Yeah, I'm still here...

I know I've been pretty much a slacker here lately, so I apologize to anyone who has been bothered by that. Oh, who am I kidding, the three of you that read this love me no matter what, right! ;-)

Today is my last day of "freedom." It's back to work tomorrow. Oh, joy. I actually went to school yesterday, hoping to get my room set up, but it was a bust. When we went in for out "Meet the New Principal" meeting a few weeks ago, I saw that everything had been taken out of the room next to mine (where my best bud will be teaching this year, yay!) and placed in the hallway. For those not in the know, that means the room was about to be thoroughly cleaned. The "summer clean," if you will. Well, here we are, 3 weeks later, and EVERYTHING WAS STILL IN THE FREAKIN' HALLWAY!! MY room hadn't even been touched yet! Um, HELLO!! We come back to work TOMORROW!!! Ok, calm down, ChiTown, get a grip!

I've gotten really spoiled working for the Big Cheese. In "real" schools, the first 3 days back are mostly meetings. We get our schedules, have professional development meetings, etc. At the Hell-Hole, we had about 45 minutes to an hour of "meetings" each day (most of it BS and nonsense) then the rest of the day was ours. We could set up our rooms, socialize, whatever. Now, with a real principal in charge, I'm assuming we'll be having 3 days of meetings, with very little time to set up our rooms. That's why I went yesterday, thinking I'd spend yesterday and today setting up, and then not have to worry about it the rest of the week. Yeah, well, fuck me! It hadn't even been touched.

I'm really pretty pissed about the whole thing, since I have a LOT of work to do, and not a lot of time. There's no way I'll be staying late each day in the ghetto, especially given that it's only August, and every scumbag gang-banger will be out by 3 when we get off work. I'm thinking that maybe I'll go in about an hour early each day, since not a soul in the neighborhood will be out, but that still kinda sucks, since I like my sleep!

I suggested that they just skip my room this year, since it really wasn't that bad. I'm a bit obsessed with keeping it clean since I'm terrified of getting rodents and/or roaches in my room. It looks better now than most rooms looked after being "cleaned" in the past. But, now we have a new engineer and janitorial staff, so we were promised some major cleaning. I was really excited by the prospect of NOT having to sweep up dead bugs and rodent droppings myself when I came back. Now, the wind has been let out of my sails.

Let's just hope New Principal will give us adequate time to set up. I'm hoping she will, as she decided to move many teachers around during the past couple of weeks. She has to realize that we all need time to get our rooms in order and ready to receive the babies on Monday. And, actually, we only have two days to get this done because she told us at the last meeting that she's planning on having a Back-to-School rally on Friday for the neighborhood. I can't wait to see how that goes! Yikes!

Oo, a weird little side note to share - when I went in yesterday, I noticed a couple of the bulletin boards in the hallway had been decorated. They face the front door, and we've traditionally used one of them to display the names of all the staff members. Someone put the board up, but I noticed at the top that two of the apples used for names said "principal" on them. One with New Principal's name, one with a name I didn't know. WTF? I asked Mr. H., our assistant principal about it, and he said that this other woman is being sent in to help out (THAT'S how screwed up the Hell-Hole is!!) but that she also works at another school, so I'm not sure how this is going to work.

This year, I'm going to try hard to bring this back to being a 'school blog,' which is what I originally intended it to be. I intend to come and post daily, like I used to when I first started this blog. I assume they'll be plenty to write about, given all the changes we are undergoing. I'm hoping I'll be able to come up with a different nickname for the Hell-Hole, too. You know, something a little more positive. I'm positive I have a lot of work to do this week....

Oh, and just to get the last of my bitching out, let me share that most of our summer has been in the high 60s-mid 70s (even hitting 50s at night!) Suffice it to say, I've never been happier!!! I wish EVERY summer was like this! But, now that I have to go back to work - in the ghetto - in an un-air-conditioned crappy old building - it's going to climb to the freakin' 90s by the end of the week!!!! WTF!??!

And, not to leave on such a crabby note, let me share that I'm planning to head to Navy Pier this Saturday night because friends of mine will be playing in the beer garden from 8-11. If you're free and in the area, PLEASE stop by and say hi! (8741, this means you, if you can!!) Let's just hope the lake will cool things down enough to be tolerable. We plan to dance our behinds off!