Much the Same

Spring semester: day eight

Not much has changed since my last post on Tuesday, really.

Last night I taught my 210 class -- gave one of the better lectures of my teaching career, I think. Every semester I tend to have five or six lectures that I look back upon and think "wow, I really am good at this 'being a professor' thing." Last night's was pretty good. The one I have my 102 students this morning, for example, was simply average, if not slightly above average. But last night's 210 class was good.

My 210 class is pretty simple. They have six overall assignments and an oral presentation spread out over sixteen weeks. There are eight of them. The class is not rocket science. The assignments are simple and direct, and most of them can be done within an hour or two, save for the big Proposal/Grant Request at the end. I mean, that's the class. That's all the class is. It's the easiest writing class I've ever taught. Every class meeting is, really, "Hand in your last assignment. Now, here's your next assignment. Here's what you need to do for it. Let's spend half an hour looking over the sections in the book that may help you with it. Here are some examples for formatting and content. It's due next week. Dismissed." Now, obviously, that's not all there is to it over the course of the entire semester -- we do have a few peer-review days and stuff like that scattered around, but there are no quizzes. There are no tests. There are no outside assignments or homework aside from the actual assignments themselves. All the points come from the assignments themselves, save for 50 points set aside for attendance/participation. The readings are light and always helpful. It's the simplest setup possible for a business/professional writing class, and runs almost on autopilot with me as its simple guide. The students in it seem to be relatively quiet this semester, but ask questions when necessary, and at least they seem to have a sense of humor if I make a joke -- I'm not lecturing to a set of brick walls, or anything like that. If I taught three sections of 210 every semester, I'd never have any major work or stresses to do for my classes.

My 102 this morning took most of the class time, as I went over two chapters in the grammar textbook (mostly focusing on argumentation and thesis statements) and made sure all of them understood how to format and structure papers for the purposes of that class. On Tuesday we dive into their first paper assignment, which means I'll be creating a handout or three for them on how to do it to my own specifications for the course, and with my suggestions to make it as easy as possible. I also should make up their first take-home quiz sometime soon just so they can start getting some points on the proverbial board. Most of those students seem enthused or at least present mentally for my class, though for the ones I had last semester, a lot of the first two weeks is rehashing of 101 stuff that probably bores them more than anything else. The class changes drastically as the semester rolls forward, however. 102 is structured way differently overall than 101.

I still don't know any new info about the payroll thing, or what the status of my paycheck even is. What I do know is that I don't have a pay stub available online for this week's payday (read: tomorrow), which tells me that more than likely even this special "advance" check hasn't been processed yet. I haven't emailed the department administrator about it yet, because she said she'd keep me updated and I didn't want to bug her, but if I don't hear anything about it tomorrow morning, I will obviously send out a query by tomorrow afternoon before the office closes to see what is going on. No, I won't be back on campus until Tuesday anyhow, but I'd at least like to know what to expect when I get there -- meaning, what I'll have to do to get paid, basically. Especially since my electric bill arrived in the mail last night. I have about $230 left in my bank account after paying my rent and my last credit card bill for the month -- the electric bill is $212. It's not due until the 17th (so I have some time, yes), but obviously I don't want to run it down to the wire if I can avoid it, especially since, y'know, I'll have other bills to pay long before then as well if I don't want to fall behind on things, and it's not like my other expenses (gas, food, etc) just stop in the interim, either. I'm not incredibly nervous about things, of course, but due dates and pay dates are a little too close for comfort in some cases.

I have a fair amount to do this weekend; I have some diagnostics to grade, lesson planning to take care of for my classes, and of course, Sunday is the Super Bowl.

I don't really care about the Super Bowl this year, to be honest with you. I mean, yeah, I'll watch it, but usually I "do it up," even if I'm alone, with "football food" and make a day of it. This time around I really don't have a whole lot of extra food in the house to cook and/or otherwise party with, even by myself. I told Daisy that I will probably (not completely sure, but probably) order pizza tomorrow with my other card that isn't nearing max-out status, simply because it's supposed to start snowing tonight and continue all the way through Saturday, and pizza will feed me for the better part of a week much more cheaply than going grocery shopping will. I tend to spend about $40 on a pizza order, and for that I can get 3-4 large pizzas and usually one or two sides, which will last me a long time. $40 at the grocery store gets me about three or four meals' worth of food, roughly, if I actually get what I want to eat instead of ramen and bread/peanut butter. I will eventually have to go grocery shopping again, of course, probably next week -- but before I do so, I really want to find out what's going on with my paycheck and when I can actually plan to have it in my bank account one way or another. Almost everything is on hold until I can figure that out, obviously. I don't really have any other options.

My back has been bothering me for the past two days now. I don't think it's stress or allergies or anything like that, I'm just tired and it aches. I am getting old, after all. It's not exactly unusual to have back pain once in a while. I may have slept on it wrong, I may not be able to relax completely when I do sleep, even, and it may even be me getting back into the cycle of teaching, even if that cycle is irregular. I haven't taken any medicines for it because nothing really seems to help back pain in the way that it should, and I've already been taking allergy meds since my allergies have been terrible over the course of the past several days. This morning, with my back aching pretty strongly and my allergies going completely nuts, worse than most other days, I was pretty miserable until I could get those meds to fully kick in.

The drain in my basement under the washer is beginning to back up again, slightly. Not a lot, not overflowing like it used to (as it did around this time last year), but I noticed tonight when I ran a load of laundry that afterwards, the grate was wet -- which means it backed up at least to that point. I ran a second load without any issues, but that was also a much smaller load (with less water), as I was washing a blanket the cats yacked on, a pullover sweater, and one of my bathrobes, along with a shirt or two. I'll keep an eye on it whenever I do anything water-intensive for the foreseeable future, such as showering and running the dishwasher. The dishwasher uses so little water that it's never contributed to backup, but still. Add that as one more thing to the list of annoyances, grievances, and issues I've had to deal with this week. I'm really glad my week is over, as if anything else went wrong or otherwise haywire, I might snap and just spend the next five days in bed.

Now that I've said that...

Ahem. Anyway. I mentioned briefly above that they're predicting some snow this weekend. Nothing big, nothing to write home about, so to speak, but something like an inch of ice/sleet and snow accumulation between now and Saturday morning. I put the car in the garage when I got back home this morning because of this, and because I don't want to have to get up on Tuesday morning before class and scrape an inch of ice off it. I needed to stick the car in there anyway, because it makes it easier (with the light in the back of the garage) to check the oil and coolant levels, and add more if necessary. As I've written here before, the "low coolant" light in my dashboard is almost always on, as it has a wonky sensor, so I never know really if it needs any more. I check it every few weeks, but as I didn't drive the car more than a few miles at a time over the entire winter break, I never checked it then. Same goes for the oil. I haven't done my "preventative maintenance," as I call it, since around Thanksgiving, so this weekend I'll check it and do what I need to do from the warmth of my garage. This is especially important now that I'm driving the car back and forth, a lot, every week again. With everything else apparently going screwy, the last thing I need is for my beloved Monte Carlo to kick the bucket right now as well.

In the meantime, Daisy is slowly finishing the big parts of wedding planning. She had a "tea party" tonight with most of her bridal party to discuss planning, colors, bouquets, etc, though it ended up stressing her out more than anything else. All of that bridal stuff she's planning herself and letting the family and bridal party sort it out. She eventually will have to delegate tasks and the like, but tonight (I suppose) was the first "formal-ish" meeting where most of them were there and they were able to have a round-table discussion of things. On the plus side, however, she has pretty much settled on a caterer for the food -- Fazoli's, of all people. Yes, the Italian fast-food place. They do catering, and she found out that their pasta, butter-free breadsticks, and salad are all vegan. To feed approximately 150 people (total, anyway) they can do it within our budget. Well within our budget, actually. She still has to do a little research and actually put in the order and the like, but she ran the idea by me first and asked what I thought.

"Perfect," I said. "and cheap. Go for it. Do it."

I actually really like Fazoli's. I used to eat there all the time when I lived in Missouri, though admittedly I never ate anything there that wasn't stuffed with meat and cheese. Pasta, breadsticks, and salad is all perfectly fine with me. It's not exotic, it's something that even the finicky eaters will like, and it's inexpensive. We originally wanted to do pasta ourselves -- meaning, make enough pasta/sauce/salad for the entire wedding by ourselves -- before we realized that would be basically a week of cooking before the wedding that we simply don't have time or patience for. Apparently we have Mama to thank for the Fazoli's idea, as she was the one who suggested it to Daisy. So, if we end up doing that (and it looks like we probably will), I'll be perfectly happy with it.

There's still a lot of stuff up in the air about the wedding, of course -- some of it quite literally up in the air. My brother, who is my best man, mentioned to me yesterday that he's probably going to fly out instead of drive, as it's a relatively fast flight and much cheaper. He also mentioned that his wife and three children would probably not come, as five people on a cross-country trip is quite obviously much more expensive than just one. I told him that it was up to him what he wanted to do, of course, and while I would love to be able to see his wife and kids at the wedding, I totally understood if logistically and monetarily that wasn't at all possible. My parents are still planning to drive -- which, no, he didn't understand either. I don't want to make anyone spend any more money than necessary just to see me and Daisy get married. For some people, especially her side of the family who are coming in from places like Maine and Nova Scotia, that can't really be avoided, but for my side I'm telling everyone to get here as cheaply and easily as possible, since I already feel guilty that my brother has to fly out and that my friend April, who is in my groom's party as well, is flying from Portland. Aside from them and my parents, almost everyone else is in or around the area, or within a day's drive or so -- hell, the vast majority of my own wedding guests are coming from Wichita, with only about five possible out-of-towners who would be coming back to the area for the event. We still have to set up the "hotel block" as well, and schedule the days/nights guests will be there in the hotel -- primarily, of course, our bride/groom parties and my parents, but there will obviously have to be rooms for visiting guests in the "block" as well. She's doing the research for that this weekend/early next week so that we can start locking things down and approximating costs. Apparently the night before the wedding, her parents insist we (the two of us) stay at the house, and I'm fine with that. Our wedding night will be in the hotel for obvious reasons. I'm guessing her sisters and the kids will stay at the house that night as well, though I don't know. Honestly I couldn't tell you what's going to happen until we get much, much closer to the actual wedding day, and details become clearer. As I'm a pretty go-with-the-flow guy, I'm open to whatever's easiest, cheapest, and most do-able.

