So it turns out everyone goes to Trader Joe's in the late afternoon on Saturday? What a mess! I guess I got everything I went for, though.

Homer is having a lot of trouble walking. He's going for it, though! Went and ate a little and jumped back up on the sofa. But I'm starting to worry that next weekend will be too late? I guess I'm trying to find the perfect time before he's too miserable, but as long as he's not totally miserable, I keep thinking not yet. Poor little Homer.

I can turn my phone into a hotspot and have unlimited data, and I went out of my way to have both those things partially because I have been on long drives when having connectivity available while driving would have been a godsend (for passenger use, perhaps I should clarify) The other part mostly being my image of myself as a person who will sit out in the middle of a park or wilderness area and work on my laptop. I don't know that I have ever actually done that, but if I don't have the capability I feel unnecessarily constrained.

Poor Homer. That's a hard decision to have to make.

I always assume TJ's on the weekend will be packed.

I always assume TJ's on the weekend will be packed.

True. I think usually I go more in the middle of the day, when people are doing other things.

I have never been to a TJ's and not had it been packed, to my eye. Of course, I live in the desert, so my expectations may be skewed.

OTOH, the big name drummer who I visited in Nashville? His wife works at TJ's (for the insurance, she actually has a library science degree and hopes to get into the Nashville system, anybody have connections? Forgot to ask Kate about it when we were visiting.) and gave me pumpkin spice chai and candy cane green tea out of her stash. Whoot!

Kids are outside yelling their fool heads off. As it should be. I'm hiding inside.

At work, they will no longer support printers in classrooms. So if you want toner, you have to buy it yourself.

No. Seriously. So in addition to buying paper, books, tissues, pens, copy paper for my students, I also have to buy toner now? That being said, I have a remanned toner cartridge for my printer and for a classroom copier I have sitting on my table. Finals start monday. I have not been able to copy or print this week.

Some times, I think, I just don't want to teach that much.

WTF, Kat, that's stupid. (The school lack of funding, that is, not you not wanting to teach.) It baffles me why we continue to place education at such a low priority in this country. It fucking matters, peoples!

Seriously. That's just crazy.

What happens if the teachers say,"No," to buying all that stuff. Do the kids just not learn? Do the teachers get fired? It seems unreasonable. I do web work and my employer doesn't expect me to pay for the server space.

Well, what happens is yes, the kids don't have access to the stuff I need to do my job. So if I can't make copies, then what happens is that the final is projected on the wall (I don't have a screen) and the kids just cope. On a MC final that means they all have to proceed at the same pace.

No tissues means they use mine. I fixed the tissue/lined paper issue this year by giving extra credit and now I have enough paper for 3 or 4 years and enough tissue for 2.

Books? Well, then, no books and no printing means I'm stuck teaching articles from a reader from 1998 on juvenile justice instead of reading current articles out now. It means we don't read Stiff but we read.... let me remember what's in the book room....Lord Jim or All the President's Men. Fine books but not what I could teach well or what meets the standards.

To illustrate: there is a copier on my floor that works mostly. When I walk to the copier, I can expect for there to be no paper in it. So I have to take paper of my own, copy, then take paper out. What other organization in the US do you have to do that for? When I worked at Wyeth Ayerst and I printed something, I did not have to take some of my paper, put it in, then take it back out so other people wouldn't use and I wouldn't have any left.

Teachers are commonly given a ream of paper or two a month. Who DOES that?