.... Some days just start out wrong. Today was one of them.
.... You may or may not know that the Utah Legislature allocated extra money for bonuses for Math and Science teachers, an effort to keep them in the classroom. Since I was teaching math half time last year, I was eligible for some of that money, and thought I had done everything right and was getting it. Not so.
.... If God is just trying to make a point, He sure has a funny way of making me realize how important the stuff I learned in my Master's program is. For those of you who are unaware, or forgot, my degree is in Instructional Design and Educational Technology. We had at least two classes that revolved around making web sites that were user friendly and as idiot proof as possible. I wish my professor had designed the TSSP* website.
.... Saving you from the long story, I lost out on the money because when they went through the applications mine was marked as "
New" instead of "
Submitted", even though I submitted it back in April. Their system is set up so that if you even look at your application after submitting it, you have to resubmit it or it automatically resets back to "
New". Even if you hit the "
back" button without making any changes. And their warning doesn't say anything about having to resubmit. Now, government being what it is, by August all the applications had been looked at, the money disbursed and whatever remained was sent back to the governement. Too late, so sad. I'm screwed. Even though I accepted that I wasn't ever going to see the money, I still found all my emails, including the one confirming the submission, I took screen shots of the various steps showing the problem and sent an email to the TSSP* group explaining what went wrong. I just wanted to be heard and for someone to acknowledge there was a problem on their part. I got a nice email back thanking me for the time I put into the explaination and letting me know they would forward it to their IT** department. If I see a change in the program next year I'll be happy, I'll know they listened. If not, I'll probably get mad all over again.
.... Which brings me to the title of my post, and a little opening up of my psyche to all you bloggers.
.... I have a temper sometimes. Not too often, but when things that shouldn't go wrong do, and when I tried to fix it and there is nothing I can see to do about it, I can blow up. Now, I've only been in two physical fights in my life, both before I was 18, both times it was in defense, so I never vent at people or any living thing. Never hit the cat, never kicked a dog (even though I call lap dogs "puntables"). Always inanimate objects. My older brother and his wife still like to remind me of the time I played basketball with a little black & white TV. (Yes, Virginia, there was a time before color). My little brother can attest to the time I slammed the door of my car so hard the window shattered. Today it was 3 of the 5 remaining glasses of the set pictured above. (The first one died in a dishwasher accident). Before anyone tells me how stupid it was to take my frustration out on these poor glasses, I had more than enough time to ponder that as I cleaned their pieces up off the laundry floor. Had to or I couldn't leave the house. I'm painting the front porch and the only other way out is through the laundry room.
.... The rest of the day went much better. I went out to my new school ... (nope, not gonna say it) ... and at first thought I wasn't going to be able to get into my classroom because they were waxing the halls, but the custodian said they were dry enough as long as I didn't drag furniture around the halls. I've got all but one box unpacked, and put away. Came home to find the email from TSSP* thanking me for my input and then watched two episodes of CSI I just downloaded on iTunes. ($2.99 apiece). Good episodes, the ones where Grissom leaves and we meet the new guy. I've got 3 more new ones to watch, then I'll have to download more. This may be better than buying them on DVD, 'cause I don't have to wait for the whole season to come out, just grab them one by one as they are available.
