First Day Back

What a day.....

Today went pretty well, all things considered. There was a sense of peace and order in the halls. There were almost no kids out and about while classes were going on, and even during 6th and 7th periods, there was no noise or insanity. The kids were in uniform and the office was quiet. I was very impressed. As long as this holds, I think this year is going to be good.

It's too early to tell what my classes are going to be like. Everybody was on their first-day-of-school-the-teacher-is-an-unknown-quantity behavior. Once that melts some, we'll see what's really under the surface. AP looks promising, but they've unbalanced the classes again. One will be very large, the other very small. That's a difficult situation to deal with for making lesson plans, but by the time schedule changes bounce around some more, as they inevitably will, we'll see if it doesn't moderate somewhat.

This afternoon, three of my former students came to see me after school. It was such a great surprise. I hadn't seen two of them in over a year. They were some of my first class of AP, and hearing about their college experiences and just talking with them again was a real treat. Too often, teaching seniors is like nursing a bird with a broken wing; at a certain point, it flies away, and one is never quite sure how everything turned out. These birds came back to the nest, at least briefly, so I enjoyed it a great deal.

While my little birds were visiting, Technology came into my room to tell me that my computer was trying to upload a virus of some kind into the system. CRAP!!! They had isolated my room from the system and checked the machine. It turned out not to be an actual virus. It was some sort of spyware instead. Great. I try so hard to compute safely, but Technology said that as much as I'm online, there's really not much I can do about it except for increasing the frequency of my SpyBot checks. I guess I'll be doing that about every other day from now on. There HAS to be an easier way....

I marshaled enough energy to go out into the stifling heat and drive home. When I got here, my TV was on. It was very strange. One of two things had to have happened: my cat walked on my remote OR my new Wireless N router cranked up my TV by itself. I'm hoping for option one because option two is bizarre.

There was other weirdness, too. My phone line has gotten spliced with some miscellaneous woman somewhere. Right now, we have a party line situation. If her phone rings, or if mine does, it rings to both our houses. I hope they fix this soon. My chances of winding up with a Doris Day/Rock Hudson movie out of this are somewhat slim. (For those of you who don't know that reference, look up Pillow Talk sometime.)

Well, it's not late, but I am pooped and tomorrow will be another day of adjustment. My phone just rang again on the party line, and I'm fervently hoping that what's her name doesn't get lots of late calls.....