American Idol Outrage 4/29/2009

I am simply outraged and in shock that Adam Lambert was in the bottom 3 tonight, and even more specifically in the bottom 2! How ridiculous! He's clearly the best one in the whole competition, and the most popular in terms of media coverage, so what happened? How did someone like Kris or Allen get more votes than him? I voted 12 times, so it's not my fault. I guess everyone just assumed he would be safe and didn't bother voting for him. The same thing happened to Michael Johns last season, except he was actually kicked off. At least now people will be careful and actually vote for Adam.

What a shocking results show!!! Thank goodness Adam didn't actually get kicked off, but I did nearly almost have a heart attack tonight waiting for the results.

American Idol Review 4/21/2009

Disco night. I know they are trying to keep from going over again, but it was weird and unfair how they let some people talk before their performance but not others. We're both ready for Lil and Anoop to go.

Tracy: Adam was my favorite, as always, with Kris and Allison being in second and third. It looked like Paula was crying/shaking during Adam's performance. It's always funny when they show her face while he's performing, it's like she's in love with him or something. But he is clearly the top runner amongst the judges, and with good reason. Danny still has a really neat tone to his voice, but his performances just aren't that exciting for me.

Blake: I think in the last 2 weeks Kris is becoming my favorite. I used to like Matt and Allison the most but not so much anymore.

Congrats to Randy for finally going one night without saying "For me for you."

Tracy's Job Search Continues

I got a call from a principal from one of the schools that I interviewed at in Frisco for a 2nd grade position. I was politely informed that they went with another candidate. She was very positive with me though. When I asked her if she had any advice for me regarding my interview skills, references, or my resume, she said she didn't have any and that I did a great job. She said I was confident, knowledgeable, and a great interviewee. So at least that's one positive thing to come from this.

But then she was brutally honest. She let me know that they were re-vamping their whole 2nd grade team and were looking for someone with a lot of experience teaching specifically second grade. She said that they went with someone who has taught in that grade for over 10 years....

Well, I can't compete with that. But it does make me wonder why they even call me in to interview. My resume clearly states which grades I've taught as a lead teacher(1st and 3rd). Nowhere on my resume does it say that I have experience in 2nd grade, because I don't...unless you count things like observation in classrooms back in college, volunteering, etc. At least it gave me good interviewing experience.

She did ask if I minded that she forward my information and notes onto other Frisco ISD principals since she liked me, and I told her of course, please do. She did let me know that Frisco is tight this year due to the economy. Not nearly as many teachers are willing to give up their jobs seeing as how things are so unstable nowadays. She also said don't get discouraged and that she's hired teachers on literally the last day of summer and also into the school year.

So I'm going to just keep trucking along. I do wish that she had even a LITTLE advice for me so I could try to work on something for future interviews. But I can't help that I've only taught for 2 years as opposed to 20 years.

In the meantime, I'm really enjoying substituting and being in the classroom. The computer program that Blake wrote for me to automatically search for substituting jobs got me 5 different jobs in one day today! So we are definitely keeping busy. I'm working every day, which I love. I also love being in all the different grades different days. It's fun going from 1st grade one day to 6th grade the next.

I'll be teaching a Kindergarten class tomorrow so keep your fingers crossed for me, kids that age wear me out!!!

-T-

Speaking of home improvements...

Yesterday we found a small, slightly damp, hole in the wall. At the same time we found some strange substance on Penny's lips. Surely this wasn't related?

Then later that day I found her literally trying to bite through part of the wall in the kitchen downstairs. We were just recently considering letting her roam the house when we're gone or asleep (she currently stays in a crate). Should we do it?

- B

Home Improvements

Hope this post finds you well. We've been doing great! We had a pretty relaxing weekend. We spent the time mainly just lounging around, getting Alisha a wedding gift, grocery shopping, and playing with the dogs. Blake actually used our treadmill for the first time yesterday. It was exciting! I hope he keeps it up so I can have a fitness buddy! He ran for a pretty long time, I was impressed!

We rented the new James Bond movie on Saturday, and both of us were very unimpressed. It was borderline boring, and just so unrealistic that it's hard to take seriously. Maybe we are just so used to Jack Bauer being awesome that anyone else like him just seems lame.

I'm still enjoying substituting. It's keeping me busy everyday and has been going well. I'm to the point now where schools are requesting me specifically, so that really help me get jobs everyday.
Blake's been enjoying his job, he was able to work from home everyday last week. Penny really liked that, she bothered him all day long!

