free- one extremely moody tween boy. must pick up.

It's disturbing, how many people I know who are in this situation of overworked and understaffed, how long it's been going on, and worse of all, that there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. This is the new normal, and I hate it.

This is absolutely the case at my school. The staff in particular are doing what used to be 3-4 people's jobs on their own. Unsurprisingly, people are burning out and morale is very low. It's why I'm considering a potential job that a colleague in a local Pasadena school approached me about. I doubt any school will have the magic and whimsy of my current one, but so many years of flat pay and more and more work on top of the two plus hours a day commuting is making me seriously consider it.

ETA: The other school is one of the oldest and wealthiest independent schools in LA county and has barely been touched by the recession.

Okay, sister. Let's do this. makes gang sign, or something

Okay, I did a month's worth of data entry and I restrung a guitar. Next I need to get the chili in the crockpot, I guess.

Good lord. I slept too late to go to yoga, and haven't done anything since except watch Face Off!

Man, a nearby school would be such a huge thing for you Kristin.

I know, Brenda. It's about three miles from my house (as opposed to 30 miles through the worst rush hour traffic in the country). It is so difficult to consider starting over, though, especially at a school like this one, which is very old and very prestigious and where I would go from being a big fish to a tiny minnow. I don't know if I'm willing to spend the next eight years building my reputation all over again, you know? It's also a K-12 coed school, which is very different than my tiny little 6-12 all-girls school. On the other hand, three miles plus probably at least $10K more than I currently make.

I'm putting the cart before the horse since I've not even started the interview process, but the teacher who asked me to apply is a big fish at the school, and she contacted the Head to recommend me. I suspect I'll be a finalist just on her recommendation.

There's now national uproar about another German ad that involves Jamaica. Our flag accidentally catches on fire in a cafe, and people witness the attempt to douse it, and it starts a huge incident and suddenly there's a riot outside, and the cafe people haven't even realised.

There are Jamaicans mad about flag desecration, and very "they'd never do that with the US flag!" I'm pointing out that although it might be diplomatic suicide to have done that with America, flag burning is allowed, although disliked. Also, if you burn a US flag, people take sides. If you burn a Trinidadian flag, no one knows what just happened (my spellchecker is okay with Jamaican, has no idea about Trinidadian--so there you go). If you burn a flag from the land of Marley, marijuana, and Usain Bolt, you're really mean.

That's why it's us in the ad.

Zenkitty, for stains on glass and ceramics, I use efferedent or other denture cleaners. It's amazing what it will lift off. Plus, I feel okay about accidentally consuming it.

I'm firmly installed in the library now. I need to write. Blargh.

Zenkitty, for stains on glass and ceramics, I use efferedent or other denture cleaners. It's amazing what it will lift off. Plus, I feel okay about accidentally consuming it.

Seconding. I have this old blue glass wine carafe from my grandmother that was stained inside with wine and dust. The opening was too narrow to clean properly, so I stuck a couple denture tabs in there with hot water and left it for a few hours. All I had to do was rinse it and it was beautifully clean.

Kat--they chased me out to my car and gave me the device then. I'm just so pissed off with other people's senses of urgency which fail to take my requirements into consideration at both ends. I am the customer, dammit.

For some reason today I'm finding it ridiculously long that I've been in LA. I pulled on a Lucy shirt, whose timing means Kat and Burrell in Brentwood to me, before I was swallowed up in krav (I stopped buying non-krav workout clothes then), and sherbert on Montana. It's so weird to think of how relatively late in life we met each other (thinking back to that article Matt linked to about the difficulty making friends after university) and how much change there's been time for since then. Unfortunately not for the better in my case, but wow, are our lives not the same.