Spring Break, Yearbooks & Floods

Spring break provided no break from the unrelenting, unforgiving, unfortunate thing we call yearbook.

As I said in my exercise blog, if being a yearbook adviser were a diet or an exercise program, I would be one Skinny Minnie. Instead, I pretty much single-handedly polished off my stash of emergency chocolate in one sitting.

Naturally, I felt a bit queasy afterwards, but I'm not entirely certain that was from inhaling that tasty box of Caramel Chocolate Batons or the fact that I had a gazillion yearbook pages left to do, no photos to pop into those lovely lime-green boxes that denote where a photo is suppose to go, and no one on my current yearbook staff who appeared to give a chocolate baton flip whether we made our deadline.

Yes, it's been one of those years. Yep, a year for the record books, and not in a good way either. No siree, Missy.

So I spent at least half of my spring break working solo on the yearbook, so that the book could final and ensure delivery before the kiddos go home for the summer. 

And, when I finally sat on the couch to relax and drink some coffee with my husband and discuss how we could salvage the rest of my spring break and do something fun, I heard a noise (and not a good one either) and asked, "Do you hear that?" 

He didn't, but I still did, and it was coming from upstairs. I ran up there speedy quick and hot water was gushing out the upstairs bathroom and down the hallway. Although we shut it off pretty quick, well, the damage was done to the hallway, and the water had also seep below through the ceiling into the master bedroom.

Ceiling removed from water damage

Obviously, none of this was my idea of injecting fun into the remainder of my spring break.

Sadly, though, the water disaster and subsequent clean up was better than working 24/7 on the yearbook debacle from earlier in the week. And, I must say I'm not looking forward to the impending doom that awaits me next week in the form of a gazillion page proofs that have to be fixed and turned around speedy quick, or the 40 something photo projects and journalism ad projects I left there to be graded upon my return, or the newspaper deadline scheduled to kick off the week.

And for those of you wondering, Howard the Shelter Cat pretty much remained fairly lackadaisical through it all.

Jeepers Creepers, here's hoping your spring break was more like Howard's than mine.

Thanksgiving Break, Yearbook & Letting It Be

In a few hours, Thanksgiving break will be gone. Sadly, the three bags of stuff I bought home won't be.

Some how, some way, some day I wish I could wave a magic wand or twitch my nose like Samantha in Bewitched and be done with it all--the bags of stuff that is.

At least I managed to sort through most of the disaster I refer to as "yearbook."  I even met with my yearbook rep over Thanksgiving Break to discuss yearbook-related stuff. I believe if the pilgrims had to do that, they would have skedaddled right on out of Plymouth Rock as speedy quick as the ol' Mayflower could sail. (No, silly, the pilgrims wouldn't have skedaddled because of my yearbook rep, who really is a rather nice guy, but because of yearbook stuff in general.)

I guess only a yearbook adviser would truly understand my angst.

In order to calm myself in these last few hours before the end of break, I thought I would (1) eat a little bit of chocolate and (2) drink some green tea. I buy the kind of tea that contains nifty little philosophical ditties. The one for this evening said, "The best way of life is to be, simply be."

Really?

Obviously, the writer of that little cleverness was never a journalism adviser.

Or a teacher.

Could be fun though. Maybe tomorrow when I go to class, I'll just let things "be."

Yeah, let's see how well that one works for me.

Biggest Loser, Saving the Titanic & Me

My school started a Biggest Loser program so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that I can so relate to that on so many, many levels. And, it shouldn’t come as a shock either to anyone that I immediately made a beeline to the nurse’s office, promptly signed up and immediately weighed in after, of course, receiving the necessary assurances that no one could hack into the nurse’s computer to retrieve my weight or BMI.

Sadly, I have enough body fat that I’m pretty sure if I had been a passenger on the Titanic I could have singlehandedly kept it afloat–at least long enough for a rescue. And that’s not because I’m fat either. OK, well maybe, but I’ve always been a floater even when I was skinny. OK, so maybe I’ve never been skinny… How about thin? OK, so maybe not thin. How about not-fat? Let’s go with that.

At any rate, this Biggest Loser nomenclature got me thinking. And, we all know what that means. Aiyeyeyeye. I was going to do a list of “You know you’re the Biggest Loser when…” but that just made my head hurt and damaged my self of steam. So instead, I thought I should hop into the confessional and tell you why I earned–hands down, no competition–the Biggest Loser title this week. (And, oh my goodness, note that it was only Tuesday.) I wish I could say earning the title had something to do with shedding pounds, but alas, that would be a lie (and a big, fat one at that).

