??????

Okay. I just woke up from quite a dream.  I was either on a cruise ship or in a fancy hotel with my friends.  I'm guessing it was a hotel, though, since our living quarters were very spacious, as was the bathroom.  My friends were kind of doing their own thing and I was getting pretty annoyed by them.  I decided to take a shower, but it took forever to get it started since I had difficulties with locking the doors and getting the lights to stay on in there. One cool thing about this bathroom was that it made you custom shampoo and conditioner right then and there and sealed it in a bag for you.  I started washing my hair when I heard men's voices in the other room. I started to worry, especially since I wasn't sure if the bathroom doors were locked or not.  Sure enough, two men barged in the bathroom and I hid behind the shower curtain.  They asked if I knew anything about the disappearance of some diamond.  I replied that it was useless for them to search for that diamond since it was not valuable at all.  They were very shocked by this info and didn't know whether or not to believe me.  Next, my role in the dream changed and my character transformed into some guy like Mr. Rogers.  He has sitting on a park bench while his marionette cat ran up and down the bench.  The end.

Anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of my first traffic ticket.  I made it 10 whole years without any tickets at all and then some Payson cop had to go and ruin it for me.  Now I have one more year of driving (semi)cautiously before I can get pulled over again without it going on my record.  In honor of this anniversary, I will share with you something I learned in traffic school.  It's not the most useful information, but it is information.

So, you know how construction barriers have slanted orange lines on them?  Did you also know that those orange lines are telling you which way to go?  Well, they are.  Maybe this photo will help you see what I'm talking about: 

Photo made possible by:

 the endless construction surrounding my school

and my awesome MS paint skills.

A Peek Inside My Classroom

There are plenty of things inside my classroom, but these are the things that I love the most:

(I probably should have cropped a few of these to make them look better,

but you're just going to have to deal with them the way they are.)

 My new owl decals that I just added to the wall today.

The super cute "J" that Heather made for me to hang outside the door. 

 My new computer! It's so big and sleek and pretty.

Diploma of Everything.  Don't you all wish you could say you had one of these?

Well, you can if you buy the book It's Not My Fault I Know Everything. Shh! Don't Tell! 

 I've been lucky to have a projector for 3 years now,

but this is the first year that it is mounted to the ceiling and I love it.

No more students walking in front of it to see their shadows on the screen. 

Another "J." This one was made out of crayons by a former student.

I'm going to either have to marry someone with the same last initial or stay a 

spinster my whole life so I can keep all my "J" stuff. 

That's it.  Tomorrow is the first day of school.  I hope that I'm ready!

Note to Self

If you have a nightmare and your roommate is the person in said nightmare who you are afraid of, you probably shouldn't tell her about it once you wake up.

I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils...

Almost every year, I have a nightmare before school starts about the children that will be in my new class.  Luckily, I haven't had one of those (yet).  However, I have had 2 dreams about school.  Each of them only involved me and some other teachers.  In the one that I had last night, a coworker presented me with a big box of pencils that had been donated to my classroom.  I was more than thrilled about this wonderful gift, until she revealed the catch.  They were all #3 pencils, so I'd have to shave off the number 3 on each one.  Wouldn't want any children wigging out about the wrong pencil, like DJ Tanner did in the episode where she took the SAT test (and her burrito was talking).  Actually, I wouldn't care what number they were, as long as they were already sharpened.  One year, I did receive number 2.5 pencils in my class.  Kind of strange, but they worked just fine. :)

Little Things

Here are a few of the little things that bring joy into my life:

This scene

Gilbert may not be the hay capital of the world anymore, but I do happen to live across the road from a hay field. Every once in a while, as I exit my neighborhood, I get so excited to see this truck parked in front of the hay bales. I don't exactly know why it makes me so happy, it just does. Maybe I have a weakness for trucks. And hay?

Chipotle Chips

The perfect amount of lime. The perfect compliment to any meal. Or the perfect meal by itself.

I may or may not be able to eat the whole bag by myself, especially since being taught the art of ripping the bag for easier access to the chips.

Copy Machines

I love the smell of freshly copied, warm papers. Also, I find so much satisfaction in grabbing a stack of papers at work, putting them in the copier, and when my copy job is finished, I discover that I grabbed EXACTLY the right number of papers!

(Don't be fooled into thinking I never get upset at the copy machine. )

Horchata

Cinnamony, ricey goodness.

Xcelerator

Who wouldn't want to see their skin flap in the outrageously powerful wind? And get their hands dry in the process?

Megamind

My new favorite movie. "Now, back to laughing." Hahaha!

Napster

" He said he named it 'Napster' because it was his nickname because of the nappy hair under the hat. But he lied, it's because I was NAPPING when he STOLE it from me!"

Last Friday, I drove up to my grandpa's house with my awesome Cuz and Sista Sista. I love seeing my grandpa, but I don't love staying at his house. Why not? Well, the beds are older than I am. Therefore, I didn't sleep all night. I was more than delighted to get up at 6:30am for breakfast because it meant my night of torture was over.

Fortunately, I was exhausted enough a few hours later to take a nice little nap. And naptime means dream time. One dream involved going sledding. Without snow. It didn't go over very well. The boy scouts that were there still made an attempt at it, though. Gotta love boy scouts.

In my other dream, I was in an airport and overheard a woman speaking to her daughter about the Mormons. I jumped right in and asked them if they wanted to know more about the Mormon church. They answered in the affirmative and I explained that the church's name is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but we are called "mormons" because of the Book of Mormon. I grabbed my copy out of my backpack to give it to them. She started looking thumbing through the pages and said, 'Umm...this is my Bible." Oops. I must have grabbed it on accident. I tried again and pulled out another book. I tried once more, but still couldn't get a Book of Mormon to give her. I decided that it wasn't meant to be, so I chose to direct her to mormon.org instead. And what do you know-my pen wouldn't work, so I couldn't write the url for her. I hope that when I try to share the gospel in real-life, I won't have so many disruptions.