In a meeting

2/9/10 Two children's books (Math Curse & An American Plague), given away

My paternity leave came to an end today and I returned to work. I'm incredibly thankful that I was able to take three weeks off to be at home with Joanna as we began to discover how to be parents.

This morning I abandoned my diaper-changing duty to return to the traditional role of bread winner (although Joanna makes more than I do).

What a way to return to school: I spent the day in -- this is absolutely true -- seven and a half hours of meetings.

I would simply like a show of hands, Dear Readers, from those of you who work in the business world. How many of you have ever spent 7 1/2 hours in meetings in one day? I'm not counting lunch, I'm not counting the downtime between them, I'm only talking about the actual clocked meeting time.

I'm an educator. I thought we were supposed to teach kids, not talk amongst ourselves.

One downsizing benefit of meeting with teachers is that it's really easy to give stuff away. I'm working on a theory that teaching has a higher percentage of hoarders than any other profession. I guess working in an environment that is low-pay, non-profit, and material-intensive leads to that kind of behavior.

Whatever it is, it helps anyone who's trying to downsize. (As, by the way, you all should be doing.)

I walked into my final meeting of the day, held up two books and said, "Who wants 'em?" They were gone in thirty seconds. Thank you Diane and Jason!

See, even though I hardly saw a child all day, I can at least say the meetings were productive.