Aside from the minimal classwork I have to do this weekend, I plan to rest and sleep a lot, especially if it's cold and snowing. It just makes me tired. That weather moving in is also probably why my allergies have gone nuts over the course of the past 24 hours or so. The stress from having to deal with constant issues/setbacks/problems this week, one after another, has been taking its toll on me as well. I've not been eating much just because I haven't been hungry. All I've had to eat for the past 36 hours or so has been two granola bars, a handful of almonds, two Hot Pockets (spinach artichoke chicken, yum) and some Pringles. With coffee as well, of course. I just haven't been hungry for anything else. I've been more tired than anything. I came home this morning and talked to Rae for a little while on Facebook before I went downstairs and just slept for about six or seven hours. I'm about to go back to bed again, actually, just because I do, apparently, need it.

Shit Day

Spring semester: day seven

I am fully aware that my semester will seem to go more quickly than most others' semesters, as I do have a pretty decent schedule (with the exception of Tuesday, which is just a long, mostly-boring slog bookended at both ends of the day by somewhat frantic classes). Yesterday, of course, was Tuesday. Yesterday was not a good day.

Let me explain.

I mentioned in my last post here that I thought the battery may be going on the Monte Carlo, and that Daisy suggested that I get it checked if it keeps acting up. Actually, the car was the only thing yesterday that didn't give me problems. Even in the cold yesterday and last night, she fired up just fine, and didn't drive stiffly or strangely as she does sometimes when it's really cold -- if she's sat for a few days in frigid temperatures, she'll creak a bit and the steering will be a little stiff for the first mile or so until she warms up. I didn't have those problems yesterday, ironically. Perhaps the universe decided to cut me a bit of a break on that for the time being. No, it was everything else (well, after the middle of the day) that went screwy.

Well, more bizarre than bad. There was bad too.

So I got to West campus yesterday morning and taught my 102 class. I had another addition to it -- another student of mine from last semester, and the more the merrier, I say -- and I taught my lessons, had them start their journals, collected sheets and leftover diagnostics from the students who needed to do them, etc. That was fine. My 102 class will more than likely be pretty mellow and partially reserved, as most of them have had me before. I talked to the administrators of the West side for a bit after class was over before I got in the car and drove over to main campus, where I didn't even bother trying to find a spot in the main lot (even though, as I drove by, I saw some open ones) and went directly up to the Metroplex to get the shuttle down. I'll only be able to park on main campus probably three times this semester -- once on my students' "library day" in about two weeks, and the other times during finals week when I'll have to be there at two different times to administer/grade exams, since my 011 class is a night class. Night classes on the main campus have different exam times than day classes there. Unless there's some sort of special day that I'll have to be there for something, I don't expect to ever get a parking spot anymore if I would arrive after 8AM.

While making copies yesterday morning, I asked one of the administrators about the healthcare plan that I now apparently qualify for through the university. Even lecturers like myself, if they teach nine hours per semester for two semesters, qualify for health insurance. This was mentioned to me briefly last semester, and I made a note of it then to bring up later when everyone actually was able to settle into a bit of a groove once the semester started. As I've mentioned here before, Daisy has been bugging me to sign up for healthcare/Obamacare/something, and until I find out what the university's plan is and what it covers, I'm not going to sign up for some "liability only" plan through somewhere else on the website if I could have much better coverage via my job.

"Well...yes, you qualify now," she said, "but I don't think you're listed as an academic lecturer."

"...what else would I be?" I asked.

Apparently there are two scales of lecturers -- there are the normal lecturers, and then the academic lecturers. What's the difference? Hell if I know. It may be one of those honorary titles that mean nothing except for recordkeeping purposes. I should, as I found out, be listed as an academic lecturer, but apparently I was not. Why not? Again, I don't know.

"I'll have to check," she said. "Because you should qualify for it and can start it now. But I'm not sure you're in the system for it."

That's a bad sign. 

"Well, let me know," I said. "Right now I'm more concerned about getting paid and paying off my bills I've had to let linger over the break anyway."

"Oh, you know you're not getting paid this Friday, right?" she asked.

"...I don't know why I wouldn't," I said, going into minor-panic mode. "I should be paid at the same time as everyone else, correct? And the first payday is the 31st."

She told me this herself long before last semester ended; that's how I knew, and made a note of it then.

She went into her office and checked. "Well, I guess you will, then," she added, "except..."

"...except what?"

"I don't think you were put into the payroll system as an academic lecturer at all; there are different forms that need to be filled out; lecturers get one form and academic lecturers get put down as another. You were put down as a lecturer last semester but this semester..."

I don't understand all of the details. I won't pretend to understand all of the details. When I'm listed as an instructor of record for classes, it's those lists that get sent to payroll for processing. They're processed, they look at my status (as well as the status of everyone else) and paychecks are distributed based on the number of hours taught and that status, as long as they have all of the information they need. But, apparently, some of that info -- regardless of whether any of it changes or gets upgraded/downgraded/etc -- has to be entered manually every semester along with those processes. At least that's the gist of it that I get. For some reason mine was changed or overlooked for the spring -- namely, what my status is as an instructor. If they don't have that, I can be listed as the instructor of record for as many classes as I want, and they'll still not issue me a paycheck because they're missing a proverbial "piece of the puzzle" in their systems. Even worse, that's apparently not something that gets a "bounce back" to the department automatically so that they can fix it -- if I'd not said anything about healthcare, which led to her taking a look at my information, Friday would have come and gone without me getting paid and I would have had no clue whatsoever why -- and if that had happened I would've been really angry.

What it boiled down to was that this semester I had that status form missing, apparently -- that was the other administrator's job and it was a simple "overlooked" item. Now, mind you, I don't know why my status changed, why it has to be updated manually every semester when payroll has had my info in their systems since 2010, not only when I was a GTA, but for the entirety of last semester as an adjunct as well, and really when nothing is any different. It is very similar to the "flag" I had on payroll last semester when it came to not having my background check form completed and approved by them, which meant I wouldn't be paid then until it was put in. I understood that, at least.

"I'm really sorry," the administrator said, and I could tell she meant it. Again, she wouldn't have known anything was wrong had I not said something. "We've fixed it now; we'll have to get you an advance check and then they'll sort it out for all the checks after that."

...just like they had to do last semester.

"Okay, so what's the game plan here?" I asked. "What do I have to do?"

"You don't have to do anything; I've run the paperwork downstairs and sent it off to payroll requesting the advance. It'll be a paper check that you'll have to pick up, but I don't know if they'll have it done by Friday," she said.

"Well, that's fine anyway, as I won't be back down here until a week from today anyhow." I'm only on the main campus on Tuesday afternoons, between my two classes. "I wouldn't be here to pick it up until at least then, so if it takes longer to process it then so be it. It's not like there's anything I can do about it anyway, right?"

This, of course, is not great news on any front. It means, basically, that I'm in the same situation I was in the fall, at the beginning of last semester. My first paycheck is delayed. If everything goes through like it's supposed to with this sort of thing, I will have to go over to the payroll office next Tuesday, pick up a paper check that I can't do anything with until I mail it home to my parents to get them to deposit it into my account, and at the very least I won't have any access to that money to pay my bills with for an extra week, if not ten or eleven days, depending on how long the mail takes to get back home. Though I don't think I'll have any new bills due before then, I also have $200 or so to my name until that check is in my bank account -- which essentially freezes my assets for almost an extra two weeks that I was not expecting to have to wade through this payroll bullshit that isn't my fault yet again.

When I pick up the check, or when I get the confirmation from the administrator and payroll later this week (possibly, hopefully, today), I really want to ask if there's any way they can not give me a printed check and just direct deposit it like they do with all of my other paychecks. I don't care if I have to fill out extra forms for a one-time direct deposit, I don't care if it takes an extra day or two of processing or what-have-you -- it's a hell of a lot faster to do that than to get a paper check, bring it home, mail it to my parents, wait until it gets there, and then have them take it to the bank. An extra day or two of processing is nothing compared to what could be a week or more of waiting and hand-wringing because I can't pay any new bills that come in until said check is deposited into, and clears, my account.

The reason an "advance" check like this (even though it's not really an advance) cannot be automatically direct-deposited is because the payroll is set two weeks in advance before the funds are disbursed to the university's working population. I mentioned this last fall. Once those amounts are set and they pass a given date, everything in their systems are set up for those disbursements and those ones only. Anything after that date is put onto the next pay cycle, and thus getting something late like this (three days before the pay date) constitutes an "advance" on that next cycle. Make sense? If there's no forms or anything like that which I can do for a one-time direct deposit with the university, I'll have to call and/or do some research with my bank to see if they have electronic deposits available; like, if I can give them all the numbers on the check or what-have-you, or take a picture of it, and see if they do that. A lot of banks do that now. I'm not sure mine does. If they do, it would save me a lot of time and stress.

"You should just open a local bank account there and put that check into it," Daisy told me last night.

"It won't matter this time around anyway," I said. "Once that check gets into my account, it will almost automatically be completely depleted by paying off bills. I'd open an account just to have to close it in a few weeks anyhow."

Plus, of course, it's not like they magically hand you a debit card and/or a checkbook when you open a new bank account -- those things take time to make and send out to you. And, again, it's not like I know how much the check will be. I have a rough idea, based on last semester, but with all of this shit going on...who knows.