Let’s just say that once again some moron–that would be me–somehow managed to schedule both newspaper and yearbook deadlines at the same time. Needless to say, I’ve been a little frenzied. OK, make that frenzied times two squared with a few crazies thrown in. Before I left school Monday. I checked the yearbook tray and noted–rather disgustedly–that there were no, nadda, zippo, zilch yearbook pages turned in. I walked out the door about 5:30 p.m. with my angry face on.

Tuesday morning wasn’t much better. A yearbook disaster here, there, everywhere. I couldn’t even muster up the energy to do the hokey-pokey. Instead, I snapped at no fewer than four yearbook staffers even before the tardy bell rang–all while pounding out a you-better-fix-this-problem-or-your-liver-is-coming-out-your-nose-nasty-email to the photo company rep. Once the bell rang, I turned my wrath on my yearbook staffers all sitting dutifully in their uncomfortable desks, and all mustering their best serious faces.

“I can’t believe none of you turned in any of your pages for deadline,” I scolded. “And, I was here until 5:30.”

But before I could really get going, a somewhat timid hand went up over on the right side of the room.

“What is it,” I bellowed.

“Uh, Richie, the deadline isn’t until today,” the staffer said amidst a sea of nods.

“What?” I barked, or maybe I hissed. I kind of like it when I get to hiss.

“Yeah, it’s today,” my always-unruffled editor announced.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s today,” they said in unison. “Today’s Tuesday.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Well, never mind then,” I added, feeling a bit like Gilda Radner’s character Miss Litella in those old Saturday Night Live skits.

Loser.

Big Loser.

Big Fat Loser.

Well, maybe not entirely a big fat loser.

At least I could have saved the Titanic. Now that’s got to count for something.

Nightmares, Bad Things & Code K

This probably will make my yearbook rep shriek, but I have decided that most of the bad things that happen to me can somehow be connected to yearbook.

Ask any yearbook adviser and they will tell you that they have awaken in a cold sweat, in the middle of the night, gasping for air and none of it had anything to do with hot flashes, but rather some twisted nightmare regarding page 132, a correction or placeholder text.

Jeez, I get all queasy just thinking about it. I even went into labor while on a yearbook deadline (Oh stop it now, my daughter was a good thing, but the labor was a bad thing.) I could go on and on about this theory of mine, but let’s just fast forward to the most recent incident. It offers, perhaps, the best example.

I stayed after school (again) with one of the yearbook editors to correct page proofs and get them ready to send to the plant. I was just putting the finishing touches on page 211 while the section editor went to retrieve the corrected versions from our fancy, schmancy beloved $4,000 networked printer.

“Hey, Mrs. Richtsmeier,” he said, “There’s something bad in the printer.”

Now, by bad, I’m thinking things like…

•Oh, the printer finally ran out of cyan and is only printing in MYK.
•Or, some idiot (that would be me) forgot to change the percentage to 75 so the page ran off the paper.

But then I heard him say… “It’s something really bad…”

OK, so that got my attention. Anytime a child tosses an adverb in with an adjective, well, that’s worth checking out. So I got up to have a look-see.

Now, by really bad, I’m thinking things like…

•Oh, there’s a dead cockroach, or perhaps a mouse, in the printer.

•Or, the magenta ink cartridge blew up and there’s pink ink everywhere.

I took the stack of papers from his hand and flipped through them… yearbook page, yearbook page, yearbook page, yearbook page, email, porn, porn…

Yep, there in CMYK color was Porn 1 and Porn 2.

Now, I’d like to point out there’s never been an in-service that quite prepares you for that sort of thing. Most normal people (non-educators) would have shrieked out a few expletives, but I rather calmly said, “Oh my goodness, hurry up and get an adminstrator.”

While I waited for him to return with an administrator in tow, I wondered how long it would take the tech guys to trace the offending items back through the district network maze to its point of origin. In the meantime, though, I realized I really needed to devise some type of warning hierarchy because “really bad” really didn’t cut it. So I’ve developed a color-coded, user friendly warning plan–the CMYK early warning system. Now, remember boys and girls, hold regular drills, be at the ready and don’t forget to practice those emergency voices…

The CMYK Early Warning System

Code Cyan…Since it’s blue, this deals only with sad things like a yearbook page is torn, a typo was discovered, an ad wasn’t sold.

Code Magenta…A pinkish code should cover only embarrassing things such as bad hair day photos, photos that make someone look fat or a quote that makes someone sound, uh well, dumb.

Code Yellow…This one deals with queasy things such as when pages 40 and 41 won’t open because the file has been corrupted or no one photographed the last game of the season or pages 252 to 264 are missing.

Code K…A code with only an initial should be reserved for things so bad, so heinous, we’re talking meltdown mode. Only three things merit a Code K designation: (1) acts of murder (2) a biohazard where hazmat appears on the scene or (3) porn in the printer.

I guess we’ll start practicing tomorrow.