So for christmas this year i'm asking my parents to sign me up for for my certification test study guide, because I'll be able to take it in two months!!! Whoohoo!!! I looked at some of it online, it looks a little tough, I guess it just depends what they decide to ask the most questions on.

Student teaching is going awesome, Middle Schoolers are pretty nifty, kind of sassy, but at least they keep things interesting. I intend to start putting up pictures of all the stuff I've been doing, it's been crazy, but everything looks great. Both my teachers have been awesome, I totally got the best luck of the draw, I can't imagine this going any better. I teach by myself for the last two weeks after thanksgiving, and then I'm done!

However, then I've got to find a job, so if anyone knows of any openings, feel free to text me :D Although I might just sub. teach, also enjoyable.

Well now I'm a little bummed because the Elementary School section of my student teaching ends in two weeks! I spent this week running the classroom and it went awwwwwwesome. We sewed, we painted, we drew, we painted some more, and we make some super cool animal ink prints.

All in all it went amazingly well except for the girl who ate the glue stick (totally just bit the head off like it was ice cream, thank god for nontoxic) and the other one who accidently chopped off one side of her hair with the scissors...yeahhhh.

But yeah, I'm getting to know the kids really well and all the teachers at Hickory Woods are super fun to sit around and chat with. Today's discussion was about how salespeople always seem to want to tell you you're wearing the wrong bra size, but can never help you find the right one. Plus the other student teachers are really nice, it'll be a bummer not having lunch with them anymore on Fridays. But! I'm getting close to the end! Mister degree, here I come!

Alright, so on all my lesson plans they shorten Standards and benchmarks to STD's and Benchmarks.
I may be immature but I giggle a little to myself every time I see it ;)

Student teaching is INSANE.
although extremely fun, i must say.

Knowing a bunch of the kids from summercare is cool because they come up everyday and say hi to me.

But yeah, the breakdown is, there's 4 classes a day, five days a week, one hour each. With 25 kids in each class that's 500 names to figure out. Oh boy. Plus like...two or three hours of prep time everyday, which is cool.

Plus, even though I'm not technically supposed to start teaching full time for two more weeks, I started teaching full days last Thursday :D Granted, its not everyday, and my cooperative teacher is awesome ad helps me out a bunch, its definitely a trip :D

But yeah, I'm certainly going to be scarce for the next few weeks, this is CRAZY!!!

:D

Well things have been going swimmingly, mostly because all I've been doing is working myself to pieces and swimming for multiple hours afterwards. The kids are grand, art is busy busy, and I've been keeping in shape with millions of games of dodgeball :)

Steve and assorted manfriends spent all of Saturday cooking this huuuuuge dinner of lasagna and garlic bread and pasta and salad so that we could have an italian food and wine night, which was pretty amazing. I watched Dark Crystal and passed out shortly after of food overdose.

Still determined to see My Sisters Keeper, but it only plays during my work hours, which is no good! Perhaps on my vacation in three weeks it'll still be in theatres (crosses fingers).

Other than that, lazy days. Went out on the boat with Zara and Evan who I haven't seen in ages, muchos fun. Need to find more people for tubing :) Looks like this weekend is going to be nice.... :D

Bah.
So we finally found time to drive out to Ann Arbor at 11am to go to Sushi.com for their sushi buffet.
Turns out they have new ownership and/or new managing techniques and have completely ousted Sunday morning sushi buffet.
Lame.

Walked around Ann Arbor and bought some necklaces. Eh.

Came back and wasted the rest of my day. Lots of paperwork to finish, very little time to go to Ann Arbor again and turn it in.

Looks like its going to be nice this week, if anyone wants to boat, leave me a message :)
Time to go back to work work work :P

Well it goes to say that the bonfire was a HUGE success, I'm glad those of you that could make it did, good times. Kudos to the people who brought food and drinks, the wine, sangria, fancy bottle liquor and chips were grand.

The fireworks were really cool too.

If you lost a yellow sweatshirt, I've got it.

I'll probably have another bonfire in July, so heads up.

Well, of course I get all my teaching paperwork settled and pay for fingerprinting and my dad's company decides to lay off 1/3 of it's workforce.

They haven't actually decided who's getting fired yet, but if my dad loses his job I totally have to trade student teaching for a full time job.

Awesome.

So I kindly ask that everyone cross your fingers for me and pray to your assorted Gods, because if this happens, I am going to be quite distraught.

Stupid economy.

Wellllllllll my first week of work is over. All in all, not so bad.
The supervisors this year are awesome, we have tons of fun.
A little girl told me I sounded like a librarian, and so therefore I should quit my job and be one :)
Another little girl marveled at my grey hairs. Apparently grey is the new blonde in the land of OH GOD DON'T PUT THAT IN YOUR MOUTH. Which is basically my new slogan.

