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Feb. 19th, 2006 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladynox25
Life has been so busy lately. What with working, and teaching, and grading, and all the things in between, I've hardly had time to keep up with everyone else's LJs, much less sit down and write in my own.
Let's see....news:
1) The trip to Japan is officially ON, as tickets have been purchased, but this is assuming Northwest's pilot contract talks work out. If Northwest is stupid, or if the pilots are stupid, it might end in a strike and a pilot strike at this point might take the entire airline down. Resolution to come sometime this month, so it's wait and see. *crosses fingers* If all does go well,hoya99 and I will be visiting the Land of the Rising Sun March 12-25th and we've got all sorts of nifty things planned. The chance to sample the food alone is getting me pretty excited.
2) I got a deck of exercise cards for Christmas frombelle_canto which I've started using. I bought a pair of ankle weights to make better use of some leg exercises. Next, I expect you'll see me on late night TV selling my own BRAND NEW PATENTED ONE LOW PRICE FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY exercise equipment system.
3) Teaching is going okay, at times better than others. At times, I feel like I'm making no sense at all. I really wish I could be doing this full time so I could give as much time as I want to my students. As it is, it's stressful to want to do a good job and continually feel like you're coming up short. Ah, well, I'll keep trying. Although I was incensed to find out that they're only paying me $250 per semester for this. I don't think it's worth it, but we'll see.
4) My car's radiator started eating major antifreeze about a month ago. I couldn't see any sort of leaks. I was being given all sorts of scenarios from "replace head gasket" to "cracked engine block--by a new car". When I got it diagnosed, it turned out that the radiator *was* leaking after all, but only under pressure, so my hanging around with the engine off waiting for it to leak was an exercise in futility. Ah, well. So it's in the shop for repairs and I'm driving my dad's pickup, of which more later. It's going to cost, though, but better that than a new car.
5) This past week has been one of those weeks where nothing seems to go right. Let me preface by saying that due to the whole car trouble, plus the teaching on top of working thing going on, I haven't really had a weekend for 2-3 weeks now. I know, I know, some people never get weekends, but what I'm trying to say is that my stress level was already quite high going into this week. Then this week happened. Let's see...Tuesday, after driving my dad's truck to work, I bumped into one of my coworkers' car while I was trying to park (my dad has a *huge* bed on his truck! much bigger than my Explorer). So, calls to insurance people ensued. I was not happy.
Wednesday I don't think anything specific went wrong. Thursday was the day I felt like I was making no sense when I was teaching. I was trying to teach them how to balance chemical equations and I kept picking the worst examples--the ones that are most difficult to balance. To top it off, the lab wasn't set up, so we had to postpone that. On top of other schedule changes, mostly due to the first exam, it really made me despair of ever getting this teaching thing right.
Friday I burnt a bag of popcorn in the breakroom. I mean, smoke pouring out of the microwave and a visible haze in the room that made my eyes smart. And there's not many worse smells out there than burnt popcorn. Everytime someone came upstairs for pretty much the rest of the day I was hearing "God, that stinks!" "That smells awful!" "It stinks up here!", etc. Friday was also spent anxiously awaiting a storm that finally came through this weekend. Freezing rain. Why this was important to me was 1) I was driving my dad's truck, 2) which I had already gotten into one minor accident that week, 3) the freezing rain was supposed to start Sat afternoon, when I would be at work doing BOD, 4) there was one small bridge between work and home, and 5) my dad told me when he gave me the truck that its tires were beginning to wear.
Putting that all together, I was envisoning a scenario of me driving home after work on Sat, hitting that bridge, which could be icy at that point, getting into a major accident in my dad's truck with worn tires, and even if I survived the accident, the insurance people were going to kill me. That is, if my dad didn't. Major worry ensued. (That I am now typing this is evidence that I survived, of course.)
Finally, yesterday, my computer died on me. I pushed the power button, and the lights flickered, but nothing happened. My reset button has been on the fritz for a long while now, and I figure there's a short in the power system somewhere that finally migrated over to the power button. I was sure that I'd have to buy a new system but then this morning, I gave it one last try and lo and behold, it started. So, now I have a zombie computer. How long this will last is debatable. I'm not holding my breath. (But at least it's not trying to eat my brains.)
So, to sum up: At the moment, things are okay. Could be a lot better, particularly on the financial side. The car repair I'm estimating to cost me a minimum of $600. I'm budgeting as much again for the trip. And a new computer system would probably be a minimum of $500. That's a significant chunk of my savings right there, especially all at once. Ouch! But I suppose it could be a lot worse.
