In 2012...

... I want to exercise more* and to spend more time with my husband;

... I want to go to Brazil, my dream would be to go twice, but once will be good too;

... I hope to become better at teaching my classes and to make a difference in the life of my students;

... I wish that good health can be re-established for all those friends and family who are experiencing health issues;

... we'll travel a lot and I hope we can have wonderful trips, starting with South Africa in March and Brazil in the summer (winter there).

... my son will be ten years old, I can hardly believe that he's growing up so fast.

I'm sure there's more, but this is what I can think of now.

Happy New Year for everyone!!

* I know this is the most cliched new year's resolution there is, but it is something that I already started working on in 2011 because I started doing yoga.

The Best of 2011

• Our new house -- my only "actual wish" this year (in small print at the end of my "what has to happen" in 2011 post).

• My nephew's birth (my first wish for this year).

• K's whole family's trip to Florida that is ending tomorrow (and which I knew would be a highlight of this year). We took some great pictures here, but I won't share them in the blog since there are too many people involved.

• Meeting Jo(e) (another wish).

There were many other things and I'll try to write about them later, but I think these are the best.

What didn't happen in 2011

About a year ago I wrote a post about "what will happen in 2011" and one thing did not happen: my 7 year old did not lose his front baby teeth just yet... but I don't think they'll survive 2012. :( He's the one on the right:

I'm editing this post because there are more things that did not happen this year from my "wish lists:"

• I did not get to see my brother and his wife at all -- I suppose the "every two years, from two days to two weeks rule" will continue, maybe forever. :(

• Not everyone is healthy in the family (my brother-in-law had two surgeries to remove a tumor from his leg. My mother-in-law had a biopsy done in her thyroid, we're hoping the results will be OK -- she didn't get them yet because of her month-long trip here).

• I didn't plant raspberries and grapes and I don't think I ever will. :(  I did plant lots of bulbs, though, and I can't wait for them to bloom in the Spring!

• I wasn't able to meet other bloggers just yet, only Jo(e).

• And, obviously, I didn't get to post 365 times in the blog, but I will be able to post more than last year as I wished to.

I'm missing them a lot...

they are my babies, after all:

Lighted

Isn't it pretty?

Our Christmas, Before & After

The other families were too busy enjoying their gifts to come play with the wrappings. :)

Two Days Left

To post a whole bunch and be done with 2011. I'll miss this year, it was positively great and about to end in great style with K's family reunion.

Tomorrow night I think I'll have more time to post and try to meet my own challenge.

K & I took the boys here yesterday and it was awesome, except for the crowds (which we mostly beat with the fast track tickets we printed) and for missing the fireworks (long stupid story). More later, then!! (sleeping at 2 am every night and waking between 7-8 when the little kids get up is pretty hard!)

I don't know...

... if during this bustling week with family here in Florida I will be able to achieve my goal of posting more than last year, but I don't really mind if I don't make it. Blogging is important and meaningful for me, but way less than most everything else in life, as it should be.

I am enjoying spending time with K's family and we had a wonderful Christmas day yesterday -- I hope to be able to blog more about it, but if it doesn't, it's ok! Gotta go to bed now!

Our Old iPod 30GB Died...

... taking with it all the Christmas music we planned to play over the holiday. (Kelvin had transferred a bunch of music to the iPad, but then accidentally deleted it during an update and our laptop has no music and neither do our external hard-drives -- we'll change that soon).

Thankfully, Spotify saved the day and we were were listening to one of my favorite Brazilian Christmas albums when we opened presents this morning -- Ivan Lins' Um Novo Tempo (this link is only to one of the songs, all the others are also available in Amazon).

"Festas" is one of my favorites because is shows how Brazilians love feasts & celebrations (festas, which also means parties ;) and this album is the reason why now I really love "Feliz Navidad" (at least this version!) which I used to hate with a vengeance.

My other favorite Christmas album is the quirky Mercy Me: The Christmas Album and for me two classics are Amy Grant's Home for Christmas and A Christmas to Remember, both absolutely gorgeous.

