Edited The Bad, The Good, and the Very Very Ugly ... and the Fraggles... and the Usurper

The Bad

Round 2 of exams are about to begin. Saturday both Swell and I are giving an exam and I am also giving a practical. The students are about to find out that I mean business. This week has been horrendous. Lack of attention. Lack of understandng. Lack of care.

On Saturday they will have 10 minutes to do something that should take about 3. I fully suspect that most of them will fail. This is the practical portion of their clinical procedures class. They are being tested on something we went over near the beginning of the semester but very few of them have taken the time to practice. They strongly hoped that they would just being doing this test on their classmates. It isn’t hard to memorize 12 people’s prescriptions and just pretend to do the testing. They were a little upset when I told them that not only would they be testing Swell or I but that the numbers on the instrument would be covered so they had to go by what they saw not what they thought should be correct. It will be a fun Saturday.

The Good
We got lucky and were given a reprise on the end of school. School was supposed to end on May 5 but due to a late start and the Snow Days we had earlier they have given us another week before finals start. So the last day of class will now be May 10. Both Swell and I have serious doubts that we will get through all of our material but at least we have an extra week to try.

My proposal for extra funds was received and I promptly got a reply that they thought it was an interesting idea. It wasn’t an immediate acceptance but it wasn’t an immediate no either. They said we would hear back within a couple of weeks. If it turns out to be a no I’ll have to go back to being an optometrist, which I really, really don’t want to do.

The Very, Very Ugly

As most of you know before Swell and I left the ATL we went to our bank and asked what the best way to deposit funds from overseas was. The answer we were told was simple. We’ll provide you with some envelopes and you just mail them in to us with a deposit slip. We mailed cheques well over a month ago and they have yet to be posted to our account. When this pay period came around we asked if they could wire the money this time. They said yes.

As of this morning we have $416 in our account. The mailed cheques are still unaccounted for and the wire has yet to go through. Needless to say we’ve been a little stressed out. Everything for this month has cleared but we really need to get money in our account. The wire is being processed and we’re going to receive a confirmation number today. The accountant is looking into whether or not our cheques were cashed somewhere. If they were not I’m hoping they can just stop payment and wire more money. We should have plenty of money by the time we’re done here but it NEEDS to get to our account. Every one of my three student loan payments is more than $400 a month. YIKES

The Fraggles
We’re happy it’s the weekend. We both have stuff to do but neither of us really wants to do it at school. We’d prefer to do it at home. We’ll sleep lots, look at our bank account every 5 minutes, watch some Fraggle Rock (Swell was recently introduced to the wonderful world of Fraggles and actually enjoys it quite a lot. She doesn’t really care about the Fraggles she just likes to look at Sprocket – the dog. While I watch it all I can think about is how much I hated it growing up but how much my younger brother, Jill, loved it – that and Full House. I laugh because I know that if I could find a Fraggle doll (and I had the money to buy it) Jill wouldn’t say no to it. Even though he’ll be very old this coming Friday. He’s just a big baby in a grown man’s body.)

The Usurper

I am quite upset about missing Easter. I haven’t been at home for Easter in years. The last time I was there I went as a surprise to everyone but my sister. I was waiting for my permanent residency to go through so I wasn’t allowed to travel but just before Easter I got my temporary card so I flew up to see my family. That was probably 4 years ago. I’m upset because not only was I not there but I was replaced. Rather than my family looking at an empty chair crying because I wasn’t there they were looking at the Usurper. She took my chair, she took my turn playing games and I am sure she took MY candy. I demand justice! I will not stand idly by while I am being replaced.

Just because she can sing doesn’t mean that I can be thrown on the Trash Heap (see what I did there I made another reference to Fraggle Rock – remember the Trash Heap? She gives the Fraggles advice. I’m clever aren’t I?).

I will have my revenge! I will win the family from her in August while she is left lonely and has to work! HA!

Edit

So I just got off the phone with our bank. I now know where our pay cheques are... they are somewhere between Decatur, GA and Jerusalem. They mailed them back due to us needing to fill out a "collections form" - whatever that is. They mailed the cheques back a little over a week ago and chose to ignore my note asking them to email us if there was any difficulties with the cheques.

We will beg and plead with the finance guy - who by the way caused Swell to cry today - to cancel payment of those cheques and wire that money in as well. We found out that the money we asked to be wired on April 4 at 8 in the am finally began the at least 5 day process yesterday.

Swell was talking to the finance guy this morning - I was at lecture - and he started to yell at her because we mailed the cheques and we should have talked to him first.

When we got here our options for pay were cash or cash. We kindly requested cheques. They decided that would be ok. No body offered wire service ever! Swell decided to ask just in case. It was then that they said they would do it. The finance guy promised to get back to us at some point in the day to tell us what the transaction number of our transfer was so we could plead with the bank to not let the one cheque we have outstanding to bounce (our money should be in place before this happens) but just in case. By 3 o'clock I had phone twice and he didn't get back to us. He finally did gave us the number and we came home to phone the bank.

The lady - who although living in Atlanta - was very nice and mentioned that if the worst case scenario occurs and we bounce something that we just need to call back and talk to the manger and she will deal with any charges.

I feel bad because I promised Swell this wouldn't happen and it shouldn't have. The money coming in is greater than the money going out - if it would reach home. We did have some unforseen expenses that put us over the top, however. Christmas, Egypt, and South Africa. Oh well. You only live once.