Turkey: 1, Stacy: 0

The turkey got the best of me this weekend. Actually, it wasn't so much the turkey, as the pounds and pounds of potatoes, stuffing, wine, random other veggies, cranberry sauce, trifle, and 8 other desserts.


I'm getting ready to go out for my 5 year high school reunion, and it's very odd. I was excited a few weeks ago, but now that the special night is upon us, I'm pretty nervous. I can't decide what to wear. I don't want to look like I'm trying, but I don't want to look like I did when I was 17. It's very complicated.

Alright off to pregame. I'm going to need a lot of beer tonight.

P.S.

One more thing. Since Kate had a special post for me today, I found something special for her, compliments of fark.com, which is appropriate since she got me addicted to the website.

The photoshop contest was to make your dream Jeopardy board. And this, I think, would be Kate's.



Only one hour left in your least favorite day of the year (or is this number 2 after Halloween?)

Turkey says gobble

It's been another lovely Thanksgiving. I'm stuffed, and still craving a little bit more mashed potatoes.

This year involved a lot of the usual traditions for me...watching the parade in my pjs, eating a ton, eating some more until it hurt, and resuming my place on the couch to end the day. Actually, since we stayed home this year, I spent a considerable amount of time on the couch. I think this year will go down on record as one of my laziest Thanksgivings. We already set a good record a few years back for one of the quickest Thanksgiving meals, so that's out of the question for this year.

Our T-day celebration also included the burial of a hamster, who made the trip (post mortem) from Austin. I gather he enjoyed his flight from Texas in my brother's suitcase, as he had been anxiously awaiting (in a plastic bag) a proper funeral service for nearly 2 weeks now.

There's a house near us that has an incredible lights display for Xmas every year, and we took a ride to see it before dessert tonight. Last year they won the best lights award thing from the Today Show, and got a visit from Al Roker, so tonight when we got there we found that a lot of other people had the same idea as us, along with a few news channels. I think I counted somewhere around a bajillion lights, and they also have a ton of those little miniature house things with moving displays inside. Last year they made a new road go around their house and you drive past all of the house things, so traffic people direct you through their property and it's almost as fun as Disney Land. There was even a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle display, which made me think of everyone's favorite liqufied veggies eater.

I feel like a big waste of space.

When I drove to work yesterday, I heard about the "experiment" that one radio station did in honor of today. They put a slab of deli turkey meat in front of a live turkey to see if it would eat it. Turns out, the turkey ate itself. And apparently went nuts over it too. I can't really blame him.

Gobble, gobble.

What's cooking?

My 2nd favorite holiday has come around again. And I'm very excited to stuff myself with turkey, stuffing, & mashed potatoes tomorrow!

So in honor of turkey day, I wanted to share soething the first graders have been working on. We made a Thanksgiving recipe book, and the kids each told us how they thought you make a certain item. Don't try these at home.







Off to school for a half day!!

my milkshake still brings all the boys to the yard...the song is still stuck in my head

I have a weird obsession with checking away messages, and typically with people that I haven't talked to in years, friends of friends, people I've never even met...I guess I'll stop now. You really get to know people by their away messages though. And I've found that there are some people who are constantly complaining that they're sick. Like every other week, it's the worst cold ever. It makes me feel fortunate sometimes that I don't actually know these whiny people. But it also makes me wonder whether there are some people who just have really weak immune systems or something and actually do get sick all the time...or if their threshold for how sick they need to be to complain about it is a lot lower than the average person. Very philosophical, I know. But these are the kinds of things that make me think at night.

Here are some pictures from the Saturday night hoopla, straight from Kristen's camera.


Before the stair jumped out at me




Greg & Caitlin getting down






Caits, me, & reardons



I have something very special to share tomorrow if I get my work done.

I'm 23 and a half

I had huge intentions for this weekend. Lots and lots and lots of work so I wouldn't have to do much over Thanksgiving weekend. Some laundry. Some errands. Some cleaning of my room.

Then somehow I didn't get any of those things done. I may have had the brilliant idea to check out IKEA on Saturday afternoon, along with 75% of the greater Stoughton area. And we didn't even get that accomplished, since we turned around about a quarter mile away from the parking lot because we had already been sitting in barely-moving traffic for an hour.

