Wednesday, May 30, 2012

{Life}: Long time no see...

So I've been away from the blogosphere for a bit now - my apologies. Life has been crazy (in good ways). So here's a little photo recap of where I've been and what I've been doing:

Right at the beginning of "exam season" at school, Jake and I went to Sweet Cece's for some fro yo and I snapped this pic of their topping wall:


Overall impression of Sweet Cece's? Love any froyo but I'm still a devout Yolo fan.

One reason for the lack of posting was the onset of the end of the school year. Like I said... life got crazy. Our seniors this year decided to try to take pranks to the extreme (really extreme in some cases). One of the less awful ones they did really made me laugh. The spray-painted their graduation year (2012) on a lot of surfaces, including the top of our gym:


Only thing? They ran out of spray paint... so all it says is 201. So I decided it would be hilarious if someone climbed up there and wrote "Poplar" under there - as in 201 Poplar, where the vandals should go. Some of their "work" was just outright disgusting, disgraceful, and made my stomach sick. Plus they ruined 100 year old brick...

In preparation for the end of the year, I got a gel manicure from my new favorite, Nina's Nails on Poplar at Highland. I've been doing with Lincoln Park After Dark - makes me feel young and "trendy":

Then a lot of that last week of school is a blur for a few reasons. I stayed after school late every day helping my students do last minute preparations for their AP exams (I get scores in July... nervous but excited!) and then got hit by a nasty stomach virus in the middle of semester exam/AP exams. I was useless for a few days but still had to go to work (kids were taking exams, turning in books, I couldn't not go...) so most of my time not at school was spent with this view:


But I made it through and managed to only throw up at school once (let's talk about how fun that is).. and just for clarification, because my co-workers thought it was so cute to hint that this wasn't a stomach virus, I can tell you with authority that my 102 fever said was definitely a stomach virus.

I wasn't the only thing slowly dying that week. My mom was so sweet and bought a cilantro plant from the store for me to grow my own cilantro from. I watered it dutifully but still managed to kill it. I really am awful with plants. I don't exactly understand how this one died. I tried my best, Mom.


The Saturday after the kids' last day of school we had our graduation. It is held at the convention center downtown and the weather was just beautiful. I snapped a few pictures while going in:



On the dog front, we bought the pups each a "pal" from Target (the blue and orange one are in the picture below). Every time we buy them toys, they spend all their time fighting over them and pulling out the stuffing... and yet we always buy them more. We're either suckers or really love our pups.
Here's Harley with two of the pals:


And you'll notice in this picture Beamer has the same pal that Harley had moments before... it is an endless cycle:


After the weekend was over, I had one last day of school where we were checking out, turning in grades, etc. Before I left, I snapped this picture of Beamer and Tyson. I think they spend every day like this.. what a strange pair:


But the real exciting news that makes this post happy and fun is that I spent the majority of that Monday packing up my room at school. Here it is during the sorting phase:


Here are my boxes and little Goodwill table I used for a student station (it needs a serious repaint now after four years of abuse):


And here is some of the aftermath - over the course of a week, I filled up four of these gallon trash cans. The cleaning staff hated me.


And here is my room, the way I left it at the end of Monday:


Now why was I packing? Because I got a new job teaching at a new school! I am so freakin' excited about the move to my new school but it is a sad time too because I had a ton of students at my old school that I'll miss - my AP students were so wonderful and some of them I taught for three years straight so that was hard to say bye to them. But my new position is going to be a good challenge and a new environment where I think I will thrive.

Speaking of thriving, I snapped this picture of some flowers growing in the bed between the neighbor's house and ours. Somehow, despite complete negligence, these flowers bloomed again this year. There's probably some allusion or metaphor in there somewhere...


And just like that, I was done with school. Done with that school forever. New beginnings, renewal, refreshment, and change on the horizon. But for the next few days, my horizon would look like this.... a good break from what was quite a roller coaster year.


More on my beach trip next post...

In change and continuity,
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1 comment:

Kala said...

You guys have one of those early ends of the school year. Up here in CT the kids won't be done until June and graduation is usually mid June. Glad to hear you are moving on to a new school. I hope it ends up being everything you expect.

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