Countdown to fall semester: thirteen hours
In case you couldn't tell from the title, yes, the book is locked. Which means it's done. I have uploaded it to Amazon, where final processing is taking place of its formatting for Kindle and other e-reader software and devices, and it should be ready and for sale on the site within 24 hours. It will be priced at $9.99, I will retain all copyrights and publishing rights, and 70% of every dollar spent on the book goes directly to me. It clocks in at 463 pages from beginning to end.
Hoo boy.
This is, sort of, a lifelong dream finally fulfilled. I've written a book. I've published a book. I will be making money off of my published book. Eventually, anyway. If I want to, I can even have the money I make from said book be direct-deposited into my checking account, though for the first few months I'll hold off on that to see what sort of business it does. I'm guessing some of you folks will buy it, as will family and friends both here in Kansas and back home in West Virginia, but outside those circles I doubt it will sell a whole lot of copies.
As much as it's about selling books, though, it's just as important that it's out there at all, in the first place. As you know, if I choose to continue into a PhD program (or otherwise apply for teaching jobs in academia), publications help. If I make a lot of money off the book in the meantime to supplement my income as a GTA and possibly pay back some of my student loans? Great, wonderful, I'm all for it. If I don't? Oh well, I can at least add that book to my fledgling CV.
See? It all works out. Sort of.
I was also technically able to keep my promise I made here months ago when I said the book would be finished and for sale before school started. Tomorrow's the first day of classes, and if all goes well, it should be on sale by tomorrow evening, if not sooner. I don't teach until Tuesday, and I don't have any actual classes of my own until Wednesday and Thursday. So really, from my perspective, at least, I kept my promise.
I spent the day today working on the book, cleaning the house some more, and washing all of the sheets in the downstairs so that I could put them in the dresser (to keep them away from brown recluse spiders). The former girlfriend's room is almost completely gutted now, save for the desk she left behind, four bags of clothes, and the lamps/notebooks/folders/iron/etc that I decided to save because I'll probably have uses for them eventually. I know I will for the iron, with how wrinkled some of my clothes get. I also completed the first month's timeline for my new science writing students, and if I can stay awake long enough tonight, I may go to Walmart after it gets dark and the Sunday crowds go down.
"The Trashing" continues onward; tonight, I cleaned out the refrigerator and pantry to get rid of anything and everything that I would never, ever eat. I also found the former girlfriend's wired temperature probe for her slow cooker, as well as its manual. Her lost jeans, however, aren't here in the house, as I've now gone through everything left in the house.
Now that I think about it, it'll be easier just to do the Walmart trip in the morning, when I can go to the post office as well to mail off the first barrage of thank-you packages to friends, get some more stamps, and get an official change-of-address form so that I will no longer get mail sent to her parents' place in Smallville (which, in case you're not a longtime reader, is the codename I always gave to her hometown in Missouri). Not that I got much of that anyway -- maybe three or four pieces of mail per year, usually junk -- but still. Better to be safe than sorry; I'll never return there again if I can help it, or if I have any say in it. I have four of those thank-you packages to mail out right now, and will be preparing three or four more in the coming week or two. Let's just say I must peruse the gift card rack at Walmart for a while tomorrow.
In addition to that, I'm still finding things I need and/or need to replace around the house. Bleach, new pillows (or firm throw pillows), a small comforter/throw blanket, cat scratch pads, Band-Aids, envelopes -- all sorts of stuff both random and necessary.
Yesterday was my parents' birthday (yes, as previously mentioned, they share a birthday), and today is my grandmother's birthday. As a good son/grandson, I called them and gave them my best wishes. I also told my grandmother that the former girlfriend and I were no longer together, which neither surprised nor fazed her, as she suspected as much when she got her birthday card from me and saw that only I had signed it. She told me to tell her hi and wish her the best from her, etc.
Then she paused for a moment, and cautiously asked if I got to keep the cats -- to which I replied in the affirmative.
Eighty-four years old, and still sharp as a tack. One of the "Special Thanks" in my book was dedicated to her, as she taught me how to read between the ages of three and four (yes, I was reading that early), thus instilling in me a craving for information and an appreciation of the written page.
Other people who got "Special Thanks" mentions were Jim Harms and Ethel Morgan Smith, the former being the chair of the Creative Writing program at WVU while I was there, and the latter being one of the strongest supporters of my writing talent I've ever known. Others who got special mentions were my parents, the former girlfriend, and the only man I could comparably compare to being my writing mentor, Clark Perry, amongst others.
I even gave a shout out to Phil Collins, thanking him for his song "Easy Lover." For those of you who remember the story behind that, I'm sure you find it hilarious. For those of you who came late or are new to this blog, well...I guess you'll just have to buy the book if you're curious, won't you? It's in there, starting on page 393. I'm such a tease.
In reviewing the PDF manuscript of the book after it was locked, I've found a few little errors here and there that I'll have to go back in and fix, quickly, though once it's been cleared for sale that process can be done very easily. Because of that, until absolutely everything is totally finalized and I'm confident that all of the little errors have been fixed, I won't be giving out the info to find and purchase the book (not that I have a link for that yet anyway, since it's not yet up). There's always a little more editing to be done and some interesting stuff to change or remove.
On that note, I'm getting a headache, so I should probably pack it in for the night and get to bed. I have another long day ahead of me tomorrow.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
The Trashing, Part I
I have gotten somewhat sidetracked this morning/afternoon when it comes to things I need to do on the computer (such as finish working on the book and make my first set of lesson plans) in favor of being active and actually doing a lot of work around the house that I've needed to do post-breakup and post-move.
I call this plan of action The Trashing. Because, really, that's what it is. I'm getting rid of all the, well, trash that's laying around the house. The former girlfriend left a lot of stuff behind that I'll never use and that she doesn't want that I've been given carte blanche to do whatever I want with. So, in the little free time I have between now and when I really get into my work for the semester, I need to sort it, throw away or recycle the actual trash in it, take the clothing to a thrift store donation center, etc. Most of this stuff right now is in her old room, which I've been using as a "holding cell" of sorts for all kinds of things that have been or were cluttering up the house, such as all of her leftover moving boxes that she didn't use, the boxes for the Dirt Devil, my TV, the coffee table, etc. The boxes, at least, I will have to deal with on a piecemeal basis; I can't get rid of all of them via Newton's recycling system in just one week unless I want to make fifteen trips up and down the stairs carrying heavy-ass, awkward, broken-down boxes. Instead, I'll break down five or six every week and take them down with the other recycling until they're all gone, unless I decide to save a few of the sturdier ones in case I may have a use for them again at some point. I haven't decided yet, though I do know that -- eventually, anyhow, whether it be two years from now, shorter or longer -- I will eventually move out of this house. It's not like I own the place, you know.
I'm making a list of things that I don't necessarily want to throw (or store) away, but otherwise have no real uses for -- stuff like extra lamps, a humidifier, a bunch of books and novels, paintings/other art, picture frames, etc. I'm trying to keep track of all of it I can so that it can be offered up on Facebook or Craigslist for giveaway, curb alert or otherwise. In the spring, I may have a yard sale comprised of whatever's left, or call for large item pickup from the trash people here in town. I'd like to get as much of it as possible gone as soon as possible, though, so that my house isn't littered with otherwise random or useless objects, so anything I can get out of here ASAP (such as the bagged giveaway clothes, which take up a lot of space) I'll be taking care of within the next week or so. The former girlfriend also told me that at some point in the move, she lost something like four pairs of jeans, and wondered if they were somewhere in the house here, so I'm looking for those too. I doubt they're here, but there's no reason not to look for them while I'm doing the trashing.
This is, as you know, the last weekend of freedom for all of us graduate students. Everyone is in town again now, as far as I know, and they're probably out having fun and being social. Me? I'm cleaning the house with podcasts playing in my earbuds. Tonight, I will cook the dinner of a solitary man, fold a solitary man's laundry, and wash the dishes of a week's worth of solitary eating. And, really, I'm okay with that for the time being. I've finally gotten a little more perspective on the situation, and it's okay to be alone with the cats, working around the house and on my schoolwork/book. It's only when the boredom (or, conversely, stress) sets in that I get lonely. Thankfully, I have enough work to do, errands to run, and things to take care of that boredom doesn't really set in as much anymore. Especially not now that I have a new TV and new channels to watch if I do happen to get bored.
You know my motto already, I'm sure: moving on, making each day better than the last, etc. I'd like to add another part to the end of that as well -- stay productive. My purpose when I get out of bed every morning is to have something to do for that day, and then do that task and even more. I don't want there to be any more days where I'm like "Okay, I have to do _____ today," and then at the end of the night when I go to bed and didn't do it, I'm like "Oh well, I'll do it tomorrow." I've fallen into these cycles before, and I end up rushing through everything and not really getting a whole lot done, or doing something half-assedly. I should add no more half-assedness to the motto as well, but that would make it too long, I think.
I don't know if I mentioned it here before (probably not) but I've been looking to get a dehydrator so that I can begin making jerky again -- as I did all the time when I lived with my parents. When I moved out here from West Virginia, however, I left my dehydrator behind. To the best of my knowledge, it's still sitting on the top shelf in my parents' laundry room, where it hasn't been touched in five years. New dehydrators, however, are apparently incredibly expensive -- like $50-80 (and much higher) on Amazon. The one I had back home was $20. Yeah. I asked my mother if she'd mail it to me so that I don't have to spend that sort of money on a new one, but for the moment I have purchased a broiler rack for the oven, and once the temperature cools down enough outside for a few days to permit actually running the oven, I have a recipe for oven-baked jerky that I'm going to try out. Obviously, I have to get the marinade materials first.
Okay. Back to cleaning. Then cooking. Then dishes. Then lots of other stuff this weekend.
I call this plan of action The Trashing. Because, really, that's what it is. I'm getting rid of all the, well, trash that's laying around the house. The former girlfriend left a lot of stuff behind that I'll never use and that she doesn't want that I've been given carte blanche to do whatever I want with. So, in the little free time I have between now and when I really get into my work for the semester, I need to sort it, throw away or recycle the actual trash in it, take the clothing to a thrift store donation center, etc. Most of this stuff right now is in her old room, which I've been using as a "holding cell" of sorts for all kinds of things that have been or were cluttering up the house, such as all of her leftover moving boxes that she didn't use, the boxes for the Dirt Devil, my TV, the coffee table, etc. The boxes, at least, I will have to deal with on a piecemeal basis; I can't get rid of all of them via Newton's recycling system in just one week unless I want to make fifteen trips up and down the stairs carrying heavy-ass, awkward, broken-down boxes. Instead, I'll break down five or six every week and take them down with the other recycling until they're all gone, unless I decide to save a few of the sturdier ones in case I may have a use for them again at some point. I haven't decided yet, though I do know that -- eventually, anyhow, whether it be two years from now, shorter or longer -- I will eventually move out of this house. It's not like I own the place, you know.
I'm making a list of things that I don't necessarily want to throw (or store) away, but otherwise have no real uses for -- stuff like extra lamps, a humidifier, a bunch of books and novels, paintings/other art, picture frames, etc. I'm trying to keep track of all of it I can so that it can be offered up on Facebook or Craigslist for giveaway, curb alert or otherwise. In the spring, I may have a yard sale comprised of whatever's left, or call for large item pickup from the trash people here in town. I'd like to get as much of it as possible gone as soon as possible, though, so that my house isn't littered with otherwise random or useless objects, so anything I can get out of here ASAP (such as the bagged giveaway clothes, which take up a lot of space) I'll be taking care of within the next week or so. The former girlfriend also told me that at some point in the move, she lost something like four pairs of jeans, and wondered if they were somewhere in the house here, so I'm looking for those too. I doubt they're here, but there's no reason not to look for them while I'm doing the trashing.
This is, as you know, the last weekend of freedom for all of us graduate students. Everyone is in town again now, as far as I know, and they're probably out having fun and being social. Me? I'm cleaning the house with podcasts playing in my earbuds. Tonight, I will cook the dinner of a solitary man, fold a solitary man's laundry, and wash the dishes of a week's worth of solitary eating. And, really, I'm okay with that for the time being. I've finally gotten a little more perspective on the situation, and it's okay to be alone with the cats, working around the house and on my schoolwork/book. It's only when the boredom (or, conversely, stress) sets in that I get lonely. Thankfully, I have enough work to do, errands to run, and things to take care of that boredom doesn't really set in as much anymore. Especially not now that I have a new TV and new channels to watch if I do happen to get bored.
You know my motto already, I'm sure: moving on, making each day better than the last, etc. I'd like to add another part to the end of that as well -- stay productive. My purpose when I get out of bed every morning is to have something to do for that day, and then do that task and even more. I don't want there to be any more days where I'm like "Okay, I have to do _____ today," and then at the end of the night when I go to bed and didn't do it, I'm like "Oh well, I'll do it tomorrow." I've fallen into these cycles before, and I end up rushing through everything and not really getting a whole lot done, or doing something half-assedly. I should add no more half-assedness to the motto as well, but that would make it too long, I think.
I don't know if I mentioned it here before (probably not) but I've been looking to get a dehydrator so that I can begin making jerky again -- as I did all the time when I lived with my parents. When I moved out here from West Virginia, however, I left my dehydrator behind. To the best of my knowledge, it's still sitting on the top shelf in my parents' laundry room, where it hasn't been touched in five years. New dehydrators, however, are apparently incredibly expensive -- like $50-80 (and much higher) on Amazon. The one I had back home was $20. Yeah. I asked my mother if she'd mail it to me so that I don't have to spend that sort of money on a new one, but for the moment I have purchased a broiler rack for the oven, and once the temperature cools down enough outside for a few days to permit actually running the oven, I have a recipe for oven-baked jerky that I'm going to try out. Obviously, I have to get the marinade materials first.
Okay. Back to cleaning. Then cooking. Then dishes. Then lots of other stuff this weekend.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Orientation, Day Two: Overheated [Redux edition]
Countdown to fall semester: two precious, precious days
No, before any of you freak out, my car didn't overheat and blow up or anything like that. Believe me, if that had happened, I wouldn't have waited ten hours or so after getting home to write about it. The car, to the best of my knowledge, is just fine. It's the temperature that's fucked.
Case in point: this afternoon, while driving home, the actual temperature was 105. Again. Right now, it's 11:45PM. It's still 88 outside. The difference between 88 and 105 when it's muggy and sticky is, in fact, not really that noticeable. You may think it would be, but in Kansas, it's not.
The second orientation day went fine enough, I suppose. It was, at least, shorter than originally predicted by about two hours or so -- I was home by 3PM. Basically, today's training sessions entailed two different things -- clicker systems and Blackboard. For those of you who work in (or, conversely, are current students of) academia, Blackboard is probably nothing new to you at this point, as something like 90% of universities across the country use it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's basically a do-it-all sort of program that allows us as GTAs and professors to put content online for our students to be able to access it, including assignments, grading, tests, course documents, etc. As I attended undergrad at WVU when the "internet age" was just gathering steam, the school didn't have it then, and I never had to worry about it. As a GTA, however, I rely on it almost on a daily basis as an online source and communication device with my students, as well as my own professors.
"Clickers," as they're called, however, may be new to most people in academia or otherwise. This is the first semester that Flat State University has required the use of them for those of us teaching sections of 101, though they have apparently been in use for years in several other departments within the university. What a "clicker" is, simply, is a little radio-emitting remote control that students have to buy and use in class discussion, and they cost something like $43-45 each. They can be used in myriad ways, though most of the time for classes like 101 they'll be used for quizzes, polls, learning games, etc. They run through a program that syncs up with PowerPoint (if an instructor doesn't want to use PowerPoint, don't worry, there's a stand-alone version of the program too).
Anyway, my main point is that the 101 instructors (who aren't teaching specialized sections or online courses, of course) are required to use them in their classes this fall, but no one else has to. This means, of course, that almost no one else will, if anyone. As I am not only teaching 102, but a specialized science writing section of 102, I am doubly exempt. However, most of the new recruits who will be teaching as GTAs are 101 instructors -- unless there is a dire need to cover an extra set of 102s or they've long beforehand specifically requested and/or had a previous specialization in something else (like ESL), that's the class we start out with as GTAs to get our proverbial feet in the door of teaching.
Because of this, and because of the possibility that any of us may have to teach 101 again before our eventual graduation, the training on the clickers was made mandatory for all of us. This, of course, I can understand as an introductory measure, as it's the first time their use is being spread throughout the department in a sweeping fashion and the university wants everyone to become familiar with the technology -- especially those of us who have the ability to choose whether or not we want to use them, because I'm sure the company is banking on "swaying" some of us who wouldn't normally use them. For me, however, unless something disastrous happens with the science writing classes I'll be teaching (or if the department loses the joint funding we get for said classes via the school of Engineering), I fully expect to be teaching the science writing courses for the rest of my graduate school career -- unless I somehow fall ass-backwards into a fellowship for my third year there, which is not only unlikely but highly so. As I've said before, good writers get fellowships, and I'm mediocre at best. At least in my opinion, anyhow.
Anyway, because of the requirement to be there as part of our two-day orientation, me and many returning others who will be teaching 102 or other specialized courses endured nearly three hours of instruction and lectures on technologies that we'll probably never put to use. We had two long breaks between sections of the instruction, and on each break, fewer and fewer of us second-and-third year students returned -- I assume it's because they were thinking something along the lines of fuck it, this is a waste of my time. Apparently there's going to be some sort of disciplinary action for skipping out on parts of orientation...or at least that's what a sternly-worded email from the Director said this afternoon when he realized that people were just up-and-leavin'. I didn't particularly mind the training -- whether I ever use clickers or not, it's good information to have, though I do think it should've been an optional part of the day for everyone but those who teach 101 and will be forced to use them. After all, I'm sure they'll do an instruction day like this every fall for as long as the department/university uses the devices...which means it's something we'll be repeating next fall as well.
