Fire

Well, it seems another few months have gone by without any posts. This summer I took a trip to Utah and Colorado to visit my cousin and meet Kristy's family. When I got back, I wrote this really lengthy post about it and intended to post it here, but something went wrong with my computer and the entire thing was lost. I really didn't feel like rewriting it, so I just let it go.

Eventually, I tired of my nearly 5 year old computer and purchased myself one of those fancy new 24-inch iMac's. Like everything else on Earth, it was made in China and sent to me via FedEx. As far as I know, there are no large amounts of lead or polonium in it. It's bigger than my stupid little TV, so I actually watch all my movies on this now, and will continue to do so until I finally cave in and purchase a big-ass HDTV. That's a few months away, probably.

Anyway, the big news here is, of course, the many fires raging across Southern California. I am perfectly safe here in Pasadena, and Kristy is safely tucked away in Fullerton. I am afraid that my hometown of Fallbrook has not fared as well. The fire actually entered the town and, for those of you who are familiar with the area, it's not good news. As I understand it, Live Oak Park is pretty much gone. I am pretty sure that my parents' house is safe, but my sister-in-law's parents might not have fared so well. Google has updated fire maps, and it looks like their home is very close to the burn area...although it might be on the outskirts.

I am planning on going down to the area to have a look around (hey, if the President can do it, why can't I?). I am sure it will be weird to see all these places I grew up with possibly forever changed. I'm just glad my parents didn't lose their home.

It's All Mine!

Well, after five long years, I have finally made my last payment on my 2001 Honda Civic. I should be getting the pink slip in the mail any day now. Of course, once I have that pink slip, I'd better be careful...lest the cosmic forces that control the universe decide that me having a nice car that is paid for is not something they can allow.

It will be nice, though...not having to deal with a car payment anymore. Basically, I have had a car payment to worry about since 2000, when I purchased my Jetta that was destroyed in May 2002.

The car is a little worse for the wear, of course. But, it has a mere 79,000 miles on it and, aside from a few dents here and there, is still a decent little car. My plan now is to make it last as long as possible...drive it into the ground. And now that I have an extra 300 dollars a month, there's no end to the possibilities! Just think of all the nerd ropes I can buy!

So, the summer continues to move along. Nothing too exciting. My good friend Shane Ross, Professor of Stuff I Don't Understand at Virgina Tech, is in town this week. It will be his chance to meet Kristy and judge for himself that she is as awesome as I say she is. (Incidentally, some of you have requested pictures of her. Well, if you click on the link to the left that says "My Pictures" you can see all the pictures you want.)

Well, I've got piles of laundry to attend to and some dishes to wash, so I'd best get to it.

Until next time.

A Surplus of Time

Well, summer school ended on Tuesday and, since that time, I have slipped into full vacation mode. I can spend as much time as I want doing whatever I want without having to worry about lesson plans or grading something or responding to e-mails or anything like that.

It's kind of boring.

No, no. Actually, it's been good. I have taken care of a few things that I have been putting off because of being busy with work. My vehicle registration is due this Saturday, so I had to get a smog check on my car and send in the $99 registration fee. For those of you who don't live in California, we pay a lot for vehicle taxes. It is somehow related to the current blue book value of your car, and, of course, decreases each year.

I finally finished reading the book What is the What by Dave Eggers, which I started back in November. (This past school year was just so busy and filled with all kinds of extra crap, that I barely had time for anything other than work.) The book tells the true story of Valentino Achak Deng, a man who fled his village in Southern Sudan at a very young age. His village was all but destroyed by the Sudanese government, and he walked, along with hundreds of other children, to Ethiopia and then to a refugee camp in Kenya, where he lived for nearly ten years before moving to the United States in 2001. (There were no spoilers there, really...so you can still read the book.)

