Last post of 07 - How the time flies

So Molly has decided that she likes sleeping with me at night. Here's the rub: SHE IS A BED HOG!!!!!

The weekend seemed to go by relatively slowly. I really didn't do anything that is worth talking about but I will review anyway.

Jess and I took down the Christmas stuff and cleaned the house. I did the dishes three times yesterday. I also made Drew's birthday dinner last night. The menu was shrimp alfredo with salad and garlic bread (Which I kind of burned). We also had an alfredo dipping sauce for the bread. It turned out pretty good. I am toying with the idea of making homeade noodles sometime to see how they turn out. If that happens, I will let you know.

It is New Years Eve today and Drew is having his birthday party. I think there are 7 kids coming over tonight. They were supposed to go to Dawn's parents house but for some reason they are all coming here instead. I am not thrilled about it but I told Drew to make sure it doesn't get too crazy loud. At least they can just play in the basement. I told Dawn to pick up about 5 Papa John's pizzas for tonight. I haven't tried that kind of pizza before and I hear it is really good. They make it and you bring it home and bake it. It is less expensive than Pizza Hut or Breadeaux and about the same price as Casey's.

Jess is going to three New Years Eve parties tonight. She has a friend Cole Brant that is having a get together so her and Katlyn are starting there. After that one they are headed to the FCA party and then to another party. The last one is an all girls party and the basketball team will all be there so that is where they are really spending NYE. They are just making appearances at the other two. Oh, the busy life of a high school student.

The sports activities pick up pretty rapidly this week. Jess has a scrimage here in Perry this morning. Both kids have games Friday night and both are away. I am not sure if I am going to Drew's game becuase it starts so early and I will wait to see about Jess's game. Saturday Jess has a game here in Perry and Sunday she plays in her first volleyball tournament.

I have an orientation for DMACC instructors on Saturday from 8-3 but should be back in time for the game. The volleyball tournament is a couple of hours away so we are driving up Sunday morning. They play at 9 so it shouldn't be a problem.

The break is winding down and school will be back in session before you know it. I am going to enjoy today and not think about that until Wednesday.

I hope you all have a good and SAFE new year.

More next year.

Foot wine makes me want to gag! I assume every wine I drink was crushed by a machine.

As each day passes I seem to be feeling a little better. Last night I ate dinner for the first time in three days and I didn't even crap in my pants afterwards, which is a dramatic and welcome improvement. I know, too much information but I had to put it in there because it made me laugh to read it.

Whatever I had, seems to have moved to my chest and lungs. I have a tightness and an ache when I breath. I cough and I feel it in my lungs.

Enough of the poor me stuff for now. I do however, reserve the right to wine in future postings. Like I said, I ate dinner last night. I made grilled chicken breasts for the kids and I had a steak. It was the first time I have tried one of the Flat Iron steaks mom gave me and I can honestly say that may have been the best steak I have ever eaten. I am not kidding either. We also have buttery rice and green beans.

Jess had her three hour practice yesterday and they practiced hard the whole time. She was completely wiped out yesterday. After practice she came home, took a bath, ate lunch and laid in bed the rest of the day. When I got home at 5 she we sleeping. She woke up to eat dinner and then laid on the couch the rest of the night. She was tired! They have a scrimmage this morning at Ft. Dodge and need to be at the school by 8.

Drew has practice today at 1. He got a call from the coach last night with the good news. I think he is happy to have practice. Sitting at home is ok but I think they get tired of it quickly when they can't play outside much. Drew's friends that he played with everyday, moved last week so he doesn't have anyone to hang out with in the neighborhood anymore. The main person he played with was a girl and he won't admit it but they were kind of boy friend-girl friend. As soon as he would get home from practice, she would be at the door wanting him to come out and hang out. Drew could have been in a dead sleep and if she came to the door, he would be outside in a minute to hang out with her.

It is Friday but I don't have the same enthusiasm I normally do for the end of the week. Break is great and the end of the week is almost a reminder that we are getting close to the end. School doesn't start back up again until Thursday but I can see the darkness of the tunnel approaching.

