Mit meinen heißen Tränen...

Mein (!) Lesesaal in der Albertina. Der Tisch rechts vorne war unserer...seufz.

Die heiligen Hallen...

Der Lesesaal in Köln, der niemals meiner sein wird...

Blick nach oben in Leipzig...

...und in Köln. Need I say more???
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...weine ich der Albertina in Leipzig hinterher!

Ich meine, wir alle wussten, dass es eine seltene Ehre ist, in solch einer Bibliothek ein- und (in sehr regelmäßigen Abständen zum Kaffeetrinken) ausgehen zu dürfen. Aber ach! Wenn einem der krasse Unterschied so dermaßen deutlich unter die Nase und in die Wunde gerieben wird! Sehr, sehr schmerzhaft. Vielleicht muss ich mein Studium in Köln doch abbrechen... Mir tun die Augen von gestern immernoch weh!

Es ist gut.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp07mwpYdxs
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Variations on the theme (4).

Oh, the fun just never stops, does it?

I guess I have neglected keeping you posted (haha) on the job/contract/money front since that glorious day before my holidays. Well, you are better off not knowing anyway. Just think engaged phone lines, angry emails, a helpful secretary, more engaged phone lines, some more no-follow-through emails, then eventually a condescending "under reserve" pay check for July and much, much later still - hooray - a new contract!

Now, just when I thought that those people had finally worked it out that I am - in fact always have been - still working for them, it turns out that, well, they haven't, have they? Why else would they send me a pay check for August that only covers the first sixteen (still summer holidays) days? None of it makes sense. Especially when you keep in mind that they were first declining, then promising, then showing an incredible reluctance to pay me for those holidays in the first place.

Well, private investigator me has solved the riddle. By the looks of it, the one office has still not told the other office that I have a new contract. Easy mistake to make, must be so much of a hassle to shove a piece of paper back into the house-mail - so much to do, so little time! I mean, they only had, what, 3 weeks to do that?

The best part of it: Do you know how I found out? As of this morning, my phantom contact person is no longer a phantom! She actually did answer her phone after just one hour of trying to get through! I must have caught her unawares. I sincerely hope she'll get over the shock soon.

Now the tricky bit remaining is that me sending her a duplicate of my contract to hurry things along is just not on. Instead, I had to ring my school secretary so that she can get back to that Sisyphus effort of trying to get someone from that other office on the phone (aah, groundhog day!) in order to get them to forward that same contract to the first office (far too much getting for my liking).

Easy-peasy. At this rate, I'll have my money in time to buy the bailiffs a round of drinks...

* * *

Meanwhile, my phone line is playing up. I can go online, I can ring my landline from my mobile, but I can't ring anyone myself. Go figure. To increase my chances of ever writing that bloody paper (you know, the one that was due in March), it would have been far more helpful for the internet access to go dead. Then again, oh, the withdrawal symptoms...

Totally unrelated.

Aww, ever so sorry, but by the looks of it I got that final absurdity wrong yesterday - I entirely blame the low oxygen levels in our tiny, crammed, overheated staffroom. So, in fact, the non-fire-proof firedoors are not going to be locked after all. The sensor alarm thing, however, I did not imagine. I think this means that now we will be able to escape through the new emergency doors and the alarm will go off at the same time so that our caretaker will know that we are escaping. Good for him. That, and he'll know of every single instance one of our very funny students will touch the handle in order to well...be funny.

That's so much better then. Colleagues spent the morning fantasizing about ways to move their teacher's desk in between their students and the new doors.

Can't wait.

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On a completely different note, I decided that as of today it's autumn in my world. When I cycled to school this morning the air was cool and crisp and smelt of yesterday's rain and the first fallen leaves and those early, golden sunrays were hitting the tops of my favourite acacia... Yeah, sorry, I'm getting over it already. But anyone who knows how much I despise summer heat to collide with teaching (or any kind of work fullstop) can guess just how much better I love autumn. I'm a big fan of temperate climate and autumn is the only time that that coincides with no hayfever. So there. Love it. And I'm bound to be back in a couple of days to whinge about all that rain and the dark mornings...

Neverending fun!

