As of 1600 today, I am no longer a teacher. I start my new job on Monday morning.
Me
NYC douchebags
This is the sort of thing that creates friction between my wife and I. She is from New York state, not the city. People from NYC have this sort of attitude:
“The main problem with moving to Florida is that you have to live in Florida,” said Jason Mudrick, “New York has the smartest, most driven people, the best culture, the best restaurants and the best theaters. Anyone moving to Florida to save a little money loses out on all of that.”
I express the opinion that New Yorkers are arrogant douchebags, then she gets insulted. I just get tired of the “everyone who isn’t from NYC is an ignorant, uneducated redneck” kind of attitude. Upstate people are fine, but NYC people are horrible.
Education
I am done
This article blames the school system because a high school student had a 0.13 grade point average and failed nearly every class he took. The student in question was absent 272 times in four years. He failed his classes for four years, and the first time the kid’s mother knew anything was during the final semester of his senior year? Yeah, mother of the year right there.
I have 133 students this year. Of those, more than half of them (68) are currently failing my course. Six of those students have a perfect zero for the current marking period, due to the fact that they have not turned in a single one of the fifteen assignments that has been assigned to them. In fact, more than half of my students have received at least 6 zeros. The mean grade for my students is a 48 percent.
Absenteeism is over the top. I have students who have been absent more than not. One of my students has only been in class six times so far this year. I have over a dozen students that I have not seen nor heard from since before Christmas.
There is nothing that I as a teacher can do. I teach, but the student has to show up and actually make an effort. I am tired of caring more about my students’ success than they or their parents.
In fact, I have had enough. I am done. I am putting in my two weeks’ notice tomorrow. Since spring break is coming up, my last day as a teacher will be next Friday. This morning, I was offered a job supervising techs at a nearby hospital. I accepted.
Back to the medical business.
economics
Let the games begin
My tax records have all been sent to the accountant. Let me say that I am against the stimulus checks. With that being said, no one is listening, so my goal is to maximize my chances of receiving whatever they are going to hand out. So that is the instruction that my accountant has been given:
Find a way for us to legally get as much of that money as we can while limiting our tax exposure. If that means that I have to claim all of the income from our business ventures and investments, and then we file separately so at least one of us gets the money, then so be it.
So the accountant tells me that she will run different scenarios to see which way and what deductions will result in the best financial situation. That is why we pay her, after all.
Me
My leg
Remember when I said that I fell from a moving golf cart, and how my leg had swollen to double its normal size? This is what it looks like this morning:
Me
Update on FIL
The hospital sent him home last night at 1 am. They had given him some oxygen and his oxygen saturation levels came back up. What made it difficult is that my MIL has COVID as well, and she is legally blind. So we were placed in a difficult spot: Who can drive him home?
So my wife and I drove to the hospital with my MIL following right behind us in their car. We led her the 40 minute drive from their house to the hospital, and then the 40 minute trip back. (He is still too sick to drive). I feel for both of them- just looking at them, I can see that they both feel like shit.
We got home at around two- just in time to get a few hours’ sleep before starting my (online) workday. That hospital has seen far too much of my family this last week.
I still think that COVID is just a nasty version of the diseases we already have seen, but for my in laws’ age group, the mortality is much higher than for other demographics, and even so, you don’t like to see anyone that you care about being sick and miserable. I sure hope they get better soon.
COVID
COVID and family
My father in law tested positive for COVID. My FIL is rather stubborn. We have been trying to get him to eat, but he won’t eat. We try to get him to drink fluids, including Gatoraid, chicken broth, water, you name it. He won’t drink.
He has had diarrhea for the past two days, can’t take a deep breath without coughing, and has a fever of 102.2 degrees. The fact that he isn’t eating or drinking means that he is losing fluids and electrolytes, and that isn’t good for anyone, much less a 75 year old man with COVID.
I dropped off an Oxygen saturation meter so they can test his SpO2. There is evidence that lower blood oxygen levels in COVID patients is an indicator of reduced increased mortality- 90 percent or lower is the danger zone. So I told them to take their readings every 4 hours, record the result, and let me know if any reading went below 92 percent.
So today they sent me a list of the readings over the last 2 days, and my FIL was having a slow drift from the mid 90’s, dropping to 89 percent this afternoon. We contacted the doctor, and the doctor recommended that we send him to the hospital. Since there was no other way to get him there, we called an ambulance.
He is in the ER now, and we are waiting to hear if they will admit him or not. My wife, as you can imagine, is beside herself with worry.
Me
Ouch
My mailbox is about a quarter of a mile from the house. Last night at about 8:30, I took my golf cart out to get the mail. It was windy and about 40 degrees out. As I was going around a curve, I began sliding across the seat. I guess my pants were slippery, and I remember sliding out of the side. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the pavement in severe pain, my left sock and shoe missing. I thought about lying there and waiting to be found, but I was shivering and decided not to be a pussy. I walked 100 feet or so to where the golf cart had hit a tree, and drove home.
My wife freaked out when I walked in the door, because I looked like shit. Road rash, bloody skin, etc. I opened the first aid kit, and my wife helped bandage me up. Eventually, my thigh swelled to twice its normal size and the skin was tight as a drum. I had a big goose egg on my forehead, so we headed out on the 30 minute drive to the closest ER.
I got home from the hospital at 4am. They were initially worried that I had broken a femur or that I had compartment syndrome. They also thought I might have broken ribs. My left side is a mess of road rash from my knee to my forehead. My right thigh is swollen and tight as a drum. There was talk at one point of putting me on a helicopter and flying me to the trauma center in Gainesville. I must have looked like shit and my vital signs were horrible. My BP was so high that they thought I had a severe head injury. Turns out it was the pain.
Turns out that there are no breaks and no serious injury. They do think I might have torn a hamstring, but won’t know until the swelling goes down. So it hurts to breathe, sit, stand, or even lie on my back, front, left side, or right side.
Tired and sore. On a side note, it turns out that I am very sensitive to morphine, and it hits me much harder than most other people. This resulted in an accidental overdose in the ED. My wife said it was scary because I freaked out in the ED and began taking my clothes off and then passed out. The staff was struggling to wake me up and keep me that way. Don’t remember much except my wife calling my name and begging me to stay awake.
The most messed up part was wee accidentally went to the wrong hospital at first. We got the two confused because they are only a mile apart. One is a trauma center, the other isn’t. Walked in the door, gave them my name, and was told that there was a 6 hour wait. I realized that this wasn’t the hospital I meant to go to and told them never mind. They told me that I might still get a $500 ER bill, even though the only person I talked to was the woman at the door who takes down your name and address. That is ridiculous and I will fight that. I didn’t sign shit, didn’t see a nurse or a doctor, and was there less than 10 minutes. I am not paying that any more than I would pay a restaurant that I walked out of before I even got a table.
At any rate, I am home, sore, and tired. More posting later. Maybe.