Woo-hoo! Burning through a four day weekend

Four day weekends are the way to go. Kathy and I both took Friday off last week, and I had MLK Day off. We had a nice day on Friday since it had stopped snowing and warmed up a little bit. We ran errands, went grocery shopping and then went out to lunch at Outback.

One highlight of the errands was taking Tank for a bath at the dog wash. This time we used the shower room and it went much more smoothly. Kathy was there this time, though she practically had an anxiety attack over the prospect of bathing the beast. He behaved quite well and stood patiently while we worked him over with an oatmeal shampoo and then his medicated stuff. He was unperturbed by the all the yap dogs that surrounded him.

I kind of treated Saturday as a work day, though, since I was working on staff evaluations. There is a new on line way to do those things now that is supposed to be “easier”, “faster” and “more convenient”, but I think that just applies to the people in HR. I was so frustrated and infuriated by the new system. At first, every time I tried to open the instruction page, it would freeze my computer. I called the help line at work and of course then it miraculously started to work.

My plan was to do all my evaluations (I have five to do) and then tell the staff to do their part of the evals. I finally figured out that I cannot do theirs until they do theirs, even though the instructions don’t come out and say that directly. So I printed out the version the system uses and then wrote out as much of the evaluations as I could without using the computer. In the end, I was only able to do half of the work. I can’t access the rest of the work until the staff fills in their part of the forms.

The person who is resigning—Sharon, the one who works with the College of Education who broke her arm January 4—was the easiest to write. I just gave her all the highest marks, and wrote glowing things about her, and she deserves it. I really have some good people working for me. They typically don’t cause trouble and do their work well.