The first job I selected for the fourth district I am now in may still be coming, but the second job was a two-day job for 8th grade language arts.  It was at the school where I know a few of the kids from my church.  As it turns out the school is only about a half mile from my church too.  I noticed on the map that this school was comprised of two buildings: an elementary and a junior high school.  As such, I did not expect to run into them since they are in elementary.  As it turns out, the schools were connected and there is some shared space such as the cafeteria.  I still didn’t run into them on the first day though.  It was actually the second day when I was entering the building that I saw two of them.  They were early because they were doing broadcasting, which is becoming increasingly common in schools these days.  At this school I would guess the elementary and junior high sides share this as well, with the elementary using it in the morning and the junior high in the afternoon during their homeroom.

This day was divided into two-period blocks again, another common thing in junior high/middle school that I did not have when I was in junior high.  Reading and other english classes were separate.  Would you believe I had a dedicated spelling class in 6th grade?  “What class do you have next- math?  Gym?  Social studies?”  “No, I have spelling.”  I don’t even recall what we did all week outside of the pre- and post-tests.  I do remember some of the tests were verbal though, and not a fun game like sparkle either.  There was one time they gave me the word “anxiety” and I mumbled something like “angziety” but when asked to repeat myself louder I changed my answer and got it right- total luck.

The first two blocks were 8th grade as the job description promised.  On Thursday they had a test which followed the daily “caught ya”  sentence correction.  Easy enough for me.  Following that we started an Edger Allan Poe story in their books.  Rather than reading it together there was a CD recording.  Unfortunately this was so soft the room had to be absolutely silent in order to hear the reader.  We only got through a few pages of this.  I tried to play it on the DVD player and see if it came out any louder through the TV than the portable CD player, but oddly enough the DVD player didn’t recognize the CD.  Did it only play DVDs?  First time I’ve ever encountered a DVD player that didn’t play CDs, unless it was just this one for some reason.

The last block was 7th grade.  They started the same way, with a daily sentence and a test.  The same test in fact as eighth grade.  Huh?  She gives the same lesson to both grades?  Well, not in every case as it turns out.  Following the test we did vocabulary and were supposed to do a worksheet on symbolism in poetry afterward, though we ran out of time before finishing the vocabulary.

Between these blocks was the 4th period lunch, starting at 10:07.  I guess I should really say breakfast.  Remember I mentioned the two schools sharing some space?  Well this early lunch was a consequence of that.  I am pleased to say I didn’t truly get a chance to eat until 1:30.  The teacher I was subbing for only had the first and last periods of (not counting homeroom, which follows the last period).  She apparently has lunch duty during 4th.  As the general rule goes, if the teacher has a job (s)he gets paid extra for, the sub doesn’t do it.  If it’s part of the regular duties, the sub has to do it too.  Some schools pay a stipend for lunch duty, some don’t.  This one does, so even though I didn’t get to eat until late I was quite happy because this school is an exception to the rule and gives subs a chance to earn stipend pay in cases like this, so I did! 🙂

The last ten minutes of the day was homeroom.  That’s right, ten minutes.  Well, they had to fit in the broadcast announcements some time, and elementary uses the room at the start of the day, so enter homeroom period.  There is not enough time to work on homework in the last few minutes following announcements, so the kids get to chat.

Friday was similar to Thursday, except the plans were different.  8th grade watched a video, again on Edgar Allan Poe, and 7th grade finally got to work on POEtry (sorry, my bad attempt at a pun) once they finished vocabulary.  Following homeroom, I got a surprise: another student from my church.  He’s in 7th grade now, but when he was in 4th grade I had him on the weekends.  He should have been with me for 5th grade too, except he was allowed to start going to the church’s junior high program for some reason I never fathomed.  Ironic, considering as far as school is concerned this district doesn’t start junior high until 7th grade.  I was going to mention this to his dad since I volunteer with him, but he wasn’t there this weekend.

So, how was your week? 🙂

No one as far as I know asked the question posed in the title, but today I certainly felt that way, as the nerd that is, not the one asking the question. I suspect my brother felt the same way. You see, we went to the funeral of someone we have never met. As such, we never met her family either so I am certain more than one person was wondering, “Who are they?”

