Today was State Visit Day.  They were basically coming to see me, which was interesting; I ran the first part of the morning and tagged along with the visitors all day long.  I also had to pull together all of their materials, and I was dumb enough to leave the photocopying and printing of same to this morning, believing– reasonably, I thought at the time– that there were likely to be some last-minute adjustments to the stuff we were providing to them and that I’d be wasting my time were I to try and get everything done yesterday.

Well, pff.  Cue every kind of technical issue you can possibly imagine, including a color printer that was stubbornly refusing to come online so that I could use it (it took the combined efforts of two nerds to discover that the damn thing wasn’t physically plugged into the network properly– the cable had pulled unseated at the wall) and then once I got that taken care of, a fifteen-minute search for a functional color ink cartridge (insert swearing about printer ink) only to discover that whatever dillweed had put the cartridge in had failed to pull the plastic tape off of it, meaning that the cartridge was in fact full and just, y’know, couldn’t print through tape.

I got the packet finished at 9:45, with the IDOE folk patiently waiting in the conference room.  They were, naturally, early, because that is how these things work.  If I’d been done last night, there would have been a dozen changes this morning and they would have been even earlier.

The good news is that once the packet issues got dealt with and ironed out, the rest of the visit went literally as smoothly as I could possibly have hoped for.  No unexpected questions, a couple of places that I thought we might get dinged on did not produce dings, a handful of compliments at the right times, and even damn near perfect behavior from the kids.  When all I have to complain about is a couple of shirts that aren’t tucked in, we had a good day.

I’m exhausted anyway, mind you.  But the day went well.  My brother’s soccer team is up for the city championship tonight, so I’ll be heading off for that in half an hour or so; I will likely go to bed early tonight when I get home.

Whazzup witchu?