Our next Home Improvement project is going to be tackling the grass, or lack there of, in the backyard. The backyard right now is in really bad shape. It's mainly dirt sprinkled with a few weeds. Lovely. So the bad thing is that ANY time it rains, the backyard becomes a mud pit.
When we have to let the dogs out to potty in the back, their feet are covered with mud and it gets tracked all over the house. Not good. We've even tried cleaning off their feet before they come in, or having them wait on a towel, but it doesn't get even half of the mud off. I've gotten so frustrated with it that I've picked up Penny and just given her a bath for the sake of not having to clean up the entire floors all over the house. But that is pretty pointless considering I can't pick up Barney to give him a bath, so he just makes a huge mess, counteracting the clean Penny. Lately we've resorted to letting the dogs potty in the front yard when it rains or the days following, which I'm sure the neighbors think is pretty weird. But if they saw our backyard, they'd understand.

To remedy the situation, my parents are going to help us cut down some of the trees in the backyard to try to help with the lack of grass. That and some of the trees are running into each other. We are very appreciative of their help, considering we found out that to hire someone to do it, it would cost around $600 per tree! Cutting down a tree is not an exciting home improvement that I went to spend money on. After we cut down the trees, we are going to till the soil and put down plots of grass all over the yard. And voila, we should have a nice grassy backyard. Of course we'll have to keep the dogs out of the backyard for a while, and definitely limit Penny-The-Annihilator's time out there, but it will be worth it!

One project we've already completed last weekend was tearing out Blake's mom's "Orthodox herb garden." We had no need for it, it was kind of weird, and most the things in it were dead or dying. We still have to tear down the three posts that are still left that were holding up the fence around the garden, we think that's going to take a while. Blake dug for about an hour on just one post, and we still didn't even see the end of the concrete. So that's one project that will just be requiring sweaty, manual labor.

The next Home Improvement project that we want to tackle after our grass planting is replacing the hardwood floors in the main room downstairs. It's in really bad shape with black spots and stains everywhere from when "the previous owners" never cleaned up when their dog would pee inside and just let it sit on the wood. Pretty gross. So we would like to replace that instead of having a constant reminder of where Roly Poly decided to mark his territory for the day. I'm not sure who we are going to use for that, but probably just whoever we can find that can do the best job matching it to the existing hardwood throughout the rest of the hose.

After that we want to paint the interior of the house a nice earthy color, maybe a light brown. We are going to hire someone for that since it will require scaffolding and a lot of work!

Then after that we'll work on replacing the white tile kitchen floors(a bad choice with a dog, especially 2 dogs right now!), taking down the wallpaper border, staining or painting the cabinets, and adding hardware to the cabinets.

There are a lot more projects, but those are just the ones we want to get started with first. Of course this will take time, we are only going to do it as we save up money for it. But be looking for our "before and after" pictures of our backyard either this month or the next!

Until next time,

-Tracy-

P.S. An easy way to tell if it's me or Blake posting is if it's a "marathon post" (as Blake calls it), then it's me. If it's short and sweet, that's Blake. Just so you know!

American Idol Review 4/14/2009

Tonight's Idol was surprising. It was interesting having Quentin Tarantino give musical advice.

Tracy: My favorite tonight, as always, was Adam Lambert due to his amazing vocal range as well as his excitement factor. Honestly, this was my least favorite performance of his this season, because I think the song "Born To Be Wild" will always be lame. But his performance was still my favorite of the night because it again showed off the fact that he's by far the best singer in the competition. My second favorite was Kris Allen's version of Falling Slowly. I also thought Allison did a great job. My least favorite performance of the night was Lil Rounds. In fact, she's starting to annoy me. She keeps picking boring songs by outdated artists, even though the judges tell her to pick something new and relevant every week. I predict her to be voted off tomorrow. And then I think Anoop will be next to go after her, even though I like Anoop. Until next time!


Blake: My favorite was Kris Allen's performance of Falling Slowly, largely because I really like that song and "Once" is one of my favorite movies. If I were on American Idol tonight (in an alternate universe), that would have been the song I would have picked. I think if they would have given all the judges time to talk they would have all disagreed with Randy on how well he did. Anyway, as far as who should be voted off this (lil) round, I think that's obvious.

Welcome to our blog!

Hey everyone, this is our new blog. We plan to update this regularly to keep everyone current with our lives. We've been doing many home renovation projects, and will be posting our "before" and "after" pictures as we get them completed. You can also expect weekly American Idol reviews!

We recently had Tracy's side of the family over for an Easter meal on Sunday. Tracy got to host her first family dinner, and everything seemed to turn out great! We are very excited about being an Aunt and an Uncle. Congrats Phil and Elicia!

Religious updates: We have been regularly visiting one of the local Episcopal churches and really enjoy it. We still want to "shop" around a little bit more before we make a decision, so look for updates on that!