Two More Days…

Well everyone, your faithfully inconsistent blogger is back. More and more recently I’ve been unable to keep even a meek schedule of blogging once a week. It’s mainly because of the gym. Typically I work out Monday  through Thursday, and I usually get home around 10 PM. At that point all I want to do is veg out and sit on the computer without taking the energy to type anything. Then Friday is generally spent out and about town, while Saturday is reserved for Hashing and Hashing-related activities (read: heavy drinking). Sunday, being the Lord’s Sabbath, is a day of rest for me. I’m generally too sore from running the day before to do much of anything.

Tomorrow is Reckoning Day for me. At the gym anyway. It marks week 10 since I’ve started working out. It’s also my second monthly test. My trainer challenged me to lose 3 kilos (6.6 pounds) in-between my monthly tests. I’m only doing it every five weeks because it just so happened my first monthly test, so I may as well give myself the same time to lose more weight than I did in the last period. Like two weeks ago I stepped on a different scale at the gym and it said in three weeks I had only lost .5 kilos, which really disappointed me, considering I’d been working my ass off in the gym as well as going out of my way to diet a bit, to boot. Someone suggested it may have just been adding muscle while losing weight, which it could be. I weighed myself at home and it had me down like 4 kilos from 5 weeks ago, but it’s also terribly inconsistent, so I can’t trust it.

Anyway, I’ve got two more days before my vacation. I’m trying to not think about it too much. I probably won’t be going out, for very long at least, Friday night, because I have to wake up early on Saturday and go to Mudfest. The Hashers are invading and going Hashing then having a wild ole time. Monday I’ll probably be Hashing again for someone’s last Hash with our group. Tuesday I’m getting my ingrown toenail taken care of. That may mean no running for awhile, which sucks. Also means I probably won’t be traveling.

Instead, I’ll be using the vacation to pamper myself. I’ll probably go to Seoul and buy several new pairs of shoes. The two I have now are a bit old and beat up, not to mention musty as hell from three solid weeks of rain. I’m also considering buying a new computer. My little netbook is reaching it’s last legs. It’s been pretty slow for awhile, but the C key started sticking and when I tried fiddling with it, it popped off and it’s goddamn impossible to get it back on. I can type all right just pressing the bare sensor, but it looks ghetto as hell. I suppose a $300 computer can only take you so far. The good news is that at least I get paid this Friday. They pay early when holidays or vacations fall on payday. Score.

The week after vacation won’t be so bad. We have elementary classes like regular all week, but for the first three days we have a “summer camp”. They’re basically the kindergarten kids (read: parents) who want more practice. Only 1-2 kids per class. I think I did a pretty good job of planning three interesting things. Each day has it’s theme — Outer Space, Myth and Magic, and Science — and I’ve got some fun little activities planned for each.

I’m also pretty astounded by my first graders. They’ve gone from zero to almost no reading skill to reading 3-5 letter words including the most common long vowel sounds in just two months. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you teach a kid how to read, you realize how fucking hard it is, even on the simple level, because English has about a million rules and exceptions. Shit you don’t even think about, like short O having a different sound in front of a G, or the dual long U sound (June vs mule). I’m really proud of them all. I can give them any basic word, and using the rules they know, they can sound it out. Next is just learning consonant digraphs, but that’s really just putting consonant sounds together, so I think that will go pretty fast.

Anyway, just gotta power through the rest of the week, then I’m free for nine days. Just two more days!