14 August 2005

New Medievia Website!

Well after many months of wishing for a new site, a website design contest, and about 3 weeks of hard work, Medievia has a NEW Website!!

Check out all our hard work! www.medievia.com/newsite.html

YAY!

09 August 2005

Going Back to School

So it's about 2 weeks now that I need to go back to work. It's strange because it's like something "clicked" in my brain and now I realise it so my brain is in teacher mode. I'm now thinking of a thousand things I could do differently this year. Part of being a teacher is adjusting and changing to make things better for the students. So, the start of the year is a great time to try somthing new and make changes to established routines.

One thing I know I do well for sure at my job is being organized. The main reason why I'm so organized is because I get really stressed out if I'm not. I just don't know how disorganized teachers get by :P There is so much paperwork, emails, phone calles, lesson plans, seating charts, etc etc that you have paper everywhere in addition to the files and emails on your computer. Oh, and voicemail too. Not to mention the 12o or so students I need to teach :) Anyways, as I tell my students, organization is the key to success.

That being said, of course I'm thinking about better ways to organize. I took my posters down off the walls in June which I hadn't done for 2 summers. I have a LOT of posters and stuff from France and Quebec that I hang up too. I need to rethink where it all should go! But, this is fun for me, so I'm not complaining. The start of the school year is a nice refreshing start every time. But then comes the rest of the year...

My goal for today is to go in for a few hours with Benjamin and get started. I only have 2 weeks left!!

04 August 2005

New Hair!

Well, I did it and it's done! I think it looks great, but I haven't done the styling myself yet :P The salon was VERY nice, of course. While I was driving there I thought to myself "Im sure I'll see one of my students/ex-students there". Well, sure enough, 2 girls that graduated last year worked there as receptionists! Anyways...

I got my smock on and sat down with a nice glass of lemon-water as I waited for my colorist. She came out and took me over to a line of chairs facing a wall with flat-screen tvs on it. The tvs were showing make-overs :) This was the coloring station. It was interesting to me that there were no mirrors here. I guess they don't want you to see yourself with a head full of foil and dye stuff.

Anyways, my colorist Monica came out and I told her I wanted highlights, but whatever she thought might look good. So we agreed on "warm" highlights and we also had to dye the rest of my hair brown to get rid of the yucky CVS color I put in 8 months ago. So, she began to foil...
"Do you live around here?", Monica asked. I explained that I lived about 2 minutes away and proceeded to explain where are street is. "What's the name of the street?" I told her. "I live on that street!" So, my colorist lives 3 houses up on the right! She lives with her parents and has lived here all her life. For the rest of the color treatment she gave me the scoop on all our neighbors. What a small world!

After drying under a dryer and perusing several magazines I received the best hairwashing I've ever had, done by Claire. It lasted about 15 minutes and was awesome. She even asked me if I wanted my feet reclined! (I said no)

Enter Brooke, hairstylist supreme. Tall, thin, short blond stylish hair, she could be a model. She was very excited about attacking my shoulder-length hair. I told her I wanted easy to manage, shape, and style. She cut it all one length shorter and then went to work on the layering.... amazing really... much different than SuperCuts. After cutting, she styled and styled and I paid close attention so I could try to replicate it here at home (won't happen). All she used was a round brush and a blowdryer, and voila! C'est fini...

http://www.medievia.com/soleil/hair.html

02 August 2005

Hair

Let me just tell you a little about the history of my hair. When I was little my hair was short and curly with a perm, given by my mom. As I got older, I had a little more say in my hair-do but still continued to get perms as per the advice of my mom. Middle school- awful 80s cuts, usually permed, trying to be Madonna. In high school I yearned to have long hair but did not have the patience. I tried many different cuts, colors, curliness, but never long. In college I continued with my experimentation with hair styles, dying, highlighting, cutting myself, etc. But again, never long. Finally, after graduation from college and as life got busier, my hair got longer. No more perms either. Well, I did get one perm with longer hair, but regretted it and hated waiting for it to grow out.