OK, here's my short-list of Christmas music. I barely heard Xmas music this year, so I think I'll listen to some more during the rest of the week.  More photos to come soon, OK?

Merry Christmas!! (Before and Before photos :)

Well... I'm glad that being stuck in traffic on Friday evening didn't prevent us to from going to buy a Christmas tree before we made it to the rental house. Our car was horribly packed, but somehow we were able to fit a (live) Christmas tree inside it! I'm delighted we did that! 

There's no mantel in the rental house, so we had to improvise where to hang the stockings. Oh, and we're all putting stuff into each other's stockings... ;)

Before fully stuffed:

 After significant stuffing (but before opening them!):

And here's the tree before all presents were under/around it:

 After most were there (but before opening, right?):

This Christmas promises to be awesome!

Beach!!

We're having a lovely time here!

We spent some time at! the! beach! on Friday and that delayed our arrival in Orlando and we got stuck in traffic for a good while. :( But it was, oh... so worth it!

  P.S. I took only the first photo, I think. K is way better photographer than me! ;)

Safely Here in Florida

We still have a few more hours of travel from Jacksonville to Orlando and we'll probably drive down for a bit along the beaches! The weather will be beautiful this weekend, up to the 80s, so if we can dig into our suitcases in the car for swimwear, we might even go into the water for a bit!! And then after Christmas, it will cool off a little bit (lower 70s, still nice).

K's brother ("K2") and his family are at a hotel a few blocks from us, but I don't know if we'll meet up with them or if they're in a hurry to get to Orlando. We can't get into our rental house until 4 pm... We need to go grocery shopping and to buy a live Christmas tree, but we don't have any room in our minivans for those items! We'll be meeting up with K's parents, though, and we'll probably fill their rental car with stuff!

I didn't blog last night because I didn't want to bother my sleeping family with the computer's blue light. Well... I can't wait for the biggest Christmas in K's family history (17 people, including the "babies" [two 18 month olds]) -- there will be hundreds of presents under that tree! That's why our car is bursting to the seams!

Oh, last but not least, the in-laws, as well as "K3" and "K4" and families just spent 5 days in Cancun --  lucky them!

Hey, I just opened the curtains of the hotel room to let in the sunlight and Linton said, when Kelvin asked for some music and I said we should have Christmas music, "It's not Christmas, it's summer!" I suppose Christmas in Florida will feel similar to Christmas in Brazil, since it's summer in the Southern hemisphere now. We'll enjoy it for sure!

I'll be back, but let me send out my first with for a Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Leaving in a Packed Car...

... instead of a jet plane. Sigh.

Well, packing for flying is even more stressful, though way more organized.

OK, gotta go.

Traveling to Florida

I'm not 100% packed yet, but I need to go to bed because I can't keep my eyes open anymore! :(

I hope I don't forget anything -- this concern, coupled with my inability to decide or choose what to bring (these small decisions are the worst ones in life for me and they make me miserable at times) is the main reason why I can't stand the day(s) that precede a big trip.

OK, I have to go to bed now... am I even making any sense in this post?

My Uncle Called Me!

Remember my uncle? Well, I guess that another update is in order, since I last blogged extensively about him nearly two years ago (post above).

Now that my brother-in-law moved close to my uncle, I'm seeing him and my aunt more often. We last saw them back in October and I even got to help care for my uncle by staying with him for one morning while my aunt went to talk to one of the ladies she works for (Have I already told you that she's been working for over 25 years for this guy's wife, so, consequently, at his house? She has an autographed copy of his book).

Anyway, physically, my uncle is doing pretty well, he can walk a little bit unassisted and he can have conversations with us and eat on his own. He sleeps a whole lot during the day, though. And during those 2 days in October, he was pretty confused. He was mixing up things he sees on TV with real life and the conversations we were having, but apparently he has good days in which his mind seems perfectly clear and he can talk to you normally.

