My new office gets MLK, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Tgivng (and the Friday after) and Christmas. That's it. Coming from the land of the Fed (ah, Columbus Day), it gonna suck.

I get those days plus usually a couple of days before Christmas and after Christmas until January 2nd (depending on what day of the week New Year's falls.)

I get a decent amount of the standard days, but my last two jobs (even more hardcore financial--bank compliant, which is a little more generous, apparently, than trading floor compliant, and university) were pretty damned golden.

God forbid I should ever go back to the small-company-jumping-through-hoops whose idea of observing holidays was not paying us on days where the banks were closed, although we were open.

However, I do now have to intermittently work weekends. Although, with luck, I have three (Sunday 12AM) deployments this month, and I'll only be working for one of them! Living the dream!

Met the cousin I don't like to give her the cake. My mother: "Did she bite you?" No, there was no biting. But she is also not my new best friend. My poor mother. She didn't do anything to deserve the bitch(es) she got as kids.

Caremark CVS blows. It's awful. My BC (yes. I know. lesbian on BC) is godawful expensive. And Grace's copay for her breathing treatment is $90, and that's not for the full amount prescribed, but for 2/3rd of it -- a 2 month supply for 3 months because they said so. It's nuts.

BUT the actual pharmacist and tech at my local CVS is AMAZING and helpful and since I'm there all the damned time they fill my scripts in like 2 minutes.

Noah's preschool learned about MLK, Jr, whom he called Mooffer. And the way he told it "Moofer changed lies." What? Oh, you mean laws? Yes.

Sorry to spam, but:

Thanks to all of you who have helped me redeem gift cards for Donors Choose. DC has decided that a teacher can only have 50 gift cards redeemed IN TOTAL and not for each project as we were told.

K has been working her butt off getting the projects at her school-funded, but she can't have any more gift cards donated to her own individual projects, so even though we have another $15,000 in cards, none of them can be used on her projects and she is worried she will lose the matching funds in February.

Can you help fund her project, especially the eligible for the match? Her Donors Choose Page is here: [link] I know I ask all the time for me, but this would make her day to get this funded. Even if you give a $1 it will help because she will move up to the front and be more likely to be funded.

Swifty is home and doing better. We just have to wait and see how he does, basically. Thanks for the kind thoughts, everyone!

We do not have off on Monday although our client, the Government does. We have no holidays until Memorial Day. They kind of load them all in around xmas for some reason. We do have two floating holidays now that we could take if we wanted. But sometimes it is nice to work when the client is not. It makes for a meeting-light day.

Home is at least good, I hope, lisa.

Meeting light days rock.

So the grant the faculty at my school voted down (or at least the submission thereof)? Was funded. $2million. Which is 1/3rd of our operating budget.

And also, can I point out, all of the people who hate it and refused to support it can be asked to leave if they won't implement or if the new eval system in the grant deems it necessary for them to go.

One staff member has already announced (though not loudly) that she is leaving in two weeks to go to a local middle school where our former principal is currently working. Hmmm... the exodus begins.

Just to be clear, you're for the new program, right?

I think they may have given Swifty some medicinal marijuana at the vet because he has been ravenous since he got home. And they said he was eating there too. It's not like he'd been fasting or whatnot.

It's not really a program. But I worked my ass off to write big chunks of the grant, including the 8% pay raise and an incentive pay scheme that will allow most professionals to get another $1500/year.

I'm happy we have the money because it will mean instead of laying off another 4 teachers this fall, we can hire for at least 6 new positions (7 with the person who is leaving!).