Let me start at the beginning.  About twenty years ago my uncle met a woman and her family.  Eleven years ago they started seeing each other.  They never did get married, so I can’t call her my aunt, but they were close just the same.  In all that time none of us were ever introduced to his girlfriend; I’m not sure why.  A couple of months ago she was diagnosed with brain cancer, apparently inoperable, and was given a prognosis of just several months.  Then, the cancer showed itelf to be extremely aggressive and about about a week ago I learned her prognosis was downgraded to just a couple of weeks.  Less than a week later she was gone.

I suppose the wake yesterday would have been a more appropriate time for near strangers like us, but we didn’t make it so we went to the funeral today instead.  I pretty much went just to support my uncle and my mother as again I never met his girlfriend or her family.  She did leave behind several grievers though including children and grandchildren, so my uncle wouldn’t have been her first husband had they gotten married.  I must have looked like robotman at this funeral.  How can one be sad and grieved when he doesn’t even know the subject of the funeral?  Truthfully, as far as sadness goes I do tend to be kind of a robot at times.  Even at my father’s funeral I never broke down, and you can’t get much closer to someone to be grieved over than a parent (or child to put the bond in the other perspective), with the exception of a spouse. Needless to say my uncle was very grieved and like my mother with her spouse, JustJ with his, and countless others who have lost the one closest to them, he will not soon get over this (nor should he, if anyone thinks I am suggesting this).

The funeral was a three part affair.  We met at the funeral home and any who wished to were able to make last respects at this time.  Though I had never met her and thus didn’t need to see her body I nonetheless joined the line as we processed past her and out the door to the vehicular procession, the part that drivers everywhere are always thrilled about 😉 .  We headed to part two- the church where the funeral would be held.  It was a Catholic service, so I found much of the ritual unfamiliar and I found I could not join in many of the prayers.  Those prayers were either to Mary, to the Saints, or just prayers for the deceased.  As a Protestant I do not believe in any of those.  I pray to God the Father directly with Jesus as my only intercessor, and I believe once dead a person is judged immediately and then goes on to one of two places so therefore prayers for them are useless.  Prayers for the family and others still living on the other hand are more than welcome and I either joined in at these points or prayed in this fashion during the other prayers.

Part three of the service was the long procession to the cemetery.  It was at this point we made our departure and headed home.  My other uncle was also there and chose to stay so at least there was someone still there for my one uncle from his own family.  I do hope everything went well with it.  I expect we will be seeing my uncle and my grandmother soon.  My mother is very close to them both even if I don’t get close to my extended family.  She tells me there is a lunch planned for the near future.  Perhaps I’ll pay for it if my uncle will let me.  He always covers these things and it would only be right if he didn’t have to this time.

Wednesday was one of those specials days. That is, subbing for a gym teacher. But first, let me talk about the days before this one. Monday, I took a full day job at one of the furthest schools from me. It was a bit of a mixed bag as well as a slight disappointment. I knew this was an 8th grade teacher so I was prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was the fact that this was a half-day job that was mistakenly entered in as a full day, so I ended up only working half the day. Actually only a couple of hours. This allowed me time to seek a half-day elsewhere, but I didn’t find one. I did find a half day for Tuesday and took it knowing that a job would be hard to find that day since most school districts had off for Veteran’s Day, but not for Monday afternoon. The mixed bag for this day was the teacher taught both mat and science. When he came back, he taught social studies. Jack of all trades here, like an elementary teacher? 😀

So next day I didn’t set my alarm as my half-day was in the afternoon. Just after six, r-i-n-g! Job assignment opened up for the morning. Cool. 8) So after quickly eating breakfast and getting ready since I had to be there in an hour, I filled in for the special-ed reading teacher at a junior high. Unlike my two periods yesterday, I had to work four periods. Breaking even I suppose. These were actually two block classes so it didn’t seem like four periods anyway. Then I was off to my afternoon assignment. Arriving there forty minutes early (it was almost down the street with a start time an hour after my end time at the other school), I sat in the lounge and had an early lunch. This assignment was pretty much like my assignment last week for two days. I met with a couple of groups of kids in the teacher’s mini-room, typical of some special ed pullout teachers, and went to help in another room later on. Well, I tried anyway- it wound up being another pullout. The last students of the day didn’t need me, so I had an extra break at the end. 🙂

