Two people from the school newspaper came and interviewed me today and took my picture. I asked when the issue will be coming out and they said the deadline is not until 9-22 and then the paper will come out sometime after that. Most school newspapers are published weekly, but not ours. It will come out on Halloween and have the caption "Happy Labor Day."

Tomorrow is the first official day of school, that means that I will actually have students. This is quite different from the last two weeks which I have spent almost exclusively attending meetings. I f*cking hate meetings! The best part is that since I am involved with a 2 departments, I have been attending meetings for both, all of the required meetings, and all of the meetings exclusively for teachers new to the district. I am not exaggerating when I say that most of these meetings were back to back. I basically told my assistant principal that I thought the number of meetings I was forced to attend was ridiculous, and quite different from what is done in other districts. The highlight was definitely the 5 hour open-house this past Thursday. At least it lasted from 2-7 PM.

I have a faculty meeting tomorrow afternoon. I wish I was kidding. After work we are going to buy a new printer since this one died. I will update sometime this week, when I have a free minute, and let everyone know how the kids are to deal with. I figure they cannot be any worse than Richmond City, of course the administration is so terrible out there it more than makes up for it. I have to arrive at 7:30 AM tomorrow to "welcome the kids." My principal is retarded. She's white, but I have been told that during African History Month she wears traditional African garb (a dashiki). Very inappropriate, but I still can't wait to watch her embarrass herself.

The district I am teaching in is so radically conservative it's ridiculous. They require male teachers to wear ties, told me that I was not allowed to use a number of table lamps instead of the fluorescent lights, and they actually pray before every fucking meeting begins. You're probably saying to yourself: "That is totally illegal!" Of course you are right. No one gets my sense of humor. I was kidding with my mentor this morning at my own expense and she told me how much she dislikes being teased. The other day I joked about showing Fahrenheit 9/11 to my Government class to my department chair and immediately said I was kidding and would never do that. Amazingly enough I still received a lecture on the political demographics of the region, and how I would be fired for showing that film.

Everyone appears to hate the principal, today my mentor referred to her as the "worst thing that has ever happened to the school." The turnover is ridiculously high and the level of intelligence amongst the staff is ridiculous. One of the members of my department did not know the meaning of the word "lecherous." The principal has also demonstrated her lack of vocabulary by asking the meaning of words that someone with a doctorate should definitely know. I don't mean to sound negative but I already feel oppressed by the right-wing Christian shit. My department chair went so far as to suggest that I join a church. In addition, I am amazed by the amount of comments lobbied against people from the north, referred to Pr!nce Edw@rd County schools exclusively as "Yankees." Its just the end of the first week and I already want out.

Some things to note:

*This site turned 3 years old on July 31st.

*I received A's in both of the classes I took this summer. That maintains my 4.0. Sweet.

*I was forced to build a second set of shelves for my record collection. I didn't need all the space I ended up creating but it enabled me to make room on my bookshelf by moving my books about music into the stacks with the records. Which looks very cool.

*My next door neighbors need to replace the battery in their smoke alarm. I know this, because every few minutes for the last week, the smoke detector has emitted a high-pitch beep. I am not sure if they recognize the problem or even notice it. Perhaps it is an attempt to drive me crazy.

&I have been working on my syallabus/semester guide for the last couple of days. It is looking pretty good, but taking much longer than I expected. At least by doing it now it gives me plenty of time for revision and enables me to look at the larger picture. It is somewhat comforting to know that I already have planned out the material I will be teaching each week until mid-January. Now the big problem: how the hell am I going to teach all of this?