Date Night!

Yay, tonight is date night! But it's a secret! Warren hasn't told me where or what we are doing! He likes to do that sometimes...I like it, I think it's fun...my only requirement is that I have to know how to dress for the event. :-) It's soo nice to have date night again...I've missed spending time with my hubby!

Tomorrow we are going to come down to Galveston to participate in early voting and then going to stop by Mall of the Mainlaind and play with some baby tigers! I'm excited! (I learned about it from the librarian at Parker, she went earlier this week.) Then we will go sit at a restaraunt somewhere to watch the Texas v. OSU football game! Go Pokes!

Also, I scheduled internet hookup for Mark's apt. for NOV. 4th!!!! It was their earliest appt.!!!!

K, later...gotta get ready for my date! Eek!

Also, another Burnet news article...

http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=94a1a6b9043c8b81 ...all of the teachers in the article are people I work with...Kusnerick is my Kinder team leader.

Yarn Goodness!!

Yay! Today at school I had WONDERFUL raverly (http://www.ravelry.com/) friends send me yarn goodness to replace what I had lost in my stash. Linda contacted me via ravelry and was asking about the hurricane, etc. and come to find out her sister is the music teacher at the school we are at now! What a small world!

Anyway, Linda and her super friends were all so sad about stinky Ike and wanted to help me rebuild my stash from the yarn I had lost. So a big Texas-sized THANK YOU to Linda, Beverly, Ann, Barbara, Peggy, Amy, Virginia, Laura, and Lianne and to Jolynn who is acutally here at Parker with me! Also, thanks so much to the businesses that helped them too...special thanks to Nancy of Knitting Under the Influence...who I could not find online but I did find a nice article about her here: http://www.giftshopmag.com/news/2008/08/new_knitting_shop_opens . If you have a website or blog then comment me Nancy! And also special thanks to the owner of NimbleFingers a LYS in the Houston area that Jolynn goes too...she is at the following address: http://www.angelfire.com/ok2/knit/shops.htm . Also if you have a website or blog comment me so I can save you and write more about you! I'll have to come for a visit!

Also, ya'll click on Crazy Aunt Purl over there on the side and enter to win the yarn & needles she is giving away!

Anyway, thank you thank you thank you so much for the wonderful yarns & needles that you all sent. It was so sweet of you all. Friend me on Ravelry at kareberrie & keep up with what I am knitting...at some point I'll start adding more projects (cause I have more I'm working on than what is posted of course!) and more yarn!

THANKS, omg you all are so SWEET!!!

XOXO!!

Edit: Yes, thanks for the reminder, Mom...THANK YOU also goes out to the Woolie Ewe in Plano, TX for the two sets of needles you donated to Mom when she went shopping there for me! :-)

I wish I could download a picture of Mark's measuring cup...he has the largest glass measuring cup I've ever seen!

I go to make cornbread yesterday during my stay-at-home sickness (I've had strep the past two days) and I'm at the point where I've got the egg and need to add 2/3 c. of milk and I go to get the measuring cup down wondering to myself if it has a small enough scale to even measure 2/3's with....

OMG, the lowest mark on it was a pint!!! Holy freakin' cow! Why do you need a measuring cup of this size for one person?!?! Maybe his mama sent it as a mixing bowl...cause it is ginormous...and send him a freaking measuring cup set, ok?

Roomate shenanigans!

OMG, so I got locked out of the apartment last night!

Mark texted me about 9:45-ish and said for me to call him when I got to the apartment and he'd unlock the door for me. I was only about 15 minutes away so I thought that would be okay and there'd be no problem.

So, I get there and park and carry all my stuff up and had called and he hadn't answered. So I thought well maybe he got in the shower or something. When I got up the stairs though and called again and knocked, then I thought...omg...he's fallen asleep?!

So I call and call and send 3 text messages, but of course I know his phone is on vibrate b/c that is how it usually is...I call my mom and his mom and they remind me what a HEAVY sleeper Mark is...great.

So after banging on the door for about 30 minutes to no avail and scared that I'm going to wake the neighbors, I punch in hotels on the Garmin and go to the closest one (half mile away) and get a room for the night!

Yay hotels with availability! Boo for not being FEMA approved!

Fun and excitement...Mark of course felt horrible when he woke up around 11:40 pm and realized that I was not there and of course read my texts that were telling him to open the door! I had put my phone on silent b/c I wanted to sleep without being woken up by a panicky roomate and we chatted the next morning. No harm, no foul.

Burnet News Article

On Friday there was a news article about Burnet...

http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=cedc4d33dc85e942

Also, some of you have asked me what our enrollment is running, this was in an email from the Super this morning:

Since GISD’s reopening on Tuesday, Oct. 7 when slightly more than 4,450 students returned to eight of 12 Galveston ISD schools, enrollment has grown by more than 900 students and is now at 78% of the first day 2008-2009 enrollment.

The number of students returning when school reopened was nearly 65% of the enrolled students (6876) who reported on the first day of school in August. While enrollment numbers are not finalized until Oct. 31 each school year, the beginning enrollment was similar from 2007 to 2008.

