Sistah Pat

Wow!  It’s 32 degrees this morning and heading to the upper forties.  Tomorrow, we’re heading up to sixty degrees!  Maybe it’ll melt some of this snow and ice so we can get out and clean up the yard and deal with the downed limbs.  We still have the one hanging over the power lines that’s keeping us from pulling all the way into the driveway.  You can’t do much about cleaning up when all the limbs and junk are stuck in ice. Gotta get that taken care of tomorrow so DH and I can feel okay about leaving on Sunday. Looks like a pretty good weekend shaping up.

I put in another long day yesterday.  Finished the school newsletter and will, hopefully, get it out today. I’m not really responsible for getting it copied and distributed.  My part is DONE!  The principal was really happy about it.  That makes three newsletters down for the year and three to go!

Gotta get to the shower.  It’ll be nice not to have to wear all those layers today.  Think I could wear shorts and a cami?

6:15 - Maybe a cami, jeans, and a jacket.  I love this cami.  Love the color and the sheen but it’s just a little bit too sexy for work.  Or is it?  I go through this every time I want to wear this thing.  Always wondering if it’s just a little bit inappropriate. It’s a pretty clingy emerald green satin with lace at the top of the bodice.  Looking straight on, it looks good.  Looking straight down, there’s just a hint of cleavage.  Perfectly acceptable for the most part but I’m never quite sure that it’s something a teacher should wear.  I found out what to call the colors I love.  I was watching “What Not to Wear” the other night and heard a nice term.  Jewel tones.  I always just thought of them as “saturated” colors but Stacy says “jewel tones” and I like that!  Sapphire blues, emerald greens, and topaz golds and browns.  What a nice term.  Here’s what google had to say:

Jewel tones are rich color tones which resemble well known gemstones, either precious or semi-precious. Typically, jewel tones have a high level of color saturation, which makes them very dynamic and distinctive. There are a wide range of uses for jewel tones, from designer clothing to websites with rich interfaces which are meant to pop in the eyes of viewers. Many colors in this family also have traditional or religious significance, and they often appear in works of art.

Some examples of jewel tones include emerald green, amethyst purple, ruby red,topaz yellow, sapphire blue, tourmaline green, and turquoise blue. Almost any colored gemstone can be replicated with a jewel tone, although some are certainly more famous than others. In general, a jewel tone is very bold, and it exemplifies the classic color associated with a particular gemstone. For example, althoughsapphires come in a range of colors and saturations, sapphire blue is a very distinctive, rich, heavy blue.

Say it again, girls…jewel-tones.  Henceforth; all my plums are now amethyst. That mustard jacket is actually citrine.   

Susan and Ashleigh, you’ve given me an idea.  I can’t wear a patty cam because it might show my cleavage today but I’m going to write down what I do at work and see where the time goes.

4:30 - OMG!  I’m so exhausted!  All I want to do is crawl up on the couch and die.  I tried to keep track of what I did today.  Here’s what I got:

7:30 - 7:45: Checked my mailbox, set up an account on a laptop for the attendance clerk because her PC went down - met with the principal to discuss printing out the newsletter, set up another account on a laptop for one of the counselors whose PC went out.

7:45 - 8:00 - Met with the department head of the graphics program and tried to break it to him (in a nice way) that the principal was NOT going to wait until next Wednesday for the newsletters to get printed and wanted them done on a copier so they could be distributed last period today (1,600 of them).  Dismantled and put away laptop, speakers, and projector used for a training yesterday evening.

8:00 to 11:00 - Checked my email - 23 new messages since yesterday afternoon - answered the ones that were red flagged and put my own red flags on the ones I needed to deal with today.  Set up a cart of 30 laptops for a teacher and delivered them to her room.  Taught my computer class (my kids were sooo good today, bless their little hearts!), met with graphics department head again (guess I didn’t handle the first meeting well because he was really angry and defensive about copying the newsletters and pretty much said he had other priorities today). It occurred to me that I don’t get paid enough to deal with this kind of stuff so I told him I was just the messenger and he’d have to take it up with the principal.  Went to a classroom and fixed a printer.  Met with the principal again because she’s NOT happy with the head of graphics and wants those damn newsletters to go out TODAY.  Asked if I’d show one of the secretaries how to run the newsletters through the copier and get some kids to fold them in half.  Set up the copier with 11 x 17 parchment paper and showed the secretary how to place the front and back pages and run copies.  Showed her how to reverse the paper, place the two inside pages and run the parchment through again.  Watched her until she got the hang of it and then went to find some kids who were teacher aides or office aides to fold the newsletters.  Got the kids and showed them how to fold the newsletters and got them started.  Went to a classroom and showed a teacher and her students how to set up accounts on a really great history site.  Came back to the library to find the kids looking for me because the secretary had done 400 copies with the inside pages upside down.  WTF???  400 pages??? On expensive 11 x 17 parchment paper!  How can you not notice something like that for 400 pages???  And the kids were afraid to say anything.  Okay - I’m sure she feels bad enough.  I go in there and make sure she understands how to do them and wait while she makes another 100 copies to make sure.  We’re in third period now and I need to find new aides to help with the folding.  I get them and head back to the library to discover that the secretary accidently hit the 75% button and ran off 100 copies that have to be trashed.  Got her straightened out AGAIN and showed the kids what to do.  Went to teach a class and came back to find, (I swear to God!) that the secretary put the pages down on the wrong guide and there are 350 new pages with a 3 inch margin at the top and the print running off the page on the bottom.  I can’t stand it.  I really can’t stand it!  Did she not notice this on the first 100 copies?  Surely to God she saw it on the next batch of a hundred!   What was she doing?  Reading a Harlequin romance as the pages floated one after another into the tray?   I decided that I’d better go to the principal and tell her I’m doing the copies myself and break the news that the entire morning has been wasted and we have 850 newsletters that are total trash and about 400 that are good.  I told her I would have the newsletters ready for last period.  That gave me 2 1/2 hours to get it done.

At this point, I gave up on trying to write down what I do all day.  Damn near killed my ass getting 1,600 newsletters printed, folded, and distributed but I got them done and didn’t hardly have enough energy left to drag my butt out to the car and drive home.  Had a carton of lite yogurt today and I’m really too tired to even be hungry.

Don’t have any wine in the house but a couple of dusty bottles of Maui Splash from a couple of years ago. They’re going in the freezer while I throw together a pot of loaded potato soup and then the wine and I are going to the spa.