Anyway. For the moment, there's little I can do about it. I have to wait for confirmation first from the administrator and payroll to see that everything's gone through, and I can then go from there. As always, stuff like this is all out of my hands.

So, already frustrated from that problem, I did the rest of my work for the day, messaged Daisy on the still-very-unreliable wifi the campus has (since apparently the ethernet port in my office has not yet been fixed) to let her know what was going on, and then went to teach my evening 011 class.

My evening 011 class is a mess. And I do mean mess when I say that. I have nineteen students. Eleven of them are international students. Of those eleven international students, only about five or six of them seem to be able to write, speak clearly, or understand any English whatsoever, at least based on the lecture I gave last night and their confusion with the diagnostic essay. I know this because for my 011 classes, i creat the diagnostic myself, and it's very simple: you get three quotes to use as writing prompts. Write a five-paragraph essay about one of those quotes, what you think of it, whether you agree/disagree with it, how it has applied to your life/a time you felt the same way, etc. I keep the quotes relatively simple (this semester, for example, one of the quotes I used was a Conan O'Brien quote). It is not difficult. It's really not difficult for anyone who understands the basics of the language and how it works. I still had many students -- most of them students who should be in an ESL course and not mine, saying "I don't get it," and "this doesn't make sense," or "I don't know how to do this." This is a big, big problem when the entirety of the class consists of them writing short essays and learning how to organize said essays around topics and reasoning for those topics. I mean, that's the basics of the course, and if they can't understand that put into simple terms, they're going to have a really rough time getting through the course...if they stick with it at all. I really can't simplify it any more than it already is. We go through grammar and structure exercises in class. We read examples of good short pieces that are very similar to what they'll write. They write simple, short (400-500 word) essays around easy topics they can take in any direction whatsoever.

I cannot make this class much more simplified than it already is. It's already, basically, sixth grade English. I already have lessons on what a sentence is and what nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives are. To simplify it any further would be me telling them about the alphabet. I'm not kidding. I mean, I don't know what else to say here.

I have not yet read through most of the diagnostics, but the ones I did glance at depressed me. It's not these students' faults, of course, if they were placed into the wrong class, or if they knew they needed an 0-level class but this was the only one available this semester. I can't help that, honestly, and neither can they. As an instructor, even a professor, I can only do so much. As I mentioned to the Director's wife, and as she agreed with me, placing a few of these students in a different section, an 013 section, may be possible if necessary. Re-placing more than half my class, even if they shouldn't necessarily be in my class, would be near-impossible. Especially as next Tuesday's class will be week three -- almost 20% through the semester already. Under different circumstances, such as a class where I wasn't locked out of the room on the first night, or a twice-a-week daytime class, it would be more do-able. As it is? I don't know if I, or we, will be able to do anything at all at this point. And that puts me in a really difficult situation when it comes to my lessons and grading, and how much leeway I should and shouldn't give. I have to be fair with all of my students -- I can't give one student slack without giving them all slack on something. And, again, the class is already almost as absolutely basic as it can be.

At the end of the class, I was tired and sort of frustrated. I was also cold and not feeling that great about how that class may turn out for the rest of the semester. When we left, one of the American students was chatting with me; he missed last week because he thought the class was an online course, and seemed to be a rather nice guy -- ten-year veteran, still in the national guard, two overseas tours and a deployment to Katrina for cleanup duties -- I mean, that's a relatively rough life. I have somewhat of a soft spot for veterans anyway. As you may know, the only charity I consistently donate money to several times a year (when I have it, anyway) is the DAV. I know many veterans; many of my friends are veterans. Many of my family members, both on my side and Daisy's side, are veterans. I respect them highly.

We walked over to where the bus stop was for the shuttle back up to the Metroplex. I saw one go by as I'd left the building, so I knew the next one should be coming soon. It didn't. I waited and waited, with this guy from my class. Finally he offered to just take me up there, as he was parked in the next parking lot over. As it was getting late and the clock was ticking for traffic -- there was a basketball home game last night, and if I got off campus at the same time all of the game traffic let out, I'd be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic not only on the main drag in front of the university, but on the interstate bottleneck for an hour -- trust me, I've had to come home on game nights before, I obliged him. Again, nice guy. Respectful. All of the vets I've had as students have been incredibly respectful towards me.

As we're getting up to the Metroplex, the gas light comes on in his truck. He's almost empty (something that I would've noticed myself long beforehand, but whatever) and he had a 40-mile drive back home.

"I hate to ask this," he said, "but do you have like ten bucks so that I can get some gas on the way home and get there? I didn't know I was almost out."

Mind you, I never carry cash on me. Ever. I wouldn't even take my wallet with me to campus if it didn't contain my driver's license and university ID. I never use money unless I'm going shopping, I never carry it, nothing. This put me in a bit of a predicament. I had no financial obligation to my student, obviously. I was, however, grateful that he'd given me a ride when the buses (which were probably running slow/late because of the basketball game) didn't show up, and it's not like I wanted the guy to get stranded along the side of the road -- I mean, I could see the gas light on. I saw the needle on E. It's not like he was bullshitting me. But the fact was, I didn't have any cash.

"I don't carry any of my money with me when I teach," I said. "I have two one-dollar bills, but that's it....well, no, wait."

I looked through my wallet until I found what I thought I'd had with me -- and I did -- an old Visa gift card with about $20 or so on it.

"I do have this," I said. "If it'll get you home and put some extra in the truck, take it and use it. It's what I had left over from using it for groceries a while back. It's all I've got, but if you need it, I'm more than happy to help -- especially since you gave me a ride up here to my car."

He was, sort of, astonished. And thanked me profusely.

"If you want, I'll give you some cash in class next week to make up for the difference," he said.

"If you want," I said, "that's fine. But if you need it, use it. Again, I'm happy to help if I can."

He thanked me again, dropped me off at the car, and left.

Do I expect to get cash next week in class? Eh, probably not. I don't know, though. It doesn't really matter to me if I do, to be honest with you. I was happy to do a good deed and help someone out when they needed it, regardless of who it was -- student or otherwise. I would've done the same for anyone. It doesn't matter that my own finances are in the shitter right now -- $20-something on a Visa gift card, of all things, isn't going to make or break me, and I know how much I'd appreciate it if I were in the same situation. Knowing my luck, I may be in the same situation at some point. Maybe he knew that he was almost out of gas and offered to give me the ride because he wanted to bum gas money from me -- does it matter in the long run? No. He still wouldn't have been able to make it home without my help regardless of whether he'd given me the ride or not, so it's inconsequential.

I returned home around 9:40 PM with a pounding headache -- it had been a really long, really stressful day and evening, and all I wanted was to get my work clothes off and just go to bed -- which I did, after eating a small dinner and talking to Daisy for a bit on Skype about the events of the day. I was just burnt-out and mentally exhausted, with nothing to do but sleep. By the time I got to bed it was well after midnight, and I'm pretty sure I was only awake in bed long enough to get comfortable and let the cats find their spots around and on me before I was out. I slept until well after 10AM.

When I woke up this morning enough to be alert and mobile, I checked my faculty email to see if there were any updates on the payroll problem -- there weren't, and still aren't. One of my students who missed my 102 class yesterday emailed me to find out what the journal topic was, and I replied and told her. I checked my rosters again, and found that I'd had a student drop that class in the overnight hours -- interesting enough, it was her. I sent her an email to ask if she'd meant to withdraw, since she'd just asked me what the topic was a few hours beforehand. I never got a reply, but she's still not on there.

I also never heard from the vet student if he'd gotten home okay and was able to get gas, but I assume so, at least. I had a few other emails from students who had either missed class or who were worried about what was done with the diagnostics, and replied to them one by one. Other than that, I've done relatively little today but write this blog entry and take a shower. I don't have to leave the house to teach for another three hours, and I have to get gas myself before I make my way down to West campus tonight. In rough calculations, I've found that my Tuesday round trips this semester, as they involve driving to both campuses and then coming home, are about 60 miles. Driving to West campus alone and back is 52, and driving to and from main campus alone is 48. This means I put an average of 164 miles on my car every week, and I fill up when my trip meter hits 200 (even though I still have a good amount of gas left after that). It looks like I'll be filling up almost every Wednesday night before class until, or unless, a scheduled day changes, classes get canceled, or there's a snow day. Luckily, I have space on two of my credit cards for that until my pay gets sorted out, and I shouldn't need any more groceries or anything along those lines until after the weekend (hopefully). As for everything else, I just have to play the waiting game once more until things get sorted out. Luckily, Wednesdays start the downward slope of my week -- I teach at night, my short 210 class, and then I teach my 102 class again on Thursday morning before my weekend begins again. It can't come soon enough; yesterday had enough stress and problems to deal with to where I just want to bury my proverbial head in the sand.

Double Time

Spring semester: day six

I do not feel that great this morning. No matter when I've gone to bed (last night it was 8:30 or so, courtesy of a sleeping pill so that I could force myself to sleep on a Monday night for once), the first day of the week that I have to force myself to get up at 5AM to begin my day always means that I'm going to feel like shit no matter how much rest I've gotten beforehand. Case in point: today. I feel miserable. My allergies are killing me, my body aches, and my stomach is queasy. I have to wonder, of course, how much of it is psychosomatic -- my body actively trying to get me to avoid any and all responsibility in favor of never taking off my bathrobe and watching YouTube all day, eating one meal, and going back to bed. Obviously, I know I can't do that, so my body revolts. I used to have the same problem when I worked night shifts at the grocery store -- every evening, when I woke up before work, my body would do this shit to me then, too. It's like I've somehow conditioned myself to avoid all responsibility and work, and when I try to do it, my body revolts.

Anyway.

