WNBP: Change Is Healthy. Or So They Tell Me...

Well here we are.  It's another Wednesday night and I am recovering from the day to day grind known as my career choice.  I shouldn't complain. I bought the ticket to this ride and it certainly does have its interesting moments. Besides, if I didn't have somewhere to go during the day, I'd just be sitting around the manse getting bossed around by the cats and that is certainly no way to live, now is it?

Of course, I'd also be eating bon bons and lording it over everyone that I am the only on with actual  thumbs, but I guess that might have some drawbacks as well.

Let's take a look at this week's highlights via the Wednesday Night Bullet Post.


*The weather has taken a most definite turn lately.


*I don't know how I feel about 74 degree days in early March.


*On one hand it is rather nice.

*On the other, it smacks of an impending apocalypse and that never seems to work out well.


*It also generally leads to a surprise snow storm right around the time you put away your winter woollies and you end up shoveling out your car wearing a tube top.

*And no one wants to see that...


*I decided to try eating dinner at the table last night.


*I figured that, after a quarter century of dining whilst slumped on the sofa, it was time for a change.


*I was surrounded by cats within minutes.  About a billion of 'em.  All thrilled to discover a large, flat surface upon which to perch as they eyed my food.


*Now it's back to the couch where I can sit hunched over my bowl of stew like a prisoner at chow time.


*It's where I belong.


*The day before they sent us off for winter break, the superintendent fired off an email for our general amusement.


*Changes.  Big ones.  The sweeping kind.


*I won't go into detail because that would bore you into a coma and probably cause you to question the very fabric of our reality.


*But it boils down to overcrowding at the primary schools which requires moving students to other buildings and causing overflows that lead to more students moving until, finally, the 8th grade ends up at the high school.


*And that WAS the less complicated version.


*This isn't a bad thing.  There are about nine million good things that will come out of this.


*But change doesn't always go over well, especially in established systems.


*I, of course, am not an established system.  I move all the time.  It's the nature of the job.  I follow the population of students who need my services.


*For a long time now, I have been an island of serenity in a sea of angst-ridden despair.


*Translation:  I don't care where I go as long as they keep paying me.  Everyone else is freaking out.


*Now I have to go to at least one meeting per week where I and my colleagues are spoken to soothingly and where they tell us that we shouldn't worry.


*Then they tell us that the way they thought they were going to do this wasn't going to work at all and that we should just sit tight until a firm plan for the transition is in place.


*Then everyone heads off to freak out some more as the "plans" become ever more convoluted.


*Today I went to a meeting where the entire special education department was displaced (on paper) due to a school board decision that no one knew about and which could mean I will be teaching my class in a small van on the football field come September.


*And the freak-outs continue...


*As I said to my director once the meeting was over, "Is someone going to tell me where to park my car before the first bell rings next year?  That is all I ask, really.  Just a little heads up."


*I have taught the following grades since arriving in the school district: Kindergarten, First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth.


*Just tell me which school, preferably sometime before opening day.


*I'll figure the rest out from there.


*She thanked me for my flexibility.


*And said that, if I played my cards right, I might end up in the abandoned science lab with the gas taps that still work if you jiggle the handles right.


*BRING IT ON!!!


*Sarcasm is generally lost on administrators in times of crisis.  That is pretty much an unchanging law.


*And who can blame them what with all the freaking out and whatnot?


*My reading situation has remained unchanged.  Still enjoying some oldies, but goodies.


*Well...not so much old as "stuff I've read before but liked and it is saving me some money while I pay off the new computer."


*Went back to visit with my friend. Felix Castor.


*The Devil You Know


*Fantastic series.  Really well done.


*And, in bigger news, I finally managed to reach the end of 11/22/63: A Novel.


*This is a long one and the audio version was really the best choice for me.


*Exceptionally well read if you aren't bothered by the narrator's tendency to substitute a Massachusetts accent for a Maine one.


*Which is really only problem if you can tell the difference and, honestly, how many truly can?


*It was thirty hours well invested and made the daily commute somewhat less of a drag.


*I was off Stephen King for a while.  He's a self-admitted Purge Through Prose kind of guy.


*And he really did seem to be working out a lot of his issues in print for a while there.


*That isn't a bad thing.  It is, in fact, a very good thing for both the writing and the reader.


*It just got kind of intense for me and I needed to walk away.


*But I think I'm ready to dive back in so I downloaded the audio version of Dreamcatcher.


*Not quite as well-narrated, but still quite enjoyable.  At least as far as I've gotten.  



And there goes the dinner timer!  Apologies for the abrupt departure, but the buzzer waits for no man (or Sheepie).  I think I'll wrap this up and go see how my chicken is doing.  Might just be time to curl up on the sofa with my meal and dream of the day when I know where I work and sometimes eat sitting upright like the humans do.

It could happen, right?  If not, I've still got my prison-hunch dinners to look forward to and lots of "interesting" changes to keep me entertained.

SA