Sorry for the Silence... but I've got Sense, and Sensibility! ;-)

I'm sorry about the silly alliterative title, couldn't resist!

Everything is fine. Warning: tons of digressions ahead! ;-) AND CAPS. 

One of the reasons for the not-blogging is the fun I had this past weekend re-reading Sense & Sensibility (how in the world that one wasn't of my favorites before? Seriously? It is a bit melodramatic, but it's every bit as awesomely written as my other favorites -- #1 Persuasion, #2 P & P.)

(digressive sigh... I wish Dawn read this and we could talk about Jane Austen, and its adaptations... sigh...)

I re-read it for two main reasons:

1) I had a strong feeling I needed some "comfort reading" and since I'm a Jane-ite, one of her books it the utmost comfort read. I started this "tradition" five years ago of reading one of her novels around Valentine's day, but I guess I skipped a few years.. :-P
         
(Digression: I CANNOT believe it's been three years since my last Jane Austen post. and this post just made me realize I will have to watch the most recent PBS adaptation of S&S!)

2) Since Alan Rickman died last week, I wanted to watch the movie adaptation of S&S again and, OF COURSE I couldn't do it without re-reading the novel first (I'm not sure I'd ever re-read it, like I've done multiple times with my two favorites).

So I watched the movie on Monday night (literally in the middle of the night, how bad am I?).

I LOOOOOVED the movie, BTW, in spite that it's HARD to try to see 36 year old Emma Thompson as a 21 year old. And then I went and discovered that she married Greg Wise, the really handsome fella who played Willoughby -- but it looks like both of them are pretty wacky creatures, some weird statements to the press & a silly tax evasion protest thing). Emma totally deserved the Oscar for the screenplay. Not visually stunning like the latest P&P, but lovely. Ang Lee is good.

Going back in time... we also went skiing Sunday, I mean, the K & Kelvin were snowboarding and I was supposed to ski, but I decided to try snowboarding and I loved it. Too bad I fell multiple times and now I am sore and feeling pain in various parts of my body (even though it's been 3 days).

I've been working a lot and also shopping a bit, since I hadn't been to stores for a couple of weeks. I had to get jeans for my son (had to return a pair and get another) and do TJ's & wholesale club grocery shopping.

What else? Yeah... so last weekend I also did my super commute on Saturday night to go to a play put up by the department and it was awesome.

Last, but not least. I've made important work-related decisions and going to a work meeting made me HORRIBLY upset again about the whole adjuncting thing. Sigh...

But those are subjects for other blog posts! This one is already a crazy mish-mash.

P.S. Tomorrow we're going skiing with my sons' elementary school, but it's going to be SOOOO cold I'm taking another Jane Austen novel with me! Thankfully I'm not driving, I'm going with friends which is nice because I arrived really late back from work today (we showed a movie to students and nobody showed up, booo!), so I had a 13 hour day...

ADHD forgetfulness sucks Vs. Great Skiing!

Edited to add: I won't delete this whiny post. But I wanted to say that the grumpiness only lasted for about half an hour, thankfully. They did make a mistake in my ski's binding which made me waste over 20 minutes and made my first descent scary (I was afraid the ski could come off) and only possible after my patient husband secured the ski to my boot. So we had a lovely few hours in the slopes after all!*

My family came to ski/snowboard  because of me, but of course, my ski jacket stayed home.

I'm still going to ski, but I have no pockets, not even a zipper to put the tag, and I better not fall, because I will be completely wet! 

How absolutely exasperating!!! Of course part of the problem is that my husband is the person who brought the stuff to the car, but I should have been checking, even if we were super late and in a hurry  to leave the house.

I'm a very unhappy camper right now! :-(

* I forgot to mention in the blog that last Friday was another one of those very unfair days (third one!) in which both my husband and sons had a snow day and I didn't and had to drive 152 miles to teach at University #2. :-( To add insult to injury we had almost 10 inches of snow on Thursday, so the snow was absolutely fantastic Friday & they loved it. :-( That's why we went today, also because it will probably be the last time this year. 

Snow Day for THEM, but not for me! Not fair! :-(

It happened again (including my husband and U#1)! But this time it wasn't that bad because I got to meet them at the ski slopes after my teaching! I skied an hour less than they did, but that was OK because my legs weren't in the best shape.

I had a wonderful time skiing this "Blue" slope today twice with no people whatsoever! I'm not very good, but I was going incredibly fast today (1) because it was more powdery than usually -- still mostly "fake" powder -- and (2) because I couldn't really avoid it, not enough strength in legs to zigzag down to slow down and!!! incredibly!!! not falling!!! I did fall exactly once, but it was a small fall from which I quickly recovered.

So I'm creating a new "Ski!"label right now, since it looks like I'll be writing about skiing again in the future (and have in the past -- it'll be fun to go label all those posts!).

