August 7, 2014

I managed to get ahold of the dentist's office yesterday and there were already way into September in their scheduling. And after school is a popular time apparently so I will be going in at the end of September at seven o'clock in the morning. Hopefully by then I will be back on my school sleep schedule so seven o'clock won't be too horrible.

Last night I didn't to bed until super late so I got about four and a half hours of sleep before having to wake up and get ready for the back-to-school district meeting. That sucked. And it didn't help that the meeting is long and boring and contains a bunch of stuff that has no real relevance to myself or most of the people in the auditorium. Anyway, my mom and I met the kindergarten teacher at the elementary school and then we drove up to the high school. We also gave a ride to the new first grade teacher and the new math enrichment and Boys & Girls Club teacher. There were some rumors that the first grade teacher was a little standoffish and snooty but she seemed pretty nice and now the thought is she just takes awhile to warm up to people. She's also in her fifties and hadn't planned on leaving the town she was from but her husband got a job here so they had to relocate. So she was working through that as well.

When we got to the high school we stood around in the commons area for awhile and mingled (I mostly stood). Going into the auditorium was very deja vu from last year, not only because the place had the same vibe but also because I sat next to the same third grade teacher I did last year. Before all the talking starts they play a slideshow of pictures from the previous year and I was in it a couple times with my cutout. This wasn't a surprise considering I was put in charge of submitting pictures, but it was still cool to see.

As soon as the talking started, I wanted to fall asleep. The lady leading the whole thing has a kid who is going to be a senior this year so she told a few stories about her kid growing up in the school district. She then mentioned that there were thirty other employees in the district who had kids that would be seniors, and then invited them all up on stage to tell their own stories. Good grief. Thankfully only eight people took her up on that offer but most of them talked long enough to make up for it. Especially the first lady, who seemed determined to include a story from every grade. She just kept going and going and going. There needed to be more direction for the parents. They should have been told to tell one funny story and then maybe thank a teacher or a school, and end it there. Most of them just rambled.

After that there were two speakers, and I didn't have a clue why they were talking and I didn't glean anything from the words coming out of their mouths. A woman spoke first and she opened with telling everyone they could stand up and stretch because we had all been sitting there awhile. A lot of people took her up on her offer, and added on a lot of talking to go along with it, but the woman was unfazed. Rather than wait she started her rambling talk while everyone was standing up and talking amongst themselves. Plus, she had taken a step back from the microphone so she might as well have been whispering on a chicken farm.

From what I understand, and based on my experience last year, the superintendent has a tendency to talk forever. He mentioned at the beginning of his speech this year that when he asked his family what he should say one of them told him to keep it short. He said he would. And then he didn't. He had a couple of funny stories about his grandson but most of his lengthy talk included statistics and other dense information that very few people actually care about or are affected by. He should have told the grandson stories, then a few general bits of information, and then thanked us for our time. No such luck. I had the thought that we should all be on the clock in order to give them the incentive to keep things more concise, but I guess it turns out that we do get reimbursed, so they apparently don't care that they could save themselves an hour of everyone's time, which I imagine adds up to quite a bit of money.

At some point in there, I think after the superintendent, they gave out awards. I learned recently that I had been nominated in the category of Office Professional / Technology Employee of the Year. I was nominated along with the two secretaries at school and several other people throughout the district. When I learned I had been nominated my very first thought was “I hope I don't win.” I had no interest in going up on stage in front of all those people. It was really cool to be nominated but I'm not a fan of public things. I felt a little better that so many other people had been nominated because that greatly reduced my odds of winning. In the end, I did have to stand up when my name was called, but I didn't win so I got to sit back down. I was completely happy with that. Our librarian was nominated for an Excellence in Teaching award and she ended up winning so that was really cool. We all stood up and cheered for her. Or in my case, clapped because my deep voice cheering would be pointless.

When that was all over we dropped the first grade teacher and math enrichment teacher back at the elementary school and then took the kindergarten teacher up to the new house. There was still a lot of construction stuff going on with the neighboring houses so the cul-de-sac was crowded, and there was a giant trailer parked in front of my mom's house, by the kindergarten teacher still got to see the outside. And the trailer belonged to the guys putting in the sprinkler system, so progress is being made.

Shortly after returning home I ate lunch and then took a nap. A long nap. And it was glorious. Kind of stole my afternoon but I'm totally okay with that.

After waking up I didn't do a whole lot. Just watched YouTube videos and crocheted. And then later on in the night watched a livestream and crocheted. I managed to start and finish the fourth coaster. Now I just need to sew in the loose ends and attempt to block them. We'll see how that goes. Hopefully well.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight. I texted him a couple times and didn't hear back until an hour after our visits usually happened. He ended up getting called into work, which is kind of what I figured. So maybe next week.