First Week: well that was fun?!

Man I was excited this week to finally get back in the classroom with the kids. I still am actually. The week has been full of work. I've only gone in at night to work 8 times now in the past 3 years-ish. Three of the 8 were this week and honestly I have so much to do I oughta go back in tonight. But bag that. It's a friday night and the mood is right for sitting at home doing nothing but dishes and cutting some herbs from my garden.
We have a new principal who is a great guy. I was one of the teachers who interviewed him and I think he's doing great things. He requires more work though, like teachers submitting lesson plans with standards attached and he's supposedly going to compare the standards taught with the ones on the state test to make sure we're preparing them. He's demanding and strict compared to what we had before, and I welcome that with open arms.
Right now I'm running a 5th grade band of 27, a 6th grade band of 24, a Middle School band of 26 and a High School band of 25 plus a guitar ensemble of 14. Not too bad for a K-12 district of only 300 kids.
I know the kids are not yet adjusted to sitting and behaving in a school setting. I'm not either. Yet despite the added work load from the new bossman, despite the excessive talking. I'm genuinely happy to be back in the room. I'm feeling the stress, but I really feel like I was made for this.
Ohhhh so story: This girl. Lets call her Suzie Que. Ok, so Suzie takes summer lessons from me at school every year. She's a flutist and honestly pretty decent considering all the social, emotional, and intellectual barriers she has. Ok so her mom calls and says that Suzie got mad and bent her flute. I was all like 'whats that even mean' but mom apologized and swore up and down they'd make it right. I gave them the addresses of the shops I approve and they supposedly got it all fixed. I'm not sure what "bent" really meant, but they were fixing it right. So today she's getting her flute out and I was like, wow I should look at that sometime. So after class I got it from her. The following is a photo I just took of the flute AFTER FIXING.

Close up of the scarring

To be honest, the repair guy I love could've probably done a better repair job, it's still kinda folded up there. But seriously, what did this girl do? There is also a pretty good ding on the plate so I think she like whacked the headjoint against a counter or something while it was in the body because the barrel part is great and the scarring from it being folded is right outside the barrel. Below is my fantastic artist's rending...

Perfect rendition of the flute headjoint

So yah, that was fun...

It's one of those 1960's or 70's Artley 18-0's. (1969 according to a quick serial number search) Basically made out of steel. These old Artley student models ain't pretty but still.

Anyway. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.