.95 for a happy customer.

After two months, I have time to blog again.  I always think about posting something, read and comment on friends' posts, and don't get around to my own.  I am married and happy and settling into a perfect new apartment with Rob.  I love it.   Seriously, this is the life I have been waiting for.  Of course, things will change when school comes around, but for now I'm having fun being a cozy housewife who cooks and organizes and keeps her house looking beautiful.  One thing I have promised myself: I will be a good housekeeper.  It may not seem like a big deal, but staying clean and organized is not a strong suit of my mom's, and I have determined not to follow in those particular footsteps.

Being newlyweds is also a fun stage to be in.  Yesterday at nerves_patterns 's wedding, not only did I see most of the Mag 7 girls but also got to reunite with many of the ARC crowd whom I haven't seen in quite a while.  That meant introducing, over and over, "my husband, Rob."  Love it!

Today we went to switch my phone from Verizon to Sprint, as a second line on his plan.  Long story, but for various reasons he wasn't eligible to add a new line (and customer care wasn't being helpful), so instead I opened a Sprint account.  That means we get to use the refer a friend program, which gives us each $25.  They didn't want him adding a line, so instead we will pay the exact same amount and get $50 out of the deal.  I already distrust Sprint's business sense.  

Now, cooking.  A quick browse of allrecipes and foodnetwork didn't find any pork marinades that looked appealing, so I made up my own.  Basil from our porch garden, fresh pineapple, rum, brown sugar, tomatoes (also from the porch garden), salt, pepper - threw it all in the blender to get the flavors working....now I can only hope for the best.  It was very different, but also tasty.  Now we're going to put the new grill to work and find out if Alice's Kitchen Experiment is a success! 

Two pieces of news, actually, and they're both making me glowingly happy today.

Mi gata.  This could be a long saga, but the essential parts of the story are that Rob is severely allergic to cats and that my mom has always really disliked mine, Clawdia.  That means when I move out at the end of June, she can't come with me...and my mom really doesn't want her to stay here.  We've asked around a bit, put up flyers at the Weyers Cave grocery store, but with no success.  I was to the point of just trying to deal with the fact that we would probably have to put her down.  Instead, my fiance and my hero asked me last night to send him a picture of Clawdia.  Today he posted a notice on his e-bulletin board - it has a catcher title - and within a few hours, I had three messages from him with questions about her habits.  Now, it's official!  A cat-lady has practically begged us to let Clawdia live and move in with her.  I'm so happy!  While I really am ok with the idea of not living with my cat, it would have been so so sad to have to end it all for her!

We have a place to live!!!  Rob and I have been scoping out apartments in Bridgewater for a few months now.  That's the perfect place, being 30 minutes from my work and less than 15 from his, and one set of apartments in particular has caught our eye.  I checked out the classifieds on Monday, and called a few numbers.  I had really only intended to get some info, but the people offered to show us their places that evening, and we did it!  The first set of apartments was not quite what we had expected.  It wasn't horrible, but it smelled a little smokey and had a cheap look to it.   I didn't leave excited about that one.  The second, however, was beautiful!  It's a two-story townhouse with 2 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and a cute little dining area off from the kitchen (something obviously lacking in the first place we saw with a small kitchen/dining area).  We filled out the application, and the very next day got a call from the landlords saying that we can have it.  This is so exciting!!!  Friends, in less than a month Rob is going to move in to our apartment.  I'll help with it all, and after we are married, my place will be waiting for me.  Can it get any better than that?  :D

52 days.

You don't realize how much something means to you until it's gone, so they say.  After spending the evening at Rob's apartment, I have just gotten home and discovered that I left my cell phone there.  I'm going back tomorrow night, so it's not like I will be without for terribly long.  

...but I use my drive time as talk time all the time.  Or at least most of the time.  Just thinking about a day without makes me a little bit sad, considering all the business I can get done in an afternoon drive from Buffalo Gap to Harrisonburg!  Not to mention my daily morning conversation with that sweet fiance of mine.  Maybe this will be good for me.  Maybe.

I am paying for my wedding, for the most part, and my goal throughout this whole engagement has been to plan a frugal, but classy, wedding day.  So far so good.   Recently I found a Perfect idea for favors: a cookie buffet!  Every time I think of it, I get a little bit more excited!  I have been looking around online for cheap takeout boxes that I can add some sort of pretty label to, but until today the best price I could find was 80 cents/box.  Times 200.  That's not bad, considering the price of most favors, but you can perhaps imagine my relief just now when I stumbled over Uline, which will sell them to me at 14 cents/box.  Much better.  :)

103 days to go.  (That's three months, one week, three days, and twenty hours.) 

