9:24 on a Thursday night. I’m sitting here on our new comfy couch, trying to figure out what to do with myself. Just got home not long ago, sent some e-mails, and ate. Not going to the climbing gym tonight…so I crack a PBR.

The earth just shook. I jumped a bit and gasped. What the…It’s still going, I think it’s still going. Is it STILL going or am I shaking? Fun. Interesting. A 4.2, no worries for a Californian, I guess.

We had hail storms twice this week. Hail, Thunder AND Lightning. Strange. After a huge thunder roll, I explain to my students what had happened. That was thunder, blah, blah, blah, blah. Afterwards a student raised his hand and reassuringly said “Don’t worry, that was a truck.”

“NO,” I think to myself, “that was not a truck…didn’t you hear what I just said? I said it was thunder!!” A humorous summary of interactions I have daily with my students.

At least he was somewhat on target…he could have just as easily said something completely unrelated like…“Ms. Shepley, I love pink bunnies.”

It is or was my birthday this week. Either today or yesterday. Take your pick. You see, when you are born on Leap Year like I was, you get a little confused about these things. Seeing that next year is a Leap Year, there must be an extra 18 hours in this year somewhere that somehow slips by. Next year I’ll get the full 24 hours and the following year, back down to 6, then 12…and the cycle goes on. I’ve always just claimed the whole week as my own. And so I should, really. Afterall, if they can write Pluto off, so too could they write Leap Day off…and then what? Do I become obsolete? My brother brought that fear upon me, just as an older brother would ;)

What’s stranger is that I’m posting on a site titled “We Live on Vacation.” Hmmmmm. My dad has been trying to convince me that I can no longer make that claim. I think he’s right. I mean, 3 days a week I am working from 7:15am – 8 pm. I have been working 1 weekend a month which is about to become 2 weekends per month. Though I still feel calm, happy and content…I must admit, I can’t quite access that day-in and day-out carefree, laissez les bon temps roulez attitude of being on vacation. So, though I’m not going to change the name of this blog for reasons of nostalgia, I will admit that maybe, just maybe, it would be more appropriately named We Dream of Vacation.

And so I leave you, dreaming….dreaming of the next time….dreaming of the next time I will live up to the mantra….dreaming of the next time I will, in fact, Live on Vacation.