Last night I learned a good friend of mine and a fellow teacher is being laid off due to budget cuts. Not only is she laid off, but every 1st and 2nd year teacher in the entire district has been laid off. There could be a chance she could be hired back on for next year, but it is not certain.

I was floored by what she was telling me. What I don’t understand is that education is viewed as so important, but the funding is disappearing and staffing cuts are being made. If we are educating the future generations and we cut staff and resources, what is the world going to look like in 20, 30, or 40 years? Schools are struggling to make ends meet with class sizes increasing, along with the growing demands to make sure students are successful academically and behaviorally. With the budget cuts, we are truly ‘leaving kids behind’.

Our district has not made any decisions about where cuts are being made and I hope that they see that cutting staff is the worst thing a district can cut.

Grrr…….

Today I traveled to Salem to join teachers, administrators, parents, students and young children to a rally on the Capitol steps for education. The hour long rally brought together individuals together from all around Oregon to bring the awareness that schools cannot take any more budget cuts. Schools are facing tough times and more cuts can have devastating results for our children and future generations. The message today: Save Our Schools!

The rally was organized by Stand for Children.

Both Adam and I are not huge fans of Valentine’s Day, so our celebration was small. In fact, we spent the weekend with my parents in Black Butte. We spent Valentine’s Day doing lots of nothing, but we were doing nothing together which is all that mattered to us. We briefly headed into the small down of Sisters to get out of the house for a bit. My parents made a wonderful dinner with yummy food and wine. The previous Thursday, I came home to my Valentine’s Day present. Adam had bought us a fake-us (aka a fake fichus tree) to replace the dying tree in our kitchen. Interlaced within the plant’s braches were a dozen red roses. Such a simple gift yet so perfect.

The first weekend in February brought the Eugene Brew Fest. I attended a few years ago, but at that time in my life, I didn’t really drink beer. In the recent year I have come to appreciate and enjoy the taste of good microbrews. So this year, the Brew Fest was going to be more meaningful than my last visit. When it comes to beers, I have found two types of beers I like: IPAs and Reds. Stouts and Lagers are too dark and Pale Ale’s are too boring. I have come to find that I am a ‘hoppy’ girl, no pun intended. So I headed out to the Brew Fest to find some good IPA and red beers. Much to my disappointment, I found that there were no red beers at the Brew Fest. So I focused on tasting some yummy IPAs. I had three IPAs that were extra yummy: Aboriginale from Block 15, Alpha-Dog Imperial IPA from Laughing Dog and 90 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head. All the beers were good, but the Aboriginale, which is made in Corvallis, was the ‘hoppiest’ beer I had ever tasted and I would say it was my favorite. Now I have a favorite Eugene beer and Corvallis beer…now I need to explore some Portland beers. Sounds like an excuse to do beer-tasting weekend in Portland.

For Adam’s birthday, I planned a weekend away for the both of us. The plans were a surprise for Adam, so I spent the previous months not being able to talk about it…and it killed me. I took my first personal day ever so we could make it a long weekend. Friday morning we left Eugene and headed north to Salem to have lunch with Adam’s mom. On our way up to Portland, we stopped for a quick shopping trip at the Woodburn outlet stores. As we drove through Portland, Adam was still confused about the location of our stay for the weekend up until we arrived on the property. I booked us a night at McMenamin’s Kennedy School in NE Portland. I have previous eaten at the Kennedy School, but had not stayed there. The Kennedy School is an old elementary school that was converted into a hotel, restaurant, theater and bar. After check in, we headed to the in-house movie theater. The movie theater is set up in the old gymnasium, with the seats being older couches and chairs and the movie projected up on the stage. Since it’s a theater pub, we were able to split a pitcher and eat some popcorn. After the movie, we walked about 200 feet for dinner in the coolest bar we had ever been to, the Boiler Room. The next morning we woke up and had breakfast at the Courtyard Restaurant on site.
After our stay at Kennedy School, we headed up to Ikea for some much needed house wares. Since I had never seen an IMAX movie before, we drove to OMSI to see a movie. About 20 minutes into the movie, all of OMSI was evacuated, however to this day, I do not know the reason for the evacuation. It may be been a blessing in disguise because that morning, the stomach flu had set in my stomach. Luckily we were in Portland, so we were able to retreat to my parent’s place. Due to my illness, I was unable to participate in the rest of the evening. Adam’s parent’s drove up from Salem for an evening in Portland. So I was curled up in a ball on the couch while Adam and his parents enjoyed a delicious dinner at Wildwood and an evening of comedy at Harvey’s. The next morning I was feeling well enough to get out of my sweats and we went out to breakfast with my parents, at one of my favorite breakfast spots in Portland, Marco’s. We drove home and spent the rest of the weekend on the couch watching movies, hoping for my stomach to feel normal again. Even with my unfortunate sickness, it was still a wonderful weekend and Adam said it was his best birthday ever. Now I am going to have to figure out how to top next year…except I will skip the being sick part next year.