OK, so this ended up not being as much about the failed snow day. I did leave about 40 minutes earlier, but it was ok, after I got farther away from home all snow turned to rain. (I still have some blizzard envy, but just a teeny tiny bit! ;-) And classes were good. I'm so thrilled I finally figured out the online quiz thing. Now I hope the students won't hate the quizzes and complain that there were technical problems! Sigh...

Now I'll go take a hot shower, yay!

Opening Day Skiing (me)/ Snowboarding (them)

This year we bought a 7-time ski pass through the elementary school and the boys insisted we use it on the very first day! It was fun, I must say! I hate falling & make sure I never fall (which makes for very tense skiing), but I fell twice and was perfectly ok with it -- big "victory" for me! 

Oh. And I went on half of a Blue slope for the very first time ever! (and I did NOT fall!) I went only once because the adrenaline surge was a bit too much. ;-) here are the boys snowboarding:

I can't believe that Kelvin (wearing lime green+black) went on a black diamond slope. And I think he didn't really fall! Wow!

P.S. My husband snowboarded too, but he didn't dare going on the blue. My 10 year old went multiple times (alone), but he had some big falls. Brave kid!

Twelve! (03/09/14)

Kelvin turned twelve on Sunday and when I told him today that I hadn't had time to blog about his birthday he let out a whining sound (bless his heart!). So I have to rectify this situation, no matter how late I go to bed!

Unlike his younger brother who doesn't much like to be blogged about, Kelvin enjoys it when I write about him. He even has a blog, but he doesn't update it. We want to wait one more year so he can use google products without fear of being shut down after the pretty sad loss of his email account a couple of years ago (to make a long story short & not to have to look for the link, he was invited to join Google+, tried to register & when he had to enter his birthdate his main email account [he has three or four like me] was deleted! It could only be recovered if we lied about his age, which we didn't want to do... sigh...)

Before I talk about his day, let me just share his favorite recent photo (above) and say a few words about my handsome "tween" boy! When I posted these photos to facebook a friend asked me if he had already began to act surly like a typical teenager and I think that the photos speak for themselves a bit. He's got plenty of "attitude" already, but I know it may get much worse.

One thing is certain, my son really cares about his appearance now! After his latest haircut in Brazil (finally someone got it right! Too bad I ruined it just slightly by cutting his hair a bit a couple of weeks ago [no photos from "after," just before in this post]), I've been helping him to blow dry his hair and, once in a while, he wants me to use the straightening iron. (I will delete this info if he tells me to! ;-) Isn't he the cutest thing, though? I love it that he still wants to spend so much time with me and wants hugs and kisses. I won't ever take that for granted because I know that for a period it will be very different!

He's maturing and growing every day and... he's getting a phone next week which has been his greatest dream for a while now! I could go on and on about my "baby," but I need to get some sleep! ;-)

His birthday celebration was great, but bittersweet: skiing with all the men in the family who were here! With his dad, his two uncles and three cousins (including the 3.5 year old!). The women didn't go (though I did want to). D (K2's wife) stayed home to study Arabic and I went shopping with M, K4's wife, who is pregnant and needed to buy things for the baby. She's having another boy, the 7th grandson!

Kelvin was looking forward to snowboarding with his uncles, especially with "K2" who had seen him  try to snowboard over a month ago when he had just started learning and who could really appreciate how much he had improved. All the boys enjoyed themselves very much and I was glad that in their excitement with the novelty of spending several hours together on the ski slopes and (especially) the terrain park, they didn't stop to consider that this is one of their last times together until January next year. Here are the cousins together for one last time until probably Dec. 2015

-- we were missing only two who are in Brazil :(

Well, here's the post, Kelvin! Now I need to write another one about your present! But that will have to be at another time.

Ski Lift Blogging

I'll come back to post a photo later, but I'm blogging from a ski lift! I came with my sons' school for their ski day while my husband will be substituting for me today. 

I'm not a good skier, but I'm persevering! A year ago I was ready to give up, but a free ski lift & rental voucher we received in early January made me go back and I decided to keep skiing, however badly! I'm glad I did! 

Photos later! 

here!

After 8 Years, I'm Hitting the Slopes Again...

I've skied exactly once in my life. For two days (Dec. 23 & 24, 2002) when my baby was 9 months old, he's almost 9 years old now...

I loved it, but never went back. Tomorrow, however, I will!

I hope I can ski OK. The boys are taking a class, but I'm not. We're going here.

I have to be up at 5 am, so that means I'll have less than 6 hours of sleep. Sigh.

I will try to take pictures...

P.S. This is totally unrelated. Heather (Dooce) tweeted about this collection of photos called The Julie Project. Heartbreaking. Wow. That's why I'm still awake.