More to the previous story!

I forgot to mention how ewhen I called the kids parent to tell them that they were not allowed to attend the closing ceremony- woo wee that was ugly! They stated "That is so not like our son *&^%$. WHO provoked HIM?" Are you kidding me!?!? So I told them what happened and how THEIR son was THE provoker. It was in front of the RAs and the instructor in the dorms so I have plenty of back up. I had some guy run into me in middle school and I am bitter about that to this day! I was so ready to kick this kid out so once the parents realized that I could do that, they quit their comments.
I was also at the dorm picking up the tables and came back to my car at the meter only to find a parking ticket! Are you kidding me?!?!? In my 11 years here I never got a parking ticket here. Ridiculous. The meter ran out 2 minutes prior! Grrr!

Super quick update

So I have been totally swamped with my summer camp.
You will get a quick abridged version.
We started a 'war' between the boy RA and girl RA (resident assistant). It is hysterical. They each of some of the campers aid them in their evil plots against each other.
The girl snuck the boys key from him (very clever) and filled his room on every surface with HUNDREDS of cups of water. Now that is funny!
Then to retaliate, the boy RA got into her room and covered it from ceiling to floor with toilet paper and balled up newspaper and on the laptop, the screen read "You've been pimp slapped.' So then the girls retaliated with a poster war which is hysterical. Then the guys hid alarm clocks that make rooster sounds when they go off and hid those in her AC vents.
Pretty funny stuff.
Last night I was going to send my first camper home in 5 years! The RAs talked me down though. So get this- the biggest kid likes to intimidate the smallest kid. For no reason he at full speed charged him. He meant to stop right before him but he tripped on his own pants and was still going full speed and hit this kid into a wall. What a jerk! He was intentionally trying to scare him but not intentionally trying to hurt him. I was livid when I heard. Arggg! So tomorrow is the last day and I was weighing my options. His folks live in pembroke Pines but I felt it would be cheesy to make them have to drive up here on the last school day (make the boy go to school!). SoI decided to call his parents and told them what happened and forbid him from attending the much hyped about Closing Ceremony. Seemed fair to me.
I have been running around all day for this ceremony tomorrow. I am pooped!

Day of dilemas

So 3 odd dilemas today.

1. Some of my TAs well.....they suck. The sticky part of the situation? I am stuck. I don't have anyone to replace them with so I can't fire them. It is a rocking job. Why is it sooo hard to find good TAs in that department? Granted- you should have seen the worst ones that obviously didn't get hired. I could write a book on ridiculous interviews gone awry.

2. There is a student who sent me an email telling me how beautiful I looked today. That's a bit odd. Really smart kid- a little socially challenged but I have known him for years. He knows I am married and he would have no intentions of pursuing me. He is harmless. Do you just say thank you and move on? What is one supposed to do in this situation? His sister then came up to me and said the same thing.....

3. One of my summer camp gangster females ran out of money. She is only able to attend this program b/c it was free to her. So her mom who also has the same bank as me asked if I would do a wire transfer of some sort. Sh drove an hour to her bank (they live in a real rural area) and had the bank manager call me. He needed my routing number. The dilema? I don't want this girl to starve! But I am not cool with giving my routing number out to people. So I grilled the guy to make sure he was with the bank. After 20 questions I confirmed he was legit. But still! What a freaking tough dilema.

