Week one, over and out.

…. Well, I survived the first week, exhausted and ready to sleep Saturday away completely. Not only was it week one, but it was elongated by Back to School Night, the evening parents are invited to meet all their student’s teachers. We didn’t have it at either the High School or the Jr. High in the South Salt Lake Area, but at both schools before that we had it the week before the kids showed up. Go figure. Anyway, that meant that Wednesday was a 7AM to 8PM kind of day. Phew!

…. No school is 100% perfect, and even though my new school has it’s problems I am really happy that I’m where I’m at. My 8th grade classes are great, I’m having a really good time with them, especially my Advisory class. The one class that is causing problems is (sue-prise, sue-prise) my 9th grade class, and I have them every day instead of every other day. I’ve had to email one parent, am waiting for email addresses for 5 more from the office and have had to bring one student down to the office already. Hopefully once we start working in the computer lab (that’s why we meet twice as often) they will get a little more interested and cause less problems. Hopefully.

…. I’ve figured out which are the fun teachers on the staff and which are the ones to just not joke with. The PE teacher, who is the wife of a guy I worked with before, is hilarious. I walked in while she was making copies, she had the wrong master on the machine, so she pulled it off in the middle of copying, and stuck her hand over it. Got a nice shot of the whole hand, including he thumb ring. So, I asked her for the copy and told her that I was going to put it up on my wall and see if the kids could figure out which teacher it was. Of course i didn’t say anything to the kids, figured I’d just let them discover it. Every time I ran into the PE teacher (which wasn’t more than once a day since she is on the opposite side of the building) she’d ask (with the look and tone of a anxious 6 year old) “have they noticed yet?” Yeah, we’re going to have fun.

Once in a million years, at least since the mid- 80's

So I'm coming home from Church today, down in the Sandy area. I get on I-215 at Union Park Drive and follow the belt route all the way to I-15 and the 1300 East exit. What, about 15, maybe 20 miles? I'll have to check sometime. But anyway, something amazing, something I'm not used to, something that used to be possible in the 70's here in Salt Lake happened. I drove all that way without once being blocked by some idiot going slow in the fast lane. Not once. I didn't even have to scoot around anyone on the right hand side to get past them. The only 2 people in the left lane moved over before I even had to disengage the cruise control. WOW.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

The Good:

Bizarre night at the Chevron today. It started out with unusual good. One customer returned to the store just to let us know that the wind had blown our milk crates all over the driveway on the side of the building. Even more surprising was Coppenhagen Guy. I know I've mentioned him before, but he was a really arrogant customer that kept coming in even after accusing us of lying about our backstock of Coppenhagen. He used to walk in and demand, as he walked past the counter to the drink fountain, "Give me 3 rolls of Coppenhagen pouches". Didn't matter if we were helping someone already or not. Well, today he comes in, waits in line and when his turn comes up asks, politely, "Could I get 3 rolls of Coppenhagen pouches, please." I almost plotzed. We didn't have any rolls left, so he asked about our singles. Didn't complain about their date or that we only had 4 rolls. Just said he'd take them all and then thanked me once the sale was done. I was amazed.

The Bad:

The fates that were smiling on us in the beginning of the evening quit smiling halfway through the night. There's nothing more depressing than having someone prove that there was a basis for a stereotype. Taxi Drivers. In general when they come in to the Chevron they're gruff, demanding and not very friendly. This one comes in today (City Cab #21, for the record), comes up to the counter with a soda and mumbles something. I ask him what he wanted and he mumbles again. So I lean closer to hear him better and he gets all pissy. Loudly says "Grizzly Mint" and then gets on my case about not being able to hear him because I'm so close. I tried to explain that I was close because he was being so quiet, but he just keeps going on about me not being able to hear him. I stop talking, figure if I say something it's going to be something I wouldn't want to print here, and he's a jerk so it won't help anyways, so what the hell. Take his money, give him his change, bag his crap up and hand it to him. Then he says something about how I need to go get earplugs (how the hell are earplugs supposed to make me hear better?). I look him straight in the face and say "bye" turn to the next customer, put on a big friendly smile and ask "how are you doing tonight?"

The Ugly:

Nothing specific, but there's no way we went a whole night without someone ugly coming in.

Just when you'd decided the human race sucks......

First of all - Happy Cinco De Mayo...

Danny calls me the other day and asks if I'd be willing to help him demolish his mother-in-law's bathroom if she paid us. The first thing out of my mouth was "pay us? what for?" We settled on lunch and the fun of demolishing a bathroom. So today Danny, Alex and I ripped out the whole bathroom and cleaned up (that's why she had to make us dinner, if we hadn't had to clean up we woulda had to pay her.)

So Danny, Josh and I head out to the dump and while we're cleaning the trash out of the trailer, one of the pieces of the toilet (somehow it got broken going into the trailer, can't imagine how that happened), with a nice jagged end decides to slice the hell out of my thumb. Nice and deep, blood all over the place. I'm jumping around holding my thumb, putting pressure on it to stop the bleeding and the lady next to us runs over to her Suburban, gets out her first aid kit and calls me over. Cleans it, and wraps it all up. It stops bleeding, as long as I'm holding it tightly, so Danny and I decide he should finish cleaning out the trailer and then we'd head out to the Insta-Care right by my house and get it stitched up. So, I'm there holding my thumb above my head and Danny is busting butt to get the trailer cleaned out when the husband from next to us comes over and helps Danny finish with the trailer. The wife then comes over and checks the thumb again and even helps me get myself buckled into my seat while danny packs up the tarp and gets us ready to go. Just when I was developing a serious distaste for the entire human race.........

Josh was cute at the Insta-Care. You could tell that he was really interested in what was going on, and at the same time, kinda scared of the whole thing. He'd ask his dad to bring him over and let him sdee, look for 5 seconds and then want to go sit back down, did that 5 or 6 times. Wanna see, dont' wanna see. So, dozen and a half stiches later and we're out of there. Thumb's still numb, just waiting until it's all thawed out and I can feel the pain......