The Blackboard "training session" of sorts was much like the one we had last year when I was a new student, though the university has now completely upgraded to the newest version of the system, which offers a lot more options for things to do. I took a lot of notes during that training session, actually -- there's a lot that I may put to use in my lessons, especially for this new science writing class I'm teaching, and a ton of new stuff that may otherwise end up useful for me in the future.
Once that session was done -- a little after two -- we were allowed to leave for the day. This was a little more than two hours before our training session was supposed to end, and with how all of the new recruits had been slogging through these orientations and meetings since around Tuesday, nobody put up a fight (for obvious reasons). I had already finished my other work for the day, so I already had my stuff with me and drove home.
I actually got a lot of work done on campus this morning before our training sessions started. Last night, as you know if you read my last post, I spent a lot of time crafting my syllabus. My supervisor told me that she was quite assured my syllabus was fine, but if I wanted to send it to her, I could. I did, and received an email full of nothing but compliments about the changes and upgrades I'd done to it. The final syllabus for my classes clocked in at five pages, which I made a copy order for this afternoon between training sessions.
That copy order was, unfortunately, for fifty copies. I have a maximum of twenty-five students that can enroll in each of my classes. That's the "cap," as they say. As of this afternoon, my course numbers had not been entered into the Banner system so that I could be established as the "instructor of record" for the course, but the office administrators could look into their own records and tell me how many students I had -- and I was told, originally, that both sections were completely full. As in a full 50 students' papers to grade three times throughout the semester.
Hoo boy.
I've never had a full fifty students before. The closest I had was last fall, when I had 23 in one class and 22 in the other for the entire semester, a total of 45. Last semester I had a grand total of (I think) 13 in one class and 18 or so in the second when all was said and done.
So, because I was expecting a full load of students, I set up the diagnostic essay copy order for 50, as well as the syllabus. Better to be safe than sorry.
Later in the afternoon I was notified that I don't have a full fifty, and that the office administrator had either looked at the wrong list or was thinking of someone else. However, I still had no clue how many students I had, because my class numbers hadn't been registered on the Banner system yet.
Tonight I can tell you that those numbers are now indeed in there, and I have a full roster for each class: 12 in my first class, 15 in my second, for a total of 27 students.
Much better than fifty. Much, much better.
Of course, more may enroll between now and Tuesday morning, so I'll be keeping track of the names and numbers between now and then. I also noticed that I have two of my students from last semester rejoining me for the science writing class, and both of them were good students, so at least I'll see a few familiar faces.
In other news, I now have to reset all my printer settings on my laptop because they've apparently wiped all of those settings (as well as all of the preset preferences) from the school's servers over the summer. This isn't a big deal, it's just a pain in the ass, and I'll have to deal with it on Tuesday morning when I get back in there on campus. I didn't have time today, and opted instead to print off my stuff -- including my office hours sheet and new profile for the "GTA wall" -- from a colleague's office.
Why did I have to make this new profile for the GTA wall, you may ask?
Well, aside from having a much better picture to go along with it (my picture on here, as well as my profile picture on my Facebook page), all of the information on the old blurb about me is outdated now; it makes references to the former girlfriend, working for the newspaper here in town and for the old grocery store I wrote the book about, and was generally sort of stupid. So, I printed up a new one and posted it, using an entirely new description of myself, using this text:
Brandon [last name] is a joker, a smoker, and a midnight toker, and a man of many nicknames – The Wolfman, The Rockstar, and "English Jesus," just to name a few – but otherwise is simply a graduate student who, when not busy teaching two sections of Science Writing every semester, is working on his MFA in Poetry at [Flat State] University. His first nonfiction book, The Cash Register Confessional: Sordid Stories of Working in a Low-end Grocery Store, was published in August 2011. He currently lives in Newton, Kansas, where he lives the life of a swingin' bachelor with his Decepticon- branded Monte Carlo Z34 and three moronic cats.
I thought this sounded interesting enough at the time. I later got a message from the former girlfriend, saying something along the lines of "you know 'toker' means 'pot smoker,' right?"
I replied with "You do know they're Steve Miller Band lyrics, right?"
Because, at this point, there are only about five people on the planet who haven't heard the song "The Joker" on the radio, in movies and TV, or in their parents' record collection, and wouldn't realize the reference.
"I do, yes. Do you want to take the chance that a student/faculty not only knows those lyrics but that you're joking?" she replied.
Oh for fuck's sake, really? I keep forgetting that we live in a near-humorless state, where culture outside of right-wing politics, farming, devout Christianity, and shit-kickin' country music is practically unheard of -- so, really, I must concede that she has a point. Will my colleagues and friends, as well as most of the faculty, understand the song lyrics reference and not care or give it a second thought? Yes. But for those that don't or won't? Yeah, I should probably change it so that folks don't get the wrong idea.
I have since reworded the text from what you see above to take out the Joker lyrics entirely, and have changed around some of the structure of it as well to make it flow more smoothly. I'll put the new bio on the wall when I return to campus. That's part of working in academia, I suppose -- you're not allowed to express yourself in the ways you see fit, as everything you do (or don't do) not only reflects on yourself, but on the institution you work for. As working in that institution is what pays my bills, I have to be doubly careful -- even for something as stupid as a line from a song.
Anyway, aside from everything else going on, I must talk about the new TV. It arrived this evening (shortly before the football games started, actually) and I set it up rather quickly. It's a Philips 22-inch widescreen LCD HDTV, though it's only 720p. Doesn't matter to me, though; it works really well, and with my new flat antenna mounted on the wall, I can get all of the stations we could get before as well as at least two new ones, no converter box or rabbit ears required. I wish it were bigger, of course, but I already spent enough money on that one -- I wasn't about to spend $100-200 more for the larger sizes. Now, if I can eventually scrape together some cash for a TV downstairs again, or get a thrift store model at some point, I'll have three televisions in the house again -- one in each room I spend the most time in.
I also must say that, to some extent, the loneliness is creeping in again. I didn't think it would set in this soon, but some of it is already showing itself around my edges. Yes, I have the cats, and they help immensely, but talking to the cats isn't like talking to a person in the same room with me. I've always been sort of a solitary guy anyhow, but most of the time that's been out of my own choices -- it's never been, well, enforced on me by outside circumstances, and before if I was feeling social, throughout the course of my entire life up to this point, I could always go to another room in the house that was occupied by, y'know, another human, and have a conversation. This didn't just apply to the former girlfriend, but to when I was living with my parents as well. Now that I don't have those people in the same house with me anymore, it feels empty, filled with ghosts, etc. Just feels weird to be the only person in this big house all the time, especially now that I've got a taste of socialization again over the course of the past few days from orientation. I've started checking with friends from out of town/out of state to see when or if they'd be able to come out here for a visit, because another few months of this will be productive, surely, for my schoolwork, but it's going to otherwise drive me up the wall.
On that note, I'm going to bed. It's 3AM, and I'm tired -- not to mention that I have a lot to do tomorrow and over the weekend as a whole. I'll keep you posted.
No, before any of you freak out, my car didn't overheat and blow up or anything like that. Believe me, if that had happened, I wouldn't have waited ten hours or so after getting home to write about it. The car, to the best of my knowledge, is just fine. It's the temperature that's fucked.
Case in point: this afternoon, while driving home, the actual temperature was 105. Again. Right now, it's 11:45PM. It's still 88 outside. The difference between 88 and 105 when it's muggy and sticky is, in fact, not really that noticeable. You may think it would be, but in Kansas, it's not.
The second orientation day went fine enough, I suppose. It was, at least, shorter than originally predicted by about two hours or so -- I was home by 3PM. Basically, today's training sessions entailed two different things -- clicker systems and Blackboard. For those of you who work in (or, conversely, are current students of) academia, Blackboard is probably nothing new to you at this point, as something like 90% of universities across the country use it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's basically a do-it-all sort of program that allows us as GTAs and professors to put content online for our students to be able to access it, including assignments, grading, tests, course documents, etc. As I attended undergrad at WVU when the "internet age" was just gathering steam, the school didn't have it then, and I never had to worry about it. As a GTA, however, I rely on it almost on a daily basis as an online source and communication device with my students, as well as my own professors.
"Clickers," as they're called, however, may be new to most people in academia or otherwise. This is the first semester that Flat State University has required the use of them for those of us teaching sections of 101, though they have apparently been in use for years in several other departments within the university. What a "clicker" is, simply, is a little radio-emitting remote control that students have to buy and use in class discussion, and they cost something like $43-45 each. They can be used in myriad ways, though most of the time for classes like 101 they'll be used for quizzes, polls, learning games, etc. They run through a program that syncs up with PowerPoint (if an instructor doesn't want to use PowerPoint, don't worry, there's a stand-alone version of the program too).
Anyway, my main point is that the 101 instructors (who aren't teaching specialized sections or online courses, of course) are required to use them in their classes this fall, but no one else has to. This means, of course, that almost no one else will, if anyone. As I am not only teaching 102, but a specialized science writing section of 102, I am doubly exempt. However, most of the new recruits who will be teaching as GTAs are 101 instructors -- unless there is a dire need to cover an extra set of 102s or they've long beforehand specifically requested and/or had a previous specialization in something else (like ESL), that's the class we start out with as GTAs to get our proverbial feet in the door of teaching.
Because of this, and because of the possibility that any of us may have to teach 101 again before our eventual graduation, the training on the clickers was made mandatory for all of us. This, of course, I can understand as an introductory measure, as it's the first time their use is being spread throughout the department in a sweeping fashion and the university wants everyone to become familiar with the technology -- especially those of us who have the ability to choose whether or not we want to use them, because I'm sure the company is banking on "swaying" some of us who wouldn't normally use them. For me, however, unless something disastrous happens with the science writing classes I'll be teaching (or if the department loses the joint funding we get for said classes via the school of Engineering), I fully expect to be teaching the science writing courses for the rest of my graduate school career -- unless I somehow fall ass-backwards into a fellowship for my third year there, which is not only unlikely but highly so. As I've said before, good writers get fellowships, and I'm mediocre at best. At least in my opinion, anyhow.
Anyway, because of the requirement to be there as part of our two-day orientation, me and many returning others who will be teaching 102 or other specialized courses endured nearly three hours of instruction and lectures on technologies that we'll probably never put to use. We had two long breaks between sections of the instruction, and on each break, fewer and fewer of us second-and-third year students returned -- I assume it's because they were thinking something along the lines of fuck it, this is a waste of my time. Apparently there's going to be some sort of disciplinary action for skipping out on parts of orientation...or at least that's what a sternly-worded email from the Director said this afternoon when he realized that people were just up-and-leavin'. I didn't particularly mind the training -- whether I ever use clickers or not, it's good information to have, though I do think it should've been an optional part of the day for everyone but those who teach 101 and will be forced to use them. After all, I'm sure they'll do an instruction day like this every fall for as long as the department/university uses the devices...which means it's something we'll be repeating next fall as well.
The Blackboard "training session" of sorts was much like the one we had last year when I was a new student, though the university has now completely upgraded to the newest version of the system, which offers a lot more options for things to do. I took a lot of notes during that training session, actually -- there's a lot that I may put to use in my lessons, especially for this new science writing class I'm teaching, and a ton of new stuff that may otherwise end up useful for me in the future.
Once that session was done -- a little after two -- we were allowed to leave for the day. This was a little more than two hours before our training session was supposed to end, and with how all of the new recruits had been slogging through these orientations and meetings since around Tuesday, nobody put up a fight (for obvious reasons). I had already finished my other work for the day, so I already had my stuff with me and drove home.
I actually got a lot of work done on campus this morning before our training sessions started. Last night, as you know if you read my last post, I spent a lot of time crafting my syllabus. My supervisor told me that she was quite assured my syllabus was fine, but if I wanted to send it to her, I could. I did, and received an email full of nothing but compliments about the changes and upgrades I'd done to it. The final syllabus for my classes clocked in at five pages, which I made a copy order for this afternoon between training sessions.
That copy order was, unfortunately, for fifty copies. I have a maximum of twenty-five students that can enroll in each of my classes. That's the "cap," as they say. As of this afternoon, my course numbers had not been entered into the Banner system so that I could be established as the "instructor of record" for the course, but the office administrators could look into their own records and tell me how many students I had -- and I was told, originally, that both sections were completely full. As in a full 50 students' papers to grade three times throughout the semester.
Hoo boy.
I've never had a full fifty students before. The closest I had was last fall, when I had 23 in one class and 22 in the other for the entire semester, a total of 45. Last semester I had a grand total of (I think) 13 in one class and 18 or so in the second when all was said and done.
So, because I was expecting a full load of students, I set up the diagnostic essay copy order for 50, as well as the syllabus. Better to be safe than sorry.
Later in the afternoon I was notified that I don't have a full fifty, and that the office administrator had either looked at the wrong list or was thinking of someone else. However, I still had no clue how many students I had, because my class numbers hadn't been registered on the Banner system yet.
Tonight I can tell you that those numbers are now indeed in there, and I have a full roster for each class: 12 in my first class, 15 in my second, for a total of 27 students.
Much better than fifty. Much, much better.
Of course, more may enroll between now and Tuesday morning, so I'll be keeping track of the names and numbers between now and then. I also noticed that I have two of my students from last semester rejoining me for the science writing class, and both of them were good students, so at least I'll see a few familiar faces.
In other news, I now have to reset all my printer settings on my laptop because they've apparently wiped all of those settings (as well as all of the preset preferences) from the school's servers over the summer. This isn't a big deal, it's just a pain in the ass, and I'll have to deal with it on Tuesday morning when I get back in there on campus. I didn't have time today, and opted instead to print off my stuff -- including my office hours sheet and new profile for the "GTA wall" -- from a colleague's office.
Why did I have to make this new profile for the GTA wall, you may ask?
Well, aside from having a much better picture to go along with it (my picture on here, as well as my profile picture on my Facebook page), all of the information on the old blurb about me is outdated now; it makes references to the former girlfriend, working for the newspaper here in town and for the old grocery store I wrote the book about, and was generally sort of stupid. So, I printed up a new one and posted it, using an entirely new description of myself, using this text:
Brandon [last name] is a joker, a smoker, and a midnight toker, and a man of many nicknames – The Wolfman, The Rockstar, and "English Jesus," just to name a few – but otherwise is simply a graduate student who, when not busy teaching two sections of Science Writing every semester, is working on his MFA in Poetry at [Flat State] University. His first nonfiction book, The Cash Register Confessional: Sordid Stories of Working in a Low-end Grocery Store, was published in August 2011. He currently lives in Newton, Kansas, where he lives the life of a swingin' bachelor with his Decepticon- branded Monte Carlo Z34 and three moronic cats.
I thought this sounded interesting enough at the time. I later got a message from the former girlfriend, saying something along the lines of "you know 'toker' means 'pot smoker,' right?"
I replied with "You do know they're Steve Miller Band lyrics, right?"
Because, at this point, there are only about five people on the planet who haven't heard the song "The Joker" on the radio, in movies and TV, or in their parents' record collection, and wouldn't realize the reference.
"I do, yes. Do you want to take the chance that a student/faculty not only knows those lyrics but that you're joking?" she replied.
Oh for fuck's sake, really? I keep forgetting that we live in a near-humorless state, where culture outside of right-wing politics, farming, devout Christianity, and shit-kickin' country music is practically unheard of -- so, really, I must concede that she has a point. Will my colleagues and friends, as well as most of the faculty, understand the song lyrics reference and not care or give it a second thought? Yes. But for those that don't or won't? Yeah, I should probably change it so that folks don't get the wrong idea.
I have since reworded the text from what you see above to take out the Joker lyrics entirely, and have changed around some of the structure of it as well to make it flow more smoothly. I'll put the new bio on the wall when I return to campus. That's part of working in academia, I suppose -- you're not allowed to express yourself in the ways you see fit, as everything you do (or don't do) not only reflects on yourself, but on the institution you work for. As working in that institution is what pays my bills, I have to be doubly careful -- even for something as stupid as a line from a song.
Anyway, aside from everything else going on, I must talk about the new TV. It arrived this evening (shortly before the football games started, actually) and I set it up rather quickly. It's a Philips 22-inch widescreen LCD HDTV, though it's only 720p. Doesn't matter to me, though; it works really well, and with my new flat antenna mounted on the wall, I can get all of the stations we could get before as well as at least two new ones, no converter box or rabbit ears required. I wish it were bigger, of course, but I already spent enough money on that one -- I wasn't about to spend $100-200 more for the larger sizes. Now, if I can eventually scrape together some cash for a TV downstairs again, or get a thrift store model at some point, I'll have three televisions in the house again -- one in each room I spend the most time in.
I also must say that, to some extent, the loneliness is creeping in again. I didn't think it would set in this soon, but some of it is already showing itself around my edges. Yes, I have the cats, and they help immensely, but talking to the cats isn't like talking to a person in the same room with me. I've always been sort of a solitary guy anyhow, but most of the time that's been out of my own choices -- it's never been, well, enforced on me by outside circumstances, and before if I was feeling social, throughout the course of my entire life up to this point, I could always go to another room in the house that was occupied by, y'know, another human, and have a conversation. This didn't just apply to the former girlfriend, but to when I was living with my parents as well. Now that I don't have those people in the same house with me anymore, it feels empty, filled with ghosts, etc. Just feels weird to be the only person in this big house all the time, especially now that I've got a taste of socialization again over the course of the past few days from orientation. I've started checking with friends from out of town/out of state to see when or if they'd be able to come out here for a visit, because another few months of this will be productive, surely, for my schoolwork, but it's going to otherwise drive me up the wall.
On that note, I'm going to bed. It's 3AM, and I'm tired -- not to mention that I have a lot to do tomorrow and over the weekend as a whole. I'll keep you posted.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Orientation, Day One: Underwhelmed and Underslept
Countdown to fall semester: three days
Yesterday, as you know, was orientation: day one.