Let's see....news:
1) The trip to Japan is officially ON, as tickets have been purchased, but this is assuming Northwest's pilot contract talks work out. If Northwest is stupid, or if the pilots are stupid, it might end in a strike and a pilot strike at this point might take the entire airline down. Resolution to come sometime this month, so it's wait and see. *crosses fingers* If all does go well,
hoya99 and I will be visiting the Land of the Rising Sun March 12-25th and we've got all sorts of nifty things planned. The chance to sample the food alone is getting me pretty excited.2) I got a deck of exercise cards for Christmas from
belle_canto which I've started using. I bought a pair of ankle weights to make better use of some leg exercises. Next, I expect you'll see me on late night TV selling my own BRAND NEW PATENTED ONE LOW PRICE FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY exercise equipment system.3) Teaching is going okay, at times better than others. At times, I feel like I'm making no sense at all. I really wish I could be doing this full time so I could give as much time as I want to my students. As it is, it's stressful to want to do a good job and continually feel like you're coming up short. Ah, well, I'll keep trying. Although I was incensed to find out that they're only paying me $250 per semester for this. I don't think it's worth it, but we'll see.
4) My car's radiator started eating major antifreeze about a month ago. I couldn't see any sort of leaks. I was being given all sorts of scenarios from "replace head gasket" to "cracked engine block--by a new car". When I got it diagnosed, it turned out that the radiator *was* leaking after all, but only under pressure, so my hanging around with the engine off waiting for it to leak was an exercise in futility. Ah, well. So it's in the shop for repairs and I'm driving my dad's pickup, of which more later. It's going to cost, though, but better that than a new car.
5) This past week has been one of those weeks where nothing seems to go right. Let me preface by saying that due to the whole car trouble, plus the teaching on top of working thing going on, I haven't really had a weekend for 2-3 weeks now. I know, I know, some people never get weekends, but what I'm trying to say is that my stress level was already quite high going into this week. Then this week happened. Let's see...Tuesday, after driving my dad's truck to work, I bumped into one of my coworkers' car while I was trying to park (my dad has a *huge* bed on his truck! much bigger than my Explorer). So, calls to insurance people ensued. I was not happy.
Wednesday I don't think anything specific went wrong. Thursday was the day I felt like I was making no sense when I was teaching. I was trying to teach them how to balance chemical equations and I kept picking the worst examples--the ones that are most difficult to balance. To top it off, the lab wasn't set up, so we had to postpone that. On top of other schedule changes, mostly due to the first exam, it really made me despair of ever getting this teaching thing right.
Friday I burnt a bag of popcorn in the breakroom. I mean, smoke pouring out of the microwave and a visible haze in the room that made my eyes smart. And there's not many worse smells out there than burnt popcorn. Everytime someone came upstairs for pretty much the rest of the day I was hearing "God, that stinks!" "That smells awful!" "It stinks up here!", etc. Friday was also spent anxiously awaiting a storm that finally came through this weekend. Freezing rain. Why this was important to me was 1) I was driving my dad's truck, 2) which I had already gotten into one minor accident that week, 3) the freezing rain was supposed to start Sat afternoon, when I would be at work doing BOD, 4) there was one small bridge between work and home, and 5) my dad told me when he gave me the truck that its tires were beginning to wear.
Putting that all together, I was envisoning a scenario of me driving home after work on Sat, hitting that bridge, which could be icy at that point, getting into a major accident in my dad's truck with worn tires, and even if I survived the accident, the insurance people were going to kill me. That is, if my dad didn't. Major worry ensued. (That I am now typing this is evidence that I survived, of course.)
Finally, yesterday, my computer died on me. I pushed the power button, and the lights flickered, but nothing happened. My reset button has been on the fritz for a long while now, and I figure there's a short in the power system somewhere that finally migrated over to the power button. I was sure that I'd have to buy a new system but then this morning, I gave it one last try and lo and behold, it started. So, now I have a zombie computer. How long this will last is debatable. I'm not holding my breath. (But at least it's not trying to eat my brains.)
So, to sum up: At the moment, things are okay. Could be a lot better, particularly on the financial side. The car repair I'm estimating to cost me a minimum of $600. I'm budgeting as much again for the trip. And a new computer system would probably be a minimum of $500. That's a significant chunk of my savings right there, especially all at once. Ouch! But I suppose it could be a lot worse.
