A Busy Week....

Well, I haven't been able to keep up with NaNoWriMo as much as I would have liked this week. I had a stack of essays to grade for Class Day on Thursday; in fact, I was up until 2 AM on Thursday morning grading essays. I left a few to grade during my free period, but one of them took nearly an hour to grade, and I had to cobble together mid-term progress reports while in class. Out of the class of ten students, I had three A's, four B's, two C's, and one D. One of my tutoring students segued into my Intermediate (college prep) class yesterday, and she had one of the A's, just barely. Fortunately, my Advanced (honors) students didn't turn in any essays last time so I only had to do their progress reports: two A's (the two students I moved up from the Intermediate class), one B+ (E's grade), and two B's. They all work so hard, and I'm quite pleased with them.

I was also back to tutoring this week, meeting with J on Monday and M & M (sisters) on Tuesday, both of whom are going through the Beginning Writing program that Becky Winn (the founder of our private school home program) and I put together. They're all working hard. And I do really enjoy one-on-one tutoring. I am also back at BraveWriter, substituting for Becky whose husband was injured in a motorcycle accident last month. I'm leading the Boomerang (7th-9th grade) literature discussion; last month I helped with the last week of Jane Eyre, and this week we're discussing The Eagle of the Ninth, a novel about a Roman soldier in Britain. Becky should be back for the December novel.

I also had to prepare the boys' progress reports which I did last night while watching Survivor, CSI, and ER (with Anthony Edwards returning! It was also cool to see Weaver and Romano, although they looked SO much older!). I have to mail them off today before the post office closes at 5:00 PM.

Sears is having a BIG sale today and tomorrow, and although our funds are quite limited, I needed to get T a few things. Being the oldest boy means that I have very few hand-me-downs for him, so I stopped by Sears without him (he refused to go) and managed with a 15% off coupon to purchase a pair of jeans and three shirts (two long-sleeved) for less than $30 all together; the jeans were only $8.50! (I love coupons that can be used on top of clearance prices!) Plus as B and I were walking out, I spied some men's shoes on sale. T only had summer shoes: a pair of sandals and a pair of thin canvas slip-ons. Sears had some very nice (and cool!) leather skateboarding shoes marked down from $65 to $20, and with my coupon which can be used over and over, I got them for $17. They only had three pairs left: 7, 8.5, and 9.5, so I bought the 8.5 and prayed they'd fit him. And they do! And (miracle of miracles) he likes everything I bought, including the red polo shirt for less than $3.50. I adore Sears for the boys' clothes. Plus if the jeans (or any other clothing or kids' shoes) wear out before they are outgrown, Sears will replace them for FREE with the same size. I usually replace the boys' jeans at least once, if not twice, and same with the shoes. SCORE!

It hasn't been easy sharing Keith's computer with him and E, so I have had little time to work on my novel. Today I should be at 22,000 words, but I'm only at 14,000; I hope to catch up tomorrow when Keith is working at my parents' cabin further up the mountain. My computer is still being stubborn; Veneta has spent hours and hours trying to straighten it around, but it won't access the Internet. Keith tried working with it last night but gave up in disgust. I think that Veneta is going to help him on the phone tonight as we have to have it up here on its own network. We'll see how it goes. (Crossing fingers and praying HARD!)