Other than that, the kids are awesome, they're all excited about arts and crafts, so that's nice for a change (last year I'd put all this effort into putting things together and like...2 kids would do it) and they're all pretty funny too. Should be a good year.

Thirty hours a week is definitely killing me a little bit, especially with getting ready for student teaching. I definitely come home, instantly pass out on the couch for an hour, and then up and research ideas until the will to run around in the nice weather is too much to ignore :) But don't get me wrong, I'm extremely happy to have the hours, I'm not even sure how they managed to give them to me (pretty sure aides aren't supposed to get more than 20 a week) but I'm certainly not going to question it, I've got some serious debt to pay off (like, three credit cards worth...oops).

Friday night was Zara's birthday, HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZARA! and it was a blast. Went to Vinology for dinner, which I've been wanting to do ever since I saw it installed next to my favorite tea place. Met some cool people, ate some seriously expensive fish and cheese insert-word-here-that-i-couldn't-pronounce and drank wine like I was rich and fancy. When we ran out of money we all hopped back to Zara's, changed into whatever clothes we could find in her closet (I looked awesome in cloud pajamas) and ran around in the torrential downpour. Probably the most fun I've had in a long while, running up and down the streets in very little clothing and jumping in puddles as people drove past and looked at us like we were psychotic. Good times.

Saturday night was the last Ypsilanti house party, and it was HUGE. I've never seen so many people shoved onto one lawn. Campfire and drinks ensued until someone brought out the slip and slide. Nothing better than a handful of girls running around in their bathing suits at 1:30 in the morning. Plus the guys had water balloons so it was really more like slip and slide dodgeball, which was a blast. Safe to say, a great way to ring out an awesome year, I'll miss that house, but I'm sure we'll all find some new place to party and watch Grey's.

Today I get to make a mad scientist out of construction paper, burn as much of the excess leaves and twigs as I can, write a half a paper, and hope I can get the pile of dirt that is supposed to be my backyard in order by next weekend for the bonfire!

need to rememeber this.

http://picasaweb.google.com/karmas.monkey

work started today.
biter kid doesn't bite anymore.
thank the lord.

i made a giant kickass paper rocketship, now my name is ms. rocketship.
i'm cool with that.

i also got sunburned on only the left side of my face.
can't wait 'til i'm half tan.

Oooooh boy.

So our septic tank is about to explode and the city peoples are being all awesome and saying that our house no longer "follows code" so we have to have bulldozers come and tear up our whole yard and move all the tanks around so that they're not near the road or the water or the driveway or that dandelion...which is just silly and mildly ridiculous.

Plus my dad thinks the company he works for is going under, so he's searching for jobs in Colorado which is sorta kinda cool aside from the taking pay cuts part and me possibly having to wait on Student Teaching so we can all get full time jobs to pay for stuff. (Although that's like, worst case scenario, but entirely possible)

Yay economy.

But at least I have a killer summer job that starts soon (and I can't wait!) and the mister and I are having a date day today where I can eat all the chinese and chocolate and wine I want, so not all bad. Although this morning he went out to steal a flower for me and severely jammed his toe. It looks crazy. A good portion of his foot has turned purple. But the flower is gorgeous.

Plus, Up is coming out soon, and I am so totally going to see it (and I'm stealing Kristina to come see it too!) Hopefully I get to see Angels and Demons sometime this week too, I've heard it's awesome!

But yeah, in general, really trying to save money in case worst comes to worst, so I'll probably be cutting back on lots of movies and eating out... but only some, it IS summer ;)

And the boats should be running soon, whoo!

my dentist tried to kill me.
i am currently chewing on ice cream.
tomorrow i teach preschoolers.
oh boy.

"if this goes off while we're filling it, it's time to de-ass the area with the quickness."

(as mythbusters fill a steel drum with match-heads for later ignition)

"de-ass with the quickness" is now my new favorite phrase.

5:00 Woke up
6:00-8:00 Went to work
8:00-11:00 Went to ceramics to work on final projects
11:00-12:00 Quick lunch break and trying to rescue my glaze covered pants.
12:00-2:30 Pants a lost cause. Worked on watercolor hardcore. Somehow made almost no progress.
2:30-5:30 Went back to work for afternoon shift.
5:30-9:30 Actual ceramics class. We bbq'd on some cement blocks and talked about birth control. Guys are funny when they blush.
9:30-Whenever I pass out. Still working on watercolor. OMG.

Two weeks left...two weeks left...

Holy crap. I can't believe I've only got three weeks left before I'm basically a teacher. Granted, I still have to go through the insanity that is Student Teaching (and i've been reading the manual (seriously, there's a manual) and it looks like it'll be quite a trip...) and pass all my tests, but by this time next year I'll probably be a part of some school somewhere...eep!