Tuesday is, and shall be between now and mid-May, my first day of the work week. It's also the longest day of my work week, as it's the only day where I teach two different classes on two different campuses -- my 102 on West campus this morning, and my 011 tonight on main campus. I really don't mind this as much as I thought I would, really. The interim time gives me time to drive across town and get copies made for the week, as well as to spend time with my friends on campus who I'd never see otherwise. The parking situation is a pain in the ass, yes, but as I now know to just drive up to the Metroplex to park and take the shuttle down to, basically, right behind my building, it's something that's easily remedied even when it's rather cold outside. And don't kid yourself, it is cold outside -- my thermometer tells me it's 10 degrees right now, and the high today is only supposed to reach 32 (and may not even get there). So, again, I'll be wearing layers this morning when I leave the house, just so that I don't end up freezing myself on the way to and from school.

I think the Monte Carlo's battery may be starting to go. When it's cold like this, it usually takes me at least two tries to get her started up, and the first try is me turning the key, all of the dash lights coming on, but nothing happening. The second try, she'll fire up just fine, generally. When it's warm, this isn't a problem. I know the battery is getting a good charge, at least, every time I drive to/from campus, as that's a moderately long drive back and forth (20-30 minutes or so). But, as Daisy just replaced her own battery earlier this month to the tune of $150 or so, I'd rather not have to do that myself anytime soon if I can help it, since for the next month or so, even with regular paychecks starting back up on Friday, I am still very, very poor until I can build up a little more money in my bank account. I'm still basically living off of my Discover card, and could only make the minimum payment on the bill yesterday, when I also paid the rent for the month. I have about $200 to my name right now before I get paid this week, but I wouldn't even have that had Daisy not helped me out earlier this month. If you can avoid it, folks, never get a job where there are stretches of time twice a year during which you don't get paid, especially if you don't get paid that much as it is.

I'll be fine, yes, and won't have to budget so tightly after this time next month (or so), but still, it's a pain in the ass. I'm hoping Daisy plays the lottery tomorrow.

As this week and next week I'm doing most of my "it's time for you to get your first paper assignment" lessons in my classes, I have a lot to cover and a lot of copies to make this afternoon when I'm on the main campus. What sucks about that is the fact that I have to plan a full week or so ahead for when I'll make copies and distribute things, because I'm only on main campus once a week. While I can make copies on West campus, it's not something that I should be doing every day, running reams of paper through their machines. They request that whenever possible, you should be making copies in your own department's office and not on their machines. That's fine, and I can do that for the most part, but if the department's machine is down, jammed, or otherwise broken (as it is on a frequent basis), that puts me into a bind if I was counting on it to be working. For most handouts, if I have to, I can print them at home if necessary -- I can't do that for all of them, of course, but for the one-pagers, that's generally fine. I don't like do do that, as my printer is running out of toner (another $40-something expense I can't afford right now)...so, yeah. I could probably do my own printing for my 210 class, since there's still only 8 of them (and I don't really expect that number to change at this point), but I'd rather not.

I now have 19 in my 011 class and 13 in my 102 class; the two additions to my 102 are a student I had last semester signing up late, and another student that has never shown up to class yet (and I don't know if she will). I've posted enough information/messages on Blackboard, however, to where if they're lost and confused about what we've been doing, they can go back through those and read them.

Also, anytime the cold wants to stop, it can. As mentioned before, my car doesn't like to start in the cold, and it won't warm up until I'm nearly to campus. Since I started this post, the temperature here has dropped three degrees, to 7. In Omaha, it's -6. Back home in West Virginia? -9. I can't take much more of this; it's driving me crazy. Especially after it was in the 60s two fucking days ago. It's never warm when I need to leave the house and be out and about, only when I stay indoors for several days at a time. And, seriously, it needs to pick a season and stick with it, because my allergies can't take it. Warm/cold, warm/cold, warm/cold absolutely wrecks my seasonal allergies, to the point where I can only function all day if I drink a pot of coffee, take sinus/allergy meds, and blow my nose fifty times. I still haven't received my electric bill for the month (though, knowing my luck, it will show up today) and I expect it to be terrible because of the furnace running all the time. Yes, I turn it down low when I'm gone to class, and I turn it off when the temperature outside is above 45 or so, but there's still an awful lot of time where it's just on and running to barely keep the house above 60-65. I want it to be about 75 in the house at all times, but to do that the furnace would never turn off. Ever. And my electric bill would be $400 or more. It's high enough as it is now.

Add to that the extra $20-ish charge every month to my water bill, for the foreseeable future, to help pay for the new city water treatment plant, and yes, I'm rather bitter about just being able to survive. I've never had higher monthly bills for anything than here in Kansas. While I wasn't a fan of living in Missouri when I was there, at least there my water bill was $15 (it's $80 here), my internet was $30 (it's $64 here) and my electric bill was about $40 per month (here it can range anywhere between $60 and $200, depending on the month).

Daisy suggests that I take my car in to get the battery checked if it keeps having trouble starting up, because it may indeed need a new one. I had to stress to her that as long as I can get the car started and get back and forth, stuff like that just has to wait until I can actually get some money for it. It just has to. It's going to take me months to pay off my credit cards as it is -- I'll be lucky to get them all completely paid off before the wedding...when I'll more than likely have to fill them up again for wedding stuff and/or living/moving expenses then. It's not like I get a break, you know. Not when it comes to bills, expenses, and obligations for mere survival. I'm lucky the car has lasted this long; it'll be more sheer luck if I can get it to last another six months as-is without dying or otherwise blowing a major part. It's just depressing that I'm stuck in this situation.

I did the math; between now and the end of the semester, I should get eight paychecks (every two weeks for sixteen weeks), if my math is correct. Each one should be a little more than $600-something after taxes are taken out, which is the same as last semester. BUT, that depends on how they divide up everything. Usually I'll get one last check after the semester is over (as it's ten days after the semester began that I'll get my first one). I don't know how they'll divide them up this semester because my payroll was skewed last semester with the whole "alternate payroll" thing I had to go through with the department due to my background check info and all that. Unless something has changed, I should be getting the same amount, or close to the same amount, as I got every two weeks for the fall. If so, and I'll know tomorrow when the electronic pay stub comes online, I can better assess my finances for the duration of the semester and know what I'll have and when it will be coming in. Most of my first two checks -- basically from now through Valentine's Day -- will go directly to bills and the like. That gives me a little comfort, but it doesn't get me "out of the hole," so to speak.

I mentioned a while back that after she got it resized, after a few months, Daisy's engagement ring wore thin and broke where it was expanded for resizing. It can no longer be worn, and instead she's wearing a "backup ring" of sorts that is a simple band lined with CZ stones I bought for her a few months ago. For Valentine's Day, I plan to get her a new ring, one that won't need to be resized. I have to budget for that as well; she trusts my judgment on that, of course, and we've already discussed that's probably what I'll do for her, as Valentine's Day is also the anniversary of my proposal. It's also the next time she'll be down here to visit. She told me she's already gotten me several things for Valentine's Day (despite my protests and insistence that it's not, really, a gift-giving holiday) that I'll like. She wanted to get me one of the expensive electronic cigarettes with the vapor battery and liquid and the like, but I told her not to -- that's something I absolutely need to pick out for myself. I have several friends/former students who have them, and they've told me about how certain brands and makes will leak or otherwise stop working correctly after a few weeks/months, and I need to be able to judge the build quality of them myself in person to be able to pick one that works out well. I'm not opposed to the idea, of course, and I didn't mean to be difficult when I told her no, but it's really something that I must pick out if I'm going to be using it every day and depending on it. I (half-jokingly) told her if she wanted to spend that much money on me for Valentine's Day, to get me a 2DS and the new Pokemon game -- the only luxuries that I really want right now, but can't afford. She won't, and I really don't want her to spend any money on me at all, but I found it funny.

I went to Walmart last night for some essentials, as much as I didn't want to. It's either that or go without eating, without cat litter, and without cigarettes until I get paid on Friday, and if I did so I'd probably end up stabbing someone with a pen. Again, thank you, Discover card.

On that note, I must gather my things and leave the house for the day. I'll get home later tonight than I usually do, sadly, because my night class will run almost the entire time due to the shit I have to do in it. Here's hoping my car starts when I leave the house, go between campuses, and come home this evening.

Tropical Freeze

When I said before that I knew I'd have more free time this semester, I knew I was being truthful, but didn't know how truthful that statement would be -- at least not for the first part of the semester, anyhow.

My weekend is about 60% over, roughly, yet all I've had to do for my students is post a few Blackboard messages, check my emails (none yet) and organize my lesson plans for next week. Really, that's not a whole lot. In fact, it's almost nothing. My lesson plans (re-reading the texts so I can refresh myself on how to cover them, and making lists of things to go over in class) took about two hours. Max. Again, I've taught all of these classes before, and I have older lesson plans that I'm using again for them with slight modifications here and there because of the classes and their meeting schedules.

I've had six more students add my 011 class in the past five days, as I mentioned before -- all of them seem to be international students whose first language is not, necessarily, English. That's generally a problem, as they're in the wrong class. 011 is for native speakers, not ESL students. The ESL class is 013. ESL students can, and generally do, have a hard time in 011 if they decide to stick with it, and placement should not have put them in there in the first place. I'm using the diagnostic exam -- which I'll give on Tuesday night -- as the bar for their performance, and if they cannot do well on it, I'll have to refer them to the Director's wife, who presides over not only the remedial classes but the ESL classes as well. This is, after all, my job -- all of us faculty want to make sure our students are placed properly. But, with 11 of my 18 current students seeming to be international ESL students, I don't know if much can be done if they truly are in the wrong class. Since it's a night class, it's even harder, as most students taking night classes are taking them because it's the only time said class fits their schedule, and to the best of my knowledge I don't think there are any night 013 classes. I'm not trying to be discriminatory or anything like that, of course, and if they can do the work, I'm more than happy to teach all of them -- I just don't want to see anyone fail because they can't understand the assignments or can't understand the class lessons because they're too complicated. I always want to see all of my students succeed.

