Tag Archives: work

Is this thing on?

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I know, it’s probably hard to remember…I retreated into my little hidey-hole, and I’ve barely even poked my head in this last little bit. And then when I do come around, I can barely think of anything that’s worth posting about. Hrm.

Well, I posted a few photos of OVFF 2009. And when I say “a few,” I really mean it. 😉 Good times were had. Maybe, if I get motivated, I’ll post some more thoughts on that…maybe. No promises.

The college semester is rapidly coming to a close, believe it or not. I was asked to teach again next semester, and I said yes, for several reasons:

1. As busy as I’ve been, I have really, really enjoyed teaching this class.

2. It’s kind of fun to share a workspace with Rand, even if just for a small amount of time.

3. I like being in the city regularly.

4. I figure that accepting the position now will give me a bit of breathing room as far as planning and such that I didn’t have for the current semester. (I’ve been pretty much flying by the seat of my pants, which lends itself to the overall overwhelmedness…)

I’m pretty sure that I had more that I wanted to add to this post, but I got distracted while posting it, and now I don’t remember…ah well. 😉 Happy weekend, everyone!

Mondays and stuff

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If you looked up “things Erin should be doing right now,” I’m guessing blogging wouldn’t be on the list. And yet, here I am.

I overslept this morning. Oversleeping used to be a fairly regular thing for me, but has become less and less frequent in recent years. I overslept once last year, so I’m hoping once a year is it for me.

Part of the problem is that I need a new alarm clock. The one I have works fine, except for the snooze button. I think it got broken one morning when I forgot to turn the alarm off and it woke Rand up while I was in the shower. He didn’t know how to turn it off, which resulted in random flailing until it stopped making noise.

Eh…lately, I’ve been doing well without the snooze, but today, I obviously needed it. I did fine…I wasn’t late to work at all, and except for it being a bad hair day, it really didn’t affect the day much.

Here are some random thoughts, in no particular order:

I bought Dance Dance Revolution for the wii, and I am learning that I really, really suck at it. Maybe someone could give me some pointers?

I saw The Hangover over the weekend, which was fun, but I didn’t think it was nearly as great as some people seemed to.

I’m getting over the…whatever it was I had last week, but for some lingering sinus congestion.

I tried a new cupcake recipe yesterday, and it ended in disaster. A combo of running out of eggs and trying a substitute I found online and the oven freaking out and running way too hot. They collapsed AND burned. They smelled tasty, though.

Made a small apple crisp today. Made up for the cupcake disaster.

Somehow injured myself in my sleep two nights ago…woke up with an incredibly sore neck and upper back. I’ve been popping ibuprofen, and I’m feeling better (but not 100%) today. Still may need to visit friendly neighborhood chiropractor.

NaNoWriMo is coming up. Now, I am in no way, shape, or form crazy enough to attempt actual participation this year. I am, however, thinking about setting my own much smaller goal–perhaps something like “finish one short story”–and playing along. It would be nice to feel some sense of accomplishment. 😉

Finished watching The Wire over the weekend. Wow. Anyone who has watched can feel free to discuss. (the fifth season was not as emotionally damaging as the fourth, but certainly brought up a lot of interesting ideas.)

Ok, I need to move along now…have a great week!

Week in review, part 2

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Okay, here’s where things get *really* crazy.

If you recall, at the beginning of this week, I had zero jobs. Oh, I’d taken steps to make sure I had work–getting my name on the sub lists of the schools where I’d been working and such. I also had an interview scheduled for a long-term sub job which would have started mid-September.

On Wednesday, Rand called me to let me know there was a sudden opening for an adjunct at his school…someone backed out at the last minute, leaving an intro English section without an instructor and the department head freaking out. We talked about it a bit, and I decided that it would be a good thing for me to do. Since classes start Monday, I had to jump right away to get paperwork in and such. (And also get to work on my syllabus, which is, um, not finished.)

So, one! One job! Ah-ah-ah.

Then, yesterday, I got a call from the principal at a school where I interviewed earlier this summer. It was a great interview, and while I was the #2 candidate, they did select someone else for the position. Well, that person took another job this week, and the department chair (who wanted to hire me in the first place) suggested that the principal call me to see if I was still available. And lo, I was indeed!

This position is another 1-year job, but rumor has it that this one has an excellent chance of becoming permanent. I’ll be teaching 9th and 12 grade English (Regents). I’ve taught much of the 9th grade material and some of the 12th grade material before.

Two! Two jobs! Ah-ah-ah.

This is my life. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to freaking out just a little bit about all of this, but I’m very excited too. I visited my classroom yesterday (I met with dept. chair to pick up some materials), and for the first time ever, I’ve got a completely blank slate. I can do whatever I want, and make it totally mine.

So, if anyone knows where I can get some free or cheap classroom decorations (posters and such) please let me know! 😉

A quick update, and random internet things

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If I start to think about all the things I haven’t gotten around to posting about…well, I’ll just find myself getting horribly overwhelmed, and that would be counterproductive for me right now. I find it strange that my life feels SO much busier than it did at this time last year, when I had *more* going on. After all, I dropped my college class (I taught one class during the fall last year) AND I am no longer planning a wedding. So why do I feel so buried all the time?

