one more miracle

So, wacky story: eating lunch at work yesterday, I glanced at my keys and noticed to my GREAT surprise that my car key had been bent dramatically! Like, the strong steel rod had been bent at least 30 degrees. ????!? I still have exactly zero idea how that happened. It is a mystery for the ages.

Needless to say, I couldn't drive my car, so I sent an email to the whole building (high school) asking a kind soul for a ride (I live half an hour away) that evening and the next morning so I could get my spare key. An older woman showed up at my classroom and said she could give me a ride as she lives out past me. I had never met her before (my building is HUGE) but I was so grateful and took her up on it. This lovely guardian angel was named Patty.

We were talking about teaching in the car, mostly, until I happened to glance in the back seat and see that Patty had a MARAUDER'S MAP IPAD CASE!!!! And a HOBBIT TOTE BAG!!!! I freaked out a little bit and we immediately launched into nerd code - you know, the conversation you can only have with a fellow Confirmed Nerd. :D We shared our biggest fandoms - she's old school, into Star Trek and Wars, LOTR, HP, etc. We bonded over both being the girl in middle school who read LOTR once a year (at least). We even have the shared experience of getting really deep into Wheel of Time but never actually finishing. It was magical! And she's just an absolutely lovely woman all around.

As the cherry on top, she also plays SOCCER every week in an indoor league! WHAT! At that point I was freaking out a little, because I'm PRETTY SURE she's me in 20 years. I even want to move to the same area she lives in, and she's been teaching at this same school for 19 years. Could that be my future?! I don't know, but she seems to be doing pretty fabulously, and I wouldn't hate it!

In any case, I LOVE everything about this - random nerd encounters, but especially making a new delightful friend at work. Yay!!

(Happy Epilogue: The welding shop at my school was able to fix my key for free! It's got a slight crack in the metal so now it's just my spare key, but I am SO grateful. I love my colleagues!!!!)

I didn't post last night because my computer was being so hideously slow that it was a herculean struggle just to get my work done. It was trying to do a backup to an external HD and apparently that was so laborious that it just froze - like 5 times. It was awful. I left it running overnight with no other programs open and it still failed to do the backup. No bueno. :( I hope this isn't a sign of a deeper problem.

Then today I stayed at work until 7 PM just doing... stuff. Planning, grading, organizing, planning. My workload never ends, and I can never stop because if I do my kids suffer. I'm worried about whether I can keep this up for any significant amount of years. Of course I'm still near the beginning so it will get better, but I'm such a perfectionist, I can't see myself ever putting in less than 70-80 hour weeks. Ugh. You know, in other countries teachers are given less students and more prep time during the day. Oh and they pay them decently. Doesn't that sound nice?! Fuck America.

Ahem! I'm currently self-medicating with amazing pizza and BROOKLYN 99!! What a good show. Terry loves ecologically responsible farming practices!! <3 And Holt and Jake are teaming up! AMAZING. I also deeply love Amy Santiago. What a gal. If you haven't seen this show, DO YOURSELF A FAVOR. Seriously. It's happy wrapped up in a bow.

I LOVE HAVING A LJ TO WRITE MY FEELS IN AGAIN. *rolls around* Come say hiiiii! Tell me what TV you're watching!