Makes Me Smile

I keep hoping I'm going to be able to stay on top of all these blog posts I want to write, but it just isn't happening. Ten Things Thursday is a wonderful idea, but lately my weeks have been insanely busy and stressful and by the time Thursday comes around I'm hard pressed to come up with a list of two things that make me smile, let alone ten. So I'm going to continue to be sporadic in my postings and assume that all of you, dear readers, will be okay with that.

I luckily did have two things that really made me smile this week that I want to share with you. The first is this lovely guy:

We have monthly faculty meetings at school and at each meeting the Apple Awards are given out. These are given by one faculty member to another in recognition of something great they did or something they should be acknowledged for. There are three Apple Awards, of various designs, but this guy is the coolest. And I got him this month!! I was the first new faculty member to receive an Apple Award and, as all the teachers have been telling me, it is quite an honor and a big deal. It was given to me by our sound and technology teacher, who is hilarious and who has been so great to me since I arrived. I'm a disaster when it comes to technology and sound equipment, so he's been helping me figure out what I need for a new sound system in my room and all of that stuff. When he presented me the award, he said the apple represents the music department and the guy is me holding it all up. I am very proudly displaying the Apple Award on my desk for the month, and am already thinking about who I'll pass it on to next month.



The other thing that made me smile, and which I unfortunately don't have a picture of, was the faculty golf tournament on Thursday. I hate golfing and had no intention of going to the tournament, but my friend Michelle (who is the colorguard instructor and is the person I know best at school so far) was golfing and she convinced me and Joy, one of the math teachers who is good friends with Michelle, to come and cheer her on. I had chatted with Joy a few times but didn't know her well so it seemed like a good opportunity to hang out with her, and be at a school social event. Joy and I decided that we would drive a golf cart and drink beer for the afternoon, which is exactly what we did. We zoomed around the course, visiting all the faculty teams (only nine people played) and delivering them beers and snacks, and generally being silly. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time and it was a much needed release after the last few stressful, intense weeks of school. Everyone who was golfing, including my principal, apparently found us quite amusing and insisted that we have to come back to drive the cart when everyone golfs again in the spring. Joy and I are already looking forward to it, though we have been told that we need to learn some golf cart etiquette first - something about driving down the middle of the fairway while people were trying to tee off...