Washington DC is the place to be on Memorial Day weekend aparently. If not for Brandon's Peace Corps friend's wedding I don't know if I would have traveled to DC anytime soon. The place is pretty amazing and 4 days was hardly enough time to take in the sights but we did as much as we could with our limited time, my feet can attest to that. There's nothing like walking in flip flops all over DC and having your feet throb in pain every night. If my feet could talk they would probably have a few choice words to say to me but luckily icing it down every night with a bag full of hotel ice does wonders. Besides a beautiful wedding, unbeknownst to us the highlight was seeing the helicopter carrying el Presidente fly above us slowly towards the White House. We knew it had to be someone special arriving as we had seen helicopters fly back and forth but none that few so close to the ground and yet we really didn't know it was Obama landing until we watched the news later that night. It all made sense as they blocked off the area where tourists are allowed to view/take pictures of the White House and after some researching www.trailobama.com also confirms this as they track his daily movements. 

While some people like to spend their hard earned money on expensive handbags and the latest trends I like to spend my money on traveling or what is within my budget. Sure I'd like to drop $1,000 on a Prada purse (I saw one in Rome that I really, really liked) but something about traveling seems so much more worth it. I think that with traveling especially to see something historic or to learn something cultural, there is so much knowledge to be gained and it can open one's eyes up to how the world really operates. Hopefully I can continue to travel as long as I don't get laid off again in July (my pink slip was rescinded) due to continued budget cuts (who elected this clown of a govenor?) that California is facing. I just don't know what more we can cut.

I've been on quite a Xanga hiatus but I've got something interesting to blog about tonight. So tonight at dinner my boyfriend mixes up this concoction that I've seen him do before but have always put it out of my mind because I think it's so weird. We had couscous with steamed veggies and me being the meat eater I had some meat on the side. He pulled out the mayo and then the soy sauce and began mixing together the combination which he then used to dip his veggies in. That is the oddest thing ever! Am I the only one who thinks this combination is weird or have other people actually used this as a sauce? I've never thought about mixing the two together but apparently this is something that he use to eat growing up. I guess there are weirder things people eat out there but I just really thought that combination was strange. What's the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?  

While I hate to use this as my complaint blog, I have to say that work has continued to go down hill and is extremely frustrating. Here we are a day away from the start of the school year and we have some rather crucial and critical pieces of student scheduling unfinished. The big screw up that no one will admit to on the administrative level is that they fucked up on the Master Schedule plain and simple. The second part of that issue is that everyone else expects the counselors to pull a miracle out of their asses to clean up the mess that was presented to us two days late from when we were supposed to start. While we try to be miracle workers, at some point I have to question where the line must be drawn because I have worked 10-14 hour days along side my collegues for the past 2 weeks desperately hoping that these days will end. What makes matters worse is the lack of responsibility that the administrators take in what I think is the worst master schedule outcome in the 3 years that I have seen. In fact we had a meeting today with the principal and administrators which clearly left a very bad taste in some of our mouths because the bottom line that we were given was to get all student schedules done by the start of school tomorrow, make sure classes are balanced at whatever costs because it's a "union year," and make sure any schedule changes are done as quickly as possible but oh btw we're closing this section so move all the kids out by tomorrow and yeah there was this other glitch in the master schedule where a lot of students were placed in the wrong level of math and foreign language. Are you kidding me?! If I could've made a dumbfounded face at that moment I would've but instead every counselor had a blank look and was left speechless. It befuddles me that these people, these leaders that run the school who are supposed to know what their doing, don't have a clue. You've got administrators who don't know how to put together student schedules, administrators who are great at delegating but won't get their hands dirty when everyone should help tow the line in what I would classify as a critical time, and administrators who lack the integrity to own up to the reality of the situation at hand. The last thing I need an administrator to do is hover and micromanage because they want to be sure that they cover their asses for their mistakes so they won't get their ass chewed out by their boss. It's just unfortunate that while everyone sees that we're working hard and is ready to set all these expectations of getting things done, no one truly understands the mechanics of what we as counselors go through each 10-14 hour day correcting each student's schedule (I've got 430 students on my caseload and we have a total of 3,300-3,400 students). It's coming to the point that no matter how late we stay the expectations are unhuman and that's what administrators and the principal needs to get, we're only human so stop treating us like we're robots. Maybe the shelf life of working at this school is 3 years. We'll see...