I know, it's been a week since I have written, but I have gotten a lot done! I have taken a short vacation from making valentines, but am itching to work on a mermaid valentine surrounded by sharks teeth, maybe a Mardi Gras valentine, and for sure a St. Patrick's Day valentine.

You see, Valentine's Day can be every day! And, I'm still not done with the whole Valentine idea - although I paused to make a big birthday collage for my niece, and am also eager to create a deck of tarot or loteria cards. I even got some of my students interested in making some collages for the covers of their autobiography projects.

I have also gotten a lot done at school - getting caught up with my lesson plans, getting my conference week statistics in, grading papers, and finally (with one day to spare before I lost my yearly expense alotment), I placed my classroom orders. Now, I just have to get the Cultural Diversity newsletter out, and communicate via e-mail with the rest of my rag-tag lot!

I just ordered a Pizza Hut 4 for All pizza, which is now my favorite pizza. I just love the cute little pizzas! I am trying to come up with an idea to get my classes to compete for a pizza party - with this deal, each kid can order their own!

It's getting to be that time of year when I just want things to be easy - to plan, to grade, to maintain. I am currently re-vamping my lesson planning - with 12 weeks to go! I am a little discouraged by what we are (not) getting accomplished by going to the computer lab and by checking out library books every two weeks. I am thinking of ending the My Autobiography Project (which has only made it to chapter 4!) and just focussing on writing (less on adding pictures!). As for the library, motivated students who actually read their books will still be allowed to go, but I am going to rely on readers and comprehension selections for the rest of the year, I think.

Today, I was prepared to kick off my second listening book - I had copies of the first 3 chapters ready to hand out, and went to take the CD set out of its shrink-wrap - only to find the first CD missing! I had ordered it last year, to the customer rep was annoyingly unhelpful at first - asking for a purchase order number (which I don't have - the secretary does, and I was going to be damned if I was going to hang up and call again). I finally said, "Listen, last year I spent $481 at your company - are you going to give me the run-around about this?" She finally agreed to send me a new set of CD's and I had better get it in the promised 5 days!

Okay, enough about school. Let's see... Last week, for Valentine's Day, my husband and I went to Kyma, a Greek seafood restaurant which is part of the Buckhead Restaurant Group here in Atlanta. We arrived on time and were seated immediately - a much better experience than at Nava, their sister restaurant! There was a prix fixe meal, with many mezze, which is the Greek version of tapas.

I ordered ouzo, which I have now tried and don't need to have again. I don't know how I didn't know that it was a licorice-flavored drink, like pastis. I am not a big fan of licorice or anise-flavored things - I don't think that a lot of Americans are! I also had a glass and a half of white wine, which was very good.

The first thing that came out was a trio of spreads served with grilled pita bread. I think that there was tzatziki (Greek Yogurt Spread with Cucumber, Garlic and Dill), hummus, and possibly melitzanosalata (Puree Of Eggplant and Mint, Lightly Smoked) - although I just thought it was baba ganouj. They then brought out a basket of breads with a dish of extra-virgin olive oil - oh, and fried cheese! But the best thing we had was the wood-grilled octopus with Red Onions, E.V.O. Oil, and Aged Red Wine Vinegar. Don't knock it until you've tried it!

If we had any complaints, it was that the food was coming a little too fast - our little two-top was crowded with plates. Then they brought the salad. I think that it was arugula with thinly-sliced fennel - pretty good.

For a main course, I ordered the turbot with slow cooked eggplant stew with Sweet Onions and Tomatoes - now I want to learn how to cook eggplant! My husband ordered the grilled prawns with lentil salad. For dessert, I ordered some sort of fried donut hole looking thing drizzled with honey. My husband had the baklava.

Afterwards, we went to Barnes and Noble - it was the perfect date! I found some copyright-free art that I am going to use in my collages.

Okay, gotta go - my pizza is here!