still no writing, as much as i miss it and want to do it. instead, the whole family has had a work weekend of one sort or another.

for me, it's the usual - grading and planning. 99.9% of my grading is done, for the moment, and i get to spend the rest of the day planning out the next 2 or 3 weeks. when you're covering something as big (even when only using excerpts) and deep as the odyssey, 2 or 3 weeks really isn't enough time. but that's what i've got, so i have to figure out how to cram as much in as i possibly can and still have it make some sense to these kids. i've got the projects planned, and they'll need media center time to complete them so that has to be factored in as well. i've already cut out 2 or 3 things i would have liked to keep and i can see at least one more biting the dust as i work things out today.

this planning isn't just what we'll be looking at when, but also how. i prewrite any lecture material because i'll forget something important if i don't. so the rest of today will be spent planning out the what and when and how and writing lecture notes as i can. then i get to type up the projects. i'll probably print out the number of pages i need for my tech class - there's only 10 kids in it so me doing that print on my own here is no big deal. as for the others, i may print one here at home just to have it ready for tomorrow, but at least on of them is going to be 2 or 3 pages and i'm not printing out 110 copies on my printer. i'm trying to save time and costs, but there's only so much saving i'll do. i only do what little i manage because i know the school districts are tight when it comes to money even for printing, but i'm a lot broker than they are.

speaking of money, i also did our grocery shopping yesterday. saxy will never let me go to the grocery store again. i spent nearly $300, a lot more than he usually does. his comment was something like he doesn't want to hear me complain about how much he spends anymore. to be fair, some of that was spent on stuff we had but i wasn't told we had by jewel who was supposed to be looking at the food in the fridge while we created the list. and another $25 was to start preparing for christmas - i picked up the first 2 of the 6 cornish game hens we'll need for christmas dinner. and i made sure we had plenty for lunches - which, to be honest, sam's club is probably the better place to go for stuff. that and meat. the freaking store was picked clean and i had to buy several small packages of chicken instead of one or two family packs which would have given us as much at a lower price. i understand the turkey and ham being demolished, i almost understand the brown sugar being gone, but chicken and pork chops? what were people having for thanksgiving this year? i've never seen a store's meat department so wiped out after thanksgiving.

as for the rest of the family, they're doing yard work. yesterday was the backyard, or as much of it as they could manage. saxy worked on it for 10 hours and it's still not completely picked up. having a forest in your yard can be quite detrimental to keeping the yard neat. but we're giving it our best go since someone reported our yards to whomever it is that writes citations for such things and we definitely cannot afford the $1000. they'll supposedly be back tomorrow to check things out and we plan to have it as neat as we can manage. today the focus is the front yard - raking, trimming, mowing. all the kids are involved, even taz. he's not too pleased about it, and has been quite resistant to it, but it's about time he helped out a bit with things here at home.

saxy and i have discussed the possibility of buying this house when we're more stable. the house itself needs some work - it's too dark, the windows are generally too small, the kitchen needs an overhaul, and we'd probably make an addition downstairs for our master bedroom; but we love the area. we like being in a nice residential area where the stores and things we need to use are so close. jewel can walk up to the store with no problem. at any rate, if we do buy it, 90% of the trees in the back are coming down. i want a real yard that we can actually use. we'll also fence it. saxy has a spot he'd like to use to grow herbs. it'll cost a fortune to get rid of those damn trees, so it'll probably be one of the last things we do or something done over time, but if we do decide to buy the place, their days are numbered.

well, time for me to go off and do my planning and finalizing of the projects so they can be typed. i really need to dig into stuff for the tech class. the honors and cp classes i can tell to do reading on their own, but that just doesn't work with the tech kids. they won't do it. they'd rather fail than actually make an effort when it comes to school work. i wish i could teach them something more interesting, but it's not my place to change the curriculum.