Year End Listmania!!

My favorite time of year for internet reading is going on so I thought I'd share some of the lists that I've been checking out. I'll put together my own list of music highlights shortly:

MUSIC
Rolling Stone - 25 Songs
Rolling Stone - 25 Albums
Billboard - Hot 100 Songs
Billboard -Top 200 Albums
NPR All Songs Considered: Listeners' Top 25 Albums
Pitchfork's Top 100 Songs
Fuel/Friends Blog Favorite Things
Hipster Runoff: The Most Authentic/Relevant/Successful Artists of the Decade

SOCCER/OTHER
Biggest soccer stories of the decade
Top Excesses in Sports
Goals of the Decade (scroll 3/4 down the page to see the list of links to the videos).
Team of the Decade
Time magazine's Top lists of everything

Healthcare: Obama & T-Pain

Everything is funnier when auto-tuned. First Taylor Swift, now Obama. Check out the video.

Cabin Fever?

The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Well, we are in the midst of some intense winter weather here in SWI. For the first time that I can ever remember, Christmas mass has been canceled, which is a big bummer for several reasons. One, I had a fun new outfit I was looking forward to busting out. Two, I love the chance to see all the familiar faces of old friends, relatives, and neighbors at Christmas mass. You see people you haven't seen in months (probably since the year before) and everyone is dressed up and in a great mood. Three, I love getting dressed up and going to mass with my whole family. It always leaves me feeling peaceful and grateful. Lastly, I love the opportunity to reflect on the culmination of the advent season and ponder a while on the state of my own faith and what I need to focus on in the coming year.
Instead, stoppable and his family had to peel out of here earlier than planned today due to an impending ice store, so we had an early present opening and Christmas meal. Now, homebase, caboose and I are just hanging out and listening to the wind howl outside. Since there is no mass, we are going to watch the Pope do his thing in Rome later. I think I'm going to put my outfit on to watch him just for fun. It wouldn't feel right to watch him as I sit in sweatpants.
We've had coloring time, crosswords, Scrabble, ping-pong, book time, watched White Christmas and I think we still have a lot of indoor time yet to come. At least it has given me time to work on my blog a bit. I was planning on a full overhaul as I've done in year's past, but after messing around with two new templates, I decided it was too much work. So I'm sticking with what I've got and I just changed up the color scheme and fonts a bit. I'm including a picture of what it used to look like in case you didn't notice a difference.

Break-up Hallway

My classroom is way down a long hallway, which usually is nice because it keep most of the drama, loudness and hall wanderers far away. Unfortunately, a by-product of this seclusion, lately at least, is that it seems to be a good place for relationship breakups. I've seen a few hallways breakups in my short teaching career (one on the first day of school this year, how's that for a welcome back!) but this week, I had to witness two girls weeping in almost the exact same spot, one on Monday and one today. Sadly, I know and like both of the students. One of which, is one of my faves and a girl I just think is great. I'm terrible at knowing something helpful to say without sounding too cliched and also without getting into the details of their breakup. Luckily, both times the girl was already being consoled, once by a friend, the other by my neighboring teacher. 'Tis the season I guess. Hope they kept their gift receipts.

Limoncello

I happened to catch Alton Brown's Good Eats last week just before heading to the grocery store and he did a quick piece on making limoncello. It looked so easy and he acted like it was so good. So, while I was at the store, I picked up a bottle of Smirnoff 100 proof (Alton said it needed to be the stronger version) and a pile of lemons. After zesting them while watching TV, I put it together to sit for 10 days. After all that wait, I could barely wait to make the simple syrup and freeze it tonight. So when I poured a couple drinks for caboose and I, the expectations were high. Sadly, they were not met. In fact, it tasted pretty much like it sounds like it would. You are sipping 100 proof vodka that tastes like it was distilled in a the world's biggest lemon grove. It was quickly determined that we would not be able to sip this booze, so we will now be looking for recipes for drinks that would work well with lemon vodka.

"Paul Samuelson Dies at 94"

I didn't know much about Paul Samuelson other than he was a Nobel-winning economist. This article from the NY Times does a good job of providing some scope as to his impact on the economics field.

Game Weekend!

Our family's annual game weekend was this past weekend and it went off without a hitch, undeterred by a rough week of weather. Without going into too much detail, we had people coming in from Farragut, Omaha and Iowa City to enjoy games, foods of all kinds, ice skating, shopping and just a nice relaxed time of conversation and hanging out before the business of the holidays and winter break commence. It was great to have such a fun event to clean up our apartment for and get it decorated and looking nice. caboose's presence was definitely missed, although it did free up a bed for others to use! :)
And Sunday I was lucky enough to talk Nic & Lez into taking in a showing of "Brothers." I was really excited to see it. That I desire Natalie Portman is no secret, and add to that Jake Gyllenhaal, and Tobey McGuire and it sounds pretty enticing. I don't want to ruin the movie for any readers, so I'll just summarize by saying I really liked it but that it is an emotional marathon and we were all a bit shell-shocked when the lights came on. Lightening the mood afterward, the biggest and most amazing box of holiday baking treats was given to me for caboose and I from these wonderful friends. The box was hand decorated and the contents were so fun, varied and delicious that I had to take a picture to remember it by.
A great weekend of family and friends. Happy holidays, indeed.

Validation

A lot of teachers, when asked why they went into teaching, say something along the lines of "I want to help people" or "I like working with kids" or "I loved school and wanted to help others feel that too." But sometimes, when you get bogged down in the day-to-day routine and challenges of teaching, you don't always feel like you are filling those goals. You rarely get the chance to hear or see if your actions and efforts make a difference. So, a little validation can go a long ways. Anyone who's talked to me about teaching has probably heard about the challenges of one of my favorite students over the past couple years. Her situation has changed a bunch and she's at a new school and sounds very happy & healthy. I had to share this comment that was made because it made my month.

What to do, what to do, what to do...

Early out on Tuesday due to impending "Storm of the Century" (actual quote from local weatherman)...GREAT! We get to count the day of teaching, we still see all our classes and we get out early. Perfect. The rest of the day is spent checking papers, messing around online, watching "Pretty in Pink" and waiting to see if we would have a snow day on Wednesday.
Which we did! Woo hoo! I'm all for a snow day to break up the routine. And, considering we got ~15" of snow dumped on us, it was definitely necessary. Travel by automobile was not a possibility and when I bundled up and walked up to the coffee shop, I realized they weren't braving the weather either. :( Actually everything was closed, except for the hardware store and Back Country. So caboose & I stopped into the hardware store to wander around, warm up and get a couple pops (I think we have a caffiene addiction). The rest of the day was filled in with giving the kitchen a good cleaning, making a tasty tater tot casserole using up lots of stuff from the freezer and pantry, working on crosswords, watching some movies, baking some very nice chocolate chocolate-chip cookies with pecans, getting upset when I saw that we would have another snow day Thursday, and cheering back up with the season finale of GLEE.
Today, the sun is shining and the temperature finally climbed above zero. I've spent the whole morning at the coffeeshop. I had to get out of the house for a while. Activities today include Scrabble against homebase, lunch with a friend, laundry, working on a semester-end survey, showering, and listening to Vol. 2 of Glee music which I purchased yesterday (good thing the iTunes store never closes).
Bring on school tomorrow! Plus it will be Friday, ha!