Night of the Living Grammar

I am up to page thirty on my English 681 final project, not counting the extra handouts I'll need to print and insert prior to turning it in. With those included and another ten pages or so of lesson plans/exams to craft and tack on, it looks like the final version of my project will clock in around fifty pages or so, give or take a few.

This is, of course, more than double what the required length of the assignment was, but it can't be helped; the first fifteen pages or so of it are nothing but the absolutely necessary parts of the assignment -- namely the three-page defense/course description, a five-page detailed syllabus, and then a weekly lesson plan. My professor wants example lesson plans/class assignments, example quizzes and the like as well. I have trimmed what I was going to include in half, basically, and it still will be around fifty pages when it's all said and done.

I have not slept. I have, of course, tried to sleep -- first a little after 2AM (when Lady went to bed), then again after 7AM. I will probably crash at some point soon. I feel it coming on but I'm not quite there yet. I'm writing this post after eating breakfast in the hopes that I will soon become tired enough to actually sleep.

Lady is still sick; this marks day five of her flu. Still she soldiers on. She is unable to make it out here this weekend because of schoolwork, but we've made plans for next weekend -- when neither of us will be busy and can actually relax together for some actual peace-and-quiet time. Plus, by then she (hopefully) won't feel like walking death, either.

As it is Saturday morning, I've got three more days of weekend laid out ahead of me. This means I can pace myself for the rest of the project and attempt to get some real rest in the meantime as well. Perhaps I should try that now.

Hell on Wheels, Part I

Spring semester: day seventy-three

It's been a really strange, surreal week, and next week is going to be even weirder.

Today is my friend Shannon's funeral, apparently. Or, specifically, "wake," as it's being called, because people in West Virginia are still old-fashioned at times. Some of her friends and family have set up a memorial trust fund to cover the costs of the funeral and burial, and whatever is extra will be put into a trust for her daughter. Though I can't really afford it, I will be sending a check to help contribute to this fund. I feel like I should do something, anyway. If I could be there for the funeral, I would.

I think, for the most part, I handle death well -- whether the person who dies is currently close to me or otherwise. All of us process death in our own ways, I think; I've always been the sort of person who very quickly accepts and realizes that nothing can be done, and that mourning is not about grief as much as it is remembrance. Is there grief? Yes, of course there's grief, especially when it comes to tragic, senseless deaths. But it's not like anything can be changed. Nothing anyone can do is going to bring that person back. The only thing anyone can do is accept it and move on. It may suck, but it's true. As mentioned before, I've had many friends (and some family members) die over the years -- some of them I was very close to, others were ancillaries -- but regardless of anything else, the lives of the living go on. Again, it may suck, but it's true. No matter how much one may want the world to stop when someone dies, it doesn't. It won't. It's not being cold, it's not unfeeling. It's being realistic and accepting of any situation that comes along -- yes, including death.

I've often wondered if the reason I feel this way is because I have always expected so little out of life and out of this world. That's not really a pessimistic viewpoint, either; again, it's a realistic one. When something goes wrong, no matter how bad -- especially in the past two years or so -- I've always approached it with a yeah, that's about right, why should I have expected anything different? sort of approach. For example, when my car decided to blow its serpentine belt and belt tensioner, and almost commit ritual seppuku on me about two months ago, my thoughts were along the lines of yeah, fucking figures. Can't do much about it but pay to get it fixed, oh well. Getting upset about bad things solves nothing. I've long ago accepted the fact that since I'm a poor grad student in a fairly shitty situation, virtually nothing is going to go my way. It's not bad luck, it's just reality. And most of the time, folks, life sucks. It just does.

"Are you depressed?" Lady asked me last night. "Because if you're depressed, that's really something you should tell me."

"No, babe," I said, "I'm actually in great spirits right now; I have you, I secured a teaching job for this summer, the semester is coming to an end, and I get to see you graduate and meet mom and [aunt] in a few weeks. No, everything's going well."

This is the absolute honest truth, by the way -- I am not depressed. Not that I would ever want to, but I am incapable of lying to Lady anyway. No, I'm pretty content for a number of reasons, like the ones I mentioned above. Am I happy? Overall, well, happy enough, I suppose. It's not like I'm filled with absolute jubilation, or anything, but right now I'm on a pretty even keel. Because of the fact that the life of a graduate student is on a constant level of shitty, I tend to get excited when some of the little things go right for once. Right now, in my own life, everything's going fine -- I'm more than halfway finished with my editing project (which I will turn in on Tuesday), I attended my very last class of the semester on Wednesday, and I have but one more class to "teach" before the semester ends. Tuesday and Wednesday will be my last real days on campus for the semester, and I'll only be there for a few short hours each day. Next Monday, the 7th, is the only other day I'll have to be there at all, and only to administer/grade the final exam. I've also received my confirmation letter in the mail that says yes, I will be teaching again in the fall (obviously), though it does not tell me what. That, of course, is still up in the air, but it's either going to be the online courses or my normal Science/Engineering 102 courses. Whatever works, I'm fine with it.

I was also notified this week (because, well, I asked) that pay cycles for us GTAs who are teaching in the summer will not be interrupted between the end of this semester and the beginning of summer sessions -- we get paid today, May 11th, and May 25th, and the first pay disbursement for summer instructors is June 8th, which is on schedule as per the usual. I've been told, however, not to necessarily count on that date, as last year it took until mid-July for the first summer pay to drop. As it's on the schedule for June 8th, perhaps (read: hopefully) they've fixed that problem this time around. Altogether, five of us have been selected to teach summer classes, and I finally figured out why we five were selected above the others: preference is apparently given to those GTAs who have never taught in the summer before but wanted to, at least this time around. Some of us who applied for, and were eligible to teach for this summer didn't get a teaching gig because they've taught in the summer before (either last year or the year before) and they apparently wanted to give some of the other GTAs a shot at it.

At least that's what I've been told, anyway, by unnamed sources unaffiliated with who does the selections. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. If it is true, it would explain why the five of us were selected.

Anyway, I digress.

Lady has been really sick this week with some sort of stomach flu, or at least that's what the doctors think it is. She's been very slowly recovering, but for anyone in academia, teacher or student, these last two or three weeks of the semester are the absolute worst times ever to get sick. The end of any semester is hell on wheels, what with the amount of assignments that all come due at the exact same time -- not to mention final exams. As I've mentioned before, though, Lady's a tough girl; she's fighting through it all. I'm convinced that even while sick, she'll still get A's on her papers and projects; that girl busts her ass on schoolwork more than anyone I've ever seen, and the fact that she's incredibly intelligent definitely helps. If she's feeling better and can get away from school for a few days (her classes operate differently than mine do) she's planning to come out for the weekend either tonight or tomorrow -- and if she can't make it this weekend, she will next weekend.

In preparations for her visit, regardless of when it may occur, I have spent the overnight hours doing some light cleaning and other chores (such as laundry, dishes, washing the bedsheets, etc). I'm doing this partially because she could be here as early as tonight or tomorrow afternoon, and partially because if I start working more on my editing project, I may finish it a little sooner than I would otherwise, but it would be at the cost of a total lack of sleep and free time. If she makes it out this weekend, I'll spend all day on it today. If she doesn't, I'll tackle it page by page over the rest of the weekend and spread it out a bit more. Either way, it'll still be done by Tuesday morning so I can turn it in.

Oh, and I made a huge pot of soup tonight. Sort of a mishmash of different ingredients I had around the house. Chopped chicken breasts, noodle soup (in the packet, the Lipton kind), shell/curly/spaghetti pasta, a can of minestrone (for more color/flavor/vegetables), a can of mixed vegetables, and water, amongst a few other dashes of spices here and there to taste. It's the only real "cooking" I've done in about two weeks -- I've been living off of the bare essentials, as I knew the rent and all of my bills would be coming due soon. My fridge is basically bare and I'm low on funds at the moment, despite getting paid today (again, the rent), so I'm scouring the pantry to find things to combine into meals. Soup works. Soup works well.

Besides, I'll have to do some shopping when Lady comes in anyhow, regardless of when that may be.

So yeah, that's what's going on right now. Right now is the proverbial calm before the storm, because, starting next week? The storm hits. Last week of classes. Preparations for finals. Practice grading sessions. Grading a large set of papers quickly and efficiently.

Fun times, for sure.

Bad Times

For my Editing American English 681 class, my final assignment is to create a semester-long lesson plan for a "teaching collegiate grammar" class of my own design.

Unit 6 is entitled "Writing at the Collegiate Level: MLA Style (or, how to write papers so that you don't look like an idiot to your professor)."

Yes, that's the actual title of the unit. We're allowed to have fun with this project, and boy am I going to.

The fact that I've gotten this far is the only good thing that's happened today. Well, no, that's not true, I'll take that back -- I did go to the discount grocery store this afternoon, I did put gas in the car and air in my tires, and I did mow the grass. But the bad far, far outweighed the good today. Big time.

I awoke this morning to find out that one of my friends from high school had been murdered.

No, that's not a joke. Murdered. In a Walmart parking lot. Shot to death by the father of her estranged, soon-to-be-divorced-from husband.

You know, words can't properly express how absolutely insane that is. You can read the news story here; it's all over the news back home. Her name was Shannon, and she was one of the sweetest girls I've ever known. I don't know any details more than what's in that news story. If asked, I would have considered her a friend, yes, but she and I hadn't been close and/or talked since, oh, sophomore year at WVU. So that was about seven or eight years ago. We weren't even friends on Facebook, as strange as that sounds. After a while, everyone I went to high school/college with tended to go their own ways, and she was just one of those folks that I eventually lost contact with (though not by anyone's fault, of course).

I've mentioned here many times that I didn't have a lot of close friends in high school. I just didn't. Most of my closest friendships were formed while in college, but in high school I had a lot of acquaintances and/or people who knew me fairly well. Shannon was one of those people, as we had midday homeroom/lunch together pretty much every year we were in high school. I knew her well enough to where she is one of the few people immortalized in my high school senior memory book, as she not only signed it and wrote me a long message, but I have one of her professionally-done studio senior pictures in the photo section, as well.

Of course, that was eleven years ago now. She was killed barely twelve hours ago.

Perhaps I'm just in shock more than anything else, but perhaps I'm a bit numb. Shannon was a wonderful girl; very smart, very sweet. Always there for me to talk to, and told me so when we were still in high school. I valued her friendship. The last time I saw her was probably around 2003 or so; she went to WVU for a while, but left the school for somewhere else, and that's the last I remember talking to her or seeing her on a regular basis. To read a gruesome news story about her getting shot to death in a Walmart parking lot just this morning is, for lack of a better term, fucking heartbreaking. You know, I've had friends who have died over the years in many ways -- car accidents, suicides, cancer...and yes, I do have another friend aside from Shannon who was murdered as well -- but she wasn't shot to death in a fucking parking lot on a routine weekend shopping trip. It's so tragic that I can't even wrap my head around it. Shannon had a young daughter, as well; she is now a daughter who will grow up without her mother, and a daughter whose grandfather murdered her mother. I can't even process that. I can't imagine, at all, what both families are going through. The most I can do is remember Shannon the way I always knew her all those years ago.

