trust me, the abandonment wasn't deliberate, i swear. even with work being what it's been, i would have written something over the last 5 weeks. instead, i've been waiting for my computer to come back from the fix it guy. then i spent last week getting everything i needed to caught up.
it has so sucked.
see, we decided to try our cable company's digital phone service and cable internet. having all 3 in one bill at less of a price than we were paying would have been wonderful! it obviously didn't quite work out that way. the day they installed our services, the phone worked for 2 hours and only one comp could get online. so we called about the phone and they said they'd send someone out to take care of it that weekend, then they got on the comp issue even though i told saxy i would deal with it over the weekend. they finally got his comp online, but mine was now off-line. so i was forced away from what i really needed to be doing to try to get my pc back online since i was the one who really needed it. first thing out of their mouths: "we don't support windows 98s.e."
wtf? then why the hell did they install their crap service on the windows 98s.e. comp?
long and short of it, they weren't able to get me back online and jacked something up in the machine. i could use my programs, but i couldn't open directories or do a whole lot of other things. we were going to take it to the best buy guys but one of the tech guys at the school i've been working at said that was a bad idea and that he would take a look at it for me. turns out whatever they did corrupted my o.s. the tech guy was willing to backup my data and take care of it all for $100 on payments, so we took the deal. it took him some time, but it's back and the way i want it and working great. only one minor glitch with my email program and, honestly, i can live with it. everything else runs great.
as for the phone, the guy who came out was a supervisor and he got it working again . . . for about another 2 hours. obviously we went back to our old provider and won't be doing a switch like that again any time soon.
but that's not all! oh, yes, someone out there really doesn't like us at the moment.
while my comp was down, we moved the printer to saxy comp. when my comp came back, we brought it back over to mine and the damn printer sprung a REALLY bad leak. we tried to clean it up, but i realized that it was a lost cause. even replacing the cartridge wouldn't have helped. so we were all prepared to replace my printer (which i really need, especially this weekend), but mcat gave us a canon. i personally have never had much luck with canons, but it was free and it's a really nice looking canon. except we can't connect it to the comp because the usb cable for it is missing and it doesn't have a port for a standard printer connection. mcat is supposed to bring the usb cable today, but, yea, i'm already pretty disgusted with the thing.
still not done!
to add insult to injury, the jetta finally took it's last nosedive and is dead, dead, dead. so now i'm going to have to figure out how on earth to add a $250+ car payment to our already strained budget.
yea, it's been a long 5 weeks. and with news like this, i'd imagine no one missed me that much. ;)
one bit of "good" news is the addition of a new cat to the family. hub calls me from petco one day and says, "there's a kitten here who's sooooooo adorable!" my husband? saying a cat is adorable? the man is a dog person (he likes wolves, actually). him calling me and saying a CAT is CUTE must have meant hell froze over that day. really. he picked up logan (for wolverine) with his birthday money from mcat. logan is a sweetie, very affectionate, and promises to end up being on big cat. pictures of him when we get them developed. ;)
i've been a pretty busy chickie otherwise as well. about the time the comp went down, i was switched from one indefinite position to another long term position that will end with christmas break. i can deal with this -- the old position was an esol spot and was working out great the way it was then, but they made major changes and that spot was about to become a whole day of beginning speakers (1 year or less of english acquisition). i can do one class of beginning speakers in a day, but a whole day's worth? i made it clear i only took the position in the first place because i was told that the kids were more advanced speakers and the communication issues wouldn't be nearly as bad as i feared. and they were right . . . with that particular group. change it to all beginners and i'd be pulling my hair out. so i was switched out to a class whose teacher is on maternity leave, and another teacher who could speak spanish switched in. and then they even changed what she was doing! yikes!
unfortunately for me, however, i was the only teacher to have worked with the previous class. and i was the only one of us 2 subs that had access to the school's network. this meant i was finalizing grades for two classes. it was a mess. and one of the teacher's had her grade book set up so weird that we ended up having to get an administrator in there to fix things anyway. i'm extremely grateful that the teacher on maternity leave left a month's worth of plans or i'd never have gotten both classes taken care of grade wise while getting settled into the new class and teaching out of my subject area. nuts didn't quite describe how busy it was for me -- i spent 2 weeks staying at the school until about 8:30 pm everyday just to get ti all done.
the new class is making me a bit nuts too. it's social studies, the team is still primarily esol so i still have a lot of kids who don't speak english very well, and i'm struggling with timing. they need to go slower and to do far simpler things. the kids themselves can be quite irritating. some of them are quite sweet and really motivated to try to get what we're doing and pass the class. too many others don't give a flying flip, are rude, and play dumb. and it's not just the esol kids (who get material and grading modifications to help them pass the classes anyway). not even my unmotivated high school class frustrated me as much as these guys. to be fair, i'm sure a large part of the frustration is the school's quickness to throw me into difficult classrooms but their unwillingness to give me a ft/p job. (more than one person -- not in the administration, mind you -- has said i should be in a full time position and not doing this subbing bit.) but i've also heard a number of teachers say that the kids this year are just mind boggling in their difficulties -- low grades, attitude issues, not phased by any kind of detention or referral, unmotivated, and with parents who either aren't involved or are involved and generally blame the teachers. i have 2 or 3 parents who are listening to what i'm saying is going on. the others either blame me or haven't bothered to contact me at all. i'm actually starting to express the desire to just quit. i won't, but i really don't like the job much right now.
add to all this that not much writing is going on right now (maybe 650 words total in the last 5 weeks), and my level of irritation is more than a little higher than usual. i'm tired, cranky, and have a stack of grading to do. my plan for this weekend is to get that grading done, do a little planning, then spend the rest of the time writing. i have monday off (which i really need). if i manage to get everything else done, maybe i can use part of sunday and all of monday to immerse myself in my writing. lord knows i need it.
word of the moment: implosion
the violent inward collapse of a vessel or structure resulting from the external pressure being greater than the internal pressure; total economic or political collapse, e.g. as a result of poor management and financial insolvency; the initial occluded phase of a stop consonant
