Break's over.

My friend, Lynn, sent me an unexpected surprise gift in the mail this week.  This very cute shirt showed up on Thursday, and I love the mix of the adorable lamb with the offensive text.  I wore it right away on Friday.  It's so nice to get that rare item in the mail that isn't a bill or "spam".  

I wonder how many pounds of marketing material AT&T Uverse sends out to each household per year.  I get several big packets and mailings from them each week and have for years, though you couldn't pay me to get on their crappy Uverse package.  I'm sure it would cost their customers a lot less if they stopped sending the slick, glossy, expensive marketing materials.  It's so irresponsible to waste so many resources. They are phenomenally environmentally destructive--one of many reasons I greatly dislike the company.

I did not end up getting sick over break, despite feeling unwell as of my previous post.  I felt a little icky for a couple of days, but it was nothing more than a very minor head cold. It never turned into anything significant, so I'm feeling pretty lucky about that.

I go back to school Monday morning.  I'm ready for school but not ready for getting up early and going out in the cold.  I miss the students and am excited to get back to classes. I have all my my materials loaded onto D2L (the online interface for our classes) and feel pretty prepared for all of my classes for the semester.  

This semester I have a female student in my Java class, and that was a totally unexpected surprise.  It's a non-traditional student who I've had in a few classes already, and she's smart, together, and she will be real asset to the class.  I have some other repeat students in there, and it's going to be a fun group! It's much smaller than my last Java class, which was overwhelmingly large, and this class size is optimal for a programming class.

One of my classes has a wait list, and I'm glad it's only one this semester.  I stress out over my waitlists, because I hate to have to tell anybody I can't get them in.  All of my classes require computers, so I am limited by the number of computers in the lab.  I can squeeze another one or two in if they have a laptop.  I have my fingers crossed that I will be able to work in at least a couple from the waitlist.

I'm returning to school with a little frustration that, yet again, I didn't get nearly as much done as I had planned.  I had several house projects that I wanted done before returning to school but they are not done, and my house is still in chaos.  

We had planned to rip out the carpet in our bedroom (the last carpeted room in the house) and refinish the floor, but M's long bout with the flu derailed that project.  We may get it done over my spring break, but doubtful, as M's workload is pretty unrelenting that time of year.

Some of my minor projects didn't go so well and ended up taking much more time than I had anticipated.  I had what should have been a ten-minute task on my list--retouching paint in our side-entry way.  I took the numbers in from the original paint color, and had Menards mix a pint of the same for touchups.  I spent 15 minutes or so touching up any chips/scratches (most of them courtesy of the dogs' claws) and realized when the paint dried that it was not at all the original green.  It was significantly darker and more saturated.  I had to repaint the entire area with the new color, as there was no way to blend in the new color.  I'm a messy, slow painter, so it took me several hours and then a couple more touchups when the bright sunny days arrived and revealed the imperfections.  We all found that we like the new green better than the previous green, so it turned out well in the end.

Another small, minor project that didn't go so was my effort at dyeing my white jeans.  I LOVE those jeans, and they are one of about three pairs that actually fits well, but I ended up with some mystery stains (bright yellow) that would not launder out.  Even multiple bleachings did nothing to help with the stains.  I figured by dyeing, I could still keep a pair of jeans that fit, though I had to give up on them being white.  I tried to dye them navy blue.  They were beautiful--I loved the color, except that the color of the blue was several shades lighter on the areas where the original stains were.  WTF?!?  So, I then tried to bleach out the color and start over, but it turned out exactly the same.  My husband pointed out that had I just replaced the jeans when I found the miserable stain, I would have a nice pair of jeans and the whole Saturday afternoon I spent wrestling with the dye process (Rit dye STINKS, by the way!)  As much as I loved having the white jeans for the few months they lasted, I guess I've learned my lesson (again).  I do not have the ability to wear white.

The big mess is focused in our dining room.  I started removing wallpaper, and the plan was to use our steamer instead of Dif.  I feel better about using steam than chemicals.  It's slow work, though, and my damn hands don't work very well, so I can only work in limited time blocks rather than knocking it out in a weekend as I would like.  We've picked out the paint for the room (the darkest of the two colors on the wall), and I've already painted the trim, so I'm anxious to get the paint on the walls.  I'll have to keep plugging away at that, but I have less time for projects now that I'm back to work.