Been a while

I haven't blogged in a while, mostly because life's been very busy as of late. I've been working more than I usually do, and I've been sick so I've been sleeping more than I usually do as well. We're in session 3 of our 5-session summer season. The first two went well, but then in session 3 the vacations started. Out of our 6-person management team (two managers, two assistant managers, two senior guards) five of us are in the water teaching lessons. I like teaching, but I had been trying to cut back my hours, so when I was told that I'd be teaching at night I had already cut myself back to like 25 hours. Now about 12 of those are in the water, and another 3 are pulling lane lines short to long course, which left me with 10 hours to do the rest of my work. I have to do the schedule, staff evaluations, and prepare for a swim meet, lifeguard competition, and water polo junior olympics... so the following week (the one that started yesterday) I scheduled myself back up to about 38 hours. I'm overlapping with my assistant manager quite a bit, so that I can work while she oversees everything else. So much for cutting back hours. Yesterday, my friend's mom got married in a church in Altadena. I went to the wedding, then to the El Monte Aquatic Center where I couldn't see David's desk under all the stuff he's got going (which is really un-usual for him, when I left there he was wiping his desk down with window cleaner daily!). I signed up Angel for two swimming lessons (Mommy and Me classes), which David had previously held spots for me in. David tells me that they're up to 100+ students per half hour in beginners (all of the shallow-water classes: levels 1, 2, and half of 3, for those of you who follow Red Cross), which I think is awesome. If you hire enough people, they definitely have enough space to do it. I tried it the last summer I was there, but ended up with fewer instructors than we planned for during the last few sessions. I wish I could take my boss and some of the other management staff down to El Monte on a summer evening for them to see the EMAC program. Ventura is currently doing 30 minute lessons with 10 minute break, with about 8 classes of 6 students a piece. Three in the morning and 3 in the evening makes 188. EMAC does 100-110, 6 in the morning (one is pre-school only) and 5 (one is pre-school only) in the evening, 25-minute classes with 5 minutes in between. Assuming they all filled up (all of the evening ones do, mornings sometimes do and sometimes don't), they have a potential of processing 900 students per day in beginners alone, plus intermediate, advanced, parent and child, and pre-school classes. After the pools, I went by mom's house. We chit-chatted and I caught up on some of the latest gossip. It's easy to forget that other people are out there getting older too. One of my cousins (a year or two older than me) has gotten married and is almost divorced now, another (same age as me) is dropping out of college to work so she and her boyfriend can make a house payment, another (2-3 years younger than me) just had her second child. Last time I saw them was my senior year of high school (2001) and it's weird to think of how different everyone would be now if I went back. Well, off to work soon, but I'll try to get on here more often. =)