In Other News...

I turned 32 this past weekend.  I had some sweet lil kids bring me birthday gifts to school.  I guess they just paid attention to the birthday calendar I have in my classroom and were thoughtful enough to bring me something (I sure didn't announce my birthday...it's not as much fun when you're in your 30s!).

The husband and I went and saw "Dark Shadows".  My husband got a little snippy with the refreshments worker.  I guess it was because he caved and donated a dollar to the Children's Miracle Network at the ticket counter, and then the refreshments chick kept trying to get him to upgrade his popcorn, upgrade his drink, and donate again to the Children's Miracle Network.  He tried to tell her that he already donated at the door and she mentioned something again and he went off about already spending $20 for some popcorn and 2 drinks and something about squeezing him for every penny he's got and so on.  It was mildly embarrassing, but I could totally see his point.  (Oh, we did enjoy the movie...but I love all Tim Burton and Johnny Depp films!)

After the movie we went to eat and drink beer at BJ's Restauarant and Brewhouse.  I love their California burgers!  Then after that we went to Ganache and got a few delicious cupcakes (instead of a birthday cake).  I am in *love* with their chocolate peanut butter cupcakes.  They have a peanut butter ball in the chocolate cake, and then are topped with the most delicious peanut butter icing.  To die for!

Then my present was the new Charlaine Harris "Sookie Stackhouse" novel, "Deadlocked".  I read it in a couple days.

All in all it was a good day.  I'll leave you with a picture of what 32 looks like. :)

I have the worst luck!

I thought PayPal was supposed to be the most secure service in the whole entire world.  I switched to pay my Netflix through PayPal after I had my debit card number stolen again.  That's all I really use it for, besides the occasional eBay purchase.  So imagine my surprise when I came home from work yesterday and checked my email on my phone and saw that apparently I had sent around $2,500 in donations overseas to someone going by the name "Rick Ross" while I was at work.  The subject for all of my donations..."wheezy".  Really?  REALLY?! 

PayPal had emailed me after the 4th "donation" had been made to tell me they had limited my account and I needed to change my password and gave instructions on how to dispute any transactions.  So I pulled up my laptop to take care of all of this, and of course my internet was out!  So you better believe I ran back to my car and drove 100 mph back to the school so I could use a computer.  I got everything changed and reported all the transactions.

Now it's a waiting game.  The 5 "donations" I did not authorize are pending out of my checking account...so yeah, someone who gets paid once a month got more than her monthly paycheck taken out of her checking account balance today. Yay me. PayPal has temporarily credited my PayPal account for 3 of the 5 transactions.  I am waiting to see if they credit me for the other two.  "Rick Ross" apparently refunded me for one of the $655 "donations" he stole, but that's only showing up on PayPal at this time and not my checking account.  He apparently has 7 days to prove those donations were valid.  The investigation PayPal is doing can take up to 10 business days.  My account may not be fully refunded for up to 30 days.  My bank said just to let PayPal handle it.  I. HATE. WAITING. Especially when thousands of my dollars are involved.

It also pisses me off that someone has nothing better to do than steal money from people who work hard to earn it!  It's not easy being a teacher.

Oh, and a google search revealed that the real Rick Ross is a rapper with a charity.  But that charity is in the United States, NOT overseas.  And when I went to his website, there was no PayPal button.  And I doubt an official website would use Hotmail.  Who actually uses Hotmail anymore???  I'll tell ya who...thieves.

Oh, kids

Teaching is definitely never dull.  I have a student who spends the whole class period talking, so his work rarely gets completed unless I can sit right next to him and keep him on task.  Well, that is near to impossible when you have 19 other people in a room who are needing help as well.  So sometimes he has to come see me during his PE time for me to help him get caught up.  He came today so I could work with him, and of course he started talking like he always does, and we got off on a tangent about missing pet posters around town and how much he wished his mom would let him go around and look for these animals so he could earn the reward money.  I was telling him about a cat that our neighbor had lost and was offering a $500 reward for, and then he suddenly says, "Ok, we need to focus and get back to work."  I wanted to die laughing!  I have probably told him to focus and get on task about a million times this year, so to hear him tell me that just about cracked me up!

Goodbye, Mitzi

Way back in the fall of 1998, I met my future husband.  The first time I went to his house to watch some movies with him and his cousins, I walked up to the door and a cute little dog greeted me.  Her name was Mitzi.  I was later told that it was so weird that Mitzi didn't bark at me, because she barked at all strangers.  (I guess she knew I was good people and would be around for a while before I even did. ha!)  Growing up I had always wanted a dog.  I think I was even convinced that the neighbor's dog was mine and always tried to pet it through the fence.  So when I moved in with my husband and Mitzi in 1999, I got the dog I always wanted.  She was such a well-behaved dog and so super-smart!  I know Labs and Golden Retrievers are supposed to be so very smart and little dogs not so much, but I'm telling you...our little Mitzi was smart!

