would you like a little whine with that?

I have escaped my job for a few minutes and am hiding out in one of my many new wireless coffeeshop homes. Because although I really need to go for a walk, it looks like it may rain at any moment. Which is quite shocking, as it has only poured rain, oh, every single day for the past week. I’m getting just a tad tired of rain. Rain and about-to-rain and just-stopped-pouring-rain-but-will-resume-any-moment. And I don’t really need more coffee, so I probably should have just gone up to the library, but frankly I didn’t want to risk running into anyone I even remotely know since this is obviously Complain To Beth About Everything You Can Possibly Imagine Complaining About Day. Who knew!

Aggghhh. I’m not certain vacations are worth it. And I’m coming to the sad conclusion that now I don’t just hate some things about my job – the student teaching things mostly – I’m afraid I hate everything about my job. EVERYTHING. Of course, this is a trying day, and I really shouldn’t judge by it. I’m back at work after a week and a half off, and my boss isn’t here because her aunt died very suddenly on Friday, and the funeral was today. Which is in itself an awful story – New Boss took her mother somewhere remote for a vacation over the weekend and they didn’t have a phone, and her mother had her cell turned off. Then her mother’s sister died, completely unexpectedly, and no one could get in touch with them for several days. They only found out yesterday, and the funeral is today. Which is horrible enough that I should really be thinking about how there are LOTS of worse things than my awful job.  

New Boss has a big meeting scheduled tomorrow with all the student teaching supervisors, trying to get them prepared to start using technology once in awhile (they are nearly all retired principals who for the most part are very resistant to everything but email, and they’re not wild about that) so I’ve spent most of my day trying to make sure that’s all set up and talking to Technology Guy who is taking over most of the meeting for New Boss since she isn’t going to have any preparation time. And with rescheduling the huge number of meetings she had today. And being the middleman between Technology Guy who has realized the room we scheduled for the meeting won’t work because of his technology needs (why on earth would you think about something like that when scheduling the room to begin with??Because that would make sense, is why!!!) and Room Scheduling Guy who is brand new and now hates us for making him give us a new room at the last minute, and for scheduling coffee and tea at the last minute and for STILL not knowing if our attendees are going to have the buffet at the hotel where the rooms are, because we don’t know if anyone will pay for it, since nobody thought to ask the dean about it and he’s not here for the next two days. When will we know? Oh, probably about the time they all get in line for the meal.

Funny how all the room scheduling people on campus hate us. I’m sure that has nothing to do with how I can never schedule a room anywhere anymore. "You’re in the College of Ed? Ummm…. no, sorry, no rooms here! Nope, not a one! We’re booked up till..let’s see…. January of 2085!" 

Meanwhile I have about 200 emails to go through, and a stack of regular mail overflowing my box. And lots of phone messages I’m sure I won’t get to this week.

And while I’m whining, is there anyone is this whole wide world who isn’t yakking loudly on their cellphone right now? Including the one other computer user here at the bookstore ("Karen? Hi, Karen. No, I didn’t call you. No, that wasn’t me. No, I didn’t call. No, I didn’t call you, Karen. No, I haven’t called you today. No, that wasn’t me.") and some other woman standing right in front of me discussing where she’s going next. Straight to hell, if I get to have any say! I’ve even got my iPod on and they’re STILL getting on my nerves. Well, really, what isn’t!

Oh, and I got to go rush off to the Traffic Department bright and early too, since apparently today is the day we all have to start using our new hangtags for this academic year and I not only never got one, but got a ticket as well. As did Baker B, who did have one but didn’t get it before we left last week so didn’t have it on his car.  I say "apparently" we had to have them on the cars today, since we didn’t get a single memo, email, notice of any sort that I ever saw about when the deadline was. Of course, I KNOW we have to get a new one at the start of every fall semester, so it’s no surprise, but usually they email us to death reminding us to get our cars registered. And we did TRY, too – Baker B did his week before last, actually, and said he’d do mine then said he didn’t do mine so I went in to register it myself – and it said it was registered already. As did his. So I said, well, I guess he did it after all and thinks he didn’t, and I’m SURE I’ll get my new hangtag SOON, and then I promptly erased it from my memory. Because there’s way too much in there, and I have to delete clutter like whether I have my new hangtag or not.

So when I realized this morning that I never did get my hangtag, I went rushing off to Traffic, and was met on the way by Baker B waving the ticket he got and the ticket I got. But this story has a happy ending at least, as the Traffic guy was as nice as he could be, and he registered my car and waived both our tickets. I bet there’s been a lot of that, since they never sent anything around about deadlines. We need reminders!!

Well, I think I’ll stop bitching and …EWWWWW… go back to work. Sadly I can’t avoid it much longer. And I think my battery is about to die. It gives me about three seconds warning so I get nervous when it gets down to the 20 minute mark. Twenty minutes means I’m just about to get the "Your battery is low; you need to switch to alternate pow…….YOU’RE DEAD!!!!" notice.