Reading

When I finished school, I looked forward to all the books I would be able to read, now that I didn't need to do homework. I've been reading some things, but I haven't read as much as I thought I would. I seem to have developed reading attention deficit. (RAD?) I'll start books but I end up not finishing them.

I was thinking tonight about why that is. One reason is that I often have the TV on when I'm at home. Before I started school, Esther and I would have the TV on almost every day, but only to watch things. It wasn't on as background noise if neither of us had something we wanted to watch. Now it ends up being company, and I'll channel-surf even when there's nothing interesting on. I used to be able to read while Esther was watching sports, but I never seem to settle the TV on sports. :)

Another reason is that I'm often on the computer - between email and Facebook and Google Reader and everything else, I find it takes more time to keep up. Additionally, I can be on the computer in the living room now with the laptop or the netbook. I can combine channel-surfing and web-surfing!

I do still enjoy reading - I just find that I'll get halfway into a book and lose some interest in it. Then I'll start another book and just forget to go back to the first one. I used to be able to juggle them, too - have one going at home and one at work and one in my bag (as well as an audiobook in the car and one on the MP3 player). Now I have one going that I carry back and forth, one audiobook on my MP3 player, and one audiobook in my car. That's about all I can keep track of at the moment.

I have been listening to a lot of audiobooks. I've been doing a lot of housework and catching up, and I can listen to audiobooks while I do that or while I play computer games. Eventually I'll settle down into reading again.

Last Assignment

Tonight I posted my last assignment for my master's degree... Hard to believe that two years ago I was just finding out that I was accepted into the program and nervous that I'd be able to make it through. It's been quite a wild ride. I'm glad I didn't know then what I know now about the past two years - I think I might have chickened out.
So what's next? Well, I spend the month of August working on house cleaning and organizing, then get my cooking and eating back into shape. Along with that I'll be working on getting the library (and my office!) back into shape. I guess then it's time to figure out what the new normal is.
For tonight, I'm going to read and/or watch TV and play on the computer. Tomorrow it's dishes, cleaning out the fridge, and enjoying an audiobook. There's a part of me that will miss school, but I'm ready to move on, I think.
So I'm finished. Yay!

The Home Stretch

I'm down to 11 days (and counting) until I'm finished with school. Seems hard to believe that this season is almost over. I'm not sure I know what normal life is like anymore! Time to move on to a new normal, I guess. I was thinking today about some of the things I used to do before school that I'll be able to do again... Things like

• Carry a camera everywhere with me instead of a laptop (although the netbook will still go some places with me (like work) - and the laptop will come with me on vacation... for fun stuff!)
  
• Knit or tat while I'm hanging out and watching TV instead of homework
• Do housework and listen to audiobooks instead of class lectures
• Read books I want to read instead of books I'm assigned to read
• Cook food to eat instead of buying readymade stuff
  

It's going to be strange - I used to think I had no time back before I started school - then I started school and really had no time. Now school is ending, and I think all the newfound time will get filled up fast.

Delinquent blogging

It's now been a really long time since I blogged. I finished my practicum and enjoyed it greatly. Then I survived the rest of the spring semester... Now I'm halfway through the summer semester, and getting ready to graduate. Somehow, there's always something demanding my attention. I'm looking forward to finishing school and getting on with my life. While I've enjoyed school, it's kinda tough to focus on classes with work stuff on my mind.
The beginning of June I took a 4-day vacation to scrapbook, do crafts, and watch movies with Teresa. That was fun! We got together with Renee and Wendy for one of the scrapbooking days. I left the scrapbooks I wanted to work on at home, but found enough to keep me busy. Onward to evaluations...

Practicum

I haven't written in a while; I've been pretty busy getting ready for my practicum. I'll be spending 5 weeks away from work as a student teacher in a school library. There was a lot of work to be done so that I could be away from work - I have a few staff evaluations due during that time, and I needed to prepare things for the managers who are covering for me while I'm gone.
Today was my first day of the practicum. I'm in a 3rd-5th grade school in my favorite school district, and I was a bit nervous going into it. Then one of my old storytime kids was in the first class that came in this morning, and I had to smile. I felt more at home then. My cooperating teacher-librarian is great, too. I think part of what had me being nervous was some bad practicum/student teaching experiences in college. I think this one will go well, though. I feel much more confident now than I did then. I even stepped in to help some students with research during one of the classes.
My best friend's husband works at this school, and he stopped by at the library to say hi, too. That helped as well.
I think this will be a whirlwind experience, though. I'm glad to be able to focus just on school for a brief time - dividing my focus between work and school has been challenging, to say the least.

Awwwww

Is there anything sweeter than rocking a baby to sleep in your arms? Especially when that baby's related to you? I guess maybe when he starts patting your arm while you pat his back, that could be sweeter. (This is all probably much nicer than I would think it was had I been asleep already when he started crying...) Can you tell Aunt Dawn is babysitting tonight?

While I don't usually make New Year's Resolutions (too easy for me to put off making changes until New Year's and give up if I don't make it past the first week or so...), I do occasionally resolve to do things. I'm going to attempt to post to this blog at least once a week this year. We'll see how well I do.
I got to thinking over the weekend about conveniences and how used to them I get. Of course there was an event that sparked this thought process - my microwave conked out on me on Saturday. I don't think microwaves are supposed to make that noise - or hit that note, either.
I realized during the rest of the weekend just how many times a day I use that microwave - every morning to thaw the frozen bagel just enough to be able to split it, most evenings to nuke my dinner, or make vegetables or bake potatoes or sweet potatoes. It was sort-of fun to try to work around it a bit - I took one of the baking potatoes and made raw fries instead - hadn't had those in years. I made granny salad instead of having cooked vegetables. I used the George Foreman grill to make meat for dinner.
I've also been using the toaster oven - I think this is the first I've used it since we moved into the house five years ago. I use my sister-in-law's trick and line the tray with aluminum foil to save on clean-up. It comes in handy, and I'll be using it more often now...
The cooking situation is complicated by the fact that the regular oven also does not work. I've been researching how to fix it but have been unsuccessful so far. It seems to be stuck in cleaning mode every time I try to turn it on. It is really, really clean now.
Realistically, though, all of these cooking appliances are conveniences. When I was growing up, we didn't have a microwave, and we still managed to warm up leftovers. (No toaster oven or George Foreman grill then either...) I'm grateful for what I do have, but I still miss the convenience of my microwave. And my microwave popcorn. I trust it's just a season, though.