The Buffalo Gap High School girls' basketball team made states.  Today's semifinal game was scheduled for 11:00 am in Richmond.  On a school day!  I'm all for school spirit, but isn't it strange that the VHSL can totally disregard students needing to be in school? 

...and with the obligatory teacher rant finished, I can say that it was a really nice, quiet, and fun day at school today!  BGHS sponsored a Spirit Bus, allowing students to go down for only the price of the game ticket.  Additionally, any student who brought a note from home got an excused absence.  Mr. Deardorff pointed out earlier, "we'll probably have 500 notes and 125 students at the game."  But so be it.  I had four of thirteen in my first block today.  The others were a bit bigger, with eight and seven students, respectively.  We played games, practicing vocab words and sentence types the fun way, worked a little on rough drafts, and then played Apples to Apples.  Very chill.  I liked it.

The girls won, so tomorrow will be similar but with even lower attendance since the game is scheduled for 2:00.  I'm not sure if I can effectively use two days like this in a row....but no matter.  We don't need academics when we have basketball!

For Christmas this year, Rob got me an iPod touch.  It was amazing!  I had wanted one to take to the gym with me, and it was everything I had hoped for and more.  Wi-Fi connections, games (to get me through the last 5 minutes on the cycling machine, when my thighs were burning and all I wanted to do was STOP), email everywhere.

Two months was all I got.  Last week, I was packing up my stuff for the gym on Monday night when I realized it was missing.  The last time I had seen it was on the jr. high retreat we had just chaperoned that weekend, when I had taken it out of my purse to check the time since my cell phone had died.  

The worst part is, we only had three kids along on the trip.  Everyone else there was from other churches.  So I can't exactly call them all out and track it down.

I love being part of the jr. high ministry, and the kids are mostly great.  But this stinks.  I really want my ipod back.

I got that urge again today.  My hair had to be cut.  This afternoon I was talking on the phone with my sweet fiance during his break, and I mentioned that I was hoping to get a haircut.  Half an hour previously, I had been looking for pictures of new 'dos, because I had really been feeling a need to switch it up a little bit.  After finding out that I planned to visit the same place I always go, he said, "why not go somewhere else?  You know, get something a little different?"  I am not totally sure if this was his creative nature subtly trying to overcome my conservative, stay-safe outlook in this area of my life, or if he meant that my mop needed help, but I told him it sounded like a good idea..."I'll think about it," 

We finished our conversation and I continued driving.  Three minutes later, my phone rang.  "They have an open appointment at 4:45," Rob informed me.  How sweet is that!   It's true that I am often too scared to try anything different with my hair, and today I just needed his encouragement to go out on a limb.  (By "go out on a limb," I mean that I got bangs.  A short, sturdy limb.)

To add to the excitement, on my way to the haircut I stopped and found a new purse and the perfect pair of black kitten-heel shoes.  So refreshing!  The combination of the three makes me feel like a made-over woman, which is perfect for a cold winter day.

If only I had a camera with me, I'd show off all three.  

When I was a little girl, probably preschool or early elementary aged, I watched at my mom's friend's house Hook with Robin Williams.  As I have told the story many times, it gave me nightmares.  I don't actually remember the movie at all, just the scary dreams that came in the aftermath.  That's a fun story to tell, because whenever it comes out, the friend scoffs a bit, checks to see if I'm kidding, and then notes, "....Hook isn't scary at all!"

Last night, Ruth and I went up to Rob's, where the single-digit temperatures (not to mention the lack of sleds at Walmart) kept us inside rather than out sledding.  He had gotten Hook from Redbox.  Isn't Redbox wonderful, by the way?  I won't follow that tangent this evening, but we are huge Redbox fans.  So the three of us watched it together, and I finally saw for myself that everyone is right:  Hook isn't scary.  I had assumed that at least there would be a little bit of brandishing of the weapon or intimidating nasty talk, but I couldn't think of a single reason to have nightmares when I came home later.  It's a little anticlimactic after all these years.

Today, at last , we got the long-hoped-for snow day.  I actually could not go back to sleep after I got up at normal time and checked the list of school closings because I was so happy about it.  Instead I laid in bed for 30 minutes and thought about all the great ways I could use my day.  Then I got up.

