Their full titles are Marceline the Guinea Pig Queen and Princess Bubblegum of the Cavy Kingdom.

Things haven't been scary-rough, just hectic. My division is having faculty candidate interviews, but for some reason the dept. chair's office decided *they* would do all the scheduling--except that those admins don't know my boss and his preferences, and they're on a separate campus and don't know the layout of the children's hospital at all, so the whole thing has been a clusterfuck of people being unable to find rooms or refusing to show up and my boss getting increasingly irritated at how many people the candidates MUST meet who've been left out completely. I was brought in at the tail end, to provide "on-site support" for the interviews, including interviews over at Oakland Children's, which I don't know any better than the chair's office.

I'm leaving in less than 10 minutes to get to campus for a 9 1/2 hour workday of more babysitting. At least I have books with me.

Theo, a day of rest will probably be a good idea regardless.

JZ, I missed who the adults you are babysitting are.

ltc is upset today that her teacher is out and that the substitute (who she knows because he has substituted her art class before) is a guy. She never had male teachers before now, and she's really not comfortable around men she doesn't know well.

I'm going to my office today for the first time in 20 months to pack up my desk and return equipment since I won't be working out of this location anymore. I think I'm the only person on the work shuttle. I can't believe I used to subject myself to this commute.

sj, faculty candidates, none of whom have ever been here before and all of whom have to navigate a big sprawling med center with 3 separate campuses, one of which is across the Bay Bridge in Oakland (plus my boss wants them all to visit an Oakland affiliate that's luckily just a few blocks away).

It does give me a deeply weird feeling to drive to Oakland's Pill Hill and see, looming over all the others, the hospital where my grandmother, mother and I were all born and now also the hospital where my father died, and know the cemetery where all of his side of the family is buried is just a few blocks further still. Not quite haunted, but definitely haunting.

Separate post: awww, ltc. Even if she's seen him once before, he's still practically brand-new. New people, especially totally unexpected ones like substitutes, are HARD.

I cannot wait until the time change ugh. This morning even with the sunlight alarm clock I super did not want to get up. One more day….

Marceline the Drama Queen is amusing me this morning

Glad to hear, Sheryl!

I hope you are continuing to feel better, Theo.

Hate how dark it is in the morning right now. I'm pretty sure it's worse in December, but knowing that the clocks could be set so it isn't quite so dark quite so late right now makes me very resentful.

{{{JZ}}}

Separate post: awww, ltc. Even if she's seen him once before, he's still practically brand-new. New people, especially totally unexpected ones like substitutes, are HARD.

Yup. This is the first time having a substitute at her current school, and the teacher's aide for the classroom is out with an injury. I'm glad it was a planned day off and her teacher was able to prepare them yesterday.

I want to note that today seems to be an overlap of seasons, at least at Starbucks, where you can get pumpkin spice lattes and peppermint mochas. But not, it appears, my personal favorite gingerbread. Alas.

Dunkin' also, pumpkin and peppermint but no sign of gingerbread.

Latest word from a couple of sources is that we expect to be back up, to some extent at least, by Monday but they are careful to say that that is not based on anything definite so who knows. Also we are hiring a new director who will be taking over at least some of my boss's job (she is also a director) and I don't know what to make of that. Except I am annoyed that we can apparently hire directors but we are supposed to make do with our staffing levels down here at the analyst/planner level. Our org chart is such a mess. I'm sure the people who make the decisions about how it should look don't think so, but I sure do.