Vacation was a Blast!

(Had to crop this bad boy, my arm was looking ginormous!)


Hey! I’m back from vacation!

Ok, it was two months ago, but I had a blast in Cancun and I feel I must devote a little blog space to the fun times.

Cancun is my ultimate vacation spot. I’ve always gone with my BTF (best traveling friend) Ericka, who I’ve been on countless of vacations with because we travel well together. We go right before the spring breakers come and tear up the town and the deals are great, all-inclusive, pay one price and everything is included. Air, hotel, food and drinks on the resort (drinky drinks too). Basically we sleep, sun trying to get as dark chocolate as possible, eat and drink, repeat the next day. Add an excursion or two and that’s it. It’s ridiculously relaxing and if you’ve never jumped calm waves in the ocean, slept to the sound of them crashing against the shore while bathing under a warm tropical sun and breathing in the salt air, then you haven’t lived!!!!!

So this time we stayed at the Oasis Viva Beach and Cancun being such a tourist area the hotels are usually very nice, this resort being no exception. We had a great ocean view, the room was clean and pretty, the food was great, the service was awesome, the drinks plentiful, all that.


A few notable events:

The weather was, for the first time since I started going to Cancun, kind of rainy. Rain and Cancun doesn’t cross ones mind since it’s sunny there like 364 days a year. So the days it rained me and Ericka would sit looking stupefied because we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We just stayed in the room, watched movies and ate during those days, which is exponentially better than being at work for sure.

We also went to the flea market to shop and got lost on a bus on the way there (a scary yet minor inconvenience). The market itself was crazy chaotic! Music blaring and colorful merchandise everywhere! As soon as you entered everyone wanted you to check out their wares, see that they had the best prices and were willing to deal. We quickly found out you’d be a fool to pay what anyone asked at first! If a price was too high, they’d go down…which we found out as we tried to leave several shops. Our intent was to browse several stores and go back to our favorites, but that was an almost impossible undertaking. The store owners basically didn’t want you to leave without buying something, anything. Say you like an authentic Mexican purse, the first price quoted would be seriously high, like $35 for a cloth bag. You didn’t even have to counter as the price would drop to $30. As you’re walking away the bag gets cheaper $25…you still haven’t decided if you really want the purse because you just glanced at it in passing in the first place. So if you include the tactic of a counteroffer, well, well, now you’re bartering until you’ve bought something within your budget.

And every trick in the book was used by the sellers. You’re everyone’s sister from another mother, you’re being outright flirted with, and I even had one who tried to dupe me with some exchange rate trickery. In the end there were good deals to be had, although you know you still paid more than you probably should have, but it’s vacation and you need to bring back souvenirs, right?

We took two excursions. One was the Pirate Cruise where you get a dinner and pirate show, complete with dueling ships and cannons. There was this great game that Eri was picked to play where she competed with two other contestants to see how many pairs of shoes they could collect from the passengers. The one with the most pairs was the winner. Then you went and tried to find you shoes in this pile of 80 pairs of shoes and really, it is fun. Ericka won, yay! I didn’t get seasick because I was hopped up on Dramamine, but someone neglected to take some and should have. ;) There was lots of drinking, dancing with strangers and gorgeous faux pirates, huzzah!

So my Cancun vacation was a pure blast and if everything goes as planned there will be yet another in 2011.

Junior High Frustration!!!

I am beyond irritated right now.

Detroit Public Schools is driving me crazy. The school system has been in turmoil for the past few years. Declining population in Detroit has been the major cause for this and I totally get it. Less children, less need for schools.

Yesterday Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager for DPS announced major school closings, including Alexis' current school and the school where is Alexis was supposed to go for junior high. I have many problems with this plan, but I'm addressing the ones that directly affect us.

The reason I chose her junior high school, Hally Open, is because it's a "school of choice", meaning you have to apply with decent grades and keep up those grades to remain a student. In such schools, academics are the primary focus and for the most part, problems i.e. troublesome students, aren't as much of an issue. Mr. Bobb is closing two very good schools in this area and leaving Barbara Jordan School which is bascially like the one Morgan Freeman had to bust down in "Lean on Me".

How do I know this school is a madhouse? My mother works there as a secretary and I listen to her daily accounts of fights, kids cursing out teachers, gangs and general bad behavior. My mother has stated that homeschooling would be better than letting Alexis go there.

Then there's the issue of childcare. Another reason I chose Hally is due to the location, being very close to her grandparent's house who have a more flexible schedule. They pick her up from school so I can keep a job. No, most schools in Detroit don't have any before or afterschool latchkey programs for working parents, which is sheer stupidity.

Due to these reasons I sent in applications to this one school. It's a good school that's been around for decades, close to her grandparents, surely if there were going to be school closings we'd be given plenty of time to adjust and apply to other schools, right? Wrong!

So at the 11th hour I'm applying for other DPS schools and charter schools. I hadn't considered a charter school before because they aren't in DPS' jursidiction but are administered by the State of Michigan, whose guidelines are different and not always up to the strict guidelines of the city. In other words, anyone can open a charter school, lots of them are very new and just trying to establish themselves. I don't want my daughter's education to be some kind of schooling experiment.

