Summer Bucket List

Tomorrow is my last official day of summer vacation. Picture me making a MASSIVE sad face, especially since I have to get up early to go sing a mass. Who the heck goes to church on Labor Day?

For the last two weeks, I have been alternately vegging out in front of the computer and working. We had registration for the school and show choir camp, along with our teacher meeting. Doing school-related stuff during what is technically “vacation” time definitely made me not want to do anything on the days I wasn’t working, and it didn’t help that it’s been too freaking hot outside to do much of anything except lie as still as possible in our one air-conditioned room.

I did some massive housework. The plumber came by and tore two holes in our ceiling in an attempt to discern the source of the leak from our tub. And I got to go to a pirate dinner adventure for my sister and mum’s birthday.

All in all, I felt like this was a pretty enjoyable summer. I just wish the last two weeks hadn’t been screwed with the surprise of having to teach a new class (and write a new curriculum) this year. I would have liked to have gone somewhere fun this week, but I was busy prepping :\ The Man and I did get to go see Premiere Rush, which was a fun movie if you don’t go into it expecting much. We were both exhausted from watching it, because it literally never stops.

Another laid-back week, which is awesome because I start working for real again next week :( The Man and I got to go see The Candidate, which was funny and less slapsticky than some of Will Ferrell’s other movies; I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd were inspired choices to play the Motch Brothers.)

I also got a chance to go hiking with my friend V., and even though she’s five years younger and probably 50 pounds lighter than I am, I mostly managed to keep up. Hooray!

Add to that a haircut, an eyebrow wax, and a small clothes-shopping trip…and I’m almost ready to go back to school. Almost. I really don’t want to yet. I keep trying to remind myself of all the cool kiddos I get to work with this year, but my brain wants to inundate me with the stuff that’s giving us trouble, like scheduling our hosted competition or finding a theater to perform our winter show.

Only a few more days of freedom. I’m probably going to spend them doing housework, because when my house is a mess, I feel like a mess too.

It has been so bloody hot here this week that the Man and I have been pretty unwilling to do anything that would involve us leaving the one room of our house that has air conditioning. I did manage to get some work stuff done (go go Gadget T-shirt order!), and I talked my parents into trying an Indian restaurant for dinner one night.

Also, I have gained a fair amount of weight over vacation – enough to put me just back outside the “healthy” range on my BMI. This is part of why my September goal is to make a meal plan and stick to it every week. The Man is most unhelpful, having bought about a dozen “interesting” sodas on his trip to BevMo :\

I spent the last week in a suburb of Chicago. And while I was not exactly overjoyed with the crying baby that accompanied us everywhere we went, I still managed to have a good time. I got my nails and toenails done, spent time with my friend and her family, and ate a ridiculous amount of ridiculous food (frozen custard, kobe boursin sliders, cupcake, fried cheese curd, watermelon Italian Ice, beer nuggets, deep dish Chicago style pizza, Chicago style hot dog, oysters and Lake Erie yellow perch, Wisconsin ice cream and Spotted Cow beer, oh dear god I can feel my arteries clogging as I type).

We only made it into the city for one full day, and it happened to be a day when Lollapalooza was happening and it was about a million degrees. Sears Tower and Millennium Park were still neat, even if I was sweating to death.

I would definitely like to go back – preferably not in the summer, and with The Man accompanying me.

Holy balls I was unproductive this week. The most important thing I accomplished was getting my car washed. Mind you, this was a major feat for me, since I normally get my car bathed about once a year.

I got to spend time with two friends I haven’t seen in a while, and took the Man’s goddaughter to the park and made sandcastles on the beach. Met with my choreographer about this year, and thankfully it looks like we’re going to mostly be on the same page as far as costumes and staging and stuff (no huge major disagreements at this point).

My bellydance class was fun this week (I wish they had a mirror in there so I could see if I’m doing it right, but she probably does that on purpose so that we don’t stare at ourselves for the entire class). One night The Man took me for Dippin Dots and Dark Knight Rises, which I enjoyed. Picked up THREE paychecks from the church and now I have money for my trip to Chicago!

My fingernails are as long as they have ever been, and they are starting to cause problems. During the year I keep them very short because I play piano every day, but I’ve been letting them grow on vacation. It’s harder to type, and I keep stabbing myself in the eye when I put in my contacts. How do those women with the FritoLay manicures do it?

