Best Men

Last night, my brother told me he would not be able to make it to my wedding.

My brother, as you may remember, was my best man. He has his reasons, obviously, and all of them are good ones and important financially-based ones more than anything else.

No, I'm not mad at him. I have no reason to be mad at him; I knew long ago that asking him to be able to come to the wedding and participate in it would put him in a rather tight spot both personally and financially, and in the months since, that spot has gotten tighter and tighter until it basically disappeared, making the trip out here pretty much infeasible and impossible. I'm disappointed, yes, that my brother won't be there, but I'm not disappointed in him at all -- my brother knows how much I admire and respect him for what he's done both family-wise and life-wise, and if anyone understands really rough financial situations and time/work constraints, believe me, it's me.

My dad has agreed to take on the role of best man in my wedding in my brother's stead, as my rule with that has been "family first"; I want someone in my family in, or otherwise involved with, the wedding. I linked my dad to the tuxedo t-shirt we are all wearing so that he could get one (his response: "you're still doing that?") and my parents plan to arrive in Omaha on the night of the 29th, more than likely shortly before or during the time Daisy is having her bridal shower and I'm having my very loosely-defined "bachelor party." This isn't a big deal as I'm pretty sure my 64-year-old dad doesn't want to go out drinking and partying with us in and around Omaha.

As an aside, we really have no major plans for the "bachelor party" as of right now; I might suggest something simple like Dave & Buster's with a buffet dinner somewhere beforehand, but who knows. I'd rather not be hung over or otherwise incapacitated the next day -- I have shit to do, so to speak, once everyone gets to town. Rae asked me a few days ago about what we plan to do for it, and I had no real answer for her.

I'm waiting on a few things in the mail still; today I should receive my Citi Card statement, and hopefully I'll get my state tax refund either today or Monday so that I can give Daisy some actual cash while she's here. Yesterday I received everything from Amazon, including my backup external HD and groom's party gifts. The external HD is smaller than Daisy's cell phone -- it's tiny. And it's 500GB. That's crazy to me. I remember when I was in undergrad and 512mb flash drives were $50 or more, and were in super-high-demand. This thing is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and was a little more than the same price, but holds almost 1,000 times more data.

The case for said drive (which I had to order separately, for about $6) will arrive at some point next week, as it wasn't Prime shipping and was from a private seller. I'm fine with that. It's going to be a good week or so before I use it anyhow.

Last night I sat down and did all of my grading of my students' papers, and did all of my lesson planning for the week, before posting said grades online and emailing all of my students with their weekly updates of what's coming up. Then I ran the dishwasher and folded all the laundry, took a shower, cleaned the cats' box and gave them more food, and baked a big dish of penne. I organized and boxed more things for the yard sale at the beginning of next month.

Today I clean the garage -- that's my big, major task for the afternoon and evening. It involves gloves and actual pants and shoes (so that I can avoid any spider bites or anything like that) and a lot of trashing/recycling things. Once my trash/recycling cans are full, I have to stop whether I'm done or not, as I don't have much choice there. They can only hold so much, and I have so much shit to throw out one way or the other. Once they're full, the rest has to wait another week until they're emptied by the trucks. My recycling can is already half full as it is, since I've been cleaning and tossing basically everything I could over the course of the past several days.

Good Day, Sir

Spring semester: day fifty-nine

Daisy is coming down on Sunday instead of Tuesday. Tonight she was officially offered (and she accepted) the promotion she'd been trying to get, and with it comes different hours and a different work schedule. She will now work Wednesday through Saturday nights, from 6PM to 5AM, and that schedule starts next week -- she still works her normal shifts on Friday and Saturday night this week. That means, obviously, she has to come down between Sunday and Tuesday.

As of right now, it's the same hourly pay she's been making at that job for well over a year; it's an interim position that makes her a supervisor on the shifts she'll be working (which, basically, is what she did anyway, with the bonus that she'll have to do a lot less of her current job's duties) with the bonus that she's in this as a placeholder until the position gets "officially" created and posted, more than likely with a substantially higher salary. And she'd already be in line for and primed for that position if she wants it and they choose her for it.

The entire transition is bittersweet for both of us. I'm extremely proud of her -- kickin' ass and takin' names and whatnot -- and while the number of hours worked are the same and the schedule is marginally better, right now (and probably continuing for a while after we're married) all that's really changed are the days she works. She'll have somewhat different duties, yes; she'll be in charge of keeping everyone else on her shift in line and doing their work, but in the big picture finances-and-time-wise not a whole lot is really changing here.

