Earth Day update

Vincent has been taking KY's standardized No Child Left Behind test - which in KY is used more to assess the schools than individual students - the past two weeks. He's working on two big projects for school - interviewing a WW2 veteran who goes to our church, and building a car slightly out of a mousetrap, which if it travels far on the big day - could rescue his currently abysmal Integrated Science grade. Today Vincent - having finished the on-line version of Algebra 1, semester 1 - taking it again, on-line, for enrichment - and passed the final exam, half way through spring break - registered today for the second semester, which I hope he'll finish by the end of the school year. For free, his math teacher is doing three ACT/SAT review workshops the week in between the school year and Vincent's putative Denmark trip. (Historically, high school students at Vincent's school ace the basic standardized test everyone must take, but don't do quite so well on the harder college admissions tests like the ACT and SAT. We may have Vincent take the SAT for the first time in Denmark, at the Copenhagen International School [scene from Copenhagen above top].) (Tonight, instead of going to buy parts for the car, Vincent transcribed the rest of a short preliminary interview from Sunday and called his father to warn him that if he fails science and still goes to Denmark he won't have time to go to Ohio to do summer visitation with his father, because he'll have to take second semester science again, on-line.) Stephanie went this afternoon to a dual baby shower for her two colleagues who have been pregnant all year. Last night we went shopping for Stephanie's one other English as a New Language education faculty colleague, who is expecting this summer, for the music teacher at Stephanie's school (see earlier "101 Dalmations" blog entry about these two teachers, who directed that musical together) who had twins seven weeks early a couple of weeks ago (say a prayer for her and her twins, one still in the hospital), and for the coordinators of youth and children's ministries, Kate and Ian, at our church, also due to have a kid this summer. Stephanie said the music teacher was at the after-school event, without the kids. Stephanie also talked with her mother, as she has been daily. Nancy has gotten out of the house twice in the past couple of days, Monday to a Cancer Center in Columbus where she may be going for treatment, assuming that she stays in town for that. For the second morning in a row, my colleagues interviewed rivals of mine, two phone interviews with out-of-town applicants for the associate for survey research position, my manager's old position, for which I have also applied. I have mixed feelings about getting together a scholarly presentation and going through the interview gauntlet. We've been continuing to interview candidates for another administrative assistant position and for a research assistant position. Some of my colleagues and I thought today's candidate was OK, but it appears that we may look for more candidates to interview - These interminable interviews take up a lot of our time, including for our one manager who has been coordinating most of them. Of course, the last time I was involved in this we extended the search and wound up with the right candidate later (instead of the ones I had helped interview during a first round of interviews). Still, we all have a lot to do, and we need help quickly, so it's depressing for this to go on forever, plus it's unnerving for me to have potentially look forward to being judged more explicitly by all of my current colleagues (assuming for the moment that I make the top two or three and am granted an in-person interview). These job interviews and the whole process, in general, potentially connect with other issues in the office as bad feelings sometimes fester. (Some of this tension has spilled over into the larger office, where it turns out that some influential people have clashed with my managers, and a Stated Clerk candidate who I wrote about earlier has encountered his first opponent in the election. That election will take place at the national Presbyterian meetings in San Jose. I booked my travel today both to Florida to be with my mother during and right after her surgery and to San Jose, for those meetings and a little visiting with friends and relatives [my San Jose hotel pictured above bottom]. Some of that tension may have also spilled over into my health, where my recovery from renewal of my shoulder/neck/back injury faced a setback, as I woke up immediately after the earthquake with significant pain again, which I'm working on at physical therapy this week.) (Speaking of San Jose, the General Assembly orientation videotapes are now live on the General Assembly Web site - http://www.pcusa.org/ga218/commissioners/orientation.htm
The person who alerted me to this - indirectly - none other than my old pastor from Tallahassee's First Presbyterian Church, Brant Copeland, who will serve as a General Assembly commissioner from the Presbytery of Florida, and told my mother he had watched a video with me in it.)