Getting back to the grind

Well, our semester was supposed to begin yesterday, but we got two snow/cold weather days because of the horrible conditions here.

This is what it looked like on Sunday while it was blizzarding (I decided that can be a verb because I say so). I stayed warm inside with my coffee.

I am so glad they canceled because roads here are AWFUL, and I have to commute on country two-lane back roads. The wind chills also approached -45 in the morning. 45 BELOW ZERO. This is not real life, is it? I need spring.

What did I do over my break? A whole lot of relaxing, which was awesome.
I read 1.5 books on my brand new Kindle Paperwhite: I finished Where'd You Go, Bernadette? which was a fun and light-hearted read, and now I'm 30% done with Tell the Wolves I'm Home (and I am actually precisely 30% through because my Kindle tells you what percentage of the book you have read!)

My husband and I binge-watched the first two seasons of Homeland and now we're trying to find some place online that we can watch season 3.

I spent a few days at Barnes & Noble, drinking coffee and reading magazines/piddling around online.

I took down our indoor Christmas decorations (outdoor ones are still up because of the polar vortex that decided to visit this weekend).

I planned a trip to the Smoky Mountains for us this June! We haven't officially booked the cabin yet, becasue we have to make sure my husband can officially take that vacation week. But we found the one we want, and here's a picture of the awesomeness that is a secluded cabin in the Smokies:

Break has been awesome and exactly what I needed. But......we all have to go back to work sometime, am I right?


So that means I have to drag myself out of bed for the first time tomorrow at 5:30 AM, put on real clothes, actually do my make-up, and go be productive and actually do some work.

Being a grown-up is no fun sometimes.

My poor dog is going to be so sad because we have been buddies for the past two and a half weeks.

Because of the unexpected snow days, I had to re-finagle some of my plans this week, but that's OK. It's a lot easier to do when you haven't even started yet. We have semester-long classes, so I have mostly new students this semester and two classes I did not teach last semester. I have pretty much everything prepped for this week because I got it done before break; I just have to run some copies in the morning, which is why I LOVE having first hour prep!

Tomorrow is pretty much course overview day/talk about the syllabus, etc. Thursday I'm pre-testing in all my classes. So the real content doesn't get started until Friday. Then we are blessed with a weekend already!

Then next week is a four-day week with a half day inservice on Friday, then we are blessed with a 3.5 day weekend. So all in all, it should be a nice way of easing myself back into work mode.

How is the semester kicking off for all of you who have already gone back? Anyone else freezing like we are here?