So, the reason it took me so long to read the book is because of a little program called BTSA. It is a mandatory state program required of all new teachers. The intent was originally to help guide new teachers and provide them with support during their first two years. Unfortunately, like anything the state gets its hands in, BTSA has become little more than a bureaucratic mess. With mounds and mounds of paperwork and approximately 5 hours worth of meetings EVERY DAMN WEEK, it is now a dreaded living nightmare that detracts from the time one should be devoting to grading and preparing and otherwise DOING ONE'S JOB!

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, it was reported that the number one reason teachers leave the profession is "bureaucratic interference"- which describes BTSA perfectly. I made it through the program and am now looking forward to actually being able to do my job...but the program that was designed to support teachers and help them through the first few years has had the opposite effect, causing many people to leave rather than put up with it.

Suffice it to say, all of us "Year 2" people are now glad to be done with it and have our credentials cleared. But getting through it was hell (we routinely refer to the program as "ShitSA", thereby showing the powers that be how we feel about their stupid bureaucracy.)

Well, that's all for now. I should get to bed as I've got a full day of doing absolutely nothing tomorrow.

Restoring the Past

Ok, that title is a little melodramatic, I confess. But, after many sessions of fooling around with the blogger template, I was finally able to figure out how to restore all of my archives without completely revamping my entire template to one of the stupid stock templates provided by blogger.

So, feel free to browse back through the days of yore and relive my days working under OMG at The ALC or my trials of student teaching and credential coursework at Cal State Northridge. Chuckle with glee as you experience once again my adventures at Oktoberfest, and marvel once more at my travels through Central America.

As you are no doubt aware, it is currently the middle of summer. We in Southern California have been enjoying a remarkably mild July, with temperatures hovering in the mid-80s most of the time. There was one week where it crested in the high 90s but, to the best of my knowledge, Pasadena has not yet hit the triple digits this summer.

My summer has been mostly uneventful thus far. Aside from a trip to the San Francisco area for my cousin's wedding, little has occurred. I have been teaching summer school, once again struggling with the frustrations of teaching remedial math. Day after day of exchanges such as this:

Me: Ok, so now we need to find a common denominator for 5 and 3. Anybody know what is is?
Class: *awkward silence*
Me: Guys, we just did this yesterday.
Class: *awkward silence*
Me: Remember, we want the smallest number divisible by 5 and 3.
Class: *awkward silence*
Me: That means the smallest number that they both go into...
*Brave 6th grade girl raises her hand*
Me: Yes?
Brave Girl: 12?
Me: Ummm...no...3 goes into 12, but not 5...
Class: *awkward silence*
Me: 3 goes into 12 4 times...so keep counting by 3's...
Some Boy: 15?
Me: Excellent! So, how do we change four-fifths and two-thirds into fifteenths.
Class: *awkward silence*

(Repeat day after day for 5 weeks.)

Thankfully, summer school will be finished this Tuesday and I will not have to deal with this again until Sepetember...by which time, I hope that my love of teaching will have been restored.

Once summer school is out, I will be hanging around Pasadena and Fullerton until August 11 when Kristy and I will be driving to Grand Junction, Colorado, so that I can meet her dad and stepmom. She's already had the pleasure of meeting my dad in June of this year and will get to meet my mom in September.

In other family news (and to serves as an update to demonstrate how fast time passes) my niece Alyson will be starting high school this fall. I believe she'll be going to Temecula Valley High School, but I am not sure. I can't really fathom the idea that she is in high school now...and I am sure many of you reading this are astounded by that fact.

Well, I need to start getting ready for a wedding that we are going to this evening. Just wanted to give an update, now that my archives have been restored.

Don't Call It a Comeback

After a nearly seven month hiatus, I have decided to make an honest effort to document once again the minutae that is my daily life. The hiatus was not entirely intentional, but I did need a break from continually having my life in the spotlight of celebrity.

Of course, most of my readership has more than likely given up checking here and it will take some time to reach pre-hiatus levels. I suppose that is the exact same lesson that the producers of Lost are learning the hard way. I also noticed that all of my archives are no longer linked from the main page due to the changes google made to blogger's system. The pages still exist...I am just not sure how to find all of them. If anybody has any idea, that would be most helpful.