Any non-teachers out there, never again dare to imply that teachers got it easy. I invite you to visualize the effort it takes not to scream out loud/bang your head against the wall/keel over unconscious during endless staff meetings with agendas that bring tears to your eyes:

Today's for example included:

• the building of lanterns for the St. Martin procession (That's still on Nov. 11, right? Or did they change that?)
• the organisation of the school Christmas (!) party (Outside it was 30°, for Santa's sake! Why, are the gingerbread and stollen in the stores already?)
• the election of staff representatives for some conference or other
• some other election I couldn't bring myself to follow
• oh, the swine flu, of course (Aren't you as pleased as I am that no, the cleaning crew are not asked/obliged to disinfect door handles at the end of the school day - evidentially the no.1 place of infection? But don't you worry, the city council has provided - I'd write new, but for the most part there weren't any in the first place - soap dispensers for all classrooms! WTF...)
• the discussion about whether or not it is ethical/practical to put students on breaktime toilet duty with or without a reward system (Ooh, that'll keep for another day's post, you so don't want to have missed that!)
• the motion brought forward to replace the normal handles on all classroom doors by door knobs that only open from the inside on account of higher security in case of someone running amok (Yeah, that'll really scare them off, if they have to knock politely and wait for the student nearest to the door to open up for them before they start shooting...)
• the reconstruction measures that are imposed on us to meet some obscure new fire safety requirements. Now, apparently what they're doing is knock through all the walls joining two classrooms and insert fire doors with glass panes. No, I don't know why either. I mean, apart from making any teaching next to impossible with students sticking their greasy noses against the windows and making faces at the nextdoor class, as well as providing even more background noise than there already is - my, those lucky ones with their emergency door towards the music room... - I guess they had in mind just that: additional emergency exits in case one staircase is already blocked. Now, I think you're with me that emergency doors should remain unlocked at all times? Yeah? And can you picture my students not messing about with such a door non-stop? No? Well, me neither. But hark! There's more. Today we learned that those new fire doors actually are not going to be fire-proof after all. Instead they're going to be sound-proof. (Hear, hear! So, you're going to be able to see the fire catch on to your room, but at least won't hear the nextdoor people's screaming. Neat. Much less disruptive.) Also, they are going to be locked. The emergency doors - locked. But just when you thought that, as utterly futile as all these undertakings might appear, at least there's still a slim chance of some teaching/learning taking place at some point in the future, here's the catch: The door handles are going to be equipped with a sensor alarm, which means that as soon as someone tries to push them down, a beeping noise will be set off both in the classroom and the caretaker's office which won't stop until the caretaker has come to the classroom and deactivated it. Oh, the fun will just never stop! I swear I am not kidding you...

In the schoolyard.

The other day I passed that boy with the brain tumor in the schoolyard. Well, I walk past him and 450 other kids every day, but that one day he noticed me and made eye contact. "Hey, Ms B., how you doin'?" he called out to me. - "Alright. You?" - "Want a piece of chewin' gum?" And he held a packet out to me. I took one, managed a "Why, thank you!" and he was gone.

It was so totally unexpected. I know it's silly to read too much into such a short episode, but it felt like a peace-offering. Needless to say, the next day he was back to "normal", ignoring me. I would have been surprised by anything else. Street cred at stake and all...

Thanks for the gum, mate!

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFwDEqLQ0bA

Silent days.

You know something's seriously wrong in your life when your voice sounds all hoarse and scratchy while you're leaving a message on someone's voicemail at 8pm and you realize that's because you haven't spoken to a single soul since the afternoon before.

In my defense, I have to say that a) I had both an upset stomach and a nasty headache since Wednesday night and b) I had tried to fix some going out for Friday but it hadn't worked out.

So, I spent my time from Thursday night till this morning mostly on/in my bed (which also serves as sofa/computer desk/dinner table on these occasions), mostly online doing nothing of consequence, reading a couple of pages, sleeping, checking my mail, postponing all outings, playing a few chords on the guitar, sleeping some more, trying if my stomach would be okay with a bowl of porridge, playing a song on the piano, browsing some more, wallowing, dissecting the fine line between loneliness and self-pity and rewatching Billy Connolly dvds to take my mind off things. Never mind what things exactly, by that time I couldn't have told you myself. Nor can I now. What a waste of time!

So, for future reference

• Get out more.
• If you have a day to yourself, fill it with useful/satisfying/uplifting things. Do not, I repeat not spend it online browsing through other people's lives. Bad for your eyes, bad for your back, bad for your sanity.
• Never give in to self-pity if you already have a full-blown headache.
• Get out more.

Which I will. I'm meeting some friends both tonight and tomorrow. Woohoo! Well done, me! (What a gripping life you do lead...) And as warm-up exercise why not consider a stroll down to the shops? I hear that's what normal people do...