Time to Catch Up

I know I'm still a very bad blogger.  This is my first post for 2016 and it's almost April.  I guess at least it's better than not posting at all, huh?  So to catch up a bit:

In January, Matt and I headed to New Orleans for a Scrabble tournament.  I played in a lite open division (players rated 1300 and less) and I did fairly well.  I ended up 8th overall and won $115 for being the 2nd highest of those who started out in the lower half of the division.  My rating had a nice large jump and briefly I was in the top 10 in the nation for ratings gain.

In February I headed to Austin for the TCEA convention.  My cousin who works at a hotel there was able to give me a great discount at a Hampton in for the week.  It was an interesting conference to attend and this year I had someone to each lunch with a few times.

Matt did a great job on my Valentine's day flowers this year.  He got me a bouquet of purple flowers.  We went to dinner at Maggiano's which was delicious as always.

I've had to step up as a leader among our district librarians as we are making an effort to make some changes for us within the district.  I helped draft a letter that we presented at a board meeting in February.  We are planning a meeting with the superintendent and plan to attend the next board meeting on Monday.

I applied for a Leadership Institute that is part of the Texas Library Association as well.  Matt has pushed me to apply for some time now, but I wasn't eligible to do so until this year.  I found out at the beginning of March that I was accepted as a TALL Texan.  I'll be going to training for five days in Dallas this summer.  I was one out of 24 librarians accepted from across the state.

Matt and I went to another Scrabble tournament at the end of February - this time in Houston.  We both didn't do very well.  I was in division 3 and he was in division 1 but we both ended up in 9th place out of 12.  He actually moved up some and I moved down about 4 places from our beginning rankings.  I lost some rating points at this tournament.  On the bright side, we did get to have lunch with Josh while in town.

Spring break was last week and I was a slug for the first half of it.  I slept late, read, and watched t.v.  I finally got productive on Thursday when I started cleaning the house.  Matt took me to dinner on Sunday night since we didn't get a chance to do anything fun.  I told him that I earned dinner and a margarita after cleaning the toilets.

Yesterday Matt found out that his collection of African American Funeral Programs has won an award.  It's the Texas Digital Libraries Trailblazer Award.  We are going to an awards ceremony in May.

Which brings us to today - it started out ok.  I've had two full days of catching up on work since the library has been closed.  I've been taking Scrabble boards into the cafeteria so my students can play as we have a tournament coming up in a little over a week.  I was heading to the cafeteria with my cart of stuff when the wind caught a folder I had on top and sent the signed student permission slips flying.  I panicked and jumped down from the sidewalk to retrieve them when I twisted my ankle.  It hurt like a #$!!*^&$^.  I sat down for a bit and then forced myself to get up and get to the cafeteria.  When, the pain got worse and it started swelling up.  I couldn't walk on it very well so I decided to go to the clinic and have it examined.  I had to fill out workman's comp paperwork first.  Thankfully I didn't break anything, but it's a pretty bad sprain.  The doctor gave me a boot to wear which helps.  I also got a prescription for some high dose ibuprofen.  So now I'm in bed taking it easy.  Thankfully Matt has been a great husband.  He picked up my prescription and dinner for me.  I missed giving a presentation that I was supposed to this afternoon.  I was trying to get through the visit at the clinic but it took longer than expected.

So for your viewing pleasure here's a picture of my foot now that it's bruising nicely.