Thursday, March 5, 2015

Apparently it's spring break..

You wouldn't know it from all the snow outside or the fact that our high today is about 15*, but I'm (slightly unexpectedly - long story! Ask me privately if you really want to know) officially on spring break! And feeling very anxious to catch up on my to do list, which includes updating this blog!

But first, I just hit my 1000th blog view! So thank you to whoever that was :)

Things are going well here, just a combination of being very busy and having terrible weather which makes me want to hibernate. We just set the record for the coldest February in Cleveland since the 1870s! Average temperature for the month was 14.3*. No wonder I didn't want to leave the house.

Teaching has been up and down. I have some fabulous new students and in general my classes are going well. Everyone is loving my experiment with the self-directed activities. I love that everyone gets to work at their own level and pace for at least a little bit every week and I also love that I really get to spend some one-on-one time with my students. It's so rare when I'm teaching the whole class that I get to sit down and really talk to / help anyone individually for more than a minute or so, but I get to do that during the self-directed activity time and it's awesome. The biggest problem so far this semester has been the weather - K-12 schools have been closed a lot, which means parents haven't been able to come to day classes, and the weather in general just makes it difficult for my students who walk or take public transportation. But hopefully the end is in sight. After tomorrow, the entire 10 day forecast is above freezing!

My other "fun" teaching adventure was driving to monthly meeting with my online students in a snowstorm a few weeks ago. My normally 2.5 hour drive was closer to 4 hours! I was so thankful when I got there and the majority of my students had actually made it to class. Whew :)


Things are also going well in Thirty-One land. I did my second vendor event and feel like a pro now! I have a pet expo coming up at the end of the month (I have ideas, but suggestions for what you'd display are welcome!) and am going to be a vendor at wing cookoff in June and two holiday shows in November/December. I also have a few feelers out for some other events, but I think I'm off to a good start. I have a drinks and desserts open house at my place tomorrow and I'm very much looking forward to having the excuse to hang out with some friends :D

And, even more importantly, I had a very successful fundraiser last month! We raised enough money to buy 127 kits of nail files and tubes of chapstick for Hanna House at University Hospitals. I talked to the director of the activities center this week and will be dropping them off during my spring break next week :) Thanks again to everyone who participated!

We've also been having a ton of fun things going on these past few weeks. J and I went to go see our favorite band, Gaelic Storm. For those new to our story - our first date was to a Gaelic Storm concert and almost exactly two years ago we got engaged at their concert :) This year, we brought a framed and matted copy of the picture taken with the band on the night of our engagement and got the entire band to sign the mat. I can't wait to hang it up!

Gaelic Storm, dancing on the bar at House of Blues
Speaking of autographs, we went to a minor league hockey game last week and J was incredibly surprised to see two-time Stanley Cup winner Ruslan Fedotenko playing for the visiting team. Fedotenko was on J's favorite NHL team when they won the Stanley cup! J and his buddy managed to get autographs :)


And, finally, last weekend we went to our friend's annual Arnold Schwarzenegger movie marathon :) We had a good time hanging out with some awesome people, eating and drinking way too much, watching movies, and generally being lazy.  Since I'm not always good at being lazy, I also made some good progress on the sweater I'm knitting. It's finally starting to look a little bit like a sweater! Since it's my first one, I don't have any delusions that it will be perfect, but I'm really hoping it's at least wearable. I'm pretty happy with how it looks so far. Maybe I'll have it done before next winter ;) My crafting progress is so slow during the school year! I'm hoping to make progress on my Etsy shop stock next week during my spring break, though I have quite a few personal sewing projects I also was hoping to work on. Why do I have a feeling that one week isn't going to be enough for all this? ;)


Stay warm, friends! Spring is just around the corner :)