Today is my last day of doing some work for the Census Bureau for the time being. As I understand the situation, the Tribes out on the Ft. Hall Indian Reservation originally wanted the Census Bureau to do the census on the Reservation because then the labor and expense money would come out of the Fed’s budget and not out of the Tribe’s budget. The expectation was that the Census Bureau would hire as many native Americans as would apply and qualify to do the work. Some did apply and some of those did qualify, but of the thirty or so people working on the Census out on the Reservation, only a handful were native Americans.

Apparently last week the political pot boiled over and last Thursday the Census Bureau was ordered by the Tribes to pull all of their workers off the reservation. Somehow the Tribes came up with people to do the work and a training class was cobbled together over the weekend and the early part of this week. Today I updated, verified, and turned in all of my binders and starting sometime tomorrow they’ll get distributed to the new teams.

Meanwhile, the other people on my team and I are all on hiatus. Supposedly, the Bureau plans to move us onto a different set of work called NORFU … non-respondent follow up … visiting folks who have not mailed back the census forms they received in the mail. That’ll require an additional three days of training which may be happening around the end of the month. I think that the Bureau was allowing time through the end of April for people to mail back their forms. When (and if) there’s further word, I’ll probably have something to say about it….

I have come down with a cold. It’s not the raging, crappy cold, but an almost-enough-to-stay-in-bed kind of a cold. I’m seriously looking forward to a day when science finally figures out how to cure a cold!

I’ve spent the day nursing this cold and doing pretty much nothing after turning in my time sheet and binders. Nina and her sister Pamela drove the 3 1/2 hours over to Boise to visit with a relative over there and a few minutes ago started their 3 1/2 hour drive back. It’ll be early tomorrow before they’re home. I’m not waiting up … bed is calling!

TTFN!