Busy again, and dealin' with the same old shit.

I started a few new classes, a new semester, on Ft. Hood last night. They have a brand new building for us to teach in. Very nice, but it'll be nicer when the bugs all get worked out. The descriptions we got from the Vice Dean at the faculty meeting made it sound like they were gonna do it up right. Lots of high tech and stuff. It's gonna be a WiFi hot spot. Let's hope they live up to all that.

I had 42 students show up out of a class of 48 for the 4:45 class. Thing is, the room only has 40 desks, so a few guys had to drag chairs in from the foyer and sit in them. There was lots of that going on in this first week. The second class had room to spare. 29 in that one. I knew there would be chaos, but it was good to see my old colleagues and get back to work on base again.

One glitch... I decided to let the secretary there on base send my syllabi over to the main campus to be printed. I usually print my own down in Florence, but this time I decided to let them do it. They're anal as hell about this stuff in the office. The want to save all the money they can. Apparently the printers on the main campus use less ink. Who knows?

Thing is, the woman didn't have enough printed! It's not a big deal. A half dozen folks in the 4:45 class will have to wait till Thursday night for a syllabus. But shit, if you're gonna have us give you our printing to be done, at least do the fucking job right. Or let us do it ourselves!

Then, when I told the vice Dean, a spindly little pain-in-the-ass from Georgia, that I was in a room that was too small for my class, he passed the buck to his secretary (yep, the same one that's a friggin' WIZARD with the printing). He's an expert at explainin' why shit ain't his fault, and then turnin' things around and tryin' to be a hard ass. We've all seen too much of it.

"Tell Nita and she'll take care of it" he says. And then... "If you guys take chairs out of some room to give your students something to sit on, you better be sure you replace them when you're done."

Shit, PUT ME IN A ROOM THAT'S FUCKIN' BIG ENOUGH! How hard can it be? Let's see, they're there on base from the crack of dawn to 4:30. They have the enrolment numbers right there in front of them. They should have a list of rooms in their brand new shiny building, and how many chairs are in each room? Do the fuckin' math!

I called the lady today, while I was waiting for my grilled chicken on rye with chips. I told her about the issue and she passed the buck back to me. "Go ahead and move your class if you can find another room that's big enough and it's unoccupied." Shit. What the hell are you friggin' people good for? Remind me again?

Administrators! Pfffft!

Anyway, both are Government classes. Times like these make the job fun. Ain't it cool, what one election can do to derail the Presidents agenda?

I'll be driving back to Killeen tonight when the Prez gives his State Of My Party's Reelection Chances speech. I'll have the radio tuned to something better... Louder. The sunroof'll be open, with cigar smoke wafting out into the cool night air as I search the high beams for the odd deer, grazing along the road.

I'll head over to the old part of town and join my pool team for the nights festivities. Old Dave will be full of old stories and funny jokes about the Prez, and comments about the very tasteful smut I've passed on to him through the magic of email. It'll be a great night. We all won last week. Here's hopin' we can keep it up.

Anyway, I'm off. Cheers.

It's been a busy week, and it's gonna be another full weekend.

I started 6 new classes on base this week. I start out in the morning, the butt crack of dawn, with 2 classes back to back at the high school (8 to 10am). Those are 16 week classes and they're about half over. This week I started 3 separate hour long daily classes from 11:30 to 2:30 every day, and 3 evening classes - M/W night from 4:45 to 7pm and T/Th night from 4:45 to 7 and then 7:30 to 10pm. In all, about 220 students taking US History and Government. One word... POOPED. One more online class starts Monday, but that's easy money.

This evening I'll be doing the usual, Friday night Chinese food and high school football with Dad. Here's a video to put us in the right mood to chow down on the buffet line at Dynasty.

Mmmmeow, I can just taste the generals chicken now.

Denise and I are taking a trip to Ft. Worth Saturday afternoon. We'll try to get there in time to have dinner, get stuffed on brochette shrimp and spicy queso dip and start to get liqueured up at Pappasito's (yep, they have one in Ft. Worth too). Then we'll head over to Billy Bob's on the North side of town and sit through a concert by the venerable Peter Frampton. We've got center seats, six rows back. Should be cool. After that we'll be gettin' a hotel room and spendin' the night in town.

Sunday morning we'll rise early and meet up with my buddy Jim, wolf down some breakfast burritos, pack a cooler and go sit in the sun and watch an Air Show all afternoon at Alliance Airport, North of Ft. Worth. We'll see the Blue Angels and all the works. Should be cool.

I'll try to get home at a decent hour Sunday so I can rest up for another week. You guys have a great weekend. I'll try to get some cool pictures and maybe post them Sunday night. Cheers.