The new recruits are, well, just that -- new recruits. I don't know much about any of them yet, as they seem pretty quiet. Friendly, of course, but quiet. There were so many of us crammed into the Writing Center yesterday morning that each of us got a quick introduction, and then we moved on to the more pressing matters of the day. Really, I only remember about three of their names, and one of them only because he now shares an office with me. He's tall, wiry, and a musician, and that's about all I know about him. I don't even know if he's fiction or poetry. Seems like a nice enough guy, I guess. Like I said, I don't really know him -- or anyone else new -- yet. That, of course, will come with time.
Amongst our new recruits, there's a girl from Newton, several recent grads, a few new guys, a girl with her MA already (who is the other person teaching the science writing class alongside me) coming back for her MFA, and others who I have not yet formally met long enough to, as I said, even remember names. Blame it on my fuzzy memory, blame it on sleep deprivation, but I didn't have much of a chance to take care of anything today but business-related things.
I have, however, noticed that I've had a flood of new readers/visitors from Wichita in the past 24 hours, more than likely current students who have just learned of my blog here as well as new recruits, and I welcome you all. Hi, I'm Brandon. You may remember me from such offices as the one down the hall, or as the nerdy guy with long hair and beard who has a toy TIE Fighter hanging above his desk. I'm also the guy who leaves all of the issues of Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly on the book tables in the department lobby. Amongst other things I do and am. Many other things.
Anyway, where was I?
Yesterday afternoon, I met with my new supervisor and got as many details as I could on the science writing class I'll be teaching starting on Tuesday. The discussion between me, my supervisor (read: boss) and the new girl who's also teaching two sections of the course lasted the better part of an hour, if not longer, and I now know how to edit and craft the syllabus for my class to my whims. I also now have the textbook for the class, which looks incredibly interesting, and I'll be able to peruse it this weekend in order to get a feel for some upcoming lesson plans.
The rest of our first orientation day, however, was much the same as last year's was -- we were given tips and a point-counterpoint on how (and how not) to dress when teaching, given the brief rundown of the new policies involving plagiarism, were introduced to the EGSA (English Graduate Student Association, in case you were wondering), and introduced to the new editor of the department's literary journal before breaking off into our assigned practicum groups to discuss what and how we'd be teaching. We then returned to the Writing Center for a discussion on its purpose before we were "let go" for the day and told to return tomorrow morning for six hours more of instruction and further orientation in the Media Resources Center. I BS'ed with a few friends before hopping into the Decepticon landboat and returning home.
I can now tell you that it is a 48-mile round trip between the house here in Newton and campus in Wichita. How do I know? Because I set my trip meter for it to see just how long I can go between car fill-ups (looks like 2.5 trips or so, max, and even that may be pushing it). I can also tell you that while the Monte Carlo may not mind the interstate drive during more reasonable temperatures, such as in the mornings, it certainly doesn't like it too much when it's 100 degrees outside and when said black-on-black car has been baking in the sun all day in the parking lot. I didn't have any problems getting home (obviously), but I can tell the car didn't like it -- judging from the fact that the speedometer stopped working again this afternoon and I had to use my GPS for the appropriate speed readings, and the car wanted to shudder a bit and get a little warmer under the hood than usual during the sweaty drive back home. Unless it rains or storms today, it's going to be 104 outside, too.
I keep reminding myself, however, that it's an old, old American car, and it's going to run until it can no longer do so, and because of that I need to get it worked on as soon as I can to keep it running as long and strong as possible. As long as I can get it to school and back without major issues, then it's all good. It's the day that it doesn't start or the day when the engine dies halfway between Newton and Wichita that I have to worry about, and hopefully that day won't be anytime soon.
Last night, before bed, I spent an inordinate amount of time crafting my syllabus and office hours schedule, as well as a new profile/picture for the "student wall" in the hallway of the department, so that they can be printed and copied over the weekend; as far as I know I won't be returning there on Monday unless I absolutely have to. As it stands now, I have enough stuff to do on Monday and would rather avoid yet another car trip down there and back. I sent an email to my supervisor asking if she needed or wanted to see a copy of my syllabus before I finalized it and sent it to print because of this as well. We'll see.
Today, as you may have guessed, I again got up at 5AM (which, I will reiterate again, is fun for no one involved), got my coffee/shower/vitamins in me for the day, and within the hour I'll be once more leaving for Wichita. Today we have two different three-hour training sessions in the MRC -- one from 9-12, and the other after our "lunch" until 4:30 or so. I just want to get them over with so that I can go back home (possibly getting more gas in the car on the way) and set up my new TV, which should arrive today. I long to be able to actually sit on the couch in the living room and watch television again. After fiddling with the controls on the new TV and antenna, I should be able to do just that, which is good -- there are not one, but two preseason football games I'll be flipping back and forth between tonight, provided I can get it all set up and working properly.
So yes, so far everything seems to be going well. I have to write four different checks this weekend to pay bills and rent, and that means a hell of a lot of money will be spent, but it also means that those things will be taken care of for another month (and, as will be the case with the former girlfriend's old deposit on this place, permanently) and I'll be able to breathe easier. This weekend will be spent preparing for classes and finishing the book, cleaning the house a little more, and reading/writing. Tomorrow is also my parents' birthday (yes, they both share the same birthday; weird, hm?) and Sunday is my grandmother's birthday. The book should -- if all goes according to plan -- be on sale on Monday, and of course I will give all of you the link here if you'd like to purchase it.
On that note, I need to finish getting dressed and vacate the premises soon, so that I can get a decent parking spot on campus before everyone else gets there. I will update you on day two sometime over the weekend, more than likely.
Yesterday, as you know, was orientation: day one.
The new recruits are, well, just that -- new recruits. I don't know much about any of them yet, as they seem pretty quiet. Friendly, of course, but quiet. There were so many of us crammed into the Writing Center yesterday morning that each of us got a quick introduction, and then we moved on to the more pressing matters of the day. Really, I only remember about three of their names, and one of them only because he now shares an office with me. He's tall, wiry, and a musician, and that's about all I know about him. I don't even know if he's fiction or poetry. Seems like a nice enough guy, I guess. Like I said, I don't really know him -- or anyone else new -- yet. That, of course, will come with time.
Amongst our new recruits, there's a girl from Newton, several recent grads, a few new guys, a girl with her MA already (who is the other person teaching the science writing class alongside me) coming back for her MFA, and others who I have not yet formally met long enough to, as I said, even remember names. Blame it on my fuzzy memory, blame it on sleep deprivation, but I didn't have much of a chance to take care of anything today but business-related things.
I have, however, noticed that I've had a flood of new readers/visitors from Wichita in the past 24 hours, more than likely current students who have just learned of my blog here as well as new recruits, and I welcome you all. Hi, I'm Brandon. You may remember me from such offices as the one down the hall, or as the nerdy guy with long hair and beard who has a toy TIE Fighter hanging above his desk. I'm also the guy who leaves all of the issues of Sports Illustrated and Entertainment Weekly on the book tables in the department lobby. Amongst other things I do and am. Many other things.
Anyway, where was I?
Yesterday afternoon, I met with my new supervisor and got as many details as I could on the science writing class I'll be teaching starting on Tuesday. The discussion between me, my supervisor (read: boss) and the new girl who's also teaching two sections of the course lasted the better part of an hour, if not longer, and I now know how to edit and craft the syllabus for my class to my whims. I also now have the textbook for the class, which looks incredibly interesting, and I'll be able to peruse it this weekend in order to get a feel for some upcoming lesson plans.
The rest of our first orientation day, however, was much the same as last year's was -- we were given tips and a point-counterpoint on how (and how not) to dress when teaching, given the brief rundown of the new policies involving plagiarism, were introduced to the EGSA (English Graduate Student Association, in case you were wondering), and introduced to the new editor of the department's literary journal before breaking off into our assigned practicum groups to discuss what and how we'd be teaching. We then returned to the Writing Center for a discussion on its purpose before we were "let go" for the day and told to return tomorrow morning for six hours more of instruction and further orientation in the Media Resources Center. I BS'ed with a few friends before hopping into the Decepticon landboat and returning home.
I can now tell you that it is a 48-mile round trip between the house here in Newton and campus in Wichita. How do I know? Because I set my trip meter for it to see just how long I can go between car fill-ups (looks like 2.5 trips or so, max, and even that may be pushing it). I can also tell you that while the Monte Carlo may not mind the interstate drive during more reasonable temperatures, such as in the mornings, it certainly doesn't like it too much when it's 100 degrees outside and when said black-on-black car has been baking in the sun all day in the parking lot. I didn't have any problems getting home (obviously), but I can tell the car didn't like it -- judging from the fact that the speedometer stopped working again this afternoon and I had to use my GPS for the appropriate speed readings, and the car wanted to shudder a bit and get a little warmer under the hood than usual during the sweaty drive back home. Unless it rains or storms today, it's going to be 104 outside, too.
I keep reminding myself, however, that it's an old, old American car, and it's going to run until it can no longer do so, and because of that I need to get it worked on as soon as I can to keep it running as long and strong as possible. As long as I can get it to school and back without major issues, then it's all good. It's the day that it doesn't start or the day when the engine dies halfway between Newton and Wichita that I have to worry about, and hopefully that day won't be anytime soon.
Last night, before bed, I spent an inordinate amount of time crafting my syllabus and office hours schedule, as well as a new profile/picture for the "student wall" in the hallway of the department, so that they can be printed and copied over the weekend; as far as I know I won't be returning there on Monday unless I absolutely have to. As it stands now, I have enough stuff to do on Monday and would rather avoid yet another car trip down there and back. I sent an email to my supervisor asking if she needed or wanted to see a copy of my syllabus before I finalized it and sent it to print because of this as well. We'll see.
Today, as you may have guessed, I again got up at 5AM (which, I will reiterate again, is fun for no one involved), got my coffee/shower/vitamins in me for the day, and within the hour I'll be once more leaving for Wichita. Today we have two different three-hour training sessions in the MRC -- one from 9-12, and the other after our "lunch" until 4:30 or so. I just want to get them over with so that I can go back home (possibly getting more gas in the car on the way) and set up my new TV, which should arrive today. I long to be able to actually sit on the couch in the living room and watch television again. After fiddling with the controls on the new TV and antenna, I should be able to do just that, which is good -- there are not one, but two preseason football games I'll be flipping back and forth between tonight, provided I can get it all set up and working properly.
So yes, so far everything seems to be going well. I have to write four different checks this weekend to pay bills and rent, and that means a hell of a lot of money will be spent, but it also means that those things will be taken care of for another month (and, as will be the case with the former girlfriend's old deposit on this place, permanently) and I'll be able to breathe easier. This weekend will be spent preparing for classes and finishing the book, cleaning the house a little more, and reading/writing. Tomorrow is also my parents' birthday (yes, they both share the same birthday; weird, hm?) and Sunday is my grandmother's birthday. The book should -- if all goes according to plan -- be on sale on Monday, and of course I will give all of you the link here if you'd like to purchase it.
On that note, I need to finish getting dressed and vacate the premises soon, so that I can get a decent parking spot on campus before everyone else gets there. I will update you on day two sometime over the weekend, more than likely.
Dear Insomnia
Dear insomnia,
Five-to-six hours of sleep before my first orientation day of the semester just isn't enough. Seriously, just let me rest.
Love, Brandon.
As you may have guessed from the short letter above, I can't sleep. My attempts at turning around my sleeping schedule failed rather miserably -- at least for tonight, anyhow -- and around 2AM I realized that there was just no way I was getting back to sleep.
The new nightstand that arrived last night took a full hour to assemble, which is entirely too long for something that's 2.5 feet tall and 2 feet wide. Because of the godawful instructions and three different sizes of screws involved with putting the thing together, the first two screws I put into it (for the leg mounting brackets) went up through the top of the table itself, and I had to remove them and replace them with smaller screws. I will also note that there was no difference in the sizes of the screws in the pictorial-based instructions, and no parts were labeled. No parts were labeled. If I didn't have simple logic as my guide, I would have had no clue how to put the damned thing together. As it is, I already punctured the tabletop, which sucks because it's not a particleboard nightstand, but rather hardwood. Luckily the puncture holes are in the back, and will easily be covered if I get some sort of tablecloth (or, most likely, a hand towel) to cover the nightstand with. Still, I swear. "Some assembly required," my ass.
I forgot to mention yesterday that I did not actually make it to the post office to mail out the first barrage of thank-you packages. After spending nearly $200 on groceries, household items, and gas for the car -- and then spending nearly the same amount on the TV as well -- I was, metaphorically, of course, tapped out for the day. As I have to ready more of these packages anyhow, since my friends across the country have been near-endless with their generosity and support, I'm going to hold off on mailing the four I have now until at least Monday, by which point I should have at least one or two more ready to go. So, for those of you who I've told will be getting things soon, keep an eye on your mailboxes after that. Each package will cost anywhere between $2 and $10-ish to send, which is a small price to pay after people have spent so much time and money helping me get back on my metaphorical feet after the breakup and move.
After I come back home this afternoon from orientation: day one, most of my time will be spent continuing the process of getting the Casa del Brandon back in order -- which includes, since I got the handheld Dirt Devil yesterday, vacuuming the inside stairs. I'd do it now just to kill time before I need to shower and get ready in the morning, but even with this house's near-soundproof walls, I'm not running a vacuum at 3 in the morning, and especially not in the most enclosed area of the house (where the sound will echo and make my ears bleed anyhow). The downstairs, of course, is still a wreck, with trash, boxes, and sheets/blankets dotting the landscape of the bedroom...a bedroom that also needs a good vacuuming. Oh, damn my need for a new television instead.
In other news, in the care package my friend James back home sent me was also a package of cat treats for the kids. I knew they'd love this, but I have to be careful with treats for the cats; only the girls can have them, and not Petey. This is because when he was about a year old, Pete developed bladder problems and had a nasty UTI that made him pee blood. After a very expensive visit to the vet, we were informed that Pete needs to stay on special urinary tract cat food for the rest of his life in order to keep these problems from popping up again. Originally, this was the Science Diet Prescription Diet "c/d" food, but as there was no way we could afford $40-50 for a bag of cat food every two weeks, the former girlfriend did some research on the ingredients and found that the Purina ONE Urinary Tract Health Formula is, basically, the exact same thing with differently-shaped morsels, and the huge bag of it is about half the price. While the Walmart here doesn't carry the huge bag of it anymore, they do carry the next largest size, and I've been feeding all the cats this food since 2008 or so (because it is impossible to feed them separately, and it's not like it's not good for the girls as well).
Because of those special dietary requirements, however, Pete can't have anything but that food. No canned food, no tuna, no cat treats, nothing. So, anytime I want to give treats to the girls, I basically have to lock them in my room and be sneaky about it. This, of course, is what I had to do with the treats James sent me, and the girls loved them.
Except, of course, there was one problem.
It was a small bag of treats, and the girls ate through them in the span of about a day or two. This set a precedent that I wasn't expecting -- now, every time I'm in my room, they both run in and start crying, meowing, and generally bug the everliving hell out of me for treats, because they remember.
Oh, I so didn't sign up for this.
To appease them, I got a larger bag of the treats today while shopping, and gave them a handful of them on the floor of my room just so they'd shut up. I'll give them the treats once a week or so until they're gone, but after that I'm not getting any more. They're expensive, and Maggie's already getting fat because, when I refill their food bowl, she waits until the other two are done eating and then gorges herself -- usually yacking about half of it afterwards.
If cats could have eating disorders, hers would be bulimia. Not kidding.
Anyway.
Yesterday, I also got a very basic copy of the syllabus template for my engineering writing class I'm teaching this semester. My new supervisor (the Director's wife) is thrilled that I'm willing to teach it, and has apologized for the fact that my copy of the textbook for it hasn't arrived yet (and may not arrive until, say, Monday). Apparently, from what she's heard one other person may be teaching sections of the class as well, and that the funding for my "training" that fell through this summer was more than likely going to be funding for me to write and compile a new workbook for that class. This gives me the slight hope that it's possible that I'll be doing that next summer, between my second and third year, as I will probably teach this course for the rest of my tenure as a GTA -- unless by some very slim, sheer stroke of luck some of us are actually offered the opportunity to teach an undergraduate creative writing class (which, make no mistake, all of us would rather teach compared to composition courses, and what several of us -- but not me -- originally thought we'd be doing when we joined the program).
Looking over the syllabus, it appears to be a standard 102 syllabus with the main text changed to the one used for science writing. It does not offer a week-by-week plan of what to cover or how to do so, but it does contain a points breakdown and a more streamlined grading system (three shorter papers compared to four for 101, a required student/teacher conference, etc.) and some basic guidelines for the class. I can tell you now, though, that my finalized version of the syllabus is going to be a little longer and more detailed, and I'll be changing a few of the smaller rules (such as the late paper policy and the rewrite policy) for my classes. As it is on the syllabus, late papers are accepted, and letter grades are taken off for each day it's late. Yeah, I don't do that -- it's too bothersome and time-consuming to keep track of. Turn in your paper on time or it gets a zero, unless someone is dead and/or dying, and in those situations you'll have to discuss it with me. As it is now on the syllabus, rewrites are graded by averaging the original score with the rewrite score, which I've never done -- I take the higher score of the two and wipe the other from the record -- mainly because I don't want someone to get a lower score on their paper after they've taken the time to rewrite it. If a student gets an 80, rewrites it and gets a 60, they'd get a 70 as the averaged score, and it would be worse for their grade than if they hadn't rewritten it at all. I don't think that's fair; as a student myself, I know how valuable writing time is.
Maybe I'm too nice.
Regardless, I'm going to meet up with my new supervisor today after orientation to see what I can and can't change, and see if I can also get some sort of weekly "here's what you should be covering and when" lesson plan from her -- because I really, really need that sort of "map" when I haven't taught this class before. If I can get my version of the syllabus readied for printing tonight, I can print it and make a copy order tomorrow...and hopefully I won't have to drive down there at all on Monday (I don't teach or have class on Monday). Of course, I can't make a finalized syllabus until I get my finalized schedule, which would include what room(s)/building(s) I'll be teaching in.