Now naturally I'm pretty sure I won't be finding an Art Teaching job any time soon, most of them are out west, but I bet I could get a job as a Parapro, or maybe even a playground lady, with all the connections I've got for Walled Lake. Could be fun.

Easter was nice. Lots of food. Lots and lots of chocolate.

Looks like the lake is doing the fireworks show a week early this year, so I'll be able to have a bonfire AND people can still do their thing on July 4th, which is awesome.

I hijacked another tree from Steve's neighborhood, so now I've got like...four.

Now I've just got to bust a move and finish all this stuff I have left to do, it's a lot more than I thought I had, whoops, but I figure I worked really hard over the weekend, so if I just keep on trucking for the next few days (yeah, i said it) I should be alright...oh boy.

But anywho, happy warm weather all! whoo!

Sooooo I went to my student teaching meeting and it started out pretty dull, a lady standing up on this tall stage behind a bid wooden podium talking about a bunch of stuff that was written in this big packet. Like how we have to get speech tests and hearing tests and blood tests and blah de blah. Although I did find out that I have to get re-fingerprinted, which I fail to see the reasoning behind, because aren't fingerprints the one thing in life that never change? Anywho...

We took a small break so she could drink some water and I was talking to this nice dude about where he was from and what he wanted to teach and the like and about ten minutes later I wonder when this lady is going to start talking again.

All of a sudden I look up as she falls forward onto the podium, I think she passed out, and then the whole entire thing, lady and all, comes CRASHING OFF THE STAGE AND ONTO THE FLOOR. We're talking like, 60 pounds of podium, big noise!

So people in the front go rushing to the nice lady because she's clearly out cold and just fell off a large stage holding a huge podium, and somebody yells "Does anyone know CPR?"

Well naturally, the 450 of us being teachers in training all decide to yell back "YES" in unison, which I found a little amusing later on after the EMU security guards came in and shooed us all to our separate advisers.

So yeah, that was a crazy afternoon, they didn't send out a big email or anything, so I imagine the lady is fine, I got part of my Fall packet, looks like I'll be crazy busy. Plus the worst part is I probably won't be able to get a job while I'm doing it, so I'm going to be broooooooooooke between Sept. - Dec.

Exciting though, I'm almost done! Whoo!

So my lizard is in breeding season or whatnot. I bought her a box and threw some soil in it with a heating pad underneath. Ever since, she's found a new game to play called "Let's jam ourselves into the box and see how much dirt we can get all over Denise's floor".

Apparently this is supposed to last for a couple weeks.

Greaaaaaaat.

(it is kinda cute to watch though, just the after-cleaning sucks...)

I have a nickel in my bank account.
A NICKEL.
Special thanks goes out to the job that decided I needed less hours, and the degree which costs a million dollars in art supplies. Granted, I'm greatly enjoying it.

In recent news, my lizard is full of eggs (not pregnant, think chickens) and she's getting HUGE.
So cross your fingers she lives through it because apparently they have a 50/50 chance of living every year.
Awesome.

And also, five more weeks of school and I'm done taking classes for a very very long time!!!
Except for the online class I have to take this summer, which is going to be so easy I'm not counting it as education.

And now it's time to clean :)

Kristina and I went to see Flogging Molly tonight.
And aside from her getting accosted by some homeless guy...

It.
Was.
Amazing.

I danced and jumped and got thrown around and met some very cool people.
And now I am uber sore.
Time for a shower and the best nap ever.

Whew! Finally got around to buying new batteries and a memory card for my camera so I think I'll start trying to get some good photos of my recent work up. Been a good semester so far, have to make 20 bowls a week, which is a little crazy, but meh, I'll survive. Watercolor is so much fun, my teacher put up my first piece in the showcase, which I thought was kind of cool. Children's literature is ridiculously hard and moderately boring, so I don't know how that class will end up. I'm going to miss all my daycare kids when I leave after this semster, one of them asked me to be him mommy last week, that was pretty adorable. I've officially given away about nine pairs of gloves, thank goodness they're cheap. I won't miss the hundreds of armed robberies we seem to be having lately, three cheers for Ypsilanti...

Valentine's day is Saturday, Steve and I are going to sit around and make sushi, drink wine and watch star trek. So pretty much like every other day, but this one will include raw fish and chopping up seaweed. Delicious. This week I have to write a small paper, crank out some serious ceramics stuff, write a couple lesson plans and think up some new things for the kids to do. Generally a lazy week. Really...not that much to update. Gotta start looking at OCC's summer classes, I missed one, but I think I'll be able to make it up by Fall when I do Student Teaching.