Happy Saturday :)

Good morning all--although I guess it's afternoon at this point...

ANYWAY. I hope you all are doing well. Going home for thanksgiving was really nice, and I had a great time seeing the GPs and Walt from the street. I almost peed myself at Sean's on Thanksgiving Friday night, so clearly I had a fun time there. :-D Thanksgiving itself was lots of fun, going to see the Blumer's and Grandmas and having Grammy and Grandpap over. Grammy actually likes Sadie! On Saturday the rents and I went to Tracie's for Italian thanksgiving, and Marg (Tracie's mom) made this DELICIOUS food. There was this soup with balls of cheddar bread in it--omg. On Sunday we all got to watch the Steelers together. Auntie Tracie bought Sadie some cute sweaters and Steelers gear (see picture below) so now Sadie loves her for life. I really miss all of you from home, and it was so great to see you all. Can't wait till Non-denominational winter break to come home and see you all again!

So, the trip back was terrifying. I went over the Bay Bridge, and it was really dark, and all I kept thinking about was that, if for whatever reason the car goes over, Sadie was going to die. She was in her crate at that point, in the back seat, and I couldn't get to her very easily. That, of course, was not a good thought to have as I went over the bridge. I survived though, and Tracie tells me that there is a service where they will actually drive your car over the bridge for you; you just go up to the service building and ask for it. I vote YES for next time. I don't usually go over the bridge, but 95 was very congested, so we figured this would get me home faster.

Sadie has been weird all week; I think she misses the constant attention of all the people. She's still adorable and amazing, but she is whining just slightly, and she actually barked at me on Wednesday night! I was putting up Christmas decorations, and I guess she felt like I should have been petting her. She got right behind me and just went "BARK!" We got through it, though. I threw her bobo a few times, and then she got bored and curled up on the couch. That's my puppy!

School is going well. My class that used to drive me insane is now the class I look forward to the most; how weird is that? We have a lot of fun, and the kids that seemed to be giving me attitude and crap at the beginning of the year now say hi to me in the hall and apologize when they are talking over me. It's nuts! I've realized how much I miss teaching English, though; I enjoy drama, I really do, but I get inane comments like, "Why do I have to do research for my independent study class, when I am supposed to be finding out about character building techniques? This isn't English class." I've been told that twice this week--"This isn't English!" One was from my Independent study girl. She insists that there are no sources on her topic, and so she shouldn't have to write the paper, and anyway, they never had to do this in drama before, because "This isn't English." She's had since the second week of school to be working on this paper, and it is barely two DOUBLE SPACED pages long. Sigh. My other is just as frustrating. My stage tech is doing a small project on anything related to tech; they find out about it and are creating a poster. I told a girl she had to cite her sources, and she got so mad at me that she almost stormed out of class. It was ridiculous! Why don't people understand that "research" is just something you LEARN in English, and then you apply to the rest of your life? (That's kind of what I told them, and they both just gave me death glares).

I'm working on making my apartment warm. I had an INSANE electric bill last month, and so I'm trying to find ways to heat this darn place without losing all of my money to the city of Dover. It's been 57 degrees in my apartment every morning I've gotten up this week. Last night, I turned on my heat in my room, and it went up to 71 before I decided to turn it off and go to bed. When I woke up, it was 60. Mom sent me some heavy duty curtains, which I've hung on the windows in my dining room. I hung one between my sun room and my dining room last night as an experiment; will the sun room stay warmer if I'm not losing hot air through that doorway? So far, it's not making much of a difference. I'm supposed to be hearing from the city and my landlord about how they intend to fix this problem as there is clearly something wrong with my heating; I checked in with both on Thursday, and they said to wait until this coming Friday. If nothing is fixed, then call them again. I called/discussed with them on the Monday before Thanksgiving break. Rawr.

Other than that, my life is OK. I'm spending this weekend planning my next unit for English, and I'm having great fun. I might need to go shopping for office supplies later (binders and folders and a new flashdrive) and I think you all know how much I LOVE office supply shopping. (If you don't, it's a LOT. It's one of my favorite things to do. :-D) I slept until 11:00 this morning, and it was great. I might go take a nap right now, and then start up again later this afternoon. It's been a hard morning, making myself tea and taking Sadie for a walk and then typing all of this. ;)

I miss you guys! Have a great weekend, everyone!