Burger King??

Tonight, for the first time in at least four years, I at a meal at a fast food restaurant.

I ordered a veggie burger from Burger King, and here are my thoughts.

1) Disturbed! I can't believe how FAST it was ready! They had it for me in just a few moments. I know for a FACT that cooking a veggie burger takes at LEAST eight minutes, so how did they have it ready??

2) Ick! My tummy felt weird afterwards. I didn't like it!

3) Toppings? They put ketchup on my burger, but no cheese?? Also, fried onions would have been great. But why not cheese??

4) Bummer. I really just went to BK because I wanted fries. I was really hungry though, and saw "veggie burger" on the menu, and felt I really needed to try it. I should have just gone for the fries.

I am really okay with waiting another four years for another fast-food meal...yuck!

Thrifty? Or cheapskate?

Pretty soon, I'm going to need to quit whining and start spending money. I can't be this much of a cheapskate for my whole life - I'll need to stop spending money on fun things and begin spending it on necessities.

Yesterday, I realized that winter has finally arrived. I commute forty-minutes each way to school Monday-Friday. It occurred to me yesterday that the chance of it snowing a huge amount while I'm at school one day is pretty big. I could get stuck in Hawley!

Anyway, I drove to Target in the shining, twenty-five degree weather and figured I'd buy a little shovel to keep in the back of my car. When I got to Target, I was bummed to see how expensive they were and I figured I'd wait to buy one. After all, it hadn't snowed all year so why would it start now? No rush.

Needless to say, today we got twelve inches of snow. YOWSERS! We made it back from Hawley fine until we were two blocks from our house, and then we got completely stuck going around a turn. Oops.

I guess I should have bought that shovel, eh?

If (by Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master;
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

Infected? (this is graphic)

For the last six weeks or so, I've been coughing up gross green stuff (sorry...). I went to the doctor tonight because it keeps gagging me in class and I have to go to the side of the room and hawk a loogey (spelling?). IN THE MIDDLE OF CLASS, while I'm teaching. Kind of embarrassing, super disgusting.

Anyway, all the doctor did was shine a flashlight thingy down my throat and make a really icky face and say "You've had a sinus infection for a month!" and then she prescribed me antibiotics.

I'm going to feel better soon! Yay!

Today's "Food for Thought"

"Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car."

I've still got a lot to figure out in my life. Today I registered for classes for my last semester of college. Twelve hours earlier, I completed my first night of parent-teacher conferences.

Every day, it's becoming more and more real that after graduation, I don't know what I'm doing. I'll literally be the kid who moves home and lives in his/her parents' basement. I've never had to live with the sense of not knowing what's coming next.

Through school, I always knew that I'd have another year of study. After high school graduation, I knew I would be going to college. For quite awhile, I had no idea where that would be - but I knew I would get into a school and attend it in the fall.

Now, I know where I would like to be - teaching, anywhere and anything. However, it's no longer up to ME to decide where and what I'll be doing. I play a big role in this decision, but I have to apply and be accepted. After talking to several recently-hired teachers, I understand that I may be competing against, literally, hundreds of other candidates for each job.

Looking at my life as a big gaping hole is scary, but it's a great feeling. I plan to work at camp and during the summer, apply to every job I can find. In the fall, I'll either begin teaching or do something else. And who knows what that "something else" may be - it may bring incredible lessons and experiences that I can't even dream up right now.

It's time to quit my "post-formal thought" processes and head to bed. Enough philosophical considerations for one night! :)

"Doing nothing" is no longer a concern!

My last post was all about a day I spent trying to do nothing for a whole day.

Going to camp last weekend was a blessing, but it meant I didn't get anything done over the weekend. I had no idea that this week would be such a doosey!

Monday evening was our first choir concert in Hawley. A fellow student teacher and I recently had a conversation about how waking up for school is different as a teacher than it is as a student. Well, a choir concert is sure different as a teacher than it is as a student! Anyway, the evening went well, but it was absolutely exhausting.

I have been teaching almost every class all week, so I'm mentally exhausted! The kids bring me a ridiculous amount of energy, but I expend so much that I'm ready for bed after school every day.

Next week, we have conferences from 4:00-8:00 PM on Monday and Thursday, so I won't get home until 8:45 PM or so (and I'll go straight to bed). We also have an extra pop singers rehearsal Tuesday at 6:30 PM, so I don't know if I'll even go back to Fargo-Moorhead before then. So that's three days at school from 7:30 AM-8:30 PM (which accounts to 36 hours in three days, or a 52 hour work week, ugh).

The ACDA choir is singing in Communion on Wednesday, at TEN PM! That is so late! So I won't be in bed until AT LEAST 11:30 PM, which makes 5:30 AM an especially early morning. I was thinking about recouping by going to camp the weekend of Nov. 12th-14th, but Chapel Choir's got a couple of events that weekend in which I should participate. Then the next weekend is the ACDA conference, so I'll be in St. Cloud Thursday-Saturday...yikes! Also, HARRY POTTER comes out that week! Do I go to the midnight showing? I always do! I probably should. But I probably shouldn't. Ugh.

Anyway, I have to run to choir. But I'm glad I fit in a quick vent session about how I wish I would have appreciated my down time a couple of weekends ago!

I HATE doing nothing.

I HATE doing nothing. I hate doing nothing. I hate doing nothing. I can't begin to count the number of things I love doing - there are thousands. However, I can only think of a few things that I hate doing. One thing I hate doing is NOTHING. I can't stand it!

I have this list of 100 things I'd like to do in the next 1000 days, and I'm making great progress. I very well may be done in the next 100 days, in fact!

One thing on my list is "Do nothing for an entire day." I tried that today.

I sat on the couch for eight hours, read an entire book, cross-stitched my choir folder, blogged, watched so much TV, Skyped, and read so many webcomics.

After eight hours, I just went insane. I could not do it anymore. My body started twitching and freaking out on me. There was no comfortable way to sit anymore - my back is still just aching from sitting weird on the couch all day. I was all fidgety and bored to tears.

At 8:30 PM, I gave in. I got up, and in the last hour, I have done a ridiculous number of things. After such a long day, I just needed to be efficient and get something done. I cleaned the entire kitchen, did four sinks of dishes, made toasted pumpkin seeds, devoured two popsicles, made lunch for Monday and Tuesday, and sorted my laundry. All in an hour, after doing nothing all day.

Never again will I do nothing for a whole day. I feel unaccomplished and completely unprepared for this week. I feel like I've gotten nothing done and I wasted so much time. I wish I would have gone for a walk (even though it's yucky outside) or played a game or talked to a friend or practiced organ or SOMETHING productive or at least fun!

I cannot relate to my college friends who play video games eight hours a day, seven days a week. How do they do it??

YUCK!