By the way, has anyone seen Melissa? I haven't for days. If you catch her online, tell her to stick around.


Edit: Nevermind, I found her. She was hiding under the bed again. Silly Mellie.

When little children grow into adults, do they finally develop good sense and shed their need to stuff parts of their feet into their mouth, no matter how dirty or smelly? Or can they just not bend their legs that way anymore?


Sadly, these are the kind of questions they don't answer in ECE classes.

When we last left yours truly, she was scrambling like rat on fire to finish her homework for her follow up meeting.


I got most of it done (save 11 pages) and our follow up people were late (30 minutes) which was ok but frustrating because there was a CORE class tonight. I'm not going though, so all is good.


So I thought.


The follow up goes peachy until the nice ladies tell me I'm missing not one (the 11 pages) but three assignments. Two of which I didn't even know about.


AAAAIIIIII.


Also not there was my extra hour work, which I did but so nicely forgot to print off, because I'm stupid like that.


So, they gave me all the hours (6, which was quite nice of them) with of a promise to send all the work into them Monday. Yay, more work.


So now, I have to finish up this work this weekend, do all the printing I can while borrowing this printer, fix my lovely Gram's weird phone problem (She has no dial tone on any line, but still has her DSL working. The phone company is spying again), clean her house and buy a new purse, I broke mine on the way to the follow up.


I'm sad, and would wear all black in mourning, but my purse was black and I'd just rather not have the bittersweet memories.

Once again my blog is refusing to update. Maybe it's a sign from the Almighty above.


The earth quakes with tremors and the clouds in the sky above part. A brilliant ray of holy sunlight breaks through and illuminates the keyboard through the window, and an angelic chorus sings unseen in the background.


Then, the land is silent and a deep booming voice is heard, causing unslightly goosepimples to cover all the flesh of the land and eyes to tear with its radiating love.


God: "Jamie! Get your damniable hands off that keyboard and stop flooding the internet with your useless mental garbage! Damn me! You are such a bother!"



Pathetic Whelp Named Jamie: Erm? God? Erm..But...but...


All That Is Devine: "NOW WOMAN! Don't make me come down there and do things of biblical preportions to your worthless human ass!"


Unworthy: Fine, fine. Geesh...God's these days, you think they created the world or something. Stu...::grumble grumble::


Mister Man Himself: "What was that?"


Me: Nothing...I didn't say anything. Sorry God. Won't happen again. Honest.


God: "That's what I thought."

I really do want to start college classes again, but between all the classes I'm already taking (PDR classes, which count to college credits but are not college classes.) and all the work I'm doing (All Hail The Queen Of Slaves!), and my lack of funding. I highly doubt I'll get to go until June.

And, no, I can't get a grant or a loan, I've been trying for years. I can't, it's a curse. The people at the loan department just slink around in their dark corners with weird white theatrical make-up on, waiting for my fat manila envelope to arrive. Then, when it does, they reach deep into the aquarium swimming to the brim with irregularly folded slips of paper (paper they've been cutting up and writing on since the last time they recieved a letter from me.) and they pluck one out with a cackle, choosing which deliciously cruel and outlandish denial I'll be receving in my mailbox this time. They don't even bother to open up my letter and read my pathetic and snivvling cries for money anymore, they just see it's got my return address on it and play a rousing round of Screw-A-Jamie. What's worse? It's not even the fun kinda screwin'.


Yes, this is pouting. Attractive iddnit?


So, until then, I'm stuck going to a million and a half seminars and workshops. These include the follow up workshop I have today, which has a good 20 pages of homework due for it. Joy. Due at 3:30. Double J-O-Y. Have I done any?


C'mon now, you've been reading my blog for how long? You should know me by now.


......Of course I haven't.


So, here I am, hanging out in someone elses cold house while they're out of town because their printer works (No, I didn't do a B&E, I've got a key. Woo..that rhymed. Graduate me now! I'm a goshdiddlydarn genius!), drawing a layout of a room while wondering where the overview for my philosophy paper went to. Oh, and talking to myself. I swear, if I didn't find it all so darn amusing, I'd be worried.


