irritants and quandaries

Well, as if I weren’t cranky enough today, I’ve just knocked over the little vase with a great big lily in it that the nice lady upstairs brought everyone this morning, and it flooded my desk. And all the papers. Fine. I’ve mopped it up with coffee filters but of course everything’s all damp and wrinkly now. Great. These are gorgeous lilies, great big one in various shades of pink and orange, but the huge flower is kind of top heavy in the teeny vase. And it isn’t like I have a spare inch of room on my desk for extravagant things like flowers.

They’re making my office smell an awful lot like a funeral parlor, too. Which is actually not such an inappropriate aroma for my office. I feel like I should be answering the phone “Fisher and Sons!”

I’m cranky because we’re already getting busy again, after a slight summer reprieve, and classes don’t even start for three weeks. Which to me means we should have three more fairly calm weeks. Of course not. We’ve got people calling nonstop. Calling, coming in, needing things right this minute that take a week at the best of times and getting mad when I tell them they can’t have it right this minute. Since public schools are starting in a few weeks also, they’re all panicking about licensure and getting into fall classes and getting transcripts evaluated because they’ve been offered jobs and getting verifications from us for their districts and oh, just everything.

And of course the student teaching supervisors are starting their incessant whining. And Dr. Airhead is working month to month now for an undetermined period of time, which means he’s A) here even less than he already was B) does nothing when he is here other than flap around telling us how we WILL still get that new person we were promised in, oh, FEBRUARY, and annoying the hell out of us because as long as he can flap around and declare that things will be fixed, he believes that’s as good as actually fixing them is. Oh, and C) now everyone on campus who calls wants to know what’s going on with him and is he resigning or is he not resigning and what’s happening with his job and what will we do about student teaching and how long will he be here for and etc etc etc. And I’m tired of saying “I don’t know!”

Waaaah.

It’s also about to storm, since I have my walking clothes here and planned to take a nice long walk after work. So of course it’s about to storm.

And we had this very very long meeting with the Assoc. Dean this morning about changes in licensure requirements for teachers – nobody but Elementary and Special Ed have to have the Praxis II exam anymore, for starters – and it’s very confusing and worrisome in that the State Board of Education is evidently unwilling to put these big changes in writing, so we’re just going on what they’ve said in meetings. With nothing really to back it up. So that means when we give out the wrong information and it results in somebody getting all screwed up, we won’t be able to point at the written directives from the state and say, “Look, it’s right here!” It’s worrisome, but not at all surprising, given how our state’s educational system operates. Coupled with the No Child Shall Ever Again Receive A Proper Education in This Country act. All teachers shall be highly qualified, my ass. Hey, let’s drop the only test that might actually weed out some of the illiterate idiots who should never be given a teaching license! That’ll make them REALLY qualified.

What a circus.

OH, and I have been invited to go to a seminar in Las Vegas in October. The same seminar that the Dean’s Ass’t and a few other people went to last year, which pissed the rest of us off till our heads nearly exploded. So this year apparently everyone who wants to go is invited. Okay. I’m in a quandary. I would like to go because I’ve never been to Las Vegas, it’s all paid for other than incidentals, and I love to go places I’ve never been. HOWEVER – and this is a major however – it will involve spending all my time with a bunch of people I don’t know that well, am not big buddies with, and don’t even like that much for the most part. Worst of ALL, we have to share hotel rooms. If I had my own room, I think I’d go and just be antisocial and wander around by myself, but sharing rooms – ewwww!!!! I know, I know, I’m a complete and total weirdo. I’m also a complete and total privacy freak.

I’ve got to decide pretty fast, too. In a way it seems stupid to not go. I might actually ENJOY it. I think that’s the thing – would I enjoy it and have a wonderful time, or would it be like three days of ghastly torture?

Okay, this is hilarious – I just called Baker B and said I may be going to Las Vegas in October, and he says, “Guess what! I may be going to New York in October!” Yes, he and HIS boss may be going to New York. I shrieked, “I WANT TO GO!! I WANT TO GO!!!! CAN I GO CAN I GO CAN I GO?????” I’d WAY rather go to New York with Baker B and his boss than to Las Vegas with a bunch of women I don’t know. I’d way rather go to New York than Las Vegas period.

Hey, maybe I can go to both! I’ll just spend October traveling.

And now it’s time to travel home.