Over the course of the past year, I've been asked several times "Aren't you nervous about teaching? Don't you get 'stage fright' or anything like that when you're in front of a class?"
My answer? Helllllll no. I am a natural showman, a frontman, a guy who loves command of an audience and the authority he has over said audience. So, no. I'm not nervous at all when it comes to teaching -- holding sway over a large group of people has been, and probably always will be, a thrill to me. Also, if you know and love me, you also know that I love talking. If I can talk to these kids, inspire them a little, and whip some knowledge their way, then I feel that I've accomplished something good, something substantial. As I plan to teach (adjunct and poor or otherwise) after I graduate with my MFA, it's all about keeping a positive attitude and trying to make a difference. Respect doesn't come easy these days, especially not with over-privileged eighteen-year-olds who don't remember a time before the internet, have owned a cell phone since they were in elementary school, and have never lived without cable television. It's the effort and commitment on the part of professors and GTAs that make a true difference, and I can sleep better at night knowing that while I may not be equally successful with all students, I at least got through to some (or most) of them.
Thank you; my name is Brandon, and I appreciate your vote for class president.
It also looks as if our heat wave has returned, at least for the next few days -- today it's supposed to be 101, and tomorrow it's supposed to be 104. As you know, my Monte Carlo is black-on-black (with red trim) with black leather interior. While this will be fine in the mornings for driving down there, I'm going to end up soaking my clothes with sweat on the afternoon/evening drives back home over the next two days. I'm glad I don't have any extra errands to run until the weekend, if then. And the car currently seems to be running fine; it didn't leak any coolant at all yesterday when I drove it.
So, in a little over two hours, my school year (unofficially) starts when I'll leave the house around 7. With the start of the school year also comes as-yet-untold expenses, problems, and work to do -- this weekend will be spent working on school prep stuff, paying the bills, and finishing the book; I hope to put it up for sale on or before Monday, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
For now, though, I must shower and trim the beard, as the morning is approaching fast.
Five-to-six hours of sleep before my first orientation day of the semester just isn't enough. Seriously, just let me rest.
Love, Brandon.
As you may have guessed from the short letter above, I can't sleep. My attempts at turning around my sleeping schedule failed rather miserably -- at least for tonight, anyhow -- and around 2AM I realized that there was just no way I was getting back to sleep.
The new nightstand that arrived last night took a full hour to assemble, which is entirely too long for something that's 2.5 feet tall and 2 feet wide. Because of the godawful instructions and three different sizes of screws involved with putting the thing together, the first two screws I put into it (for the leg mounting brackets) went up through the top of the table itself, and I had to remove them and replace them with smaller screws. I will also note that there was no difference in the sizes of the screws in the pictorial-based instructions, and no parts were labeled. No parts were labeled. If I didn't have simple logic as my guide, I would have had no clue how to put the damned thing together. As it is, I already punctured the tabletop, which sucks because it's not a particleboard nightstand, but rather hardwood. Luckily the puncture holes are in the back, and will easily be covered if I get some sort of tablecloth (or, most likely, a hand towel) to cover the nightstand with. Still, I swear. "Some assembly required," my ass.
I forgot to mention yesterday that I did not actually make it to the post office to mail out the first barrage of thank-you packages. After spending nearly $200 on groceries, household items, and gas for the car -- and then spending nearly the same amount on the TV as well -- I was, metaphorically, of course, tapped out for the day. As I have to ready more of these packages anyhow, since my friends across the country have been near-endless with their generosity and support, I'm going to hold off on mailing the four I have now until at least Monday, by which point I should have at least one or two more ready to go. So, for those of you who I've told will be getting things soon, keep an eye on your mailboxes after that. Each package will cost anywhere between $2 and $10-ish to send, which is a small price to pay after people have spent so much time and money helping me get back on my metaphorical feet after the breakup and move.
After I come back home this afternoon from orientation: day one, most of my time will be spent continuing the process of getting the Casa del Brandon back in order -- which includes, since I got the handheld Dirt Devil yesterday, vacuuming the inside stairs. I'd do it now just to kill time before I need to shower and get ready in the morning, but even with this house's near-soundproof walls, I'm not running a vacuum at 3 in the morning, and especially not in the most enclosed area of the house (where the sound will echo and make my ears bleed anyhow). The downstairs, of course, is still a wreck, with trash, boxes, and sheets/blankets dotting the landscape of the bedroom...a bedroom that also needs a good vacuuming. Oh, damn my need for a new television instead.
In other news, in the care package my friend James back home sent me was also a package of cat treats for the kids. I knew they'd love this, but I have to be careful with treats for the cats; only the girls can have them, and not Petey. This is because when he was about a year old, Pete developed bladder problems and had a nasty UTI that made him pee blood. After a very expensive visit to the vet, we were informed that Pete needs to stay on special urinary tract cat food for the rest of his life in order to keep these problems from popping up again. Originally, this was the Science Diet Prescription Diet "c/d" food, but as there was no way we could afford $40-50 for a bag of cat food every two weeks, the former girlfriend did some research on the ingredients and found that the Purina ONE Urinary Tract Health Formula is, basically, the exact same thing with differently-shaped morsels, and the huge bag of it is about half the price. While the Walmart here doesn't carry the huge bag of it anymore, they do carry the next largest size, and I've been feeding all the cats this food since 2008 or so (because it is impossible to feed them separately, and it's not like it's not good for the girls as well).
Because of those special dietary requirements, however, Pete can't have anything but that food. No canned food, no tuna, no cat treats, nothing. So, anytime I want to give treats to the girls, I basically have to lock them in my room and be sneaky about it. This, of course, is what I had to do with the treats James sent me, and the girls loved them.
Except, of course, there was one problem.
It was a small bag of treats, and the girls ate through them in the span of about a day or two. This set a precedent that I wasn't expecting -- now, every time I'm in my room, they both run in and start crying, meowing, and generally bug the everliving hell out of me for treats, because they remember.
Oh, I so didn't sign up for this.
To appease them, I got a larger bag of the treats today while shopping, and gave them a handful of them on the floor of my room just so they'd shut up. I'll give them the treats once a week or so until they're gone, but after that I'm not getting any more. They're expensive, and Maggie's already getting fat because, when I refill their food bowl, she waits until the other two are done eating and then gorges herself -- usually yacking about half of it afterwards.
If cats could have eating disorders, hers would be bulimia. Not kidding.
Anyway.
Yesterday, I also got a very basic copy of the syllabus template for my engineering writing class I'm teaching this semester. My new supervisor (the Director's wife) is thrilled that I'm willing to teach it, and has apologized for the fact that my copy of the textbook for it hasn't arrived yet (and may not arrive until, say, Monday). Apparently, from what she's heard one other person may be teaching sections of the class as well, and that the funding for my "training" that fell through this summer was more than likely going to be funding for me to write and compile a new workbook for that class. This gives me the slight hope that it's possible that I'll be doing that next summer, between my second and third year, as I will probably teach this course for the rest of my tenure as a GTA -- unless by some very slim, sheer stroke of luck some of us are actually offered the opportunity to teach an undergraduate creative writing class (which, make no mistake, all of us would rather teach compared to composition courses, and what several of us -- but not me -- originally thought we'd be doing when we joined the program).
Looking over the syllabus, it appears to be a standard 102 syllabus with the main text changed to the one used for science writing. It does not offer a week-by-week plan of what to cover or how to do so, but it does contain a points breakdown and a more streamlined grading system (three shorter papers compared to four for 101, a required student/teacher conference, etc.) and some basic guidelines for the class. I can tell you now, though, that my finalized version of the syllabus is going to be a little longer and more detailed, and I'll be changing a few of the smaller rules (such as the late paper policy and the rewrite policy) for my classes. As it is on the syllabus, late papers are accepted, and letter grades are taken off for each day it's late. Yeah, I don't do that -- it's too bothersome and time-consuming to keep track of. Turn in your paper on time or it gets a zero, unless someone is dead and/or dying, and in those situations you'll have to discuss it with me. As it is now on the syllabus, rewrites are graded by averaging the original score with the rewrite score, which I've never done -- I take the higher score of the two and wipe the other from the record -- mainly because I don't want someone to get a lower score on their paper after they've taken the time to rewrite it. If a student gets an 80, rewrites it and gets a 60, they'd get a 70 as the averaged score, and it would be worse for their grade than if they hadn't rewritten it at all. I don't think that's fair; as a student myself, I know how valuable writing time is.
Maybe I'm too nice.
Regardless, I'm going to meet up with my new supervisor today after orientation to see what I can and can't change, and see if I can also get some sort of weekly "here's what you should be covering and when" lesson plan from her -- because I really, really need that sort of "map" when I haven't taught this class before. If I can get my version of the syllabus readied for printing tonight, I can print it and make a copy order tomorrow...and hopefully I won't have to drive down there at all on Monday (I don't teach or have class on Monday). Of course, I can't make a finalized syllabus until I get my finalized schedule, which would include what room(s)/building(s) I'll be teaching in.
Over the course of the past year, I've been asked several times "Aren't you nervous about teaching? Don't you get 'stage fright' or anything like that when you're in front of a class?"
My answer? Helllllll no. I am a natural showman, a frontman, a guy who loves command of an audience and the authority he has over said audience. So, no. I'm not nervous at all when it comes to teaching -- holding sway over a large group of people has been, and probably always will be, a thrill to me. Also, if you know and love me, you also know that I love talking. If I can talk to these kids, inspire them a little, and whip some knowledge their way, then I feel that I've accomplished something good, something substantial. As I plan to teach (adjunct and poor or otherwise) after I graduate with my MFA, it's all about keeping a positive attitude and trying to make a difference. Respect doesn't come easy these days, especially not with over-privileged eighteen-year-olds who don't remember a time before the internet, have owned a cell phone since they were in elementary school, and have never lived without cable television. It's the effort and commitment on the part of professors and GTAs that make a true difference, and I can sleep better at night knowing that while I may not be equally successful with all students, I at least got through to some (or most) of them.
Thank you; my name is Brandon, and I appreciate your vote for class president.
It also looks as if our heat wave has returned, at least for the next few days -- today it's supposed to be 101, and tomorrow it's supposed to be 104. As you know, my Monte Carlo is black-on-black (with red trim) with black leather interior. While this will be fine in the mornings for driving down there, I'm going to end up soaking my clothes with sweat on the afternoon/evening drives back home over the next two days. I'm glad I don't have any extra errands to run until the weekend, if then. And the car currently seems to be running fine; it didn't leak any coolant at all yesterday when I drove it.
So, in a little over two hours, my school year (unofficially) starts when I'll leave the house around 7. With the start of the school year also comes as-yet-untold expenses, problems, and work to do -- this weekend will be spent working on school prep stuff, paying the bills, and finishing the book; I hope to put it up for sale on or before Monday, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
For now, though, I must shower and trim the beard, as the morning is approaching fast.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
"Replacement" Day
Countdown to fall semester: five days
This morning, I awoke for the first time to my new alarm clock, which was sitting on top of a box of dusty books, VHS tapes, and seldom-watched DVDs moved off of the bookcase the former girlfriend took with her -- a box that now serves as my nightstand. It was 9:30, and I was still tired. However, all three cats were in the room with me, watching me as if I were some strange alien being who had just stirred from beneath the depths of the earth.
I had a plan for the day, though, a plan that would not be enacted if I didn't drag my ass upstairs for coffee.
I have dubbed today "Replacement" Day, as it is the day where, more than anything else, my plans were to replace some of the stuff I needed that I'd either run out of, needed to take to school, or things that the former girlfriend had taken with her in the move. This, of course, entailed going to Walmart with a 30-item-long list, and getting what I could and/or actually wanted to spend the money on today -- and, of course, remembering that I still had to put gas in the car if I wanted to get to Wichita and back tomorrow. So, around 11, I left the house. When I returned at 12:30, this is what I came back with:
1. Two bags of cat food and a tub of litter
2. Coffee
3. Mayo, hot sauce, and ketchup (or, as I call it, "the three-condiment holy trinity")
4. Boil-in-bag brown rice
5. Tissues for the office
6. Air fresheners for the office
7. A gigantic, 40-gallon-trash-can sized laundry hamper
8. A birthday card for my Godfather (which went in the mail ASAP when I got home)
9. A set of 10" x 15" bubble mailers for larger thank-you items/packages
10. Three packages of steaks ("Beef. It's what's for dinner.")
11. 7 packets of Buddig beef lunch meat (y'know, the little packs that are 58 cents each)
12. A pack of sharp cheddar cheese
13. Four different varieties of those Knorr/Lipton noodle side dishes
14. A set of plastic cooking spoons (like wooden spoons, but plastic, dishwasher-safe)
15. A pack of teeth flossers
16. A can opener
17. Two small bags of chips
18. Two different kinds of body wash (Ivory and Axe, if you were wondering)
19. A new bottle of Listerine
20. And, finally, a bottle of Pantene conditioner for my head.
Total cost of these items, before tax? $131.09. Yeah. Living alone is expensive. The hamper alone was $15, and it's just a piece of plastic. It's not like there's anything special about it, it's just a much taller, wider laundry basket. It cost me $26 to fill up the car, too, but at least I was able to put in the much-needed fuel system cleaner when I did.
The search for a free or cheap TV did not go well -- I got two replies to my Freecycle posting; one of them was from a teacher at Newton High School who said a janitor had left him a TV and he'd had it in his classroom to use with the kids, but even I have enough of a conscience not to take a TV from a high school teacher who probably not only needed it, but more than likely also actually used it in the classroom. I'm not that cheap. The second reply was from a woman in Hesston (a neighboring town within 20 miles or so) who said she had a Zenith from 1985 that she'd give me, but it had seen better days. At least with the high school TV, there's the possibility that it wouldn't need a converter box if it had a digital tuner, but that wasn't going to be the case with a TV from 1985.
Just a show of hands here, but how many of you (aside from me, of course) were actually alive in 1985, and/or remember what TVs were like then? Maybe, say, five of my readers? Yeah. Let's just say that since then, television technology has significantly improved. I didn't want to drive all the way to Hesston to pick up a TV that may or may not work correctly, drive back home, then have to buy yet another converter box just to get it to pick up signals. So, I kindly told this lady that one of my friends had given me a TV this morning (read: I lied) and posted another Freecycle message as an update to my first saying that a TV was no longer needed.
Then, I bit the bullet, went to Amazon, and bought this. It arrives on Friday.
I weighed my options. I didn't want to get stuck with a thrift store or giveaway TV that I would more than likely have to get another $50 converter box for, only to have said TV die or otherwise stop working properly within a few months. Also, despite my penchant for retro styling, I certainly don't want one of those huge, wood-paneled floor model TVs with a channel dial that includes VHF and UHF frequencies. My parents have a little flatscreen like this in my old bedroom back home, and I really like it, so I figured okay, what the hell, might as well get it.
On the plus side, well, it's new. And it won't require a converter box. And it's two inches larger than my old TV that the former girlfriend took with her, with the benefit of weighing about 1/4 as much. I should be able to put it on the TV stand, plug it in, plug in the new antenna and perform a channel scan, and go. At least I didn't have to spend a ton more money on it -- this was, indeed, a large purchase for me, and it means I'll probably have to wait another month or two before I can purchase larger items I need (like a lawnmower or vacuum), and possibly wait until after Christmas or longer before I can replace my laptop. I'm mostly okay with this; for a single man living on his own, a TV in the living room is sort of essential.
The kids (read: cats) are slowly getting used to the way the house is set up now that the former girlfriend has moved out; Maggie, the fat white-and-grey little girl, was wandering around all hunched down and cautious for most of the day yesterday, as she'd noticed that the futon and old end tables were gone -- and she liked to sleep under those (I'm guessing because it was darker than the rest of the room). She later got over it and got back to her normal self, flopping down under my new coffee table. Sadie (or, as I like to refer to her, my shadow or the dumbass), found a big pile of boxes and trash to flop down on while I was cleaning and rearranging the place, and happily passed out -- oblivious to anything going on. Pete, now bereft of anywhere off-the-ground to sleep on since the window table, freezer, and old side tables are gone, has now taken to sleeping on the new coffee table that Andrea sent me -- despite the fact that a soft, comfy couch is literally eighteen inches behind him. Sadie, at least, is smart enough to sleep on the couch during the daytime.
As you can see. Pete is on the coffee table in this picture, if you look close, but as he and the table are both jet black, it's like cat camouflage.
Yes, by the time I got up this morning they'd already found a way to pull the sheet off the couch. May have to get a proper cover for that.
So, where was I?
Oh yes. So, I came home, put away the groceries and the like, and sat down. My back was still aching from yesterday's moving, and I was tired. I didn't sleep that well last night, which will work for me tonight because I need to go to bed early, but it wasn't working for me this afternoon. I was also hungry.
It was at about this point where I realized hey, I have steak. MEAT. Meat to cook.
I spent an hour cooking; I made a pack of steaks, chopped five potatoes into hand-cut French fries, cooked them in oil, and ate. After that, I was too tired/full to move once I put away the leftover stuff. It's the first real "meal" I've cooked in several weeks; as of late, I've been living off a sandwich or two a day, a handful of Cheez-its, and coffee. Even when coupled with my daily vitamin regimen, it's still not good for me. Aside from today's steak and potatoes, I'm making a conscious effort to eat better; I'm trying to incorporate more fruit into my diet, and trying to eat smaller meals and smaller portions when I do eat. As mentioned before, this is partially laziness and cheapness so that I don't have to buy so much food -- or spend an hour or more in front of the stove every night once I get home from work/school -- but I intend to keep up the habit as much as I can.