And Lady wonders why I am such a worrier. You worry about me too much, she tells me. I can take care of myself, you know. And she's right; Lady is a tough girl. She may be small, but damn is she athletic and muscular. When she's not here, however, Lady also is three hours away on her own college campus, and much farther away when she's at home with her family. It's not like I can stop myself from worrying about whether or not she's okay -- especially in the light of the sheer craziness of what happened to Shannon on a simple shopping trip. I'm not the overprotective type, but fuck, when one of my friends is murdered, I tend to be a little more on edge, you know?

Right now I just don't know what else to say about what happened. It's horrific and simply heartbreaking on so many levels. I simply know no other way to describe it.

[EDIT] Here's an update to the story.

[EDIT 2] Here are two more stories about Shannon, one of which has my friend Amber quoted extensively.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Spring semester: day sixty-eight

There has been a lot going on this week, most of it interesting and good (I say most, of course, for a reason). Because of this I'm going to recap most of it for you.

First things first -- I have secured a teaching position for the summer. This is incredible luck, because I only had about a 30% chance of receiving a position over the summer. Only five spots were available, and fifteen or more of us applied to get said spots (including Rae, who apparently didn't get one despite her pleads). I feel bad about this, of course -- I feel bad for anyone who needed a summer teaching gig as much as I did but didn't get one. I'm not sure if all of them have been announced yet, however; our office administrator in the department told me about mine earlier this week, because she knew how worried I was about being able to survive this summer without any additional income. I've not really kept that a secret amongst the higher-up administrative types in the department, including the office ladies as well as two of my three "bosses" (the third is on sabbatical).

The class I'll be teaching is the standard English 102, a class I have not yet taught (yes, I teach English 102 now, but it's the Science/Engineering 102 and is therefore quite different than the standard 102). It will be a ten-week course, from the end of May through the end of July, and it will be held one night a week on Tuesdays on the west campus, not the main campus.

This is, of course, the best teaching schedule I could have possibly asked for. I mean, one night a week? That's amazing. It leaves me the rest of my summer to work on my thesis as well as basically do whatever else I need to do -- whether that involves writing for the newspaper or working some other job. For this teaching position I'll be paid a little less than two grand. It's something like that, anyway. I've not been told any salary details, but I do know that it's close to that from other friends who have taught in the summer.

I haven't mentioned the west campus much mainly because none of us ever have to go there. It's not even in Wichita; it's in a suburb on the outskirts of Wichita called Maize. I've been there a few times; Maize is a nice little town with lots of shopping, a massive Goodwill store, and a Five Guys. It also has Flat State University's west campus, which is a huge and sprawling one-story building built only a few years ago. It's very, very nice, and all of the classrooms are "smart classrooms," meaning they're fully wired for multimedia presentations and the like. The majority of the summer classes take place there, at least for the English department. It is a gorgeous setup. So yes, I'm quite thankful that I not only don't have to worry about finding a summer job immediately, but that the one I'll have will require minimal time investment.

This, as you probably have guessed, takes a huge weight off my shoulders. Money will still be tight for a while, make no mistake, but I will be able to survive on my summer teaching paycheck even if I do nothing else for the majority of the summer.

In other news, yesterday I read three of my poems to a rather large audience at the library. In fact, it was one of the biggest audiences I've ever seen for one of the MFA readings. There were two drawbacks to this reading, however:

1.) I was, by far, the worst of the four readers there, and definitely spent the least amount of time at the podium (I clocked it at about five minutes, maximum. It seemed like much less than that).

2.) Lady was not able to make it into town to see me read.

I had known for a day or two beforehand that Lady was probably not going to be able to come, despite all her plans and intentions of doing so. She, like the rest of us, is wrapping up her semester at her own college, and she has a ton of work and responsibilities to manage and take care of just like everyone else. One of these responsibilities is the play she's currently in. I've mentioned before, briefly, that Lady is an actress, and is very active in her school's stage productions despite not being a drama/theater major. She's been in two full-length plays since we've been together, and we've not been together an incredibly long time yet. Anyway, in the play she's in now, she plays a pretty important part (read: one of the larger roles), so it's near-impossible for her to skip rehearsals regardless of how well she knows her part already. She's already missed practices to come see me on these past two weekends as well, so...yeah, getting out a third time probably wasn't going to happen anyway. She did tell me, however, that she really, really tried to get out of it.

She didn't miss much, however; the reading was very uneventful, despite the crowd there. Of the four readers, I will be the only one in and around the department for the foreseeable future -- two are graduating in a few weeks, and the third is leaving the program. So, like I said, I read my three poems (originally wanted to read four, but eh), thanked the audience, and sat back down. The poems I read were all newer ones -- "Our Winter Snow is Shining," "The Exercise," and "Slow Down" -- the latter two of which were written about Lady (one of the other reasons I was hoping she'd make it).

Afterwards, I came straight home, told Lady that everything had gone well, and that I was going to take a nap. The next thing I remember, it was 2AM and my phone (which I'd taken downstairs with me in case Lady needed to call me) was ringing in the night, and in my haze of sleep I recognized it as Lady's custom ringtone. I had passed out for close to seven hours straight, and Lady had been worried about me as I hadn't awakened. Those of you who are my longtime friends know that me passing out for upwards of twelve hours isn't uncommon -- regardless of the time of day or night and especially if I've been exhausted and sleep-deprived, but Lady hasn't exactly experienced my comatose-like sleep patterns when I'm totally worn out yet, as we've only been together a few months. We ended up talking for over an hour in the middle of the night while I woke up and while she prepared to go to bed.

After she went to bed, I stayed up for the rest of the night -- again, yes, my sleep patterns are screwed up because I can never get enough rest -- and began work on my final project for my editing class -- a project that will consume most of my weekend, more than likely, just so that I can get it done and out of the way. I got a little research for it done and have been able to plot out the major lessons I need to cover (it's a semester-long lesson plan), but the real work for it won't come until probably Saturday/Sunday/Monday nights. I went back to bed around 9AM, and slept until 3PM. This basically ruined any other productivity I would have had for the rest of the day, which sucks because I'd planned to get gas in the car, put more air in the tires (they're getting low again) and to go run some small errands, including getting stamps and going to the discount grocery store in town in order to get more Powerbars for the office. I'd also planned to mow the grass again. All of this looks like it'll have to wait until tomorrow or Sunday...depending on when I wake up, of course. As I type this, it's 2:38 AM and my body/mind has shown me no signs of wanting to sleep anytime soon.

As all of us rush headlong into the last two weeks of classes, for most of us the action in the department and within our own classes is ramping up as well. I've mentioned here before that this is the craziest time of the semester for anyone in academia -- student, professor, or both (as we GTAs are), but it builds and builds, faster and faster, hits its crescendo, and then...everything stops. Like, a screeching, grinding halt of stoppage, when everything is finished. My students turn in their final papers on May 1st, which I have basically decided will be their last day of class -- there's no reason for them to come back on the 3rd; I can give them their practice exam on the 1st and let them be done, for there's nothing more I can teach them and no further advice I can give them after they turn in their papers. May 7th is their final, and after I give their final and tally their grades, I'm done for the semester. As in, completely done. All of my work will have been turned in and graded by that point, and being there for the final and for the grading of said final is but a formality. The last week of classes for me is really strange anyway:

Monday, April 30: OFF

Tuesday, May 1: Collect students' final papers, give practice exam, say final farewells. Have final poetry workshop class, say final farewells there too.

Wednesday, May 2: Hold last office hours of the semester, work final Writing Center hour of the semester. Practicum is a practice grading session for final exams; Editing class is canceled, though if needed my professor will be in his office to look over drafts and field questions on the final projects. My goal is to have my final project completely done, turned in, and hopefully graded long before this date, so I should be able to go home around 3PM.

Thursday, May 3: OFF. Moving everything with my students to the 1st means I get an extra day off -- therefore, I will be grading through the bulk of my students' papers on this day (if I haven't already done so on the 2nd).

Friday, May 4: Again, OFF. The English department is always off on Fridays. Hopefully Lady will be able to come in this weekend, as it is the last weekend before she "graduates," a graduation which I will be driving three hours to attend (as it will finally allow me to meet her mother and her aunt).

After that? Well, like I said, the 7th is my students' final, and then I'm done as soon as the grades are calculated and posted. It will be a freeing feeling, especially as I haven't touched my Xbox or PlayStation in four months, and haven't had any time to really sleep as much as my body needs, either. I don't start teaching the summer class until the end of May.

As for the summer, a lot of things are still up in the air -- though they're not things pertaining to my job (that I already mentioned). It is my understanding that Lady will more than likely be returning home to her family for the vast majority of the summer, with her future education plans as of yet unknown. While it will be hard on both of us to be apart for such a long stretch of time, we'll deal with it; we'll have to, really. Both of us have been in long-distance relationships before, so it's nothing new -- hell, the first full year I was with my ex, she lived in Missouri and I was still living in West Virginia. And, knowing Lady, it's not like she won't steal away as soon as she can to come back out here to visit me for a while.

However, with my ten-week teaching position, I'm rather locked down here in Kansas -- while I could theoretically leave town for a few days (I'd like to visit my parents again with Lady, even if we have to do the same sort of travel we did over Spring Break), I can't ever be gone too long. My class meets but once a week on Tuesday nights, and it's not like I can cancel a one-night-a-week class without serious repercussions to the teaching schedule. About the only thing that would let/make me cancel class is if horrible tornadoes rolled through the area and the west campus closed for the night, or something along those lines (this actually happened last summer one night when the ex was teaching her own summer sessions in June). Aside from that, however? I'm basically stuck here for the vast majority of the summer. I have twenty days or so in May (after finals, of course) before I begin teaching, and about twenty days after I finish at the end of July before school starts back up again for the fall semester. If I'm going to make any sorts of trips like that, they'll have to be planned out well in advance, more than likely.

Besides, both Lady and I would like to see Andrea again too...that is, if she sticks around town for the summer.

So, that's what's going on right now. Good things, I suppose. At least I have a summer teaching position, at least the semester's almost over, and at least I will finally, finally be able to get some responsibility-free relaxation time in soon. None of it can come soon enough.

Tuesday Update

Spring semester: day sixty-six

Everything has calmed down after this weekend's tornado outbreak, it seems, and slowly life in Kansas is returning to normal. The main tornado that hit Wichita (because there were smaller ones) was confirmed to be an EF3, and it caused over $300 million in damage, some of it catastrophic damage -- but no reported fatalities, and only minor injuries. Some sections of the city won't have power restored to them until at least Thursday, though. In retrospect, everything could have been a lot worse. I have been in contact with friends and family back home, so everyone knows I'm okay and that nothing happened here in Newton, so that's a plus. Most of my family members who know I'm out here (well, those who care, anyhow) were worried, so I made sure to let everyone know I was okay.

