My money woes continued from last week.  The Porsche ended up costing about $1000. to get it tuned up and smogged.  My Honda cost another $450. to fix the A/C… for the third time.  My dog got severely sick, so that was another $450.  And then there were taxes… another $450. went to my accountant for her services.  To make up for all these expenses, I now have to sub every day until school gets out!

I spent Thursday and Friday subbing in my favorite English class.  What a treat – that teacher is so organized, and the kids are so well trained.  I think it also helps that they’re seniors.

Over the weekend, I felt a cold coming on, but I still taught Adult Ed at church.  It wiped me out though, so much so that I questioned whether or not I should sub on Monday.  I did, mostly because it was a minimum day, but it was rough.  For the rest of the week, it’s English classes at the High School.

Good news!  I mailed off my English Credential Application (plus documentation and check) today.  Very soon, I’ll have an English Credential.

So now what?  I’m done with class.  That goal has been met.  I now have to wait until grades get posted before I can submit my credential paperwork.  Do I wait for the local high school to contact me, or do I start looking at all districts?  I need a job!  I’m starting to line up the sub jobs, which is good because by June they’ll be gone… and so will I shortly after school gets out.  Between now and then, I would really like to know where I’m going to work next year.

Today was an expensive day.  I took my car in for “minor” service and a smog check.  At the Porsche dealership, “minor” is still $900.  I can’t afford to pay this every year.  Not on a teacher’s salary.  I need to find another place that can service my car, or I’m going to have to get rid of it.  I don’t want to, but it’s costing me a fortune  just to keep it on the street.

Yeah, I’m done with my class!  What an exhausting week!  Not only did I have a ton of class work to do (this week was 50% of our grade, 5 papers/projects due) but it’s also Easter Week.  Somewhere in the middle of the week, I sort of lost track of what day it was and I wound up missing a band practice because I thought it was a different day – that sort of sums up how my week went.

My final paper turned out to be 72 pages long.  The other four projects were another 14 pages (for a total of 86 pages typed this week!), plus an 8 minute video that I had to put together.  I’m happy to be done and I feel quite accomplished.  My teacher liked my final output, and I have received a perfect score in this class.   On her final comments, my teacher said that I deserve a teaching position because my work is excellent, I had the best ideas, and I put in maximum effort, which I did!  She said I can use her as a reference and I don’t think she says this to everyone.  Now I just need to get a job.

On the home front, my dog, Rudy, is not doing too well.  He’s having an allergic reaction to something, and after taking him to the vet, we learned that his kidneys are shutting down.  He may not last much longer.  Courtney will be crushed if he dies so soon after we euthanized Jeffrey’s bunny.  Me, I could go either way – I like the little guy, but I don’t want him to suffer, and if he does go away, it solves the problem of what to do with him when we go away for a month this summer.

This week was crazy!  My class workload was so much greater this week due to vague instructions.  I was not alone either; many of my peers were off base with the assignment and like me, probably spent way too much time on both major portions.  As I was getting into page 7 of my “5 point” assignment, it occurred to me that I might be doing it wrong so I asked the teacher.  What she wanted was in no way reflected in the assignment instructions, which called for a unit level of study, or about a month’s worth of class instruction.  With this new information, I quickly finished, but my peers turned in rather large reports.  For the other assignment, a group assignment, we were asked to create all kinds of stuff and put it on a Wikipage.  None of us had done this before, and our teacher didn’t even know what a Wikipage was (so why assign it?)  The assignment was hardly trivial — I think my group put in over 70 hours between us on this.  We did get full credit, but it could have been a much easier assignment.

Next week is the last week of class, and the workload is about 4x of last week.  As a result, I’m taking the entire week off from work.  Even so, I’ll probably work six straight 10-12 hour days just to complete this class on time.

OK, this week was a different kind of exhausting.  My family was home all week, due to Spring Break, so I spent some time with them.  Even so, I still spent a lot of time in my home office.  Because of the many hours I spent in school last week, I made sure that I only went to class four days this week, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t spend my time doing other things.  For much of the week, I helped my pastor and family move from their rental home into a home that they now own.  It took three afternoons to do this, and each day, the stuff to move got bigger and heavier.  By Thursday, I could barely lift my arms!  I also spent two days doing my quarterly stock review.  This takes a lot of mental power, and a ton of time simply putting numbers into a spreadsheet (at some point, I should really figure out how to automate this with a macro).  My discoveries weren’t all that great either.  The market is flat for the first quarter and is beginning to go down.  What is yet to be seen is if this is a false flat, or the moment when the market crashes.  I’ve put in a lot of stops and replaced risky stocks with more stable stocks as a precaution.  Especially without a job, I can’t afford to lose a ton of money, like I did in 2008 when I didn’t have stops on any stocks.  I also spent a day doing chip work.

On Friday, after spending three days moving, my wife and I went on an all-day date to Berkeley.  We did this because she is taking ~80 AVID kids there next week.  I also wanted to check out the Art History department, which has the only Doctoral program in the Bay Area that I can take, should I decide to get my PhD.  The thing is, Berkeley is built on a hillside, and it’s pretty expansive.  The BART ride there offered some rather uncomfortable entertainment, as we sat next to a mentally deranged person (possibly possessed and homicidal?) for about half the trip, but once off the train, we found some awesome Turkish food and then began our trek up the hillside.  We hit two museums, four libraries, the stadium and the bookstore – several uphill miles and several stairs!  This was great practice for next year’s Turkey & Greece trip.  It also showed that I could survive that trip, but that some extra walking and stairs between now and then would be advisable.  At our last stop of the day, Jeffrey called.  He’ll be at Sheppard until early June and then he’ll be ready for his first duty station, which will be in North Carolina.  He wanted something overseas, but nothing was offered overseas.  He did get the only stateside base that deploys people overseas, so he’s still hoping to get deployed somewhere.  After a couple of years, he may be ready for his next duty station, and that one may be overseas.

On Saturday, I did 10 solid hours on a single, 5 point assignment.  Most of these 5 point assignments take a day to do.  I can “hardly wait” to do the 10-12 point assignments in weeks 5 & 6.  After doing all that work, I got chastised by the teacher for doing it wrong.  I don’t think that I did it wrong, based on the rather vague assignment requirements, but she gave me full credit none the less, possibly because of all the extra effort I put in (?).  I’m hearing from other students that they too have been “doing it wrong” on some of their assignments as well.  I guess maybe I should ask more questions before I launch into these projects, but truthfully, I’m just trying to get through this class.  The class is an unnecessary burden placed on us by the State of California, and I am not happy about it.

Oh ya, I passed my English CSET!  This class, and $70., are all that remain in getting my English credential.  I was so excited that I emailed my principal and the vice principal who interviewed me a few weeks ago.  They had both asked to be “kept in the loop” on my progress.  It seemed prudent to do as well, since I have seen or heard nothing about a job at the school.  I know there will be multiple job openings next year, but so far, they haven’t posted any.  Maybe this has to do with the change of principal.  They’re still interviewing for that position and whoever gets it will likely want to be the one to hire the new teachers.