Things Are Looking Up

You know how when you climb something really steep - a windy staircase in an old castle or a mountain or something - and as you take the final steps on the top, you look back and that's when you realize how far down you were and how light it is on top?

I'm, thankfully, doing that with every day left at STMS.

Every single day something new happens that makes me nothing but glad to be leaving and that makes me realize how low I had been.

For example? They just released a schedule of mandatory trainings for teachers over the summer. Starting the day after school lets out with a (again) mandatory two-day meeting. They justify this by paying $100 for attending. That's $6.25 an hour, by the way. For coming in outside of the agreed contracted work days, the day after school lets out. What makes it even more special is that they've been sitting on these schedules for at least three weeks, and now they expect the teachers to redo their schedules to meet their demands.

Oh, and? They're extending the work day at our school by 40 minutes without additional pay.

I am so glad to be getting out of there, and I am so sorry for my friends who are staying.

Life continues to be busy. Really, I don't know how this happened, where I suddenly have a full social calendar. Granted, I don't know if it qualifies as a social calendar when 80% of the time is filled with work and church stuff, but still!

For example, I declared "Reasonable bed-time be damned!" and went bowling on Tuesday night. A lane near me does games for $1 after 9:00 on Tuesdays, so Elisa invited a ton of people from the ward to go. A relatively small group showed up (Elisa, me, Jennifer, Noelle, Melissa, Scott, Ben, and Ryan), and they talked me into staying until closing instead of ducking out at a more practical hour. Ooh! And I got three strikes and an awesome spare from a 7-10 split.

Monday I went to FHE, which was a photo scavenger hunt. I'm pleased to say that my team won the grand prize (a couple of rolls of toilet paper)!

Last weekend was a delightful break from the usual. I took Friday off work to attend Rachel's graduation from nursing school. She, as usual, did a far better job than me at documenting the event visually, so I shall simply link to her post here and also direct you to the awesomeness that was our spontaneous trip to the Alpaca Festival. Mmm... fiber!


Oh, also, look! My grandmere and I have the same mouth/chin, don't you think?



And, doesn't Andy look a bit like this guy?