3 hours and 49 minutes to go.

It's almost time for a new layout (alright, no it isn't, but my disgusting need to make layouts is taking over again. I'd ask for help to slay it, but to tell you the truth, I sort of like my weird neurosis. Ah, so there.) and I've got a really good idea for a quick, functional, and fun one. Unfortunatly, my idea might offend a few people.


Oh, the choices.


It's just all so very sad.

When I'm being a good girl, which is very rare if you're wondering, I write every morning. Sometimes it's a few pages on a novel, sometimes it's just a short story, sometimes it's babble, most of the time it's crap, but I do write, and that's all that matters.


The majority of the time I do short stories (it's better to not force yourself to write on a project unless you've made time just for that, otherwise just let whatever's going to go, go) based on a starter sentance.


Yesterday, I mentioned it to Fred (who's an amazing writer), and he gave me a sentance to work from. He wrote a great little peice off of it (post it to your blog, man) and I wrote crap.


But that's ok.


Digital Spam which should open by the end of next week, is a writing site that I've been wanting to start for over a year now. I long for a writing group, but just haven't found one locally that I click with. Digital Spam will be an online writing group, we'll have resources, support, activities and lots of writing. It should be fun.


Until then however, I'm stuck doing starter sentance stories by myself. Want to do it too? Here's your sentance for today:


I was sure, I remembered quite a bit later, that it had somehow moved since the last time I saw it.

There was a town. It was a while ago, and I'm sure it's still there, if you want to go find it. It might have died by now, turning into one more lost stretch of gloomy buildings that children swear are haunted. A dusty little hole-in-the-wall place in the Dead Zone of Oregon thats main attraction was the huge log and mud general store that sported a ten point rack of antlers from some long forgotten Elk over it's front door. The Dead Zone (as I named it) is a 200 mile stretch of amazing high desert landscape that runs from the Eastern corner of the state bordering Washington all the way down to California. To normal people this is 'Eastern Oregon', or 'Southern Oregon' depending on where your feet have taken you, but to me, it's a Dead Zone.


It's not dead in a depressed macabre teenager sort of way, but in a quiet, endless sort of way. It's brown, and green, and the wind can howl or do nothing at all. It's hot and dirty and cold and soothing. It stretches on forever and looks alot like a sunset would, if a sunset was land. It's like walking through an automatic door to a lush air-conditioned grocery store on a hundred degree day, passing through the Gorge into the Dead Zone. You go from endless trees spotted mountians to endless sagebrush living on painted rock that conjours up images of stagecoaches and indians in a few blinks. It's like magic, sometimes.


You can go for miles, from towns like that one, bordering on the edge of becoming ghosts, and not find anyone or anything but chewing cows and cattle fences. It took ages to get there, over potted roads that were obscured in either direction by the dust we churned up and the only thing to look at was the browning sagebrush. We traveled in a bus you know, a converted one, it amuses me as much as it did then now. The town was called Fossil, one of the most extraordinary ironies I've ever encountered in my life. It was one too, an aged fossil, sporting not much more then the store. There was a small school, abandoned thanks to the summer months, a car repair shop (Something very familiar in that country. Breakdowns in the Dead Zone can lead to very unhappy adventures.) and the fairgrounds.


That's why we were there.


Rodeos are a common summer occurance in the Dead Zone. Most of the bodies that inhabit it are Ranchers, or the tired low men who work for the railroad. In a world where you travel two hours in one direction to reach a town slightly bigger then your own to watch a movie, you have to have something for entertainment. I have millions of memories from my life and the things I've done, and the ones from that single hot summer in the Dead Zone are some of the sharpest. I spent lots of summers there, some of them in a house, some of them traveling, but there was just something about that summer that stands out. I think maybe, if I ponder at it, it was because of the people. After a long time, I've found that it's the people I remember the most, and there were so many people that summer....


