Both Daisy and I are paranoid about money; I think I tend to be much more paranoid about it than she does, as for many years I have lived a life of abject poverty. However, she is very smart with money, probably because she is very sensible about most things and, well, because she spent a few years working in a credit union. I have to be smart with money because I've spent many years of my life really poor and scraping by. Yeah, there's a reason why I drive an eighteen year old Monte Carlo with 233,000 miles on it, and only a small part of that reason is because it's fast. So, yeah, it's really nice that we'll be a dual-income household and really nice that said income will allow us some breathing space.
Aside from those chores and tasks, everything's been quiet all week. I'm getting used to the iPhone, I suppose, though I haven't really done much more on it than before. Apple did see fit to send me a really long email with this, though:
I mean, I like the phone, and it's really useful for some stuff already, but it's going to take a loooong time for me to actually use it like an Apple master or anything like that. I have a few apps, I have my numbers programmed into it that I need, and I tried out the GPS tonight by plotting in the address of the place I have to go on Monday morning for my processing/ID badge creation/etc. It's apparently three miles away, and will take me eight minutes to get there. That's useful info. But aside from run of the mill calling, texting, and reading the news? Yeah, so far I've not done much more than that with it and I don't know how much more I will do with it. I actually need to read the manual, which the phone doesn't come with -- it's all online, apparently. I don't even know how to turn the phone off and on, or how to turn the sounds off and on. Yeah. It's a complicated little device.
I did special order and put a rubber case on it, though, because I needed to do that. iPhones are really smooth and sleek, and I have the feeling that if I didn't put a case on it, eventually it would slip out of my hand and I'd drop/break it. I'd rather not do that, especially as the phone retails for more than I paid for my car.
Anyway.
I still follow the news for back in the Wichita/Newton area if only out of mild curiosity for the place in which I spent five years living. Apparently there was a shooting today in Newton, which is really rare for a town like that. The newspaper (which I worked for, as you may recall) was reporting on it like crazy, as was the Wichita news channels. Shootings in Omaha are nothing new -- several per week, gang violence in certain parts of the city, etc etc -- but down there it's a major event when something like that happens. I looked it up on the map and found that it was maybe a mile or so from my former house, out by the discount grocery store I went to often.
The university starts back up on Monday, same as WVU does back home. My mother informed me that today is "move in day" at WVU and she's glad she has the day off so that she doesn't have to navigate student traffic. My friends who remain in Wichita, the few who are still there finishing their degrees (read: less than ten grad students who I actually know and know well) aren't looking forward to the beginning of the semester. Well, Parker probably is, as I'm sure he's itching to get in front of a classroom full of students again. It will be the first fall semester in five years that I will not be teaching classes when Monday rolls around, but it is clear that the fates have a cruel sense of humor, as I will be reporting to work on Monday morning for the first time since the semester ended in May. That seems so long ago now; I wasn't even married yet when the semester ended. I was still living in Kansas when the semester ended. I had really long hair and a really full, thick beard when the semester ended. It's so weird to think of how much really can change in the span of a few short months.
"Are you nervous about starting your training?" Daisy asked me tonight over her lunch hour.
"No," I said. "Psh. I just don't want to do it."
That may be the most honest sentence I've uttered all summer. I don't want to do it. I've been enjoying sleeping on my schedule, eating on my schedule, being able to shower and shave and smoke and go to the bathroom when I've needed or wanted to instead of when I have time to. The concept of being trained to do a job where I will have to report to people above me and have little to no autonomy in said job whatsoever isn't so much nerve-wracking or dread-inducing as it is frustrating. For the past five years, I've been teaching -- and when you're a teacher, you are more or less in charge. When you lead a classroom and teach lessons, you tell students what to do and how to do it. Because I was damn good at what I did, I rarely had to report to anyone. Yes, there were superiors above me, and yes, I did consult them when necessary, but for the most part, I was in charge of what I did and how I did it. The same does not apply to this new job I'll have. I will have at least three direct supervisors to report to, and while Daisy isn't allowed to be in charge of me at this job (nepotism, etc etc), she is ranked above me...and everyone there I'll work with knows she's my wife. In fact, from what Daisy tells me, I am the most anticipated new employee joining the crew.
That's something that may be really hard to live up to, honestly. Truth be told, I've never done this sort of work before. I've never even done anything close to it. Now, you give me enough training and I can do damn near anything and do it well, but I'm also a fairly slow learner when it comes to stuff that I have absolutely no experience with.
"You're lucky," Daisy said. "Things are starting to slow down right now. This is the beginning of the slow part of the year."
Okay, well, yes. That's good. That will help.
There are many upsides to the job, of course; I'll get to work with my wife, I'll get to work (after the training period, anyway) a schedule that is, quite possibly, the best schedule I could've been assigned, and unlike being a professor my job will goddamned end when I clock out for the day. I can't tell you how freeing that will feel again. I haven't had a job that actually ended (aside from breaks between semesters) since 2009 -- as a professor, yes, you go home at the end of the day/night, but there's still always lesson planning that must be done, there's still stacks of papers that must be graded, grades that must be entered on Blackboard, quizzes and handouts to write and make, etc. It was a very rare occurrence that there was nothing I could be doing for my students in one capacity or another. The fact that I don't have to do that stuff anymore is both a blessing and a curse, depending on how one looks at it.
So, that's about all that's going on. I'm sure I'll update you again over the weekend, provided I have the time and energy to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment