So much room for activities!

Apparently I have a race on Sunday. We'll start there.  I signed up for the Wild Rover series again this year and didn't pay much attention to the dates.  I knew the first one was the weekend of Hyannis, and that the rest were the following weekends, but I didn't give it much thought.  Then they postponed the first one and I really forgot about the dates.  Until I got the email that it's Sunday.  Cool.  Don't get me wrong, it's only 4 miles, I'm ready to do it, I just don't particularly WANT to do it.  It's still fairly cold out and a lot snowy out.  Although the temperature for Sunday is looking pretty good, so that's a plus.  This will be my first run outside since the marathon though.  I think it's more the fact that the race is in Lowell, which is feeling kind of far at the moment.  At least it's a late start, 11:00 a.m., so I have plenty of time to get there.
Aside from the running, which is back on now that I don't have a choice, I just have miscellaneous subjects to talk about.  We'll start with motivation.  Usually I'm pretty good at going hard and fast during the 8 rounds of boxing, but I always, always get bored during abs and 9 times out of 10, don't put in my best effort.  Part of it is that it hurts and part of it is that looking at the lights on the ceiling is the most boring thing I can think of, outside of watching paint dry.  I got so sick and tired of looking at the ceiling and the black steel beams holding up the bag system that I decided to brighten up my little area.  Now, there's technically no assigned bags or anything like that, but generally the regulars have a favorite bag, myself included.  I've been using this bag for the past year or so now and it's really broken in to my specifications.  So when I go, this is my general area.  To brighten it up, I made some posters that I can look at while I'm doing abs.  This seemed like a good idea because it would distract me from the abs and maybe motivate the people around me too.  Plus, when I get bored with them, I can bring them to school and hang them up in the room to motivate the kids for MCAS. After all, it's all about reuseability.  Which is a word I just made up, so enjoy that.  I'll stick up some pictures of the posters after this next paragraph.
Speaking of MCAS, because that was the closest I could come to transitioning that paragraph smoothly, I've decided to offer tutoring services for MCAS/summer work.  Nothing fancy, but I figured I could help out the parents who want their students to get some extra help.  I'm also offering to teach the parents how to do Common Core math, which I feel is a service that should be utilized.  A lot of the math can be confusing if you're used to doing math the way we learned it in school, so this could help a lot of parents help their students! Right now I'm only really offering services on the North Shore area of Massachusetts.  However, I do have teacher friends in other areas, so if you want a tutor but don't live on the North Shore, feel free to let me know and I'll pass your information onto those teachers. For more information on my tutoring services, visit Gibbs Tutoring. You can see pictures of my classroom and watch a short video clip of a first grade class in action.

And now for those pictures! If you're interested in my posters, but not in my tutoring, you can always contact me about these.  I love to draw and would be open to drawing/making personalized posters, for a small fee.  *These particular posters are not for sale, they are for personal use*

The great Muhammed Ali.

This is actually my favorite, I really like the way Huntress came out. This was made almost completely with oil based sharpie pens and I really like the effect they made.

Hercules, Hercules!

Wonder Woman hanging out between the bags. 

Punchies

Ahh vacation week.  Nothing like it when you've already had 7 days worth of snow days in the past two weeks.  All I've really accomplished so far is, baking brownies, making a lasagne, watching some old Disney animated classics, and eating a bunch of junk food.  Right now I'm catching up on Gotham and assuming that Jerome is going to be the future Joker. Because look at those lips. Chap city. 

But anyways, basically all the road races for the next month have been cancelled.  Hyannis is flat out done, not even a reschedule.  The Frozen Shamrock, which was supposed to be on February 22, is rescheduled for April 12.  Hopefully we'll be able to see the ground by then. I've been really great at NOT running, but I should probably get back on that treadmill.  I tried to add my 100 punches to last week and I've managed to achieve that.  What I've learned is that there are two ways to count punches. The REAL way, which follows the instructors combos and makes you work hard, and the fake way.  The fake way is when you stand in real close to the bag and just fire off punches without fully extending your arms and pulling them back.  Imagine a T-rex with boxing gloves on. That's the fake way.  Not that I didn't try both, but I didn't really find a huge difference in either way.  Other than that, it's been more and more snow.  FUN!