Well, this afternoon he called me. I think it was the first time in over three years that I talked to Uncle O on the phone (he had his surgery 2.5 years ago). He wasn't confused at all on the phone, we had a lovely conversation about this time of the year, he thanked me for the Christmas card that they just got in the mail from us yesterday (I mailed them last Friday) and told me about their plans for the holidays (they're going to Ocean City). It was so nice to hear his voice and talk to him! I wish he could recover fully, but the likelihood of that happening is very low. :(

In any case, his phone call made my day! I have to see if my cousin (his only daughter who lives in Vienna now) will be still there when we return from Florida because I'd love to see her!

OK, I have to go back to packing and cooking dinner now, but I just thought I'd share this today.

15

I have to write 15 more posts before the end of the year to beat last year's posts. I hope I can make it, in spite of the busy times ahead with K's family in Florida. Had I told you that we're going to Florida? I probably did.

OK, gotta go to bed now.

Free!!!

Yeah... free from grading to go work some more, and more... Make packing lists, pack, pack, clean house and garage, get people in the airport (a favor for a friend), pack car... shop for the Xmas presents that I still didn't have time to buy. Host friends so we can eat some yummy food... and cancel lunch with friends because of going to airport to pick person up. :(

and K thinks we won't be able to leave on Wednesday morning to Florida, and he's probably right. :( Oh well... I wish I could work faster than humanly possible, but I went to bed at 3 am last night and I'm sooo tired!

Well, let's see what happens. I'll keep you posted. Grading take SOOO much time, but the truth is that I like to do it all concentrated in a couple of days like this. It's crazy, but I think that I go way faster. The good news? My students got tons of As!! Which is fine with me! If they fulfilled all their obligations and my expectations, why not As for those who earn them? Yeah... that's what I think.

OK, gotta go pick up the boys in school.

17 Years Ago...

... K and I got married! I blogged about it before several times (16th - last year, 15th -- with photos!).

We were able to leave our sons with a friend and go out to eat some Italian food and I had very yummy tiramisu (I needed it to be awake grading).

OK, now I have to go resume the "regularly scheduled programming" of grading jail. Sigh... (that's why I wrote earlier that the timing for our anniversary will always be a little troublesome).

In Grading "Jail"

I have to grade everything today and I'm actually thankful for the deadline (tomorrow). It will be a glorious feeling to be free from that. Too bad the timing is of this grading period is not good and it will be the same thing year after year for me and K... (you'll see why at a later post today)

Let me get to work now!

Ayrton Senna do Brasil

The year was 1994 and my job was teaching English for one class period (45 mins) a week for 2nd-4th graders. Maybe you'll think I'm lying, but it's true that the week after Senna's crash, I couldn't really teach my 4th graders. They spent all of our 45 minutes of class humming his name under their breath "Senna, Senna, Senna."

I watched the crash live with my dad, as I typed a paper on the computer next to the TV in our family room and from that day on, after 10+ years of watching Formula One races as a family nearly every Sunday, I never watched another race.

I just found out through wikipedia that Senna was the last pilot to die in an F1 race -- they changed many things in the sport to avoid another tragedy such as this one.

This is the song we heard throughout my childhood time and again on Globo television in Brazil during the "victory lap" whenever a Brazilian pilot won (I believe they still play it today, but I could be wrong) -- I have it on a CD and my boys are very familiar with the song (and other TV Globo songs from my childhood):


And here's the trailer of the Senna documentary (not yet released on DVD), which won the Sundance Festival this year and which I didn't even know existed until last night when I clicked on Michael Moore's twitter link to his theater in Michigan and saw their schedule. My lucky brother got to watch it on an IMAX screen in New Zealand:


I can barely wait until the DVD is released here to see it. The reviews say it's a riveting documentary, just like Senna himself. I wish I could fly to Michigan to see it in Moore's theater. :( And I wish I'd found out about it earlier, while it was still playing in more places.

Go see Hugo while you can -- this is an order, not advice!!!