Well, there have been numerous changes in my life over the last seven months. For starters, I am no longer living the roommate lifestyle. Because of my former roommate's impending nuptials, I moved from Montrose over to Pasadena on December 26...which put me about twenty minutes closer to work, as well. When I moved out, it was somewhat of an eye-opening experience to discover how little I actually owned. Thankfully, he gave me the dining room table and one of the couches. And, because I just switched apartments with his fiance, my place came with Direct TV and Tivo already included. The rest of it I have had to slowly acquire on my own. Although it is all a bit piecemeal, I now have most of what I need. I do need some bookshelves, so I can proudly display all of the books which I fully intend on reading someday.

Other impending purchases include the necessity of a new computer, as this one is now about 4 years old and takes almost 10 minutes to completely boot up. This can be aggravating.

In other news, I have been dating my girlfriend Kristy for nearly five months now. She lives in Fullerton, which is about forty minutes away. It can be hell getting down there on a Friday evening...but the payoff is well worth it. Some of you have already met her...others will meet her sometime soon, I am sure. She works in the financial industry, dealing with retirement accounts or something. Everytime she tries to explain her job to me, I try as hard as I can to listen, but usually end up glazing over after five minutes or so.

Over Spring Break, I was one of the chaperones on the eighth grade field trip to Washington DC. It was exhausting but, man...it was fun. If you want to see pictures of the whole experience, I have posted them all on my flickr account. Just follow the link that says My Pictures.

This school year is winding down (26 days, I think!) and then I will have a week off before summer school starts. I'll be teaching remedial math again this summer...which makes for an arduous five weeks. But, once that ends on July 27, I don't have to be back at work until September 4. I haven't decided yet what I am going to do this time, but I don't think I can afford another big trip this summer.

I have, of course, been retained for next year- which means I will have tenure, so that is pleasant. I am still stuck teaching math, but I am keeping my fingers crossed for a social studies position at the high school next year.

Well, there is more to report, but I am going to go ahead and leave you with this little slice of my life. Don't worry- I'll be back soon.

I been here for years.

Don't Worry, I'm Alive

Well, it has been quite a while since I have posted anything. A little more than two months, to be exact. It wasn't intentional...it's just that I got home from Costa Rica at about 2 am on August 29, and had to be back at work on August 30. Since then, things have been going almost non-stop. Every once in a while, I have politely reminded myself, "You really should update your blog before the memories of the final week of your adventures are lost forever."

To be honest, though...there is really not that much to tell about the last week, as it was spent sitting on the beach, swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, and enjoying the casual night life in the small village.

While I was there, I did form friendships with a group of Americans from Colorado who had rented a house outside of town. I tried my hand at surfing (which did not go too well, I'm afraid) and kayaked on the open ocean out to an island off the coast. I did all of this with my bad arm, too. It wasn't broken after all...but it was still pretty much useless for nearly eight weeks. Anyway...all the pictures from my trip have now been posted online (including a photo of the rare and elusive urban iguana.)

The school year is going very well so far. I can tell all the areas that I have vastly improved over last year (namely, classroom management) and am better at explaining the more confusing topics in a manner that 12 year olds can understand. Also, I am much better at getting assignments graded and returned in a timely manner. Although this sometimes happens at the cost of my social life, which has been quite slow since school started. This weekend, for example, I have been frantically grading a bunch of assignments for the honors classes so that they can have them back in time to study for the test this week.

This past week I suffered a severe blow to my savings account, as my car required $1,180 in repair. The power steering pump and the alternator both broke at the same time. The worst part of it all, though, was the fact that I had to drive around in a Dodge Neon for two days. I guess I should just be grateful that the dealership paid for the rental car. I guess they felt bad for me.

Still...I have had the car for more than four years now, and this is the first thing that has ever gone wrong with it. I just wish it had been something less expensive.

At least the Johnson rod didn't break.