I’m alive. I promise. This weekend, after staying up for 24 hours on Friday (not. ok.), I started the week feeling like the three weeks I had left of Institute would be ENDLESS. ENDLESS I tell you!

However, after getting the afternoon off yesterday (Happy TFA Day!), which then allowed me to get four hours of sleep from 7 until 11:30 before I drove across town to a midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with Stephanie before returning home at 4 to get two more hours of sleep, and after finishing three lesson plans tonight without breaking a sweat (and before 10:00PM!), I’m feeling like the two weeks and 2 days of Institute I have left are totally manageable. Especially since tomorrow at this time, I’ll be rocking out to Kris Allen, Adam Lambert, and Allison Iraheta at the American Idol concert…..andagainonSaturday.

Yes, I am going to the American Idol concert twice. And yes, I am aware that the do-gooders here at TFA probably judge and don’t understand my pop culture obbsesions. I know in my heart, though, that the fact that I’m going twice is just the consequence of a weird set of circumstances that involved me not thinking I could make the LA show, buying tickets to the San Diego show instead, and then finding out I could go to the LA show….but I digress.

The seeing HP and the seeing Kris Allen are the things that are keeping me sane and allowing me to plow through these last two weeks. I went into this thing telling myself that I would not change. I would not let TFA consume my life. I would not burn out by pushing away the things I love and becoming scary-serious-sanctimonious chick. I do want to give all I can to my new job, but not at the expense of my life. So…yeah, no guilt. And I won’t complain if I’m tired, which surprisingly after last night’s weird split up sleep situation, I’m not. (I still got 7 hours of sleep, which sadly, is more than I’ve been getting on a regular basis) Although, this post is sounding more and more like I am super tired. Or like I’m drugged.

Whatevs. The whole point is I’m alive. I’m going to make it through Institute, and I’m going to allow myself to have some fun along the way. The end. Good night.

“We are going to watch a video clip about investing your students from Justin Meli’s class. He’s a little bit TF Famous” – My Curriculum Specialist

“No! Don’t take the dinosaur subtraction! Not the dinosaur subtraction! He’s taking it!” – Justin Meli to his 3rd grader, who happily skipped away with extra subtraction homework.

“What’s the smart student motto?”
“WORK HARD. GET SMART. OOO! OOO!” – Justin Meli’s 3rd Grade class

“What is ‘Team All-Star’ in another language?”
“How did we go from ‘Let’s finish this lesson plan!’ to ‘What is All-Star in Spanish?’” – My co-lab (aka teaching partners) trying to think of a team name (and generally being mini-lesson planning all-stars)

Institute is mostly challenging and kind of stressful….but sometimes, it’s just funny.

Maybe you had to be there. Or maybe I’m just sleep-deprived.