Penny walks and other unrelated items

So, I haven't posted in a while, but probably because everything is just about the same as always. The only thing I have added to my day lately is a "penny walk". It is my mental break at work. To keep sane during grant writing season, I am picking a time in the afternoon and going for a 15 minute walk looking for pennies for my "found money" experiment. That way, the only thing I am thinking about for 15 minutes is finding pennies and NOT why I do not have everyone's NIH style biosketch for the grant that is due in at 5 pm, even though I emailed everyone weeks ago for the information...grrrrr.

I just started doing this penny walk about 2 weeks ago, and was excited this week when I found my first Canadian Loonie (1 dollar coin). It made me think that maybe, since probably 2-3 dollars of the loose change I have found so far is Canadian, I should separate my found money counter this year by currency since I know the coinstar machine is going to spew out my non-American currency anyway...and I was curious to see how much Canadian money I have found so far. Maybe I will do that tonight. (Edit: OK--we were bored so Simon and I separated out the currency on the sidebar. I actually had more money than I thought--I guess I haven't been keeping track as well as I thought.)

Today I found my first 10 cent Euro--would you call that a Eurodime? I have no idea...it has to be worth at least 5 bucks by now, right? Ha! But the best part of today was finding my first $5 bill. I can't even remember the last time I found a $5 bill just lying in the street. It made up for the $1 bill I missed in the student center a month ago when some other eagle-eyed student snatched it up seconds before I could get to it!! B*st*rd!

In unrelated news, I joined Weight Watchers this year. Before anyone rolls their eyes or starts mocking me (as Hawksbill promised that would happen), I was just trying to lose that darn 12 lbs I haven't been able to lose the last 3 years since I had Gwen. I knew I was in trouble when I went to the first meeting and the woman who RUNS the meetings took one look at me and said, "We have plenty of skinny people join ALL the time." Sigh...but anyway...I managed to lose my 12 lbs since joining, and have just today made "Lifetime member" status--which I thought meant they just gave me a little gold sticker, but apparently I can go to WW for free now...so that was pretty cool. I have been using the points system, which means I can eat anything I want as long as I limit myself to 20 "points" of food per day. Losing weight was easier after I discovered my morning banana nut muffin was freaking 14 points!! But, like all diets, it is mostly, eat less and exercise.

Changing the subject AGAIN, we have had a rash of crime lately in our otherwise sleepy, boring neighborhood. On our street alone (and this is all I know about) we have had the tires stolen off 2 cars within 4 houses of our own. I can imagine it would suck to wake up to find your car sitting on bricks. My next door neighbor is missing some bricks from a retaining wall, so she thinks hers were used in at least one of these crimes. Then last weekend someone broke into our favorite pizza place down the street making off with $13 from the register after smashing the front door. One of the employees said that they also tried to steal the grease trap from under the fryer, but perhaps they thought it was a safe, or maybe that it was some type of "metal" they could sell at a scrap yard. The employee said that these particular criminals have already been caught, so I am kind of hoping these are the same people who have been stealing tires...but I have no idea.

The kids are doing well. We are calling this time "summer vacation" and are not doing any formal homeschooling, but the learning is still happening. We had planned on having Simon work on his printing skills for writing letters next fall, but he decided about a week ago he wanted to start doing this on his own when he found a book with dry erase markers that shows you how to write your letters...Simon knows how to write all of his letters upper and lowercase already, however, he wasn't using anything (lined paper) as a guide, so everything still comes up all squiggly. So, he just started practicing this last week. He is also finding new planet facts to tell me about every time I come home such as how many Plutos it would take to circle the Earth--apparently the number is 17.

Gwen is learning new things, too. I asked her if she could count to 20 the other day and she looked at me and said, "20." I guess if she is counting by 20's, then technically, she is correct. :) But after a short pause, she started saying, "21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28...." and I honestly didn't know that she knew any numbers past 20. Gwen has also become obsessed with 24-piece puzzles...another skill I did not know she possessed, but she can put them together without any help. I thought that was cool. :)

Not much else is going on except that I cannot believe it is the end of June already. It is weird not worrying about Hawksbill going to school in the fall since he is done. It is weird to know that I really DON'T have to think of life in semesters anymore...however, since I work at a university, I still do and probably will for as long as I live.

I have to go sit on the porch with Gwen now. Until next time, I hope to have some more interesting information to share. :)