I sent an email to the Director's wife this afternoon letting her know of the situation, and told her we could discuss it on Tuesday afternoon when I'm on campus before that class. I'm lucky this semester in that my time on main campus coincides with her office hours for the week. I have to use the diagnostic essay in the class as their barometer for performance, anyhow, and I won't be able to administer that until Tuesday night first thing. There may not be any other options for said students -- one or two we could work with, more than likely. Eleven will be really tough to re-place if they should all be in a section of 013 and don't have any openings in their schedules. More than anything else I just feel shitty about the situation, as I can't really change the lessons for 011 to cater to students who shouldn't be in there -- those lessons are set, the paper assignments are set, and I can't really deviate from them. I make a ton of concessions for my students as it is, doing things that most other 011 instructors don't, and the class is really basic as-is, since it's a remedial class anyway. Like, to the point where there's an entire lesson in which I explain nouns and verbs, and what homophones are. In college.

Anyway. It'll get sorted out one way or another, I suppose. There's little I can do about it. I also don't want to make said students feel insulted or offended if I do have to approach them and say "Um, yeah, you really don't belong in this class." I guess that's what I'm more concerned with right now, as silly as that may sound.

In other news, it's 63 degrees outside right now. For the moment. Tonight it's supposed to get really cold, really quickly and sleet/snow. No, that's not a joke. The high tomorrow is supposed to be 22 with wind before it gradually warms up, a little more each day, to around 50 again by Thursday and Friday. However, Daisy has it worse -- this is the forecast for Omaha, because in Nebraska weather never has to make any sense whatsoever, apparently:

Yeah. I hate winter. I especially hate midwest winters, as there's never any rhyme or reason to their weather patterns. At least back home in West Virginia, I knew that for four months of the year it would snow every other day to the point where you couldn't see grass between (at least) November and March, and you knew it was going to be consistently, constantly cold for those months, with many school/work cancellations and hardly any getting out of the house. Looking at Daisy's weather above? That's a fifty-two-degree temperature drop in a matter of hours. That's insane. Insane.

Speaking of Daisy, as time goes on, more of the wedding planning is coming into focus. She and mama have been making the bouquet and corsages over the past few days, she has her dress (which, again, I mentioned before) and she's pretty close to snaring a professional photographer for us -- she's getting quotes and she's contacting several of them who she's been referred to by friends. A photographer is one of her "absolute musts" for the wedding, much like the completely vegan food for the wedding and rehearsal dinner. I told her months ago that it's not like every guest there won't have a camera with them, if not a high-quality camera, if not a high-quality camera on their phones for as many pictures as we'd ever want or need. She still wants the old-school official photography done, which I'm not going to argue with her on -- if she wants to spend the money on it, let her.

"Do all the planning and the like that you want, babe," I said. "Seriously. You don't have to consult me on all of it. If you want to do something and we can afford it, go for it."

"I know," she replied, "it's just that I want to make you part of it, run it by you, get your feedback, etc."

I think that's sweet of her, of course, but I told her in the end the only thing that matters to me is that we get there, we do the wedding, it's done, and we're married. Everything else is ancillary to me; little things that don't matter to me in the overall picture. Weddings are mainly for the brides anyhow. To me, as a guy, I already see Daisy as my wife, and the ceremony is simply the officialization of that. All of the planning she's doing when it comes to the bouquets and corsages and what the kids will wear and what food we're going to have, etc -- while it's nice to be included and to have her bounce ideas off of me, it's absolutely, completely unimportant to me. I'm all about the endgame. Because I want her to have her dream wedding, the best wedding possible for our budget, I stay out of a lot of the planning stuff as it doesn't affect me and it's simply things to make her, her bridal party, and her family happy. And I'm fine with that. I don't even care what food we have or what caterers we use or don't use. I just want to do it, have my parents/friends/groom's party there to see it, and party down at the reception. And, for as somewhat impulsive and go-with-the-flow as Daisy is, she's actually a really good planner for this stuff. She's very logical, she's very budget-minded, and she knows what we can do and can't do. I trust her with all of it because she's intelligent and has family and friends to help her.

For example, a few days ago she suggested that we do a large sheet cake instead of a multi-layered, thousand-dollar wedding cake, as it would be cheaper and easier to cut/serve, and if we wanted we could have a much smaller, tiered take on the side with a "wedding topper" on it for tradition's sake. That's a good idea, very easy to do, and much more inexpensive than a massive traditional cake. She asked if I had any sort of preference for the topper, and I said no -- one can probably get a wedding cake topper on Amazon for two dollars. She wants to do bubbles instead of rice or birdseed or what have you, and I said that was fine as well -- there are kits for that in Walmart's wedding aisle (yes, they have a wedding aisle) and even at the Dollar Tree. I told her we could even mix the bubbles and the like ourselves if necessary. She wants balloons in netting above us at the ceremony's doors, or something like that -- that's about five bucks, and easily done. Little things like that I'll give her feedback on, but the rest of the stuff that's left to her, the bridal party, and the family I tend to stay out of.

We still don't know how we're going to deal with the travel and comings-and-goings of friends and family over that week. My plan, regardless of where we're living or what we're doing, is to be in Omaha to help set things up and coordinate that stuff at least five days before the wedding, and will remain there for two or so days after the event itself to help everyone get back home and coordinate the cleanup and aftermath. This will happen regardless of what our living and working situations are; I personally don't know what we'll be doing at that point, obviously, as it depends quite heavily upon my status within the Department of English as well as her own job and monetary situation -- neither of which we'll know definitively until at least March or so. We may remain here in Kansas, and we may not. There's a very good chance that we will permanently relocate to Omaha or the surrounding area before the end of the summer, depending on how the cards fall here for my own position at the university. The only certainty is that we won't remain here and I won't be adjuncting again in the fall unless she somehow finds a damn good job here in Kansas. I can support myself on my salary -- barely, but I can -- but I cannot fully support two people. Adjuncting is a decent gig, but it's only decent on a temporary basis -- I cannot be a simple, work-by-the-semester professor forever. My bills and other financial obligations catch up to me too quickly.

One of my friends made a post on Facebook about how her birthday, which is in about a month and a half, is on a Friday -- so she wants to go out and go bowling and then go to a bar. Then I thought about my own birthday for a moment.

My next birthday, which is eleven months away, will take place six months after I'm married. It's a Saturday, but I'll probably be spending it taking care of a wife who will be five months (ish) pregnant and watching cartoons.

No, I'm not kidding. That's probably pretty accurate. And fucking mind-boggling. My entire life will change this year. I will be in a very different place and a very different situation at the end of the year compared to right now. Daisy and I have discussed children, of course, and have basically settled on the whole "when it happens, it happens" sort of consensus. But to think that by the end of this year I will more than likely no longer be living in this house, or have the same job I have now, or that she won't be living where she is now and probably won't be working in the same place either -- whoa. I mean, really, that's a lot of gigantic changes stacked one on top of the other. Along with that, there's only so many preparations I can make in advance -- it's akin to the wedding planning. I can do some things, yes, but a lot of it is going to be left up to fate. Yes, I would like to have kids sooner rather than later, as even now I'm getting gray hair, and at their high school graduation(s) I'd be in my 50s. Life's too short. I'd rather not die before my children get married and give me grandchildren, so time is of the essence.

Anyway.

I'm not looking forward to the temperature drop-off again tonight. It's so nice right now. I was planning to go to Walmart in the overnight hours, as I need a few items for around the house (for example, every time I've gone shopping for the past month, I've forgotten to get almond milk so that I can actually eat my cereal and oatmeal I have in the cupboard), but if it's going to get really cold and snow/sleet, fuck that. I'll do it on the way home Tuesday night if I have to, since I'll already be out. I'd go now, but I haven't showered since Friday, and Walmart on a Sunday afternoon is my personal definition of hell.

As for my classes this week, it looks like I'll once more have to dress in layers, but the work in them shouldn't be too difficult based on the lesson plans I've already made up. My 102 students are getting their first taste of their Writing Matters book and will be getting their workshop group assignments in preparation for the first paper, my 210 students will be introduced to their workbook and the first assignment for the class, and my aforementioned 011 students will take their diagnostic and have a large chunk of lecture covered in class. While on main campus this week I also have to see if I can get some info on the healthcare plan the university offers to adjuncts who teach nine hours or more per semester -- which, since I've done that for a year now (counting this semester) apparently I qualify for. I don't know any of the details on it; it was just something mentioned to me near the end of last semester. Daisy has been bugging me to sign up for the Obamacare stuff, but I can't do that until I find our what the university health plan covers, and if it's different than the plan I was offered as a grad student there (which, admittedly, was pretty shitty when I was using it).

I'll let you know, of course, how all of this stuff goes. For now, though, I'm going to work on revising/revamping assignments for my classes so that I don't have to do it later.

For the Weak

Spring semester: day four

Upon returning home from my class yesterday morning, I ate lunch and then found myself to be really, really tired. Not exhausted, can't-stay-awake or bodily-shutdown tired, but just sleepy. Daisy was still sleeping, of course, as she does try to keep her circadian rhythms at least somewhat regulated even when she's off work, though sometimes that works better than others. I hadn't heard from her all day, though I'd messaged her to let her know when I was leaving and when I'd returned home safely, as I always do.

By 2:30 or 3, I knew that I just needed to nap. I didn't know why, really, but I knew I needed to. I'd slept well on Wednesday night -- early to bed, early to rise and all that -- but I think my body knows when my work week has finished, and decides to put me in hibernation mode when it does. I later told Daisy that more than anything else it's probably my allergies messing with me as well as the fact that I'm still trying to get back into a "go teach every day" groove. It's not that my schedule is grueling (because it isn't), it's that I once more have a schedule compared to the past six weeks when I did not.

