Another Day, Another Dollar

I'm (Cathy) am working a temp job at Wichita State as a bookstore cashier. The job will last anywhere from 2-4 weeks for the student rush. So far it is not that bad.

My very first job was as a grocery store cashier at Cub Foods. I am amazed at how different the cash registers are now. At Cub, I had to remember a lot more and DO a lot more. Now the computer does nearly everything for me! It's nice.

I had forgotten how hard it was to be on my feet all day. Years of cushy office type jobs has spoiled me.

It's not a bad gig, but I know I'll be ready to leave when the temp job is over. They use the same temps over and over, so it's possible that I will be asked to work the Fall rush as well. If I have time, I'll do it! It's not a bad way to earn some extra money.

Busy Busy Week

I think I've been busier since I was laid off than I was at my job! The past week I've been planning my Fundamentals of English classes for one school, writing the syllabus, running over to the college to attend meetings, get an ID made, get parking passes, pick up books...it's been crazy. I've also been working hard on my other class- The Search for Meaning in a Changing World. They provided everything for that, but I still had to do all the assignments to make sure I understood them, etc.

We also had a visitor, briefly. Or rather I did. Matthew was in town for a conference and neither of us had a lot of free time, so lunch it was. I swear that we've had more visitors since we moved to Wichita than we ever did when we lived in Fort Collins. :) It was nice to catch up.

A blast from my UNC past. I think this picture turned out rather well.

Today I start teaching my Friends class, and tomorrow I'll be teaching my Butler classes. It seems like everything happened so fast!

Quick Catch Up

It has been an extremely busy couple of weeks. For those of my readers who don't know, I was laid off from my position at Case New Holland. Friday, August 8th was my last day. The higher HIGHER ups made some radical decisions, and one of those was to let all contract employees go, so I was not the only one who ended up leaving. I enjoyed my time there and will miss most of the people I worked with, but I am excited to move in a new direction.

For my next step, I'll be stepping back into teaching. I've gotten positions at two schools as an English and Humanities adjunct instructor. I'll be teaching The Search For Meaning in a Changing World at Friends University, and two sections of Fundamentals of English at Butler Community College. Classes start next week. After I finish this brief update, I will continue working on figuring out what exactly I'm going to do in those Fundamentals of English classes! They provide us a book and a general idea of what the students must be able to achieve by the end of the semester, but that's all!

The Search for Meaning class is a little different than the classes I've taught in the past. It is in a five week format, and it is continuing adult students. It is also a four hour long class. FOUR HOURS. Luckily, Friends has already provided the entire course to me so I just have to teach it. (Of course, "just having to teach it" is not as carefree as it sounds!)

All of my classes are night classes. It will be nice to have my days free again and to do a large portion of my work at home. One of the things I liked best about teaching was the fact that I only had to be someplace a few hours a week. Everything else could be done anywhere. I'm hoping that it will be less overwhelming this time, but I'm thinking it should be. The last time I taught I was taking a full load of graduate level classes. Nothing is more horrible than grading 60 essays while you're trying to finish a couple of 20 page papers.

I'll get some pictures up of the garden soon. Our tomatoes are doing great, the zucchini is slowing down, and we were disappointed by our cucumbers this year. Kirk's dream of having rhubarb is dead- the plant died for the second year in a row. Our eggplant has flowers on it, but I'm not sure if we're going to get any eggplants yet. I'm already thinking about what we may try next year.

Crazy Bathroom Lady

The bathroom at my workplace is very small. The women's room only has two stalls. If anybody is washing her hands and you open the door, you'll take out her butt if you're not careful. I nearly did that today. The woman moved to allow me admittance, and proceeded to put on her very complicated coat.

There are like, four women at my workplace, and I had never seen this one before. We chatted about the weather for a bit, and then she said the strangest thing:

Crazy Bathroom Lady: "I like to put my coat on and get ready to leave in the other bathroom, but men keep coming in, so I'm using this one instead."

Me: "Men keep coming in? To which bathroom?"

Crazy Bathroom Lady: "To the one right beside this one."

Me: "You mean the Men's room?"

Crazy Bathroom Lady: *crazy stare*