The final list of readers for Thursday's poetry reading is set, and the editor for our school's literary journal is going to be the emcee. I work with him on a regular basis, as I am the journal's nonfiction editor. Should be a fun reading. Should be a fun day, actually. I'm looking forward to it, especially because (barring any unforeseen circumstances), Lady should be in attendance at the reading and will stay the night, as mentioned previously. I even told her to bring in any and all laundry she needs done, as well, as it's $5 per load at school for her to wash things, and I have my own washer and dryer (when either one wants to work, of course, but that's a story for another time). I have picked four poems to read -- two of which are brand-new and have not yet seen workshop. All of them are about the same length, and none of them are those long-lined, prose-ish poems I've read at readings in the past. I'd like to think that my style is evolving more with each passing semester, and that by the time I graduate next year, I will indeed have a polished thesis full of publishable works.

My best friend and sister Andrea mentioned that she got a hit on a technical writing job in Wilmington, NC. While I'm no technical writer (I mean, I have no real experience in that), North Carolina has always been one of my top three destinations for after I graduate and leave Kansas. The other two, prior to meeting Lady, were Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. Now those other two have been updated, as you know, to basically anywhere in New England, or somewhere around the Virginia Beach area. While Pittsburgh or Philadelphia would still be nice, I'm more focused on finding a happy medium area between my family, Lady's family, and wherever I'll end up working/living. Our hopes are that wherever we end up, we can get to either family's home within about six-to-eight hours or so of driving, which leaves a rather large circular radius of places for me to be able to settle and find work. Of course, by then if I'm going to be doing that much driving, I'll either have to get a better car or have maaaajor repairs done on the one I have. Still, with Andrea getting a hit from North Carolina, and with me having some friends either in the region (at least two in the state) and two more who went to undergrad there, I've got a good information network set up if there are possible writing or teaching jobs there. And Lady loves North Carolina, as well; she's spent a lot of time there.

I am awake and typing this post at 4:43 AM; insomnia has struck again on a Monday night (typical, I know) and therefore I cannot force myself to sleep. Now it is far too late to even try, as my alarm goes off at 5 (or, if I'm setting the alarm clock downstairs, 5:15). I was awake late working on school stuff as well as talking to Lady, who doesn't have anything pressing to do tomorrow, and rather than even attempt to sleep for an hour or two and end up a zombie the entire day, it's easier for me to down a pot of coffee and power through everything until I can finally come home and go to bed tonight. Yes, this means I'll be ungodly tired by the time I go to sleep (having been awake for about 35 hours straight, and only able to get about 4-5 hours of sleep on any given weeknight -- on average, of course) but hey, that's grad school for you. Perhaps if it's quiet this afternoon after all of my student conferences are done, I'll take a nap in my office. There's not a whole lot else I can do -- I have class from 4:30-6:50, then have to drive home and get something to eat before I can go to bed. It's a super-long day to be sure, but at least I can spend most of it leisurely because of my student conferences.

I'm not sure I really went into a lot of detail about what conferences entail. They are two of the most mentally (though thankfully, not physically) draining days of the semester, and they're required for anyone teaching English 102. Even though I teach the Science/Engineering Writing course, it's still technically an English 102 course -- just a highly specialized one. Sadly, this does not exempt me from conferences. Anyway, basically what happens is that class is not held within the classroom for a week, but everyone in both of my sections gets assigned a 10-minute window during the times I would regularly hold class to come up to my office and meet with me. I tell them their current grade, hand back any assignments they haven't gotten yet, and they get to ask me any questions/bring up any concerns they have with the class. For this, they get thirty points, and I send them on their way to finish their final papers for the semester. My class is set up a lot differently compared to the normal sections of 102, so my conferences are this week instead of earlier in the month. When we return to the classroom next week, it's workshop week, and then they turn in their papers on the 1st. The last day of classes is the 3rd, where they'll take a practice final exam in class, and then their actual final is on the 7th. The end of the semester is coming up so much faster than I expected it to, which means that over the course of the next two weeks I have a lot of work and a lot of grading ahead of me. So so much work.

After those two weeks, however? I plan to catch up on all the sleep I've lost over the course of the semester. This will take a few days at least, days during which I will more than likely be effectively dead to the world. Hopefully it'll reset my sleep clock for summer, and recharge my batteries from their proverbially-on-empty state they've been on all semester. It feels like I've just been bleeding energy from every pore, and that there's only so much I can bleed off before I just run out of power completely and won't function without a recharge. I just pray (well, okay, I don't pray, but I hope) that I can last until May 8 -- the first day, for me, of true time off, provided I have all of my final grades calculated and uploaded to Banner. After that, anything goes.

What else is going on this week? Not a whole lot, really. My practicum class will consist of our first practice grading session for final exams, which is more of an exercise than anything else -- all of us have been teaching for at least two semesters already (me, I've been teaching for four), so we're well-versed in final exam grading, but again it's one of those required things that we can't get out of. The department has its regulations that all of us have to follow. In my Editing class, we're covering a chapter in the book, and in Poetry this afternoon it's workshop as usual. For most of this week I'll probably be deliriously tired anyhow, so it's not like I'll notice if anything else happens.

Tornadic Activity

First of all, let me tell all of my readers and friends that I am fine, and so is Lady. Neither of us got hit by any of the really nasty shit that rolled through here yesterday/last night. In fact (luckily), Newton didn't get anything but a moderate thunderstorm around 2AM -- everything else split up and went around me in one direction or another, doing nothing here but a few rumbles of intermittent thunder and some decently strong winds.

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, turn on the news; I'm sure sooner or later they'll say something about the tornado devastation in Kansas, especially the Wichita area. Yesterday there was something like 122 tornado touchdowns, with a large chunk of them in and around my area. Wichita got slammed by a few of them -- there's a lot of widespread damage down there, but little of it is severe. Lots of damage to some homes and to places like the aircraft manufacturing plants, some businesses in the downtown area, etc. No fatalities (not here, at least) and no life-threatening injuries, though, from what I've heard. A lot of Wichita is still without power, and the police/national guard/what-have-you have cordoned off the more damaged areas of the city so that said damage can be assessed. The weather people are saying that it at least one of the tornadoes that hit was an EF3, but they're still trying to figure out how many there actually were because they all hit after dark (like 8:30-9PMish). The local stations were running live newscasts all night long until at least after 3-4AM when I went to bed, keeping everyone who still had power abreast of the situation. In short, it's a complete mess. I've been trying to get in contact with friends in the area all afternoon, and while some of them have had damage to their homes, all I've heard from are okay.

As I said, though, I am very lucky -- it was pure chance and pure happenstance that the tornadoes didn't come up to Newton, though other small towns around Newton got hit and sustained a fair amount of damage. Because of the storms rolling in, Lady left early yesterday afternoon to get back to school safely (we were planning one of our normal full weekends together after she came in on Friday afternoon), so she's okay as well. The storms/tornadoes never reached the little town her school is in, thankfully.

All in all, it was a really strange capper to a really strange week. In fact, this week (as well as all of the tornadoes and stuff this weekend) will go down as one of the most odd weeks of the entire spring semester, with lots of good/bad stuff happening back to back. So, to be brief about it, let's start from the beginning.

Last Monday, I was able to successfully register for fall semester. Thankfully. I did indeed get into the Playwriting and Surrealism in Poetry classes I was planning to take (along with my thesis hours, of course) and my thesis prospectus got full, final approval from my readers/directors. All of that is taken care of, and I am now set to end the semester smoothly and have my third -- and last -- year of graduate school begin in the fall.

However, what happens between now and then remains to be seen.

As mentioned in my last post, I threw my proverbial hat in the ring to apply for teaching online sections of 101 or 102 for my entire last year of school here. I did this for several reasons, including the fact that it would give me more free time in the fall to work on my thesis and work on my actual classwork, but also because there's a $1700-1800 training session that I get paid for if I were going to teach said classes. Or, at least I thought that's what it was. It's not. I learned this week that it isn't that much money...it's more. According to one of the guys who's teaching it now (who will graduate in a month), it's three thousand dollars they pay you to attend the training sessions to teach these online courses. $1700-1800 would have been enough to cover all of my expenses for the summer, comfortably at that, but $3k can and will also allow me to not really have to worry about a whole lot of anything, and will allow me to get the repairs done on my car -- repairs it so desperately needs, but I'm so desperately broke right now.

Of course, I have heard nothing about who's going to be selected to teach these classes; nobody has as of yet, and my backup plan -- teaching normal summer sessions -- is in much the same boat. They haven't selected anyone for those teaching positions either. As mentioned before, if I am so unlucky to get neither opportunity, I'll probably have to spend my summer working at Arby's (or somewhere akin to Arby's) just to be able to pay the bills and survive. Yes, that's how bad it gets in the summer, folks -- it gets really really bad for finances for poor graduate students who don't have anywhere to go or anything to do for money during those months. My only other option (and probably my primary option, first and foremost) will be to try to get back on at the newspaper in some capacity if everything else falls through, even if it's just for a few short summer months. Those people there love me, and I should have an easy in if they need someone a few hours a day or more during those summer months. I'm willing to do pretty much anything I can for them, to be honest. It's not like I've lost any of my writing or layout skills.

As for planning for my future? I'm still looking at positions and places to live back east in New England or the mid-Atlantic area. Lady will be returning there after she's done with school anyway, and neither of us want to remain in the midwest any longer than we have to (the weather this weekend is but one of the many reasons why). The problem is that I'm still a year out, and can't focus on any of that stuff too much until I'm zeroing in on a timeframe of when I can leave this state. Jobs and teaching positions that are available now won't be available in a year, and likewise there are new jobs and positions that aren't there now but will be there in a year. I could drive myself mad looking for that stuff now as-is. While I haven't necessarily put it on the "back burner," as they say, I have definitely been focusing a lot more on this year ahead of me first and foremost, because right now I have to worry about that work much more.

I also found out this week that my spring semester next year won't be as easy as I originally thought it would be, though it will still be pretty easy. I was originally planning to take thesis hours and nothing else, as I need no more credits to graduate other than those after this coming fall. However, if I don't take at least six hours, I am not classified as a full-time graduate student, and that gets reported to the student loans people -- who will try to start collecting my loan debt early (which, obviously, I cannot afford yet), so I'll have to take at least one other class even though it doesn't matter when it comes to graduation. I've planned to just take the visiting writer again, mainly because it's a 3-hour course and there's virtually no work required for it other than meeting with said writer once a week for an hour. Regardless of whatever/whenever I'm teaching, I can work that in -- and paying for an extra class is a lot cheaper than being forced to start paying my loans back before I'm even done with school. Besides, the visiting writer is usually immensely helpful in critiquing my poetry anyhow, and it's a really fun experience.