Back to Wednesday.  The gym teacher was still there when I arrived, so he explained what he wanted me to do with the kids.  They started off with laps around the gym then moved into kickball.  I had 5th grade at the start, and they of course knew what they were doing.  The second class had a lot of home runs because the teacher set the bar for home runs pretty low.  At least for the older kids.  I’m sure with the younger ones the zone is fine, but with so many 5th graders kicking home runs it really needed to be set higher.  This reminds me of playing kickball outdoors when the weather is nice.  It is really different.  No walls, no ceiling, no automatic home runs, no ground rule doubles when the ball hits the basketball backboard…  Anyway, back to the present.  The second half of the morning was Kindergarten.  After they did their five laps, we practiced basic motor skills like hopping, skipping, galloping, etc before going into kickball.  From 5th to 5- quite a difference.  Now I had to teach them kickball, but they can only take in so much at once.  The real teacher will have to reteach them I’m sure, adding rules I didn’t cover.  There were a few who had played before, but to most it was a new thing.  The afternoon was quite different.  There is a student teacher in this class who was out observing another student teacher in action at another school in the morning.  In the afternoon, they swapped positions and came to this school.  Kickball struck out and the new home run was dodgeball.  Bad baseball analogy aside, it wasn’t regular dodgeball, but a variation with two medics on scooters (those square things on four wheels sat on by gym students across the nation, not a Razor if you’re wondering) who can tag their teammates who are out to get them back in.  Additionally there are pins set up at the back of either side that can be knocked over.  If all of them get knocked over, the other team wins.  During the afternoon I of course took a back seat in all of this, but when the student teacher inserted himself into the game, I just had to join the other team.  😈  Too bad I am terrible at most sports, dodgeball included, but it was a blast anyway.  I’ll have to join in more in the games on the weekends at church.

Today was 7th and 8th grade LA/Lit.  More on that tomorrow though since I will be doing the same thing.

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Three months ago I realized I would need to head off to sub once again.  At that time I made a decision to not re-sign on with a district that only rarely called me last year and was still on the slowly fading sub caller system (that is, not online) this year so more of the same was expected.  Ironically, in that district last year I learned that another district I had worked in for about a year and a half moved their sub system online when I found out their former sub caller now had a job in that district, so I decided to go ahead and sign up.  So, a little over 2½ months ago I received my sub packet from them by email.  It took them over a week to get it to me; little did I realize this would be a foreshadowing of things to come.  I finally made it in for fingerprinting in early September, at which time they accepted my paperwork.  I was told then that there was one person inputting the subs, in order, one at a time and that it would take a couple of weeks before my paperwork was confirmed and I was entered into their system.  Two months and a couple of phone calls later I logged into the system for one of the districts I’m already in to look for future jobs (particularly for this Friday- I signed up for one school a couple weeks ago and the grade was not listed so I figured, why not?  It’s a K-8 school so my chances of a grade that I wanted was pretty good, so of course when I went there Monday for another job I found out she was Kindergarten- a grade I oh, so don’t want to teach if I can avoid it, though I will if I have to).  Now understand that the new district uses the same system as this one that I’m already in.  So, I logged in and something showed up on the screen that I had never seen.  It turned out to be asking me for a pin number for a multi-district login now that I am in two districts on that system.  Yes!  Finally!

An hour later, I now have a confirmed job in said district for next week.     A 7:40 start time for 3rd grade.  Hmm.  A little early for elementary.  I think I had better look up a newspaper article too.  I remember reading that third grade at one of their schools has overloaded classes (30+ students).  If it’s this school I may just have another first for this district- first canceled job. Maybe.  I am now keeping an eye out for a certain school in a certain grade where I know a couple of church kids of mine attend…

Well this weekend was a special one, for more than one reason.  First my friends from Ohio came out and visited.  Thbey came out to see their family and then came over here for the “nightcap” before they headed back.  It took us a bit to decide on where to go for entertainment.  For a very populated area I couldn’t think of much in that line.  There is a lot of outdoor entertainment during the warmer months, but it was cold and wet so that was out.  Indoor water park down the street?  Too expensive.  Laser tag?  Kids not old enough.  So we settled on Chuck E. Cheese.  We got there and it was so packed that people were making their own parking spots at the side of the building.  Fortunately some people were leaving so we got a spot.  Inside, C bought a bunch of tokens which the older girls used for the most part.  A couple of times C would raid the cup of tokens, but the two girls used most of them.  There were a couple of rides, some skill games, a video roller coaster, and video games.  The favorite seemed to be the Nickelodeon race game which basically stole borrowed heavily from Mario Kart.  The younger of the two could not reach the accelerator when she played, so her older sister did that job for her while she steered.  I didn’t get to talk to C and L much at this time, but it was quality time with their two oldest.  Following CEC, we went to a local hot dog joint, down the street from me actually, and had us some good food.  There is where we were able to talk, that is between young C spitting up and some issues that crept up with the girls eating.  From there they dropped me off (we all went in one vehicle), changed the baby, and they were off for home and I was off to part 2 of this post…

