A lot of things have been happening to me. But to keep y'all from getting overwhelmed from one giant long post, I'm going to break it up into a few smaller posts instead. This one is about me being an aunt. At the beginning of March, Carrie and Nathan had their baby -- a girl named Kennedy. Chris and I drove up to Columbus on the day she was born ( Read more... )

Last week Chris and I started going to our pre-marital counseling with Aldo, who is the therapist we did the Pairs weekend with. Last Friday we made a list of the issues we wanted to talk about for the next several months...things like family, money, ways to communicate, ways to fight fair, and ways to not drive each other crazy. Even though I know ( Read more... )

Today I started my second job back at the UC Admissions Office. Everyone was glad to see me, and I got right back into the swing of things -- part of which is listening to music for several hours a day. This is by far the best part of the job, and since I now have my iPod, my music choices are unlimited. Today I had it on shuffle. I kept getting ( Read more... )

For the past couple of years, I have gotten employment with incredible ease. My summer job at Miami Housing was a breeze, no interview or anything. Then as soon as I moved to Cincinnati, I got a job at the Admissions Office and got on at Dubois until my UC job started. THEN a couple of days ago when I walked into Manpower to get on their temp list ( Read more... )

Yesterday was my last day of student teaching -- It was two weeks until the end of the quarter and 75% of our students were failing because of so much missing work. So we spent a lot of time on makeup work, pushing the kids to work hard and turn it in, calling parents, organizing portfolios, and a million other things. Some kids still failed, but a ( Read more... )

My students were giving speeches today at school, and I witnessed a beautiful thing. Two of my lowest-achieving students gave wonderful, interesting presentations. They got up in front of the class without a hint of nervousness, and "talked" to us about Malcolm X. They made eye contact the entire time, rarely looked at their note cards, didn't ( Read more... )

For Christmas I was going to get plain white dishes from the Pottery Barn, but all of my relatives convinced me that they would buy those for my wedding and encouraged me to get something more fun. So I got a different white thing - an iPod. I hadn't really been interested in them until I read an editorial in City Beat about this hip hop guy who ( Read more... )

Chris and I are snowed in here in Cincinnati -- Even though the roads were covered, we drove here yesterday afternoon because we wanted to have our little Christmas date in my neighborhood. Going out for pizza, watching A Christmas Story, and opening our gifts by my cute little Christmas tree. It turned out to be the right choice. We took our time ( Read more... )

This morning as I was walking to Hughes, these fat flakes of snow drifted quietly down to the ground, catching on my coat and in my hair and all over the high school papers I was carrying. It finally felt like Christmas to me. Last night before falling asleep, I prayed for a good day today, and God answered my prayer. My students did their work, I ( Read more... )

My students at school have been driving me crazy with all of their capping and making fun of each other. They're really mean. Anytime someone answers a question, at least three other people in the class make rude comments like, "Oh, you're wrong. You never guess the right answer," or if they answer correctly, "Oh, he thinks he's so smart. Remember ( Read more... )