Omens and Portents?

I am not sure that I believe in omens, but if I did today might not have been the best beginning for the school year for me.

I went back a little early to start setting up my room. I am scheduled to report back to work on Monday, but will be on--Jury Duty! Isn’t that fun? It was postponed from the end of school last year, for some reason. As it is now occurring during the week of meetings, I am not too heartbroken. But it does necessitate a little early work.

I got to my classroom during a nice steady downpour. It took a while to find a place to park where I could unload the supplies I bought for the classroom. Yup. That’s right. I spend my own money on classroom supplies. This year it was “found money.” I got an extra check for travel expenses that I had not expected.

Anyway, I got to my room and decided to set up the lights and computers. I don’t use the fluorescents during the year. I use incandescent lighting. I like it better and it doesn’t seem to set off ADHD behaviors as much as those harsh, white fluorescents do. But, to see what I was doing, I needed the overhead lights to get it set up. I was literally halfway through that when the lights started blinking on and off randomly and repeatedly.

As I poked around the building a bit I discovered that some classes had no power, some had full power, and some had intermittent power. I tried to get the rest of the class set up; apparently the sockets in the walls were working in my room. At least somewhat. I got the incandescent lights on and set up the rest of the room with those.

As I could not use the elevator, I had to go out and move my car to a back entrance on the bottom floor to unload my supplies. And, returning to the room from that, I found that some of the bulbs had blown out. Or at least stopped working.

At that point I gave in for the day. I put up the stuff I bought and headed for home and lunch.

If the chaos of the first day is an indicator of things to come, I really don’t wanna know about it. I’ll try to finish tomorrow.