The Dead Zone is very different then the Valley. The Valley is lush, green, wet, busy. Cities and people and noise somehow manage to blend perfectly with the forest and mountains and water. The Dead Zone is the other end of that pole, it's like going backwards. Not in society or how civilized the people who live there are, but in thoughts. Sometimes tt's hard, and dirty, and rough. It's spending hours herding cattle or riding rails, spending days away from your family and traviling hours just to get anywhere. It's 120 degree days and not being able to move. Sometimes it's like music though, in hills and the wind. You just slow down, out there, at least that's how it is for me.


We sold jewelry at fairs, rodeos, festivals. We got it from a dealer in Portland who sells to nation wide 'fine department stores'. His name was Veranazan, and although I never met him, I did love his warehouse. The Rodeo, I don't even remember the name of it, had clogged the little town with more traffic then it had probably seen in decades. It was a trip, in these little towns, watching them pop under the hot sun with hot people waiting for the dust to fly. It was a freedom other kids my age didn't have, these little towns, being able to go anywhere and do anything and not have anyone worry about where I was or who I was with. The fact that there was, in reality, noplace to go didn't stop me from making a place to go.


It was amazing, the change that took over during the infest of people. Booths lined (all four!) of the towns streets, banners waving, people shouting. The fairground would be jumping with Cowboys and Trainers, with Ranchers stowing their animals for the shows, it's like a sea of trailers and dirty pickups.


You'd make the rounds first, check out the other sellers, the layout of the town, who's going to be where and who you know. It's like a family, this crowd that travels from little place to little place, you find Buddies, you have to, because it's lonely life. It's what you look forward to the most, those few days after you've set up and done your booth duity when you can go act your age with other kids who are doing the same thing you are and understand. They made the whole trip to that overlooked little town, those Buddies.


You stay out late with them, drink bad coffee just to drink coffee, purchace bad trinkets. You run seller duity at each others booths, so you can have the night off together. You play cops and robbers in the schoolyard, and buy junkfood with the gift certificate someone won in the pie eating contest. You root on the cowboys, flinch when they fall, and stalk the one that has the name of your brother for an autograph. You play, and you have to play hard, because in a few days you'll have to exchange addresses with your new (or newly refound) Buddies and pack it up because it's time to move on. You cling to a hope that somehow you'll track of them, and knowing like most seller-formed friendships, you most likely won't. You'll travel to the next Rodeo, watch the next magical transformation of a sleepy desert town, find the next buddy to play with and maybe this time insted of watching Cowboys you'll swim, or borrow a bike. But, like the others, you'll lose track, and with time all those friendships will color with a form of nolstalgia.

Every now and then, when the sun is just right in the sky and makes the shadows of the trees in my yard look like desolate tumbleweeds, I wonder what ever happened to the one girl who was with when, or the one guy I did that with that one time, and if they ever forgot that little town called Fossil and the Rodeo that went there once.

It was a lovely day at the beach. Very little cloud cover and nice and sunny. It was a little windy, but that's a given on the beach any time of the year, especally in February.


I should go more often.

I'm playing hooky. I'm going to the beach. Right this second.


Yay!

Saetan SaDiablo: 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35, 35 more daaaaaaaays!

Rhea Rhyolin: Until?

Rhea Rhyolin: ::grin::

Saetan SaDiablo: 29th of March

Saetan SaDiablo: duh

Rhea Rhyolin: ::Stares at the sky:: And that is?

Saetan SaDiablo: My christening.

Rhea Rhyolin: ::laugh::

Rhea Rhyolin: And all the water turned to oil and burrrrrned

Saetan SaDiablo: ::laughs::

Rhea Rhyolin: What do you want for your birthday anyhow?

Saetan SaDiablo: Nothing you can afford.

Saetan SaDiablo: Nothing Rich can afford either.

Saetan SaDiablo: Hell, his mom's got over 30K in the bank, nothing she can afford.