I am so tired of Galveston. Driving to work in the morning is the most depressing thing, it sets the tone for the day & kills any kind of positive attitude I have going. We drive by (I'm commuting with the Art teacher) piles of trash & debris, houses that are leaning sideways, boats still sitting on the highway, flashing red stop lights, traffic that is made worse because of all the workers coming to work on the island...

Last week when the list I posted yesterday was told to us, it instantly killed any kind of work ethic I had going. If my school isn't opened up then why should I try to solicit donations of books and materials? If there is going to be a RIF, then why should I spend any time or effort on my job to filling out disaster relief forms for the library? Besides all that, what about UTMB? Will we even be living here come January?

I searched the 7 school districts north of Galveston that wouldn't be too far of a drive for job postings...but everyone has a full staff at this point.

Austin has one elementary librarian position open and 3 children's librarian openings in the public library system. Maybe moving wouldn't be so bad.

My body is so stressed from all of this that I missed my monthly last month, which I NEVER have ever had happen...but no worries I started yesterday. lol

I'm just tired. Tired of it all. Tired of seeing it; tired of smelling it (no kidding, it stinks still); tired of being here; tired of being in someone else's space both as a job and living arrangement. (For those of you who don't know, Warren is in our FEMA hotel and wrapping up surgery this week, and I am living in Mark's dining room on his air matress in his apartment). At this point, all I do is show up and get paid and at least there is some security in that. But I really just want to walk away, walk away and not come back. Thank God I don't have to deal with insurance people, although we still haven't gotten any money that I know of from FEMA so we are probably going to have to re-file or do another claim or something.

K, I'm going to go drive by my school that I'm contemplating breaking & entering to steal MY OWN THINGS back from. Then will drop some cat food off at the humane society and go drink half a bottle of wine & go to sleep.

Oh, & p.s. I have no internet at the apartment now, the network we were using secured themselves.

Later,

GISD Update...

Last Thursday & Friday, I was called over to one of our closed elementary schools to help clean out the library part of the building for, I was told, so families who are camping in their field area to be able to move into the school to live. So I guess when FEMA housing runs out, then Alamo Elementary will be opening up to those already living in the field around it to move into.

Per the notes my friend took from a small meeting with the Super last week...she said:

1. Right now Burnet's building has been stablized as far as carpet, dehumidifying, and spraying (?)...maybe for mold?

2. We are losing enrollment.

3. They can't keep putting money into a building that they may not use in the future.

4. The middle schools, Central & Weis, are priority because of over-crowding.

5. January will start looking closer at enrollment numbers and March will have a better idea of if/which school will need to close (right now there are 3 elementary schools closed, two here in Galveston and the one on Bolivar).

6. A district-wide RIF is possible but wouldn't happen until March.

7. If they do RIF, they will look at first your certification, then PDAS, and finally tenure.

8. Scott & Burnet may close if enrollment doesn't rise (if it gets up to 6,000 then they may need to keep both).

9. They are as of now not going to let people back into the buildings to collect personal items.

10. Pre-paid legal says that if they keep denying people access then we can file suit for our items in small claims court.

Note from Mom:

Kim says, "I am not able to post to my blog because 1) I fried one computer; 2) my backup computer is infected with about a dozen viruses/worms and has been in for cleanup for six weeks; and 3) the loaner I have doesn't not let me post to my blog!!" Eek!

Living in Limbo...

Well school started back this week and I am shocked...absolutely shocked at how many students returned. We had alot of Burnet kiddos...they are being bused from all over some as far as Texas City and La Marque (which is across the causeway on the mainland). Our host school(s) Parker and Oppe are seeing less students return because their children feed out of the west end which received much more damage than the middle of the island which is where Burnet students are. Yesterday was tearful...but anytime one of their little faces saw me, or Mrs. Bacon, or another Burnet teacher that they knew, they just lit up and smiled and waved and hugged. It made us all feel better to see one another. Today I saw a rough count of our attendance (Burnet only, we are doing separate attendance for now so we will know how many from each campus are here) and it was hovering around 300 for us. When we left for Hurricane Ike our ADA was about 530. So, roughly 60% of our kiddos are back! Yay!

In other news...read the article entitled, "UTMB avoids massive round of layoffs" here: http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=4c2d61ba4eec5c48 . This worries me. It sounds very ambiguous about if the med school will return?! We could end up in Austin. Time will tell I guess...it sounds like the director is supportive of keeping the school here, but unless they find a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and some patients to start rounding on...who knows? Warren is still hearing that they will more than likely start back in January after December break, which is what we had been thinking all along.

There is a rumor that can neither be confirmed nor denied by Warren's UTMB director-man of a 30 ft. alligator running around in UTMB. Eek!

Our landlords are making progress on housing renovations, they got out the flooring and are getting new sub-flooring in already as well as making other little changes too. We'll see. Apparently plumbing is too much to add the W/D inside the house, but building a walkway and carport to have a covered walking area isn't. She is also looking at enclosing the deck, putting in darker wood (or some type of wood-like, pet friendly flooring), putting french doors in the dining room and closing off the kitchen door and putting the fridge there w/ more cabinetry, and an island. Cool! I hope all that pans out :-) Maybe we can move back in over Thanksgiving. Anyone wanna bring down their turkey fryer and some blow-up matresses?! We can have a moving in party for Thanksgiving! lol