It also didn't help that yesterday was quite possibly the coldest day I've had to leave the house and go teach in for, maybe...two years or more? Something like that. It was in the single digits yesterday morning when I left the house, the windchill was -10 to -25, depending on how hard the wind was blowing and what part of the state you were in, and the Monte Carlo had a little trouble starting up. It also didn't get its heater warm until I was about four or five miles from campus -- my entire drive down to West campus, I could see my breath in the car. When it's as cold as it was yesterday, said car will almost never get warm enough to be comfortable. The warmer it is outside, the faster the heater will start to work. So, that being said, I'm really looking forward to low temperatures being in the 30s or 40s sometime soon, as it takes about five minutes for it to warm up when it's around those temps outside.The high temperature yesterday barely reached 20, and may not have even gotten there, as it hadn't when I took a nap.

At around 3 or so, I went downstairs, turned on the electric blanket, and went to sleep. It didn't take long to fall asleep; I was fully unconscious within fifteen minutes or so. When I woke up next, it was after 11.

I took an eight-hour nap. I just slept and slept. Why my body needed an eight-hour nap, I'll never know. Again, I wasn't particularly fatigued or stressed, and despite the back-to-work schedule I've been keeping this week, with the exception of Monday night, I've been sleeping well. Normally. Without the use of sleeping pills or melatonin.

I got up, talked with Daisy on Skype for a while, and then made some baked potatoes and the last of my Boca burgers for "dinner" before I went back to bed again and got up around 11 this morning. Strange.

Physically, I feel okay. My allergies are indeed bothering me, as they usually do when it gets really, really cold and I have to run the furnace -- which does nothing but circulate dust-filled, dry air through the house, but I mean, I'm all right. I'm not ill, or anything. My sinus infection may be coming back, but I'm not ill.

This weekend will be spent taking care of little tasks one by one. I need to mail out the rent check for February, I need to pay my Discover bill, which came in the mail a few days ago, and I need to do some minor grading/lesson planning stuff for next week. The first week of classes during any given semester is little more than a meet-and-greet; it's the second week where we, as instructors, actually begin to dive into the classes themselves and begin teaching in earnest. With next week comes the introduction of the first assignments for all three of my classes, as well as teaching lessons out of the books and workbooks and finalization of my rosters for my classes. I've had several students add my 011 class (the one we were locked out of) this week, bringing my total number of students in there up to 18 (with a max of 20). None of them know what's going on with that class, as they were not on my roster and not there for Tuesday night's debacle. I'll have to send out another announcement/email this weekend giving them the recap and telling them to read through the previous announcements on Blackboard. I also gained another student in my 102 class as well, bringing the total in there up to 12. My 210 is still holding strong at 8. Usually, most classes will have lower numbers in the spring semester, not vice versa.

As an aside, Blackboard updated all of its software/systems over the winter break, unveiling their new layout at the beginning of the new year. Apparently a lot of the instructors at the university who use it are having major problems with it working correctly. I haven't had any problems with it yet; all the stuff I do with it (grading, SafeAssignment, uploading handouts, announcements, etc) is all in the same place, and I haven't seen any issues on my end with it. However, up until 2011 or so, it didn't like Linux at all -- it would erase my grades when I tried to enter them, it would time out when I tried to upload the PDFs of my students' handouts, etc. Since the first major upgrade back then, I haven't had any problems with it. Maybe I'm just lucky, I don't know.

Unfortunately, as I do my work this weekend, I won't be able to have football on in the background, as all of that's done now until the Super Bowl next weekend. I mean, I guess the Pro Bowl is on, but really, who cares about the Pro Bowl? It doesn't count for anything and they're not real teams. Bah. I guess I'll charge up my music player and listen to that while I'm doing my "professor work."

It is warmer today...about 40 degrees warmer than it was yesterday morning, actually. It's supposed to get up to around 60 over the weekend before the temperature once more drops like a stone for next week when I have to go back out and teach again. I told my mother this morning that I'm pretty sure Kansas weather does that to spite me just because I have to leave the house. I haven't been outside today, as I'm sitting here wearing tie-dye longjohns and the same shirt/hoodie that I've worn since Wednesday night, so eh. I have to do laundry this weekend, so there's no reason to change my clothes until I do that, lest I just add more to the pile in the bottom of my hamper after it's already been emptied.

Daisy and my mother have been talking back and forth via email; Daisy sent her pictures of her wedding dress and the like, and she's trying to help coordinate their travel for the rehearsal dinner and the wedding. I think it's very sweet, as well as very comforting that they're establishing a rapport with one another. My parents have never met Daisy in person; they've talked back and forth with her on Skype when I was visiting home over Christmas in 2012, but that's about it. They won't get to actually meet her until they come in for the wedding. Apparently our mothers are going to be talking back and forth in much the same manner as well, in order to welcome my parents to the midwest for the event and to put any issues that may pop up at ease. While I've told my parents that it would probably be much easier/cheaper (and definitely much faster) to fly out here from West Virginia instead of drive, the last I heard, they still insist on driving to make the trip. I find this at least somewhat amusing (but mostly puzzling) as I fly back and forth when I visit back home.

Nothing else is going on, really. I expect a quiet, mostly restful weekend. I don't get paid for the first time this semester until a week from today, and it will be Wednesday before I even know how much that check will be (that's when they put the electronic pay stub online).

"Your paychecks are going to be a little less this semester because you're not on that late payroll timeframe," Daisy told me last night. "You should be on the same schedule as everyone else, and will get an 'extra' check at the end of the semester."

"I know," I said. "They're different every semester anyhow; they always have been regardless of whether anything changes with my job/taxes or not."

When I was a GTA, my paycheck amounts would fluctuate between semesters by close to $100 -- it's all about how they schedule everything and equally divide it up. Some semesters I'd get paid over $400 per check, others I'd get much less. It's all based on the first and last pay dates. If the semester's pay periods are shorter, the checks are bigger. If they're longer, the checks are smaller. Regardless, it's out of my hands. Most of my first check -- however much it is -- will go directly towards paying off bills and credit cards anyway. I won't have a cushion of money of any sort until at least Valentine's Day, when I can slowly begin rebuilding my bank account a little more every two weeks, and hopefully (with careful budgeting) I'll be able to have some extra savings I can work with in another month or two.

Frigidity

Spring semester: day three

It is 9 degrees this morning, and with the wind chill, feels like anything between -9 and -25. By the time I got home from teaching my 210 class last night (which I'll get to in a moment), a cold front had blown in and the temperature had dropped like a stone. With it came big-time high winds for a few hours -- my Monte Carlo is a heavy beast of a car (3400lb, dry weight) and it was still difficult to keep her driving straight on the interstate. With each hard gust of icy wind, I'd swerve eight inches or so. Everyone in front of me on I-135 seemed to be having the same problem as well, as I watched them slowly weaving in their lanes as well. Even then, though, it was about fifteen degrees warmer than it is now.

I should mention that the car is performing relatively well despite the weather, especially since for the past six weeks before classes started back up, for most of that time she was in the garage and wasn't being driven at all except for short trips to Walmart and back about once every ten days. I had to fill the gas tank last night before my drive south to West campus, which she seemed to enjoy. I haven't needed to put new gas in the car since before finals week last semester, so it's been well over a month. In my three days of extensive driving thus far, I haven't really had any issues with the car except for a slight transmission slipping last night when I pulled off the interstate, which, with my car, is fairly normal and no real cause for concern any more than usual. Even with the cold, she fires up really quickly and doesn't have trouble starting, though with her air-cooled, "naturally aspirated" engine, the heater won't get warm until I'm nearly to campus, or conversely, almost home. Still, I'm impressed. Once I get paid next week, I need to get some oil, new coolant, and fuel system cleaner to perform my usual, monthly "preventative maintenance" on her, but for the moment, I'm proud of my old girl's ability to get up and go with no real issues.

My 210 class last night was interesting -- and it will be, by far, the easiest class I teach this semester. As I mentioned before, there are but eight of them. All of them come from different walks of life and different class ranks; I have several seniors, but I also have a few sophomores and juniors. Almost all of them took 101 and 102 here at the university, so they know the drill when it comes to MLA, SafeAssign, and the English Department's attendance policy. Some of them are my age or much older, and some of them are probably under twenty. It's a good mix. All of them seem pretty cool. I went through the syllabus and lesson plan, described the differences between my version of this class and the other versions (the 16-week, twice-a-week version and the 8-week version I taught last semester), and showed them the books. The primary text for the course is relatively cheap now -- one of my students said she got her copy on Amazon, new, for about $20. That's a plus for them, at least.

Anyway, they introduced themselves, I introduced myself, and once we were done for the night, we dismissed. I kept them for maybe an hour at the most -- there's not much else I can do until everyone gets the books. The assignments will be, mostly, the same -- but the pacing for the full sixteen weeks of the class will be a lot different because we have more time for those assignments, especially the first three really easy ones. Because of the way the dates fall, and because there's no final exam for that class (they do the Oral Presentation instead), with eight of them it looks like I can officially end that class, with all of their work done, turned in, and graded...on April 23. The other two weeks after that are floating days that can be used for those presentations in the case that we get some big snowstorms and/or the university closes on our class days while it's still winter. The semester runs until May 8, with finals week taking place between the 10th-16th, so being able to have everything done with that class well before the end of the semester? That's awesome. I've written the lesson plan so that can be possible. That'll also free up more time for me to collect and grade the final papers for my other courses as well, and help out more when it comes to wedding planning (as by the end of the semester we'll totally be in the thick of that, hardcore).

Speaking of wedding planning, yesterday Daisy got her dress.

I know; it came as a shock to me, too.

