Wigs are Cool!

So apparently, having hair that looks like a wig is not a bad thing.  If that's the case, I should just buy a wig and save time fixing my hair every morning.  A couple of the girls in one of my classes are always telling me my hair looks like a wig.  When I'm like, "gee, thanks??" they try to reassure me that it's pretty and that's not a bad thing.  Another teacher said that when she makes her hair super-straight, they say the same thing to her.  So now, every once in a while during their class I will move my scalp around and mutter under my breath something about my wig slipping. 

Vroom! Vroom!

Michael has been wanting a motorcycle for forever, and I have been wanting to sell my old Neon since we got the truck a few months ago.  Well, we ended up doing a trade...car for bike.  Looking up the values, it seems to have been a pretty even trade.  So here it is...the 2005 Suzuki C50 Boulevard.

LOL OMG

Yesterday during my last period class I overheard a discussion at the back of my classroom.  There are three kids that sit at this particular group.  They were debating whether or not I was married.  One kid said, "Of course Mrs. Beck is married, I mean, she looks married."  Another one said, "No she doesn't, she looks like a teenager!" and the third one chimed in, "Yeah, she's been looking like a teenager for a while.  She probably is one."  My thoughts on that...A+ to you, sir. Forget your homework!

Four-eyes Update

In case you were wondering, I did in fact wear my glasses this week *and* so did my little friend who thought the glasses made her look "old".  Another child who told me her glasses were broken and hadn't worn them in a while even came to school on Friday and had her glasses on!  Hers were bent and had the lenses half popped out, but she wore 'em!  Go me! Haha!

4 Weeks and 8 Pounds

Well, even after a massive calorie meal at The Cheesecake Factory AND a massive calorie piece of cheesecake AND a few Mocha Toffee Crunch brownies...I still managed to lose one pound this week.  I completed the 4-week program I started on the Biggest Loser Challenge game this morning and was crowned "the biggest loser"!  I lost a total of 8 pounds these last four weeks and I am super-duper stoked!

I have about 8 more pounds I would like to lose, so I am going to start another program on the game and keep on keeping on.  It feels good to see that number on the scale finally going down, instead of up, up, up, up.  :)

Relay for Life

 It's that time of year again!  The time when I start begging for donations.  I am participating in the annual Relay for Life event that benefits the American Cancer Society.  My personal fund-raising goal is $100.  If you are able to donate anything I would greatly appreciate it!

You can either go to my personal page and click the "donate" option there, or you can mail me your donation.  Let me know if you need my address.  I have until the middle of April to collect all of my money.

There is also an option to order a luminaria for $5 if you would like to have one lit in honor or memory of someone who has/had cancer.  The luminaria ceremony is really neat.  They wait until dark and line the track with the luminarias and scroll the names of the people on a large screen. It's a very quiet and reverent time and makes you really think about all the people who are affected by cancer.  It's really amazing to see the number of people who have fought cancer being represented by all the luminarias.

Anyway, I would encourage you to attend a Relay in your area.  I am going to cease rambling now and thank you in advance for any support. :)

Email Subscription Box is Now Up and Running!

OK!  I used my trusty Google and fixed the email subscription box.  Now if you sign up to get email notifications via the form on the right, you will get posts in your inbox from this blog.  I'm sorry if you used the other one and are getting weird notifications.  This one is fixed!

They Make Me Look OLD

A little girl I have in one of my classes is pretty much blind as a bat.  After waiting a whole semester for her to get glasses, she *finally* got a pair!  The first week she was so proud of the glasses and would go on about how she could actually see.  Then this past week at school, her glasses haven't made an appearance once.  I asked her daily where those wonderful glasses were, and she kept telling me they were at home.  Once I helped her devise a plan to get those glasses to school each day, she finally blurts out, "I don't like those glasses.  They make me look old!"  Now, I have no idea how a 9 year old girl can possibly look old, so I made a deal with her.  I told her I would wear my glasses next week if she would wear hers, and that we could look old together.  She seemed to think that sounded good, so we will see if she keeps up with her end of the bargain! There is definitely never a dull moment in my profession. :)

Email Subscription Box Fail

So, I tried out the email subscription box gadget I had put at the end of my blog and it subscribed me to something called "box of feelings for you" which is *not* my blog. So I have removed that gadget. If you want email notifications when I post, let me know your email address and I will add you to what I know does work. Otherwise I do know the RSS option does work. I signed up my yahoo and can view posts on comments on my homepage.