I need to note that something has happened to my brain over the last few days. With feeling terrible it seems that I have also gotten dumber. My brain isn't functioning correctly. Whatever wit, humor, and modest intuitive grasp of concepts I previously had has now seem to evaported. I was trying to do some simple calculations in my head yesterday and had to break out the calculator. I was working with vendors yesterday and they would ask as question that I normally would just snap off an answer and I had to think and then I am not even sure I gave them the right answer or even really an answer at all. I hope I snap out of this soon. If not, I will have someone take a picture of my stupid ass, eyes wide and a clueless expression on my face; maybe even my finger in my nose. I do take some solice in that fact that I notice this is happening.

I am not sure what the plans are for the weekend. I really need to get to the grocery store and I probably need to find a way to get the ice off of my driveway. It is really slick!

Off to start my day and weekend. More Monday!

It just doesn't seem right that the lue has seen more content than my stomach!!!

I am feeling a little better today. I have a touch of a sore throat and spent too much time in the bathroom, it you know what I mean, and my stomach is still a bit upset but I seem to have a touch more energy this morning. Don't get me wrong, I am not up for a marathon or even a long walk to the fridge but it is better than yesterday.

Jess has practice today. The coach told them they will be practicing for three hours this morning. 8-11. Practice for two hours and shooting for the last hour. Jess is thrilled..lol

Work went pretty well yesterday. Progress on all the projects is going well and I hope to have a majority of everything done by the end of the day today. Life just doesn't stand still does it.

I haven't eaten much over the last couple of days but suprisingly, I am not hungry. I guess if there is a positive spin to feeling like hell, it is a great way to lose a little weight.

It is Thursday but is seems more like Tuesday because of Christmas. It is not so exciting to see the weekend around the corner while we are on break. I like having the building kind of quiet and not having to worry about people bothering me. Before I know it, the break will be over and the long part of winter will be upon us.

I hope I get my appetite back. I kind of miss eating and the joy of eating.

More tomorrow.

Shiver me timbers!

Woe is me! Yesterday I was sick and sick in a bad, bad way. My stomach was bad and I had a persistent headache. I was achy all over and had big temperature issues. In the morning I was so cold I was almost shivering. I checked my temp and either the thermometer doesn't work or I didn't have a temp. What I do know was that I was freezing. I finally warmed up but then I was sweating. Took some ibuprofen and that helped but during the night I had the same thing. Woke up FREEZING even though I had three blankets and a sheet on. I was also wearing pajama bottoms, a t-shirt and a sweatshirt. When my alarm went off, I was sweating.

I hope I am done with this because I have a bunch to do at work this week. I have vendors in and a few projects that need to be done by Friday. Yesterday was miserable.

The kids had a good Christmas. Drew got a PS2 and Jess go Guitar Hero. It is a fun game. I played it Monday and a bit yesterday morning before I started feeling like hell. They played it most of the day.

I don't really feel like going into all the things everyone got and all that but it was a good Christmas. I will mention that Mom got me a case of Flat Iron Steaks. I was going to eat one yesterday but as I mentioned above, it was a bad day. I had chicken noodle soup and a bowl of ceral for the day.

I feel like I should have a bunch more to say today but I must not be feeling well yet because it seems like effort to even type the blog today. I seem to feel ok but I am tired and don't have any energy. I will keep on the ibuprofen today and hopefully am on the downward slid of this.

Drew turned 13 yesterday as well. He wanted a certain type of game but they didn't have it out yet so we game him a $100 visa so he could buy whatever he wants. He can save it and use it to buy the game when it comes out or use it on whatever. He said he has enough in gift cards now to buy a Wii. We will see if that is what he does with his money.

I am going to get started on my day. I am hoping a shower and shave helps me feel more human than I do now.

Off to start the day.

It's 40 below but I don't give a "bleep" got a heater in my truck and I'm off to the rodeo.......

We seem to have made it to Christmas break! No school today! Jess has practice this morning from 8:00 - 9:30 but will be done for a week after that.

The girls lost last night in overtime. It was a bit of a dissapointment because they played pretty well. They were tied with a little over a minute left in overtime and a girl from the other team hit a three pointer. That did it. Three points was a lot for our team to overcome in just a minute or so. We pressed and they broke it and ended up winning by 8 or so.

