I have the best girls ever!!!

So I have been sick with the Flu for the past three days and my girls made me a get well card...this is what it said:

"If you weren't so like-able then maybe those darn germs wouldn't like you so much. Here's hoping you become more offensive!!! (to germs at least). Love 2E"

What kind of teenagers do that for an authority figure....gotta love the Gifties (gifted kids).

Let it Sneaux!!

So it snowed yesterday...CRAZY!

The kids were soo excited. Some of them had never seen snow and a lot of their teachers let them out of class to go play in it. It flurried for almost two hours and of course none of it stuck, but it did create a nice layer of ice all over my car :(.

Not a big fan of snow. I am glad that the heat got turned on in our dorm for this. That would have been COOLD.

I am almost done painting my room. Just two little pieces left. My room is in painting transition right now where most things are pulled towards the middle of the room and away from the walls so it feels quite cramped. Nothing is really plugged in so everythng is sitting around without purpose. I am ready to have my room back, then I will post photos for you!

Back from Break

I love Thanksgiving...

I don't know if anyone knew that...but it's my favorite holiday. It's not very long until winter break where I will get almost four weeks off (yaaay!), AND I will finally...after three long months...get to see Mike!

So tomorrow is Wednesday and my day off. It also happens to be another SLA's day off and we are going to help each other paint our apartments (rooms?). Should be a lot of fun...had a good time picking out colors and planning it out.

It's really cold here today and I don't like that one bit. Cold and rainey are things I was hoping to leave back in North Carolina...I know, I know, I'm not THAT far south.

I am thinking about starting my Christmas shopping so I don't have to do it all on X-mas eve like normal. This year people are getting magnets and Ramen...

I woke up and did my Yoga first thing this morning and even (h)ate my hot cereal. Apparently if you put cardemom and cinnemon on it, it is good for your digestion. I need to go grocery shopping (and christmas shopping), but I really just want to buy clothes for myself. October was expensive because I kept fixing my car, November was expensive because I moved and December is expensive because of the holidays. Is there such a thing as a cheap month?


Excuse my rambling...I'm running (still) on very little sleep. I had my first 6am IM SICK wake up call and wasn't able to go back to sleep after. I swear soon I'll have time to call my family.

FInally an entry from Mike

Alright it has been a while since I have written in the blog. I think in my last entry I talked about the trip out here and got right up to working at the winery so I'll talk about what I actually do at the winery. The cellar crew gets there at 7am and starts setting up the crush equipment. The crush equipment consists of an incline to take the grapes from the ground to the top of the destemmer. The stems are removed and the berries fall onto a vibrating grid that shakes tiny pieces of stuff out. Then they fall onto a conveyor belt and get sorted by 8 Mexican ladies. They finally fall off the belt through a crusher and into the pump where they are pumped into the tank. At the end of the day the equipment gets taken apart and cleaned. The grapes cold soak in the tank for 5 days then they start fermenting. The skins float to the top and form a cap. This cap has to be punched down into the juice to release the CO2 from underneath it and to get some oxygen in there. We do this by pumping juice from the bottom of the tank over the top with a sprinkler like device. There about 20 tanks to pump over twice a day each with time varying from 5 to 15 minutes each so it is a big job. The hardest part is moving the pump around all the equipment and hoses laying on the ground. In addition to pumpovers I also check every batch with a hydrometer to see how much sugar is left while it is fermenting. At the peak of harvest that took about 6 hours a day. If there was any time left I also made additions of yeast, acid, and water to tanks. The average day was about 12 hours long and some of them were 14 or 16 hours. I even worked 18 hours one day. For about 4 weeks I worked an average of 75 hours a week hence there was not much updating of the blog.
Now things have calmed down. Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I am off work from wednesday night until sunday. Sunday night the winery is taking the crew out to dinner so I am looking forward to that. I'm at my Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Jim's house right now. I saw Grandma and Grandpa last night for Thanksgiving dinner which was great. Tonight my cousins are coming for dinner which will be fun. I hope everyone at home had a good Thanksgiving and ate too much.

Who's Mother Are You?

So getting close to the break the "mothering" side of this job really sets it. Everyone is stressed out (at least the kids are) from classes and papers and tests. So of course they all start to get sick, and in this environment things get passed around so easily. So it was lovely when a 24 hour stomach bug was going around that had everyone projectile vomiting all over everything. At one in the morning guess who gets to clean that up?...me.

And then there is driving all these kids to their doctors appointments...filling their prescriptions...calling their parents and their teachers and getting them excused from class.

I am so glad break is on the way and they HAVE to leave so that I GET to leave. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday...I love to eat!

I did my first program too...a trip to a theater an hour away to go see the midnight opening of New Moon. Only the kids with special permission were allowed to go but it was so much fun. We didn't get home until after 4am and they ALL had to get up and go to school in the morning, but the ones that I talked to today said it was totally worth it and they would do it again. Nice to hear...started out with a bang I think.

So the kids leave tonight and I leave in the morning...can't wait to go home!

So the chiller is fixed...

IT’S FREEZING IN HERE!!!!! The chiller is fixed and aptly named. I am starting to feel comfortable enough that I know my girls that I am more seriously thinking about the programming I have to do, and I was thinking of doing some kind of Yoga program that I can do in my TOTALLY EMPTY OFFICE! These girls are so helpful and funny and not (yet?) that persnickety. My room still feels like a room though but I have NOTHING on my walls. I am waiting to get paid and then I want to get some posters off the Internet. It’s like college all over again.

Tomorrow is one week before I go home for Thanksgiving and I am glad for that. Now..almost five hours after I started this entry forget what I said above. These kids are running me ragged already, but they are teenagers and I am pretty sure it’s their job to drive the adults around them completely insane. Trouble is…I think I like it ☺.

Hot in Herre

So the chiller in our dorm is broken. It has been broken since the day I got here, but its really really hot today. Some of the kids from the third floor are sleepig in the hallway. My floor isn't quite as bad and the first floor isn't all that bad but every now and then you get that stifling hot sticky heat and you just wanna die.

We make an announcement every night about the Chiller saying they are fixing it as fast as they can and to advice them to do certain things such as:

take cold showers
drink water
open windows
purchase or borrow a fan

But these are teenage girls and cold water isn't good for their hair, they can't drink THAT much water, there are bugs outside and they shouldn't be required to spend money for their comfort.... oi

So we are all tired of the heat and tonight some girls from upstairs are sleeping in the lobby...have fun with that.

In other news I got my plane ticket home for Thanksgiving (YAY!).

I stole a rug for my office and I am still working on a couch. My mom sent me some Yoga and Yogilates DVD's which I am going to start tomorrow morning. I am trying to figure out and navigate all the millions of different computer programs we use for tracking students and their progress and their discipline and their every...single...breath.

The ACT scores get posted at Midnight...there is a lot of Anxiety on this hall right now. Sometimes its so clear how freaking smart these kids are.

Tomorrow is another day...Im going to crash now.