Is it possible to age ten years in a week?

I feel like I have aged in this last week. APA has, quite possibly, taken years off my life. It was interesting to note on the wiki that just about all of us had the urge to quit this week. All I can say is that I'm so grateful to have you all on this journey with me. Thank you for all your help and support. Like they say in High School Musical, "We're All In This Together..."

This One's For you Kathy

Well, I chose an alternative evaluation this year rather than the traditional classroom observation. I wanted to try and work smarter, not harder. In other words, I wanted to combine the work I am doing for this master's program with anything else I could. I deperately long for purpose and meaning in my life! So, I committed to creating a class wiki and getting as many of my handouts and regularly used forms into PDF format and onto the wiki. Tonight I took my first steps. I tried a couple web 2.0 applications for converting files; one was www.scribd.com and the other was a free download from cnet called primopdf. Both worked. I have a chart for the literary unit we are currently wrapping up on the wiki in an adobe acrobat file and I also converted a document for a piece of literature we won't do until the spring. I had already converted the form we use for our weekly spelling/vocabulary words into an excel file, and that too is on the wiki. So, if you care or if you want to see my wiki in its infancy, then visit www.fieldsenglish8.pbwiki.com. Enjoy!

New Love

Sport

• Well, I've got little to nothing done this week because... I've fallen in love.

• My boyfriend got us a new dog and I am enraptured! To fully understand the situation, you have to know that we just lost our other dog, Malibu, at the beginning of summer and I didn't think I was ready for a new pet.

• He had his eye on this new dog for months - even before Malibu got sick. Scott would visit him and bring him up in conversation with me and I'd always say, "I don't want another Pit Bull. People act so weird around Malibu." It was hard to take her places. She didn't really care to be on a leash and certainly didn't need one, but the way people reacted to her, we often felt compelled to leash her up.

• Needless to say, last week, he gently mentioned the grey Pit Bull puppy his friend had AGAIN. My response was, "Do whatever you want." All other boyfriends in the universe would understand this to mean, "Do what I want," but Scott interpreted it literally.

• Now I'm useless. All I want to do is pet him and be near him -- the puppy not Scott. We named him Super Sport, Sport for short. (He! He! That rhymes) Scott has a thing about naming his animals after Chevy model muscle cars.

• At 34 years old, I'm overcome like a little giddy school girl, with feelings of love. I guess, in this one instance, Scott was right. I was ready.