Jess had a good game. She scored 14 point in the first half but didn't get any points in the second half. She was the team high scorer but she only shot the ball twice in the whole second half and missed both. She did shoot a third time but it was blocked and she was fouled pretty good but there was no call.

I talked to her a bit after the game and she was dissapointed. The team is getting better and have finally found a point guard that can play pretty well. We are stuggling on the inside and our older kids are throwing the ball away quite a bit. Still looking for win number one.

I played in the student vs staff basketball game yesterday. It was fun. I scored pretty regularly but am so out of shape I could only play for about 4 minutes at a time. Drew score 7 points. Two normal field goals and a three pointer. He was the only one on his team to score against us. It should be noted that I wasn't guarding him when he scored. That would have been tragic. We played a 2-3 zone and he was shooting from the other side from where I played.

After the first half of the basketball game last night I had a teacher come up to me and say, "The Nichols family is really on tonight. You were on fire in the staff game and so was Drew and now Jess has 14 in the first half. What did you guys eat for breakfast?". Kind of funny.

Today should be a pretty good day. No students, no staff and a relaxed atmosphere. The first day of a break is always great. Towards the end of break, I start thinking about what I have to do after break and the stress of what is to come starts to creep back in but NOT TODAY! Today is party central.

So I found out the national title football game is Monday night, January 7th. The same night I start teaching my class. It is a good thing the huskers weren't good this year. I am not sure what I would have done if they were playing in the national title game. That would have completely sucked. I guess there is a bright side to the huskers sucking this year.

Today I party at work. Tomorrow we make gingerbread houses and Sunday off to Nebraska for a big Christmas celebration. Life it pretty good right now.

Merry Christmas everyone! I will see you soon.

FYI for you devoted readers of the blog. I will not post again until Wednesday the 26th of December. I might even have some Christmas pictures to post.

I don't care what anybody says, I'm thirsty!

Wednesday came and went with the blink of an eye. We are finally at the last day of school before Christmas break. Whoo-hooo!!!

I am playing in a "Students vs Staff" basketball game today. It is the middle school staff against the middle school students. I am playing becuase Drew is playing. I really could care less about this but I thought it would be fun to talk trash to Drew this week and explain to him how I am going to SLAM DUNK over the top of him today! I think there are 20 staff members playing so we will all probably get about 2 minutes of playing time each. I am in terrible shape so it is probably a good thing.

Jess has a game tonight in Jefferson. She said he brought a couple of the younger players up to the "Blue" practice squad, which is the varsity playing group. There is a chance that she will have a few new faces joining her on the floor today. As poorly as the team has been playing, it sure couldn't hurt.

On a different note: A couple things in the news yesterday caught my attention. The first is the honey bee population is dying off. The honey bees account for the pollenation of 1/3 of our food supply and the word is that if they die off, the human population is in trouble. The second thing was 3 or 4 southern states held a joint conference to discuss their need for drinking water. The drought in the south has caused some major problems with states being able to provide enough water to sustain the population. They feel this situation will get much worse in the future.

Kind of troublesome stuff. As the climate changes there is a chain reaction in many areas. The coming years are sure to bring a variety of challenges we have never been forced to deal with before. I hope we are up to the challenge.

I started working on some of my college class stuff. I have been going through the text books and thinking of assignements and assesments. It is going to be a bit time consuming going through it all but I read that the instructors edition has presentations that cover every chapter in the book. That is good news because the content is all things I know well but putting together the instruction is very time consuming. These premade presentation will be a huge help. I hope I get my instructors material soon.

It doesn't seem like Christmas to me. It is almost unbelievable that I will be in Nebraska Sunday for the Griswald, I mean Nichols family Christmas. We haven't really gotten into the Christmas spirit here. Jess was complaining last night that the Christmas tree looks sad because there aren't many presents under it yet. We have the gifts, they just haven't been wrapped yet. I will spend some time tomorrow night getting gifts wrapped and making things a bit more holiday like. The kids and I are going to make Gingerbread houses this weekend.

Have you ever "re-gifted" a present you have recieved? I have never done that but am thinking it may not be such a bad idea sometimes. There are times you get a gift from someone that you really don't care for but you know someone who may love it. Is it so wrong to re-gift it? Seems kind of cheap and ungrateful so I don't know if I will ever be able to do it. I don't blame people for doing it though. At least they don't have a cabinet full of stuff they don't want.

