When I was much younger (high school age or so) I would occasionally get lockjaw¹ thanks to my gritting my teeth while sleeping. Then I went through a number of years when this didn’t happen. Well, it’s happened this week. And I’ve finally discovered the cause. It’s the stress! I do my best to go “ha ha!” to stress, but the fact is that when I’m sleeping at night, my teeth betray me. I blame the Fileserver for this.

Thankfully, the folks at work are more forgiving of me than my teeth seem to be. The superintendent assured me that no one is complaining about the computer jobs which aren’t done. They know I’m doing the best that I can with my 1 period a day. The high school principal later told me the same thing. And tomorrow when Dean and I (hopefully) put the new Fileserver onto the network, I’ll be getting paid for that time. (Dean took the old Fileserver with him today at 4pm in order to transfer the files to the new one – hope its going smoothly for him!)

Dad and I went to see Tipp City’s new high school today for the monthly county tech meeting. Before I taught at Newton, I taught at Tipp for two years. As we went to enter this gorgeous new building, dad said to me, “Just think, you could have been teaching here.” Yeah, yeah… Jim Wilson, the head tech at Tipp, took all of us on a tour after feeding us pizza². The building is gorgeous, the auditorium to die for³, the science labs are nifty, and the wiring closets are amazing (and still orderly).

When we were in one biology room, I saw my old Mentoring Teacher from when I student taught at Tipp City, Derron Brown. I replaced him when I later taught there when he went to try his hand at Troy High School. Then when I left Tipp to go to Newton, Brown came back to Tipp. Heh. He took me off to look at the chemistry lab and storage area (more jealousy) and I managed to lose the techs. Found ’em again once I got to the first floor offices and continued the tour.

After dad and I were suitably wowed by the new school building (next month we get to see Miami East’s new building), we went back to our OLD school and checked e-mail. Then I announced at 5 til 4 that the Fileserver was going DOWN. Then after five minutes, there were still a few folks connected. Dad and I went around getting in touch with those folks (or simply turning off the computers they’d left on) and I turned the Fileserver off. Dean then took it home with him.

I was exhausted when dad drove me home. First, I was a bit disappointed that Ghost Light still wasn’t in. Then, I felt too tired to go to BW3s. And Fall Fair was tonight – as much as I love watching the kids do silly things, I wasn’t in the mood. And the folks were going to head off to the Lake and do Octoberfest there. So I went home, read LJ, and started to mope. But at 6pm, I decided enough moping, it was time to go out and HAVE FUN. So I went to BW3s, had an amaretto sour and popcorn shrimp (something new) and talked with the Fishers and Weavers.

After the Weavers left, I headed off to Culvers for some ice cream. I got a wafflecone with vanilla ice cream and sat down. Just as I was finishing, someone stuck a number/marker⁴ on the table and I looked up, surprised. It was the Fishers. After I’d mentioned the ice cream, they decided to get some too. So we continued the conversations we were having at BW3s and they even ordered me some more ice cream. Damn, that’s mighty fine ice cream!

I’m home again, ready to rest and relax. Tomorrow I’m on call. When Dean’s got the new Fileserver ready, he’ll call me and I’ll head off to the school and we’ll get it all hooked up. And maybe I can stop gritting my teeth!

¹Well, I don’t mean REAL lockjaw. No bacterial infection for me. No, I just mean that my jaw locks up and gets sore thanks to all of that gritting going on. It doesn’t help that I grit my teeth in time to the music that runs through my head during the day.
²When he sent the all call out to the county tech mailing list on what pizzas folks wanted, I was the first to respond and asked for cheese (or maybe even cheese and pineapple). One of the three pizzas that he’d ordered for us was half cheese, half pineapple. Yay! Thanks Jim!
³Seriously, this auditorium looked better than some professional theaters I’ve been to. Apparently, it was paid for by private donations. Simply an amazing place.
⁴What do you call those little plastic bends that have numbers printed on ’em? Some restaurants give ’em to you so they can find you in the seats.