…Drama.  This was my cast’s weekend to perform so I had to be at my church at 3:30 for rehearsal.  Between making a DVD for another friend in OH and the visit this mornig I had no time to shower so I dragged my grubby self over to the church.  We found out that the learning center where we perform was in use so we rehearsed in the room next door.  I gave the two giggling kids some candy (4th and 6th grade) and we were slowly able to get through the lines.  We then did it with blocking a few times.  Through all this time the guest author (there is a different “guest author” every week) never showed up.  Steve, the children’s pastor, didn’t know anything about it so I gave the director a call and he was surprised that he hadn’t shown up.  I hung up and a few minutes later Steve got a call from him and it turns out he wouldn’t be coming, so Steve would have to fill in (again…) for the night.  The one who was supposed to be there would be there for the Sunday performances.  Now, because Steve is the kids’ pastor he had many other duties to do so we still didn’t get to rehearse with him.  This may or may not have contributed to what happened next during the performance.  Bear in mind that I am an experienced actor and rehearsal had actually gone fairly well, especially line-wise by the time we got to the performance.  I did my puppet part well, but when I walked out to do my live character, I started off fine but then I forgot my lines!  How…?  Anyway, I at least stayed in character and the others tried to cover until I was able to recover a few lines later.  I almost missed my puppet entrance after that because I was mad at myself.

Today’s performances went fine though I am happy to say.  There was a line flub by the kids in the first performance today, but mothing like my flub last night.  I will miss this drama for the next two months.  We will be off for the holidays.  Next week is the last one until January, but it is a different cast so I am done until that time.  Hey, more time to memorize for the next one, right? 🙂

I only made one post about work last week?  Well, I was depressed about the state of the elections I guess.  I truly believe we are in for a very rough four years, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.  I know who my messiah is and He isn’t a politician.  So my last post was about Wednesday, so that day is covered.  Thursday and Friday were the same job, a special ed teacher.  The interesting thing about this job was that it was a teacher-grade job, but the duties were more or less the exact same as the prior week’s teaching assistant job!  The difference must be behind the scenes.  The job was itinerant (traveling) but I didn’t know that until I showed up at the wrong school Thursday morning.  A phone call later to verify where I was supposed to start, I was on my way to the other school.  Got there, got started.  Detailed plans- good.  Start off in 4th grade where there is a student who appears to be autistic.  They’re still working on his diagnosis.  I helped where I could and then I was off to another 4th grade class to help other students with writing.  I edited the papers of a couple of students who were on the teacher edit stage and then it was time to go back to the first class.  I pulled a couple of students and worked with them outside of the room for a while, and then it was intervention time- something that was skipped last week at my assistant job because I had no plans for it.  Half a dozen third-graders came in and we did a reading lesson about visualization and bugs.  That ended and it was time to go to the other school.  Only a half hour before I was scheduled to be in another class so no time to stop for lunch.

So now I was at the school I had initially gone to in the morning.  Went to her desk and- no plans.  After the detailed plans of the morning (which only included the morning!) there were no plans here?  Say what?  Okay, she had a schedule, so I just went to the rooms in question and followed whatever the teacher had for me.  Lunch was 45 minutes after my start at this school (and I did bring a lunch by the way- I just like to stop for lunch instead when I travel, in which case I would save the lunch I brought for another day), and that’s when I learned that the teacher I subbed for was not expecting an afternoon sub.  Nice.  In fact, she initially expected no sub at all- she was apparently told that her position doesn’t get a sub (this is her first year there by the way).  Interesting considering I have subbed for many teachers in this district with her job title.  Somehow that changed and she expected one for the morning only.  Well, I continued to follow her schedule for the afternoon, which included two 5th grade classes and a 2nd grade class.  The second grade class had a student who was in a way the equivalent of the 4th grader I mentioned in the morning.  No intervention group this afternoon, but I did notice she had one tomorrow.  I was getting a little worried about that.

After the last class I returned to her office, and surprise- the teacher I was subbing for was there, due into a meeting after school.  That would solve the plans problem for tomorrow, including the intervention class. Whew.  She explained to me more about the miscommunication and that she would be sure to have plans for me the next day.