It is now 6PM. In a short eleven hours, my summer vacation will officially end, and I will force myself out of bed to get ready for a morning/early afternoon of orientation. It's sort of exciting, as I'll finally be reunited with my friends I haven't seen all summer (as well as some I have), and I'll get to meet the new recruits. It's also sort of groan-inducing, because it's not like I haven't done this "orientation" thing before. In order to get some good, quality sleep, I'll probably go to bed tonight around 8 to properly recharge my internal batteries and reset my circadian rhythms to the ones I'll need to keep throughout the next four months or so. I was originally planning to vacuum off the stairs with the Dirt Devil I (finally) received in the mail today, but I'm just too tired. I am, however, planning to put together my new nightstand -- which also arrived today -- before I go to sleep, if I have the tools needed to do so.
I will, of course, return here soon enough for updates on the new recruits, as well as the new semester.
This morning, I awoke for the first time to my new alarm clock, which was sitting on top of a box of dusty books, VHS tapes, and seldom-watched DVDs moved off of the bookcase the former girlfriend took with her -- a box that now serves as my nightstand. It was 9:30, and I was still tired. However, all three cats were in the room with me, watching me as if I were some strange alien being who had just stirred from beneath the depths of the earth.
I had a plan for the day, though, a plan that would not be enacted if I didn't drag my ass upstairs for coffee.
I have dubbed today "Replacement" Day, as it is the day where, more than anything else, my plans were to replace some of the stuff I needed that I'd either run out of, needed to take to school, or things that the former girlfriend had taken with her in the move. This, of course, entailed going to Walmart with a 30-item-long list, and getting what I could and/or actually wanted to spend the money on today -- and, of course, remembering that I still had to put gas in the car if I wanted to get to Wichita and back tomorrow. So, around 11, I left the house. When I returned at 12:30, this is what I came back with:
1. Two bags of cat food and a tub of litter
2. Coffee
3. Mayo, hot sauce, and ketchup (or, as I call it, "the three-condiment holy trinity")
4. Boil-in-bag brown rice
5. Tissues for the office
6. Air fresheners for the office
7. A gigantic, 40-gallon-trash-can sized laundry hamper
8. A birthday card for my Godfather (which went in the mail ASAP when I got home)
9. A set of 10" x 15" bubble mailers for larger thank-you items/packages
10. Three packages of steaks ("Beef. It's what's for dinner.")
11. 7 packets of Buddig beef lunch meat (y'know, the little packs that are 58 cents each)
12. A pack of sharp cheddar cheese
13. Four different varieties of those Knorr/Lipton noodle side dishes
14. A set of plastic cooking spoons (like wooden spoons, but plastic, dishwasher-safe)
15. A pack of teeth flossers
16. A can opener
17. Two small bags of chips
18. Two different kinds of body wash (Ivory and Axe, if you were wondering)
19. A new bottle of Listerine
20. And, finally, a bottle of Pantene conditioner for my head.
Total cost of these items, before tax? $131.09. Yeah. Living alone is expensive. The hamper alone was $15, and it's just a piece of plastic. It's not like there's anything special about it, it's just a much taller, wider laundry basket. It cost me $26 to fill up the car, too, but at least I was able to put in the much-needed fuel system cleaner when I did.
The search for a free or cheap TV did not go well -- I got two replies to my Freecycle posting; one of them was from a teacher at Newton High School who said a janitor had left him a TV and he'd had it in his classroom to use with the kids, but even I have enough of a conscience not to take a TV from a high school teacher who probably not only needed it, but more than likely also actually used it in the classroom. I'm not that cheap. The second reply was from a woman in Hesston (a neighboring town within 20 miles or so) who said she had a Zenith from 1985 that she'd give me, but it had seen better days. At least with the high school TV, there's the possibility that it wouldn't need a converter box if it had a digital tuner, but that wasn't going to be the case with a TV from 1985.
Just a show of hands here, but how many of you (aside from me, of course) were actually alive in 1985, and/or remember what TVs were like then? Maybe, say, five of my readers? Yeah. Let's just say that since then, television technology has significantly improved. I didn't want to drive all the way to Hesston to pick up a TV that may or may not work correctly, drive back home, then have to buy yet another converter box just to get it to pick up signals. So, I kindly told this lady that one of my friends had given me a TV this morning (read: I lied) and posted another Freecycle message as an update to my first saying that a TV was no longer needed.
Then, I bit the bullet, went to Amazon, and bought this. It arrives on Friday.
I weighed my options. I didn't want to get stuck with a thrift store or giveaway TV that I would more than likely have to get another $50 converter box for, only to have said TV die or otherwise stop working properly within a few months. Also, despite my penchant for retro styling, I certainly don't want one of those huge, wood-paneled floor model TVs with a channel dial that includes VHF and UHF frequencies. My parents have a little flatscreen like this in my old bedroom back home, and I really like it, so I figured okay, what the hell, might as well get it.
On the plus side, well, it's new. And it won't require a converter box. And it's two inches larger than my old TV that the former girlfriend took with her, with the benefit of weighing about 1/4 as much. I should be able to put it on the TV stand, plug it in, plug in the new antenna and perform a channel scan, and go. At least I didn't have to spend a ton more money on it -- this was, indeed, a large purchase for me, and it means I'll probably have to wait another month or two before I can purchase larger items I need (like a lawnmower or vacuum), and possibly wait until after Christmas or longer before I can replace my laptop. I'm mostly okay with this; for a single man living on his own, a TV in the living room is sort of essential.
The kids (read: cats) are slowly getting used to the way the house is set up now that the former girlfriend has moved out; Maggie, the fat white-and-grey little girl, was wandering around all hunched down and cautious for most of the day yesterday, as she'd noticed that the futon and old end tables were gone -- and she liked to sleep under those (I'm guessing because it was darker than the rest of the room). She later got over it and got back to her normal self, flopping down under my new coffee table. Sadie (or, as I like to refer to her, my shadow or the dumbass), found a big pile of boxes and trash to flop down on while I was cleaning and rearranging the place, and happily passed out -- oblivious to anything going on. Pete, now bereft of anywhere off-the-ground to sleep on since the window table, freezer, and old side tables are gone, has now taken to sleeping on the new coffee table that Andrea sent me -- despite the fact that a soft, comfy couch is literally eighteen inches behind him. Sadie, at least, is smart enough to sleep on the couch during the daytime.
As you can see. Pete is on the coffee table in this picture, if you look close, but as he and the table are both jet black, it's like cat camouflage.
Yes, by the time I got up this morning they'd already found a way to pull the sheet off the couch. May have to get a proper cover for that.
So, where was I?
Oh yes. So, I came home, put away the groceries and the like, and sat down. My back was still aching from yesterday's moving, and I was tired. I didn't sleep that well last night, which will work for me tonight because I need to go to bed early, but it wasn't working for me this afternoon. I was also hungry.
It was at about this point where I realized hey, I have steak. MEAT. Meat to cook.
I spent an hour cooking; I made a pack of steaks, chopped five potatoes into hand-cut French fries, cooked them in oil, and ate. After that, I was too tired/full to move once I put away the leftover stuff. It's the first real "meal" I've cooked in several weeks; as of late, I've been living off a sandwich or two a day, a handful of Cheez-its, and coffee. Even when coupled with my daily vitamin regimen, it's still not good for me. Aside from today's steak and potatoes, I'm making a conscious effort to eat better; I'm trying to incorporate more fruit into my diet, and trying to eat smaller meals and smaller portions when I do eat. As mentioned before, this is partially laziness and cheapness so that I don't have to buy so much food -- or spend an hour or more in front of the stove every night once I get home from work/school -- but I intend to keep up the habit as much as I can.
It is now 6PM. In a short eleven hours, my summer vacation will officially end, and I will force myself out of bed to get ready for a morning/early afternoon of orientation. It's sort of exciting, as I'll finally be reunited with my friends I haven't seen all summer (as well as some I have), and I'll get to meet the new recruits. It's also sort of groan-inducing, because it's not like I haven't done this "orientation" thing before. In order to get some good, quality sleep, I'll probably go to bed tonight around 8 to properly recharge my internal batteries and reset my circadian rhythms to the ones I'll need to keep throughout the next four months or so. I was originally planning to vacuum off the stairs with the Dirt Devil I (finally) received in the mail today, but I'm just too tired. I am, however, planning to put together my new nightstand -- which also arrived today -- before I go to sleep, if I have the tools needed to do so.
I will, of course, return here soon enough for updates on the new recruits, as well as the new semester.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Moving Day
Countdown to fall semester: six days
I was originally planning to write this post this afternoon, but I got sidetracked putting together furniture, vacuuming (with the small stick-vac that I have left after the breakup, nearly killing the damn thing) and rearranging basically the entire top floor of the house minus the former girlfriend's former room/office. That I will get to clean/rearrange later; for now, it's a place to toss empty boxes into and occasionally pull smaller pieces of leftover furniture out of.
Then, when I wanted to sit down and write this evening, I got so bogged down and back-achey from working all day that I just wanted to take a shower and go to sleep. I told my friends I was going to bed, took the shower to wash all the sweat off, and returned more awake and less tired in general than before. Call it insomnia, call it a "second wind," or whatever, but I'm in that weird space of mind and body where I'm too tired to do much of anything, yet not tired enough to sleep. So here I am, and here's the story of the day.
Today (as the title implies) was Moving Day. The former girlfriend picked up the 16-foot truck this morning from the rental place, brought it back up here, and over the course of about three hours, breaks included, we had everything she wanted stacked into the back of it -- layered and intricately sorted like Tetris pieces. By 1PM -- less than twelve hours ago -- she pulled the truck out of the driveway and I was, for the first time in my life, officially living alone.
I mentioned before that the original plan was to follow her to Wichita and help her unload the stuff again too, but that was before we saw exactly what was in the truck -- maybe ten pieces of large, unwieldy furniture (such as her desks, the futon/mattress, and her dresser), and then a bunch of assorted tubs and boxes. Oh, and her bike. As she had recruited some of our mutual friends to help her this afternoon at some point anyway, I wasn't needed -- so I didn't go. Instead, once she left, I spent my afternoon doing what I described above -- namely, cleaning and reorganizing the entire top floor of the house after what looked like a moving-related whirlwind had blown through it. About halfway through doing this, around 4:30-ish, she texted me to tell me that everything had been unloaded at the new place and that the truck had been returned.
"Wow, that was fast," I texted back.
The entire actual moving process had taken about eight hours, about an hour of which was spent on the interstate here and back to Wichita. Those huge rental trucks don't drive too quickly, you know.
By the time it had gotten dark, I had pieced together a working living room, including the building of the Ikea coffee table my friend Andrea had bought for me (which took way longer than it should have, and I was lucky to be able to find a pair of pliers downstairs to help). I was lucky in other ways, too -- due to its weight and the space constraints in her new place, she did leave me the old fold-out loveseat she had kept in her room/office, which now serves as the living room couch. We also had the foresight to move it out to the living room with the dolly while she was still here, as the thing quite literally is 200 pounds of wood and steel from the 1970s. It serves the purpose, though, and because I have that I won't have to purchase another futon or couch -- which definitely saves me a lot of money.
Last night, while she was getting furniture coasters (she has hardwood floors in the new apartment, which we had while living in Missouri and I haaaaated them) from Walmart, I tagged along and picked up the site-to-store cookware and cutting boards my lovely friend Becky had bought and shipped to me all the way from North Dakota. The cutting boards are probably the finest I've ever seen, and the stainless steel cookware is wonderful as well. I washed all of this stuff (along with the silverware my friend Brittany sent me, and the blender I got from my friend James), and put it away.
95% of the kitchen and living room are now set up properly. The most glaring difference in the living room is the fact that I no longer have a TV out there -- I gave her my old one, a 20-inch I'd had since I was living in Morgantown (so, 1996-97 or so), and she took her smaller 13-inch TV/DVD combo from the bedroom. I have but one television left in the house, and it's almost as old as mine was; her mother gave it to us years ago just to get it gone from the house. I could move that one to the living room if I wanted to, as it does have a converter box and antenna on it, but I've also got my Xbox and PSOne hooked up to it, and I'd really rather just leave it where it is.
There is at least one more thing that the former girlfriend will have to come back to get, and that is the lawnmower. She didn't take it today because she has no place for it in Wichita, and no lawn -- she won't need it until she goes back to the lake house sometime this fall, and will pick it up then to take with her down there. This means that if I need to, I can mow the grass at least once or twice more between now and then, and if I do I've been instructed to drain the mower's gas tank. She also still has the house key and the electric garage door opener clicker that I'll need to get back from her as well. I'm not really concerned about those items in a pressing fashion, as it's not like she's going to come up here and rob me.
To replace the television, I put a "wanted items" ad thing out on Newton's Freecycle group, and I've already gotten several replies. I was looking for a TV with a built-in digital tuner (to avoid having to get another converter box), but I'm more than likely not going to find one of those. Instead, I got a reply from a lady with a 19-inch TV that's analog, asking if I wanted that. If she's available tomorrow, I'll go pick it up while I'm out shopping and running errands. Ironically, I got my new flat antenna (with "superior reception" capabilities) this afternoon in the mail with Andrea's coffee table, and if I do pick up this TV tomorrow I'll see if I can find a converter box at Walmart as well...if they even still carry them.
There's a lot of bigger stuff I need to get at Walmart tomorrow anyhow; I should probably pick up a real vacuum, I need to get cat food and litter (I swear, those little fuzzy bastards are hogs with the food as of late) and a bunch of other little household items and foodstuffs to replace the ones she took, or stuff I ran out of. I'm hoping to get up early in the morning and do this before the afternoon, so that I can pick up that TV if I can and hit up the post office for mailing thank-you packages and getting stamps. As if that wasn't enough stuff to buy, I also need to put gas in the car tomorrow as well before I start making trips to Wichita for school again.
As you saw above, there are but six days before school starts, but tomorrow is really my last day of summer vacation. This is because, as you know, Thursday and Friday are our orientation days, days where we have to be there by 9 (which means I'll be leaving the house around 7 to get a good parking spot). Thursday will be short, only 9-12; Friday is 9-4:30 for the long haul, after which I will basically be leaping back into the Monte Carlo to get home in time to watch preseason football -- remember, I do still have the one TV.
"You mean to tell me," the former girlfriend told me last night while we were packing and moving things, "that on Friday -- the last day of orientation, after we'll have met all of the new people, and nobody has to get up early on Saturday morning, that you're going to leave campus as soon as you can, not go out drinking and socializing with everyone else, and come home to watch football? Not even regular football, but preseason football, and Chiefs preseason football at that?"
Yes, that's exactly what I was telling her. And it's exactly what I'm telling you folks.
Look -- most, if not all of you who read this blog know me. I am not big on the "bar scene," in Wichita or anywhere else. Even the former girlfriend knows that when we went out, I usually only did so for her benefit because most of the time, being around drunk people -- even classmates and friends -- bores and irritates me unless I'm absolutely plastered myself. Not only that, but I'd have to drive that landboat behemoth of an 18mpg Monte Carlo home afterwards, at night, with a passenger-side high beam that's out. I'm not doing that. I have no interest in doing that -- I'd much rather return home to my humble abode after doing my orientation duties and enter full hermitude for the weekend, to not only mentally prepare for my classes, but to actually get some last vestiges of relaxation time. Truthfully, if I'm going to drink, I'll do it alone. Some would say that's a sign of alcoholism. I would say that it's a sign of independence.
Regardless, it's not like I won't have stuff to do anyhow. My online activities and socializing via AIM, Facebook, and Twitter are going to drop drastically over the course of the next week or so, as not only do I need to be working on school stuff, but this weekend I've tried to clear my metaphorical plate enough to completely finish and "lock" the book to put it on immediate sale. I still also must complete putting the house back in order (I haven't touched the downstairs yet), and pay the bills -- several of which are coming due soon, including the rent and my updated-with-my-name cable bill. Not to mention write the former girlfriend a check for the deposit on this place. There's a good chance that around $1500 of my newly-acquired loan money will be spent on obligations like that in just a matter of days, and no, that's not a small chunk of change.
So, as tomorrow is my last day of summer "vacation" proper, what have I accomplished over the course of the past three months?
1. Purchased/insured/registered/tagged a car, all with my own money
2. Completely dismantled this blog and reinvented it (insert your own "phoenix rising from the ashes" reference here)
3. Wrote/compiled a book that will be on sale by next week
4. Became single for the first time in over six years, surviving what could have been a devastating breakup/move-out process with the former girlfriend, but thankfully wasn't
5. Calculated a summer budget that worked much better than I was expecting it to
6. Submitted my poetry to at least six or seven different magazines and journals
7. And, finally, fully reorganized and restyled this house into a bachelor pad, this afternoon.
While the Casa del Brandon (or, as it is colloquially known, the Brancave) isn't completely finished being set up, what is done is quite livable and sustainable, and over the next few weeks it will become better and better -- especially once I get more of those necessary items around the house to make it feel like "home."
Plans for tomorrow, though? Shopping, errands, picking up a TV, and then coming home to cook meat and drink beer for dinner. Things aren't perfect, but they're certainly looking up.
I was originally planning to write this post this afternoon, but I got sidetracked putting together furniture, vacuuming (with the small stick-vac that I have left after the breakup, nearly killing the damn thing) and rearranging basically the entire top floor of the house minus the former girlfriend's former room/office. That I will get to clean/rearrange later; for now, it's a place to toss empty boxes into and occasionally pull smaller pieces of leftover furniture out of.
Then, when I wanted to sit down and write this evening, I got so bogged down and back-achey from working all day that I just wanted to take a shower and go to sleep. I told my friends I was going to bed, took the shower to wash all the sweat off, and returned more awake and less tired in general than before. Call it insomnia, call it a "second wind," or whatever, but I'm in that weird space of mind and body where I'm too tired to do much of anything, yet not tired enough to sleep. So here I am, and here's the story of the day.
