Day 194- Day 200 Some City Fun and Hiking Fun

 This week featured a healthy mix of city life and hiking life!

We got things started with dinner at Moona, which continues to blow us away with its atmosphere and food.  The waitstaff always makes an effort to make us feel appreciated for being such frequent customers.

Bill is an accurate depiction of what it looks like to be a teacher right now.  (Honestly though, even though I look and feel like these a lot, I love my kids and am having fun rediscovering my love of teaching.)

The weather was perfect for a hike so we headed up to New Hampshire and hike Mt. Tecumseh.  So many stairs!

The leaves are peaking right now.  I'm hoping we can catch peak leaves next weekend.

After the hike, we got ourselves cleaned up, and headed into Harvard Square to enjoy the absolutely stunning weather.  We headed back to Noir because why not?  It was a perfect night and there was this nice feeling in that part of the square that made me forget the current reality.  It felt like a normal fall night and it was just lovely.

And they recognized us from last weekend and gave us complimentary champagne cocktails!  These were delicious and I am all about the glassware happening at this place.

I'm starting to feel stressed about all of the school work I have to do, but I keep reminding myself about all the lessons I've learned about self-care over the last several months.  

Day 193~ Rest in Power and Noir

 On Sunday, JO and I headed over to Harvard Square to pay our respects to Ruth Bader Ginsberg.  There was a growing memorial at the Harvard Law Library and we both felt like we should visit.

The loss of RBG is such a defining moment in our country.  So many of my rights are thanks to her efforts.  Thank you RBG- Rest in Power.

It was a bit chilly, but we decided to walk through Harvard Square and run some errands.  We ended up visiting the newly renovated patio at Noir at the Charles Hotel.  Oh my gosh, they did fantastic things with their patio.  The flowers are beautiful, they installed deck floors, and the new tables look sharp.

Major points for presentation of the oysters, served on a bed of salt!

Heat lamps should not go away after this.

And on the walk home, we saw an actual "Allston Christmas" Allston Christmas!

Day 187- 192- I'm Still Standing

If you have teacher friends, send them wine and snacks.  They deserve it.  This past week was unlike anything I have every experienced in my life.  

There were times when I wanted to wave the white flag!

There were times when I felt like Michael Scott!

Thank God for Pumpkin Beer.

I taught myself how to make a document camera from "spare" parts.  That pretty much sums up 2020 in a nutshell.

Because I teach for our online school, I get all of these emails, texts, and voicemails to my home and work accounts.  I have no idea how to fix, nor do I have time to fix it, so I cringe when I look at my phone.

Twas the Night Before the First Day of School....from my living room.

Love Bitmoji classrooms

On Day 2 the loudest drill in the history of the world started up right outside my "classroom."  That was fun!

Sometimes you gotta "GoNoodle!"

I still found time for workouts.  This thing is no joke.

My Huskies might actually play games this year!!!!!!!!!!

And then the world stopped.  Justice Warriors and Nasty Women- she left us with a mission and we need to fight like hell.  

This morning, it certainly felt like fall.  We woke up to sunny skies and 50 degree weather.  We put on our fall clothes and headed over to Kendall to enjoy coffee on one of the docks.  What a glorious way to start the weekend!

Although I spent most of this week looking like the bottom right, I survived and the kids were so happy!

 

Day 180-186~ We Hiked Mt. Washington

Wow!  It's been a while since I've had enough time to sit down at my computer to write my blog.  Teaching this year is like this.  I've also been adapting to being on a computer for 6+ hours each day.  Honestly, how do people do this?

Days 180-186 were pretty overwhelming, work wise, so I made sure to get outside and enjoy our neighborhood.

We visited State Park.  They just reopened and they have a great, very safe system and patio!  They also have delicious chocolate cake!

We got my "desk" area set up.  

We enjoyed a night at Ole!  The people there are just so nice!

I love these window displays at Gather Here!

Can't forget that those Woodward tapes came out.  

On Thursday my head was spinning, and I was feeling a lot like Katie Lou, so we made an emergency plan to drop everything and go hiking.

So at 3:15pm on Friday, I closed my computer, and we walked out the door.  I had so much work to do but didn't have any answers so it made more sense to head to the mountains.  We drove up to Jackson, NH and stayed at The Eagle Mountain House.  We both love this place and we both kind of had this "moment" when we realized that we hadn't been anywhere but our living room for 186 days!  (We didn't hang out in the hotel, other than to sleep, but it was nice to see different walls.) We were even greeted with a giant bear in the parking lot when we arrived.

We got up super early and hiked Mt. Washington!  Oh my god, this was a hard hike.  This was probably the hardest hike I have ever done in my life.  The scenery was gorgeous and JO helped me every step of the way, especially going down.  Lesson learned~ If I could hike, Mt. Washington, I could teach online!