Friday went much the same as Thursday, with only a slight variation.  Same classrooms, same kids.  Today I gave spelling tests to a few of the kids who had special lists.  I did this for a few kids each in the 4th grade classes.  For 3rd grade intervention I finished the lesson from the day before and let them read silently for the rest of the time.  Since I knew I had an extra 15 minutes today for travel I had time to pick up a Wendy’s lunch and scarf it down before 5th grade intervention.  This class just had a writing assignment so no big problems there.  Like the morning, the rest of the time was spent in the same classrooms as yesterday.  A few written notes later I was on my way out for a nice weekend.  Next up: drama.

Construction- gotta love it.  Construction on the roads, construction of buildings, and so on.  Just yesteday when I went to vote- nice short lines by the way, a far cry from the two-hour wait I expected- one of the volunteers there noticed where I live and mentioned she lives down the street in a two-story house.  Of course I was thinking, “This is a ranch neighborhood, except for…”  Then she completed my thought by adding that they had just added a second story.  Construction.  Just a few years ago it seemed like every fifth house was being made into a McMansion, a topic proudly taken on and condemned by the King of the HIll crew just last weekend by the way.  If there can be one good thing said about this economic downturn it means less of these teardowns.

Today I can add construction in classrooms to the list of construction to deal with.  I subbed in music today and the music room was under construction, so I had to hold class elsewhere.  The other music/drama teacher gave up her space to me and decided to hold her classes in the regular classrooms so it didn’t bother me.  We didn’t do much.  It was a last-minute illness so the teacher just set me up with videos for lesson plans.  For the morning she left two alternatives- a Beethoven movie titled “Beethoven Lives Upstairs” and a movie titled “Bach to Rock.”  Well, Beethoven wasn’t in the building let alone upstairs, so we watched the other one.  Ironically when I went to the library after work the Beethoven movie was on the rack with recently returned movies.

There was one more class before noon where I read a book to the kids and then in the afternoon I travelled to another school.  Fortunately the road construction that had been going on a couple of weeks before in front of that school was finished.  I had stupidly left the lesson plans at the other school so I upset the secretary at the afternoon school by having the morning school fax it over.  Apparently the fax machine was in a room where only the secretary could retrieve it and she was very busy.  That drama over, the afternoon classes were, well, drama so naturally we watched sing-a-long videos. 😛

Well, that was my day today.  Monday as I previously mentioned was 8th grade math.  No teaching, just worksheets.  And a practice ISAT extended response problem for the Algebra classes.  The only interesting thing to write about was homeroom at the end of the day.  I may have blogged about a boy recently from Italy a couple of weeks ago when I did ELL.  Well, that boy was in my homeroom.  Actually, the homerooms in this district have two teachers and here is where it gets interesting.  The other teacher is the Italian teacher.  That’s right, this school has an Italian class.  I subbed for her last year incidentally.  I wonder why they chose to put this boy in this particular homeroom… 😛

It’s been a while since I wrote a church post, so here we go.  A while back I mentioned the 4th and 5th grade moving into a new room.  The old one was getting kind of cramped and so when the church redesigned the area in the front of the church, adding a mini-café and some TV screens for the live video feed from the worship center, we were able to take the room where the live video feed was.  This room doubles as a junior high room on Sunday afternoons and has a large portion dedicated to games.  There are four TVs for video games, thankfully not used for our group.  There are also two carpet ball tables, four foosball tables (not all in good shape), two air hockey tables, and one of those mini-basketball games.  Now you may have heard of most of what I listed, but you may not have heard of carpet ball.  This is a game that uses ten pool balls plus the cue ball.  each player gets five balls.  The field is long and narrow (about one foot wide by ten feet long) and the object is to knock your opponents balls into his pit (each side has a pit).  The picture above shows a game in progress.  No, the kids aren’t from my church- I just grabbed the pic off the web.  As you can imagine the kids love these games.  Of course it makes the parent’s job harder, peeling them away at the end… 😀

Besides the games, the new room has a divider that cuts off the games during the main time, a projector hanging from the ceiling that broke down this weekend, a better sound system than in the old room, and some couches to sit on during small group time, though some groups leave the room to hold their small groups.  We did this in the old days too when we had this room, before we were moved upstairs when the upstairs was new.  The teaching and worship area is larger as well.  Large enough that some forward-thinking person decided to set up the chairs in three sections.  You see, in the old room we only had room for two sections which kind of became the “boy’s side” and the “girl’s side,” distinctions we never had in mind.  The first day one of the leaders was watching the kids as they claimed a chair and commented on how it was fun watching them try to puzzle out which was the boy’s side and which was the girl’s side.  🙂