Saetan SaDiablo: ::wants a house::

Rhea Rhyolin: Aw..you'll get a house someday

Rhea Rhyolin: I'll buy you one when I'm rich

Saetan SaDiablo: yay

Rhea Rhyolin: Until then you'll have to be happy with Macaroni birthday cards and cheap candy

Saetan SaDiablo: candy works then



There you have it, for those of you who know him, Fred only wants cheap candy for his birthday, so don't go getting him anything else. Because, I have a plan.


(There is an evil type laugh that should be inserted right here.)

Eep. I'm sorry! I guess I should have clarified what exactly I wanted people to test. (Thanks Rebecca)


IF is Interactive Fiction, a text based game. (Think Zork) The game is controlled with simple commands, like directions or actions ('north' to move north, or 'get book' to get the book) it's not hard to get the hang of at all, it just requires reading. (Some people aren't real big on reading in games. ::grin:: )


Most IF's are completely puzzle based, and totally plot driven. It's rare you ever find an IF that the only way to win is kill everything in the game off. So if you're not real big on puzzles, then you probably wouldn't be really big on the game. (Although I would like input from people who like all types of games.) If you're wondering, the type of puzzles mine contains are simple situation solving puzzles. (I.E.: How to fix the radio so you can hear the weather without waking everyone else in the room up.)


If you're interested, I'm going to be sending the game out along with some other information probably by tomorrow evening.

I'm a druggie, and it's all Michael's fault.

Have an option for a third job, going to go talk to someone about it tonight. I don't want to get into details, details = jinx. Cross your fingers for me, I need the money.



Now, off to eat my Tofu.

:)

Happy Birthday to Laura (My grammie) who dosen't read this blog, but needs a Happy Birthday just the same.


Still in need of beta testers. Come on guys, I don't ask for much.

I'm looking for beta testers that are external from the IF community for testing a current Interactive Fiction project (using Adrift. Yes, it's a game.). This project is slotted for submission in a competition that has a deadline of the 28th of this month. That means I need testers right this second that:



o Has the time to test anywhere from two to six (it most likely won't go over three) versions of the same game a handful of times and not hate me afterward.


o Can give me thorough and constructive feedback from the first to the last test.


o Can submit the test reports back to me ASAP so I can implement any changes.



I'm looking for all the testers I can get, however for the first version of the game I only need two more. (Anyone else who wants to test will get the second version, unless you seriously want the first version.) I'll be accepting people for testing for the next week. If you're interested, and I would greatly appriciate it, drop me a note and I'll get the information you'll need back to you.


Muah.

Hrm. Blogger isn't working right (Hopefully not a foreshadowing of things to come ::grin:: ) and has refused to publish or post anything I've written in the last four days, in fact it's vanished completely.


It might have just been trash, but I was attached to that trash.

Oh yeah, happy mushy folded cardboard giving corporate backed non-denominational holiday.


Have a good one, ok?

Kins (Ally, one of my very very very best friends, the one who I flew to the hot sticky town of Memphis for.) finally got a computer after almost three years yesterday and a phone line at home. Which means she can finally be online to gab, and we don't have to play phone tag (although, the phone is fun, and we talk for hours and hours...) and we don't have to go sometimes weeks on end without talking goss...er...talking.


::does the super happy dance::


I'm happy. Damn I missed her.

Last night's book was T.J. MacGregor's Out Of Sight. Starting off with two characters, Logan and Tyler, as their sitting in a room located on an abandoned air base that contains a device ment to make things invisible (what they call shrouding) as test subjects for the goverment. When the first test with human subjects goes bad, Logan flees, leaving Tyler behind.


So far so good.


The book bumps you ahead three years, where we meet the Townsends, going on a camping trip in the Everglades, while there, they wander into a test site the scientists have made to test the shrouding and it's effects. Then we bump back to Logan, Logan is still invisible and has no firm proof Tyler (Who she believes never escaped) is still alive. So, she decides to go back to the air base and find solid (no pun intended) evidence that Tyler is alive, and where he is. In the process, she screws some stuff up, and inadvertently causes it so the Townsends end up invisable too (along with a Dog named Dog, who's been a target of shrouding experiments for quite a while).


Oops.


