Wednesday, August 18, 2004

Do I have to tell my wife?

Ok. I’ll try this again. Everything froze on me just a minute ago. It’s a good thing I wasn’t very far along yet.

Mr. Mayhem worked all last weekend to get some pressing projects done for some meetings that he was going to have yesterday. I, being the understanding wife that I am, didn’t complain. I wasn’t thrilled, but neither was he so why make him miserable. He went to the office early and went to retrieve his files from his computer, but half of them were gone. Apparently the server at the new office had a squabble with the server at the old office and they were both very confused. They had to take the new server back to the old server and see if they could patch things up. My bet is that the old server is feeling jealous because he never gets to go anywhere. (Ok… so maybe there’s a more technical explanation, but I am the computer illiterate of the family.) Anyway…. The really sad thing is that his files would have been fine if someone hadn’t accessed them on Monday. He told his boss that the worse thing about this was that he (Mr. Mayhem) was going to have to come home and tell me that he spent two days away from the family for nothing. He prefaced telling me with, "I took this news better than you're going too." What a comforting start. You have to remember that this is the man that came home one day and said, "I quit my job." My apprehension was high. Now he's frantically trying to fix everything. I don't think he'll have to work all this weekend, but probably one day or the other.

Tuesday, August 17, 2004

No excuse

I looked at my site meter just now and saw how many of you still come by even though I'm a delinquent blogger. The kids went back to school yesterday so my most recent excuse is gone.

Mr. Mayhem took Mayhem #1 to school and I went with Mayhem #2. Two weeks ago we spent hours at school getting registered and picking up her schedule. So we walk in the door and the first thing we have to do is stand in line to get a new schedule. "New" must be a relative term because nothing on her schedule changed. I dropped her at the courtyard, with much complaining, and went to my duty station....the copy room. On the way down the hall I was informed there was no paper. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it hard to make copies without paper? I scrounged around and came up with 6 reems of green paper and one teacher gave me some white so I could do the history teacher's maps. (The kids were going to have to color them and green paper makes most colors look icky.) I spent 2 hours running copies while I kept the paper hidden and only pulled out a little at a time. I have to say that I do feel this is my right. When I filled out my volunteer info form, I completed the "job wanted" blank with Copy Queen. This is the last year the middle school can abuse me.

I picked up Mayhem #1 and was immediately informed that she wasn't going to learn anything in AP English. AP calculus only had 9 students, but they talked too much. There were way more kids than desks in Economics, the Yearbook teacher kept saying that some of the kids would have to go because there were too many, and the assembly where the band was suppose to march into the auditorium didn't work right either. French 3 was good. Art was good. Lunch was good, though overcrowded. The real problem with her schedule, besides a few bad teachers, is that all of her classes except English is only offered once. To get her art class in we were forced to drop honors physics, and move English. Then she still had one empty class and there were only 3 choices she could take. That's how she wound up with yearbook. I told her to hang on until things settled down a bit.

After dropping Mayhem #1 at the house to get ready for work, I went to pick up Mayhem #2. The parking and the pick up system at the middle school is atrocious. It takes forever. As soon as she gets in the car, I hear about how her locker is way down on the other end of the building and upstairs. She only has one class upstairs and it's nowhere near her locker. Her schedule has her running from on end of the building to the other. A locker somewhere in the middle would be nice. I'm going to let her work this out. The homeroom teacher that handed out the lockers she was given has requested that some of them be relocated. Mayhem #2 is very worried about being late to first period because it and the current locker are on opposite ends of the building. They are not allowed to carrry backpacks and lunch boxes to class, especially this class since it is the technology lab. Once again, hang on until things settle down. She practiced her oboe last night and I was informed that her reeds were shot. Funny, but they were fine for the few times she practiced over the summer. I guess I better go call the oboe teacher and see if she has any reeds made. Then I'll have to drive to Arlington (30 minutes) to get them. And pay a fortune...

I know. Hang on until things settle down.......but when?