This coming week is another strange one as well; I have in-office conferences with all of my students (so I don't really have to "teach" anything), but those take a lot of mentally-draining time, and I've still got my other normal classes as well. However, I do have an extracurricular engagement on Thursday afternoon -- the spring MFA poetry reading in the library.

I've mentioned this before, briefly, but I'll go into it in a little more detail. Y'see, every semester, the library hosts this "MFA Poetry and Fiction Reading Series" or something like that. Depending on the semester, it's either a forum for those graduating to show off, or if there are few graduates, it's a forum for all of us in whatever discipline (fiction in fall, poetry in spring) to actually read our works aloud in an on-campus setting. Oh, and the library films it for the archives. Yes, they film it. They have to get permission from each reader on whether or not they want to be filmed, too. I, of course, don't mind it. Well, except for the fact that if I fuck up, it'll be caught on film for the ages.

This semester it's unique because I'll be the only reader who will return to Flat State University in the fall. There are four of us reading total -- two of them (the ladies) are graduating, and the third is not graduating but is leaving the program to move to Denver. I'm the fourth. Apparently there wasn't much interest in this semester's poetry reading -- but as I haven't read in a year (read: since the last one) I wanted to do it. So I volunteered. The reading is at 4PM on Thursday afternoon, and apparently they're posting flyers about it around campus this week, including all of our names and stuff like that. I'll be sure to get one of them for my "graduate school scrapbook." No, I don't actually have one of those. That's a joke. I'll still get an extra flyer anyway.

As there are only four of us, I'm planning to take a change of clothes with me to school that day, and will dress up as much as I can. Like, shirt and tie dressed up. Part of this is for me, part of this is because I never dress up for anything, and part of it is because Lady is planning to come in for the night so that she can see me read. I'm not yet completely sure whether she'll make it in, but she's planning to, anyway. If she does, maybe I can get her to take some good pics of me at the reading. So yeah, the reading should be fun. I used to be all about the readings, getting exposure out there, showing off, etc. I really haven't been too into it for a long time, however, because I've been so focused on just getting all of my work done during any given semester. I'm actually looking forward to it this time, though. For the most part, anyway. After all, it'll be fun to watch the film afterwards, especially when comparing it to last year's film, when I had a full lumberjack beard and hair down to my shoulders. Yeah, folks -- there's a reason they call me The Wolfman both inside and outside the department.

Next weekend will be spent absolutely immersed in writing -- as mentioned briefly before, my semester-long assignment for my English 681 Editing course is to put together a semester-long mock syllabus and lesson plan for our final (and only) project/grade in the class. While I have started this, including trying to put together an outline/gameplan for it, I have not written up any of the actual coursework for it yet. In essence, I will be designing an entire class from top to bottom over the span of four days so that I can have a "draft" of this plan to give to my professor. As boring as doing that may sound, I find it thrilling and a fun challenge to undertake. For the rest of the semester, aside from any of my other normal work I'll do over the next few weeks, that's the only remaining large task hanging over my head -- so the sooner I get it finished, the better. It'll give me more time to grade, post grades after the final, and get the hell off campus. Counting this coming week, there are only three weeks of classes left. For my students, that means conferences and workshop week, and then the final week of classes where they'll turn in their papers and take the practice exam. Their final is Monday, May 7. This is the first semester I've had where I myself have no final exams, so as soon as I can get their stuff graded and posted on the Banner system, I'm done. As for my own work, as soon as I turn in a completed, more than likely revised lesson plan to said professor, I'll be done as well. That's the other reason I want to get as much of my work out of the way as soon as possible.

So that's about all that's going on right now. Lots of little things to take care of, and life as usual. I'll keep you updated when/if anything else happens.

Good Surprises

Easter Sunday

This weekend was awesome. I'll start out by saying that.

Some of you folks would probably like an update on what's been happening over the course of the two weeks (now going on three) since Spring Break ended and I returned home from West Virginia, since that's all I've been writing about in great detail. The short version of that story is that everything has pretty much returned to normal, or at least my version of normal, anyhow. As the semester ramps up (or winds down, depending on how one looks at the end of spring semester), not only do I have a lot of my own work coming due, but I have a lot to take care of for my two classes I teach -- for example, this weekend I just collected their second (of three) papers, so I have forty of those I must grade through as soon as possible in order to clear my plate of any other student-related responsibilities. I'll also be creating a ton of different handouts and other final course prep material, and I have a meeting with my "boss" of sorts on Tuesday to sort out everything for the final paper and final exam. There isn't a day for the next month or so that I won't be balls-to-the-wall busy with something to do, not to mention that I have a semester-long Editing project that I haven't been able to touch as of late. Here's what my schedule looks like for the next two weeks or so:

4/8 (today) -- Grade through as many papers as possible. Take care of all household chores that I didn't get to this weekend thus far (the reasons for this I will mention later in this post).

4/9 -- Monday. Register for fall semester at 7AM. Go back to bed, get up, continue grading papers/working on other homework. Finish as much as humanly possible. Probably get a headache while doing so. This includes writing a new poem for workshop and completing another gift poem assignment, as well as editing/critiquing the poems up for workshop this week.

4/10 -- Tuesday. Teaching my two classes' worth of students at the library, for their "library day" activity. Returning to the department for a meeting with my bosslady. Office hours, during which I will continue my grading (because I'm sure I won't be finished yet). 4:30-6:50 Poetry workshop class. Return home exhausted, but purposely leaving the remainder of those ungraded papers at work so that I don't have to mess with them until Wednesday morning.

4/11 -- Wednesday. Get up, go to campus. Start office hours, hopefully finish grading any and all papers I have left to grade. Work Writing Center hour at 12. Go to practicum at 2. 4:30-6:50 Editing class, after which I will once more return home exhausted, once more purposely leaving any papers left to grade (my hopes are that by this point, there won't be any) for Thursday morning before class.

4/12 -- Thursday. It's SPTE (read: university teacher/professor/GTA evaluations) day in my classes. Deal with those, collect my students' proposals/annotated bibliographies to grade, cover a lesson in the textbook. Remind them that conferences are next week, so we won't be meeting in my class but in my office, and that normal office hours on those days don't exactly apply. Finally, a break -- go home shortly after noon, probably pass out. Get up, clean house like crazy (for various reasons, again, that I will mention below).

4/13 -- Friday. Also, thankfully, payday. Go to bed probably around 4AM. Get up, continue cleaning house until I'm finished. Attempt to grade as many proposals/annotated bibliographies as humanly possible. Lady arrives in town again that afternoon, to spend the weekend with me as she has an appointment at a school here in town.

4/14 and 4/15 -- Time with Lady while she's here, including her appointment and some shopping/other fun couple stuff before she (regretfully) must return to school.

4/16 -- Monday. Again. Finishing the grading of any proposal/annotated bib assignments, making sure all bills that are due soon are paid and mailed, and once more finishing up any homework for my poetry class that I've slacked on over the weekend. Also working on my Editing class's final project.

4/17 -- Tuesday. No teaching; conferences instead in my office. Taking student conferences all day until 12:30 or so, then office hours, then my 4:30-6:50 poetry class as per the usual. Must finish an extraneous assignment for this class by this day, otherwise I'll never get it done.

4/18 -- Wednesday. See schedule for 4/11. Nothing ever changes on Wednesdays.

4/19 -- Thursday. Again, no teaching. I'll be finishing the second half of my conferences with my students, for as long as that takes, and then at 4PM I am participating in the spring MFA poetry reading in the basement of the library. Lady will be in attendance, coming to see me read and meet my friends from the department. It will be the first time she's seen me read any of my poetry aloud. Return home after the reading, go to bed early so she can get up and drive back to school in the early morning hours (unfortunately she has classes that next day, Friday, she can't miss -- despite my wishes for her to stay the weekend again).

4/20 -- Friday. See Lady off in the early morning (probably no later than 6:30 or so) before spending the day working on editing my students' workshop copies, collected in their conferences with me, and trying desperately to finish up a draft of my Editing project if at all possible. Most of this work will continue throughout the rest of the 4/21 - 4/22 weekend.

So yeah, I've got a lot on my plate to deal with over the course of the next two weeks or so. However, that's what's ahead of me -- let's move back into the present and recent past to bring you up to speed.

Tomorrow morning, as previously mentioned, I register for the last real semester of schooling I will ever endure. This is a bittersweet moment, but a good one nonetheless. I'll never have to take a semester of actual classes ever again after I register tomorrow morning. How can this be, you ask, because I still have next spring as well? Well, let me explain.

During my advising appointment (which took place on the Wednesday after Spring Break ended), my advisor -- who is also the director of the creative writing program -- told me that I should take a nine-hour fall semester. This is fine, of course, though not what I was expecting. I have covered all of my course requirements but two -- one more lit course and my "enrichment" course, which is a graduate-level course outside of the department -- and my original plans were to take one of those courses in the fall and the other in the spring. The enrichment course I chose was Playwriting I, offered through the theater department -- a course that many of us MFAs take when it's offered because it's fun and still allows us to creatively write, just outside the department. Said course is only offered in the fall, so originally I'd planned to just take that, take my thesis hours, and deal with the lit course (whichever one it ended up being) and my other thesis hours in the spring. Simple enough, right?

Well, not exactly. Yes, Playwriting I is offered in the fall, and I will be registering for it tomorrow morning as long as I can get into it (if I can't, I have a few backups in Sociology and History ready to go). But my advisor encouraged me to get the other lit course out of the way as well, just so that when I came back in the spring after Christmas, I would have no classes to take but the three thesis hours I required to graduate. She suggested that I should add the class being taught by the new poetry professor in the department (the one I had last semester), as it's a "studies in surrealism" in poetry sort of class -- and that it would count as my other lit course. While I was initially apprehensive about this, after discussing it, I was like eh, why not? and summarily put myself on the list for it. I'm not a big fan of surrealism in poetry, but if it means I don't have to take yet another Shakespeare, American/British Lit, or Renaissance Lit course instead in its place, I'm game. So, I'm set up for Playwriting, Surrealism, and thesis hours for the fall. My schedule will be much like it is now for the most part.

However.

The Playwriting class is Monday/Wednesday. Yes, two days a week. The Surrealism class is Wednesday night. If I'm still teaching Tuesday/Thursday, it means I'll be in there four days a week instead of three. Yes, all four days, with basically one or two things to do each day I'm there, and no way out of it. I asked, because of this weird schedule, if I could get my teaching days switched to Monday/Wednesday instead, so I could take care of everything on those two days and not have to worry about being on campus the rest of the week, but if I'm teaching the Science/Engineering English again in the fall, that will be impossible as that class meets at set times -- Tuesday/Thursday, 9:30 and 11.

I say "if," because I've also thrown my hat in the ring to teach the online versions of either English 101 or English 102. Two of the GTAs who now teach those are graduating this semester and they need to fill those spots, if not open up more sections as well. I have put in my request to teach one of these classes for three reasons:

1.) It would mean that I would never have to be on campus for the entirety of my last semester at Flat State University -- if I'm just having thesis hours and I'm teaching my classes through their online system, I'll never have to be there at all but maybe once a week for office hours and at the end of the semester for their final exam.

