Day eight: Monday, December 18, 2006. 

Another day closer to zero hour, my friends.  I have started the clearing out process so as to not ship anything more than I have to back to the states. I don't have a "home" to return to so I'll have to put my household goods in storage. I'd guess that is a matter weight and volume, so less is better.

My travel orders showed up in my email inbox today. This may be a test of how quickly the Transportation office can get a move scheduled -- it's not pretty either way. If everything gets packed up this week then Christmas might seem a bit bleak in an empty house. But it might be worse to be "celebrating" Christmas in a half-packed house. I need to work on seeing some "opportunity" here instead of focusing only on the negative and the ugly side of what is happening. But that is not an easy task for me.

Not wanting to slip up on the thank you messages -- Many, many thanks to the people with the vans and station wagons who hauled the loads over to the storage area. And of course, thanks always to the students who continue to call or stop me wherever on post we meet in passing. So far that has been at the vet's office, PX, Post Office, shoppette, sidewalks of the health clinic - pretty much everywhere! It takes a little bit of the sting out of this to know I have your support and that you aren't afraid to say hello and tell me how your lives are going.

My sister leaves tomorrow.  I am really fortunate to have had her out here when this craziness started.  She'll be taking about half of my pack of dogs back with her and that will certainly make my trip easier.

Rumor control report: I graded all of the work students had handed in to me through last Monday.  Those papers have been returned to the outboxes for your class period in the front of the classroom.  I also entered those grades into my gradebook and submitted a copy of it to the administration.   I mention all this because I have heard that one possible response from the administration to my sudden absence was to average last quarter's grades into this quarter's progress reports.  There has been such a strong turn-around in my classes this quarter since the changes I intiated in our classroom procedures that I want to make sure that each student has an official record of his or her work and not a best-guess by someone who has never observed the work we were doing.

Not much else to talk about right now. Despite what still seems to be a huge injustice, I have to get to work and try to make some good happen.