Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

Today was the annual ESU #13 Winter Conference. ESU stands for Educational Services Unit and the one that covers the Panhandle of Nebraska was the 13th to be established in the state.

Every February, they hold numerous workshops for teachers and other educational professionals in the Gering/Scottsbluff area to support our “professional development.” Every December, we get asked which of these workshops would we like to attend and, unfortunately, this year I forgot to tell my Principal my preference, so he put me in what he thought would be the best workshop for  me.

Until this year, all we had to do was fill out a sheet telling the administration what workshop we wanted to go on, but, this year, we had to go see the Principal and “request” the workshop of our choice. I say request because several teachers told me that when they went to the office with their requested workshop the Principal insisted on them attending something else instead.

So I go to the workshop at the Gering Civic Center to see what the presenter, Carl “Energizer” Olsen, has to say. Anyone who decides to use the term “Energizer” as a nickname immediately raises a red flag for me. Sure enough this guy did not fail to disappoint.

Almost from the beginning, I got the feeling he was trying to sell me something from the collection of products he had set out on tables in the room. He also spent much of his presentation demonstrating his products claiming they could be used in the classroom to attract and maintain students’ attention.

I had several issues with the “Energizer.” First off, I found his presentation to be dull. I find most workshops to be dull so, to be honest, it may well be just me and I will try not to hold that against him. The next issue concerned where he spent most of his career in public education. For most of his time in education, he was a Middle School Guidance Councilor and, while that means he would have had regular contact with students, it also means that he had little to no experience of actually teaching and managing a classroom. I do not like people who have had no real experience of teaching in a high school setting telling me the best ways of how to teach.

The other issue I had with the “Energizer” is that a lot of his products would not be used safely in a classroom. Some of his products create magic tricks and one involved the use of fire. I can just imagine the trouble a teacher would get into if they used such things at our school.

The final issue involved the afternoon break. The main reason for taking this break was not so we could stretch our legs and maybe grab some coffee, but so that the “Enerqizer” could try and sell some of his products to the people present.

At the end of the day, I asked one of my Social Studies colleagues what he thought of the presentation and he said that it had been one of the worst in his 25 years of teaching. I think that pretty much says it all.

We have had the new cats for almost two weeks (Puck) and a week (Harvey) and things appear to be getting better. Puck is the most well adjusted and I think that is because he has been here longer. Things are a little more difficult for Harvey, but he seems to be adjusting to his new home.

At the weekend, we could not get Harvey out of the upstairs bathroom and he was sleeping on the kitty litter. When he did come out of the bathroom, he peed on the bedroom carpet, but I think that was just nerves. He is now using the litter box. He is also now coming downstairs and has finally started eating and drinking. We were really worried because, for the first two days, he would not eat or drink. Finally, on Sunday, he drank some water and, later in the day, he had some food.

Harvey seems like a very friendly cat and he is very affectionate. From what I have found out, he came from a farm out by Mitchell, Nebraska and was part of a litter of four kittens. He is about eight months old so he is still a kitten and not fully grown just yet. Both Puck and Harvey seem to be getting along better. There is less hissing and they seem to at least tolerate each other. Hopefully, their relationship will continue to improve.

This afternoon we got a knock on our door. Once again, a person was at our door trying to sell Kirby Vacuum cleaners. If you don’t know about Kirby Vacuums that is because they are not sold in stores, instead they are sold by sales people going “door to door.”

I do not like people coming to my door at the best of times trying to sell me stuff, but it does seem that the Kirby sales people seem to turn up in this area every six months trying to sell their ridiculously expensive vacuum cleaners. The first time it happened was about eighteen months ago when someone came to my door asking me if I wanted an “opinion” on a consumer product. He was pretty pushy and I ended up letting him in. He then spent the next TWO HOURS demonstrating a Kirby Vacuum cleaner to us. By the end, I had to almost push him out the door as I had an appointment at the Orthodontist that I did not want to miss.

After this experience, I googled Kirby Vacuums and their sales techniques and discovered a ton of complaints about Kirby both from people who had to put up with the demonstration and also from former salespeople. I actually felt sorry for some of the former salespeople. Many of them were just regular people who needed a job to pay the bills and support their families and were/are getting duped by Kirby. If you want to find out more about how Kirby scams customers and salespeople you can do a google search for yourself and find out.

So, this afternoon a young guy comes to the door with the exact sales pitch I heard eighteen months ago and also six months ago and I immediately asked him if he was selling Kirby Vacuums. His response was “so you’ve heard of us” to which I responded that there was no way that I was going to spend $2000 on a vacuum cleaner and that he might want to consider getting another job. He tried to tell me that his job  was the best job in the world and, as he did so, I closed the door.

If you ever have someone at your door and they ask you if you want an “opinion” on a consumer product or if they ask you if you would like a free carpet shampoo and cleaning, then do not let them in the door. Kirby Vacuums start at about $1200 and, if you buy on their installment plan, this can double with interest. Better to close the door to these people and go to the store and buy a perfectly good vacuum cleaner for $200.

Today during my 3-Blue class at school, three of my students came to me with a big box saying that the box was for me. I peered into the box and, at firs,t could not see anything. When I opened it some more, I saw two little yellow-green eyes looking back at me. The eyes belong to a little black cat that my students decided to give to me because they were sorry I lost D’Argo.

I had to spend the rest of the afternoon with the cat sitting in his box with a blanket the students bought for him. He could not get out of the box. He is very timid and shy. This second cat has been named Harvey after John Crichton’s neural clone out of the science fiction television show Farscape. Since we brought him home, Harvey refuses to leave the upstairs bathroom or indeed leave the litter box we have set up for him there. I am hopeful that he will settle down and adjust in a few days.

Meanwhile, Puck is doing much better. He is running around the house and does very well considering he has just three legs. He is not too fond of Harvey and keeps hissing at him. From what I have been reading, this should subside as the two cats get used to each other. It will just take a little time.

Today at school I got a message from one of the school secretaries saying the Humane Society had called and that they were ready for pick up. This meant that they had cremated D’Argo and we could bring him home.

We went to the Humane Society to pick him up after school. He is in a little stone urn and if you take the lid off there is small bag and covering that is a tissue paper bag. That is, of course, D’Argo. When we got him home we put another bag in the urn, which contains some of his fur, two whiskers, and part of one of his claws that he shed. We have also placed his three collars in the urn and closed it up. We now have the urn sitting on the computer desk next to his picture.

We still miss him and wish that he was still with us. We only had D’Argo for 14 months, but we treasured the time that we had with him.