Now I'm in a bind, most of the application deadlines for the other schools of choice have past. I've done some research on a few of the charter schools that I've sought recommendations for from friends and their application guidelines and deadlines are even stricter involving lotteries even when your application is on time. None of these schools are in convenient areas so they must have some kind of childcare. Aaargh!!!!

Tomorrow we have an appointment with Burton International a DPS school with a pretty good reputation and I'll be putting in applications just about everywhere else. If all else fails there's private school which is an expense I'm not ready to handle, but will if I have to.

I'm hoping for the best here...

Oh, shall we even get into the fact that these school closings will probably cause my mother to be laid off...again. For the fourth time in about five years?

Catching Up

A whirlwind of activity has prevented me from posting in almost a month, so in the next week or so I plan on getting back on the horse and providing updates on my adventures. I finished my Ravelympic projects, went on my Mexican vacation, took a trip with Alexis and her classmates to a school tournament in Grand Rapids, MI, etc.

So be looking out for entries and pictures too!

Procrastination!

I'll be leaving for Cancun on Saturday morning and am I ready? Of course not!!! I've got a million things to do still, including a marathon shopping trip after work today.

Sigh....this is what I do, wait until the last minute. The best I can hope for is to be finished tomorrow evening.

I'm really excited though!

Monday Ramblings

First, let me thank everyone who has taken a moment to read my blog and and another thanks to those who have left comments. What's that saying about a tree that falls in a forest when no one is around? Whenever anyone decides to read an entry, that means I really did post it!

The Ravelympics are going well. My wrist feels much better and I'm making sure to stretch before knitting, taking frequent breaks and making sure to knit ergonomically. Great news!

....however, I have some new body quirk that presented itself last week. My hand are itching and there is no rash. Just the top of my hands, too. I get no relief from scratching either and sometimes it feels more like a pinprickly pain than itching. I've searched every internet resource I could think of and I've decided either I'm going completely insane or just falling apart. Seriously, it could be nerve damage, a bad liver, allergies, B12 deficiency, any number of things. If it doesn't get better I'll go to the doctor and let him google it and tell me the same, but until then I'll just deal.

Oh, I've discovered that Benadryl is useless. It only makes you so drowsy that you don't care about annoying itching and you pass out like an addict.

I have five more days before I'm headed out to Cancun. I think I'll ignore the weather forecasts because it's gonna shine my entire vacation and that's that. Being the procrastinator that I am, I've done ZERO packing and have only manage to compile a to-bring list in which I know something is missing. Whatever...I'm determined that I'll have everything completed by Thursday! I did manage to purchase my vacation reading material which is as important as the passport, IMO.

Until next time...

The Ravelympics Are Here!

Wait, are there any of my two readers who don't know what Ravelry is?

Ravelry - Ravelry is a free social networking website. It functions as an organizational tool for a variety of fiber arts including knitting, crocheting, spinning, and weaving. Members share projects, ideas, and their collection of yarn, fiber, and tools via various components.

Basically it's an addictive, social site that sucks hours of time from you. Not just with chatter, but with endless patterns to browse, yarn suggestions and help forums, etc. It's loads of fun.

Alrighty then..

It's the opening day of the 2010 Winter Olympics and I'm waxing nostalgic. My daughter was born during the 1998 Winter Olympics and I fondly remember watching the events all day while I was in the hospital.

So what are the Ravelympics? It's a time where knitters are invited to challenge themselves by starting and finishing projects during the 2010 Winter Olympics. How you decide to challenge yourself is entirely up to you. There are teams to choose from and events to participate in, with many knitters joining in on the fun and supporting one another. I'm signed up with three teams, Team K'nerd (the nerdy knitters), Team Michigan and Team City Knits (my local yarn store of choice).

In a previous post I mentioned the problems with my wrist, which has affected my project/event choices. Since I rested from knitting starting Monday, iced and exercised, it feels better, but not 100%. Therefore, my alternate projects are much smaller, but that's OK I'm happy to compete and will be challenged just by completing these without hurting myself.





Here's Bob, the overall Raverly mascot and ambassador of this year's Ravelympics.

I'll be blogging about my first experience as a Ravelete as I progress.

Only 10 Days Left!

....before I am sunning on a tropical beach.

Last night, here in Detroit, MI it is snowed a few inches, not nearly enough to close my job down (in the 20-years I've worked here I can only remember them closing maybe once due to the weather). This morning I took my time clearing off the car, the driveway, yuck! I've lived in Michigan my entire life so you'd think I'd be used to snow, which I am, but I still don't like it, not even a little bit. (Well, it's fine if I'm curled up in the house with a book and/or remote not having to venture out for the day.)

Actually, I should be grateful as it hasn't snowed here that much...yet. We still have the rest of February and March before we're out of the woods.

That's OK because in less than 2 weeks I'll be in Cancun, Mexico where it's currently 76-degrees (F) out!