The student from Moody Bible Institute who was a leader a few years ago when he was in high school and now came back as a study for his class, taught today at the second service and recorded himself for his class.  He was a little nervous at first I could tell, but he got into it and did a fine job.  One of these days I’ll get a chance to teach in the new room, but the children’s pastor, Steve, wants me to record the kids and make weekly shorts to show at the beginning of class.  I did a little too good of a job on the DVD I made for my cabin… 😛  As soon as he gives me a camera on which to do it, I will, probably in two weeks as I am doing drama next week.  The camera I used at camp really isn’t good enough as it was made to be a still camera first.

The calling idea is working well too.  I have called at least the parents of each member of my small group once so far and I should be giving another call either this or next week.  There is one student who gave me an unreadable number so I haven’t been able to call him yet though and I totally forgot to ask him this weekend about it.  I hope I remember next weekend.

Well, I think that’s enough for now.  Until Tuesday most likely.  Due to small group, Monday is a bad time for me to post.

Thursday was an interesting day.  I subbed for the gifted teacher at a middle school.  Fir some reason this teacher has only five classes instead of the usual six.  Two each of 7th and 8th grades, one 6th grade.  Now what happens when the reason for the teacher’s absence is because she took the 8th graders on a field trip?  Five – two = three.  Three classes, and a full days pay.  Wow.  To be fair I did check around for extra work, but none was to be had so I pretty much spent the rest of the day reading my book.  Friday I had a full contingent of classes though.  It was 7th grade math and the teacher was in the building helping with a tour of kids from the local Japanese school (school originally made for Japanese families who would be in the country for a year or two and didn’t want the children’s education disrupted from the normal Japanese school routine).  However, the tour didn’t start until the end of third period, so he was still around for the first classes.  The rest of the classes had me doing no teaching- he set them up as a homework day so they could independently work on a long assignment he gave them.  More book reading… No, not really.  I walked around and helped a bit, and more than once headed up to the board to go over some common problems I was getting a lot of questions about.  Not a bad day.  I will be at their rival school on Monday for 8th grade math.

So, not much excitement, and no- you may not have your minute back that you spent reading this post. 😛

Considering the topic of this blog one could assume that I am about to write a post about a Bart Simpson-esque student deciding to pull the fire alarm or set a trash can on fire for a gag, then get caught by police and dragged before a judge to learn that the story dad or grandpa told him about the things he did in his school days are not just considered not funny these days but actually a crime worthy of a hefty fine and/or community service.

Well, I’m not going to tell that story.  Instead this is about the trick-or-treaters who missed out on our house for the hour we took out of this evening to check up on my grandmother.  Things started out normal enough.  She called and the one she wanted to talk to was in the bathroom, so she said to have her call her back.  No problem, and thank– {click}.  Sigh.  My grandmother always hangs up immediately following her last word.  When she’s done, she’s done.  So, when the call is attempted to be returned- no answer.  Okay, maybe she’s in the bathroom this time.  Try again- nope.  And again.  Nada.  Keeps trying, and panic arises.  You see, my grandmother is 86 and I’m told was having some chest pains earlier today.  Okay, time to go over to her apartment to see if she’s all right, still attempting to make contact on the way.  We get over there and she is happily in discussion with a pastor who also sells household goods, I guess for extra income.  She loves the products he sells, or rather sold, as apparently he is quitting that line of business.

So, long story short (everybody now: TOO LATE! 😛 ) what happened is she unplugged the phone she had in her living room because it had too many cords and one of the buttons sticks.  That left her with her bedroom phone, which wouldn’t be a problem since her apartment is pretty small except she had the ringer turned off so she wouldn’t be woken up when asleep.  Doh!  We hooked back up her phone, explaining to her that she could still take calls even if she couldn’t dial any number with a 3 in it, and that I would be happy to get her a new phone ASAP.  No more troubles with not being able to call her I hope.

Okay, we return and only get maybe two more trick-or-treating groups for the rest of the night.  Where have they all gone these last few years, seriously?  Maybe scares like the latest one of tainted chocolate candy from China [don’t worry unless you’re in Canada, says the company]?

If you really want to hear about my jobs these last couple of days, I think I’m going to have to make you wait until tomorrow.  It’s 11 now and I’m tired.  Good night.