Yesterday I had a lovely and oh... so rare! :( afternoon date with K. We had a nice meal at one of the great all-you-can-eat dining halls at the university (which -- horror! -- just reminded me of one of those buffets in Las Vegas [I HATE Vegas with a vengeance, BTW]) and went to see a movie completely by ourselves in the theater (it was 1 pm after all, on finals week).

I have seen movies in theaters so few times in my life that it was a unique and very enjoyable experience to have the whole place to ourselves for the first time in my life. Oh, the joy of commenting loudly, as often as I wanted, and in Portuguese too!

OK, I talk too much, don't I? How am I supposed to convince you to go see Scorsese's Hugo?

First... there was Brian Selznick's book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret which is great. Here's the book trailer (seriously, book trailers are WEIRD! Who invented book trailers?):


And then, Scorsese made Hugo, the movie:


And now I will have to buy this book (because of the previous post, get it?).

I have to write one more movie recommendation today and then I'll be off!

I've Got a Paper to Write (or... Accepted)

I still don't know the answer to that, and, at this point, I'm getting a little discouraged, thinking that maybe it's a "no," but... I have good news nevertheless!

Well, not groundbreaking news or anything, after all -- the MLA excepted -- insiders know that most everyone that submits a paper or a panel for presentation at an academic conference gets accepted, so... I was accepted and have a paper to write for a conference in the Spring. The timing couldn't have been more perfect, but I won't say much about that because I don't want to reveal too much about my eminently googleable paper topic.

I'm pretty excited, except that... saying that March and April next year will be CRAzy HECTIC months (I'll keep the small zy there, it looks funky) is a huge understatement. I better get started with my paper right now -- it's a great procrastination strategy for 100 papers that need grading (booo hooo!!!!!!).

OK, got at least to more posts to write, or else I'll never complete my race to "outpost" last year in the blog.

Link Love: Best Picture Books, Climate Change & the Right, Poor Academics & More,

I've been collecting a bunch of links in the two browsers opened in my desktop. Generally, I just email them to myself when I decide it's time to shut down the computer so those pesky updates can get installed, but today I decided to blog them instead.

Shall we begin with the picture books? (And, as an aside, Library of the Early Mind, the great documentary about children's literature and its most celebrated Anglophone authors [most American, I think] that I blogged about back in June is available for order as a DVD and for renting online!)

Here's a list of the 11 Best Picture Books/Illustrated books of 2011 -- some of these are gorgeous!

Next, Naomi Klein takes on the disgust that conservatives have about climate change.

Rachel Wagner has a sad account of being an academic and still remaining poor (it has lots to do with having a child in graduate school and, well, also with taking loans to pay to get a graduate degree -- definitely a HUGE No-No!). She received lots of awful criticism, but I think her piece is pretty interesting and informative.

Adjuncts versus Full-Timers in the fight to unionization.

OK, that's it for now... maybe more later!

Still Waiting...

... to hear about that. Maybe this means bad news. :(  Since there's nothing I can do about it, I might as well try to forget about it for a little bit and wait (before sending an email to the "grant-givers"). Sigh... I hope I can do that.

Edited to Add: well, I checked their website and the award will be announced this week, so I have to wait until Friday. That's OK, I can do that. It'll be my reward for finishing of all my grading.

Suspense

I applied for a travel grant for next year and I just remembered that we're supposed to be notified of the receipt of the grant by today... Now I'm pretty nervous and anxious about it. I hope I get it! If I do, my expenses to travel to Brazil next summer will be covered, so I can plan for an upcoming study abroad there. This will help me fulfill my dream of going again to Brazil for the holidays next year, to meet my nephew and have the four cousins (same link as above) together.

(I am planning to pay for the boys to go in the summer and use our mileage to go in December -- let's see if this will work).

I'll keep you posted about the grant! I just checked my email, but there's nothing yet.

10:42 am

I was able to sleep in this morning until 10:42 am!! YAY!!

I got up for a few minutes at 8 am to wish the boys a good day at school and make sure they had everything they needed (like books for the piano lesson) and then I went right back to bed.

