I did something about my hair today; I cut it all off. Here’s the ponytail the stylist cut off:
I would’ve donated it to the cancer-wig program that Jen donated HERS too, but I couldn’t wait any longer. The tangles were too exhausting to untangle. :(
Anyway, I think it looks pretty good! And it’s DEFINITELY easier to comb!!! :)
Ben and I have been in Las Vegas for the past five days. Arrgh … I HATE Las Vegas. Or, I hate it right now; I can’t go ANYWHERE. It’s too noisy. WAAAY too noisy. :(
Interesting bits of our stay included the food the Marriot people brought us; they bring SO MUCH of it! I should’ve taken a picture of it. We ordered ice cream, and we got an *enormous* bowl of it — like eight scoops for three people — along with popcorn, pretzels, and candy bars. As if we really are going to need four candy bars each after eight scoops of ice cream.
I watched an unlimited number of pay-per-view movies, which were free! I saw … let’s see … Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, Transamerica (on the weird but funny side), Jarhead (just on the weird side), and a couple others whose names I can’t remember. That was cool.
Other than that, I didn’t do much. I wanted to; it’s not like I was just being a party pooper. Alas, though, I stayed in my “cell” (as Ben called our hotel room) most of the time. :(
It’s the boys’ birthday! Chaco turned five and Bonzo is one. We celebrated with … you guessed it … steak! They LOVED it. (Big surprise, eh?) I have a video but I haven’t uploaded it yet …
In other news, Dr. Utlaut pronouned my eyes “healthy and robust” today. Yeah :) It’s not a big surpise, but still, it’s good. (Of all the ailments I could have, vascular cancer seemed the least desireable.)
I’ve had a good week of therapy today, too. I saw Jill for PT (physical therapy) again today and she agreed that she could help me. YAY!!! (I would love to not be a fat, sit-on-the-couch-in-front-of-the-TV kind of person anymore!) And then there’s Melissa. Melissa is the smartest of all my therapists, and I trust her a lot. Today I told her about school and asked her how many classes I should take. She immediately flipped to the back of the “Course Schedule” handout, where the four and five semester programs are, and said “Well, why don’t you start with one class.”
And I agree with her, but … I came home and cried. (Which, I might add, is an accomplishment of its own; I usually laugh when I mean to cry! Which stinks, too! But today I actually cried and it felt SO good.) It SUCKS to be at this point; I could go the alternative teaching route (i.e. finish up my internet math class and then, when I get hired, teach and go to night school to finish the requirements), but I’m too tired to do that right now. This teacher program allows me to get started using my brain again, which is fantastic, and I can go at any pace I want. But TWO YEARS seems like a long time. Ben said something like, “But you may need that much time to recover!” I know, cerebrally, that he’s right. But I don’t want it to take that long.
In my email today, I got this from the Teacher Licensure Program at the University of Colorado:
Hi Katherine,
Congratulations! You have been conditionally admitted to the Post-Baccalaureate Secondary Math Teacher Licensure program for the fall 2006 semester. Since it has taken so long to process your application, I am emailing you what would be in the acceptance package that gets mailed to you (the actual package will be mailed out tomorrow). Please review all the documents and contact me immediately to let me know if you plan on attending. If you are, you will need to pay the $200 enrollment deposit right away and let me know what EDUC courses you would like us to register you for this fall. The options are on the back of the Reply card. I hope to hear from you soon.
Best regards,
Erin Orzolek
I think I’m going to accept! I don’t have much motivation to do things right now, and I think it might be nice to be in school and have things dictated to me. However, I have a number (a LARGE number) of questions, such as:
(1) How much does it cost?
(2) The “conditional” part is because I need to “complete 50 hours of service with the appropriate age group”, but I’ve already done that … did they not receive the form that Pastor Tim filled out? (Did he indeed fill it out?)
(3) Is there any program that will let me work on my alternative license? Like, just do the coursework that I would need to do at night or on the weekends, instead of taking three semesters of stuff?
(4) I’d like to find out what “Disabled Student Services” are available. Apparatley, there is a law that demands a whole bunch of things for disabled students, including not being called on in class without warning and other things I wouldn’t have predicted. Some of these may be very useful. (I’ll ask Melissa about these.) My immediate question, however, concerns how many classes I have to take; two, maybe, would be a good number. Can I drop some if I need to?
Today we welcomed our good friends Jason and Guki back to our house! First, though, we met in Boulder for some good eatin’; mongolian BBQ and ice cream cake :) Mmmm! After gourging ourselves on ice cream cake, we went to the movies and saw “Thank You for Smoking”, which was hilarious.
When we got home, we had time for a walk, hamburgers, fondue, and the hot tub. It’s been a good day! :)
This afternoon I did something I’ve never done before … well, two things, actually. First, Ben and I went to the Denver aquarium; it was very impressive! Second, I attended a fraq swap of the Rocky Mountain Reef Club. This is when members of the club get together and sell little bits of their corals, which you can regrow into full-sized corals in your own aquarium. It sounded a little bit dull, to be honest, but I really wanted to see the aquarium so I urged Ben to go. The fraq swap turned out to be neat, though; it’s neat to meet everybody else who’s interested in marine aquaria. There were high school boys, people from a shop in Fort Collins, a doctor from the Denver Children’s Hospital … it’s an interesting range of people.
Here’s Ben getting up close and personal with an exhibit at the aquarium:
And they also have tigers!
Now we’re busy making our new coral frags feel at home in our aquarium :) We got seven in all, I think; my favorite is Xenia, a soft coral. It’s already pulsing in its tub!