Ever since we got engaged, her mother (Mama) said that she'd make Daisy's dress. She wanted Mama to make it; Mama is a master seamstress and can make nearly anything given enough time and material. Daisy told me earlier this week that yesterday was the day they were going out to look at dresses for ideas and planning -- essentially, finding a design she wanted and getting Mama to make a similar dress much more inexpensively. Well, apparently while looking through different ones at David's Bridal, she found one that she adored. Like, really adored. She tried it on and her parents thought she looked so gorgeous in it that they bought it for her on the spot. I won't see it, of course, until the wedding day, and because of that I made sure she didn't tell me any true details about it -- I want to be fully surprised. Needless to say, she's incredibly, bouncing-up-and-down-over-it excited, especially since she got a mind-boggling deal on it. I'm very happy for her. That's one less thing to do between now and the wedding, as well. And, of course, it means that Mama doesn't have to spend weeks on end making the dress -- she's already planning to make the wedding outfits for our nieces and nephews, most of whom will be in the wedding.

As an aside, Daisy wanted to see if she could make me a jacket for the wedding as well, since it's nigh-impossible to find a plain black sport coat in my size. Because I have really broad shoulders and the upper half of my body is tall, it is so very hard to find a jacket that I can not only button, but get around my shoulders and move around my arms in, and all of my searches thus far have been fruitless. However, Mama said that it's really difficult and time-consuming to make a jacket like that (which I told Daisy myself) and said that we'd look at different retail outlets and the like, as much as possible, between now and then to find me one in my size, even if it costs us $150 or more. I really don't want to spend that much on a jacket, of course, considering that my wedding pants I got for $4 at Goodwill and the tuxedo t-shirt is $6. The dress shoes I'll wear in the wedding were $30, but I've also owned said shoes for close to ten years now and have worn them approximately five times.

I emailed the department admins yesterday, including the Director, and told them about being locked out of my classroom on Tuesday night. I stressed that for last night, anyway, it wasn't a huge deal, but I wanted to know what to do in the future in case it happened again (and so that it could possibly be prevented for anyone else as well). Apparently when I get back to main campus on Tuesday, I'll have to call the Physical Plant and have them direct their custodian to leave that door unlocked for my class from this point forward. If they don't, the only people who can open it for me are the campus police -- and we saw how well that went last time. It's a relatively simple fix, yes, but with Tuesday being the first day and all, I can't imagine how many people on campus had the same problem I did -- maybe a lot, maybe nobody but me.

In about ten minutes, I will leave the house for West campus to teach my last class of the week, my 102 class. Today we're going through some pertinent sections of the workbook and they're taking their diagnostic exam for me. The formal lessons, as well as the dive-in to the first paper assignment, starts up on Tuesday. I'm actually not really tired this morning, for once -- part of that, probably, is because I know I'll be back home in about three hours or so, and once I am I can formally start my weekend. Ah, the weekend.

Let's hope I don't freeze between now and then.

"Go Time," Part II: The Lock-out

Spring semester: day two

Well, I had an interesting day yesterday.

I've mentioned before that my schedule this semester, while much more ideal than last semester, is still really strange -- especially for someone like me who is used to teaching in the mornings and early afternoons at the latest, as I've done since 2010. I got my first taste of evening classes last semester with the eight-week 210 course, and now this semester I have two of them. I also mentioned before that Tuesdays for me this semester are quite similar to last semester -- I still teach two classes, one in the morning and one at night, with the only difference being that this time they're on two different campuses. I'm at West in the morning and main at night. Do I mind this? No, not necessarily -- I'd prefer this to the other way around, as I'll actually get to see my friends and colleagues again this semester, which is a good, much-needed change from being the ghost who walked the halls during the early morning hours last semester.

However, it is still a really long day to start my week. The money makes up for it, but damn am I going to be exhausted on Tuesday nights when I return home.

I slept like hell on Monday night. I tried to go to bed early -- before 10 -- after getting a shower and purposely avoiding coffee most of the day after I awakened fully. However, my body is still, to some extent, in "sleep when it wants to" mode, and Monday night it didn't want to sleep when I needed it to. Instead, I laid in bed 1/3 of the way asleep for hours on end. I dozed off several times for an hour or so each time before waking up again and being mostly uncomfortable, mainly feeling as if I were trying to force my body to get rest. When I do that, my body fights back. I considered just getting up and staying awake for 36 hours straight or so, throughout the entire day until I got home last night just so that I could wear myself out and attempt to reset my body clock, but I did not. Instead I simply tossed and turned, drifting in and out of light sleep. Sadly, I didn't fall into a deeper sleep for good until roughly 4AM...when my alarm was set to go off at 5. I hit the snooze six or seven times until it was well after 6 before I got up and came upstairs. On Tuesday mornings, I can do that -- the alarm at 5 is basically the beginning of a slow wakeup process for me. I don't have to leave the house until around 8 or so on Tuesday/Thursday mornings, so I can afford myself a bit more time.

When I left the house, it was cold. Like, really cold. The weather forecast wasn't lying; indeed, the temperature had dropped into the single digits and the wind was whipping around hard enough to make it feel below zero. The car fired up fine, and I went to West campus, where I would teach my first class of the semester.

This semester, there are no classes on West campus before my 9:15 102 class, and as far as I know, there are no classes directly after it, either. This means that on those days, at those times in that building, there's nobody there but me, my ten or so students, and the two administrators of the facility.

I'm in a new room over there this semester, a nicer room on the front of the building with windows, tables and padded chairs(!) and a nice, big lectern/desk area for me. The class itself went uneventfully -- five of the students I either already know or had last semester, and the other five or so are new. My five returning students knew the drill when it came to my class, and for the new ones it was a delight to tell them how I run a classroom and how the 102 class is structured a bit differently than the 101. I went over the syllabus and gave them the brief rundown of how the class will operate, along with the books they'll need (several of them already have all of the required texts for the course, which is a good sign). The newbies seem intriguing and somewhat excited for the semester, so that's a plus as well. I'll get to know them all pretty well over the course of the semester, since we once more have a small, rather intimate group.

After the 102 class ended came the interesting and/or maddening part of my day. As it's the first day of classes, it's not like I could steal away to an office on West campus for a few hours for grading (not that I'd really want to anyhow), so my task was to navigate through early midday-rush-hour traffic to get over to the main campus.

This is, at least for right now, easier said than done. While I can get off the interstate just fine at the exit I need to when I'm going to West campus, I can't get back on where I should be able to because of endlessly-ongoing road construction in Park City, one of the suburbs of Wichita. Instead, they divert traffic around in a big loop through Park City for a detour that allowed me to get back on the interstate a few miles from my original exit. This adds a good ten to fifteen minutes to my driving plan and probably another 6-8 miles. I'm sure there's a straighter way to get to main campus from West campus, but as my GPS only works about half the time and it's notorious for losing signal in certain areas, I'm not entirely sure that I trust it.

The other problem is main campus parking. As I've written about or alluded to here before, there's no longer ample parking on the main campus -- the main lot that most people used was demolished shortly after my graduation, as they are now building a massive, multi-million-dollar dorm there. The lot across the street from there was repaved and expanded where the old soccer field used to be, but there's still a net loss, overall, of about 400 parking spaces between this time last year and now. This is part of the reason why, even when I didn't need to, I always got to main campus last year by, oh, around 7:30 or so. Any later than that and the lot would already be full.

Well, with the first day of classes, parking is always worse than usual. People drive like idiots, they don't watch where they're going, students on foot jump out in front of cars to cross the street, etc. I've seen several parking lot accidents and at least one screaming match between students over parking spots. If there's a hell, I would imagine it consists of driving around looking for spaces to park one's landboat Monte Carlo, while hell's administration blatantly ignores that they're trying to fit roughly 8,000 commuting students (and that's a very conservative estimate) into about 3,000 parking spots over the entire campus.

If I get there now, I thought, maybe, just maybe I'll get in-between classes coming-and-going, and I'll be able to slip into a spot with no problem.
 
This was my first mistake. Now was roughly 10:45 AM. I would've gotten there earlier if not for the interstate detour and my uncanny ability to hit every red light on the main drag up to the university's doorstep. The parking lot was a legitimate fucking nightmare.

I drove around, up and down aisles, in lines, following other cars who had just come in and were looking for spots as well. There were literally none to be found. Whenever someone pulled out of a spot, three cars rushed for it, and the first one there without hitting another car or killing a pedestrian got it. It was like a feeding frenzy for idiots. I drove around those parking lots, very slowly (while my car's engine began to slowly creep up in temperature, as it hates driving slowly anywhere), for close to forty minutes. Not only did I never see one solitary open spot that stayed open longer than -- and I'm not kidding here -- ten or fifteen seconds, I was probably one of thirty cars prowling around looking for parking.

My patience having worn thin by this point, I said "fuck it" and left the main campus for the shuttle bus parking at the Metroplex.

I may have mentioned this before, but the university realizes that there are way too many students and way too little parking now that they've decided to build a new dorm on what was previously the biggest, and best, parking lot on campus, so they opened up the Metroplex for student parking and initiated a shuttle bus system. The Metroplex is roughly a mile from the main campus, and is one of the extension offices (with many other facilities, such as a few theater performance areas and the like). It also has a parking lot that is, and I'm not exaggerating here, probably roughly the size of half of the main campus. Students/faculty/visitors/etc can park there permit-free and ride a shuttle bus from there to the main campus. There are four buses which run the route in a big circle, and it's timed to where between 7AM and 10PM, you'll be able to get to and from the main campus from that lot in about ten minutes, give or take, on one of the buses. It was one of the few ingenious ideas the university has come up with in the past several years that I've been teaching there.