It was LOVELY and just what I needed today! Now... on to grading and the last night of the Bethlehem tours (4 hours long in the cold... good thing there are fires & hand+foot warmers help too). More later.

breeze

if you read my earlier post and you're wondering how it went... well... I really couldn't believe what happened!

I had to miss my relaxing yoga class, but fortunately it was a breeze to get in and out of those stores, I even got to park right in front of the door in both Target & WM something that hardly ever happens on either place! Of course Costco was as crowded as ever (and I forgot to buy contact lens solution -- 'cause it obviously was not on my list! :p ), but it was ok.

There were only two problems: 1) I forgot that I had to recharge my store card to buy gas (put only 5 dollars to be able to go back home); 2) the traffic in the parking lot and surrounding streets after I finished shopping was horribly jammed, so I was late picking up the boys. :(

I'm beyond exhausted after 4 hours and saying my lines 19 times... sigh. And I'm still smelling like smoke, even after a hot shower. only three more nights to go. (I will have a substitute for part of Sunday, though, which is good).

dread

I cancelled the yoga class reservation (mopping and cleaning took too long on top of blogging) and I'm heading to town now. I DREAD going into the stores, though. I wish I could go to sleep and woke up after the holidays... I can't stand the crowds. I just need to buy food for our family and cleaning supplies and stuff. Sigh. I'll let you know how bad it was later, OK?

Busy, Relieved, Worried

Busy
Well, this word is a bit too weak to describe this week. Yesterday was the busiest day, by far, so, a quick summary: I arrived at the university at 9:45 and administered 3 oral exams before teaching ,my 2 last classes, from 11-1:45. Then, three more oral exams and a meeting of 1h30 with two students who need looots of help. I barely eat on Tu/Th because I teach right over lunch time (and I don't like/can't [IBS] have breakfast, so that's a problem for me. I generally eat a plate of food during my 11 am class). In fact, I've been so busy this semester that I've been buying frozen food, like the 1.50 pasta & vegetables on tasty sauces that I can find at evil-superstore-that's-open-24h-and-in-which-I-shouldn't-shop or the nice and yummy organic & vegetarian dishes of Amy's kitchen, which is what I ate yesterday (enchilada verde, my favorite).

I had to be getting ready for a performance in church (more on that in a second) at 5 pm, but I only left the university at 4:50! I ran home to put on a few more layers of clothing and to "grab" my family that was going to participate too. We were a bit late [it started at 5:30], but it was OK in the end. You see... we're doing this huge Bethlehem town representation for five nights. It involves hundreds of people and it's really nicely set up with a great script (it takes about 45 mins. to go through) and I'm a poor widow (with my youngest son), my oldest son is a school boy with a small speaking part and my husband will be the Inn-keeper for a few nights. The whole thing goes from 5:30-9:15 or later every night until Monday. Sigh... We've had several nightly practices in the past weeks (even before Thanksgiving), and the last was on Tuesday (and on Monday I cooked to help feed a group of homeless that is given shelter in various churches around town, so Wednesday was our only "free" night this week). It does feel good to be helpful, though.

If all that weren't enough, my mother- and father-in-law are coming tonight to spend the weekend, so K & I were cleaning the house until 1 am last night, mostly because today he has to work and go to a holiday party (until roughly 4 pm -- remember that by 5 we have to go to the performance!) and I have to go shopping for food and other necessities since I didn't have time at all the whole week! I should be mopping my kitchen floors right now and yet I'm blogging (I need some "therapeutic" me time to help  me keep sane in all the busy-ness). But... I'll try to have an hour for myself later today too.

Relieved
Remember those bad news? Well, they were about my brother-in-law and there's some good news to supplement those. He's had the first surgery (prior to the news), then a CT scan -- which scared him more than anything -- and which came back negative, no metastasis anywhere else in the body! Which is great news, since that makes it more treatable. His second surgery was on Tuesday and it was successful. He will undergo radiation therapy in January. The only thing is that it seems that he's feeling much more pain and other side effects of the medication (nausea) than he did after the first surgery, so I hope he can recover and feel better soon.