I was pretty lazy this week, and it felt good. Take that, overdeveloped work ethic. However, I do think I should probably stop going to bed at 5:00a and sleeping till 3:00p. I feel remarkably unproductive because of that small thing.

Monday night I had my first bellydance class of this session, with the same teacher I went to last summer. I am thinking perhaps I want to continue this during the school year, as it would be nice to have something fun to do outside of just going to work and home. We’ll see how I feel once school has actually started.

Over the course of this week, I got ALL my music finished for this year’s competition set – piano, bass and choral charts for a half-dozen songs. Every year I swear I’m not going to do my own arrangements because it’s so time-consuming…and then every year I end up doing my own because the arrangements I can buy are never quite what I want. Now I just need to put it all together in folders, and THAT part of dealing with competitions will never bug me again this year.

AND! My birthday was Saturday! The Man took me for delicious dinner and ice cream. I loves him.

VACATION! The Man and I went up to the mountains of central California and frolicked amongst the redwoods for a few days this week. We got to see Crystal Cave and hiked through the forest to Tharp’s Log and Crescent Meadow (which was a long hike and made us feel super out-of-shape). Also saw the movie “Ted” while on vacation, which we rather enjoyed.

When I came back from vacation, I got to deal with work stuff – the changing of the guard for the booster club, pop show DVD orders, blah blah yackety schmakety. I don’t think I’ve had a week of summer vacay where I haven’t dealt with work stuff. Lamez.

Saturday morning I got to see my friend’s new baby get baptized (and the kid was surprisingly well behaved for having water dumped over her head). Then that evening, my family celebrated my dad’s and my birthdays at Medieval Times , courtesy of a BOGO coupon that made the price relatively reasonable. Soooo much food…and our knight won! My actual cake day is next weekend, and I think the Man is going to take me to get a massage. Bless’im.

Very quiet this week – the Man has had lots of people over to play Warhamster in the backyard, and he has been going out to visit some friends of his who are in town for a short while. So I’ve mostly been entertaining myself with the Sims and sleeping until 1:00p.

Thursday night we saw Spamalot at the Carpenter Center. The Man is not a musical theater fan (it actually makes him angry, if you can believe that) but I enjoyed it very much. Also got to go have drinks with V. on Friday night, and listen to her silly tales of being single and 25 in Long Beach. The more I hear, the less I miss being single :)

J. is in town from Chicago for her baby’s baptism, so I had some brunch with her today between masses. Baby is as cute as babies can be expected to be. Baby has a retarded middle name that I can only hope is a family name of some sort. Baby gets dunked on the 14th, and that will be a fun party.

Oh! and I donated blood today after work. I was fine until the guy took the needle OUT, and then I got dizzy and passed out for a few seconds. Sweaty, cold and hot at the same time, yech. I think it was because I was watching him bag up the blood and put it all away. Every time I have ever passed out in my whole life, it’s because I was watching stuff being done with blood. Clearly, I do better when I just don’t look.

Tomorrow we leave for Sequoia! Ready to hike the redwoods.

Lots of good and entertaining stuff this week. The Man and I saw Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (entertaining if you go into it not really expecting anything) and also went to the Butterfly Pavilion at the Natural History Museum.

Got my blood sucked at the doctor and apparently my cholesterol has improved, but now my triglycerides are high? Probably a result of all the soda I’ve been pouring into myself recently; July Goal is water/tea/milk only. Will get blood sucked again in December and see if it’s better.

I went to my final cake-decorating class and I can do everything we learned except the stupid Wilton Ribbon Rose . Mine look like spiral turds. Oh well, one more excuse to practice by playing with sugar and shortening.

Oh! And the sister and I saw “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” last night. SUCH a good show, and their Hedwig was fantastic. Tiny, tiny theater (seated maybe 50 people) and was a great venue for this show.

Technically, this will be less of a proper Bucket List, and more a way of keeping track of all the awesome stuffs I get to do this summer. It is a far cry from last summer, where I had no idea if I would be employed and my unemployment was about to run out.

WEEK 1 has mostly been a “getting things done” week. I went to the dentist (no cavities!) and got a haircut after having colored it myself. I also dealt with some work stuff, went to my cake decorating class, and cleaned the house up a bit. Nothing terribly exciting, but it was pretty awesome to have several days where I didn’t have to do anything.