Yesterday I decided I had to make 2 students switch rooms. That was a first. They did it and they all seem happier now. I have one girl who so doesn't want to be here but her parents made her so she doesn't talk to anyone. High schoolers are so full of drama. And of course one boy like a girl who likes a different boy and so on and so on. Two of the students got dumped b/c they left their significant others behind for 3 weeks. There is a cheesy war between the boy RA and girl RA with the kids helping- they are posting pictures of each other with mustaches and all sorts of stuff like pasteing ones head on the body of King Kong and also on gangsters with signs that read the girl RA shot TuPak Shakur (sp?). It's funny and is keeping them out of trouble. My program asst is not riding the bus back with us on this Saturdays field trip so I am going to tell the students that she is late and that we are leaving without her! Hee hee. I am so going to hell! It is also interesting how the male RA has bonded with every single student and the female one has not bonded with a single one...
I am getting barraded with parent calls- very needy group of parents this year. I am stressing out b/c the guy I make the video with each year is leaving town next Wednesday so instead of having a week to make the video (I would prefer 3 weeks!)- I have a day to shoot it and a day to make it wonderful. Crap!
As for my TAs, I have one who is missing a middle finger and likes to show it but its like getting the bird but not really....I have one who believes that he lives in a secret underground lair (in FLORIDA), one with thick , long gorgeous hair that any girl would envy to have but he loves to out talk everyone, one who thinks drinking is sooo cool and he is the oldest....., one who likes to wear sunglasses, indoors- but he is actually super cool. I do have one girl and she is cool. The instructor is super cool (except when he wears a UF shirt.....when we are trying to recruit these students!)- he is actually rather brilliant & an all around cool guy. Talk about a diverse group of personalities. It is an amazing learning experience though and I love it. It is just nice to vent a little. Its frustrating when I think things are common sense and other people don't. That part is hard. Next year will be interesting b/c hopefully by then I will either be pregnant or have a newborn...not sure how that is going to get juggled in but we will see. As long as I can get a great staff, all will be well.

In other news, my man is all about getting season tix to the football games. Where the heck did that come from? He didnt want to go when it was free?!!?!?

Tomorrow is going to be jam packed busy. Next week is the last week of my camp and I cannot even describe all the madness that goes along with that...Saturday is a field trip to IOA/Universal.
That's it for the update. I am going to go watch me some Charmed.

Schnikes what a day!

The past 24 hours have been from hell. Total sheer madness.

First there was some serious work drama that I am not legally able to talk about but can simply say SCHNIKES.

But the rest.....well it all began w/ the first call at 12:05am. Oh and the delightful PARENT call at 1:10am. Oh that is so not cool. It is interesting to learn that the students with problems....well- its all the parents fault. I can professionally say that. One of the kids got toilet papered (okay- 3 did but the youngest one had it happen when he was asleep and thought he was being picked on instead of included). Sh*t hit the fan. I didn't get to bed till 3am. So needless to say- I was pissed this morning.

So I get to work, crazy stuff goin on. Then I go to pull the kids out that I wanted to have a talking to - one by one. This one kid was asleep in class. Oh hell no. I am not having that. I took his picture- that didnt wake him. I poked him. That didnt wake him. I pushed him and that woke him. I slapped a memo on his desk that read Come see Dr. Me right after class. That boy came in here sooooo scared. I love it! I downloaded the pic and pulled it up on the computer and told him how I would send this pic to his family who sent him here to learn - not to sleep. I told him how I was looking for someone to be an example and have sent home. I threatened him w/ changing his roommates. All sorts of stuff. It was great. I am turning into such a witch! Then I did it to the other kids. Woo wee. It was just one problem after another after another. I put in like 60 hour work weeks minumum when I have this summer camp. I love it though. We also had a super cool speaker that I brought in. This guy is totally blind and is the CEO of his own software company. He just got a seeing eye dog so that was also cool. Here is his info: http://www.freedombox.info/mike.html
This guy is so cool. He has a family and gets his kicks by going to Publix w/ his pregnant wife, toddler, kid, and seeing eye dog while wearing his shirt that reads Too Much sex causes blindness. He uses the Lynx shuttle service and they were AWFUL. He got here at 11am instead of 12:45 (no lunch for me...) and then they were supposed to pick him up at 2:30. Yeah...they got here at 5:30. I was trying to juggle him and the 20 students waiting to see me and the parents and RAs calling and the notarizations, and, and, and. Agggh! So afterwards I said to heck w/ it all- got my Hot Dog Heaven and then got my hair cur shoulder length short :o I am about to head over to the dorm and do a girls night (facials ) over there.

