This is the end of my third day of vacation, and my nine day break is now almost one third over.
Last weekend was the first truly free weekend that I have had since early August. This is because I’ve been doing an average of ten hours or so of grading and/or lesson planning every single weekend since I started teaching. However, when I tell people this I seem to get very limited sympathy. The common perception is that teaching equals summers off equals easy living, never mind if the rest of the year consists of 60 hour workweeks.
Be that as it may, what I intend to write about today is the praiseworthy joys of my vacation - not the unappreciated rigours my vocation.
I spent the first 50 hours or so of my vacation in a semi-gellatinous state. That is, once in a while I formed myself into an upright posture for short periods to get food, start a load of laundry, or bake up another batch of cookie dough, but I spent most of my time in a limp puddle in front of the TV eating cookies and pop tarts. In the process I completely cleaned out my TiVO and Neflix backlogs - which most would consider to be a dubious accomplishment, but I’m rather pleased about it.
I also learned a couple of things:
1. I appear to be a coke addict. Every weekend I have been getting a headache sometime after noon. This is shortly after the time during the workday when I indulge myself in a single cherry coke. You wouldn’t think that one coke a day over a five day period would be enough to build a caffeine addiction, but since I’ve had the same headache on several different Saturdays I’m beginning to believe this is the case. So, maybe it’s time to get off the sauce.
2. Laying on my back for 2 days straight eating fresh baked nestle chocolate chip cookies makes me gassy.
Late Sunday night I went down to the tiny little gym in my apartment complex and worked out for the first time since last summer. It felt good, it helped me get a good night’s sleep despite the fact that I had had a really good nap that afternoon, and even though I did an incredibly whimpy workout, I’m definitely feeling it 23 hours later. I hope this will get me started back on the fitness track, because it is sad how little it takes these days to get me feeling a little winded.
Today (Monday), my first real day of vacation, I went to the common area in my apartment complex to spend a few hours grading papers. In between grading I did a little juggling now and then as a break. In the process I got about a third of my grading done and I learned how to do a 531 flash in the middle of a 3 shower pattern. All in all, I consider that to be a fairly productive day.
Oh… and I wrote in my blog too.
Tomorrow’s goals:
Get some more grading done, do another workout, and perhaps even get out of my apartment complex to go buy some stuff (like some non- pastry related food products).
My ambitions for this week really know no bounds.
