Weekly Wrap-Up #81 – August 21st, 2022

Posted August 21, 2022 by Lisa Mandina in Weekly Wrap Up / 38 Comments

Once again I’ll be linking this up with the Sunday Post (hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer).

The students come back tomorrow. I hate that the first week is a full 5 days.

So Monday started out busy as last week. I spent the first three or so hours working on moving boxes to where the shelves should be and I got few boxes opened and some books put on shelves. Then in the afternoon we had more professional development meetings.

Tuesday we had a lovely rainy morning. I had to get an ultrasound of my liver due to some bloodwork results, and had scheduled crazily at 7 am thinking I’d go right into work after. Well I forgot we had open house for school from 5:30-7:30. So I took my full half day in the morning. Which included going back home after the ultrasound and taking a little more sleep in the rainy morning. In the afternoon we had time to work in our rooms so I did some things that I could do at my desk. They had scheduled to have pizza for us at 5 pm, but it didn’t show up till almost 6:30. By the end of the night I was tired and ready to be home. The trees that I talked about a huge branch just hanging in back in July, finally had those branches loose enough I could pull them down.

Wednesday I woke up and really couldn’t believe it was only Wednesday, the week seems so long! We had professional development in the morning, two of the three sessions had more to do with classroom teaching. So I skipped one of those after the other was kind of a waste of time for me. Our administrators grilled hot dogs and hamburgers for us for lunch. The afternoon was time that I spent moving more boxes of books to the shelves near where they will go which meant other shelves that I can actually start on are now clear to get to. It was a nice quiet night at home thank goodness. I think the dogs were happy I just came home too.

Thursday was even harder to believe it wasn’t the end of the week yet. I was so tired all day! In the morning we had the 9th graders come for a half day where they got to run through their schedules quickly, and then there was an assembly and a little activity/sports fair where they could see about joining or things they’d be interested in. Another quiet night at home, just trying to get as far in the over 700 page anthology I had to review on Friday as I could.

Friday. Ugh. We started the day with intruder training. While a lot of it seemed pretty common sense and I felt like we’d gone over it in past years, I did learn a few new things. When I got home from work there had been a kid with a gun at a high school in the district I used to teach in, and they have metal detectors which we don’t. So I feel it is an unfortunately necessary evil. The rest of the day Friday I did some unboxing and getting some books on shelves, and then got started on labeling all the laptops, not all were done by the time we left. Here are pictures of how many my clerk and I have to get done by Wednesday. What sucks is there are different types for each grade, and not only that, some students get special laptops based on a survey they filled out telling the district that they have no other type of computer of any sort at home, so those have to be figured out and sorted too.

Also my mom and step-dad were out of town the last week and ended up decided to stay till Saturday night, but didn’t schedule their dog sitter that whole time, so I had to go feed their dogs right after school on Friday, then go back in the evening before bed.

Saturday I got up in the morning about the same time I do for work and went and let my mom’s dogs out and fed them. My mom texted me about the time I would have gone back over in the afternoon to say they were almost home so I didn’t need to go over. So that was nice. I went and saw a movie, and did a bunch of commenting on some blog posts I’d saved. Which reminds me, some of the posts I’d saved no longer had an option to comment on them. Does anyone know if they set posts to stop taking comments after there are so many or maybe after a certain amount of time? It’s weird! I know some of the posts were from July, but I guess I’m kind of slow at times to get around to commenting. That’s why I save the emails to remind myself to go back and read the reviews.

Books Finished

The first was an audiobook for a blog tour coming up this week, technically I finished it last week but forgot to include it in my wrap-up. The second was for a blog tour review this past week. The third one was also for a review this past week.

New Additions to My Library

ARCs:

Got an awesome surprise box of books from Sourcebooks Casablanca, plus I think their new Bloom Books imprint. Now I already have When Life Gives You Vampires, and since I haven’t started the Amanda Bouchet series yet, even though they gave me the first one, I’ll probably see if I can trade the 4th one’s ARC that they sent for something else.

Audiobooks:

I ended up not getting into the book I’d spent my credit on Audible this month. So I returned it and got this instead.

Bookish Stuff:

None

E-galleys:

The publisher reached out and offered me an e-galley of this. Even though I prefer physical ARCs whenever possible, I went ahead and got it on Netgalley. Unfortunately this took my 80% rating I just got this week and dropped it back to 79%.

Free E-books:

The first three were from signing up for an author’s newsletter. I have already read Lani Lynn Vale, but haven’t read this one yet! I haven’t read any Helen Hardt yet. And I’m hooked on Katee Robert after I got hooked on her Neon Gods series! The rest were free on Amazon.

Library books:

As I was unboxing books in my library on Monday I came across this one and it is one I need to read for the library committee I’m on. So I went ahead and checked it out.

Physical books:

I loved the first one, so asked my friend who still works at B&N to get the second one for me with her employee discount that I miss so much! She finally got it to me this week. Not sure when I’ll get to this, but I can’t wait!

What I’m Watching

Again, the same series that I’m going through slowly either because they only release one episode a week or because I want to enjoy them longer than a quick binge. It was the season finale of Evil, and man what an ending!!! I also went and saw the movie Beast on Saturday. It was definitely an entertaining movie.

Giveaways

Coming Up Next Week on My Blog

Proposed reviews:

I’m also hoping to get a DNF post put up. There are some cover reveals this week as well!

Final Thoughts

How was your week? Did you read or watch anything good? Get any good books? Have anything exciting coming up this week?

