We had a pretty fun weekend. Friday night Jack and I got together with some friends for a Fondue and games night. GOD I love fondue! We did a cheese fondue for dinner with bread, broccolli, peppers, fried tofu, ham, apples, potatoes, pickles and pickled veggies. Mmm Mmm. Then for dessert we did a chocolate fondue with apples, banana, oranges, pound cake, snickers, twinkies, and strawberries. Talk about being full. After ingesting about a half a pound of cheese apiece and then another half a pound of chocolate we decided to settle in to some games. We introduced our friends to a new game we got called Zombies. We thought we'd get in a few games that evening but instead our game of Zombies ended up lasting something like seven hours! Around four in the morning when I finally kicked their asses ;) we decided to head home. We slept in Saturday needless to say and then had originally planned to run some errands and then have a nice quiet afternoon at home doing things around the house, but our friends called up and since we had only gotten to play one game the night before they wondered if we could come over and play a few more. So we ended up going back over Saturday night for some more games. We drank coconut rum and played Captain Treasure Boots and Turbo Cranium. Much fun was had by all and the girls totally kicked the boy's butts at Turbo Cranium.

Work was pretty good today. The rest of the week will be pretty wild because I am going to two half day work shops and one 2 day work shop. So I won't be spending a whole lot of time at school. Tonight when I came home my loving husband,jakothewoods had made this incredibly awesome Golden Cheddar Soup which I must now have him make for everyone we know because it was SOOOOO good. I swear he's trying to fatten me up on purpose.

Wooot... today is "Talk like a Pirate Day!" I wish I'd known that earlier. I think schools should make kids dress up like pirates on "Talk like a Pirate Day." That would be fun. Now if only we could get Steve Jackson to make a Pirate Munchkin game. That would totally rock.

In other news, not much going on here. Ophelia goes back to the vet in a three days. She seems to be doing alright, but she still hasn't been eating much. Fortunately though we figured out the trick to force feeding her and was able to get a good amount of food down her yesterday. So that was good. We had a nice weekend. We spent Saturday cleaning house, and had some friends over in the evening for cards. That was a lot of fun. We tried out a new card game called Burn in Hell which was fun, and I think it will really be fun once we've played it a couple of times and really get familiar with it. Sunday The Wizard of Oz was playing at the Buskirk Chumley with The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd as the soundtrack. I had always heard that you could start that album at a certain point in the movie and it would actually match up with the movie. It's rumored that they actually wrote the album to do so. I had never tried it myself, but when we saw they were going to be doing it at the Buskirk Jack and I decided to go. My parents actually decided they wanted to go too when they heard we were going so they came with us. It was really pretty neat. There was some spots where it was absolutely amazing how on target it was. It gave a whole new feel to the movie.

Well today was my last day at my old job. I taught there for six years. All week I've been really excited about the new job, but trying not to show it too much at work especially around P--, my assisstant. She has been very upset since I told her I was going to leave. I've felt horribly guilty all week, because while I care very much for P--, and am sad to not be working with her I'm still very excited about the new job. I hadn't really been sad at all to leave my old school. Last year was so stressful, and there are a lot of little things I didn't like about the way things were done down there. Then there is the fact that I have never felt like I really fit in down there. It is a pretty conservative environment. Everybody goes to church several times a week, voted for Bush, listens to country music, and watches reality tv shows. That's just not me. Aside from P--, J--, and a couple of other people I never really formed any real close friendships with my co-workers. So I was surprised to find myself so sad today. Today was much harder than I expected. Mainly, it's because there are a handful of really great people that I am going to miss, and I am really going to miss seeing P-- everyday. P-- and I cried off and on all day today. I just didn't expect it to be so hard. P-- and I took an extra long lunch today and went out for Chinese like we always do whenever we get the chance to go out together. The staff threw a going away party for me. That was kind of a surprise. We had cookies and punch and they bought me a gift. It's a stained glass dolphin sun catcher. Oh if only they knew how much I just love dolphin stuff. *note sarcasm* But it was a sweet gesture nonetheless, and while it's not particularly my style for the house it might be nice to have in my new classroom. After work I had to go in to the new school and pick up my keys. The principal took me around and introduced me to a few more teachers. Everyone seems really nice. I'm sure I'm going to really like it, it's just going to be a bit of an adjustment, but that is to be expected with any change. Boy talk about the week of changes...I graduated grad school and got a new job all in one week. I'll be glad when things settle down a bit.