2.) I've been wanting to teach the online classes since I started there, as I already make incredibly detailed handouts and timelines for my students to follow -- 95% or so of which I can easily take care of online without changing around my lesson plans (or the way I make said plans) by any large amount.

3.) Because those chosen to teach online are given paid training at the end of this semester -- an online "boot camp" if you will, and it pays very, very well -- something like $1,700 for as little as two weeks worth of "hey, come in here and listen to us teach you how to teach online."

I've mentioned before that over the summer, my finances are in extreme dire straits (and no, I don't mean the band). As I did not win the fellowship (the story about that is forthcoming) -- not that it would pay me in the summer anyhow -- and as none of us yet know who will be selected to teach summer sessions, this is the only option other than, say, breaking down to work at a fast food place or at Walmart I will have to be able to survive this summer without paychecks. $1,700 would be life-changing for me for the summer. I could quite easily live on that. Would it be glamorous? No, and I'll still need to save as much as I can from each paycheck from now until the end of the semester to get by, but it would pay the bills and allow me to focus on putting together my thesis -- which is what I should be spending those months doing anyhow. I can save money from my paychecks as much as I want, but without other income after they stop, I will not last past mid-July before I run my bank account completely dry because of bills, rent, and food. That's just the cold hard facts. Adding to the misery is the fact that my car insurance (all $382 of it) comes due at the end of June, so that in itself is another one-two punch to the gut when I'll already be financially struggling. While I could put that on one of my two credit cards, do I want to? Fuck no. My point is that if I don't get one or the other and/or can't find at least a part-time job -- demeaning to my position/education or otherwise -- there's no way I'll survive until August. No way at all.

However, in order to teach the online classes I not only have to get a greenlight to do so from the department, but I would have to help find someone who could "replace" me as the instructor for the Science/Engineering 102 sections I teach now. This is harder than it sounds on both fronts; while some of my colleagues are interested in teaching said courses, they're either locked into what they're teaching, they've already put in for teaching another class (such as remedial English, ESL, or business writing), or they don't have the "technical experience" to teach the class (read: they're not huge nerds like I am). All of these are big ifs, and it's looking more and more by the day like I'll have to plan for worst-case scenario to actually happen -- meaning I won't get a summer teaching position, won't get the online courses, and will have to find something to do to make money this summer outside of the school environment, all while trying to put together my thesis.

But...the silver lining is, of course, that I won't have to take any classes next spring, regardless of all of those events.

Anyway.

The registration process and being unlocked to register for my fall classes was a whole other animal as well. I had to get both poetry professors to sign off on my "prospectus" sheet in order to even be able to enroll in thesis hours for the fall. This means I had to ask one of them to be my director, one to be my second reader, and that I must be "thinking about" who I'd like my third reader to be. Plus I had to give the director a tentative title, subject matter, and estimated length of the project (read: basically tell her what the thesis is actually going to be).

We're a year out, folks. I have no fucking clue what my thesis is going to be yet, what I should title it, what it's going to consist of, or how long it's going to be. All of those things I wrote on the sheet, just to be able to register for the thesis hours themselves, are basically bullshit. I'm a poet. If I were a novelist, it would be different. As a poet, my thesis is basically just a collection of edited, polished poetry of a publishable quality. That's it. I don't know what I'm going to call it, what will be in it, or how I'll arrange it. I have no clue. I have enough shit to worry about right now in my daily life, and many other things to take care of first before I can even seriously think about that stuff. So, really, I made up a title and BSed a title/chapter headings/estimated length just to make the department happy so that I can graduate on time. Poets think different from other writers, and I think I do especially; whatever goes into my thesis will go into my thesis. I'm not going to obsess about it a full fucking year in advance. Like I said, I have other important things to deal with right now -- like how I'm going to be able to eat and keep the air conditioner running this summer.

Anyway.

The title of this post is called "Good Surprises" for a reason, folks, and it entails what happened this weekend. So let me tell you that story.

I stayed up really late on Thursday night. Really late -- I didn't go to sleep until 7AM on Saturday morning, after the sun came up. This is because I'd taken a nap on Thursday afternoon, I'd collected forty papers from my students that I didn't want to grade yet, and I was severely, severely sleep-deprived. I can't get back on any sort of really normal sleeping schedule after the travel and events of Spring Break, and because of that I am struggling through my days in a zombie-like state, fueled by many cups of coffee and many cigarette (or, in my office, eCig) breaks. So, when I got up on Friday afternoon, I stumbled upstairs, made coffee, and made a vow that I just wanted some time to relax, some time for me -- I didn't want to deal with any schoolwork or anything else -- I just wanted to sit here and write and decompress. That's why the last two posts about Spring Break went up on Friday afternoon/evening.

During this time, I'd been texting back and forth with Lady, as I frequently do when we're apart. We give each other updates on how our days are going, etc. I know her schedule at this point (for the most part) at school, so I know what classes she has and when she has to go to play rehearsal (she's an actress) and the like. That afternoon she was attending a baccalaureate meeting at the school, so I knew she was busy. After the meeting I assumed she'd gone to dinner with her friend, as her friend works at a small restaurant in the town where she goes to school, and Lady can eat free there when said friend is working. She told me AIM wasn't working on her phone, so I was waiting for her to get back to her room so we could spend the night talking.

Around 9:30 or so, she called me on my cell. I missed the call because (like an idiot) my ringer was still on silent from the day before of teaching, and I had the phone in my robe pocket, which muffled the vibrations. I was also listening to my podcasts in my earbuds, so it was hard to notice any noise or vibration anyhow. However, a little while later I received this text from her, which I did immediately notice, as I had at that point put the phone back on my desk:

"You should really answer your phone. Or go outside. Either/or."

This intrigued me. There were thunderstorms in the forecast, so I thought maybe she'd been looking at the radar and had seen something really nasty coming my way, or something like that. Yes, that was my first thought, because -- again -- I'm an idiot. I left my room, surely with a quizzical expression on my face, and walked out to the living room to look out the window...only to see Lady's car in my driveway. Surprise!

Like a madman I dashed to the door and flung it open to find her standing there. Apparently she'd been at the house for about twenty minutes or so, but with me in my room, my phone on silent, and my earbuds in, it's not like I had heard her knocking or had any clue that she was there. She'd come to surprise me for the weekend, for Easter weekend, and her mother had given her gas money to come see me -- because, even if neither she nor I are religious, she desperately wanted to be with me on a holiday weekend (well, that and we missed each other like crazy). It was the best surprise ever. I hadn't expected to see Lady until next weekend, as she's coming in then as well so that she can go to her school appointment here.

We had a wonderful weekend together; Friday night, because neither of us had eaten, we went out to Walmart (late night shopping, oh yes) and got materials to make a huge pot of penne with vodka sauce, as well as garlic bread, and ate a very late dinner while watching This is Spinal Tap before bed. I haven't seen that movie in yeeeeeears. We didn't fall asleep until 5AM. Yesterday, we got up late (understandably), and went to Hutchinson so that I could show her the mall (which is declining quite fast in quality), where we got some stuff at Bath & Body Works and Target, and I took her out to dinner at Chili's before we returned home. Last night, for the first time, I sat down and watched Rent. While I've had the opportunity to see it many times before, I'd never actually watched it. Lady loves the movie. Now, after seeing it from start to finish, I do too. Wow, what a fantastic musical film. We eventually fell asleep around 4AM, though I barely remember it. Like always, we fell asleep in mid-conversation.

This morning -- as she did two weeks ago when she was here after I returned from West Virginia -- she cooked me a wonderful breakfast. Homemade banana pancakes and sausage. She loves cooking for me, and I'm not about to argue with that. I put gas in her car so she could make the trip back to school, and we said our goodbyes for another five days until she returns next weekend...when I will have been able to clean the house beforehand.

Our times apart are becoming shorter and shorter in duration -- when we first got together, they were a lot longer. We used to be able to go without seeing each other for three weeks or so. That got shortened to two, then to one, now to about five days or so before we start going nuts because we're so far apart, in our respective towns and schools. I mean, obviously, it's not always like this -- there are and have been times where we haven't seen each other for long stretches of a few weeks (and due to our work/school, we simply can't sometimes) ...but since she hates being stuck alone at school and bored, she loves making the trip out here to Newton whenever she can on the weekends, and those trips are becoming more and more frequent. Yeah, folks, it's getting pretty serious -- I'm not afraid to say that. But then again, you could have probably guessed that already.

It is 4:19 AM now, even though I started this blog post in the afternoon (and took several breaks for grading/food/talking to Lady/other homework). I have to stay awake, because if I don't, I'll miss the 7AM registration time for fall semester. Once I register, I'll be able to go to bed. Finally.

I'll keep you updated on the happenings of my life over these next few weeks, of course. Soon, the semester will be over, and as I mentioned, that will bring with it a sense of dread as well as a sense of freedom. But for now, grading, registration, and sleep are all calling my name.

More Whirlwinds, Part VI: The Voyage Home

when we last left our intrepid heroes...

There is a reason that it is a very, very bad idea to eat five tacos, two fried chimichangas, rice and beans, a full chile relleno, and drink three beers before a day of flying halfway across the country, but it's not the reason you'd expect -- I found that at 3AM Wednesday morning, I awakened with some of the worst heartburn and acid reflux I've ever had in my life. So bad that I got up and scoured the house for Tums, Zantac, Prevacid, Tagamet, etc -- anything I could take that would stop the discomfort.

I also awoke to three text messages from Lady, and they were not good news. She had arrived safely in the midwest, yes, but her friend (who was driving Lady's car to pick her up) had blown a tire and was stuck halfway to the train station. This means that not only was Lady stranded in the train station in the middle of the night, but her friend and car were stranded on the side of the interstate in the middle of nowhere, and neither of them could do anything about either situation.

For the record, Lady is a poor college student just like me, and also just like me, she has no family out here in the midwest. Having something like this happen isn't just bad, but catastrophic to a certain extent. They say money can't buy happiness, but having money sure solves a metric fuckton of otherwise horrific problems. Neither Lady nor I have any money to spare -- we're just scraping by, her even more so than me. Because of this, it's not like Lady was able to afford a $100 cab ride back to school from the train station, or pay a tow-truck driver however much it would be to tow the car back to school -- not to mention figure out some way to get her friend (remember, she's stranded there along with the car) back to school as well. With me getting on a plane in but a few hours and with no money to spare either, there was absolutely fuck-all I could do to help the poor girl.

Also, because I was out of the T-Mobile network, the timestamps had been absolutely screwed up on the texts she'd sent me while I was sleeping -- I didn't know how long before I'd awakened that she'd sent me the texts, because they gave bizarre times like Monday 2:37PM, Tuesday 9:41 AM, etc. Which, obviously, were quite wrong.

