Frog and Goat

I officially began Winter Break vacation at 4:10pm on Friday. I totally forgot to set up my voice mail message so I did it later Friday night. There’s something pretty awesome about saying “This is December 15th. I won’t be back in the office until January 3rd.”

How I’ve spent my vacation so far:
The better-half volunteered to help my sister and her family renovate their upstairs bathroom–we’re on a roll, someone stop us. He’s been working for a few days with demolition and this weekend I’ve been assisting with moving pipes and installing wall board. We hope to be completely done by next weekend. My sister has a friend who paints so we need to be done with the major parts (installing bead board, mudding and sanding the new wall board, priming, installing a new door and installing a cool custom built cabinet) by Thursday so her friend can come in and paint. On Friday we’ll install the floor, toilet and pedestal sink.

Last night we went to Ashland Coffee & Tea to see The Grandsons & The Taters perform their 4th annual Christmas show. A very good show and at one point I think there were 10+ people on stage so it was a little crowded but the bands were having fun and it appeared like the audience was having a good time too. We’d really like to see The Taters again and will probably go back to ACT to see them. The Grandsons were good too, but we both really liked The Taters.

I’ve had a low grade headache for days. I can’t tell if it’s because I’ve been clenching my jaw or if it is because my sinuses have been seriously out of whack. My sinuses are out of whack because, let’s face it, 70 degree weather in December is just not right.

We went to see The Niece’s Christmas sing-a-long and she performed quite well. I’ll say this about The Niece–she’s the happiest kid and spreads that joy around. It’s cool.

Some of the kids looked like they’d rather be anywhere else and some seemed OK with being on stage. There was one little kid who pogoed her way through her song. I wondered if any of those kids would end up being the drama club geeks in high school.

In other news, I said hi to my father as I walked past him to slide into my seat. No response from him. Later in the parking lot, I handed him a box of china pieces and explained to him those pieces belonged at his house and not ours (had already told my mother this, but he was the one taking the box) and there was no response from him. At least he took the box and it didn’t crash to the ground. The better-half sat next to him at the concert and said when he made conversation with my father it was like my father was on a time delay–figuring out if he should respond. The better-half said he was trying to be nice since last weekend the ‘rents stopped by our house to give us a some Stollen and my father was sort of normal. You know, we try to be civil and nice but the fluctuations and the general lousy behavior wears a little thin. For crying out loud it has been almost 5 years, snap out of it.

We always close for the end of the year and sometimes the amount of the closure is longer than others. Last year we were positively spoiled because we had two weeks off. This year it is only 7 days? 8 days? My last day is on the 15th which means I only have to take 4 days of leave at the end of the year to get a ridiculously long break.

We really need a break as the last week or so has sucked and then there’s been months of contract negotiations that have stalled and floundered. We’re all going a little nuts. Today I answered the phone and the person on the other end started the conversation by singing Kumbaya. I nearly busted a gut laughing at the level of sarcasm.

The icing on the cake was the insensitivity that our fearless leader showed by sending out a one line email about the sudden and terribly sad death of the husband of one of the managers. Then, not more than a few days later, we get a crazy mass email to all the loyal subjects asking us to think up songs, poems or other falderal to share with the fearless leader about the greatness of the fearless leader. We’re supposed to perform these ditties at our holiday lunch next week (which will already be chocked full of hokum). I nearly choked on the bitter taste in my mouth and then I deleted the email. Others have had a similar or more openly hostile attitude. I think most of us are tired of the BS.

Lucky for me, I have to be late to the lunch next week and hope to arrive just in time to go home early. That’s really the best part of the lunch because the logo gift* just doesn’t cut it.

*logo gifts are those gifts with the organization’s imprint on them (clocks, umbrellas, notepads, etc.)–you know, crap.

I got home from work and started flipping on the Christmas lights we have in all our windows. The better-half heard the familiar click-click of the switches and started tackling the lights upstairs. Then he helped me take my poster out to the car. The poster that is due on the last day of class, tomorrow. I am supercalifragiliciously happy about that. I liked this class and I like being in school but, damn, I’m glad winter break is here. I’m also glad that I’m not still in undergrad because those poor suckers aren’t done until next week.

Because I am a nut job, I decided to turn my poster into a PowerPoint show and have already posted it on my e-portfolio. When I sent it to the better-half to get his opinion, I titled my email “I’m The King Of Rock,” because, well, I am. The PowerPoint show is a thing of beauty. Which is a good thing because my ability to cut paper with scissors is really pretty horrifying and so the show should make up for the misshapened ovals that make up my poster.

My reflective essay for the semester is out there on the e-portfolio too and my final paper is printed and in my book bag. I am ready for 7pm Tuesday night to arrive.

I think I may have been threatened at work today. Seriously, someone told me to stay out of the way because she didn’t want me helping another person that we work with to get a job accomplished. She told me that by failing you learn. That may be true for some things, but we’re talking about getting a project done at work, not learning a life lesson. Unless learning a life lesson is how to get along with others, especially people you don’t particularly like, to get a common goal accomplished.

We’re a learning organization so I take teaching seriously. It isn’t just a matter of writing training classes so we can spread the word from on high. I actually, crazy as it sounds, think you should walk the talk. If we’re going to be a learning organization then that means the teaching and the learning are internal too. How could I be in this field and torture myself with grad school in adult learning if I didn’t actually believe this to be true and want to help someone learn how to do whatever it is that needs learning? It doesn’t mean I’m going to spoon-feed them or do their job. It means I’m going to guide them through the process and help them learn by doing. Not a tough concept really.

So, what do I do when threatened? I take the high road and then plot like mad to make sure a big cup of comeuppance is served. The project will rock the casbah and the mentored will know what she needs to do in the future to carry a course on her own. The bully in all of this will just have to take a sip of this.

I have two class sessions left and then it is sweet, lazy sailing until the middle of January when all hell breaks loose with regards to school.

I had every intention of spending my long holiday weekend working on the last projects due for class and I think I spent a total of an hour working on homework. One of the things I did instead of working on my paper was to tackle the stack of papers that had started to take over the world. I had stacked all my paperwork from Spring semester on the floor and just kept piling the crap on. Somehow organizing that disaster area and recovering the floor space took up quite a bit of time. I’m not usually quite so slovenly but eh, it happens. Since the majority of the crap on the floor was actual school work, I suppose I could say I spent a little more than 2 hours on school work this weekend.

One of the things I must finish before the sweet end of the semester is a poster. I don’t think I’ve made a poster since I made tons of them in college to attract people to dorm events. There’s a lot more riding on this poster than whether people show up to a kegger. I think I’ll leave the crudely drawn letters and stupid drawings off this poster.

I also have to write the second section of a program plan. I have to figure out budgets and marketing ideas (mmm, maybe a big poster with witty slogans) and I just don’t want to. I consider the first section of the plan to be super fine and this last part is just something I’ll type up and struggle with this week. The brilliant part is that now that the holidays are upon us I have more free time at work and will be filling up that new thumb drive with documents and sneak in work on my paper whilst at my desk (insert evil slacker laugh here).

And, finally, I have to turn in a reflective essay about how I feel about my education. The professor reads, makes comments and I squirrel it away to refer to it later when my time finally comes to graduate. I did spend the better part of my morning churning that paper out. It was much harder to write this one since I didn’t have a bunch of angst and general pissedoffness going on like I did last semester.