T-minus One

It's almost here, and I've been exploring. In fact, you might even say I've been running and doing. I'll save the teaching for tomorrow.

I went jogging around my apartment community yesterday, but only found about a mile of sidewalks and parking lot loops. Not great, but it worked to control my Irene cabin fever. Today I found the holy grail of jogging trails. It's about a five minute drive from my apartment, but get this: free parking. None of that $8 parking fee that Nassau County pulls. The trail is partly paved, but mostly packed dirt, which is softer and safer. The trail was a mess today, covered in leaves and branches, so I only jogged a mile. According to a man on a bicycle, the trail is 3.6 miles from trailhead to the first major road crossing, and continues more beyond that.

Sweet. I think I've found my first challenge: build up to 7.2 miles (round trip) before the weather drops below freezing. I think I can do that. It's about 12 weeks until Thanksgiving. I'll make that my goal. I'm planning on starting at 2 miles, 3 times a week. I'll build up one run 1/2 mile at a time, which should get me to 8 miles by then. Or, I could add some rest weeks in there and make it up to 7.2 miles. Either way, doable, but I have to force myself to go jogging despite exhaustion.

I also stopped by school this morning, even though we weren't required to. I used the opportunity to set up a few last-minute things, including putting out a bathroom sign-out log and organizing my desk. I found that I can finally log onto the computer network. Now I just need to figure out how to access the district webmail and the student attendance tracker program.

My apartment is almost unpacked. I've completed the IKEA table-building and I've unpacked boxes. I only have a few bags to unpack, and it's the hard stuff to do. The stuff that was never really unpacked thoroughly in my last apartment, but I don't really want to throw away (e.g. extra ethernet cords, miscellaneous school supplies). I'm pretty sure I have enough clothes to last me a lifetime, and I even filled a large storage bin with clothes that will probably sit in my front hallway until I take it to Goodwill some weeks from now. Fortunately, my nerdy, teacherly fashion sense in high school will come in handy, as I now have a wealth of sensible skirts and dresses.

Now I have to figure out what to wear on the first day of school. I'm nervous. I have no idea what will happen. I've found a pretty comfortable place in planning, in that I've planned every minute of the first 2 weeks, but I'm prepared to take 3 or 4 weeks to do it. That's what I've been told to expect. I'm waiting to plan the following week, so I can see what my classes are like.

On another note, I found this link to a description on the less commonly used English units of measurement. Thank goodness I'm a science teacher. We only use powers of 10.