I had but one idea, and one only, and I texted it to her: "If all else fails, use what money you have and get on a train going west that will go through Newton. I will pick you up once I land in Wichita and will drive you back to school in the morning." This was the only idea I had, and it would have been a roundabout way of doing things, but it was better than her being stuck in a train station four hours away for who knows how long. It wasn't a great idea, I'll admit, but it was still an idea.

Some of you may be asking "if she was still stuck there, why wouldn't you just go pick her up and take her back to school?" This is a reasonable question, to be sure. The train station is over four hours away from Newton, where I live. I would have had to get off the plane in Wichita, drive home to make sure the cats were okay, get back in the car and drive another four hours to the station, pick her up, drive the two hours or so to take her back to school, and then drive the three hours it takes to get from her school back to my house. For those of you keeping count, that would have been nine hours of driving, and about a 500-mile round trip total -- or, in my car, about $80 worth of gasoline (and needing more once I got back home). Not to mention that I'm sure that if I made my car drive 500 miles in one day, it might explode, completely die, blow a head gasket, etc. Simply driving her to school and back from Newton, while not exactly an ideal situation either, would be cheaper and less stressful on my car (the drive between the two places, really, is a straight line for about 80% of it), with the added bonus that even if she was shaken and frazzled by the entire travel experience, we would've at least gotten some time together in the meantime.

In the meanwhile, my mother was still awake at 3:30 or so, watching some shitty movie on cable, making sure the dog was okay (he was sleeping most of the night, but for the past few days he'd been needing to go out over and over because of his intestinal problems, sometimes once or more an hour). I hadn't gotten any responses from Lady to my texts, but the anxiety about whether she was safe/okay kept me awake along with my acid reflux/heartburn. I figured that whether she was still stuck in the train station or not, she had found a way to get some sleep. I made something to eat and made a pot of coffee -- I was now awake for the day, with little else to do until my dad woke up in the morning. By around 5 or 6, my stomach had settled down, and I spent those early morning hours watching the news. Around 7, my dad got up and began getting ready for the drive to Pittsburgh.

It was hard to leave my family home again, and understandably so. As glad as I am that I moved out and moved on with my life as an adult, there's always something intangible I'll miss about living in West Virginia, living in that house, and waking up in the morning to sit on the porch with a cup of coffee and a cigarette while the sun rises. There's something about the view, the environment, and the climate there that I'll miss. There's something about the easy familiarity I have with Morgantown, with my parents, with my friends who still live there -- that something can't really be described or truly be put into words.

Despite that, there are many factors (many, many factors) that prevent me from ever wanting to live in West Virginia again.

Because the dog took his sweet time on his morning walk, my dad and I didn't get on the road until 8:30 or so -- a full half-hour after we wanted to leave. When we left, I gave my mom a long, tight hug and a kiss. I don't know when I'll see her again for sure, though Lady and I are planning a trip back out there sometime this summer if at all monetarily possible. Mom is usually pretty weepy and/or sad to see me go, but this time she was able to contain her emotions for the most part -- possibly because we were short on time, but also probably because she knows that I would stay longer if I didn't have to worry about my cats, or if I didn't have to get back to school the next week to teach and take my classes.

Despite it being rush hour in Pittsburgh, we were able to navigate through the traffic and get to the airport fairly easily/quickly. I had a little spare time, so I smoked a few cigarettes and talked to my dad for a little while before going inside, printing my boarding passes, and getting in the line for the security screening. He came with me, but that was as far as they let non-flying people into the airport. I gave him a hug, told him to be careful going home, and we parted ways. The line was long; I knew I'd be waiting a while. The security line in Pittsburgh's airport is always really long, as it's an incredibly busy airport. I estimated my wait time would be about 45 minutes, judging from previous experience there as well as how long the line was (I was about 50 yards or so from the TSA checkpoint).

However, one of the TSA guys walked by me, looked at me, and asked "Hey, are you traveling alone?"

"...yes..." I replied, blinking.

"And you only have the one bag?"

"Yep."

"Oh, well you don't have to use this line then, you can go up there to the express line."

"Oh, thanks! Awesome."

A 45-minute wait then turned into about a 5-minute wait, as I was able to get into that line and get through security quickly.

However.

Two people in front of me, a lady with all sorts of metal jewelry on had been detained because she kept setting off the metal detector. Over and over. I watched her set it off at least three times, perhaps because she had about five different necklaces on, huge hoop earrings, six rings, and fucking metal buckles all over her shirt. No, I'm not making that up. Why anyone would dress like this and expect to pass through airport security with no problems boggles the mind. Because of this lady, the people directly in front of me (as well as myself) got to experience the wonders of the backscatter X-Ray machine -- something I'd never gone through until then. You know what I mean, I'm sure; it's the machine that takes the X-Ray of you that people were soooo irrationally concerned about because it lets them see basically a naked photo of you (and radiation! OMG! etc). Yeah, well, they can look at my dick all they want; I just wanted to get on the fucking plane. It was an amusing experience; they make you stand with your hands in the air like you're praising Jesus, or something, and then tell you "okay, you're fine, be on your way." At least it lets me avoid the metal detector thing, which is slightly ironic because this time I made damned sure to get every piece of metal off my body before going through security, including my belt and sunglasses.

I did not hear back from Lady until I was at the gate for my flight; she called me and told me that she had gotten back to school; several other friends from school had come to pick her up at the train station and to pick up her friend stranded with the car as well, but the car was still on the side of the interstate and she didn't know how she'd get it back to school.

"Well, how far away from school is it?" I asked.

She named a town that was about an hour away from hers. That was, really, almost exactly half the distance between the school and the train station, unless my distance math was wrong.

"Okay," I said, "Well, once you're done with classes or between classes, look up tow trucks or places who can tow the car in the area. Call some of them. Tell them what happened, and get the cheapest one to take the car back to [town], preferably right to the Walmart so that they can put a new tire on it today. If you run yourself out of money doing this I'll pay for it once you come in this weekend, to make up for it. A tow truck's going to be about $40 or so, maybe a little more or less, and a tire's going to be about $100, roughly, but do it today."

I was fully prepared to give her the money to make up for it; I do have $140 to spare, despite how destitute I am most of the time, while she does not. I'll also remind you that she was coming in that weekend to stay with me anyhow, so having the car was rather important. What I did not tell her (or at least I don't think I told her), so that I didn't further stress her out, was that if you leave a car on the side of the interstate for too long -- usually a day or so -- the highway patrol will mark/flag it with an orange sticker-like thing, and they'll tow it to an impound facility...which you will then have to pay more to get it out of. So yeah, it was imperative that she get it back and fixed ASAP. She told me she'd do what she could, but I could tell that she was already supremely stressed and sleep-deprived from the trip back to school and that this was just one more bullshit thing on her plate that she had to deal with, but shouldn't have had to worry about. And it was, of course. Lady is really strong and can take care of any obstacle that life throws at her -- it's one of the many, many things I love and admire about her -- but this was just one more thing that was stressful and would overload her even more. That's one of the reasons I was trying to help her as much as humanly possible, but again, being stuck in an airport and/or on two different flights all day, there wasn't much I could do.

When we hung up, I found out that my flight had been delayed. A familiar sense of deja-vu began washing over me, as you'll recall that my flight into Minneapolis from Wichita on the previous Friday had been delayed as well, and I was already envisioning another "sprint to the tram and then to the gate" sort of experience in Minneapolis.

"The plane will land here in Pittsburgh in about fourteen minutes," the gate attendant said over the intercom to us, "and as soon as we get the passengers and crew de-planed we will begin the boarding process."

Okay, that's good, I thought.

"We have checked ahead with Minneapolis-St. Paul and it looks like all of you who will be making connecting flights this afternoon should be able to make them just fine, despite the delay," he continued. "We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you again for choosing Delta to fly with today."

Even better, I thought.

Right on time (though half an hour late, of course) I was on the plane and we were able to lift off from Pittsburgh with little issue. This was a much smaller plane than I was anticipating, however, and because of that I could not fit my bag under the seat OR in the overhead compartment. I got it about halfway under the seat and let my foot rest on the part that stuck out for the entire flight -- which, of course, was highly uncomfortable and made my knee ache horribly. The guy in the seat next to me was a bit of an asshole, too.

Anyway. We landed in Minneapolis and it was very gray and depressing outside, and I had about 30 minutes until my flight to Wichita would depart. Luckily for me, we had landed in the same terminal that my next flight would take off from, so all I had to do was walk from one gate to another one at the end of the terminal -- about 300 yards or so, people-mover included -- before I could sit down and relax. I turned my phone back on and texted Lady that I was safely on the ground, and sent out a tweet that Minneapolis looked like a wholly depressing place.

When I finally got on the plane bound for Wichita, I found that it was larger and a bit more comfortable to fly on. This time, I was on the left side of the plane, and was able to have a little more leg-room. The guy who sat next to me was just a kid, no older than seventeen or eighteen. He looked exhausted.

"Where you comin' from, man?" I asked.

"Fairbanks, Alaska."

"To Wichita?"

"Yep. Visiting family. Spring break. Two days of flying. What about you?"

"Doing the same; flying back to Wichita from Pittsburgh, just visited my own family over break."

The kid was pretty cool; throughout the entire flight he watched The Fighter on his netbook. I, meanwhile, passed the hell out until nearly our final descent into Wichita. We were making good time -- the flight wasn't supposed to be on the ground in Wichita until 4:12 PM; we were on our final approach by about 3:50, a few thousand feet off the ground and gliding in.

"Welcome to Mid-Continent Airport," the pilot said over the intercom, "where the local time is 3:52 PM and the weather is rainy and 45 degrees."

...say what?

When I had left Pittsburgh, it was gorgeous. The temperature was about 80, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. It was beautiful. Minneapolis had been dingy gray and cloudy, but I hadn't gone outside there (obviously). Getting back to Wichita, it's 35 degrees colder than it was in Pittsburgh, and pouring rain? Oh yes. Welcome back to Kansas, Brandon.

I looked out the window as the plane pulled up to the terminal, slowly, and saw that it was not only raining, but it was a horrific torrential downpour, raining so hard that you could barely see the terminal building through it. Greeeeeeeeeat. However, I was safely back on the ground, and I'd made it back to Kansas from my front porch West Virginia in the time frame of a little less than seven hours, two of which were driving and a third waiting in two different airports. Air travel is fast, son.

I got off the plane and texted Lady again to let her know I was safe on the ground in Wichita. I texted Andrea to tell her as well, and tried calling my parents but couldn't reach them. I was finally able to get ahold of them once I was sitting in my car, soaked to the bone because I'd had to park in long-term parking in the middle of nowhere. I waited for a good twenty minutes, during which I plugged in my GPS and let it charge a bit while smoking a cigarette, to let the rain lighten up a little bit. It wouldn't. Sighing, I told my car "Hello, old friend," and started her up to make my drive back home.

