All in a week's work

"You would be the one to wear a red dress to a little black dress party!" -Shelley

Went back to Atlanta this weekend to start moving back and had a fairly decent time. I had my substitute teacher orientation on Thursday, which went pretty well. The people were an interesting mix, to be sure. A couple of really rude women-- one a cranky old black lady and one a middle aged white New Jersey woman who thought she was right about EVERYTHING. With the Jersey lady, I kinda felt like I should be rolling my eyes as she griped about the Newark flight being late... There were a few other former teachers, pretty chill people, and then the three people I was sitting with I made friends with.

The first was Liz, who had taught Social Studies in, I think, Middle School for a long time and decided she wanted to change school systems because she and her husband moved to Decatur. She sat right next to me and even though she came off as your average nice, pleasant, generally funny kind of gal, she had a little bit of a wit to her, we made fun of all the training videos together. She was really interested in my Senior Paper topic, turns out she was an Econ major with history minor in college and had studied literature as a side-track (her college curriculum was a little different from what we're used to-- she was probably about 40-45 maybe) so we talked a lot about imperialism and society and the economics of imperialism. It kinda made my day :)

Next up was Victoria, who had moved down from Memphis about a year ago, where she taught and did her graduate work. She worked at one of the worse high schools in Memphis, Sheffield (from Google: "hated it. I think it is a terrible school. The teacher and staff doesn't care about any of their students and i think that is awful.") where 75% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. She's a social studies teacher, and she wants to work at Renfroe, our MS, but the principal wants everyone to be gifted certified... but won't pay for it. Yeah. Anyway, she was a lot of fun, we bonded over how awful Memphis is, and when we got to the part about fights in school, she turned to me and said, "In Memphis, it was just weave and press on nails all down the hallway!" Which, let's be honest, is probably true.

Wayne came in late, he'd taken MARTA and the shuttle from the High School pulled away with him running after it. He's a middle aged black man, his son just graduated from Emory and is going to grad school there, too, I think. He was a lot of fun, and we had a great discussion about racial and economic lines, especially in a city like Memphis where so much has happened. He thought the Rhodes BSA's stunt from a few years ago, calling the white lights on the Christmas tree racist, was utter crap-- most educated people do, regardless of race. They also agree that the colored lights on the tree is kinda tacky looking-- good for retail, not for the home. Anyway, he was really cool-- worked for HP, another computer company, and then Cingular --> AT&T and decided he was sick of the corporate world and he wanted to teach.

Friday was errands day, then Saturday was hangin' out with Emily and doing not much day. Went and had my hair cut at the Van Michael salon at the Forum and even though it made me want to cry to spend $60 on the haircut (with Coke and mini facial), it probably is one of the better haircuts I've had in a while. Granted she mostly just cleaned up what I'd done last week, but it does look pretty good. Then we went for nail time, I got a manicure and Em a pedi, and my French manicure is possibly the worst one I've ever had and I do my own nails usually... oh, well.

The Little Black Dress party was fun, there were horribly dressed people, good food (even if it was cold) and good company. I ran in to a friend from Rhodes, and then Em, Susie and I judged people the rest of the night which was actually a lot of fun. We also decided to go in to art thievery, it's a very lucrative business these days.

Sunday, I drove back, and here I am.