Parking at the Metroplex and hopping on the shuttle -- which I did today for the first time, since I never had to use it before -- ended my parking issues. The Metroplex parking lot is so huge that it will never fill up. I stepped off the bus onto the main campus five minutes after parking my car up there -- but not before, as the bus drove by, I saw at least two open parking spots in the lot I'd been circling over and over before, with nobody around to claim them. Fuck. Oh well.

Campus was fine; it was good to see everyone again. Most of my friends and colleagues are back in town and are still teaching, with a few notable exceptions (such as Parker, who isn't teaching this semester but is instead focusing hardcore on his thesis). It's interesting to see how quickly everything returns to "normal" once I'm back in the department. Everyone falls quickly back into their own individual grooves, and because I helm a unique position within the department -- former grad student, now professor there, and one who knows most of the grad students as well as fellow faculty -- I hold this sort of weird respect with many of the folks up there. To the grad students (some of them, anyway) I'm sort of like a Jedi Master -- if they have a problem that I've dealt with before, or if they're taking a class with a professor they've never had before, but I have, they come to me for advice and questioning. I am one of them, yet no longer one of them at the same time. There are only a few of us still in the department who can claim that sort of position and expertise, and mine is tenuous at best; it'll greatly dissipate once the class who started in 2011 graduates this year, as I know few members of the starting class of 2012 and even fewer of last fall's starting class. And, outside of the offices up there, I'm not exactly a particularly social person. In fact, I'm more of a hermit now than I was when I was a grad student. Part of that is because I have less money (no more student loans to live off of) but part of it is also because I have strange schedules and a different teaching load.

I found out today that I was lucky to get the classes I got this semester -- very lucky, apparently. Several of the longtime adjuncts didn't get anything this semester, or got one class at the most. I have three. Yes, I was proactive on getting as many courses as possible, and volunteered waaaaaay early for two of the three that I did get (since I knew nobody else would want them, the 102 and 210 on West campus), but getting the third 011 class on main campus on Tuesday night was probably more luck than anything else, and I do realize and appreciate that. Spring enrollment is down compared to this past fall, though applications for this coming fall have spiked 70% above what they were last year -- which is a mind-bogglingly high amount and means, if I'm still here and still teaching here, job security. The spike has been attributed to the success of the basketball team, and I'm sure that's a big part of it, yes, but probably not all of it. It will be interesting to see what opens up when it comes to funding and sections of new courses for the fall when they begin readying the schedule this spring given this spike in applications. Still, it's a bit disheartening to hear that some of my colleagues -- some who have been adjuncting for years, much longer than me -- were unable to get classes this semester. We've also apparently hired on a new adjunct to teach lit courses as well, someone with a PhD, so even those adjuncts who primarily taught lit in the past are now teaching a few composition courses instead. I find the entire situation fascinating to a certain degree -- it shows just how unstable planning a career in low-level academia can be, and sometimes is.

Anyway. Ahem. The shuttle bus makes those circles around campus for the entirety of the class day until 10PM, so even if I have to use it every time I teach on main campus this semester (and believe me, after the parking nightmare this morning, I'll more than likely choose to do so) I'll be able to catch it there and back with no problem. My 011 class is supposed to run from 7:05-9:45PM, and even though it's once a week, it will more than likely never run past 9PM at the latest. I don't believe in keeping my students in class any longer than they have to be there, and once I'm done for the day, it's not like I make up extra shit to do in order to be able to kill time.

However, last night that class was a huge thorn in my side, and it turned out to be one of the most interesting, strangest classes I've ever taught in my time as a college-level instructor.

Let me explain.

I teach my 011 class in the Engineering Building. Yes, that's the building's actual name and designation. For an "Engineering Building," the floorplan is put together in an appallingly terrible fashion. Most of the building is offices, and they're centered in a huge, long cluster that takes up 90% or so of the first floor. On one end of the building's first floor is a classroom, and on the other end is another classroom. You can't walk from one end of the building to the other, as there are no inside hallways. No, you have to go outside and walk around the building to go into one of the classroom entrances. Apparently there are other classrooms upstairs, though as I've never taught in that building before now (and still haven't, but we'll get to that) it's confusing as fuck. 

One of my close friends (one of the lovely ladies in my wedding, actually) taught her own 011 class over there yesterday morning, in the same room I was to teach mine in. She told me how to get in and out so that I wouldn't be confused. I was still confused anyway, but much less than I would have been otherwise if I would've tried to figure it out by myself.

I left the department early so that I could get over there well before 7 and set up the classroom. I had to find it first, of course, and I had paperwork and the like to do (rosters, readying the syllabi and the diagnostic exam, etc) before I would start the class. When I found the room, two of my students were already there, standing out in the hallway in front of the door. Why were they standing in front of the door? Because the door was locked.

I should take a moment here to make the point that I have never been locked out of a classroom I've been scheduled to teach in. Never. Have I been locked out of my office or the main office on campus? Yes, I have. But never a classroom. All classroom doors are, generally speaking, perpetually unlocked -- even when the rest of the building gets locked up for the night or over holidays. Even more than that, my friend had taught in that room that morning, so it's not like it hadn't seen use all day long. I doubt she was the only one to teach in there yesterday, either.                

So. The door's locked. It's after 7PM -- all departmental staff who occupy the offices in that building have left for the night (they leave at 5). Even some of the outside doors were locked down, which made no sense at all. I told my students who were there early to stay there outside the door, as I would see if there was anyone around who could unlock it for us. I walked around the outside of the building (for probably a third or fourth time), and was lucky enough to find two of the Engineering staff members still in one of the offices. Neither of them had a key, and more than that, neither of them could explain or understand why the room was locked in the first place. The maintenance staff for the university, or at least for that building, goes on their lunch hour at 7PM, meaning they were unavailable to come unlock the door as they generally go off-campus (or at least off the grid for an hour or so) for their lunch.

"About the only thing I can think of to do," one of the two guys said, "is to call the campus police and have them come unlock the door."

So, he dialed the number and handed me the phone. It rang once, someone picked up and didn't say anything, and then immediately hung up on me.

...the hell?

He dialed again, and I once more took the phone. This time it rang off the hook without anyone answering, probably twenty times. I hung up.

"It's not a huge deal," I said, the wheels already turning in my head to try to figure out how to salvage my first night of class. "Really, all I need to do is give them the syllabus and give them a brief introduction to the course and the books. I can do that in the hallway if I have to."

"Well, you shouldn't have to do that," they replied.

"No, but if there's nothing else to be done about the situation tonight since everyone's gone, eh, it can't be helped."

By this time I had already scrapped plans to administer the diagnostic essay -- it's not like students can write an essay for me while standing in the hallway, and because of the time that had already been wasted trying to unlock the door, I wasn't sure they would've had adequate time to do it anyway after I would've gone over the syllabus. I thanked them for their help and apologized for being a burden, and went back outside to once more walk my way back around the building to deliver the news to my students.

A few seconds later, one of the two Engineering guys came out to get me before I got too far away. "We reached campus police," he said. "They're sending someone over to unlock the door."

This was...oh, 7:20 or so, a good fifteen minutes after my class should have started. I thanked him again, and went back to my students outside the classroom to tell them the situation and simply wait on the campus police to let me in.

We waited, in the hallway outside the classroom -- which is closed off from the rest of the building and makes a room roughly the size of my Man Cave here at home -- for thirty-five minutes. No campus police showed up to unlock the door. Finally, at around 8PM, when I knew the class wouldn't have time to do much even if the room would be unlocked between then and the end of the night's class, I distributed the syllabus to all of them and covered it right there in the hallway, teaching my standard lecture as we all stood there without chairs, still all wearing our coats. I went over all the course policies, showed them the books and gave them approximate prices for them (I would later post an announcement on Blackboard with Amazon links for them) and I did what I could. I couldn't formally take roll, obviously, and I couldn't give them the diagnostic, but I did want to give an overview of what the class would be like when we actually settled into it and began real lessons. By the time I'd done all I could, it was 8:30, 8;40 or so, and there was still no sign of campus police anywhere -- so I dismissed and sent them all home.

Full disclosure here, of course -- I have the campus police on speed-dial in my phone. I've always had them on speed-dial in case there's an emergency that needs to be taken care of. However, judging from my previous two experiences in calling them last night, and knowing that even if they showed up at that point it wouldn't really do any good for the sake of holding an actual class 90 minutes into it, I didn't bother.

I got the shuttle back up to my car at the Metroplex, and drove home -- stopping at Walmart for a few minutes first to pick up some essentials (thank you, Discover card). I talked to Daisy on Skype for a bit, and then ate dinner and went to bed. I didn't get up until 2PM. Apparently, I needed the sleep.

I told the department, of course, about the locked-out situation. About all I can really do for next week is to call the Physical Plant beforehand to make sure that their custodian for that building always leaves the door unlocked on Tuesday nights, as aside from them the only people who can open classrooms are the campus police. And, well, we already know how well that went.

Tonight I teach my evening class, 210, on the West campus -- and tomorrow morning I teach my other 102 class over there before I'm done for the week. I'll probably spend more time driving back and forth tonight than I'll actually spend in the classroom, since (again) it's the first night of that class, there are only eight of them, and I don't necessarily have a whole lot to cover other than "hey, here are your books and this is the syllabus, see you next week." I'm lucky that said 210 class this semester only has eight students, as that cuts down my workload considerably for that class. I also just prepped their first assignment of the semester for them, which I'll distribute next week. That class was, by far, the easiest one to teach last semester -- the only thing that made it difficult was the then eight-week timeframe. I don't have to worry about that this semester, as it's a full-semester course.

On that note, I need to get a shower and may also get something to eat, so that I don't have to starve throughout my class tonight until I get home. I also have to get gas on the way down there this evening, as driving the detour and then scouring the campus for parking spaces yesterday morning killed the gas mileage in my car for the day/week. I'll more than likely have to get gas every Wednesday from this point forward, unless I top it off on a Thursday afternoon, or something.