Observations

So I had this all-day workshop thingy at the central office, which turned out to be mighty odd, though not unpleasant. There were about 30 people in the room -- very noisy -- from all the schools in town, K-12, making plans for an in-service being held next month that we are presenting. The six of us from the high school sat together, making our plans. We needed computers to work on, so we went to the COW.

COW stands for Computers on Wheels. It's a cabinet that holds about 20 laptops; the cabinet is plugged into the wall and the network, and the laptops communicate with the network wirelessly through the cabinet. Except someone had unplugged it all, so it took forever to get started, and then all the laptops died in five minutes because they hadn't been charged. Fun.

Then the middle school librarian and I got diverted into working on the glitch with our new software, and it progressed from there. The high school group ultimately got our basic plans made, though.

I did get to make someone's day, which you don't get to do that often, so that was nice. Before we all got started, a woman sat down next to me and said hello to me by name, and then something about that I probably didn't recognize her, but she was so-and-so, and how were my girls? And I recognized that both R and K had been in her class for 7th grade social studies. And I said the girls were well, and thank you, that K was in the process of becoming a social studies teacher. Oh, she was delighted, as she should have been. K had an excellent series of social studies teachers from 7th grade on up, and I'm sure they all contributed to the road she's on. It's fun to be able to tell someone something like that.

And here's the afternoon's fun. First, the Other Chai dropped in to join the group for the afternoon, for some reason. Then the now seven high school people debated the injustice of our having to be in this meeting today on the elementary school teachers' schedule -- 8.30 to 3.30 -- when not only does the high school staff get out earlier because we start earlier, but that today, all high school kids were being dismissed at 1.45 to go to a re-scheduled football game, and any staff that wanted to go would be dismissed at 1.45, too. So someone asked the administrator in charge of today's meeting if we seven could leave early -- we were done with our work -- and go to the game, too. Absolutely! So we left when we were told we could, and knew that no one at the high school would know if we were there, or still at central office, or at the game, so ... Yeah.

It was good to be home, too, because after months of my allergies attacking my skin in the form of hives, the fall has brought back my old familiar symptom of horribly itchy and sticky eyes, and I needed to close them for at least a half hour just to continue to live.

Later on, after K got home and we went out on an errand or two, I saw something that was a familiar sight in my childhood -- I did it myself -- but now looked so wrong that it stood out right away. I was turning a corner, waiting for a car to pass, and as it did, I saw that there was a little boy, maybe four or five years old, standing on the floor in the back seat and leaning close to his father, the driver. They were happy, smiling, talking. But seriously. If you don't have the sense to use a car seat, at least doesn't everyone know that a child should wear a seatbelt in a car? All I could think was that if that car got hit from behind, the kid was going right over dad's shoulder and straight through the windshield. How does everyone not know this in the 21st century? Fifty years ago, it was different; nobody knew. People routinely held babies in the arms in the front seat, because it was the safest way at that time to carry a baby in a car. There were no seats designed for infants, only car-beds that you could lay on the backseat. When I was a kid, I often slept on the back shelf about the backseat when were on long car trips, or sometimes -- on the Connecticut Turnpike, if that's what that road was called -- I would climb over the back of the front seat and sit between my parents so my sister could have the whole backseat. It was different then, but now we know better. Don't we?

So tomorrow I have to get dressed up and go to a wedding. Oy. We're not going to the ceremony, just the reception. It will be noisy, and we'll be sitting with all of the Hubs' work friends. Can't hardly wait.


WATCHING LAW & ORDER :: ENTRY #1587