Today (as the title implies) was Moving Day. The former girlfriend picked up the 16-foot truck this morning from the rental place, brought it back up here, and over the course of about three hours, breaks included, we had everything she wanted stacked into the back of it -- layered and intricately sorted like Tetris pieces. By 1PM -- less than twelve hours ago -- she pulled the truck out of the driveway and I was, for the first time in my life, officially living alone.
I mentioned before that the original plan was to follow her to Wichita and help her unload the stuff again too, but that was before we saw exactly what was in the truck -- maybe ten pieces of large, unwieldy furniture (such as her desks, the futon/mattress, and her dresser), and then a bunch of assorted tubs and boxes. Oh, and her bike. As she had recruited some of our mutual friends to help her this afternoon at some point anyway, I wasn't needed -- so I didn't go. Instead, once she left, I spent my afternoon doing what I described above -- namely, cleaning and reorganizing the entire top floor of the house after what looked like a moving-related whirlwind had blown through it. About halfway through doing this, around 4:30-ish, she texted me to tell me that everything had been unloaded at the new place and that the truck had been returned.
"Wow, that was fast," I texted back.
The entire actual moving process had taken about eight hours, about an hour of which was spent on the interstate here and back to Wichita. Those huge rental trucks don't drive too quickly, you know.
By the time it had gotten dark, I had pieced together a working living room, including the building of the Ikea coffee table my friend Andrea had bought for me (which took way longer than it should have, and I was lucky to be able to find a pair of pliers downstairs to help). I was lucky in other ways, too -- due to its weight and the space constraints in her new place, she did leave me the old fold-out loveseat she had kept in her room/office, which now serves as the living room couch. We also had the foresight to move it out to the living room with the dolly while she was still here, as the thing quite literally is 200 pounds of wood and steel from the 1970s. It serves the purpose, though, and because I have that I won't have to purchase another futon or couch -- which definitely saves me a lot of money.
Last night, while she was getting furniture coasters (she has hardwood floors in the new apartment, which we had while living in Missouri and I haaaaated them) from Walmart, I tagged along and picked up the site-to-store cookware and cutting boards my lovely friend Becky had bought and shipped to me all the way from North Dakota. The cutting boards are probably the finest I've ever seen, and the stainless steel cookware is wonderful as well. I washed all of this stuff (along with the silverware my friend Brittany sent me, and the blender I got from my friend James), and put it away.
95% of the kitchen and living room are now set up properly. The most glaring difference in the living room is the fact that I no longer have a TV out there -- I gave her my old one, a 20-inch I'd had since I was living in Morgantown (so, 1996-97 or so), and she took her smaller 13-inch TV/DVD combo from the bedroom. I have but one television left in the house, and it's almost as old as mine was; her mother gave it to us years ago just to get it gone from the house. I could move that one to the living room if I wanted to, as it does have a converter box and antenna on it, but I've also got my Xbox and PSOne hooked up to it, and I'd really rather just leave it where it is.
There is at least one more thing that the former girlfriend will have to come back to get, and that is the lawnmower. She didn't take it today because she has no place for it in Wichita, and no lawn -- she won't need it until she goes back to the lake house sometime this fall, and will pick it up then to take with her down there. This means that if I need to, I can mow the grass at least once or twice more between now and then, and if I do I've been instructed to drain the mower's gas tank. She also still has the house key and the electric garage door opener clicker that I'll need to get back from her as well. I'm not really concerned about those items in a pressing fashion, as it's not like she's going to come up here and rob me.
To replace the television, I put a "wanted items" ad thing out on Newton's Freecycle group, and I've already gotten several replies. I was looking for a TV with a built-in digital tuner (to avoid having to get another converter box), but I'm more than likely not going to find one of those. Instead, I got a reply from a lady with a 19-inch TV that's analog, asking if I wanted that. If she's available tomorrow, I'll go pick it up while I'm out shopping and running errands. Ironically, I got my new flat antenna (with "superior reception" capabilities) this afternoon in the mail with Andrea's coffee table, and if I do pick up this TV tomorrow I'll see if I can find a converter box at Walmart as well...if they even still carry them.
There's a lot of bigger stuff I need to get at Walmart tomorrow anyhow; I should probably pick up a real vacuum, I need to get cat food and litter (I swear, those little fuzzy bastards are hogs with the food as of late) and a bunch of other little household items and foodstuffs to replace the ones she took, or stuff I ran out of. I'm hoping to get up early in the morning and do this before the afternoon, so that I can pick up that TV if I can and hit up the post office for mailing thank-you packages and getting stamps. As if that wasn't enough stuff to buy, I also need to put gas in the car tomorrow as well before I start making trips to Wichita for school again.
As you saw above, there are but six days before school starts, but tomorrow is really my last day of summer vacation. This is because, as you know, Thursday and Friday are our orientation days, days where we have to be there by 9 (which means I'll be leaving the house around 7 to get a good parking spot). Thursday will be short, only 9-12; Friday is 9-4:30 for the long haul, after which I will basically be leaping back into the Monte Carlo to get home in time to watch preseason football -- remember, I do still have the one TV.
"You mean to tell me," the former girlfriend told me last night while we were packing and moving things, "that on Friday -- the last day of orientation, after we'll have met all of the new people, and nobody has to get up early on Saturday morning, that you're going to leave campus as soon as you can, not go out drinking and socializing with everyone else, and come home to watch football? Not even regular football, but preseason football, and Chiefs preseason football at that?"
Yes, that's exactly what I was telling her. And it's exactly what I'm telling you folks.
Look -- most, if not all of you who read this blog know me. I am not big on the "bar scene," in Wichita or anywhere else. Even the former girlfriend knows that when we went out, I usually only did so for her benefit because most of the time, being around drunk people -- even classmates and friends -- bores and irritates me unless I'm absolutely plastered myself. Not only that, but I'd have to drive that landboat behemoth of an 18mpg Monte Carlo home afterwards, at night, with a passenger-side high beam that's out. I'm not doing that. I have no interest in doing that -- I'd much rather return home to my humble abode after doing my orientation duties and enter full hermitude for the weekend, to not only mentally prepare for my classes, but to actually get some last vestiges of relaxation time. Truthfully, if I'm going to drink, I'll do it alone. Some would say that's a sign of alcoholism. I would say that it's a sign of independence.
Regardless, it's not like I won't have stuff to do anyhow. My online activities and socializing via AIM, Facebook, and Twitter are going to drop drastically over the course of the next week or so, as not only do I need to be working on school stuff, but this weekend I've tried to clear my metaphorical plate enough to completely finish and "lock" the book to put it on immediate sale. I still also must complete putting the house back in order (I haven't touched the downstairs yet), and pay the bills -- several of which are coming due soon, including the rent and my updated-with-my-name cable bill. Not to mention write the former girlfriend a check for the deposit on this place. There's a good chance that around $1500 of my newly-acquired loan money will be spent on obligations like that in just a matter of days, and no, that's not a small chunk of change.
So, as tomorrow is my last day of summer "vacation" proper, what have I accomplished over the course of the past three months?
1. Purchased/insured/registered/tagged a car, all with my own money
2. Completely dismantled this blog and reinvented it (insert your own "phoenix rising from the ashes" reference here)
3. Wrote/compiled a book that will be on sale by next week
4. Became single for the first time in over six years, surviving what could have been a devastating breakup/move-out process with the former girlfriend, but thankfully wasn't
5. Calculated a summer budget that worked much better than I was expecting it to
6. Submitted my poetry to at least six or seven different magazines and journals
7. And, finally, fully reorganized and restyled this house into a bachelor pad, this afternoon.
While the Casa del Brandon (or, as it is colloquially known, the Brancave) isn't completely finished being set up, what is done is quite livable and sustainable, and over the next few weeks it will become better and better -- especially once I get more of those necessary items around the house to make it feel like "home."
Plans for tomorrow, though? Shopping, errands, picking up a TV, and then coming home to cook meat and drink beer for dinner. Things aren't perfect, but they're certainly looking up.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Moving, Part III
Countdown to fall semester: seven days
This afternoon and evening I've been helping the former girlfriend pack and ready for her move to Wichita. Despite my inherent sloth-like nature, I can get a lot done working with my hands once I get into the groove of it. Because of that, I've helped to pack two boxes worth of kitchen stuff, and have helped to clear off all the counters/drawers of stuff she's taking with her. I've also done the dishes, washing the parts of her blender that she'll be taking, as well as do a few other things around the top floor of the house.
This morning, I took out the two end tables my former student gave me last week, sprayed them down with Pledge, and polished them/cleaned them up as much as possible. They look great, and I'm hoping they look good in the living room in a few days.
I know I must sound like a broken record at this point about the "moving stuff," but there isn't much else going on. The former girlfriend will be picking up the truck on Tuesday morning, and we'll be loading the stuff into it ourselves -- me and her -- because, well, I'm here, and nobody else is available. I'm also not heartless or unfeeling, so I will be doing everything I can to help. The original plan was for me to follow to Wichita in the Monte Carlo and help unload it again down there as well before going home, but as she's been successful in getting a few of our mutual friends to help her move into the place, I don't know if my presence will still be necessary or requested. I have, however, volunteered to do so if needed, so whatever works. After that, all of the moving will be done.
As mentioned here before, this coming week is going to be crazy-filled with work and other work-like things on multiple levels. There's the packing and moving first, then on Wednesday I need to go to Walmart to start picking up the essentials to replace around the house -- as well as possibly any appliances or furniture I can afford and can fit into the car, before bringing them home and assembling them (what needs assembling, of course), and rearranging/cleaning the house as much as possible after the move. Thursday and Friday, obviously, are our required "orientation days" for the new semester. I've then got a short weekend before classes start back up and I'm stuck teaching/attending them until mid-December. Again. The start of my second year is going to be crazy and hectic, and I have a feeling that being out of the daily routine of work and school since May is going to take its toll on me within the first few weeks -- especially as I came to the realization that I am on campus Wednesday nights until 10PM, and then must drive home and sleep fast so that I can teach on Thursday mornings again at 9:30....and be there until 10 again on Thursday night as well.
I am lucky, however, in the sense that I do nothing but teach on Tuesdays, and can theoretically schedule my office hours/writing center hour on Wednesday/Thursday so that, if needed, I can just go home on Tuesdays after I finish teaching, or otherwise find ways to use my time in a more productive fashion than I have in the past. Living alone will find me with a lot of free, quiet time to myself in the house, and as I told my friend Zedral last night, it also means that I can get a lot more done for my classes, and faster.
I mean, I had a lot of free, quiet time this summer, and I wrote/compiled a book. This should mean, theoretically, that I'll have plenty of time to make lesson plans, read/grade papers, read/write papers, and still take care of all of the around-the-house stuff, right?
Well, we all think that before every semester, don't we?
With the breakup/moving saga soon coming to an end, I've been entertaining offers from friends to come visit for long weekends and the like, an offer that I'll be extending to my parents as well if they'd like to do so. I need to be able to get all of the furniture purchased and set up first, of course, including getting a couch or futon for visitors (or myself) to sleep on while people are here. Some of my friends are actually able to make the visit out here, since (like me) they are grown-ups now -- imagine that -- and if they're not in school, they actually do have vacation days from their respective jobs. So far, October 14-18 is free, as that is the "fall break" we have every year around midterms. The actual "break days" are the 17th and 18th of October, but as I don't have classes/teaching on Friday or Monday, that extends the actual break to five days off -- the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th. By then, obviously, whether I get it in person or shipped to me via Amazon, I should have more than enough furniture to make the house hospitable to guests.
Perhaps I will make a big focus of my new "livin' solo" lifestyle revolve around visiting guests and friends. After all, the vast majority of my friends I've not seen since I was living in West Virginia. Not that many of them would really want to see the flat, uninspired black hole of culture that is Kansas. Still. I won't have anything to do (aside from schoolwork) or anywhere to go/money to get there/ability to actually leave town over Thanksgiving week either; maybe I can do some sort of holiday gathering here at the house with some of those out-of-state friends.
The former girlfriend thinks I'm getting the furniture to "fill space" left by stuff she's taking, as evidenced by the fact that most of the time I'm at home, I'm in the Man Cave. While that may be partially true (in the case of getting a second living room chair of some sort, it kind of is), but getting things like a couch or futon for the living room are sort of important, as you might have guessed, if I want to actually have a living room. As is the coffee table Andrea got for me (which, I expect, will arrive tomorrow).
Also, as expected, I got an email yesterday afternoon from the school, telling me that my one student loan had been processed through my account, and what didn't go to student fees and the like (which they take out automatically, otherwise I get billed for them) is finally in the process of getting dropped into my bank account, though it could take up to five days. Usually it takes a maximum of two or three, if that. Regardless, it'll be the first real, new money I've seen since May, and as I do have a need for it, it couldn't come soon enough. To "celebrate" of sorts, I bought the handheld Dirt Devil I need to vacuum the stairs, as well as the flat antenna I'll need to get better TV reception. They were two of the cheaper items on my list that I need. I'll still have to get a full-size vacuum and another converter box to go along with them, but I'll wait a bit longer on those things to see what I'll be able to work with. Keep in mind I still have bills to pay this month, food to buy, and gas to put in the car before I get my first actual teaching paycheck from the school in about 2-3 weeks. Either way, I'll get by fine, but that doesn't mean those few weeks are going to be pleasant money-wise. After all, I have to get the car worked on eventually as well.
This afternoon and evening I've been helping the former girlfriend pack and ready for her move to Wichita. Despite my inherent sloth-like nature, I can get a lot done working with my hands once I get into the groove of it. Because of that, I've helped to pack two boxes worth of kitchen stuff, and have helped to clear off all the counters/drawers of stuff she's taking with her. I've also done the dishes, washing the parts of her blender that she'll be taking, as well as do a few other things around the top floor of the house.
This morning, I took out the two end tables my former student gave me last week, sprayed them down with Pledge, and polished them/cleaned them up as much as possible. They look great, and I'm hoping they look good in the living room in a few days.
I know I must sound like a broken record at this point about the "moving stuff," but there isn't much else going on. The former girlfriend will be picking up the truck on Tuesday morning, and we'll be loading the stuff into it ourselves -- me and her -- because, well, I'm here, and nobody else is available. I'm also not heartless or unfeeling, so I will be doing everything I can to help. The original plan was for me to follow to Wichita in the Monte Carlo and help unload it again down there as well before going home, but as she's been successful in getting a few of our mutual friends to help her move into the place, I don't know if my presence will still be necessary or requested. I have, however, volunteered to do so if needed, so whatever works. After that, all of the moving will be done.
As mentioned here before, this coming week is going to be crazy-filled with work and other work-like things on multiple levels. There's the packing and moving first, then on Wednesday I need to go to Walmart to start picking up the essentials to replace around the house -- as well as possibly any appliances or furniture I can afford and can fit into the car, before bringing them home and assembling them (what needs assembling, of course), and rearranging/cleaning the house as much as possible after the move. Thursday and Friday, obviously, are our required "orientation days" for the new semester. I've then got a short weekend before classes start back up and I'm stuck teaching/attending them until mid-December. Again. The start of my second year is going to be crazy and hectic, and I have a feeling that being out of the daily routine of work and school since May is going to take its toll on me within the first few weeks -- especially as I came to the realization that I am on campus Wednesday nights until 10PM, and then must drive home and sleep fast so that I can teach on Thursday mornings again at 9:30....and be there until 10 again on Thursday night as well.
I am lucky, however, in the sense that I do nothing but teach on Tuesdays, and can theoretically schedule my office hours/writing center hour on Wednesday/Thursday so that, if needed, I can just go home on Tuesdays after I finish teaching, or otherwise find ways to use my time in a more productive fashion than I have in the past. Living alone will find me with a lot of free, quiet time to myself in the house, and as I told my friend Zedral last night, it also means that I can get a lot more done for my classes, and faster.
I mean, I had a lot of free, quiet time this summer, and I wrote/compiled a book. This should mean, theoretically, that I'll have plenty of time to make lesson plans, read/grade papers, read/write papers, and still take care of all of the around-the-house stuff, right?
Well, we all think that before every semester, don't we?
With the breakup/moving saga soon coming to an end, I've been entertaining offers from friends to come visit for long weekends and the like, an offer that I'll be extending to my parents as well if they'd like to do so. I need to be able to get all of the furniture purchased and set up first, of course, including getting a couch or futon for visitors (or myself) to sleep on while people are here. Some of my friends are actually able to make the visit out here, since (like me) they are grown-ups now -- imagine that -- and if they're not in school, they actually do have vacation days from their respective jobs. So far, October 14-18 is free, as that is the "fall break" we have every year around midterms. The actual "break days" are the 17th and 18th of October, but as I don't have classes/teaching on Friday or Monday, that extends the actual break to five days off -- the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th. By then, obviously, whether I get it in person or shipped to me via Amazon, I should have more than enough furniture to make the house hospitable to guests.
Perhaps I will make a big focus of my new "livin' solo" lifestyle revolve around visiting guests and friends. After all, the vast majority of my friends I've not seen since I was living in West Virginia. Not that many of them would really want to see the flat, uninspired black hole of culture that is Kansas. Still. I won't have anything to do (aside from schoolwork) or anywhere to go/money to get there/ability to actually leave town over Thanksgiving week either; maybe I can do some sort of holiday gathering here at the house with some of those out-of-state friends.
The former girlfriend thinks I'm getting the furniture to "fill space" left by stuff she's taking, as evidenced by the fact that most of the time I'm at home, I'm in the Man Cave. While that may be partially true (in the case of getting a second living room chair of some sort, it kind of is), but getting things like a couch or futon for the living room are sort of important, as you might have guessed, if I want to actually have a living room. As is the coffee table Andrea got for me (which, I expect, will arrive tomorrow).