This weekend was jam packed. On Friday I took them to FIEA which rocked! http://fiea.ucf.edu/shield/showpage.php?page_id=1

On Saturday I took them to Epcot. Perfect weather. Great trip. Didnt like the restaurants there though. Sunday was SeaWorld- it was the 5th year we got rained on (not bad though- it waited till the last hour). No time for details. Gonna try to get in some tennis b4 the facials. Gotta run.
xoxoxo

Lebanon

So my sisters husband wanted to take the family to Lebanon or Beruit (sp?) for vacation. I am talking 'get the passports ready' stage. How do you get out of going there?!?!? Schnikes. So anyhow, their airport runways were all bombed. The airport is closed/not functional. I swear I had nothing to do with this.....!

The hot romance

So tonight we were planning to have a date night- a little CheeseCake Factory and a movie. We got home at 6 and passed out at 6:02. We woke up 3 hours later. EEEiiiieee! We slept through date night! Oh the romance! Between his studying for an exam what seems like every day and my 30 comp sci gangsters- we were wiped. I am fighting a little cold too- ouch- bad timing.

So today I took my little gangsters (my pet name for them) to FIEA. Talk about an awesome field trip. They were so good to us. It is a grad school program where in a nut shell- they combine programmers, artists, and all sorts together and do video programming. My kids got to do a hands on battle of the bands w/ an interactive guitar - then they broke up all the kids into 4 groups and gave them their own rooms to 'make' a video game concept- then each time had to go in and play it. The pictures I took I bet are awesome! The winning team got tee shirts from them. The architecture of this building was sweet. All the grad students had the coolest cubicles- lots of action figures everywhere to help stimulate game design.

Keepin it short tonight- gotta walk the dogs and get ready for tomorrows trip to Epcot since I slept away the day!

Today was like an after school special....

So each year I always have that one favorite comp sci gangster ...you technically shouldn't have favorites but everyone does...they just might not admit it. So this year it is the youngest kid. He is 13, has the roundest cheeks, and is VERY rural. He is the smallest one of the group. So we did rock climbing again tonight with the 2nd half of the group. I'll get down on the floor to take pics of each kid to make it look higher than they are (since they all get a CD of all the pictures I take for the 3 week program). I even fake a few pictures if they are too scared to really climb so their parents think they did...it boosts the ego for some. SO my lil favorite, I took some fake pics at first. But then- this is where it gets very 'after school specialesque'- we start cheerinng him on. Then it becomes a large group cheering him on. Aww! He got all the way to the top (totally kicked my butt mind you!). Then they all clapped when he was coming down. :)
We also had some crazy athletes. They made it up to the top of the rock climbing wall on the parts where there are no nubs to grab. Scchnikes!

It was also the RAs bday today. We printed a door sized poster of him for fun humiliation and we surprised him w/ a cake- all the kids showed up on time to sing him Happy Birthday.
This years group is sooo interesting and very diverse backgrounds.
I gotta start thinking of what I am going to do differently for the video of it all this year....any good song suggestions (I like Green Days- I Hope You Had the Time of Your Life).

I am wiped!

How HOT is Chuckstar!?!?!?!?!?

So todays topic of discussion: Chuckstar's hotness level.

Today he came home from school at 10pm after taking his exam.
He did so good- oh let me tell you how good.



He got 100%. Good golly now THAT IS HOT!!! I'd post a hot picture of him w/ his book bag but I think he would kick my butt so you will simply have to visualize that hotness on your own.

The madness continues...

I am exhausted and I think I am fighting a cold from being around new kids (kid germs- you know at the mall those germ infestation boxes they call play areas...? It is inevitable to catch a cold..).

So I took the computer science gangsters rock climbing. Of course, you always get a few that are scared of it and just want to watch. The other 85% of the group were like little monkeys and scaled up the wall so fast! Great pics. Of course, the Rec Center pulled a new one on us. They said you can't wear denim - of course I had girls in denim capris and shorts and a few guys in jeans. This is horse hockey. You gotta be kiddin me. I had to send them back to the dorm to change. They never said this new rule in the phone calls, the rec center meeting, the emails, nor is it on their website. They said that denim 'wears down the wall.' Are you kidding me?!?!? It is plastic. I also tried to work out a deal so the kids can use the pool but they want to charge $120 and would only give us like Monday at 10am (when they are in class). We have rock climbing again tonight. They offered up the Ropes Course (for a fee of course)- but hello- comp sci kids outside in the heat in July....I think I will pass on that one!