For those of you who haven't driven a lot in the rain, let me tell you that during rush hour traffic on two of the busiest highways in the Wichita area, it's not fun. No, it's not fun at all. It was raining so hard I could barely see even with the wipers on at full speed, and it was freezing because I had gotten so wet on the walk from the shuttle bus back to the car. Adding insult to injury, it was $36 to even get my car out of the parking lot, since I'd left it there on Friday morning.

By the time I finally made it back to Newton, I was exhausted and didn't want to cook. I had very little food in the house anyhow because I'd been gone for a week and didn't want to buy a bunch of groceries beforehand (obviously). I stopped at Walmart on the way home and purchased a sub from their deli, reloaded on cigarettes and coffee, and finally, finally came home -- burned out, face covered in five days' worth of stubble, bags under my eyes.

The house was as I'd left it, for the most part. The cats were perfectly fine; they hadn't torn anything up or gotten into anything while I'd been gone, and they'd only consumed about half the food/water I'd put out for them. Usually, Sadie will spill the water the very first day I'm gone, and they'll empty their food dish shortly thereafter because they eat like hogs. This time, however, they seemed to be pretty subdued during my time away -- and amazingly enough, all of them came out to see me, came out to spend as much time with me as possible, which is a first. Usually when I've been gone for a long(ish) trip, the girls will hide under the bed for a few hours, scared that someone is in the house with them again, until they realize that it's just me and come back out.

Once I'd settled back in with new coffee, new smokes, and my sandwich, I got online to talk to Lady. In the time I'd been flying/landing/driving, one of her (very nice) professors had taken her to pick up the car -- Lady has full AAA coverage, but they wouldn't tow it without her there -- and had it towed to Walmart to put a new tire on it. Lady's mother had paid for the tire. Lady herself was taken out to dinner with said professor (female professor, no worries) to de-stress, and finally, all was as it should have been -- Lady and I were both home safely, the tire on the car was fixed and she had the use of said car again, and my first half of break was over.

I wish there was more to tell to end the story, but there really isn't. Lady, while nervous about something else going bad on her car, made it to Newton that weekend (and we had a wonderful weekend together), and once she returned to school, I returned to school as well to start the final six weeks of the spring semester. Granted, this was two weeks ago now, and a lot has happened in the interim, but everything is back to normal for the most part. School is school, teaching is teaching, money is money. One month from tomorrow, I will be giving my students their final exam, and afterwards will bid the campus farewell for an indeterminate amount of time -- depending, of course, if I'm teaching or doing anything else this summer on campus. As frightening as it may be to run headlong into summer with no job or other sense of financial security as of yet, it is indeed a bit liberating (as always).

So, that's the story, folks. We can now return to your regularly-scheduled normal blog posts.

More Whirlwinds, Part V: The Clusterfuck

Spring semester: day fifty-nine

To continue from where I left off (because not only was that last post exceedingly long, but it took me a week to write, in no less than ten different sessions), I've now covered everything during the trip up to my last day in West Virginia. So, let's cover that now, and then get to the flights back home to further wrap this up.

Tuesday (the 20th) would be my last full day back home. I would fly out the next afternoon, so if there was anything I needed to do while I was there it needed to be finished by the time I went to bed on Tuesday night -- as on Wednesday morning, I would be getting out the door on the way to the airport by 8AM.

Lady and I had scheduled our travel after WV to coincide rather well, actually, if everything were to go smoothly. Her train would arrive back here in the midwest on Tuesday night, and she would get back to her classes on Wednesday morning, as I was flying back to Wichita. At least that was the plan, anyhow. You'll see later in this post how this plan got a few wrenches thrown into it, but I'll get to that. I'll also say that the further plan at this point was for her to also be in Newton again that weekend, so we both had something to look forward to after returning to our respective homes-away-from-home/schools, but I'll get to that too.

I awakened on Tuesday morning to find that my mother was worried about our old dog, Moot. I've not written much about Moot here (mainly because I don't live at home anymore), but Moot is a shih-tzu. Purebred. Mom and I got him from a pet store in the Century III Mall in Pittsburgh in July 1998 when he was just a puppy. He's fourteen this month, and for the past few years he's been a little worse for wear because of his age -- he has severe cataracts to the point where he can barely see, and his legs/hips are giving out on him, requiring him to get semi-regular laser-based treatments at the vet so that he can actually move around normally. Throughout all of my formative years (and I use that term loosely), that little dog has been like a little brother to me. Moot has always been a part of the family, the favorite one, the little prince. My mother loves that dog; my dad and I joke (well, half-jokingly) that she loves that dog more than she loves either of us. So, there's a little backstory.

Anyway, on Tuesday morning, he was sick. He'd been sick since Sunday, around the time of the party, and had been needing to go outside fifteen times a day or more -- digestive troubles. I won't go into details, but I'm guessing your can probably assume what I mean by that. Needless to say, he wasn't feeling well; he wasn't eating or drinking any water (a telltale sign for that dog, as he's always eaten like a hog) and Mom was very concerned about him. So, first thing that morning, she called the vet to see if they could see him that day, to check him out and see if there was anything really wrong with him, or if he was just old and having a few days of "old dog syndrome."

The elephant in the room here is that all of us know Moot's days are numbered because he's so old, but it's the one thing that none of us ever discuss. My dad had a dog for a long time as well; her name was Betty. She died in 2008 around the age of 15 or so, and both of them were pretty distraught over it. Now, along with Moot, my parents have three indoor/outdoor cats, so hopefully when Moot does eventually die, the blow will be lessened by having the cats around the house.

The vet said they'd take him in for observation for the day, but we had to get him there then because they were booked solid with appointments. So, we got ready and left the house. This entailed a lot of driving and running around the city of Morgantown. During lunchtime rush hour. On a weekday when classes at WVU were still in session (their break was last week, the week after I'd come home). Here's the order in which we planned to do everything:

1.) Take Moot to the vet.
2.) Go to the post office (around the same area)
3.) Drive back across town to Kmart to get my phone card fixed.
4.) Drive back to the other end of town, again, to leave town and go visit my grandmother.
5.) Drive back to down again after that in order to have dinner with my former boss.

This is a lot of driving, yes. But the weather was beautiful -- around 80 degrees, not a cloud in the sky -- as it had been the entire time I was visiting back home. So, we did these things, in this order, and didn't run into any snags until part 3.

Kmart.

Sigh.

Look, before I go further, I will say that I really, really like Kmart. I wish there were more than one or two Kmart stores in a 50-mile radius out here in Kansas. For many years, I bought a lot of my clothing at Kmart, including a large chunk of my underwear and at least two bathrobes, along with many button-up shirts and jeans (when I was in undergrad and actually wore jeans, that is). My favorite hoodie is a Joe Boxer hoodie from Kmart, because it's incredibly comfortable. So, I mean, I have a history of never having any problems with the company and enjoying shopping in their stores.

"I hope they don't give me shit over this phone card thing," I told my mother in the car. "Airtime is non-refundable; it's one of the few things they could really just say 'sorry' and basically steal my $50 over."

"I'm sure they can fix it," she replied. "You have the card, you have the receipt that says its activation failed...what else can they do?"

It turns out they can do quite a lot, and all of it wrong.

When we went to Kmart, I went to the service desk and explained my situation. Instead of helping me, they immediately got pissed at the cashier who had sold the card to me, because said cashier (who wasn't even there when I'd come back in) required an override after the activation failed to actually sell it to me. Of course, having previously worked in retail for many years, I knew all about overrides -- but it's not like I was paying attention on Saturday to what was happening behind the counter. I just expected these ladies to do their job. Instead they grilled me for questioning.

"Who sold you this card? When were you here? Did you pay cash? Why were you allowed to buy it if it wasn't activated?"

WTF, customer service? I don't give a shit. Just fucking activate it and deal with your administrative bullshit later once I'm gone.

So the cashier at the service desk swiped the card again. Activation failed. Again. Okay.

"Do you want me to get another card off the rack to replace it, if that one isn't going to work?" I asked. I was trying to be helpful mainly because I wanted my damned phone to work and I wanted them to fix what they'd screwed up. Plus, the service desk had a line of about five people behind me.

"Yeah," she said.

So I did. I went to get another card off the rack, and in the meantime the ladies at the desk were able to deal with a few other customers in line behind me. The second card failed activation as well. What. The everliving. Fuck.

"Go get all of them off the rack," the CSM said to the cashier. We'll run them through until one works.

And they did this. The women at the customer service counter went through at least fifteen cards. All of them failed activation. All of them. There were at least three different types of T-Mobile cards they swiped. Not one of them would work. At all. At this point, not only was I getting frustrated, but so were the cashiers and CSMs, and everyone behind me waiting in line. Not to mention my parents, who were both waiting for me, in the car, to just get this fixed as well. Mom had gone to look at flowers, but was done and had been done for a while by the time they finished with me.

Finally, the flustered CSM just asked me "Well, we can't get these to work, do you just want a refund for the card you bought?"

Yes, please, I wanted to say, and for fuck's sake fix your machines, because I'm sure all of those cards are fine.

She gave me my refund in cash, apologized profusely, and I left.

This, of course, still meant that I had zero minutes on my phone, and that I was back to square one.

"I have to get some minutes on my phone somehow," I told my parents. "Don't care where we have to go -- gas stations, Kroger, Walmart -- all of them should have T-Mobile cards, and I just need to pick up one from somewhere other than this fucking place."

I believe those were my exact words, really.

Here is the problem, however. T-Mobile isn't really a supported cell carrier in West Virginia. The fact that Kmart had those cards in the first place was probably more a fluke than anything else. I found this out when, upon going to Walmart (my parents' choice, as my mother wanted to look for flowers and it was on the way out of town), I only saw cards for Virgin, Boost Mobile (whatever the hell that is), Tracfone, and the AT&T GO phone. Except for one card hidden in the back of everything -- something called a universal wireless card.

I've used these before on occasion, so I knew they worked. It's basically a card that will let you add minutes to any prepaid phone for any carrier. T-Mobile is, thankfully, on that list, so I had no choice but to purchase it if I wanted to have any sort of phone service before I got back to Kansas. Normally, that wouldn't be an issue, but with me flying back home and Lady taking the train -- both of us out of contact from one another -- in case there was an emergency of any sort, I wanted us to be able to reach each other. As much as I abhor cell phones on general principle (read: I hate not being able to just say "oh, I must've not been home when you called"), it's sort of my lifeline to a certain extent if any bad shit goes down.

So, I purchased that card. Additionally, at the register I'd seen something I'd never seen before -- an electronic cigarette (you know, the eCig things) starter kit for $13. So I purchased that too, just to try it out. I've been wanting one for a while, but they've always been so prohibitively expensive -- most of them $100 or more -- that I shied away from it. I'll get to this more later, however.

With one problem taken care of, we made the journey to my grandmother's house.

Over the hill and through the woods, to grandmother's house we gooo....