I have been growing my hair pretty much from that time until last year. Before I got my hair cut to my shoulders last fall, my hair was all one length, brown, to the middle of my back. When I cut it to my shoulders, I dyed it myself auburn, and that's the look I have now, except not so auburn since the dye has faded/grown out.

Every single time I've gotten my hair cut that I remember has been at a SuperCuts quality place- Hair Cuttery, Holiday, Super Cuts, etc. - all the same - cheap haircut place. So, today, I decided that I'm going to take my all one length brown shoulder-length hair to a fancy schmancy salon and see what they come up with. I just got off the phone and I'm going tomorrow at 5 for a color consultation and cut! Wish me luck!

01 August 2005

A healthy baby boy at Burger King

Today I took Benjamin for his 2 year medical checkup. Overall, he's healthy and growing great - Yay! He was a good boy in the office until the doctor came in the little room. He was ok at first but once he started touching him the volume rose a few notches. Overall he was great though, and no shots!

Afterwards I took him to Burger King for lunch - they have a huge indoor playground/climbing thing. We ate first - I got him a chicken nuggets kids meal. He ate the fries, I ate the chicken. Well, I should say, he ate the ketchup. He loves to dip the fries in the ketchup and then suck the ketchup off, over and over. The fry usually never gets eaten. Instead, it gets discarded into the container and a crunchier fry takes its place as ketchup utensil :P

After we ate, we checked out the playground/climbing Benjamintrap. It is designed so children can climb up and get stuck up there. It is also designed to be too small for parents to fit up inside it comfortably. Needless to say, but Benjamin happily climbed up the steps inside it, got scared, and "forgot" how to turn around and climb back down. He was inside it standing at the top looking at me through this small hole, holding his arms out to me. I tried to coax him down but no go. So up I go, climbing up inside this thing that's too small for me to climb in. But up I went and I got him. He was happy to see me but still too scared to go back down. It was a bit of a struggle but we made it! I think I'll skip Burger King next time :P

Clothes

So, one of the jobs on my "Summer Todo List" was/is to organize my mess of clothes. I want to clean house and donate all the clothes I'm never going to wear anymore. Easier said than done...Since I've been many shapes and sizes over the past 5 years or so, I've accumulated quite a mass of clothes, also all shapes and sizes. I have pants - blue, black, olive green, khaki - in sizes 8-16. I have shirts and sweaters from M-XL. I have dresses and work clothes for all ranges too. So, my task was/is to go through the clothes, REALLY get rid of the things I haven't worn for the past 3 years (going to GoodWill), and organize things by size, in large storage containers.

But, why don't I just get rid of all the clothes that no longer fit me? Well, I aim to get back to that size 8, so don't want to give them away in case that happens anytime soon :P I don't want to dispose of the larger sizes either in case of pregnancy #2, if and when that may ever happen. So, organize I must.

I started with my pants. I have WAY too many pairs of pants. I have a large storage container now for each size: 16/pregnancy, 14, 12, 8 (I'm currently wearing the 10s, so they aren't in containers). The containers fit nicely at the top of my closet... nice and organized!

I'm 1/2 way done organizing my work clothes. Out of all the dresses hanging in my closet, I happily put about 1/3 of them in my GoodWill pile. I haven't gone through them in years and there were a lot of old things there! Yay!

Next I need to tackle my sweaters and sweatshirts. Many of them have "sentimental" value to them as I've had them since high school and college and can't bear to part with them. Most of the sentimental value items are things I will most likely not wear again. So, what to do? Do I put them in a storage box at the top of my closet for the sake of keeping them just to take out and look at every once and awhile, or do I give them to GoodWill? Hrm, since I'm a packrat, I'm sure I'll keep them.

Some days I wish life were like Star Trek when everyone wears the same uniform all the time. I wouldn't have to waste my time thinking and writing about clothes!