Saturday would have been totally shot, except for the fact that I had an absolutely great night with some of my high school friends. I danced so much that my legs were actually sore today...which is actually more pathetic than amazing that I danced a lot. Tomorrow I'll share pictures, compliments of Ms. Kristen Whitney.

Now I go catch up on sleep...

P.S. When is it going to snow?

P.P.S. When did Ty Pennington become so annoying?

If you could all just take a chill pill

Whenever I told people during college that I was a psych major, almost everytime the person responded with something like, "Ohhh, you must be analyzing me! I'll have to watch what I say!" I know I do look a little bit like Freud, but come on people--it wasn't very hard to get a psych degree from Union, and I certainly can't look at a person and diagnose them with a borderline personality disorder after a couple of classes with Donaldson.

I've found that people do the same thing when I tell them I'm going into teaching. As soon as they hear 'first grade,' inevitable they remark that I must be a patient person. I suppose that's not entirely untrue, but I can think of at least half a dozen other qualities that I think should exist in most good teachers.

I've always thought of myself as a pretty patient person, when I want to be. But lately I've found that those crying, nose-picking, running-in-the-hallway little guys have been wearing me down lately. I don't know what it is, but if I have to hear one of them tell me one more time that so-and-so said he wasn't going to be his friend anymore, it's going to be hard not to hit him. And it drives me nuts when one of them cannot finish his snack in 15 minutes. ADD aside, the fact is you're hungry, so just focus on eating your apple and jello! And then there's the little stubborn ones. I think it's great that at 6 you already have a strong personality, but I'm the teacher, and when I say that you need to use your crayons instead of your markers, then don't try to negotiate.

Goddddd...my roommate is sitting here screaming about how her bank is going "fucking down." She has that evil look on as she crafts a brilliant letter explaining why she shouldn't pay the excessive charges as she lists what she could have bought for the same amount of money (new boobs, for one), and I'm thinking it's time to vacate the room and head to bed.

Burn baby, burn

I kind of crapped out on blogging for the past two weeks. A long time ago Kate told me something like 99% of blogs don't last a year, and I was determined not to have that be me. I have a feeling once I'm done with student teaching I can have lots of time and no stress and can blog alllll the time. Except that when I'm sitting on the couch during my 4 weeks of winter break, watching my second consecutive hour of Family Feud hosted by Al from Home Improvement, it might be hard to think of exciting things to write about.

I have just five weeks of student teaching left, which is really hard to believe. Last week I did my first "take-over" week, which is where I'm the one in charge for five days, and I do all of the planning and stuff. I was so nervous about student teaching to begin with, but I was absolutely terrified before the school year to do my two takeover weeks. But it turned out actually being kind of fun. I spent so many years playing school in my room, so it was strange to think that I was actually the real teacher for the week. And it was a little bit fun playing school with real kids.

So I promised a fire and foot story, and now I'm actually getting around to telling it. With pictures.

I decided I needed a little time on the futon to recover from the Halloween bash the day afternoon after the party. I curled up with my favorite blue and white fleece blanket, and fell asleep to some reality show on MTV. In that time, Kate migrated to Gillian's room to keep her company while she continued to unpack her room, and Charlotte dozed on the other couch. I'm not sure how long I was sleeping, but all of a sudden I woke up because my foot felt hot. Really hot. So I sat up, looked at my foot (which had blanket/sock on it) and realized that I had unknowingly moved my foot into the flame of the candle that Kate had placed on the table so precariously close to my helpless toes. Sadly Kate wasn't there to take sideways pictures before running for safety to her rock in Yarmouth, so I drew a picture.




After a little scream (I found it's slightly scary to see your foot on fire) I whacked it with the rest of the blanket and got it out. But not without a little damage to my blanket and the table.



My favorite blanket will never be the same. Mostly because it leaves ash on me now.





We had a nice weekend here at 9 Acadia. It was Gillian's birthday, and we celebrated in style. Some celebrated a little harder than others. But our toilet appreciated the company.


23, but still just as hot