My mother left me a voicemail last night (apparently she called while I was either out of the room or out shopping, who knows) that I could only understand about half of, but it entailed wanting me to come out and visit alone now, before school starts, since the former girlfriend and I have broken up, or something like that.
Believe me, visiting my parents? That's the last thing on my mind right now. I have way too much stuff to deal with right now. There are many, many things that must be taken care of, the least of which is the former girlfriend's move, the landlord situation, and school starting back up. There's no way I can just pack up and leave town for a few days. At all. Sorry, but I just can't.
This has been one of the strangest, most surreal weeks of my life, and I need to take care of everything important that I can, as efficiently and as quickly as possible, so that I can move on with my life and so things can return to some semblance of normal. There's no way that any visit back to West Virginia is going to take place at any time in the foreseeable future, as there's just too many things to take care of here over the next three weeks or so. I have to finish my book, I have to make a few trips into the office at school and back, and I have to deal with switching over the cable bill and deal with whatever the lease here on the house will entail, the former girlfriend has to move (which I will probably help her with in some capacity) and I have to figure out what to do with the leaky hose on my car. None of these things can be avoided, and with the fall semester rapidly approaching, they have to be taken care of now.
The former girlfriend doesn't think the landlord thing will be a big problem; apparently this place was empty for two years before we began renting it, and she doesn't think it will be a big deal for him to switch my name to be the primary and either make a new lease or just continue with the one we have now with her name removed from it, if that. I just get panicky about the unknown, because I know what horrible luck I have in situations like this. Making that phone call to him really, really scares me, because few things go right when I need them to, and this is something that I really, really need to go right.
In other news, I received an email today from one of the department directors about the science/engineering class I'm supposed to be teaching in the fall. Or, at least, the class that I should be teaching, really.
As you may know, this summer I was supposed to be working for a few weeks with the director of the writing program within the English department to train, revamp the syllabus, and set up a game plan for me to teach a new class the department offers: science and engineering writing. I believe the spring semester was the first time it was offered (though it could have been available before, who knows), and the wife of our director was the instructor. As I have the most scientific experience and showed interest in teaching the class -- I worked as a laboratory assistant/technician in a microbiology laboratory on and off for five years -- I was picked by our director to take over this class once his wife got assigned sections of English 102. When that happened, I didn't sign up for summer sessions of teaching like the former girlfriend did, as I didn't know when my "training" for this new class would be taking place, and didn't want a schedule conflict involved. The training would have paid me roughly $2k over the summer to live on.
The funding for my training didn't come through, though -- budgets have been clamped down tightly through not only our department, but throughout the entire university -- and the deal fell through. Because of that I've been out-of-contact with most of my supervisors and higher-ups at the university for most of the summer, but was always told that training or not, I'd be able to get some official literature and/or a syllabus and game plan a bit early, so that I would be able to prepare for teaching this class -- as I was still scheduled to teach it.
Now, I'm not so sure.
I got an email this afternoon from the director's wife that said the department has just secured funding for the class, and that I would be able to get the syllabus around the 12th, but she wanted to know if I was teaching 101 or 102.
...say what?
I wasn't sure what this meant; as far as I know, the science/engineering writing class only has one level. I don't think there are two sections to it, like science writing 101 and science writing 102, for example, but I could be wrong. Then, I began to wonder about the funding -- if the funding just got cleared, that would explain why the class hasn't been offered on the course catalog up until this point...but it could also mean that I may have to wait until the spring to teach it.
I replied and told her that as far as I'd been told I was supposed to be teaching it this fall, but didn't know anything other than that because the funded training deal had fallen through and I hadn't gotten any more details on anything since then. I asked if she knew anything else about it if she would please let me know so I could get it sorted out, as I was sort of clueless on how it was going to work anyway. No, I did not use those words; I was much more eloquent and cheerful, just like I am in all work-related correspondence.
It's all a bit confusing, though. As of right now, like I said, none of us know what, when, or where we'll be teaching until that official paper schedule comes down from the department administrator. I did, however, email said administrator to tell her that if she does have me on a preliminary Tuesday/Thursday teaching schedule (for whatever class I teach, really) that I'd like it to stay that way so that it's not so taxing on the Monte Carlo. I haven't yet received a reply or confirmation, and probably won't.
So, we'll have to wait and see, I guess, on all fronts -- classes, moving, and landlords included.
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