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

What a month!

Things have been so crazy that I just haven't had a lot of time to sit down and catch up.  But I feel like that's just how it is in December.  Between work open-houses and APTT events, and friend emergencies, there's been little time to even think about anything else.  Even my running has taken a back seat the past couple of weeks.  Not that I haven't been doing it, I just haven't been doing it as fast.  Pretty sure I left off on the Sunday of the Merrython.  That week I ran at least 30 miles total, mostly because I couldn't really get to boxing at all, so running was the only option.  APTT really ate up a good chunk of workout time.  Then there was a cookie judging contest at Punchbowl and suddenly the week was over.  Last week I did so little running it was like I wasn't even training.  To be fair, last week was crazy.  A very good friend lost a family member and that took over the entire week.  There's no way I wasn't going to offer my support in case they needed it.  On top of that I had a 24 hour flu-ish cold.  It wasn't really the flu, but it included chills and aches.  Luckily it passed quickly.  AND we had our December open house at school.  So, as you can see, there was a lot going on. Today I'm back on track.  I ran 16 miles, 10 with Murdock and 6 alone.  Doing the last 6 alone wasn't so bad actually.  Unfortunately my Garmin died at mile 13, so I don't have accurate times or any of my last splits.  I do know that I had to use the bathroom so bad by mile 13 that I passed through the last 2 miles without noticing, because I was so busy looking for a place to jump into the woods.  (Don't worry, I never did find a place, so I just held it and dealt with it.) Let me just tell you, there is perhaps nothing harder than trying to run with a full bladder.  As a runner, I fully believe that porta-potties should exist on every road.  Sure that's unreasonable, but man, I would have paid someone to use a bathroom at that point! I was a little disappointed because the run took about 2:30 total, which is really not that great.  My whole goal is to run a faster marathon, perhaps even a 3:59 if possible, and running 16 at 2:30 is not going to get me there.  Of course there are a million factors that will come into play on the day of the marathon but I only live in the here and now.  That's just how I roll.  I plan on running my 20 miler a bit faster next week.  Now all I have to do is find a place to run it!

Oh yea. The Greyhound Friends came to visit the third graders at school last week.  It was awesome to be able to see all the dogs and hear the stories.  The students really enjoyed meeting the dogs and learning about re-training former racing dogs.

Selfie from a 6 mile Lake Q double loop run.  Because why not.

Halloween!

So, this post is unrelated to running, which is why it's separate from the previous post! But, since it's basically October at this point, I wanted to share my new classroom door for the month.  My goal is to change the door monthly this year, just to add a little pep to the third floor hallway. If you recall, my September door was a Minion from Despicable Me.  This month, I had to go Halloween themed, obviously.

Meet Frank. He's my newest creation using only fadeless bulletin board paper, some scissors, and a black marker. I added the bowtie because I like my door to have some class. (hahaha, get it!) Anyways, this was actually even easier than the Minion, believe it or not.  All I did was layer two long strips of green paper down the door for the base and cut out a handle hole.  Then I flipped the scraps over and cut out two eyes. Luckily the back of the paper is white, so it makes everything easier.  For the hair I took pieces of construction paper and cut out random chunks. I used the scraps from that to make the eyebrows, bolts, and scars on his face.  Then I used a separate piece to make two eyes, and a another piece for the mouth background.  The teeth are the leftover scraps from Frankie's bowtie, and I drew the nose on with a sharpie. Seriously, so easy, a caveman could do it. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with a cute saying to go with it this time, so it's just Frank hanging out.  Stayed tuned for next month, I already have something in mind!