Also, as expected, I got an email yesterday afternoon from the school, telling me that my one student loan had been processed through my account, and what didn't go to student fees and the like (which they take out automatically, otherwise I get billed for them) is finally in the process of getting dropped into my bank account, though it could take up to five days. Usually it takes a maximum of two or three, if that. Regardless, it'll be the first real, new money I've seen since May, and as I do have a need for it, it couldn't come soon enough. To "celebrate" of sorts, I bought the handheld Dirt Devil I need to vacuum the stairs, as well as the flat antenna I'll need to get better TV reception. They were two of the cheaper items on my list that I need. I'll still have to get a full-size vacuum and another converter box to go along with them, but I'll wait a bit longer on those things to see what I'll be able to work with. Keep in mind I still have bills to pay this month, food to buy, and gas to put in the car before I get my first actual teaching paycheck from the school in about 2-3 weeks. Either way, I'll get by fine, but that doesn't mean those few weeks are going to be pleasant money-wise. After all, I have to get the car worked on eventually as well.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The Moving, Part II
Countdown to fall semester: nine days
The former girlfriend signed her lease at the new place today, and we signed the paperwork for this place and stuck it in the mail. She's getting a truck on Monday, and by Tuesday she will be officially out and gone to start her new life living in Wichita. Likewise, I will be starting my new life of living alone, completely on my own.
It will be a short experience of living alone, however, before the semester starts. I'll have but two days to try to take care of all of my around-the-house stuff before orientation on Thursday and Friday, and then a short weekend before classes start. Tomorrow, if the schedule on Flat State University's website is correct, my student loan should disburse to my student account. If so, it will be good timing -- I'll need to begin getting the rest of the items on my list, either from Amazon or somewhere else, of course allowing for the items friends have sent to come to me in the mail.
This weekend will be spent packing, disassembling, and assembling various items. Tonight is the first preseason football game that I can actually watch on network TV -- Chiefs vs. Bucs -- and I was planning to watch it while assembling the coffee table that Andrea sent me. Unfortunately, it did not arrive today. Nothing arrived today, in fact -- the mailman must have never come down our street, as evidenced by the fact that I put the flag up and put the water bill and my parents' birthday cards in the box to mail out, and we put the landlord letter in there as well this afternoon when the former girlfriend returned home, and they're still there. Mind you, I put the first stuff in the mail well before noon, so it's not like I could've missed it.
Besides, I have friends who have sent me packages in the mail, not via UPS or FedEx, that should have arrived today, but didn't -- so I know the mailmen never showed up. This isn't the first time this has happened, either. This probably happens three or four times a year.
Yes, I know, first world problems, etc.
Anyway, on to other news.
While I had the link to my Twitter and this blog listed on my Facebook page for a while, I decided to remove it in preparation for the book's imminent publication. I have kept both links on my Google+ page, as I am much more selective as to who I friend on there and what I allow to be seen there. I also have no current of former coworkers (aside from fellow grad students) that I've friended on Google+ that may give me shit about the book, and I have not mentioned the book at all on any of my status updates on Facebook -- in fact, I have spoken of it very little there, and only between friends, for reasons which should be apparent. That book, if it's ever read by anyone I used to work with in that store -- despite how nice and conciliatory I am in it, which is a major change from the original blog posts it came from -- is still going to make me some enemies. It won't make me any lawsuits, because no actual places or people are named, but still. Writing a "tell all" sort of book is always going to make some enemies. I'm hoping, however, that it creates more dollars than enemies.
The former girlfriend signed her lease at the new place today, and we signed the paperwork for this place and stuck it in the mail. She's getting a truck on Monday, and by Tuesday she will be officially out and gone to start her new life living in Wichita. Likewise, I will be starting my new life of living alone, completely on my own.
It will be a short experience of living alone, however, before the semester starts. I'll have but two days to try to take care of all of my around-the-house stuff before orientation on Thursday and Friday, and then a short weekend before classes start. Tomorrow, if the schedule on Flat State University's website is correct, my student loan should disburse to my student account. If so, it will be good timing -- I'll need to begin getting the rest of the items on my list, either from Amazon or somewhere else, of course allowing for the items friends have sent to come to me in the mail.
This weekend will be spent packing, disassembling, and assembling various items. Tonight is the first preseason football game that I can actually watch on network TV -- Chiefs vs. Bucs -- and I was planning to watch it while assembling the coffee table that Andrea sent me. Unfortunately, it did not arrive today. Nothing arrived today, in fact -- the mailman must have never come down our street, as evidenced by the fact that I put the flag up and put the water bill and my parents' birthday cards in the box to mail out, and we put the landlord letter in there as well this afternoon when the former girlfriend returned home, and they're still there. Mind you, I put the first stuff in the mail well before noon, so it's not like I could've missed it.
Besides, I have friends who have sent me packages in the mail, not via UPS or FedEx, that should have arrived today, but didn't -- so I know the mailmen never showed up. This isn't the first time this has happened, either. This probably happens three or four times a year.
Yes, I know, first world problems, etc.
Anyway, on to other news.
While I had the link to my Twitter and this blog listed on my Facebook page for a while, I decided to remove it in preparation for the book's imminent publication. I have kept both links on my Google+ page, as I am much more selective as to who I friend on there and what I allow to be seen there. I also have no current of former coworkers (aside from fellow grad students) that I've friended on Google+ that may give me shit about the book, and I have not mentioned the book at all on any of my status updates on Facebook -- in fact, I have spoken of it very little there, and only between friends, for reasons which should be apparent. That book, if it's ever read by anyone I used to work with in that store -- despite how nice and conciliatory I am in it, which is a major change from the original blog posts it came from -- is still going to make me some enemies. It won't make me any lawsuits, because no actual places or people are named, but still. Writing a "tell all" sort of book is always going to make some enemies. I'm hoping, however, that it creates more dollars than enemies.
The Moving, Part I
Countdown to fall semester: ten days
The former girlfriend returned to Newton this afternoon, as her former professor left a day early to go back home. Tomorrow afternoon, the former girlfriend signs the lease on her new apartment in Wichita, and we both sign/send the requested letter to our (well, my) landlord here that he wanted, which severs any responsibility or financial liability she has to this place -- making me the one in charge and the primary (and sole) lessee. After that moment, for the first time in my 28 years on the planet, I will be entirely financially responsible for myself in every way, shape, and form -- with no one to fall back on if times get rough, and no backup plan.
Is it a scary thought? In a way, yes. Is it a liberating thought? Definitely.
Tomorrow, of course, begins the moving process -- especially once she's signed the lease for the new place. Everything that hasn't already been boxed up will be boxed up and moved to her new place within the next several days, and as soon as she can get a truck/van rented for a day, all of the bigger things (such as furniture like the tables, dressers, desks, and her chest freezer) will be going as well -- and so will she.
This afternoon, we took care of the cable account and transferred it into my name. After a bit of paperwork in the offices there, as well as a phone call once we got back to the house, the internet is up and running in my name after a quick reset of the modem. The former girlfriend also found out that she doesn't have to pay a deposit on her new electric account at her new place, as the was apparently listed as an emergency secondary on my account up here in Newton, and since said account has always been in good standing, a quick phone call or a few clicks of the mouse will have the lights turned on in her name in her new apartment ASAP. Aside from changing her address on her important documents (like taxes, her driver's license, and with the school), after she signs the new lease tomorrow, all of the "busywork" sort of stuff involving her moving out is done, and all that really remains is the legwork of physically moving her stuff out of here and into the new place.
I actually need to get up fairly early in the morning -- to mow the grass one last time with the lawnmower here at the house. As mentioned before, she'll be taking that with her, and as we've actually gotten a good amount of rain this past week, the grass has come back with a vengeance and needs to be tamed before I no longer have the ability to mow it until I purchase another mower. When I'm done I will more than likely help her pack up the kitchen foods/canned goods/utensils/towels and the like before she goes to sign the lease. I don't know if she's actually going to do any of the moving of boxes down there tomorrow, though.
In other news, so far I have received silverware, a popcorn popper (and corn), a toaster, a set of bakeware, a new ashtray, and the two end tables from my former student. By the end of the weekend, I should also have a coffee table, stainless steel cookware, cutting boards, a blender, and an alarm clock. Depending on what she has room for, the former girlfriend may be leaving me her old fold-out couch and one of her two large dressers, and there was talk of her getting another futon once she got down there, too. Who knows, really; once she's moved out and the proverbial dust settles, I'll have to evaluate the situation and see what's left. Aside from the list of absolutely necessary items, I've started a shopping list of household items that I'll need once she's gone, from stuff like groceries to replace the ones she'll take, to stuff such as cleaning supplies and wooden spoons -- and anything/everything in-between. Potholders, dish towels, even stuff like hand soap and furnace filters. I will have to wander around the house with a checklist for what, I'm sure, will not be a cheap shopping trip.
Still, the former girlfriend is leaving me a lot of stuff, and with my one student loan ready to drop after this weekend, it shouldn't make a huge difference in the long run what I have to purchase. The bills still have to be paid, I still have to go to school, gas must be put into the Decepticon landboat that is the Monte Carlo, and life goes on.
By the way, it still didn't leak a drop after I got it home last night.
So, that's all I really have to say for tonight. Tomorrow the work begins, and with it, the book just gets postponed a few extra days until I can properly settle down and finish everything for it. I'll keep you posted, of course, on how everything turns out.
The former girlfriend returned to Newton this afternoon, as her former professor left a day early to go back home. Tomorrow afternoon, the former girlfriend signs the lease on her new apartment in Wichita, and we both sign/send the requested letter to our (well, my) landlord here that he wanted, which severs any responsibility or financial liability she has to this place -- making me the one in charge and the primary (and sole) lessee. After that moment, for the first time in my 28 years on the planet, I will be entirely financially responsible for myself in every way, shape, and form -- with no one to fall back on if times get rough, and no backup plan.
Is it a scary thought? In a way, yes. Is it a liberating thought? Definitely.
Tomorrow, of course, begins the moving process -- especially once she's signed the lease for the new place. Everything that hasn't already been boxed up will be boxed up and moved to her new place within the next several days, and as soon as she can get a truck/van rented for a day, all of the bigger things (such as furniture like the tables, dressers, desks, and her chest freezer) will be going as well -- and so will she.
This afternoon, we took care of the cable account and transferred it into my name. After a bit of paperwork in the offices there, as well as a phone call once we got back to the house, the internet is up and running in my name after a quick reset of the modem. The former girlfriend also found out that she doesn't have to pay a deposit on her new electric account at her new place, as the was apparently listed as an emergency secondary on my account up here in Newton, and since said account has always been in good standing, a quick phone call or a few clicks of the mouse will have the lights turned on in her name in her new apartment ASAP. Aside from changing her address on her important documents (like taxes, her driver's license, and with the school), after she signs the new lease tomorrow, all of the "busywork" sort of stuff involving her moving out is done, and all that really remains is the legwork of physically moving her stuff out of here and into the new place.
I actually need to get up fairly early in the morning -- to mow the grass one last time with the lawnmower here at the house. As mentioned before, she'll be taking that with her, and as we've actually gotten a good amount of rain this past week, the grass has come back with a vengeance and needs to be tamed before I no longer have the ability to mow it until I purchase another mower. When I'm done I will more than likely help her pack up the kitchen foods/canned goods/utensils/towels and the like before she goes to sign the lease. I don't know if she's actually going to do any of the moving of boxes down there tomorrow, though.
In other news, so far I have received silverware, a popcorn popper (and corn), a toaster, a set of bakeware, a new ashtray, and the two end tables from my former student. By the end of the weekend, I should also have a coffee table, stainless steel cookware, cutting boards, a blender, and an alarm clock. Depending on what she has room for, the former girlfriend may be leaving me her old fold-out couch and one of her two large dressers, and there was talk of her getting another futon once she got down there, too. Who knows, really; once she's moved out and the proverbial dust settles, I'll have to evaluate the situation and see what's left. Aside from the list of absolutely necessary items, I've started a shopping list of household items that I'll need once she's gone, from stuff like groceries to replace the ones she'll take, to stuff such as cleaning supplies and wooden spoons -- and anything/everything in-between. Potholders, dish towels, even stuff like hand soap and furnace filters. I will have to wander around the house with a checklist for what, I'm sure, will not be a cheap shopping trip.
Still, the former girlfriend is leaving me a lot of stuff, and with my one student loan ready to drop after this weekend, it shouldn't make a huge difference in the long run what I have to purchase. The bills still have to be paid, I still have to go to school, gas must be put into the Decepticon landboat that is the Monte Carlo, and life goes on.
By the way, it still didn't leak a drop after I got it home last night.
So, that's all I really have to say for tonight. Tomorrow the work begins, and with it, the book just gets postponed a few extra days until I can properly settle down and finish everything for it. I'll keep you posted, of course, on how everything turns out.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Raiders of the Lost Radiator
Countdown to fall semester: twelve days
It helps, while reading this post, if you have -- in a separate tab, of course -- the Indiana Jones theme playing in the background. For effect. So that you can do this if you wish, I have provided you with this link. Don't let it play yet. I'll tell you when to start it. It'll be an interactive experience.
This morning when I awoke, it was -- surprisingly -- sunny. This was surprising because when I went to bed last night, it was blowing up a storm so nasty that I put my car in the garage for fear of hail (and because I knew I was so tired that I wouldn't hear it hailing in my sleep).
Because it was sunny and barely 70 degrees when I got up, I happily made my coffee and went through my morning routine. I also switched off the air conditioner, as really it wasn't needed, and checked the weather. It was storming in Wichita, but it was slowly moving off to the east. I figured I'd give it some time to do so, but as it was all moving off, I made the decision then and there that if I was going to go down there and "move" my stuff back into my office, today's weather and cooler temperatures was going to be the best day to do it. So, because of that, I told my former star student (who was going to bring me two end tables for the living room) that I would be down there around 2-3 or so, finished cramming everything I could into three(!) different bags -- my backpack, my laptop bag, and another messenger bag -- got dressed and ready, and went down to the garage.
The Monte Carlo, as you know, has some sort of radiator leak. It's not a bad one, but after it's driven it will drop anywhere between a tablespoon and a cup of fluid on the pavement. I checked the garage floor both before and after I removed the car -- nothing. Dry as a bone. Hm, okay, that's good. Not only did it mean that the car didn't leak when I put it in the garage, it meant that I wouldn't have to sop up antifreeze from the garage floor.
So, with that optimism in mind, I set up my GPS for its first official destination test, plugged it into the cigarette lighter port to power it (because its battery life is abysmal otherwise) and set off for Wichita, bags in tow.
(start playing the music now)
The drive down there was mostly pleasant, actually. The GPS worked beautifully, even though it's not like I didn't know where I was going, and it gave me an accurate speed (which is what I wanted to test, really). My speedometer was working just fine, as it has been 95% of the time I drive the car now, and there wasn't a lot of traffic on the road around 1:30PM or so, so I was really able to "open 'er up," so to speak, and for the majority of the drive down there I was going at or slightly above/below the speed limit of 75. No acceleration or braking problems, no overheating, nothing -- perfectly normal drive. It was, to that point, the fastest I've ever driven the car, and a good road-worthiness test of the machine. With its 18mpg, though, I literally watched the fuel needle slowly move across the dial.
No, the drive was fine -- it's when I actually got to school that I had the problems.
When I parked the car, I had to fit it into a fairly tight spot, as two huge minivans were on either side of me. I got it a little crooked, and had to back out and adjust a few times, but it fit. This is no small task for a car the size of a land boat. When I got out, I was idly unloading my bags when I noticed....hm. A trail. Of fluid. Not much, but enough. Right where I had to back up and adjust a few times.
Shit.
I walked to the front of the car, where I knew the leak was situated, to see green antifreeze literally dripping from the car. It formed a large puddle. Not gushing or anything like that, but easily 3-4 cups of the stuff. Shit. Shitshitshit.
(pause the music.)
Now, keep in mind that the car had not been overheating, at all. And I know that gauge works, mainly because the needle on it does move, just barely, when I've been driving the car a lot, and that it's always well below the "hot" range. The "Low Coolant" light was also off, and had not been on the entire time I'd been in the car. But here I was, standing in front of my car's bumper, watching antifreeze drip out of it.
What did I do? I took my stuff inside to my office. I know that when it does leak, it will eventually stop doing so a few minutes after I shut the car off. And luckily, I had enough foresight to bring the rest of the bottle of antifreeze/coolant with me in the car this morning when I left the house.
I did not, however, have the foresight to remember the bottle of radiator stop-leak from the top of the fridge.
Once I got inside and started to put my stuff away/set it back up in my office, I texted the former girlfriend to tell her that I'd brought my phone charger for her to use (since I couldn't find hers no matter where I looked) and that if she could bring one, I needed her to pick up a bottle of radiator stop-leak on the way to the office.
She called me a few minutes later and I gave her the rundown of the situation, and she told me she'd look at it when she got there.
When she came, she did not bring the stop-leak, but she did help me take a look at it. My coolant reserve tank was lower than it had been before when I'd last topped it off (obviously), but I still had a ton of it.
"Well, it's leaking after you run the car for a while, and it's leaking that much after you drove down here," she said. "...you may possibly have a cracked radiator."
Not good. Worst-case scenario sort of not good.
"It's not overheating, though," I said. "And it doesn't tell me 'low coolant' or anything like that. Wouldn't those things come from a cracked radiator?"
I have never seen, nor heard of, a "cracked radiator" scenario where the car doesn't overheat, drives just fine, and doesn't tell me it has low coolant.
I removed the radiator cap to check inside the actual radiator -- and it was full. Like, full up to the cap's edge. Somehow I doubted it would hold that much fluid with a cracked radiator, let alone be full up to the actual metal cap under the hood, so I was beginning to feel a little more optimistic.