I, meanwhile, am still teaching through most of May, or at least will be doing teaching-related duties for the majority of the month while I clean and pack this house, so I'm going to be busy as well. Her coming down on Sunday instead of Tuesday evening means I'm shuffling around all of the work I'd be doing this weekend -- lesson planning, grading a stack of papers, etc -- to today and tomorrow at the latest. I clear my docket when Daisy visits, so that I don't have anything hanging over my head or any other pressing, somewhat concerning responsibilities I need to take care of. This means that most of my grading I'll have to do in the morning/afternoon hours today, and if I'm going to clean out the garage (or most of it) this weekend, that has to be done on Saturday at the latest. That can be done, yes, but it also completely fills my weekend and time off with tasks to do, so I'm not even getting any real downtime.

More than that, it also gives me a short window to pay whatever bills I need to pay and (hopefully) receive my state tax refund check in the mail to cash so that I can use that for our activities and give her most of the rest of it, in addition to whatever other money I can afford to give her to cover some expenses for the wedding and apartment stuff. That money will primarily go to the cost of the wedding photographer and the security guard at the venue, as mentioned before. Most of everything else is covered or will be covered without much issue. On the plus side, though, she's going to do me a big favor and pick up/bring down some extra boxes so that I can kick my packing into overdrive in the next few weeks. I asked her to, because apparently it's like pulling teeth to get boxes from the places here unless I want to get up or be awake at dawn on the weekends.

My conferences for my 102 students yesterday morning went well; those kids tend to be pretty bright and on-the-ball, and all of them showed up and got their requisite points and feedback on their upcoming essays based on their Proposal/Annotated Bibliography assignment. Some of them have great paper topics, topics that I'm really excited to read about. They can now sort of rest easy for most of the weekend; next week we're covering a few articles out of their textbook, and for the rest of the semester they're simply writing their papers and finishing up their journals.

As the semester ramps up for all of my students, it winds down for me -- my classes all know at this point what's coming up between now and the end of classes, and they're all working on those things. My 210s turn in their final papers on Wednesday, and then have their oral presentations in two weeks. My 011s have one more paper after the one they're working on now, then their practice final and final exam. My 102s are hip-deep in their final papers now as it is before their own practice final and final exam. I will be doing my last bit of lesson planning for the entire semester this week and next week, and after that? They just have to do their work, and I just have to show up to get it and cover what needs to be covered. It's really freeing for me, to be honest with you, especially with the upcoming move and the like when I'll have to carefully meter out all of my time anyhow. The more I can get out of the way now, the better.

I get paid today, as I mentioned in my last post, and said pay is on par with normal paychecks -- so that certainly helps me when it comes to bills and the like along with my tax refund. I'll also get my Amazon order today, which contains my external HD for backup and several of my groom's party gifts. The rest of the party gifts come next week, as they were somewhat, ahem, custom creations that need extra time. I need to get one more thing for one of the members of my party, but everything else is done on that end.

Last night I did all of my laundry and washed the bedsheets/blankets as well. I removed the electric blanket from the bed, unhooked it, and washed it (since it can be washed and dried) to put it away for the summer in its bag with its controls, which I found in the upstairs spare room closet. I was also able to pack another box full of clothes -- the clothes I'd washed, in the one box I got from Walmart last weekend -- so that's out of the way, at least. Well, it's still in the way, as all of the boxes in the spare room are, but at least it's packed up. This is why I can't wait for Daisy to bring down more boxes -- there's something purifying and centering about packing everything up and eliminating as much clutter as possible. There's at least one or two boxes in the garage, along with a tub, that I'll be able to reclaim when I clean out the garage/storage room tomorrow, provided that they aren't all full of spider eggs/nests. Because that would be bad.

And, of course, over the next few weeks I'll be saving paper boxes from West campus as well, provided I can get them to save them for me. I need to email the sweet administrator lady over there this afternoon to see if she can save whatever comes available. If she can't or they don't really have any, eh, no biggie -- but it would be helpful, at least, if even in a small way.

The weather is gorgeous and has been for several days now -- right now it's 77, and tomorrow the temperature could reach 85 according to the Weather Channel...and then it will rain (possibly even snow) and be cold and shitty for most of the next several days afterwards -- basically the entire time Daisy is here. I mean, that can't really be helped, but it'll seriously piss me off if it gets so cold I have to kick on the furnace again, since I've not had to do that at all since basically the week after Spring Break. My electric bill for April should be really low -- less than $60, I'm guessing. The lowest bill I've ever had was $40-something, and that was about this time last year, soooo...

Ahem. Anyway.

I slept until around noon today, despite the neighborhood wild turkeys (because yes, I do have those; welcome to semi-rural Kansas) gobbling loudly outside my window in the yard for about an hour at 8AM.