Jack and I are going to an Oscar Party tonight. It should be a good time. I'm sure Jack will probably hang out in the garage with the rest of the boys while us girls ooh and ahh over the Oscars. We all had to vote on who we thought would win each award and then the person with the most correct answers wins a prize. I've been trying to see as many of the movies that are up for awards as I can beforehand but I had to guess on a lot of the categories. The following is a list of my pics, first who I think will win and second who I want to win.

200My 2005 Oscar Pics:

Best Actor:
Who will win: Jamie Foxx - Ray
Who I want to win: Johnny Depp - Finding Neverland

Best Supporting Actor:
Who will win: Morgan Freeman - Million Dollar Baby
Who I want to win: Morgan Freeman ( I actually haven't seen the movie, but I really like Morgan Freeman)

Best Actress:
Who will win: Hillary Swank - Million Dollar Baby
Who I want to win: Kate Winslet - Eternal Sunchine of the Spotless Mind

Best Supporting Actres:
Who will win: Cate Blanchett - The Aviator
Who I want to win: Cate Blanchett - The Aviator

Best Animated Feature
Who will win: The Incredibles
Who I want to win: The Incredibles

Best Art Direction
Who will win: Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events
Who I want to win: Finding Neverland

Best Cinematography
Who will win: The Aviator
Who I want to win: Possibly House of Flying Daggers. I haven't seen it yet, but it looks cool.

Best Costume Design
Who will win: The Aviator
Who I want to win: Finding Neverland

Best Directing
Who will win: The Aviator
Who I want to win: The Aviator

Best Original Score
Who will win: Finding Neverland
Who I want to win: Finding Neverland

Best Adapted Screenplay:
Who will win: Sideways
Who I want to win: Sideways

Best Original Screenplay:
Who will win: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Who I want to win: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Visual Effects
Who will win: Spiderman 2
Who I want to win: It's a toss up between Spiderman 2 and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Buckbeak was awesome!)

Best Picture
Who will win: The Aviator
Who I want to win: Finding Neverland

Well so I left out a few categories because its getting late and I need to start getting ready, but wish me luck!

So I took a personal day today. I had originally planned to take one on Wednesday for my birthday but I had a meeting I had to go to after school that day so I chose to give myself a long weekend instead. The funny or annoying thing is the person who was conducting our meeting that afternoon never showed up, but I'm kinda glad things turned out the way they did. All of my students were being very sweet about my birthday, making birthday cards for me and singing happy birthday to me. The student council came in and sang to me as well, and the principal gave me a cupcake while we were waiting for the person to show for our meeting and the other meeting participants sang happy birthday to me as well. I came away from work that day feeling pretty special that day, which is really a rarity. Anway I have ACR's coming up so I brought a lot of work home with me this weekend and had planned to work on IEP's today while Jack is in class. When Pam, my assistant, and good friend at work found out what I was planning she told me that she didn't care if I took a day next week to work on them during the day and that I should just leave them at school and just enjoy my day off. She actually got rather insistant about it saying repeatedly that I should leave them at school and enjoy my weekend. I told her I had to atleast take them home to maybe work on some of them Sunday evening, and that if I didn't take take them home I'd just end up fretting about it all weekend and feeling guilty. She made me promise her though that I wouldn't work on them today. You know what? I think I'm actually going to keep true to that promise. I need the time off.