That's totally fucking outrageous, Kat. Six weeks is an outrageously small amount of time in the first place; and, in the second place -- just, fuck them. The district wasn't the one in a postpartum haze with critically ill infants and a stress level constantly rocketing back and forth between insane and unbearable. If they couldn't either get it right the first time or catch any errors before they and you were $4000 in, they ought to just suck it up and write it off.

I'm sure they won't, but, for God's sake, they bloody well ought to. That's just fucked.

Yeah I hate the air quality, and cramped seating in air planes even though I have almost no plane fear. I'm with the enjoying turbulence (though there is a reason for seatbelts, really rare extreme turburlence has been known to seriously injure or kill people.)

Incidentally the whole "nothing I can do" thing:

Note where the two closest exist too you are. If you are going to be flying over water or near water, and one of your closest exits is over the wings, note where the two closest non-wing exits are (because wing exits sometimes are not used in water landings.) Make the appropriate personal tradeoff for you in terms of risk of being out of your seatbelt, and risk of embolism + personal discomfort from sitting in cramped airline seats too long. Know where the life preservers are. Statistically most airline crashes do have survivors. Being able to get to the exit in time with proper equipment is statistically part of what separates the survivors from the dead. Also being in the right seating section. (I forget where, but statistically, some sections are more likely to survive a crash than others.) Also a huge streak of luck. The other stuff just raises the odds.

Kat, that's appalling.

I wish people at my work would stop being confused, because they're dragging me into it with them. I'm very vulnerable these days.

I've never had those long-drive bonding conversations. Most of my long drives have been done alone.

These days I get lifts a fair amount from friends, and it was a delight the day we were running late for a wedding so he was driving aggressively to get there in time. I loves me some aggressive, competent, and safe driving.

I also like the deep conversations that it seems isn't possible to have outside of really long road trips where you've been on the highway for so long and you're road-weary and bored and you've already talked about all the normal things you can.

Oh yes. I do love a road trip. Except that as a non-driver I'm deadweight. However, I do have excellent navigation skills.

Kat, the Army actually has a "we overpaid you but it would be a real hardship to pay back exception". Any chance the district has something similar?

Nope.

Basically ANY person who took family medical leave or any long term disability time was overpaid and the district WILL take it back. Also people who are fucked are anyone with an unusual salary above base pay, so if you worked extra you were screwed. My friend the librarian owes over $12,000 because she works all year.

And frankly, it's not as bad all the people who weren't paid at all for months on end because of the new payroll system.

I'm just sick at the thought of this.

IE won't stop crashing on my work computer. It's destroying my will to live.

Yeah I hate the air quality, and cramped seating in air planes even though I have almost no plane fear.

The new 787 will have air at higher pressure and humidity, so it should be more comfortable....

United, eh?

Well, United is getting a reputation for really poor maintenance. When the cabin lights started flickering, the flight attendant expressed surprise because usually the maintenance information they receive to pass to passengers has nothing to do with the actual problem. Also, when I worried about scheduled ground transportation, she asked if give the airporter my flight number. When I said yes, she told me not worry about it. Everybody knows that that there is a good chance of United flight coming in a couple of hours late, because they have problems like this all the time. Not every flight she assured me, just "a whole lot of the time". So airporter dispatch would check my flight number. (I still called into the airporter on my cell once we landed.)

DH loves to drive and, being a motor journalist, he does a LOT of it. Not only is he always driving a review car, which means he drives when we go places together, car journalists also have many events they go to during the year where all they do is drive. He just got back from a trip to Ford in Detroit, and he raved about the "84 acres of pure asphalt" he got to drive on. And just ask him about his trips to Willow Springs to drive on the racetrack--the guy will wax rhapsodic.

How are they taking it back, Kat? Spreading the pain, I hope. That's just not right. Not that they're wallowing in money that I know of, but what's been spent's been spent and there's no way this can't hit hard.