So, how's your week been?

Mine's been, uh , interesting. First of all, it's over for those of us in education in Utah. It's UEA (Utah Education Association) weekend. Oh, wait, sorry. The Legislature spent valuable time on passing a law that makes it illegal for schools to have a holiday in the name of any organization. So, now we have "fall break" instead of UEA weekend, and "Washington & Lincoln Day" instead of President's Day. Yeah, good thing they concentrate on the important things up there.

For those of you who are not in the SLC area, our high on Monday was 45, Tuesday was 54 and today is supposed to be around 66. Nice cold start to the week, a week that the boilers in our school had broken down for. Monday we had no heat in the building anywhere, except for the 2 rooms next to me that had their own heating system (they were added on sometime in the 60's) and the home ec. teacher who had her oven on full blast and open. Even with my big class of some 35 students in my room, I still had to teach with my winter jacket on. Tuesday was every bit as bad, although the heat came on sometime around noon - for some rooms - not mine. The rooms right next to me got so hot that they had to open windows to cool them off. I thought about banging a hole through the wall between my classroom and the one next door, until I realized that it used to be an outside wall, and I'd probably hurt myself trying to get through. Today started out just as bad, worse even because I was tired of freezing. I ended up spending my Tech and prep period hanging around "working on computers" for the teachers who had heat. At least it was tolerable when the students were in the room, it's amazing the amount of heat human bodies put out, and for 4th period with me and 30 students it was warm enough to take off my jacket. Yea! I'm spending this long weekend wrapped up in a blanket watching CSI Season 8 set that came in the mail today. With my heat cranked up around 80.