So, the plot moves along, and now everyone is being chased around by the goverment. Which always happens (never to me, thank goodness). I'm not going to go into any more detail there, because I'd hate to ruin anyones book for them. If you want my personal opinion (if you don't, you should seriously take a second look at the site your on, but I know you secretly do) I've got to say that all it all it was a fun book. Cute plot, great characters, good writing. My only gripes are it was too short, the author deffinatly could have put more content into the book, and it cut off without letting us know what happened to certain characters (No, I won't tell you) which upset me because I wanted to know. (and pout and two and three and four) However, the lovely author makes up for that by not killing off Dog. Authors who kill animal characters lose all their points.


Remember that.


All in all, this one gathers three Ducky Wuckys.



Next book is Bentley Little - The Return of which I have only read the first chapter but already have already found it quite interesting. I think it was the carcass that did it. I've never read anything by this author, so it'll be interesting to see if it's any good.


Yay. I love books.

I've changed it again. "Student Enrollment Consultation". Unfortunatly big, flashy, impressive, and important names I make up for these things because I have nothing better to do don't stop people from standing you up during one.


Rude. Rude I tell you.


If you were wondering (and I know you were salavating with excitment over it) the workshop was incredablly boring and left me not only feeling very wearied it left it's mark so the dull throbbing could linger on and on in the form of a four inch stack of homework.


And a resounding 'yippy skippy' was wailed by all.

I've decided to change 'Student Interview' to 'Student Consultation' because it sounds more professional. I know you marvel at my wonderful talent for making things sound more important then they really are. Honestly, sometimes it astounds me too.

I read disgustingly fast (so I've been told) my current personal record is ten 300+ page books in a 16 hour period. (Yes, I really did it, and yes, I remember what I read.) Lately I haven't been able to read as much as I like to, so I got myself some books (a few from the library in my garage, remind me to take pictures of it to post in here...one I bought myself, because I deserved a book) and I've decided to try and read a book (or at least half) every evening to give myself some wind down time. My life is pretty hectic, I go home, grab a few hours sleep and go straight back to work or someplace else when I wake up, all this rushings really starting to frazzle me. So, reading is my current solution (along with writing, and picking out dollhouse paint for the dollhouses living room which is currently a weird yellow color. I was so excited, Fred Myers sells these little pouches of sample paint that's perfect for one room in a dollhouse and they're a million times cheaper then buying a quart of paint or dollhouse paint from a minatures store. I'm a geek, you should know this by now. I didn't buy any though, I'm broke)


Last night I read Four Blind Mice by James Patterson. I started reading James Pattersons books just before 'Kiss The Girls' made it as a movie. He's a good writer and his books are alot of fun, plus his main character (Detective Alex Cross) isn't inflicted with a Mary Sue complex like some mystery/suspense writer characters are. That wins points. This one wasn't as good as some I've read, but it wasn't bad either. I'll give it two and a half ducky wuckys out of five. (I'm sure nobody cares, but here it is anyway)


It's a pretty good read, but unless your a diehard fan (or like hardbacks) I'd wait for the paperback. Or, you can just borrow mine.

I'm sorry James :( ::hugs:: I love you hon! If you need anything let me know. (Of course you won't though, cause Kel'll take good care of you ;) )

Today my AM class is going to be making 'mailboxes' for their Valentines Party on Friday (yes, you're invited, you have to bring a snack though. Make sure it's store bought and pre-packaged, because we all know you want to slip us something in our cupcakes.), I enjoyed doing that in school, it was always alot of fun. I can remember being more happy about making (more happy...aaai!) the mailboxes then actually opening the Valentines. Especally since nobody was ever creative with their Valentines. It was very sad...I did however develop a sick love for conversation hearts in Grade School, so I guess it wasn't all that sad. Well...maybe it was.

After class I have to run back here and finish the curriculum for the month, because I'm lazy (well, more overworked then lazy) and haven't finished it yet. I'm going to be so happy when we get enough students to hire aides and I can start doing the work of one person insted of five. Then I have to run back to school for a student interview (cross those cyber-piggies ok? We need another student something awful.) which hopefully goes well. It's someone looking to enroll their child in a class that's currently not open, so we'll probably get to open another class. Yehaw.