We did have a bowling tournament in the dorm though using paper cups as pins and a volleyball. Halo of course is the 'in game' still. Really cool group. The youngest is 13 and the oldest is 17. We have like 3 or 4 birthdays during the 3 week program. Tomorrow I am taking them to the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA). The next day is Epcot and the day after that is SeaWorld. I seem to get about 2 parent calls a day. Very active parents this year.

I was hoping to get Doc & Johnny from the local radio station as luncheon speakers and Doc wrote back that he doesn't like to talk in public (hence why he is on radio). That stinks.
Chuckstar is till plugging away at school. He is in the last class which is a real devil.
My sisters husband wants to take them all on vacation. .......
To Beruit. We have 49 other states to choose from and he wants to go to Beruit?!?! I know why he didn't become a travel agent! My brother is going on a work trip to CA and the place he is staying at has 41 pools- now that's my kind of vacation!
Work is fine. Lots of madness going on there but nothing I can talk about.
I am off to a Housing meeting. I hope all is well with everyone!

Glimpse into the madness

So here are a few highlights regarding my summer camp:

*As an icebreaker, we do a game called 3 truths and a lie) pretty self explanatory- you state 4 sentences one being a lie which we have to guess which one). It is a great way to learn about people. So one of the TAs (teaching Assistants...i.e. 'adult') said I live in an underground secret lair." Oh wait- it was one of his truths. Are you kidding me? The lie was "I like orange' when in fact he doesn't. So one of the other TAs asked if he could see this underground Lair (by the way- we live in Florida....we don't even have basements!). The guy pauses. Looks at him. Then sternly says 'No.' Who does that!?!?!?

*As the game is winding down, I get to this one kid. He looks like one of the brothers from that music group called Hanson. His truths were "My grandfater is/was a NAZI. I don't like black'- oh- and he was wearing all black. No wait- it gets better, the guy sitting next to him is his roommate who happens to be a very big black guy w/ corn rows and a big chain like Mr. T. This kid replies "So your my roommate?' Schnikes! They are getting along though.

So that is just a peak at what goes on w/ a summer camp. We had a couple of room lock outs. No big deal. The Resident Assistants are superb this year. We have 5 girls (previous years were like 1 maybe 2!). Pretty cool group this year. At the end I try to put together a video montage so i have a camera attached to me at all times. I do the confessional tapings the last week.
I am hoping to find a way to get 4 free XBoxes for the upcoming summer camps.
Hopefully some of my summer camp pics will make it onto the main website.

Happy 7-11!

I'll be MIA for awhile

I am on call 24/7 for the next 21 days. I have about 30 high schoolers I am responsible for right now so it is crazy time for me.
No- it is not a Star Trek convention.....

On a short note. Had a great weekend.
Went to Shogun- worst chef we ever had there- bad enough to cause us not to go back for a long time. Watched Failure to Launch at the house- really cute movie- way better than The BreakUp. Went to the mall and did house stuff Saturday. Ate ay Bill Elbows. Not a big fam of that place though. Saw Pirates of the Carribbean 2. Good movie but long- didnt get home from it till like 2am :o Then today I did my summer camp stuff- I was on my feet for a solid 8 out of the 10 hours. I'll have great stories later.
Off to bed.

Role Reversal

I am feeling rather guilty.
My poor husband is so miserable with the obscene amount of school work that is laid out for him. He has been having to use his vacation days to get all of his school work done.
And he is kicking a*s at school.
It is soooooooooooooo hot, but as you know, I find school sexy.
However- how guilty do I feel for finding hotness in something that makes him miserable?!?!?!?
But when he comes home saying he got a 99 on a test- PURRRRRRRR! Now that is hot.

