Friday Photos- Just felt like writing- mostly soda and sub stories!!

I don't have anything earth shattering, really interesting, or noteworthy to share- just wanted to write for the sake of documenting this ordinary week here in Ohio. I mean, I guess it was a little extraordinary in that spring started this week.

*Tangent- I never remember whether the seasons are proper nouns such that they should capitalized. My first instinct was to say, no, they are not proper nouns and so I wrote "spring" with an lowercase "s" but I wanted to make sure that was correct. (I feel like it is not uncommon to see season names beginning with a capital letter) It was. Season names are not proper nouns. So spring sprang, not Spring sprang! *

I subbed four days this week which is a lot for me. Last week, I was out of town with Alyssa for her school's spring break. Next week is our school district's spring break so I won't be subbing then. I decided that I should work as much as I could this week, within reason. Within reason meaning with pretty good assurances that the day would be a good one. I saw there was an opening on Monday for a class for a teacher whom I've never subbed for (he's new which is why I've never subbed for him). I like this teacher a lot personally (he seems like the sweetest young man and a really good teacher based on what I've seen) but I wasn't willing to chance that he'd have good sub plans, keep the students busy the entire class time, etc. And yes, I suppose if I'm unwilling to "chance" subbing for new teachers, then pretty soon, as the teachers I know retire or leave and new teachers come in, I won't be subbing much. Perhaps that is or will be my nudge to leave subbing...

The following day I was a floating sub at the junior high. I say subbing is like a box of chocolates (except that rarely (occasionally though) is consuming chocolate part of the day!) because you never know what you're going to get. Floating sub days are the ultimate "like a box of chocolate" days since you have no idea what rooms you'll be subbing in or for how long. This day was an odd one with both good and bad mixed in. The bad- I didn't get a lunch break! That has never happened to me before but there's a first time for everything, I suppose. Normally, subs get their teacher's lunch break but when you float, you don't have one particular teacher's schedule. There was a fairly large gap near lunch time in my schedule so I thought I'd eat then. But the teacher whose classroom I was in near the gap didn't return from her meeting until it was time for me to go to the next classroom. It was no big deal- fortunately, I had my lunch with me and just ate in the classroom (was very glad for a "shelf stable" lunch that didn't require refrigeration). The upside to the day was that I got to leave an hour early due to the last teacher whose class I was assigned to cover not having a class because it was his plan period. It was great to get out a whole hour early. So the day balanced itself out.

When I was in the teacher's lounge during a break in the beginning of the day (I didn't need to be in a classroom first thing), I perused a magazine. I think it was called Real Simple or something like that. It had recipes in it and I found one that I decided to make. I mean I changed it a decent bit to suit what I had on hand.

This is the picture from the magazine and ended up being a far cry from what mine looked like but mine was still good so that's all that counts. 

It called for a type of pasta called mafalde. It looks like lasagna noodles except it's thinner. I looked online to see if our Kroger carries it and it doesn't (there are sites that you can order it from but there was no way I was going to spend $10 for a box of pasta...). I realized that I had all of the ingredients, except the pasta which I knew I could swap with another kind (the pictured one being adorable notwithstanding (the real appeal was the ingredient list!)).

Here is the ingredient list-

 I like, and had a bottle in the fridge of, gochujang sauce. It's somewhat spicy and very flavorful. I had everything else, too, including sundried tomatoes that I normally don't stock. So I decided to make it for dinner that evening since I didn't have a concrete plan in mind for dinner.

I knew right away that I wouldn't use an entire stick of butter. I used half a stick. The jar of sundried tomatoes smelled off to me when I opened it. I decided to not use it. I wanted a vegetable so I took some zucchini out of the freezer, thawed it, and used that in the tomato's stead. I also subbed Gouda cheese for the parm. Other than those changes.... I made it exactly as written. I thought it turned out great! 

Here are the instructions, if anyone wants to try it:

On Thursday when I subbed, it was almost a day where I got chocolate at school! The principal and assistant principal came around to all of the classrooms, pushing a cart loaded with soft drinks and snacks and I was asked to help myself. The problem is that they and the cart were in the hallway and picking out a snack meant I had to turn my back on the classroom and it was, well, not a classroom where the person in charge should keep one's back turned long (the students weren't terrible but there were a lot of them!). So I quickly picked out a snack size popcorn bag, which was the closest to me rather than a candy bar.  I think there were candy bars(?) on the cart so I could have gotten chocolate but, I felt the need to very quickly make my selection trumped a leisurely thought process/decision.

I had this mini can of Cherry Coke from the snack cart. I usually drink diet and not full sugar soda- I picked this one from the cart and as mentioned previously, I made my selections based on haste not a timely/ caloric consideration of all the offerings...

In other soda pop happenings, Donnie picked me up a $.25 Big Gulp at Speedway when he gassed up his car. This was caffeinated so I only took a few sips the evening he brought it to me. I drank most of it the next day (I don't mind pop that has lost some of its fizz.)

I had only planned on subbing Tuesday through Thursday but on Thursday, the secretary asked me if I could sub the next day, Friday. It was the Friday before spring break in the district and it did not sound exactly fun, knowing how riled up the students would likely but. However, I like to sub for this particular teacher so it was a fairly easy "yes" from me. In addition, since I won't be working at all next week due to spring break, I thought I should work almost as much I could this week (I do stand by my decision not to sub on Monday!).

There was leftover free pop in the teacher's lounge so I picked out this on a break on Friday when I had more time to carefully select an option :).

Not too much else of note happened. Though, really things don't need to be noteworthy to be blog fodder. I can ramble about just about anything. In Columbus, Alyssa was paired with a "big" in her sorority. She's excited about it; I don't follow all of the significance of the sorority events. I'm happy she's happy. In Oxford, Abby is getting ready to go to her spring break destination in Florida. Jacob also has an upcoming short trip. So all is good right now with the kids. I've got plenty of pop (that I've purchased) in our beverage refrigerator, Donnie has two days at home (though he says he has some work to do :(), our district's spring break is upon us so I don't have much or anything, really, to complain about :).