Tuesday brain dump

brainAlmost titled this post “Friday brain dump,” which should show you where my head is right now.  I have no idea whether anything in this post is going to be interesting to anyone who isn’t me but I need it out of my brain, so… yeah.  Make yourself enjoy it.

I have… news?  On the job front?  I inquired about a position this afternoon and received a “let’s set up an interview as soon as possible” response within ten minutes, which seems pretty positive.  I know the principal already and got along with him quite well, so it’s entirely possible that in his head this may be done and dusted already, but who knows.

I’m ambivalent about the job itself, though.  I must get out of my building next year; that’s simply not optional.  I would really really like to get out of my district, and a lot of the problems that I have with my current building are going to still going to be problems with the new school.  And at the moment landing a position at this building would not cause me to stop looking in other districts.  Which feels more than a little dishonest to me.  Unfortunately, I’m not certain I actually care.

No word from District Four.  I felt like I didn’t do well on the phone interview, but I also felt like the phone interview was kinda bullshit.  I’ve talked with one other person who has interviewed with them and he felt the same way.  That said, I know they did more than one phone interview and I also know that those interviews have to be shared with multiple other people before second calls go out– and since my interview alone was probably half an hour or forty minutes long, I suspect that I probably ought not to panic about the fact that I haven’t gotten a call back in a week.  It’s a busy time of year, y’know?  And it ain’t like there’s a lot of time pressure there for a job that doesn’t even start until August.  So… we’ll see.  I’ve got several generic “if you end up with openings” types of letters out and at least two applications for specific jobs that I haven’t heard back on.  So, we’ll see what happens.  I’m trying not to stress out about it, as I’ve probably said before; I would be really surprised if I knew anything at all before August.  But, again, we’ll see.

Tomorrow’s field day.  It’ll be inside because it’s supposed to rain for pretty much the entire day.  But still field day.  And then my twelfth and quite possibly toughest year of teaching is finished.

Bring it, goddammit.

Today’s agenda

Today’s agenda is write.

No.

Pay bills, too.

Today’s agenda is write and pay bills.

Wait, shit.

Today’s agenda is write, pay bills, and figure out what to do with the next two days of school, since my lesson plans from a couple of weeks ago have blown up.

Damn it.

Today’s agenda is 1) Write, 2) Pay Bills, 3) Figure out lesson plans, and 4) go over to my parents’ place for a bit.

Hmm.

Today’s agenda is 1) Write, 2) Pay Bills, 3) Figure out lesson plans, 4) Go over to Mom and Dad’s, and 5) Clean up around the house a bit.

Oh, that too.

Today’s agenda is 1) Write, 2) Pay bills, 3) Lesson plans, 4) Mom and Dad’s, 5) Clean up, and 6) Laundry.  Cat puked on one of my shirts last night; probably ought to get to that.

Fuuuuuck.

1) Write 2) Bills 3) plans 4) parents 5) clean 6) laundry 7) fix the damn broken lamp that’s been sitting next to my bed for a week.

OH GOD DAMN IT.

  • Write
  • Bills
  • Plans
  • Parents
  • Clean
  • Laundry
  • Lamp
  • Shopping.  Need some shit for this week and I kinda want to replace my phone case.

(Phone beeps) Oh, yeah.

  • Write
  • Bills
  • Plans
  • Parents
  • Clean
  • Laundry
  • Lamp
  • Shop
  • Infinitefreetime.com is about to expire.  Gotta remember to renew that.

Okay, wait, ONE LAST THING, and I swear this is it:

  • Write
  • Bills
  • Plans
  • Parents
  • Clean
  • Laundry
  • Lamp
  • Shop
  • Renew
  • Find some time to read and relax.  It’s Sunday, after all, and oh I have like literally thirteen thousand pages of reading I’m supposed to do in time for the Hugo awards so I probably ought to treat that like it’s a job…

Hmm.

Fuck it.

Today’s agenda is to go back to bed.

In which I jobhunt

paperworkHave spent the morning updating my resume (screw the accents) and filling out all sorts of shit on complicated online application forms.  I’ve decided, much to my chagrin and for reasons that I don’t really want to go into here, that I need to go somewhere else next year, most preferably to a new district entirely.  My head already hurts just from the revisions to the resume, which I haven’t touched since moving away from Chicago in 2007; I’m sure as soon as I wade into having to get copies of my transcripts from the three different universities that I have degrees from it will much improve the quality of my day.

Also today, if I can squeeze it in, some work on final revisions and formatting for Benevolence Archives, and oh right I have a birthday party to run at work tonight.  And tomorrow I get to do mortar & tape work in the bathroom, which I’ve never done before and am sure to screw up in a most epic fashion.

I managed to get all my grading done yesterday before leaving work.  I think I’m grateful for that; it means that I might get half an hour to relax this weekend if I play my cards right.

Graaaah.

(EDIT:  The University of Chicago, amazingly, doesn’t charge for electronic transcripts– the other two universities hit me up for $15 to email me a .pdf file.  Apparently they’ve decided that the hundred million dollars that it cost me to get a Master’s Degree from them covers future transcript requests.  Hooray!)

In which I hope for productivity

I’m at OtherJob basically all day today, from 11 to 8 officially, which is probably going to turn out to be 11 to 7 in practice because I suspect that between the wind and the cold and the snow outside it’s gonna be a real slow day.  To that end, I have brought the following items with me:

  • My laptop
  • My iPad, with Bluetooth keyboard
  • Two different books, plus an ebook short story collection that I want to get into
  • About two inches of grading (light week!)
  • My lesson plan book
  • Two math textbooks

(Does math, realizes he brought around $2500 in technology to work.  Decides not to care.)

I have the following tasks to accomplish:

  • Write a somewhat serious blog post (Which is not this one.  Yeah, it’s gonna be a loquacious day.  Hopefully that’s a good thing.)
  • Grade the aforementioned two inches of grading
  • Email parents collectively
  • Email a whole bunch of parents individually
  • Plan lessons for next week in detail and for the rest of the window in somewhat less detail (the next two weeks will be tricky for various reasons)
  • Write separate lesson plans for Monday afternoon, since I’ll be out of the building at a PAT meeting
  • Put together Success groups for next week
  • Decide if I need to prepare anything for said PAT meeting
  • If necessary, prepare that
  • Update my parent contact log (waaaay behind on that, which is weird, because I was totally on top of it all the time last year)
  • Finish at least the book I’m currently reading; getting through two would be good.
  • Actual OtherJob stuff for which I’m being paid right now
  • Spend some time just watching the snow swirl; the wind patterns on the course are fascinating and the snowflakes are really big.
  • Figure out what I’m cooking for both of the two Thanksgivings I’m attending in the next five days
  • Play with my new Pebble

Yeah, I bought a Pebble.  I’m wearing both the Pebble and the Fitbit right now, on separate wrists, because I am TechnoWanker and I can get away with that.  (Actually, I can’t, but since I’m old I don’t have to care anymore.  Yay old!)  Super short review: so far, it does what I want, save for a bit of amateur hour stuff with the alarms which they’re already promising a fix for.  Longer review coming in, oh, a week or so.

And here we go.