These are the punches from Monday, regular full punches following the combos and taking some breaks. 1378 and 1223 for a total of 2601

These are punches from Tuesday, using T-rex arms and no breaks from punching.  I'm also fairly certain that the left didn't record all punches, they should be much more even.   1612 and 1915 for a total of 3527. So almost 1000 more.  Fine, maybe there is a bit of a difference.

It's snowy and it's cold.  Welcome to Alaskachusetts.  -25 yesterday. :(

This is what my street looks like now. 

Disney Movie Day

Snow place like home

Whooooeee it has been a long week or two.  Honestly, the days have all but blended together with all the snowstorms and school cancellations.  February has never seemed shorter, and that's saying a lot, since it's already the shortest month!  Seriously though, if the snow could quit, I'd be a little bit happier.  There's pretty much no place left to walk, park, or drive if another car is coming at you.  It's getting out of hand.  Yet, we are intrepid, we carry on.  What else can you do, with all this snow around and talk of another storm or two heading this way? The good news is, it's almost February vacation.  The bad news is, it's almost February vacation.  I make this next statement with the knowledge that teachers in the state of Massachusetts will be calling for my head, but it's about time we did away with February vacation.  Let's be honest, we just got back from Winter Break, and with the SEVEN snow days we've had in the past 15 days, this vacation is a bit of a joke.  What the students could really use is 5 more days of work.  Besides, we're one of the only states that still has this vacation hanging about.  I say scrap it, start school earlier than the Wednesday before Labor Day, and use March for Spring break.  It would solve SO many problems. But, who am I to change things?  Alright, aside from the snow days, there's no where to run, so I've been spending a lot of quality time with the treadmill.  I don't love it.  Also due to the snow, I missed 4 days of being able to workout.  I know, that's insane! At this point though I've made it up and I feel like I'm back on track.  Wouldn't you know it, that means I'm getting a cold.  I can feel it coming on.  My nose is stuffy/runny, my eyes are itchy, and things hurt.  Fantastic.  Nothing like a good cold to start vacation. Since I don't have a new goal in the near future, I decided to work towards upping my punches at boxing.  I started low today with a total of just over 3000 punches. My goal is to try and add on at least 100 more punches each week.  I only need to track one day, but I might track all and just pick my best.  Except Sunday's because that's a 12 round class and that would feel like cheating.
Completely out of the realm of working out, but back on the snow day thing, I made one final pair of shoes a couple of weeks ago.  I went Little Mermaid themed, just to see how it worked out,  They came out alright, but I'm not sure I love them.  However, I did want to try and fix the paint chipping problem I had on the first pair.  The paint on the rubber part of the sole chipped off as they were worn around, so I wanted to try and fix that.  I saw a trick online that if you sand the rubber with fine grain sandpaper it makes the paint more likely to absorb into the rubber, so I tried that.  It looks like the paint held up a bit better, but still chipped off in places.  At this point, I'm beginning to think it's the sealant that's chipping it off, not the actual paint.  Anyways, I'll add a picture of those in a minute.  Finally, the students at my school are number one in the city for the math program we've been doing.  Yes, that's right, number one! We're third in the state, and in the top 100 in the nation! There are some days when I feel like I'm doing a real bad job teaching, but learning this made me feel like I must be doing something right.  I'm very proud of the school and I love being able to brag about the students.  Tomorrow they're getting a special award from the school committee, which is very exciting.  So, that's it, snow city in a nutshell. Enjoy the pictures!

Punch counters

Icicles and ice dams 

Way to go Tracy School!

Snow pile...it's gotten a lot bigger since this picture