no, no, that’s fine, no HURRY or anything….

Have I ever mentioned that I hate dial-up??? I wanted to post some Lexington and Thereabouts pictures, but to begin with I didn’t get most of them onto Flickr because I can’t upload them from home (thank you, Dial Up!) becasue it will work and work and work  on uploading ONE for like an hour, then I’ll get an error message and about a third of the picture will be loaded and the rest won’t. So I have to do that at work. And how much time have I had to upload pictures at work? Why, NONE, that’s how much! I’ve tried for the last two days, and finally did get some this afternoon, so I guess I’ll have to be content with them for now. However, now it’s taking a week to load the Flickr pages up, so it’s proving to be very very hard to find what I want. Guess what I hate! DIAL UP!!!!

So, guess I’ll settle for what I can get. I’m going to be out of the office quite a lot next week, so certainly won’t have time for anything fun while I AM there. My new boss is, so far, very pleasant and likeable and good-humored, but is also full of wonderful ideas for making our office all efficient and smooth and non-chaotic. Which would be FINE, they are mostly very good ideas and things which definitely need to be done – but they all involve me doing even more work. Which, ummmm….. isn’t possible!!!!  So far she’s been there one day, K and I met with her for two hours, I have four pages of notes and three big meetings to arrange in the next few weeks with all the student teacher supervisors and academic area people, along with a TON of information to gather for her. She kept bringing up stuff in the meeting about things that we must start doing – like sending copies of the placement letters we send to the students to the principals and cooperating teachers as well – and I’d say, VERY cheerfully, "Yes, we DO need to do that, and when we get our third person who will be doing nothing but taking care of student teaching, they will be able to handle mailing out three times as many letters! No problem!"

Obviously we are going to have to have a talk, and it will probably happen Monday, since when she left yesterday she said, "We’ll meet again on Monday and I’ll have more stuff to give you!" I think the problem – and this was one of Dr. Airhead’s problems too – is that her position is Field Experiences Coordinator, so all that exists for her is Field Experiences. Licensure doesn’t exist, certification doesn’t exist, advising doesn’t exist, undergraduate records don’t exist – nothing exists but student teaching. And of course I can handle ten zillion more student teaching related tasks, because that’s all that exists! I’m just going to have to point out to her that WAY more exists in my world than student teaching, and if she wants all this done, she is going to have to get that third person in there. NOW.

Why, if my boss is Field Experiences Coordinator and nothing else, am I doing licensure, programs of study for certification, keeping undergraduate records, and all the other ten zillion things I do in addition to student teaching related stuff? WHO KNOWS!!!! I certainly have no clue. As Baker B often notes, our office is by far the most completely screwed up office on campus.

But whatever. I got done what I could – which was not NEARLY what she’d asked me to do, as I had a full box of not-related-to-student-teaching-things that were more urgent (and didn’t get all that done either, and stayed till SEVEN tonight) and Monday we’ll have a chat and I’ll gently remind her that there’s a REASON we’re supposedly getting another staff person. I’m not just whining that I’m too busy because I don’t have time to play on the internet.

Oh, well. I DO think we’ll get along fine, after she realizes what kind of shape that office is actually in. And I do think her ideas are great. They just aren’t possible when we are insanely understaffed. There is an astonishing disconnect from reality among the higher-ups in our office.  

To make it even worse – and to kind of take some air out of my I’M REALLY REALLY OVERWORKED complaint – I’m taking a couple of days off next week because two of my cousins are going to be in Asheville, and I’m not about to miss that. And fpr two of  the three days I will be at work, I have to go to half-day-long Useless Finance System training. So I’ll be there one full day next week.

Okay, it’s time for a few pictures, at least –

This was the cool cemetery in Lexington. Where Stonewall Jackson is buried:

Stonewall Jackson with a madly singing bird on his head. Perhaps trying to explain why there are lemons all over the ground in front of his tombstone:

My lovely Witch House as seen from the bar across the street:

A Witch House Window:

The Witch House’s front door. I love how they are trying to make it all festive and appealing to buyers by hanging a wreath on it. In July.

A weird old shed behind The Witch House:

Well, getting the pictures to load on Flickr so I can copy the address has taken like HALF AN HOUR, so this will have to be enough for now. AAAGGHH!!