I have to go straight from there to a (coughboringcough) workshop which will include four hours of lecture and two plus hours of 'homework'. They're getting really sick about this 'homework' stuff. There was one session of workshops I was going to do, that ended up being 7 credit hours total, but had you doing about 20 hours of homework along with six classes. I understand they want people to work for their hours, but geesh, some of the stuff they had the poor people doing was insane. (The class was on developing themes in early childhood education, and the focus theme was farm theme, and they had to develop stuff like a complete boardgame, write a 20 page book and illustrate it, blah. It was just bogus, no teacher has the time to create things like books and games from scratch for each unit, that's what people write resource books for.)


I'm all for developing your curriculum just for your class, it's what I do for LKP, but I don't come up with every single thing off the top of my head. I do, however, make most of the worksheets and things because I can rarely find anything that fits to exactly what we're doing. I don't write books or create complete board games from scratch. There is just no way...

I'm so sick of this sick thing. I'd banish food all together but my body seems to think it can't survive without all the oh-so-tasty heinous substances.

Valentine's day is coming, and although I do have the LKP parties to look forward to (Oh lord), I'm pretty much avoiding the whole thing. Not because I don't think it's a cute holiday, but because I am oddly bummed about not having anybody to buy stupid sappy pink and white crap for.


Someone should just slap me now.

Fred made me a page on his domain to post writings. (After a long conversation with myself, I've come to the conclusion he did this so I'd be guilted into finishing something, knowing that deep down I can't display anything for public consumption without it being somewhat completed first. I had to admit it's quite brilliant. Which, unfortunatly, forced me to put up my Louieville Slugger.) I was terribly flattered that he thought my writing was good enough to host on his site, especally since I find myself lucky when I remember how to spell schedule correctly. I threw up a layout that I made using a picture of a lovely orange armchair that was left alone in the middle of someones grassy feild. (I'm 100% certain the color of that armchair was the reason it was abandoned, but maybe it smelled like cat urine, I just took the picture, I wasn't crazy enough to take the chair itself. I've never understood the draw of taking things people leave abanoned, and I hope I never do.) I named the site "The Abandoned Armchair" for lack of anything better (plus, it fit...who am I to argue with my strung out crack-head of a muse?) and now I just have to put content up.


Here we find ourselves dangling over the side of a bridge. I haven't written since NaNoWriMo, in fact, I never finished NaNoWriMo. I'm a fraud. A lazy fraud. A big lazy fraud. I should be ashamed (shame on me) and I really need to finish some of the things I've started because they're not all trash. Maybe not the great American novel, but not trash. I hope.


I drag myself out of bed at 5 am every morning so I can have a few minutes to myself in which I can write. I get about an hour a day to myself (that's not counting sleep time, because technicly I'm not awake with myself, I'm being rude and sleeping) so I tried to fit some time in where I can write. The problem is, is I don't. In fact, most of the time for the last couple weeks, I've done something terrible.


I've slept.


Yeah, I admit it. I'm one of those people who reset their alarm to 30 minutes later then they really want after it's gone off so they can have a few more minutes of sleep.


It's naughty, but I love it. I feel rotton though because, even though I need the sleep, I also need to spend some time doing something for myself. So, tomorrow I'm actually going to make myself get up and write something. Honest.


In other interesting news, Jackie (our used-to-be sister childcare provider, now just beloved foul-mouthed friend) has a client who's in the Army Reserves who was shipped off without any prior notice or information today. I don't know where he's going or why (although my smart side has it's little suspisions. ) I thought it would be fun to share that little bit of fluff.


While I'm in the mood for sharing, I was asked again today if I would run a children's class for the H.O.M.E Center. I said I would, but only because I'll be compensated for my time. There is just no way I can put more hours a month into another project for other people and not get reembersed for my time. So, I'm now (once again) in charge of the 5 and under (I'm assuming that's where the cut off will be) class on the weekends. They gave me total control (which, as you should all know, is a very unwise thing to do) and so now I've got to think of some kind of somewhere for this class to go.


