Party in Homestead

It's been four days without a post. A lot of work during the day, and I've been too exhausted at night to write anything. We had a fantastic week! To start it off, we had meetings with the insurance company, the security company, the contractor, the architect, the fire department, DCF, a courier named "Lefty," and the expediter. All in all, it was extremely productive, but exhausting.

The office is now primed and painted! All the classrooms except the toddler room are clean, prepped, and primed. We are now in a holding pattern until the contractor gets in and starts the work.

The nicest things happened this week: we had 35 high school students come all the way from West Palm Beach to help us out. They cleaned, primed, painted, hauled trash, etc. There is another group from the same church coming back on Monday and Tuesday this coming week. It was amazing how quickly all the sanding and patching took place. Their only payment was brownies and cupcakes!  :)

Then we started to have donations come in from parents--boxes of books, office supplies, etc. Parents are dropping by just to say hi and see how they can help. It's awesome!

Finally, we our big Parent Informational Party today. We had over 70 people show up! Registrations started pouring in (we have already received a registration for August 2011!), we had parent sign-up sheets for volunteering, and overall just a fabulous time hanging out and chatting about next year. And now I'm exhausted (and hungry!) again. All this exhaustion is just great. I feel like I've contributed more to Homestead and to my family in the last two weeks than I have in the last 13 years. Feels great!

On the other hand, FIU just couldn't stay away! Had my first call from a frustrated department chair (won't say which one). Nice that the person called and great to catch up, but also a reminder of why I left in the first place. Also had a call from a former colleague in the School of Music, and unfortunately things there have gotten strange. I've also gotten a slew of emails from outside folks wondering what has happened. All I can say is that things move very slowly in academia, and all too many folks are only concerned with themselves. They don't think about the greater good of the community, and in many cases, they don't really concern themselves with educating their own students. All they care about is the next performance, conference, or off-campus lunch. It's sad when people loose sight of what's important in life.

Enough talk about that. We all had a great time, and we're very, very excited about the future! Time is just flying by. I've never felt so energized (even though I just got through telling you how exhausted I've been all week).

Spread your wings!