Worried
I'm really really worried about my sister-in-law, my brother, and the new baby (in that order). I think Andi Buchanan's phrase "Mother Shock" is too weak for what they're undergoing, really... and I feel sorry that there's nothing that we can do to help, since it's hard to even talk to them and just talking won't help relieve their sheer shock, exhaustion, etc. My poor SIL was diagnosed with acute anemia after the baby was born. She is being treated, but the extra exhaustion brought by that condition, added to not sleeping, etc, is just too hard on her. Then, she couldn't take the pain of breastfeeding and suffered greatly until she was given nipple shields.

We only talked to them last week on Saturday when they took & sent us some photos and skyped with us briefly. All I hear is through my mom, who's communicating briefly with my brother every day. Ever since the baby came, my SIL realized she cannot sleep -- she gets stressed out about the baby being OK. My brother is trying to help, but he's working full time and her parents are there, but they only help during the day... The latest I heard is that the baby is crying up to an hour a day -- they think he might be colicky!! -- :(  I hope that's not the case, but if it is, I just pray that they can survive. Of course we all know they will... but... I feel for them and worry. Especially because I had it so (comparatively) easy -- well, I never wrote in the blog in detail about the nightmare of Kelvin not nursing/latching on for a month and me pumping for that whole time. I will try to do that someday. It's always been too difficult to even remember.

So... yeah, I wish I could feel simply happy about the birth of my nephew, but that's not to be. :( I wish the birth of a new baby could be easier on the parents and family, but it never is. So many people (SIL especially), worry so much about the labor and delivery, but those are nothing, really compared to what comes after, there's nothing that can prepare you for a new baby, NOTHING. That's why there's this sharp division in the world between those who are parents and know and those who don't. There's no way the latter can ever understand the former, seriously.

All right, that's enough for now, I have to do some mopping and run to town for food shopping. (outrageously ridiculous rhyming, I know, and not on purpose, I swear!).

my greatest fear

It was early evening and raining when I entered the highway driving home from work today. I immediately thought that it was dangerous to drive under those conditions, but I hoped & trusted that everything would be fine. I felt that way because every time I drive I feel a keen awareness that driving is one of the most dangerous things we do every day and that there is a real threat of getting into an accident and getting killed.

That's why as I was driving earlier today I thought about my greatest fear as a mother. I don't know if I shared this here in the blog before or not, but after I became a mother my greatest fear is of dying and leaving my sons' mother-less. I'm not afraid of dying, not one bit (well, I'm sure I will/would be if I knew for sure it was happening), but in general I don't think much of it, but the idea that my sons won't have me anymore while they're still young and need me terrifies me.

I know the boys would be OK in the end (though it would be positively awful if both K & I died), well cared by any of our family members (yes, I think that my parents, my in-laws, any of my brothers- & sisters-in-law, my brother & wife and even extended family members such as aunts, uncles, cousins, would do a wonderful job caring for our sons), but I still feel sad to think that I wouldn't be around to comfort them and help them and mother them. And, believe me, this is not about me, but them.

Good thing they're growing and becoming more independent, etc. I think every year that goes by will make it easier for me, little by little, to let go. Because I guess that in the end this feeling has to do with my need to be needed by them -- especially since they don't need me even half as much as they did when their nourishment depended entirely on me as well as 100% of their physical care.

One of the saddest things I've ever watched on TV was a documentary about this young mother in Canada whose own mother had early onset dementia or an Alzheimer type degenerative disease and who had had genetic tests/ analysis done to determine whether she had the gene that would doom her to the same fate. Even not knowing, she already did lots of things that would help preserve her mind while it was still cognizant -- such as writing incessantly all her thoughts in a journal and recording audio tape messages to her children.

It turned out that she did have the gene and seeing her reaction was simply heartbreaking. She began to actively record tapes for every milestone of her children's lives and to try to prepare to lose all her mental ability and memory. This, in fact, sounds worse than actual death, doesn't it?