Originally the weather people had lead me to believe that snow and ice would happen today; tomorrow, it would be over.  But now as I am realizing the possibility of another day at home tomorrow,  I have another reason that I cannot wait until next winter, when I wake up beside my husband on a snow day and see him off to work and have a cozy supper waiting at home to share that evening.  I'm grateful that this is the last winter that snow and ice keeps me away from him...instead of trapped inside with him.  Five months from today, friends!

Back in October, we started planning the big details, which was thrilling.  Recently it has been very satisfying to start really chipping away at the specifics.  Last weekend, for example, my bridesmaids came to town and picked out their dresses.  Ellie, my maid of honor, will wear this in Riviera Sky.  The other girls will be in this, minus the bling, in the same color.  They're going to be gorgeous!  :)  This weekend Rob and I went to arrange for tuxedo rentals.  We're going with a nice but simple tux with a vest and necktie that matches the girls' dresses.  The best part of that trip was finding out that the groom rents for free in a wedding party of our size.  So, while the groomsmen will be in a nice but affordable outfit, Rob gets a Ralph Lauren Chaps tux.  Amazing.

There is good DJ news!  We had had a friend offer to do it for us, but then he decided to move to Malaysia in May.   Go figure!  So we have been looking around for an affordable option, but unfortunately many people are getting booked up at this point.  Rob heard from someone at work that there is someone in my area who is supposed to be amazing, but when he contacted the guy, he was booked.   After a week or two of looking and emailing other people with no response, we got an email yesterday from our first contact: the groom backed out of the wedding on our date.  How sad is that?!?  But....it does mean that [unofficially] we have a DJ now, and one with a good reputation.  Best of all, for $100 he will bring a second set of sound equipment to the ceremony, set it up, and take it down.  Two birds with one stone, and now we don't have to worry about renting that stuff and making sure someone knows how to set it up! 

We also have chairs rented, a menu planned, a cake designed, and hotel rooms set aside.  And we're working on the honeymoon.

All five months from today.  :)

For the last week or so, I have been really focused on getting a snow day.  It rained really hard for a few days....and then it got really cold.  Somehow the two just haven't figured out how to coincide yet this year.  But this morning, on my way to school, I realized that I would really enjoy a good snow - not because I need to miss a day of work, but because snow is beautiful and I love it.   I feel oddly purified, as if my motives have come clean now.  And I am really wanting that snow!  Hopefully we see it within the next few weeks.

This evening I'm experimenting with Rachael Ray's Salsa Stoup to go with a different quesadilla recipe that I'm trying out.  I'm hopeful that it compliments the quesadillas so they aren't just an appetizer-for-supper.

I used to post here all the time.  Now I feel like a stranger come back from foreign parts, or something like that.

There are good things to report!  First, I love being engaged.  Dating was just probationary, but Engaged is full of expectation and excitement and just-around-the-corner goodness.  

Last night Rob and I went up to Massanutten with our small group, where I learned to ski.  It was so fun!  When I was young, I was chubby and shy and very scared of taking on new things.  Over the past six years or so, my sense of adventure has grown and my intimidation has started backtracking....so skiing was amazing!  Not embarrassing at all (although perhaps it should have been....missing the lift that Rob rode...spending 5 minutes talking to a stranger on a snowboard who caught the next one with me...falling on my behind right off the bat), and only a tiny bit scary.  I can't wait until we can go again!

Also, I got an ipod for Christmas.  I had only mentioned once in passing that I have been wanting one, but mi amor took the subtle hint and got me the touch.  I feel so cool now when I go to the gym!  :)

In wedding news, we have registered at Bed Bath & Beyond and Target.  That makes us one step closer to having a house all fixed up together.  I can't wait!  Our wedding plans seem to have stalled out a bit, but as I look back and think about all the things I have been working on in the past week, I realize that it can't be all that bleak.  We have a flower plan, and a catering plan, and bridesmaid dress shopping scheduled, and premarital counseling in the works.  Not to mention the save-the-dates that are currently in the care of the U. S. Postal Service.   I'm just afraid that it's all going to pile up on me a month or two before the big day - I'd rather not be stressed out then.

The last seven days have been full of scary, intense, perplexed, worried, stressed, hopeful, anticipatory, relieved, thankful, and glad.  In about that order, but not usually more than one at a time and all at least more than once.

