Super Weekend

Well, not that I actually watched the Super Bowl or anything. Meg and I actually watched the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet, while we rearranged furniture in the family room, and while I studied music for the next season of handbells. I am not much into football, but since the Super Bowl is always on Sunday, and we are usually over my parents (who are avid football fans), I usually end up watching some of it. However, we went to Adelphia's in Deptford for Sunday brunch to celebrate my mom's birthday, so we ended up not eating dinner there tonight.

I'll work backwards, since I started with today...

This morning, I subbed for our choir director at church. The choir sounded great, but Meg and I couldn't stay for the whole service, since had to get to the brunch. We also took Maddie along (to church and the brunch), and she was very well behaved--only cried once at brunch when she needed changed.

Saturday was very relaxing--the only thing we really did was go to Sam's and do our monthly stock-up. BTW- the "grocery experiment" from the summer works, as we actually came very close to sticking to our budget this past month (finally!). I also got my grades as finished as possible (we are still one of these archaic schools that does their report cards by hand, so tomorrow I have to copy my printed out grades from my computer onto the report cards). In between hanging out with Maddie, Meggie, and Maxy, I found some cool Open Source software at www.sourceforge.net, and I am happy to announce that I have a completely legit computer (if you exclude all of the illegally downloaded music), now that I have replaced Cool Edit with Audacity and Paint Shop Pro with The GIMP. Also for the fun of it, I downloaded Scribus, an O.S. alternative to Adobe InDesign, which I use at school with the yearbook (I can't actually use it to work on the yearbook, as all of the yearbook files live on the school server, but it is still cool to have a program like this).

Friday afternoon was grocery shopping, quickly followed by a meeting with Jane (choir director at church), to go over music since I will be subbing for her a couple times in the winter/spring. I then rehearsed the piece with the choir that I conducted today.

The school week was a pretty busy one, considering I only worked four days. It is the end of the marking period, so I spent most of the week doing all of my last minute grading. I have been trying not to take work home, but I had to on Tuesday, and Wednesday, I was at school till 6 grading stuff. I brought home work to do on Thursday, but was so fed up with everything that I put it off, and then miraculously found time to do it on Friday.

I would like to think that this week will be easier, since my grades will be done as of 12:15 tomorrow (hopefully), but next Monday (2/12) is our first yearbook deadline. We are in good shape, with 26 out of 32 pages submitted. But we have to finish six more pages, and pretty much all of the pages need a bunch of work. So, I'll have to wait till next week before I can relax again.

Weekends are pretty much what are getting me through the school year. I LOVE weekends. I get so much time with Maddie, and I get to relax, and take time to 'play,' and to do housework (believe it or not, I like housework). The only thing left on my to-do list to do this weekend is to make a to-do list for future weekends, so I will do that now:

My Winter/Spring Weekend To List
To be completed in any order at any time, no deadlines or due dates here

• Remove all leaves from the property (front, back, and side)
• Clean up the front and side gardens
• Remove all dog 'waste' from under the pool deck (yes, I said under the pool deck!)
• Put chicken wire around the deck so that Max can't do his business under there any more
• (later in the spring) Install lattice around the deck, since chicken wire looks ghetto
• Move wall shelves in office to new 'office area' in family room
• Continue rearranging of family room and set up the 'music area' and the 'play area'
• Move third wall unit from my parents house and set up with the two that we already have
• Install a whole house fan in the hallway
• Clean out the shed
• (If $$ allows) Build workbench in shed

That's a pretty good list for now. I know there were more things I had thought of earlier, so I will have to add them later.

Well, it is a school night, so I am off to bed.