"She said, I think I'll go to Boston..."

Jennifer and I are going to Boston next weekend! A little last minute, yes. Jen has next week off of work and wants desperately to get out of here. She said she'd love to explore the city and see Matt... and I said, well, sure!

We're leaving Wednesday night after I get off of work and will fly back early Monday morning so I can work all day and then go to class.

I will have to work my tail off for the next week to get everything done; it's not the best time of the month for me to get away.

On that note, back to work I go!

Welcome Chuck, Welcome all!

Well, I semi-officially took my new blog public. Without much fanfare, I posted it as my website on Facebook and made (probably) a final Xanga entry with the web address posted.

I have enjoyed the anonymity here, but I do want to open it up to more people. Xanga was weirding me out by the number of kind-of-friends that were there and the concept of audience was stifling me. It's still a struggle here, especially as more people read it but I decided I had to make a break from Xanga... I have good memories there and I still go to check my subscriptions -- I enjoy that feature. I am still struggling to find a balance of what's-going-on-type updates vs. what's-going-on-inside-of-me posts. Anyone else with struggles of audience pleasing or advice on blog purpose?

I am trying to figure out "feeds" to keep up with my friends in all of the blog arenas. But I am pretty much only online at work (at home the last thing I want to do is sit in front of a computer - gag!) and our browsers here don't support feeds. So, I am working to get a comprehensive list under my "links" section to find my friends' updates.

btw, I heart updates! After working intently for several hours, I am thirsty for human contact! An email, a facebook (I'm making that a verb), or a blog update is a joyous occasion! Also, please comment--whether I know you in real life or not. It will make this less of soliloquy and more of a community process/conversation. Not sure-- I'm still not clear on the purpose of this guy...

Inspired by our last weekend together, Lindsay is hopefully going to create a community blog for our spiritual family to keep in touch and share what is happening inside of us, through us, and around us. Despite the distance between us, hopefully we can experience community and share and grow!

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Um, I'm a little loopy. I just had a feeling that my legs are disconnected from my body. When I got lunch, I thought I may be floating on the stairs. I think this is caused by a combo of a few medicines and my body trying to fight off a cold (my roommate has laryngitis and I'm a bit weary...) I hope this does not affect my performance at work as I handle millions of dollars today... ha! :-/

Hazelhood West

I heard on the radio this morning that tonight's Hazelwood West homecoming bonfire and pep rally have been cancelled due to adminstrative concerns over gang violence. How sad. This is just another reminder of a downward spiral that Hazelwood is in.

This school year has supposedly been an administrative nightmare for everyone involved. Hazelwood opened four new middle schools to ease overcrowding, but no new high school, especially up north with all of the new housing developments. Boundry lines were (seemingly arbitarily) redrawn and kids suddenly were pushed into new schools. Literally one side of my street goes to one elementary school and the other half goes to another. My neighbor, a 5th grader, was assigned to a new elementary school her last year before middle school. The busses STILL are not running on time. Kids are a half hour late to school everyday because they can't get it figured out. They pushed the middle school start time up to 7:15am to try to get high school bus routes back ontime. So 11 year old kids will be waiting for the bus at 6am.... in the dark.

A neighbor kid sat in an AP Chemistry class for three days in August without a teacher. Finally they figured it out: they didn't hire one. Oh, darn it... The kids' schedules were all screwed up--they were missing classes or lunches or one kid had three lunch periods or some peoples' schedules were completely blank!

Plus, the phone systems aren't working in the schools. Earlier in the year, there was a bomb threat so everything was under lockdown, school was released early.... and no parents could call into the school to see if everything was OK. Whoops, we never got those phones hooked up, did we? How important is communication, especially between parents and schools?? I guess not very. Oh, and there are major textbook shortages.

One good thing: there are actually people showing up to the school board meetings. The last meeting ran from 7pm to midnight because there was so much disgust and so many complaints from over 400 teachers, parents, bus drivers, and students. Hopefully this will be the kick to wake up the public to vote out the corrupt-beyond-all-belief-union-controlled school board driving Hazelwood, the 2nd biggest district in St. Louis county, straight into the ground.

My heart is literally heavy to hear about all of waste, corruption, apathy, laziness, lack of organization, etc. so laden in our schools... kids literally don't have a chance. And I am talking about a county school. I haven't even mentioned the St. Louis City school problem (officially unaccredited and taken over by the state this year). I hope that Hazelwood can receive a change of leadership and change of heart and mind to keep us from going down the same path...

Things like this boil my blood... and crush my spirit... like nothing else.