For my grandmother, that song is rather accurate. You do have to drive over a big hill and through some sparsely-populated, country wooded areas to get to her house. She lives about 20 miles to the west of Morgantown, in a little town called Blacksville (highly ironic because there are no African-Americans who live there that I know of, anyway; they should call the town Whitetrashville).

My grandmother (or Grammy, as I have always called her) has not been in the best of health for several years now....like, twenty years now. She's 84, has heart disease, a pacemaker, and osteoporosis, has had at least one debilitating stroke fifteen years ago (which, thankfully, she recovered from), and she lives alone. For the past year or two, she's had an in-home aide who hasn't lived with her, but comes by on a daily basis for so many hours to help take care of her and help her get around, as she can barely walk now without a cane. Over the years she has shrank to such a diminutive size; she's now well under five feet tall, and weighs less than 100 pounds. To hug and kiss her I have to bend down almost in half.

Still, for the most part she remains in good spirits, and her mind is as sharp as it ever was. Every time I visit her, though, I do worry that it's going to be the last -- so whenever I go to West Virginia, I simply must see her. Regardless of what else is going on in the world or out there with my extended family (believe me, that's a whole other mess of a story for another time) it is an unspoken rule that when I am there, I am visiting Grammy. No matter what. The woman practically raised me when I was a young child; she cooked for me, she taught me how to read, and she took care of me almost every day while my parents were at work. Grammy is very, very important to me, is what I'm saying.

However, because of the phone card debacle, the dog being at the vet, and the set time frame of 4:30 for dinner with my former boss, we didn't arrive at my grandmother's house until 3PM or so. Which was bad on several levels, but mainly because on my other visits to see her, we've generally spent three or four hours with her. This time we were there for a little over an hour, and while she was very, very happy to see me, I wish we could've stayed longer. Still, the only reasons we always stuck around that long before were because most of the time, other family members would come to Grammy's house to visit me as well. As most of said family members no longer speak to each other (like I said, a story for another time, and one that I'll probably never tell in this blog), this time it was just us.

I activated the phone card from Grammy's house, and was able to get it to work fine. I'm still burning through those minutes now; I'll need another card in another week or two, but I have to pay all of the household bills first. At Grammy's, I took a few pictures; one of which was her and my mother together on the couch, but as I didn't have any relatives there to visit me as well, it was a rather subdued visit. Aside from the photo Andrea took of me and Shainna in the Kmart chairs and a few pictures that Lady took of me/us together on that day as well, I didn't take or have any pictures taken of me to document the trip. This, by the way, is one of the pictures Lady took of me:


I call this "the pensive face." It was taken inside her aunt's Prius, in the Gabes/Kmart parking lot.

Ahem. Anyway.

When we left Grammy's house, I was surprised that she wasn't crying more than she was. Grammy is always concerned, as I mentioned before, that every time she sees me may be her last, because she has no rose-colored glasses about where her life is headed. She's told me many times that she knows she's going to die soon, and that she's afraid she's going to die before she sees me again. She tells me this (I think) mostly because she knows I am mature enough and intelligent enough to handle that fact without disagreeing with her or telling her she's overreacting -- as most of her children or other grandchildren would do or have done. While I don't want to think about that inevitable future, of course, it's not like I ignore that it will eventually happen.

When we left, she pressed a $20 bill into my hand, and told me that she wanted me to have it. She wouldn't take no for an answer, wouldn't let me leave without taking it. For Grammy, this is strange -- the woman doesn't really have a lot of spare money, and never has. She's always been a homemaker her entire life, and after her husband died (three months before I was born), she's lived on her social security income and his pension (as long as that lasted, anyhow; I don't think she gets it anymore). She's never had any other real regular income, and she pays the woman who takes care of her, the house aide, on an hourly basis. So it's not like she has money to spare.

After I left I realized she gave me the money probably because she couldn't afford to send out money in the Christmas cards this year -- usually she sends out $30 in the Christmas cards for those of us who are single, and $50 for those of us who are married. I told her she didn't have to worry about it for me this past year, even though I was absolutely broke at that time. She needs her money more than I do. I would have felt incredibly guilty. I still felt guilty taking the $20 she gave me.

Anyway, the rest of the afternoon ended up being a complete clusterfuck. And I do mean that in the nicest, but sincerest way possible.

As I'll remind you, the dog was at the vet, so we were not only on a timeframe to meet up with my former boss for dinner, but we were on a timeframe to pick him up before the vet's office closed as well. The plan was (since we didn't have any other options) for us to pick up the dog, have my dad drop me and Mom off at the Mexican place while dad ran the dog home and made sure he was okay, and then come back in for dinner with all of us. It wasn't the best plan, but it was what we had to do -- the vet trip had thrown a wrench into everything we'd needed to do that day, and it's not like we could leave the dog in my dad's SUV for two hours while we had dinner.

We were scheduled to meet with my former boss for dinner at 4:30. We got back into Morgantown a little after 4, so everything seemed to be working in our favor. Until we got to the vet's office. My parents went inside while I waited in the car and texted Lady to let her know I had gotten my phone fixed. Twenty minutes passed. Nothing. Thirty minutes passed. Nothing. We were now officially late for dinner. I got out of the car and purchased a Coke from the machine outside the vet's door, to see my parents waiting inside the office. They were the only ones in there. Mom shrugged at me. I smoked a cigarette and drank the Coke. Forty-five minutes had passed, and all of us were just waiting there. Technically, the vet's office was past closing time at this point, and yet the dog was still in the back.

At the hour mark, I went inside and asked "is there something wrong with him? WTF is taking so long?" or something to that effect. We were already half an hour late to meet my former boss, and Mom had called him a few times on his cell but couldn't get him, so we had no way of telling him we'd been held up.

The dog was fine, but the vet techs were taking forever to bring him back out. Finally, at the hour-and-fifteen-minute mark, we got the dog back. They said he probably had a stomach virus, but otherwise he was just fine. They'd given him fluids and had watched him, and he seemed to be okay for the most part. We took him for a little walk outside the office to let him pee, and then put him back in the carrier and left. We were now almost a full hour late for meeting with my former boss. Dad dropped us off at the restaurant and then took the dog home.

Luckily, my former boss and his wife were still there, and were not upset with us. I let Mom tell the whole story about what had happened, and then fielded questions about my life/job/etc. with my former boss, who I hadn't seen since 2006.

I've not talked about it a lot here in this blog, anyway, but to clarify what I did I'll mention it now -- from July 2001 to November 2006, off and on (yes, a month before I was a college student and a year-and-a-half or so after I'd graduated from WVU), I worked as a laboratory technician (later bumped up to the more regal-sounding position of "Laboratory Assistant II") for the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cell Biology at WVU. My mother was the office administrator of said department for about ten years or so, so not only did I already know everyone in the department from a young age, but they also knew how intelligent I was. Because the man who would later become my boss had a lab and needed some help to keep it running, I met with him and he gave me a shot at doing so -- paying me out of his research grant. I started out at $5.15 an hour (minimum wage in 2001, of course) and worked anywhere from 10-25 hours a week throughout the first three years of my college career. It was interesting but fairly simple work -- I would take care of the lab's sanitation (spraying down everything with alcohol, keeping stuff as sterile as possible), wash/autoclave glassware, order parts and supplies for the lab from a number of different scientific websites and/or catalogs, mix and prepare formulas and mediums, and would do really fun stuff like refilling the liquid nitrogen tank. I was also in charge, as I was an English major, of proofreading every new publication the lab would put out for clarity and typographical issues, and spent many many hours in the stacks of the library getting bound journals and making copies of articles in the main office. I was, as some would say, the "lab bitch." Anything that I could do which would save the other lab workers (of which there were four, both graduate students and post-docs) time, I did it. And I loved my job for the most part. It was fun, it was fulfilling, and it looks damned good on a resume. It was that job that gave me the "experience" I needed to teach the Science/Engineering English 102 class I'm teaching right now at Flat State University.

As I said, I worked that job off-and-on for over five years -- I took a hiatus from it in 2005, as I was wrapping up my senior year at WVU (and had two eighteen-hour semesters back to back), as they didn't need my help as much by then and they'd gotten an "intern" of sorts to help as I finished my degree, but I returned to it in the summer of 2006, now a graduate, and now hired under WVU's temp agency for about $9 an hour. I worked it until the day before (yes, the day before) I moved out here to the midwest over Thanksgiving week that year. I miss working there quite a lot -- aside from the newspaper, it was the best, most interesting job I've ever had.

So, needless to say, I knew my former boss quite well, and so did my parents -- not only did my mother work with him in the department for many years, but his (now deceased; cancer) former wife was my parents' lawyer who helped them sort out many things in regards to the family house when they purchased it. We have a long, long history with him.

My former boss is really proud of me and what I've accomplished; he was also absolutely humbled when he found that my experience in the lab is what allowed me to teach my sections of Science/Engineering English that I teach now, so we caught up on what I'd been doing, talked about the poem I'd had published, talked about where I'm headed in life after graduation, etc. It was very, very nice. It was like old times.

As an aside, the week before I moved out here and left the job with him, my former boss gave me some of the best advice I'll ever hear in my entire life. He sat down with me in his office, and in a very serious tone, told me this: "Brandon, don't ever look back, and don't give up. You will probably be homesick and lonely, you will probably question yourself at some point and wonder if you made the right decision in leaving West Virginia and moving on with your life. Don't question it. Don't get apprehensive and second-guess yourself, or come back. You are destined for greater things."

I've kept that advice with me for many years now. It's still as true now as it was then. Even though my reasons for remaining in the midwest (then Missouri, now Kansas) are different than they were when I left, it doesn't change the fact that he was, indeed, correct about everything he'd told me.

My dad made it to the restaurant a little later, and all of us finished our dinners. My boss and his wife stuck around a little while longer to talk with him, but left shortly thereafter so that they could catch a movie. Meanwhile, I had stuffed myself with tacos and beer -- which, for future reference, is not exactly the best idea the night before one has to be on two different flights for six hours the next day -- and went next door to the video game store while dad finished eating. While there, amusingly enough, I ran into my friend Mike that I'd written a long feature article on for the newspaper back home. He's an independent comic writer/artist. I got to catch up with him a little bit, which was nice. I always tend to run into one or two people I know while I'm in town.

After dinner, we all returned home and relaxed; all of us went to bed fairly early. I fell asleep probably around 11 or so, because I knew I'd have to get up early the next morning -- we needed to be on the road to Pittsburgh by around 8 or so, so that I could get to the airport and get through security to get on my flight at noon. It's about a 90-minute drive from my parents' house to Pittsburgh. Mom volunteered to stay home with the still-sick, but slowly-getting-better dog in order to keep an eye on him, so it would just be me and my dad making the trip. I texted Lady, who would be arriving back to school that night, to tell her that I'd keep her updated on my flights, and passed out.

And so ended my last day in West Virginia, but believe me, there is much more story to come. If you thought the events were interesting before...hoo boy, wait until you hear what happened next.