I am keeping a close eye on the weather for the weekend. We are flirting with a snow and ice storm on Saturday that could impact travel on Sunday, when I am supposed to go to Lincoln. Right now it looks like we are going to be ok and the worst of it will be to the south of us. I really don't want weather to put a damper on my trip.

Today is Trash Day as you know it is a sore subject. I think I am going to be irritated every Thursday as I take my trash to the curb.

At least today is the gateway to the break.

More tomorrow.

Christmas wish #1 - A little common sense in our local government!

There is a nice ring to the sound of Wednesday this week. Two days left until break and it seems like I am running in sand towards the finish line. I am not sure why this week has seemed so long but it is dragging. One thing bad about heading into a break is I have a tendency to just put things off. I tell myself, after break I will take a look at that. If a teacher needs someting that isn't an emegency, I say, "Give me a call after break and I will come and take a look.". The procrastinator in me comes out BIG TIME. Once January comes, I am depressed about being back and I have a boat load of work to do.

Oh well, I'll worry about that in January...lol

Both of the kids teams lost last night. Drew had 2 points in a ten point loss and Jess has 4 points in a 30 something point loss. Both of them are ready for the Christmas break. I feel bad for the girls. They work really hard and just can't get a win or even be competitive. They should get their first win Thursday. We play a 2A school that isn't very strong. I hope we win, it will be nice to go into Christmas on a high note.

I attended the DMACC orientation last night and found out I have a lot of work to do. My instructor books aren't in yet but they at least gave me student versions. I have two huge textbooks to work with. There is a list of competencies the students should possess after taking my course so I have to develop a class using that as a reference. I have decide my grade scale, setup my class rules and policies, create assignments and tests, and develop a lesson plan to use for the instruction during class. There are a couple of people that also teach DMACC classes that work at our high school so I am going to ask them what they do for some of this. It seems like I have a bunch to do prior to the 7th.

Wednesday is early out at school. It is also known as Chicken, Chicken, Cripito day. They have the same lunch on Wedneday - A spicy chicken sandwich, a normal chicken sandwish or a cripito. It is the same every Wednesday. FYI - I have no idea what a cripito is. I don't eat the school lunch because I think they rip people off and are not good to the kids. I would rather go hungry than give them any more money than I have to.

I hinted a few days back that the garbage people are wanting thing to be easier for them. Well, the city council, the mayor and the city manager, in their infinite wisdom has deemed it necessary for all the citizens of Perry to put their garbage out with the following stipulations:

• No garbage cans of any kind can be put at the curb
• All garbage is to be put in no larger than 40 gallon bags
• These bags are to be tied and left on the curb the morning of pickup
• A limit of 4 bags per household will be picked up.

The reasoning behind this is they have had a bunch of workman comp claims and they are trying to limit the physical demands on the garbage men in an attempt to limit the injuries.

WARNING: IF YOU ARE NOT IN THE MOOD TO LISTEN TO A RANT DO NOT CONTINUE READING THIS BLOG - HAVE A GREAT DAY AND I WILL HAVE MORE TOMORROW!

What the hell is that all about! Garbage men worried about the physical nature of their jobs! THAT IS THEIR JOBS! IT IS PHYSICAL - YOU LIFT GARBAGE ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. Get over it or find a new job! To me it is like me going to my boss and saying the work is too TECHNICAL, we need to find a way to DUMB IT DOWN a bit. My brain just can't take all the technology!

I am disgusted on two fronts. 1- The lazy, crying, wimpy garbage men that are crying like a bunch of babies about how hard their jobs are. GET OVER IT. LIFE IS HARD! GABAGE MEN SHOULD BE HAPPY TO HAVE A CITY JOB WITH GOOD BENEFITS! BE GRATEFUL! 2 - The city council need their asses kicked to go along with such nonsense. When has this community decided the citizens work for the city instead of the other way around. They need to get a clue and get a handle on how to make the city work for the citizens not the other way around. The council contantly complains about people not wanting to move to Perry! Well maybe if we didn't have the tail wagging the dog, people would come!

Ok, sorry about all that but it needed to be said. You know, I actually feel a little better.

Off to start my day.