Well... I will stop here, my apologies for the gloomy subject. I do have one more post in me about a related topic, but I don't know if I'll write it now or later. And, hopefully, my sons will still have me for years to come!

the little bad things

I should be grading, but I'm just so tired after a very busy day that, obviously, I'm spending time online checking my twitter feed, reading friends' blogs and, before that, several minutes being really annoyed by the random stuff people post to facebook -- can't stand that thing!

In any case... I'm really frustrated by a few bad things that happened and one of them is not even so little -- I dropped my cell phone and it broke. It's still functioning, but I don't know how much longer since the little panel on top of the button to make/take a call and turn it off fell and now won't stay in place.

Of course our two year plan doesn't end until June next year!! :( The only option I know to hold off until then, and which we've used before (TWICE for K who ruined his phone -- and his is half ruined now too, just the touch screen), is trying to find a friend who had a phone from the same carrier that was discarded, but still works. Is that really the only option, though? I know some carriers offer to "buy out" your remaining time with another carrier, but I don't know if any carrier does it around here (Sprint was going to call me back if they ever decided to offer it).

I HATE HATE HATE the two year plan requirement! (when we joined T-Mobile years ago our plan was for only one year.. and obviously we ended up using it for over two years, so we didn't even take advantage of it. :( We have Verizon now (in spite of the fact that once upon a time I was the #1 google search result for "Verizon Sucks" [which it does]) because it's got the best coverage in our area.


OK, the second little bad thing is that one of my kittens vomited today and I'm hoping they are fine and that he (the one who did it) is not really sick.


Well, I'll try to grade a few things now... sigh...

A Gift to Myself

Yesterday (or today, since it's after midnight on Friday and I just want to be accurate, for once in my blogging life ;) I had tons of things to do in town, including picking up an online order returning some stuff at a couple of stores and going to the university to take care of some stuff that I had neglected during Mon-Th (I don't teach or go to town or to campus on Fridays), but... I had told myself that I needed a reward this week: a yoga class.

You see, I have been unable to take the (free) yoga classes offered at the university this semester because I teach during the two classes I might be able to attend (I already changed one of my classes for later time slot next semester so I can go to yoga, woo-hoo!). My current schedule allowed for one "Yogalates" (yoga+pilates, pretty fun, in fact) class on Wednesday mornings, but I only went in the beginning of the semester, because later I was so swamped with trying to read the books and get ready to teach that I spent that time working instead. :(

I tried to get into the Friday noon class a few times, but I always remembered too late and it was already full (we have to register 24h in advance or less), but yesterday afternoon I finally remembered and registered! This morning, when I was running late, frantically looking for a lost netflix DVD (from last month) that I still haven't found :( I briefly considered cancelling the class, but changed my mind and decided to give it a try.

I rushed to town, stood impatiently in line at JCP to pick up my MIL's present, then wasted my time trying to return something at Costco (apples, K had already bought apples when I came home with more -- but the lady said they were going to destroy them, so I didn't return them in the end. I'm happy with my decision because they are very yummy honey crisps). I literally ran into my office where I had to email my students, print out stuff (printer out of paper! had to print it in the secretary's office since I didn't have time to go get paper, etc) and head out the door to walk 5-10 minutes to the class location.

Phew! I made it! And it was a lovely, lovely... too short 50 minute class that I really needed. I was so glad that I decided to try and go!

I'm considering another "gift" to myself next year in the shape of a once a week paid "real" yoga class to complement the free ones I get to take on campus, I think I deserve to take care of myself, right?

Getting Lazy

Well... after the obligation to post by midnight every day last month was over, I just relaxed a little bit about blogging, still confident that I have tons of things left to say and can easily pull off 33 more posts (minimum). I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that I'm so confident about my ability to blog that much and... frankly, I don't care. One of my (always pretty lame) new year's "resolutions" was "to blog with abandon" and I need to take care of that before it's too late.

OK, I just remembered that I had a post planned for today, not this lame one so... let's get this one "published" and let's talk about something more interesting, shall we? :)