Okay, now don't get me wrong- it is also sooo nice to be on the other side of the fence after all of the early years of me always being the one in school while everyone else was out having fun. It is hard to explain, but its like the baby club- oh you all know what I am talking about. It's that "you can relate' mantra. Maybe the misery loves company club. Its like when I graduated with the doctoral degree- I didnt think it would be different but it was (which was cool). YOu get accepted into the 'club' of the 'wow- you had to jump through the same devil hoops that we had to go through.'
EEEiiiieee- I am rambling. It is time for bed. I just had to share how hot my husband is.

What else is going on.....

This Sunday is the start of our 3 week computer science summer camp. For the following 21 days- the sheer madness that goes along with it begins. I love it though! There is a ridiculous amount of small details that go into planning these institutes. Oh do I love the planning and follow up. Plus I get to take them to FIEA (Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy), Epcot, SeaWorld, and Universal. However, I am on call 24/7 for 21 days....We picked the best two resident assistants too. I am psyched about that.

Not much else going on. I stumbled across a great find. One of my coworkers enlightened me to Glade candles. they are less than 2 bucks each and they make the entire office smell like fresh baked cookies.

I talked to Derek. Next month he is moving back to Cambridge Circle. His sis is going to move to G'ville. My brother bought a new Acura TL. My Dad's hernia operation went fine. O yeah- I went to the chiropractor today (I go again on Tuesday)- they gave me an $80 gift certificate for a facial. Sweeeet! They also made me at least half an inch taller.
That is all my news.

My Burlington Coat Factor

I only had to work a half day on Monday. After work I decided to go to Burlington Coat Factory to get a bathing suit since my elastic disappeared. Where does it go?

So I swing by Arbys (mmmm) and eat my lunch like a total winner ......in the parking lot of Burlington (everyone else had to work!). Let me tell ya- you get some weird looks when fine dining in your car alone.

I do my shopping. I had too much to drink at lunch and had to pee. Since I wanted to do more shopping, I decided to brave the Burlington Bathroom.
First of all- BAD idea.

There is a big ole note on the door that says ring doorbell to get in. No problem, weird, but no problem. Okay. So I look at where a doorbell should be. It is missing. That's right. Someone stole the doorbell. But wait! The hard wiring for it was still there. What do you do? Splice the wires?! So then this guy standing there says to me in Spanish- "Llame el timbre para abrir la puerta" (ring the doorbell to open the door." You don't say?!?!? So I just push hard on the door and it opened.
Oh dear heavens- I go in and contemplate if it is safer to pee outside.
I want to know how it is humanly possible for a female to do what I saw done to that bathroom?
So what was the lesson of this story? Go to Burlington Coat Factory dehydrated! Oh so unholy!

For my non-blogging readers

Hello non-blogger readers.
Today I have a request for you.
Imagine writing someone every week and never getting a response back. Would you keep writing?

Exactly! So even if you don't have a blog- just reply back so I know you are reading it. You don't need to have your own blog. I don't care if you just write back 'wow' with your initials. But throw me a bone!

At the bottom of each blurb in the right hand corner you will see a number next to the word comments. Just click that, write a comment, and click on Anonymous (or you can make up a name). It is that easy.

A friend of mine who I haven't heard from in a year was reading it and when I called that person, they knew what was new with me and I haven't heard a peep from that person. That drives me crazy.
It is blog etiquette so now you know.

Weekend Update

Holiday weekends are great.
A group of 8 of us went to New Symerna. We went boating, frolicked on sandbars, fished off a dock, swam, had a group dinner, took embarrasing pics of everyone that I can't show on this blog- doesn't get much better than that.
Had to work a half day today. Was very productive but then got to go shopping after work. If only all days were this good!

The boys.

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Originally uploaded by drjeeeol.

The Girls.

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Originally uploaded by drjeeeol.

Lynn, Chaz Jill on the boat

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Originally uploaded by drjeeeol.

Kevin

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Originally uploaded by drjeeeol.

Here is a pic from our last party of someone imitating a fish out of water. YOu can't see the wiggle action in the pic- but trust me- it was there!