Sunday, February 23, 2014

Weekly Wrap-up for February 23, 2014: Done with Winter.

I love the winter. I really do. I love the snow and the cold and the layers of clothing I get to wear. As a teacher, I love the occasional snow day and the excitement of the kids the day before a big snowstorm. I love cuddling up under warm blankets with a cup of hot cocoa and bowls of hot soup.

But I'm done now.

This has been, by far, the worst winter I can remember. From below freezing temperatures, to massive piles of snow, the last two months have been a blur of never-ending snow, cold, and freezing rain. And while I'm not at all ready for the heat and summer months to get here, I'd be okay with slightly warmer temps (it did get up to 40 earlier this week. I actually drove home with my windows cracked to enjoy the "nice" weather).

I'm also quite sick of the snow days. We had Friday off....for "hazardous road conditions." That was our 7th snow day since January. I was actually mad when I got the call at 5 in the morning! Now it's up in the air as to whether we need to make up the day. We get 6 snow days built into our calendar year, so now we might have to stay later in June. And I know our district isn't that bad off-some schools have had 10 or more days!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to a change in the weather, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon (more snow this week....yay). I think the kids are looking forward to it too!

The good news is that Spring Break is looming and I'll be heading out to California with Matt and my parents to visit my sister Torrie. She graduated from college back in December and got another internship with Disney (she interned down in Florida a couple years ago). We'll be there for the week (Matt a little less because of work), so we're planning on hitting up the Hollywood area as well. It's dreams of warm California weather that are keeping me going. :)

In reading, I haven't been too focused. I'm still in the middle of a bunch of things, but I have plans to at least start The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata this week. The Classics Club issued a dare to read the novel, so I'm going to tackle it so I can dare others. :) It looks interesting and my copy arrived last week, so it'll be next up. I'm also trying to finish 7 Events that Made America America by Larry Schweikart, but it's going rather slowly....it has a very obvious conservative slant that gets distracting...I'll admit that I've skimmed a few passages. The ideas behind the book are interesting; however, so I'm not ready to declare it as DNF.

I also started the second book in A Song of Ice and Fire a couple weeks ago, and I've been meaning to finish it, so I assume that'll be next up. I ready to dive back in to Westeros after a month or so away from it. I think spacing out those books was a great idea, but now I need to make sure I finish through book 3 by the time the show premieres again in April.

I hope you all have a happy reading week!

6 comments:

  1. Looking forward to hearing how you like the Game of Thrones sequel -- I've been wanting to read them so much, but haven't found the time!

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  2. Spacing out the Game Of Thrones books is a really smart idea, that's what I am doing and it works out well given how quickly GRRM publishes his books, ha ha.

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  3. Everyone in LA will ask you to bring the snow with you. We are all freaking out about the massive scary drought. (That said, it really is gorgeous today. But I live in NorCal, don't know what it's like down south.)

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  4. I teach two Thursday hybrid classes, meaning we only meet once a week. We just finished our sixth week of the semester, and we've only met 3 times. In other words, I too am done with snow days.

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  5. We've had endless rain rather than snow here and I'm definitely ready for it to end and trains to work again. The sun did make an appearance on Saturday though, which did wonders for my mood. Fingers crossed it starts clearly up for you soon! I read a review of The Sound of the Mountain recently and it seems a very interesting book - I hope you enjoy it.

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  6. Winter here has been really strange this year. There have been some unusually cold days, including a few ice days and one which caused the schools to shut down (something that only happens once every 3-5 years here), and some extremely hot days (seriously, 90s in January and February??). The two have been bouncing back and forth, sometimes with 50-60 degree swings from morning to afternoon, and it's killing me. Everyone keeps getting sick, with this roller coaster weather. I know it doesn't get truly cold here, but I'd really just like to have real winter - even real San Antonio winter - for a few months before summer starts again. I don't think we've had a single week where the temps stayed below 60 every day, and more often than not, we've had extreme cold and extreme hot every single week. It's ridiculous...

    I just started the 2nd Fire and Ice book last week. I love taking these slowly and spreading them out!!

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