Showing posts with label christmas vacation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas vacation. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Going back to school tomorrow!

I had a nice vacation, two weeks at home in quietude. I watched movies, read, cooked, napped, snuggled with the kitties.

Murray is channeling Luke. He is turning very snuggly. In the morning, he likes to jump in the kitchen table and sit in my arms as I boot up the laptop and read morning devotionals. He purrs a lot when he settles in, his head snugged in the crook of my elbow. It's nice.

I watched a Norwegian movie called The Wave. It's a good disaster film because it's based on real science, scarily possible events, and written with the right amount of suspense. In Norway, there are very tall mountains. The mountains are made of rock. There are earthquakes. There are fjords below the unstable mountains. When a landslide of rock occurs the weight and movement of the slid-down mountainside causes tsunamis. his had happened twice before in modern times, killing many. The nation has now devices which monitor the mountains and scientists stationed thereto interpret the data. There is also a red button and for one particular fjord-side town in a heavily touristed area. When the button is pressed and the alarm sounds, the populace has ten minutes to get above 80meters and safety. Otherwise...

The Wave, good movie, nice characters in it, realistic.

I also watched Sing Street,
Sing Street is a charming movie from Ireland that "takes us back to 1980s Dublin seen through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy named Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) who is looking for a break from a home strained by his parents' relationship and money troubles, while trying to adjust to his new inner-city public school where the kids are rough and the teachers are rougher. He finds a glimmer of hope in the mysterious, über-cool and beautiful Raphina (Lucy Boynton), and with the aim of winning her heart he invites her to star in his band’s music videos. There’s only one problem: he’s not part of a band…yet. She agrees, and now Conor must deliver what he’s promised - calling himself "Cosmo" and immersing himself in the vibrant rock music trends of the decade, he forms a band with a few lads, and the group pours their heart into writing lyrics and shooting videos. Inspired by writer/director John Carney's (ONCE, BEGIN AGAIN) life and love for music, SING STREET shows us a world where music has the power to take us away from the turmoil of everyday life and transform us into something greater.

Getting ready for school tomorrow, I made Baba Ganouj. It's eggplant spread/dip. Heat a pot with oil. Most people also put in a crushed garlic clove. You can also add mushrooms, celery, onion. I would advise adding one of the above, not all of them. Cook until they are softened a bit.

Cut up eggplant in small cubes and put in pot that has been heated with oil. Cover the pot so the steam can soften the eggplant without having to pour lots of oil into the pot to ensure the cubes don't stick. Eggplant will absorb oil like a sponge. It doesn't take long for the eggplant to soften.

Cool the eggplant stuff. Add to a blender, Cuisinart, or chopper of some kind. Add Tahini, lemon juice, and a bit of oil to taste. Also salt. Blend till smooth. You can dip crackers, bread or make crostini (garnish with parsley), or add to pasta as a sauce. Whatever you want!

I also made a pot of lentil soup, with celery, potatoes, and carrots. We have some winter weather coming in and the shelves will be razed of milk and bread, soon enough. I will need to get to the store too. A pot of soup is always good to have around. Any amount of snow or sleet is a problem here in the south. So I will prepare as best I can. I haven't driven this new-to-me mini-van in any kind of serious weather yet so we'll see. Oh well, all that is a few days away. Meanwhile, the soup will fill my tummy for lunch at school tomorrow.

Have a good week!

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Christmas vacation started yesterday at 2:30

Today was the first day of Christmas vacation. Phew. Working in school is great, and being stationed in the kindergarten wing is the best, if you ask me. Except perhaps, the excitement the week before Christmas break. It all gets to be a little much, lol. The kids are wildly excited and as Friday nears they can barely think straight. It truly, truly is like herding cats.

Our state is being hit hard with flu, extra quickly and extra severely.

Center for Disease Control
These last ten weekdays we had many children out with the flu and many staff as well. At one point with three kindergarten classes, we had only about 10 kids in each class, or nearly a 50% absentee rate in our wing. Other grades were not so hard hit. The little ones don't seem to take the no nose-picking, no uncovered sneezes, no uncovered coughing as seriously. Germs spread fast. I'm glad vacation came now so that we can all clear to personal home corners and stop the contagion.

Today I slept until 7:00 am, late for me. I enjoyed leisurely coffee, watched the last two episodes of the British detective show "Broadchurch." Then I had a nice brunch and then went back to bed at 10:00 until noon.

When I awoke I decided to finally clean out the fridge and do the dishes. When I'd completed that long-overdue task, I processed fruit. I'd bought a pineapple, half-cantaloupe, mangoes, and grapefruits several days ago. Unprocessed fruit does not do my body one bit of good so I spent a while chopping and peeling. If it is ready in the fridge, I'll eat it. I hate to see unpeeled fruit go to waste. Now I have chopped up and cleaned fruit to throw in the delicious homemade granola my friend gave me for my birthday. I also roasted potatoes, broccoli, and processed a bunch of jalapeno peppers and roasted them too. A friend gave me some of her fresh eggs for a Christmas present so I boiled four eggs to be ready to put into spinach salads this week. All that took me several hours.

The afternoon was filled with bible study, and also learning how to use the new bible study software I'd bought. I studied the Sunday School lesson, and I wrote a blog entry at the other blog, ("The Way of Balaam"). Then the evening was for dinner (ham sandwich and roasted potatoes and broccoli) and playing with photos. I experimented with layering and making a collage out of one of my pictures. I'd taken a shot of the full moon last week, and I used a lasso tool to make a cutout of a butterfly photo I had. I opened Pixlr to layer with the items they have on their photo editing software. It's harder than it looks, but here is what I came up with-

We go back to school January 5 and the kids return January 6. I'm looking forward to more study, more reading, more learning how to make art out of my photos, more cooking, and more tv and movie watching. I like the hermitage here, and I don't plan any social activities.

Except for church. And speaking of that, I better get to bed so I'll awaken fresh and ready to worship tomorrow, this last Sunday before the birth of our Savior.

Vacation is here and it just feels so good!!