A few years later we got married and moved to Texas, and ended up getting some cats and a miniature pinscher along the way.  Mitzi was still the loyal, sweet dog she had always been.  She was the best at what Michael called "regulating" the cats...meaning she would bark and growl at them and chase them off. Not really a game I approved of, but then I got her to "regulate" Michael, so that was kind of sweet revenge for my cats!

When we lived at the lake, there was a wild, mean cat who was raping my poor cat...and Mitzi treed that bad cat and rescued my kitty!  She always got along with new animals we brought home for the most part, and I even have several pictures of her napping with cats.  :)

She was the best traveling dog...she would lay down and just chill out in car rides.  My min pin does anything but! Mitzi even used to ride around on a motorcycle with Michael (before I met him...truly man's best friend).

The past few years of her life we watched her slowly weaken.  She started sleeping more.  One day she stopped going up the stairs.  She didn't run around as much anymore.  She'd only go outside to go to the bathroom, not spend hours basking in the sun like she used to.  Then she started to become incontinent and finally last weekend, her back legs quit working for her altogether.  That's when we decided it was time to say goodbye.  I don't know if it would have been a little easier if she would have just died in her sleep, because making the decision to end her life for her was rough.  But it really was the best thing for her.  She was suffering and her quality of life would not be good without the use of her legs.  So it has been a rough week in our household.  She was my first dog.  She was my husband's best friend for a very, very long time. 

1997-2012

Ham

Yes, this is really a post about ham.  I hate shaved deli style ham with a passion, but will eat the mess out of a big ol' ham.  Maybe once a month we will buy a ham and I will score it, shove cloves in it, and maybe top with some pineapple and let it heat up.  Then we will feast on what was a pretty "traditional" ham dinner at my house when I was growing up (ham, mashed potatoes, and corn).  After that, we have a ton of leftover ham because there are only the two of us.  So I have learned how to be creative with using up the rest of the ham.  I have youtubed how to make omelettes, so I love to dice up some ham and make a ham-and-cheese omelette.  We *love* cheesey potato casserole, and diced ham goes beautifully into that.  And for the first time ever, I made ham salad and it was surprisingly good.  I was thinking it would be kind of barfy, like tuna salad, but I found I recipe online that I not really somewhat followed because the husband and I like and don't like different things.  The recipe called for ham (of course) and hard-boiled eggs.  Also mayo, parsley, lemon juice, and minced onion.  I changed the sweet pickle relish to dill pickle relish because neither one of us is too fond of sweet pickles.  I omitted the red bell pepper because my husband refuses to eat anything a bell pepper has been in.  I left out the cayenne pepper altogether.  I plopped this concoction on an onion roll and gobbled it up.  The lemon juice and dill pickle relish gave it a nice tang that kind of counter-acted the sweetness of the ham (that I had put brown sugar on when I originally cooked it).  So now we still have a little bit of ham left over.  Do you have a favorite ham recipe? (Don't suggest ham and cheese sandwiches, because those make me wanna yak too.)

Fun Times

Last night we had a line of storms move through the area (you may have heard about the tornadoes in Dallas).  Our power here only flickered briefly, but I woke up to the news that only 1 of the campuses in my school district had power, so we would be starting school late today.  Of course I was thrilled to be able to go back to bed for a little bit!  When I arrived at the school at 10:30, I was told that the power company didn't expect to restore power until 8:00 tonight, so we would feed the kids lunch and dismiss at 12:30!  So for two hours in the dark we colored pictures and played games.  A few kids didn't even show up to school, and the kids were too wound up to really do anything more meaningful.  For some reason it seems to be really exciting to be at school in the dark with toilets that don't flush (because they are those self-flushing toilets that require electricity).  Of course I had a few kids ask me if we could just watch a movie or something...and I just had to shake my head and laugh. 

Political Rant...I guess.

So it's been almost a month since I have posted anything.  I have been busy at school getting ready for the first round of STAAR testing.  The testing situation in Texas is utterly ridiculous and has gotten worse with the implementation of STAAR.  Since so much rides on the results of this one test, classrooms across the state are now basically just teaching test-prep.  The subjects that aren't tested don't get the attention and time spent on teaching them that they should.  It's my opinion that this does cause the students not to get the well-rounded education that they deserve.  I won't spend hours and hours ranting about all of this, instead I will just ask Texans to register to vote, and then find out who will be for bettering public education, funding it properly, and vote for them.  (If you live in the Cherokee County area, do NOT vote for Robert Nichols.  He voted for all the horrible changes that cost education its funding and teachers their jobs.  Chuck Hopson may be a Republican, but he stands up for public education.  And for goodness sake, no one should re-elect Rick Perry! Ever.)

I had intended this blog post to be just an update on what's been happening in our lives, but obviously it took a turn.  So I will leave it at this. Have a wonderful weekend!