Washing Machine Woes

Saturday night my washing machine broke during the final spin of the last load I did. We ended up calling Sears and they came out to the house today to look at it. Before they came, the tech told Michael that he knew exactly what it was and that if we didn't have the warranty the parts would cost $1,000. Yes, that's right...one THOUSAND dollars! Um, the washing machine itself didn't cost that much.

So I was prepared to face the fact that we were going to have to buy a new washing machine (there was no way I was spending that much to fix the old one). Then Michael calls me back and says the machine is still under warranty. Yay! But the bad news is that they won't be back to fix it until February 1st. I'm not looking forward to going to a laundromat these next few weeks, but there aren't really any other options. This is a time I miss being close to relatives...I've got no one's washing machine to go take advantage of! Haha

Big Fat Loser!

For Christmas this year Michael got me the "Biggest Loser Challenge" game for the Wii.  I have slowly regained some of the weight I had lost and want to get it back off before I end up regaining ALL of it!  For a while we had a personal trainer coming to our school and working with a group of teachers after school.  Just when I was starting to see a difference, he crapped out on us and quit coming.  Then I continued walking and doing workout DVD's with a couple of the teachers.  Over the break that fizzled and I enjoyed Christmas snacks like crazy!

So now for the past two weeks I have gotten more serious about this, and have actually lost 6 pounds!  One of the reasons my weight was coming back on is because I had gotten back into the habit of eating snacks after dinner, in the evening.  Also, I used to drink pop just once in a while (maybe 1 or 2 times a month), and that became 1 to 2 times every few days.  Empty calories!  So, the past two weeks I have pretty much eliminated evening snacks (I broke down and ate some Oreos two nights in a row), and I am drinking tea instead of Coke.  I also have been doing my Biggest Loser workouts.

What I like about this game is that I actually *pour* sweat when I am doing the routines.  I have had the Wii Fit Plus since July, and those routines are very low impact and are fun, but not very effective.  The Biggest Loser game has several pre-set routines, and also personalized ones if you do the fitness test.  Everything is customizable.  There is also a wide variety of exercises and you can incorporate a balance ball if you have one.

What I don't like about this game is the constant switching of the remote.  Each exercise either has you switching hands, putting it in your pocket, or moving the balance board out of the way.  It can get kind of annoying.  Also, the remote doesn't respond well in some of the exercises, so then you have Bob and Jillian yelling at you to try harder when you already are giving it 110%.  That can be frustrating.

Overall though, I think it is a great game and will help you lose weight.  You have to do a weekly weigh in, just like on the show, and that is a motivator for me.  I don't want to be eliminated from the game!

So if you are looking for something new to help drop some holiday weight, you might give The Biggest Loser Challenge a try. (:

Email Subscription

Hey y'all!  I put an email subscription gadget at the end of the page if you want to try it and see if it will notify your email when I post something new.  There is already a RSS feed subscription option...like if you use Yahoo it will add new posts to your homepage.  If neither of those work and you want to be notified when I post, let me know and I can sign you up for email notifications through my blog settings.  If you need help, just let me know. (:

The Slippery Slope and New Year's Resolution

For the past several years, this is what happens:  I clean the house (dust, vacuum, laundry, bathrooms...the works) on the weekend.  It looks good for about a day.  Then life goes on and stuff doesn't get picked up, put away, swept up, and by mid-week it is to the point where I would be embarassed to have someone stop by.  By then I think there's just a couple more days til "cleaning day", so I don't do anything about it.  As I am writing this I am looking around.  Today was cleaning day and already there is stuff on my freshly-vacuumed carpet.  Now, I don't want to become obsessed with cleaning (that's a good one!), but my New Year's resolution is to keep up with the house just enough that if a someone stops by, they will actually get to enter the house.  This will really just take a few minutes of my time each day, so there is absolutely no reason I can't keep this resolution.

So there you have it.  Before I go to bed, the leftovers will make it to the fridge and I will run my cordless vacuum over the carpet.

Happy New Year!

Back when Myspace was king, I enjoyed blogging whatever I felt like on my Myspace blog.  Then Facebook took over and I stopped using Myspace and the blog that was hosted there.  So now I have decided that I will just start blogging on an actual blog site.

I'm sure most of this will be totally uninteresting to the general public and will serve more as a journaling outlet for me.  That's ok.  I'm not trying to sell or promote anything here.  I will probably be just as random with my postings as I was on Myspace.  Sometimes it was a personal rant, sometimes it was a product review.  I posted videos that made me laugh and stories that made me sad.

Anyway, it's a new year and I need to get off the computer and start on my New Year's Resolution.  I'll write more about that later.