Updates

There are still earthquakes happening here in Virginia. I believe Mineral made the news yesterday for having a record of 12 aftershocks, some of them back to back. We don't feel most of them here in Culpeper, just 4's and bigger I think. The rumbles though mostly small are stressing locals and many are not getting good sleep.

So today we went back to school... back to the middle school. I met my "roommate" Holly, a new 8th grade science teacher in my former classroom. So I am back on the 8th grade hallway and back in the same room. Weird. Because Holly is a new teacher, she has practically nothing in the classroom so I have cabinets to put my stuff in.

Why am I in the middle school? The solution to an earthquake-damaged building is to share a building that is not damaged. The high school will be taking over the middle school building on MWF from 7:30-4:30, while the middle school will be going T,Th, and every other Saturday until about January. Then there should be enough "pods" and trailers to move all the high school teachers out and we can resume a more normal schedule. There has been no word on whether the building is going to be fixed or rebuilt. One of the elementary schools is sharing with another as well, but they are jsut offsetting by an hour to accommodate two different bunches of buses.

Over the weekend, we were asked to compile a list of items "essential for teaching for the next month." I stressed over this list because mine was long, but I am teaching two different courses and use a lot of manipulatives, but I made a list, drew a map and then sent it via email as instructed. Monday and Tuesday I am not sure what I did. A whole lot of nothing important, wedding planning, and blowing my nose.

The hurricane did blow through here and drop a lot of rain, but not much other damage. I know a lot of people who lost power. Hell I know people who STILL don't have any power, but the damage is nowhere near as bad hear as it is New England.

So today a whole lot of pick-up trucks (like 30) lined up at the high school ready to pick up pallets that had been packed by professionals who are allowed in the school. Teachers and football players delivered those pallets to our newly assigned middle school rooms and unpacking began. I got two full pallets! But not what I asked for. I did get some useful things and one of the big things on my essentials list.

I feel incredibly guilty for complaining, but why ask me for my essentials and then not do that? Apparently, many rooms were packed before lists were sent. Many items were dumped out of boxes and containers they were in and placed in their bigger boxes... but the smaller containers were not brought. I got two bookshelves of books I didn't ask for, but not the shelves to put them on. I got boxes of stuff from cabinets and filing cabinet drawers of stuff I would have never asked for... but today with nothing much else to do than go through it and toss a lot of it.

So I had to resubmit my list of essentials. At least I got stuff, which is one reason I feel guilty (the other big reason is that this is a huge ordeal to move all the high school teachers over in the first place), but Aaron didn't get anything - not one box.

I guess it would have been nice to have a meeting or something that was prefaced with "look a lot of things were packed before your essential lists... lets see what you go and then let us know what you still need" or "not all the rooms have been packed up yet, but lets bring over what we got" or something. Then I would feel a bit better and not stressed about this. And maybe some others too.

Tomorrow is more of the same I guess. School starts back in 2 weeks. I am not sure what we need to do in that time... If I planned ahead it would be useful, but that is not really how I do it. Good news perhaps is that Friday might be free which means we have more time to drive to Pennsylvania for Josh's wedding.