I don't know who Greensboro blogger Bottles and Cans might be, but the author has won a place on my blogroll chiefly on the strength of this "Big Time Hard Hitting Investigative Report" involving his friend's proclivity to pee on his own property, "an old Turkish woman", and an old theory about ridding one's self of a racoon infestation.

Excellent.

11:34:27 PM     comments to the above post so far, join in.   Trackbacks

This morning's N&R reports the results of The Board of Education's protracted discussion last night regarding magnet school changes for next year.  I attended that meeting because one of the main topics of discussion was Aycock Middle School, which my kids respectively attended, now attend and will attend.  It is also one block from our house and commands a lot of my neighborhood's land mass.  Let's just say... I'm an interested party.

I received a background email two days ago that let me in on the conversation among a group of parents who currently can, and/or do, send their kids to Aycock by choice.  The Very Special Needs (VSN) program has been at the school forever, however many parents of students in the elementary VSN program at Wiley school, which feeds Aycock's VSN program, are advocating for the school board to combine the elementary and middle school programs and move the whole thing to Lincoln Middle School, which will reopen next year as a performing arts magnet. 

The clandestine email was the first I had heard of the exodus so I started calling some school board members to glean what they knew about it.  Come to find out, many options were being considered for both Lincoln and Aycock.  Today I further discovered that many of those options, which the Board voted upon last night, were perhaps predicated on faulty information...

Continue reading Changes for Aycock Middle School

************************

Update 12/18:  The numbers of the various groups of students who may or may not attend Aycock next year are confusing I admit.  I received an email for clarification from an Aycock parent.  That email and my (hopefully) more succinct response might clarify things..

Parent: "I am confused about numbers, having read your blog and the email from William Price today.  Do we really only have 250 district children at Aycock, as I think your entry said, or is it the 520 that William put in his email earlier today?  I thought his number sounded more like what I have always been told."

My response: "It is currently 520, but the staff reported to the Board on Thursday night that Aycock will only have 250 seats available to districted kids after VSN's 50 students leave and are replaced by Brooks' 90 (or so) 6th grade students next year.

11:50:48 AM     comments to the above post so far, join in.   Trackbacks

Jinni had her second round of chemotherapy yesterday and the process is a real day-buster.  Although I can't say enough good things about the people at the Regional Cancer Center, one thing I can say is that they are not particularly respectful of anyone's time but their own.  The appointment was for 9:00a and we didn't finish until well after noon.

One would think that since every room in doctors' offices have computers in them, they would actually use them for something other than billing you for their services.  Say, like ... scheduling.  Believe it or not, all of you hospitals and doctors, cancer patients (and their men/women in waiting) have lives to live and incomes to produce so that we might have a shot at paying your bills on time.

Surely, by now, doctors know the average amount of time it takes to consult with a cancer patient and the amount of time it regularly takes to administer each prescription of chemotherapy. 

Some patients might need one hour of consultation, and another one 15 minutes and another 30 minutes.  Take those three numbers and do what my 5th grader does very well - average them together, docs.  You will come up with 35 minutes, which is the amount of time you should allow for each patient.  That is how the rest of the world plans their day. 

You will find that if someone needs longer than an hour, it will probably be off-set by someone who normally takes an hour but only required 45 minutes of your time.  By applying this simple math you could easily get patients dispensed with before frustration raises their blood pressure through the roof, thereby requiring additional medication and office time.  God forbid that doctors or their staffs should actual experience 10 minutes during the day when there aren't patients stacked up like jets waiting to land in Atlanta.

Scheduling isn't brain surgery... its more like rocket science .

Anyway... Jinni's treatment went smoothly, although the the amount of time it took was just a bit excessive.

We found out that our fears about Jinni being overly suseptible to germs and infection were unfounded, for now.  One of the drugs she is taking is designed to boost her white blood cell count even as the chemo works like crazy to destroy them, and it is performing wonderfully.  As of yesterday, her white count is considerably above where it was before she began her treatments, so you probably couldn't transfer your cold to her on a dare.  So...

Note to neighbors and friends... its OK... you can come back and re-populate our kitchen and drink our Bourbon and kiss us all square on the mouth.  The doctor said he will let us know when we need to bar the door, but it won't be anytime soon.  Come spread some Christmas cheer.

7:05:26 AM     comments to the above post so far, join in.   Trackbacks

I really tried to get back in time for Wednesday night's Greensboro Blogger Meetup but Charlotte's means of egress was even worse than it's usual way of somehow turning six lane highways ino giant parking lots - for hours at a time.  I will be SO glad to get shed of that city, but it looks like I will have to return for a couple of days next week.

6:24:20 AM     comments to the above post so far, join in.   Trackbacks