Tuesday morning at about 4:00 a.m. I received a text message, but I didn't know what it read until I woke up again at 6:55 (exactly one hour after my alarm should have gone off) and paused just long enough in my I-overslept-panic to find out that Rob had been puking half the night. For the record, I showered and left by 7:25, just a hair later than I would have liked but also just a hair earlier than usual.  I spent the day hoping he was okay, dropped of sprite and crackers and jello and chicken soup that night, and went home again.  Wednesday was about the same, but because the ice chips I made came right back up that evening, we made a trip to Emergicare and learned that he may have had food poisoning and not the flu, but regardless it was awful.  That night, of course, he came to my house to be nursed (it's so awful to leave someone you love, so sick, alone!), and I was a little short on sleep the next day.

At this point, I was thinking it all would have passed by Saturday...my engagement present to Rob was tickets to the Cowboys v. Steelers game in Pittsburgh this weekend!   We had both taken time off work and had all the plans set.

The next night, Emergicare again where he was diagnosed with pneumonia and dehydration and given a couple bags of IV fluids.  By then the puking had stopped, but the fight was far from over.  Diabetes makes everything complicated.  Pray for a cure, friends.  Friday morning, sugars high and me very concerned, my mom escorted him to the emergency room while I went to school and arranged for a sub to come in and take care of my classes.  By the time I got to my man, he was looking a bit better, had learned that he probably didn't have pneumonia after all, and had two or three more bags worth of fluds in his system.

The next two days were spent recouping on the couch.  I kept offering to stay home on Sunday, but he was insistent that he would be okay to go.  So we went!

NFL is fun.  :)  I wore five layers of shirts and was still a bit chilly.  But we survived, didn't freeze, and had a lovely time.  I also got in my first IKEA visit and learned that Pittsburgh fans have the worst manners I've ever experienced.   After two seasons of hearing Rob talk Cowboys, it was exciting to be at the game and recognize players, understand plays, etc.  I've always been a football fan of sorts, but it's much more fun to be with someone who really knows the game and can explain all that I miss!

I had more fun, but my fiance also had a good time being a model on Saturday.  Tim and Sasha Rothwell, our photographers, turned out to be as nice and friendly in person as they were via email.  I'm so glad that they are doing our wedding!  (Incidentally, Tim's voice reminded me a lot of Nathaniel's, Ray-Po.)  We should be getting a CD in the mail within a week or so with all the pics, but the entirety of the ones I have seen are posted at  <http://www.rothwellphotography.blogspot.com/>.

( A few of my faves )

Nearly a week ago I joined a gym.  For awhile I have protested that school is so far out into the backwoods that there isn't anything convenient to me.  It's still true, sort of, but I decided to make this one convenient!  Imagine a triangle.  It's one of those long, skinny triangles with one side a little shorter than the other two.  At one end (vertex?  geometry was a long time ago) is Buffalo Gap, school, work, rednecks.  At another is my house.  Harrisonburg, and Rob, is the third.  The gym is between BGHS and Rob.  This means that on cooking-for-my-fiance days, I can easily stop by to work out, because the gym is on my way.  On go-home days, I can make it happen, since the gym just a little over 10 minutes from my house.

This is all to say that three, 20-minute sessions on the elliptical machine have transformed my life.  I no longer feel like a total slob.  There's hope for me now that it's too cold outside for me to find motivation for walking.  AND I'm being healthy.   Yay me!  Haha, can you tell I just left the gym?  Endorphins are amazing.

I feel totally good about myself today.  In the last 24 hours or so, I have dusted my room (long overdue), cleaned my family's nasty bathroom (a rant which I will stifle), gotten to school six minutes early (nearly impossible recently), and worked out at the gym.  For the second time since I got the membership last Thursday.  Daylight Savings just does it to me, I guess.  I can only hope it lasts!

Although my students get the day off tomorrow for Election Day, I'm going for an inservice.  This actually looks to be a cool one.  The faculty will be divided into groups, which will rotate among a healthy snacks station, something else I can't remember, and an hour "exercising" with a Wii.  Isn't that amazing!  We have been encouraged to dress down for the day, and after the rotations are over, there is a potluck.  They told us to bring healthy foods...I'm participating if you can call crock pot pork BBQ "healthy."  :P

Ironically, I'm also getting up in time to primp a bit in the morning.  This Saturday Rob and I have engagement pictures with Rothwell Photography.  I'm planning to curl my hair, but since I have chopped a bunch of it off since the last time I did any curling, I want to do a practice 'do tomorrow.  We get to go in half an hour later than usual, so it's the perfect time...except for the exercise part! 

On the Rothwell note... I am in LOVE with their work!  Assuming that all goes well this weekend, we're hoping to book them for our wedding as well.   They give Holly Callan a run for her money, Ray-Po.  :)