I so need my own office.

I have 1 hour and 36 minutes a day that there are no children present so I can grade, attendance, copy, plan, respond to work email, pick up the room, clear to do items from my desk, or blog. I like these 96 minutes at least 48 of them are Special K free. Which means most of my work gets done then. What I don't get done I do after school or at home. I don't like that. Right now I am in the middle of the time I would have with just me in the office, and Special K is here. And talking out load to no one. Except to bug me, which is always fun. She also likes to ask me questions that I have to stop what I am doing to look up the email that has the info that she wanted. The real funny part is that she has the same email. Why I needed to drop what I am doing to look that up for her is beyond me. This is usually when I leave the room to do other things. But then she will yell from the office for me to get something out of her desk. Then I just leave the building altogether. I find this annoying and counter productive to my work schedule. And I am so frustrated I needed to vent ie. writing out this blog posting which also eats in to my productivity.

Moral of this story everything is Special K's fault. World Hunger: Special K Fighting in the Middle East: Special K Childhood Obesity: Special K The Fact my next door neighbor is really loud in the morning: Special K.

This has been another segment of how Special K is sucking my will to live.

What is going on?

Yea so last night thought pretty mild. I hadn't had lunch that day and my whole eating for the day had been a granola bar I had at 7am. So 4 jack and cokes got the better of me. I was fine until I got home and the rush of drunk hit me and I was, to say the least, a bit giggly. That is when I decided to blog and make Chicken Tikka Marsala. This might be why at 3 am I awoke to heartburn and a headache.

To make matters worse we are quickly approaching solo and ensemble time. Though not always bad, it's also not always good. For instance the children in the band room right now "playing" through their solo's. One is a junior in high school "playing"* a song I played in 6th grade. Judges are much less forgiving when you stand under 5 feet tall, but not when you could grow a full beard. To say it is awful is a mild understatement. Special K is working with him right now and I just cringe on every "note". I also worked with a group that I wasn't sure were playing the wrong note or was just that out of tune with themselves. Tough call sometimes.

Well all of this is bringing back the heartburn and the headache with a vengeance. God I love teaching... when can I start looking for a new job?

* by playing, I mean butchering.

Ok...

So I am working on the parade for the big gay parade and tonight I met with the president of pride and one of the chairs for the pride festival. We met at a bar. So to make a long story short, I am drunk. 5 jack and cokes later and it's a school night. So much for the diet. The upside to all of this is that I will sleep well tonight. However the morning may be rough.Yeah...

So over it.

Winter can go home. I have never been a fan of cold weather to start but this snow needs to go. It's like that guest you didn't invite, or the one who leaves a half eaten ham sandwich in your Christmas tree, this snow has over stayed it's welcome. The city really hasn't recovered from last week let alone ready to start a clearing of the new snow. Chances of me getting another snow day is slim and having to sludge through the traffic in the morning is not a fun thought. I so need to be living somewhere it is either sunny and so very rarely snows or I don't have to drive.

I please summer come soon.

Creatively cooking with constraints.

So the diet has left me missing large meals. I am not starving by any means but I do get that "oh so very full" feeling and maybe that is a good thing. Many times I go past the osvf feeling and go straight to the "oh so very uncomfortable" feeling. So I have been experimenting with low cal ingredients to make a larger and satisfying meal. By experiment I mean I look around my kitchen say I like this, this and this. Now will they taste fine together. I tend to stick with variations on a theme. I like recipes yet I like to do my own thing. Today I am trying my hand at a baked pasta dish. I added some chicken and orange peppers and it turned out pretty good. It's pretty simple.

Ingredients:
1 small chicken breast
1/2 cup of pasta (whatever you want I like the spiral kind)
1/2 cup sauce (I improv mine with canned tomato's but you can use what you want)
1/4 cup grated cheese (I like cheddar)
1/4 an orange pepper
Spices (Your choice I used Sage, Basil, Ground Mustard, Majoram Leaves, Black pepper and oregano)

Bake the chicken breast, sprinkle sage, basil, ground mustard and marjoram on the chicken. It doesn't have to be fully done it will finish baking in the dish. When the chicken is well on it's way to being done take it out and dice it up into small piece and put into a small baking dish.

Boil the pasta till it just starts boiling it will finish cooking in the dish. Drain the pasta and add to the chicken. Dice the orange pepper and add it to the baking dish. Add about 2 spoon fulls of sauce over the chicken, pasta and peppers sprinkle a small amount of the cheese with that then add black pepper and oregano. Mix it all together in the dish then add the rest of the sauce over the top of everything a little more black pepper and oregano as well as the rest of your cheese.

Put in the oven at 350 for about 10-15 minutes. It serves about two and is roughly 300 calories a serving (or 600 if you eat the whole thing) and very yummy.

I steam up about a hand full of veggies to go with and it makes for a good meal and pretty low cal and easy. I am sure every time I do this I will do it differently depending what is in my fridge. :)

I look at it this way it was easy and quick. Two things I like in my cooking. I like to get right to the eating.

Screw Flanders or Bon Appetit

Snow days

Though I love the snow days I would like to put in a request that they only occur on Mondays or Fridays. The reason being? It really throws my week off. When I get up the morning after a snow day I am confused because I feel like there should be another day of sleeping in. I do not function well in the mornings so throwing a curve ball like that really can mess with my head. The other reason is that all day today I kept thinking it was the beginning of the week because I had had a day off so recently. So yes nice to have but really messes with my head.

Not that it would take that much to do.

Some good news and some bad news.

Bad news: 5:45 am Every school in the area was either closed today or on a two hour delay. As I was getting up this morning I was hearing about slide off, car accidents and road closers all over the city. So the question arises why the hell did we come to school at the regular time. This seems idiotic to me. Not that I want to make up the time later on but I think it would be in the best interest of our students and parents to allow more time to get to school safely. But what do I know.

Good News: 6:00am I am at 220 which is 8 lbs less than where I was 4 weeks ago. I even splurged last night and bought some ice cream.

Bad News: 6:45am The roads are just awful. Upon leaving every stop light I have almost no traction. People are driving like idiots and I can't see lines on the roads. So I figure if I don't drive head on into traffic it shouldn't be a problem.

Good News: 7:00am The roads are terrible and the people are stupid but hey there are no school buses on the road. BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE IS HAVING SCHOOL!

Bad News: 7:20am Waiting in the line to get up the hill to get to school. Anyone else notice that I left at 6:45am and it usually takes 15 minutes for me to get to work.

Good News: 7:30am Still waiting line and I am not at school. So a little bit of an up shot.

Bad News: 7:45am I made it to school it started 10 minutes ago and the kids are bugging me.