so, what would inappropriate technology be??

I still love my job very much, but I am not too crazy about some of these majors. For example, Appropriate Technology. Which seems to be the Take Whatever The Hell Hits Your Fancy and We’ll Figure It All Out Right Before You Graduate major. I’ve been working on one all afternoon, and I need a break. He’s supposedly graduating in December but has taken maybe two classes that are actually listed on his requirements checksheet. So he’ll be short some 50,812 hours for graduation. Nothing he’s taking this semester appears to bear the vaguest resemblance to any required course for Appropriate Technology. This is making my head hurt. What will happen, I’m sure, is that the technology department will make a gazillion substitutions for him from all the classes he’s taken that AREN’T on his sheet, but I sure wish they’d do that before we do the audits. Actually, I think they’re supposed to, but that doesn’t seem to ever happen.

Oh, well. I could still be in my last job. That’s a perpetual cheering thought, at least. It’s quiet, it’s peaceful, I’m not being interrupted twenty times per second as I try to figure out complicated things. And I’m not dealing with Education majors. I get to send their emails on to poor K!! Including the one I got a couple of days ago, who didn’t know that I’m not dealing with student teachers anymore. She was emailing to let me know that a problem she was having with registration has been taked care of.

Taked care of.

And she’ll undoubtedly be teaching in North Carolina next spring. Cause she done taked care of that there issue.

AAAGGHHH!!!!

On the plus side, the number of emails I’m still getting from people with licensure and student teaching problems has slowed way way down. And in the six or so weeks I’ve been here, I’ve received two pieces of regular mail. TWO!!! And they were from Human Resources. In my other job, I’d get ten or fifteen pieces a DAY. This is SO nice.

I think I’m just a wee bit cranky today because I’m reeeeeeally tired. I went down to Asheville Sunday and came back last night so that I could go to my mother’s Memory Clinic appointment with her. Between working non-stop the entire two days and putting up with my poor parents, I am wiped out. I worked and worked trying to clean their house, which wouldn’t have been so bad except it’s around 850 degrees in there. Seriously. I don’t mind heat, I rarely get too hot, but I was About. To. DIE. You walk in, and it’s like being inside a pizza oven. They have ceiling fans and a couple of floor fans, which do nothing but shove the heat around because they WILL NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS. Why won’t they open the windows? Well, I guess because opening the windows might make it a little more pleasant in there. I really don’t know. I was going through opening windows right and left, and my father would say things like, "We never open that window because stuff comes in!"

Stuff comes in.

Stuff like, oh, cooler air maybe?????

I really don’t get it. Daddy was talking about getting air conditioning, and as much as I don’t like air conditioning and have never thought they needed it – it rarely gets that hot, and they have ceiling fans and … nice big windows with screens all over the house .. .but now I’m rooting for air conditioning. I was trying to vacuum and mop yesterday with sweat pouring off me and the vacuum which falls apart because it’s stupidly designed making me crazy and the cats getting in my way and my parents both saying over and over and over "Oh, we don’t want you to come down here and have to work!!" And me trying my darndest to not reply, "Well for fuck sake, stop sitting there in front of the fan watching me and do this yourself then!!!" And boy was it annoying. My father really really really needs to do the vacuuming and mopping himself, because he is perfectly able and seriously needs the exercise, but if I’m there he wants me to do it. Because I’m there. And he’d rather sit. Which makes it even more annoying!

They also worry about people coming in the windows, apparently. Because whenever we go out, even if it’s just to walk across the driveway to my brother’s garage, we have to shut all the windows, lock all the windows, and draw all the blinds. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to fry an egg on the livingroom floor when you return. And when I’m trying to go to bed (i.e. saying I was going to bed but in reality going to lock myself away and read in peace) my mother asks me about fifteen times whether the window is locked. Because of all those burglars who are lurking around under that window, just waiting for a chance to drag me out of it! Which would, honestly, have been quite a relief at that point.

On the plus side, they test my mother’s memory every time she has an appointment, and this time she’d gone up several points. The bad thing was that she’s lost eight pounds, and she was already way too skinny. So now if she doesn’t gain five pounds by her next appointment in December, they’ll have to take her off the good medicine that she’s on. (They switched her from Aricept to something that starts with an "R". I don’t need the memory clinic myself, though – no, not at all!) Daddy’s under orders to make her eat cheese and crackers and a bowl of ice cream every night and whatever else he can get her to eat that is full of calories. She can’t stand Ensure or anything else that’s the slightest bit sweet. The doctor gave her a long talk about eating more, so I hope that will help. The medication apparently dulls your appetite, and she’s not a big eater to begin with.

Well, I need to get back to my Appropriate Technology friend, especially since I seem to have lost the ability to type and haven’t managed to type two works in a row correctly and now that’s getting on my nerves too. I think I seriously need a nap.