I’m finding myself really missing the block scheduling that was introduced at the school where I worked last year. With that schedule, I found myself VERY busy two days out of every 8-day cycle, but the rest of the days were more gently-paced and productive. Now? I don’t feel like I’m ever caught up. I’m feeling better than I was at the beginning of the year, but still awfully crazy most days. And being an introvert by nature, I’m utterly exhausted by the end of the day…most Fridays, I feel ready to cry with relief when the last bell rings. This past week, I’ve been trying to focus on giving myself some time to relax and reenergize at the end of every day. I put on some calming music, light a candle, use my aromatherapy heat wrap, and this seems to be helping. I should also be working more yoga into my weekly schedule. I’ve been thinking about joining a gym as well. We’ll see…

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been looking at on the internet the past couple of days. This post, from cracked.com, might be the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen.

The 5 most horrifying bugs in the world

For the love of all that is holy, let me never come into contact with that Japanese giant hornet. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!

Then, just for kicks, I read this: a Roman Catholic priest threatened with excommunication for daring to suggest that hey, maybe Rome should consider the idea of ordaining women. That, along with the comments I’ve read on that article, remind me why I voluntarily announced my resignation from the Catholic Church a few years ago. I briefly considered writing a full-blown Catholicism-WOW! rant on this topic, but I just don’t have the energy.

So there ya go…enjoy, and have a happy Friday!

Sooooooo busy…

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I have to read both A Raisin in the Sun and Of Mice and Men within the next week.

We have open house tonight.

Interim grades have to be in tomorrow, and I still have a bunch of essays to grade.

I wrote six discipline referrals today.

Thankfully, I’m giving a test in two of my classes tomorrow…that should be a good opportunity for me to get some things accomplished.

In other news…I received an issue of The Martha (TM: Eden) in my mailbox yesterday, courtesy of Jen! 😉

I’ve been told to keep watching my mailbox, so who knows what the mailman will bring me next? Stay tuned, and thanks, Jen!

Work work work

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Today and tomorrow are my last college classes for the semester. I still need to grade a bunch of stuff and meet with students briefly next week to give them back their work and discuss their final grades with them. Then I turn in the grades, and I’m done!

I just found out that I will not be teaching a summer session this year. I was only available for one class–an evening class during the first session–and they weren’t able to give me that class. I couldn’t take any day classes, obviously, because of my current long-term job, and I couldn’t do session II because of the wedding/honeymoon.

Time-wise, I’m fine with that. Financially, though…this is going to make things tricky for me for July and August. I’m pretty sure that the part time work I’ve been doing for the past two summers is not available this year, but I’m going to check to make sure.

So if anyone knows of anything, please give me a holler. I don’t think I can bear to do the temp agency thing again.

Other than that, I’m consumed with moving tasks and wedding tasks. Soon, I will be able to breathe again…

Lazy weekends and deadlines

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So, I’m in the middle of writing my article for Toasted Cheese which needs to be ready to go up on the site, oh, Tuesday. Procrastination is bad. 😉

The weekend has been lazy and generally relaxing. This is a good thing. Rand and I talked about going out to a movie, but didn’t see anything that we wanted to go out for. We want to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but that isn’t out until next week. Ah well.

We found ourselves in possession of a wee bit of extra disposable cash, so we went out to eat several times this weekend. Yesterday, we went to May Jen, and I had the yumtastic ginger garlic chicken. And we have leftovers, which will probably be eaten tonight. Mmmm…leftovers.

We’re in the process of decluttering, and took a couple of boxes of CDs and DVDs to trade in. We spent way too much time doing that today! While we were in F.Y.E., I asked a salesperson what music was playing. It turned out to be a new release called Unfold by Marie Digby, which I just decided I need to buy on iTunes. (only 6.99, and I still had some credit left from a gift certificate Samantha gave me for Christmas. Yay, me!)

Rand bought the full Northern Exposure box set with his credit. We also traded in a bunch of CDs at Record Theater and bought a few new things with the credit (and we still have a bunch of credit left). Sadly, we have a small selection of stuff nobody wanted. Sniff.

I still have some photos from Rand’s birthday that I have yet to post…I treated him to dinner at Marinaccio’s, a place neither of us had ever been. We both enjoyed our meals very much. More on that soon. Besides the dinner, I (with contributions from both our parents) bought Rand a new iPod…he wanted one with more space. So guess who else gets a new (slightly used) iPod? 😉 Of course, now I have to go through the process of getting what I want onto the iPod. Oh, the trials.

I also have some photos of my pretty, shiny new earrings that people who follow me on twitter heard about yesterday. They will be posted soon.

Oh, and that long-term sub job I mentioned at the beginning of last week? I got it. Since it’s a shorter period of time than my other job (and in a different district), there are no benefits…but it is steady work, great experience, and a wee bit more money than I’d be making as just a day-to-day sub. I went in on Friday to shadow the teacher I’m filling in for and meet the kids and my soon-to-be coworkers. It seems like it’s going to be great, and I’m very happy to have the experience. This week is spring break, so I’ll be starting a week from tomorrow. 😀

More? I’m sure there is, but I should probably get back to work…hope you’re having an excellent weekend!

Weird day

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So I got up to go to work this morning, went to the room of the teacher I was supposed to be subbing for, and she was there. This doesn’t always indicate that the teacher is *there*, though–there are lots of situations where the teacher is actually in the building but not in the classroom. So I said, “Am I in for you today?” And she looked at me like I was high.

So back to the office I went…where there was another sub in the same situation. Some calling around confirmed that there were several teachers who were supposed to be at a conference today, but it was canceled, or the district decided not to send them, or something. Three of the subs were notified, but the two of us got lost in the shuffle.

They called around to see if anyone was short subs, and the answer was no. Bottom line? Because it was a district mistake, I get paid for half a day and I got to go home. I’ll take it. 😉

And so I went shopping…check the wedding blog later for some of the things I bought!