Yay..more work.


I'm kind of leary about it, though. I don't want to have people think I'm stepping on toes or anything, especially since the other older children's class just got kicked out of the room they were in because of LKP. (Erm...oops..lol) See, until the building LKP is leasing is finished, we're leasing the entire East wing of the upstairs from the H.O.M.E Center. H.O.M.E is sort of like a community center and some other things all rolled into one. They rent out all of their rooms for classes and everything, so there is always someone using or needing a room. The part of the building we're in (which is almost self contained...all it's missing is a private entrance.) used to be for another program that was run by Mary. Mary used to teach Preschool, so she (so sweetly) gave us her room to use for our school, and moved into a room the other side of the buidling. Well that room was used for H.O.M.E's children's classes (confused yet?) so they were stuck without a room. So, LKP said we'd share our room with them, since they'd only use it for an hour on Sundays (and once the week is over, we normally don't go back up there anyway, except to clean or drop stuff off or change walls or...ok, we're there all the time, but we don't teach on the weekends) and they moved their stuff in (They have a TV and some movie racks that are just covered and off limits during school and they put some stuff in our storage closet).


Well, everything was good until we opened, then problems started. Since we signed a contract saying we are liabel for any damage done because of our business and that we're responsible for everything we bring in, we had to set some ground rules. Have you ever been inside a preschool? It's a mixture of Toys 'R' Us, Michael's Craft Store and any learning product store you can find. There is stuff everywhere, all over the walls, all over the centers, and all over shelves in our storage room. All this stuff is a huge temptation, so we had to start putting everything from our centers and shelves and put them away in the storage room, and lock the room. Well, the kids in the children's classes were used to being able to get into any closet or room they want or take whatever they want out. There was no way we can let them do that, because it would just be a disaster, so we opened the closet in the morning and closed it when they got stuff out.


To make a long story short, it made alot of people mad. They thought they should be able to get into whatever they wanted. The kids weren't supervised, so every time I went up there after class there was stuff everywhere, and things moved, furniture drawn on, wall stuff drawn on, walls drawn on...clogged toilets...broken stuff...missing stuff...


::sigh::


Plus, the whole putting away of every center (we have 16, and are adding two more) ment that I tacked 10 hours of work onto my week just in putting center stuff back out in the centers. It's crappy, and it makes for a hard job.


Well, the teachers of the children's class got mad, complained to Jay, so Jay moved them into Joe's room. (Joe is a massage therapist who has a room directly down the balcony from us.) I have to be honest and say I'm glad they moved because it means I can keep the centers out and won't have to worry about damage not done by us (yay!) but I feel bad because people are upset (they said we said they couldn't touch our stuff, we didn't, we said we didn't want the kids in the closet and left unsupervised with our stuff) and poor Joe has to share his room.


Guilt...


But, we pay rent for our space, and we have to have a certain look and process. There is no way our business can be taken seriously if our space is shared with a bunch of other people and dosen't look dedicated to the class. We have enough problems trying to make it clear we're not affiliated with the Center other then leasing the space. (There is nothing wrong with the Center, LKP just isn't affiliaed with it. Dosen't mean the staff can't be.) Oh well.


Now I'm off to make feild trip release forms for Friday, notices about our Valentine's Day party next Friday and finish the website.


Whee.

TPC is down again, our server is reinstalling software and switching machines and whatnot. It should be back up by the end of the day, in the mean time I'll post what I was going to post there here.


Persa (who has a new website address I can't remember offhand. I'm so awful :( ) sent the lovely bracelets she made for during the Blogathon out to people. (I owe her like boxers and stuff, I swear I'll send them as soon as I can afford to) I love mine, it's very kewl, it's all twisted and has purpley-green beads. I just wanted to say thanks Pers, and don't be such a stranger ok? We miss you :(