So, we bickered back and forth about it, as we are wont to do, for a few minutes. I gave her my phone charger to use until she got back to Newton (probably Friday) and she left. I had other things to do today, so did she, etc. So, I waited in the parking lot, leaning against my land boat of a leaky car, and smoked a cigarette. I poured the rest of the antifreeze/coolant I brought with me into the reserve tank, for good measure, and put the bottle into the backseat to take back home. There wasn't much else I could do -- I knew the car would get me back to Newton just fine with that much coolant in it, and I knew with the possibility of my friends being able to work on it or look at it in the next several days, and with no spare cash aside from what I needed to spend at Walmart on groceries on the way home, I just had to flip down my proverbial sunglasses and deal with it. Plus, as I had told my former student that I'd wait out there for her to get the end tables she was going to give me, I needed to just hang around outside the car so she'd see me in the (fairly crowded) parking lot.
While I was doing that waiting, by sheer luck one of my other star students that I'm in contact with a lot just happened to be walking by after buying his class books at the bookstore. Said student is a former marine, and a former marine mechanic. Note that last part in particular. He was in the same class as the student I was waiting on and knows her, so we waited together and BSed. I told him about the car, and he got down underneath it to look at it.
"Well, I can see the problem," he said. "Where's your radiator overflow?"
"The tank?" I asked. "The tank's up there, obviously, where all the green shit is."
"No, I mean the overflow. The overflow."
"Fuck if I know," I said. "I don't know shit about cars."
This, at least, is partially true. I know a lot about cars -- specs, top speeds, torque, horsepower -- you name it, including the minutiae. But do I know anything about working on cars? Shit no. I can pull apart a computer and put it back together, I can diagnose a software or hardware problem in mere minutes, and I can give out motherboard specs and tell you how to properly install a heat sink and fan -- but working on cars is an entirely different animal to me, and it eludes me.
"Okay," he said. "The overflow valve is what dumps extra antifreeze/coolant if there's too much in the radiator. It hits that valve and flows, literally, out of the car. You appear to have two of them, one on each side. It looks like it's coming from that, not from a hose or a 'crack in the radiator' or anything like that. That's not to say, mind you, that you don't possibly have a leaky hose or a hole in the radiator somewhere, but I can't see any further up there than that. I'd have to get the car on a lift, or something."
And then it hit me.
When I first got the car, it always had the "Low Coolant" light on in the dashboard panel. Until I figured out that this was probably a sensor going in and out (as they tend to do on older GM models such as this one, I've found in my research), I had filled the reserve tank with new coolant until the light kicked off. That's why I had what was left of a bottle of it to take with me today.
It's also probably why, when the previous owners gave it a radiator flush and new coolant right before I bought it, nothing (such as a crack or hose leak) popped up out of the ordinary...because there was nothing out of the ordinary. My drive down to Wichita today was the longest duration I've ever driven the car, and (as I said) up to that point, the highest speed I'd ever driven it. I'd never had it above 50mph on the highways here in and around Newton, not even up on the huge straight stretch near Alco. Because I'd never driven it that long and that hard before, it worked up the coolant in there enough to have it hit the overflow valve when the engine had been running hard enough...hence why it decided to, well, overflow its way out when I parked the car.
And, stupid me, before that revelation hit me, I'd poured the rest of the coolant I had in the bottle with me into the damned reservoir again. Thankfully, it wasn't a lot -- maybe half a liter, if that.
I should also note that my dad thought this overflow valve thing could have been the problem as well, as early as last week, but again, I thought he meant the reservoir tank, not a specified overflow valve for this sort of thing. D'oh. At some times, I can be a damned idiot, and it is always clear that I have a lot more to learn about anything and everything.
Anyway, we hung out for a while, my other former student arrived and I got the end tables from her (two sizes; smaller one just baaaarely fit in the back seat, and the larger one baaaarely fit in my trunk). In return/thanks, I gave her a large manila envelope stuffed with about 20 comics and two trade paperbacks, and she loved them. After we all went our separate ways because it looked like another storm might have been blowing in, I went back up to my office one last time to shut down my laptop (which had been downloading upgrades after being turned off all summer), gave the place a final sweep of the eyes to see if there was anything else I needed to do, and then left.
And here's where the fun begins.
(restart the music)
As I was pretty sure at this point that it was the overflow valve, demonstrated by the fact that it had, once more, stopped leaking very shortly after I'd turned it off, I wasn't too worried about the drive back home. And I had no reason to be, really -- the Monte Carlo performed like a boss all the way back to Newton, and at my fastest (while passing big trucks and the like) I had it cranked up to 85mph.
Note: the speed limit is 75, so when you're passing someone, 85 is about at about the same ratio you'd need to overtake someone at any other speed.
I did learn, however, that the car does not necessarily like to be driven at 85mph, and shimmies and shakes a little while doing so. It's an old car, though. And I'm pretty sure that's because of the misfires in the cylinders. But, it goes, and has the power it needs to have when I need to use it.
As I mentioned before, I needed to go to Walmart on my way home -- to get another bottle of antifreeze (just in case, of course), if nothing else. I did, however, need some minor groceries, so I ended up getting some. The car didn't leak when I turned it off, and when I was done shopping, it had only leaked a little bit (a small circle about the circumference of a mayonnaise jar). Keep in mind, this was after the same length of a drive as I'd done earlier this afternoon, with the outside temperature warmer than before, and the drive was for the most part at a faster overall speed, meaning the engine was working harder.
It drove home just fine as well, and even after I'd taken about ten minutes to unload the groceries and the end tables, it hadn't yet leaked another drop. Looks like whatever excess coolant it had to make it leak a lot dumped itself out of the system in today's trip. I'll obviously be keeping an eye on it over the course of the next week or two, especially if it's going to get worked on, but I think I worked myself up over nothing. Well, really, I worked myself up over my own stupidity and inexperience with owning a vehicle. We'll see what happens, of course.
(you can stop playing the music now, if you haven't already.)
As for the end tables, they're almost exactly what I was looking for, and I can't thank my very generous former student, a good friend, enough for them. They'll work well in the bachelor pad I'll create after the former girlfriend moves out, once I polish them down with some Pledge and get the cobwebs off them.
My other former student, the marine mechanic, has also graciously offered to help me get the futon from Walmart and bring it home, as he (surprise!) drives a truck that it will easily fit into. This, of course, is awesome; I told him I'd let him know, as it's not like I can get it and assemble it until a) the former girlfriend moves out and takes hers with her, and b) until I get enough money scraped together to purchase it, barring any gifts from friends or giveaways from the Freecycle community here.
So yeah, that was the events of the day. Me being a dumbass. No news to report there...
It helps, while reading this post, if you have -- in a separate tab, of course -- the Indiana Jones theme playing in the background. For effect. So that you can do this if you wish, I have provided you with this link. Don't let it play yet. I'll tell you when to start it. It'll be an interactive experience.
This morning when I awoke, it was -- surprisingly -- sunny. This was surprising because when I went to bed last night, it was blowing up a storm so nasty that I put my car in the garage for fear of hail (and because I knew I was so tired that I wouldn't hear it hailing in my sleep).
Because it was sunny and barely 70 degrees when I got up, I happily made my coffee and went through my morning routine. I also switched off the air conditioner, as really it wasn't needed, and checked the weather. It was storming in Wichita, but it was slowly moving off to the east. I figured I'd give it some time to do so, but as it was all moving off, I made the decision then and there that if I was going to go down there and "move" my stuff back into my office, today's weather and cooler temperatures was going to be the best day to do it. So, because of that, I told my former star student (who was going to bring me two end tables for the living room) that I would be down there around 2-3 or so, finished cramming everything I could into three(!) different bags -- my backpack, my laptop bag, and another messenger bag -- got dressed and ready, and went down to the garage.
The Monte Carlo, as you know, has some sort of radiator leak. It's not a bad one, but after it's driven it will drop anywhere between a tablespoon and a cup of fluid on the pavement. I checked the garage floor both before and after I removed the car -- nothing. Dry as a bone. Hm, okay, that's good. Not only did it mean that the car didn't leak when I put it in the garage, it meant that I wouldn't have to sop up antifreeze from the garage floor.
So, with that optimism in mind, I set up my GPS for its first official destination test, plugged it into the cigarette lighter port to power it (because its battery life is abysmal otherwise) and set off for Wichita, bags in tow.
(start playing the music now)
The drive down there was mostly pleasant, actually. The GPS worked beautifully, even though it's not like I didn't know where I was going, and it gave me an accurate speed (which is what I wanted to test, really). My speedometer was working just fine, as it has been 95% of the time I drive the car now, and there wasn't a lot of traffic on the road around 1:30PM or so, so I was really able to "open 'er up," so to speak, and for the majority of the drive down there I was going at or slightly above/below the speed limit of 75. No acceleration or braking problems, no overheating, nothing -- perfectly normal drive. It was, to that point, the fastest I've ever driven the car, and a good road-worthiness test of the machine. With its 18mpg, though, I literally watched the fuel needle slowly move across the dial.
No, the drive was fine -- it's when I actually got to school that I had the problems.
When I parked the car, I had to fit it into a fairly tight spot, as two huge minivans were on either side of me. I got it a little crooked, and had to back out and adjust a few times, but it fit. This is no small task for a car the size of a land boat. When I got out, I was idly unloading my bags when I noticed....hm. A trail. Of fluid. Not much, but enough. Right where I had to back up and adjust a few times.
Shit.
I walked to the front of the car, where I knew the leak was situated, to see green antifreeze literally dripping from the car. It formed a large puddle. Not gushing or anything like that, but easily 3-4 cups of the stuff. Shit. Shitshitshit.
(pause the music.)
Now, keep in mind that the car had not been overheating, at all. And I know that gauge works, mainly because the needle on it does move, just barely, when I've been driving the car a lot, and that it's always well below the "hot" range. The "Low Coolant" light was also off, and had not been on the entire time I'd been in the car. But here I was, standing in front of my car's bumper, watching antifreeze drip out of it.
What did I do? I took my stuff inside to my office. I know that when it does leak, it will eventually stop doing so a few minutes after I shut the car off. And luckily, I had enough foresight to bring the rest of the bottle of antifreeze/coolant with me in the car this morning when I left the house.
I did not, however, have the foresight to remember the bottle of radiator stop-leak from the top of the fridge.
Once I got inside and started to put my stuff away/set it back up in my office, I texted the former girlfriend to tell her that I'd brought my phone charger for her to use (since I couldn't find hers no matter where I looked) and that if she could bring one, I needed her to pick up a bottle of radiator stop-leak on the way to the office.
She called me a few minutes later and I gave her the rundown of the situation, and she told me she'd look at it when she got there.
When she came, she did not bring the stop-leak, but she did help me take a look at it. My coolant reserve tank was lower than it had been before when I'd last topped it off (obviously), but I still had a ton of it.
"Well, it's leaking after you run the car for a while, and it's leaking that much after you drove down here," she said. "...you may possibly have a cracked radiator."
Not good. Worst-case scenario sort of not good.
"It's not overheating, though," I said. "And it doesn't tell me 'low coolant' or anything like that. Wouldn't those things come from a cracked radiator?"
I have never seen, nor heard of, a "cracked radiator" scenario where the car doesn't overheat, drives just fine, and doesn't tell me it has low coolant.
I removed the radiator cap to check inside the actual radiator -- and it was full. Like, full up to the cap's edge. Somehow I doubted it would hold that much fluid with a cracked radiator, let alone be full up to the actual metal cap under the hood, so I was beginning to feel a little more optimistic.
So, we bickered back and forth about it, as we are wont to do, for a few minutes. I gave her my phone charger to use until she got back to Newton (probably Friday) and she left. I had other things to do today, so did she, etc. So, I waited in the parking lot, leaning against my land boat of a leaky car, and smoked a cigarette. I poured the rest of the antifreeze/coolant I brought with me into the reserve tank, for good measure, and put the bottle into the backseat to take back home. There wasn't much else I could do -- I knew the car would get me back to Newton just fine with that much coolant in it, and I knew with the possibility of my friends being able to work on it or look at it in the next several days, and with no spare cash aside from what I needed to spend at Walmart on groceries on the way home, I just had to flip down my proverbial sunglasses and deal with it. Plus, as I had told my former student that I'd wait out there for her to get the end tables she was going to give me, I needed to just hang around outside the car so she'd see me in the (fairly crowded) parking lot.
While I was doing that waiting, by sheer luck one of my other star students that I'm in contact with a lot just happened to be walking by after buying his class books at the bookstore. Said student is a former marine, and a former marine mechanic. Note that last part in particular. He was in the same class as the student I was waiting on and knows her, so we waited together and BSed. I told him about the car, and he got down underneath it to look at it.
"Well, I can see the problem," he said. "Where's your radiator overflow?"
"The tank?" I asked. "The tank's up there, obviously, where all the green shit is."
"No, I mean the overflow. The overflow."
"Fuck if I know," I said. "I don't know shit about cars."
This, at least, is partially true. I know a lot about cars -- specs, top speeds, torque, horsepower -- you name it, including the minutiae. But do I know anything about working on cars? Shit no. I can pull apart a computer and put it back together, I can diagnose a software or hardware problem in mere minutes, and I can give out motherboard specs and tell you how to properly install a heat sink and fan -- but working on cars is an entirely different animal to me, and it eludes me.
"Okay," he said. "The overflow valve is what dumps extra antifreeze/coolant if there's too much in the radiator. It hits that valve and flows, literally, out of the car. You appear to have two of them, one on each side. It looks like it's coming from that, not from a hose or a 'crack in the radiator' or anything like that. That's not to say, mind you, that you don't possibly have a leaky hose or a hole in the radiator somewhere, but I can't see any further up there than that. I'd have to get the car on a lift, or something."
And then it hit me.
When I first got the car, it always had the "Low Coolant" light on in the dashboard panel. Until I figured out that this was probably a sensor going in and out (as they tend to do on older GM models such as this one, I've found in my research), I had filled the reserve tank with new coolant until the light kicked off. That's why I had what was left of a bottle of it to take with me today.
It's also probably why, when the previous owners gave it a radiator flush and new coolant right before I bought it, nothing (such as a crack or hose leak) popped up out of the ordinary...because there was nothing out of the ordinary. My drive down to Wichita today was the longest duration I've ever driven the car, and (as I said) up to that point, the highest speed I'd ever driven it. I'd never had it above 50mph on the highways here in and around Newton, not even up on the huge straight stretch near Alco. Because I'd never driven it that long and that hard before, it worked up the coolant in there enough to have it hit the overflow valve when the engine had been running hard enough...hence why it decided to, well, overflow its way out when I parked the car.
And, stupid me, before that revelation hit me, I'd poured the rest of the coolant I had in the bottle with me into the damned reservoir again. Thankfully, it wasn't a lot -- maybe half a liter, if that.
I should also note that my dad thought this overflow valve thing could have been the problem as well, as early as last week, but again, I thought he meant the reservoir tank, not a specified overflow valve for this sort of thing. D'oh. At some times, I can be a damned idiot, and it is always clear that I have a lot more to learn about anything and everything.
Anyway, we hung out for a while, my other former student arrived and I got the end tables from her (two sizes; smaller one just baaaarely fit in the back seat, and the larger one baaaarely fit in my trunk). In return/thanks, I gave her a large manila envelope stuffed with about 20 comics and two trade paperbacks, and she loved them. After we all went our separate ways because it looked like another storm might have been blowing in, I went back up to my office one last time to shut down my laptop (which had been downloading upgrades after being turned off all summer), gave the place a final sweep of the eyes to see if there was anything else I needed to do, and then left.
And here's where the fun begins.
(restart the music)
As I was pretty sure at this point that it was the overflow valve, demonstrated by the fact that it had, once more, stopped leaking very shortly after I'd turned it off, I wasn't too worried about the drive back home. And I had no reason to be, really -- the Monte Carlo performed like a boss all the way back to Newton, and at my fastest (while passing big trucks and the like) I had it cranked up to 85mph.
Note: the speed limit is 75, so when you're passing someone, 85 is about at about the same ratio you'd need to overtake someone at any other speed.
I did learn, however, that the car does not necessarily like to be driven at 85mph, and shimmies and shakes a little while doing so. It's an old car, though. And I'm pretty sure that's because of the misfires in the cylinders. But, it goes, and has the power it needs to have when I need to use it.
As I mentioned before, I needed to go to Walmart on my way home -- to get another bottle of antifreeze (just in case, of course), if nothing else. I did, however, need some minor groceries, so I ended up getting some. The car didn't leak when I turned it off, and when I was done shopping, it had only leaked a little bit (a small circle about the circumference of a mayonnaise jar). Keep in mind, this was after the same length of a drive as I'd done earlier this afternoon, with the outside temperature warmer than before, and the drive was for the most part at a faster overall speed, meaning the engine was working harder.
It drove home just fine as well, and even after I'd taken about ten minutes to unload the groceries and the end tables, it hadn't yet leaked another drop. Looks like whatever excess coolant it had to make it leak a lot dumped itself out of the system in today's trip. I'll obviously be keeping an eye on it over the course of the next week or two, especially if it's going to get worked on, but I think I worked myself up over nothing. Well, really, I worked myself up over my own stupidity and inexperience with owning a vehicle. We'll see what happens, of course.
(you can stop playing the music now, if you haven't already.)
As for the end tables, they're almost exactly what I was looking for, and I can't thank my very generous former student, a good friend, enough for them. They'll work well in the bachelor pad I'll create after the former girlfriend moves out, once I polish them down with some Pledge and get the cobwebs off them.
My other former student, the marine mechanic, has also graciously offered to help me get the futon from Walmart and bring it home, as he (surprise!) drives a truck that it will easily fit into. This, of course, is awesome; I told him I'd let him know, as it's not like I can get it and assemble it until a) the former girlfriend moves out and takes hers with her, and b) until I get enough money scraped together to purchase it, barring any gifts from friends or giveaways from the Freecycle community here.
So yeah, that was the events of the day. Me being a dumbass. No news to report there...
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