Back in action after a lengthy hiatus. Enjoyed a well-deserved couple weeks at home, and an exceptionally nice week here w/ EK before starting my new off-track gig. Before going into it- allow me to explain off-trackness. As most of the LA schools are so full that they can't fit all their students (ie: mine has 3700 kids and is built for 2200), the track system, wherein 1/3 of students and teachers are off at any given time, allows the schools to operate closer to their designed capacity. What this translates into is a deal where you teach/learn for 4 months, are off for 2, back for 4 more, etc. etc. Anyway, post-Xmas break I'm off until the beginning of March. In order to fill the time (and to make some cash, because as a 1st year teacher my pay isn't divvied up over the full year) I'm working for UTLA, the teachers' union, as a "volunteer recruiter" for a school board campaign in LAUSD. I started this gig on Tuesday with a meeting at the temporary campaign headquarters. It was billed as an "all-day strategy session" and took place in what was the closest I've ever been to a crack den. After finding the correct condemned building, I was met outside by a guy who said he was told to find "a white guy and a Mexican girl" who were coming to the meeting, and ushered up some rickety steps above Hank's Bar, through a warren of tiny, ill-lit hallways to a dim room illuminated only by the sunlight struggling through South Central's smog and the grimy windows. Suffice it to say that, given that the meeting was only an hour long, it was somewhat underwhelming having last done a presidential election in a hotly contested state. Fortunately, although my initial idea that the people I was dealing with were incompetent turned out to be true ("these are people who spent all of December making slipcovers for the office furniture" quoth one Union campaign pro), some other people are layered over them who appear to have some idea...