Long time, no post. My apologies. We've been very busy this week. Since this is the last week most of my office will be at work, I've been slammed at work with a bunch of things to do. Thankfully the week ended very well because I got my performance appraisal from by boss and I "greatly exceeded expectations." I'm getting a raise and a bonus, plus I will be getting the annual government cost of living increase, so January should be a great month! Christi and I are very excited about that.
Christi's work has also been very busy, as always. We went to her work Christmas party Friday evening. It was surprisingly well-attended and I met a lot of her teachers friends that I had only heard of. The things keeping Christi the busiest is her kids. The kids know Christmas is right around the corner and they aren't exactly the best behaved bunch, although they have made significant improvements. To make matters worse, Bibb County is a horribly run school district. Christi found out that they are having a budget crunch and here is a list of some of the things they are going to have to do and might have to do:
- Have to try to teach in the dark with the blinds open to save energy
- Taking light bulbs out of the classroom to save energy
- All personal refrigerators and microwaves must be removed from classrooms by Christmas break
- Copies per teacher per month have been reduced from 400 to 200. When you have a class of 22 students, that's only 9 works sheets/tests/homework per month! How can you teach if you can't give lessons or homework? Some teachers have upwards of 32 students.
- Teachers may be asked to furlough days - that is, work 5 but only get paid for 4.
- The lights in the hallways are being turned off to save energy
- Substitute teachers are no longer being used starting January 1. When teachers have to miss, their students will be dispersed into other classrooms - despiter the fact that most teachers (including Christi) are already over the state-imposed kids per teacher limit.
- Long-term subs SHOULD be ok, but there is no 100% guarantee. This is particularly important to Christi because 2 of the 4 1st grade teachers are pregnant and are due in March/April time frame. We hope they are still able to hire long-term subs. That is too many kids for too long to be dispersed into other classrooms - i.e., her classroom.
I'm sure there are some other things I forgot. Also, her principal has 2 Christmas trees, a blow-up snowman, and lighted decorations in the school lobby. She's decided to unplug 1 of these decorations - NEXT year! Makes sense, right? Lets take light bulbs out of classrooms and hallways but leave up the unnecessary Christmas decorations. That's just my view point, anyway. Christi really like a lot of her fellow teachers and the principal/vice-principal are good people, but the county and how it is ran is just sub-par, at best. I think she is going to try to stick it out one more year, but I'm not sure. She still have 4-5 more months to go, so we'll see what happens. Just pray for her to have patience to make it through these restrictions since they are for the rest of the school year, barring some miraculous discovery of money by the budgetary group. Enough of my ranting, back to what we have been doing.
Yesterday was my first day shopping. I went out by myself around 10am and stopped around 5pm. I got Christi a bunch of presents, although I am still looking for that one "big" present. I have a few ideas that I won't post, but I haven't decided which one I want to get, yet. I also got a lot of other people gifts throughout the day. Christi has been doing the majority of our shopping so we are almost through with everyone. Hopefully we will be done soon. I was a little surprised at how crowded the stores were yesterday. It's a definitely a good thing for our economy. The day after Thanksgiving was much less crowded, in my opinion. I did see a guy steal something while in line at Best Buy. Despite my attempts to tell the cashier and manager, they didn't even stop him to question him. Too busy to care, I guess. I'll have to remember that next time I'm in Best Buy. Overall it was a successful shopping trip, but at the same time I saw a lot of things - arguing for presents, rude people, etc - that really turned me off on the holiday season. What has my favorite holiday become?
Last night we went to a Christmas special at Ingleside Baptist Church. My grandfather and his wife are in the choir at Ingleside. It's the largest church in Macon with roughly 1800 members. Last night was the 2nd of 4 performances of their Christmas special. They have a very large choir that is excellent and also had their orchestra playing as well. The music was great, the message was great, and entire evening was really good. It was definitely a great experience after spending the whole day shopping. Seeing people remembering the true reason for Christmas was good, especially when they are far more talented musically that I will ever be! It was fun seeing my grandfather and Laverne up their singing. I was proud of them. After the performance, we went out to eat at Guiseppe's pizza with Christi's family, my dad, and Sappoo and Laverne. It was a great meal and a good time to catch up with everyone since we haven't been able to see them much lately because everyone has been busy.
The other days this week have been pretty full as well. After work, we either went grocery shopping, to my mom's house to fix her computer, shopping, or painting. I'm still working on the bonus room and I'm losing steam. I'm on the 4th coat of paint (2 primer, 2 color) for some areas. The dark blue is a pain to paint over. Thankfully, it looks like this should be the last coat. I'm hoping to finish it by tomorrow afternoon. Let's hope that I am able too. It has to be finished by Christmas week since I volunteered our house to host our Christmas get together on my dad's side of the family.
It's time for me to eat breakfast then get dressed to go to church. Sorry for the long, rambling post. That should get you caught up on where we are right now. I promise I'll post more than once a week! Have a great rest of the weekend.