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38 responses to “Weekly Wrap-Up #81 – August 21st, 2022

  1. I remember when I was in school, we always started on Thursdays for some reason. We had block scheduling so this did allow us to go to all our classes and then I felt like the weekend was to get any of those last minute supplies that was not on our list but they insisted we needed for the class! Lol. Hope the first week back goes well!

    Nice new reads! I enjoyed Amanda Bouchet’s series! It’s a fun fantasy series that I finally finished last year! When Life Gives You Vampires looks like fun! King of Battle and Blood was pretty fun too! Some awesome looking reads there! I hope you enjoy them all!

    Here’s my StS

    Have a GREAT day!

    Old Follower 🙂

    • Lisa Mandina

      Yeah, in my other districts we usually started on a Wednesday or Thursday. A full week with students is so hard the first week. For both students and teachers! Oh well. I’m excited to try a couple new authors as well!

  2. I love when adminstrators make food for everyone. We’ll get a few gift cards thrown our way but lately the workplace has been looking for ways to cut PTO. shrugs. And those books look awesome.

    • Lisa Mandina

      Last year, my first year in the district, we got treats every Friday. It was either fancy donuts or bagels or cookies sometimes. I know it was because we were still wearing masks and all the Covid stuff going on, so we won’t get it this year. But our administrators do a lot of things for us.

    • Lisa Mandina

      Interesting! I wonder if my blog is set that way now that I’m on WordPress? I’ll have to check it out. Of course it probably helps with scammers too, as I’ve noticed that’s where they usually end up commenting is on old blog posts it seems. Thanks for looking into that!

  3. That sucks that things likeintruder training are necessary, but I guess with thse things happening it’s better to be safe than sorry! I bet the first weeek back is always a bit hectic and stressful.

    Wow quite the branch that came down!

    Beast looks good! I haven’t seen Idris Elba in anything in a while…

    • Lisa Mandina

      From the previews when I saw Beast, it looks like Idris Elba has a few movies coming out in the next year!

  4. I just started my class on Tuesday of last week. For some reason I usually start on Tuesdays lol. Here we call it the Alice drill? For the active shooter. Thankfully, this year they are going to let me skip it. I told them last year that it triggers my PTSD but my teacher made me stay anyway and I ended up having a panic attack. Does that happen to any of your students at all?

    • Lisa Mandina

      Honestly we haven’t had the drill while we’ve had students since I’ve been in this district. We did them at my last district but they were a little different. I know we had one of the newer teachers that had some issues with the drill a little bit this year. It was just teachers when we did this. Sorry that is a problem you’ve had to deal with!

    • Lisa Mandina

      Ha! We actually don’t do much just hiding anymore. We have these things that go on the door called barracudas and they keep the door from being opened. That’s a lot of what they trained us on.

    • Lisa Mandina

      My hope is that there will be a week or two of stress and then it will calm down somewhat. I hope your first week back goes well too!

    • Lisa Mandina

      Lol, yep, I’m exhausted! The one thing we always talk about at the intruder training is how we hope we never have to use any of the info and it all seems like a waste of time because of that.

    • Lisa Mandina

      Yeah, it’s just so hard to jump right back into the swing of things. But I know most school districts locally did start back for a full week this week.

    • Lisa Mandina

      I haven’t heard back yet from my doctor, so your comment reminded me I should call and check with them! I hope it comes back negative as well. Thanks for visiting!

  5. Nothing like jumping into a full first week. I so hope the week goes as smoothly as possible for you. Sounds like last week was crazy long and busy. I saw that Caitlyn Dare book free on Amazon and considered it but decided to pass. I’ve read one recently from Dare and enjoyed it (and will continue the series) but the Sterling Prep series has me thinking the characters are going to be a lot younger than I prefer to read about.

    • Lisa Mandina

      I read a mix of YA/NA/ and adult romance, so I went ahead and got it. Although like most other free e-books I get, no idea when I will actually get to it, lol.

  6. Jumping right in to a full week seems like punishment for teachers and students!

    Your week sounds exhausting but it is nice that the administrators took care of dinner and lunch a couple of times.

    I was just thinking about The Initial Insult the other day. I may read that in September or October. It seems fitting for Halloween season.

    Good luck with your first week back with students!

    Jen at Introverted Reader recently posted: Weekly Update for August 21, 2022
    • Lisa Mandina

      I hope to fit in The Initial Insult soon, but my blog review schedule is so packed, we’ll see! Thanks for visiting!

  7. I loved the Ice Planet Barbarian series, I devoured them earlier this year but I love that they’ve been getting new covers for the physical books. When I was in school we usually started on Wednesday or Thursday but I don’t know how they’re starting them locally anymore (we don’t have any children in the family). I know a couple of my officers (I’m a police dispatcher in a small town) just did active shooter training at the elementary school this past week since school hasn’t started yet. I hope this week and next are a bit more relaxing for you!

    Taylor @ Taylor Fenner’s Bookish World recently posted: I Can't Wait for... The Kiss Curse!
    • Lisa Mandina

      I got the first one with the new cover when I started reading, I’m a total newbie! So I’ll be buying them all with the new covers. I’m so excited the author will be at Book Bonanza next year, so hopefully I’ll get to meet her next summer! I’m hoping next week will get closer to normal at school, but with all my boxes of books to unpack, it’ll be a while!

    • Lisa Mandina

      Things are still crazy, and probably will be for a bit, but I might see the light at the end of the tunnel for craziness, as a tiny pinpoint at the moment. lol

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