The rest of my day will be spent grading and getting a shower, as well as possibly ordering a pizza -- I haven't decided yet. I need to do my normal weekend chores as per the usual over the course of the next day or two, which includes emptying the cat box, vacuuming, and doing other minor cleanup before Daisy gets here on Sunday. Tomorrow? Again, cleaning the garage as much as I can; it'll be somewhat long and dirty, as I told Daisy, but maybe I'll find some interesting stuff down there that I can "reclaim," so to speak, that I've forgotten about.

It feels good to be getting things done, to be cleaning and packing and getting all of my affairs in order. Daisy asked me this morning if there was anything I was nervous about regarding the move or the wedding.

"Money," I said. "Being able to pay for everything without us basically needing to fight for survival."

"Aside from money."

"Nope. Not really, anyway."

And there's not. I'm not nervous about anything, especially not anything involving the wedding -- I can't wait to marry her. However, I do dread all of the work and physical labor that will be involved with the move and cleaning this house -- as that will more than likely make me sore and fatigued for days, but I'm not nervous about it. Not in the least.

On that note? Time to go take care of my Friday tasks. I'll keep you updated on everything as it happens.

Cha-ching, Part II

Spring semester: day fifty-eight

Yesterday was an incredibly productive day for me, even if the work I got accomplished wasn't that physical, monumental, or otherwise mind-blowing. What I did was more...spiritually fulfilling, I suppose you could say, more than anything else.

I got up early -- probably around 9AM -- and immediately started taking care of tasks that needed to be done. With my federal tax refund in hand (so to speak), I paid the two Publishers Clearing House orders that I'd had waiting for me, and completely paid off my Chase card bill, zeroing out its balance. One card down, two to go, right?

I then took to Amazon to get some of the things I need but had been putting off -- for example, I finally got the external HD I needed for backing up my files, a few other small things, and three of my small groomspeople's gifts. I went to another site later in the day (I won't say which, as it'll give away the surprise) to get the remaining gifts. The Amazon stuff arrives tomorrow; the other stuff arrives next week; the latter two items I was able to get for basically free.

It also helped immensely that yesterday was the most beautiful day possible, I think -- the temperature reached 83 in the afternoon and it was breezy and sunny. It was, simply put, the nicest day Kansas has had since last fall six or seven months ago. When it's really nice like that and my allergies aren't killing me (as they are right now, this morning), I tend to have more energy and ability to take care of tasks -- or at least more motivation, anyway.

By the time I left the house last night to teach my 210 class, I was in a great mood and great spirits -- I'd taken care of everything I'd needed/wanted to do, had cleared off one entire card's worth of credit card debt, and for once, I didn't feel overwhelmed or overly stressed about everything going on in my life. To top it off, my electronic pay stub for tomorrow's paycheck had been posted, and since the payroll lady fixed the insurance stuff, it's all correct and roughly normal/what I was expecting after said insurance was taken out. That paycheck will give me a good bump in my finances and will allow me to assess my monetary situation a little more fully by the time Daisy comes down here next week, so that I can give her some of the money she needs to pay for the deposit on the apartment, the rent, the wedding photographer and security guy at the venue, her wedding band (because she hasn't picked one yet), etc. 

So, clad in a tie-dye t-shirt and board shorts with flip-flops (as one of my close friends told me, "Brandon's back!"), I brushed my hair back, threw on the aviators, and rocketed down the highway in the Monte Carlo to teach my night class.

As an aside, when you're going 75 down the interstate with the windows down and no traffic around you, and when you're driving a car with a powerful and responsive 215hp, DOHC 3.4L V6 that will go 0-to-60 in about four seconds...when Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone" comes on the radio, it's really, really hard not to speed.

For future reference. Ahem.

Anyway.

My 210 class was fine; they're finishing up their projects and brought in their entire project drafts with them last night. Most of them are nearly finished. Some of them, yes, still have some considerable work to do, but they also have a full week before it's due, and many of the drafts I looked over this weekend were very rough in comparison to the more polished, nearly-finished versions of a lot of them that I saw last night.

Next week is their last week of instruction in the course -- they turn in those final projects and I instruct them on what they need to do for the oral presentation, which is their last course assignment. Those presentations are on April 23. For a class with a full 25 students, those presentations could and would take two full weeks or more, which is why they start working on them next week. With a class of but eight students, such as the class I have, we're in and out on one night for those presentations. Even if all eight students took twenty minutes each (instead of the hard-out I give them at ten), it would still only take 160 minutes -- the timeframe of a normal weekly class.

As an aside, those students are really fun to have in class. I'm definitely going to miss that class when it ends, simply because they all know how the game is played, they all do their work and we all have fun.

Anyway.

My 011 class I teach on Tuesday nights, of course, is another story. As always. I think I've basically cemented the group of students I'll have between now and the end of the semester, though -- because at this point, all of the others but one have failed either mathematically or due to absences. I had four more fail for one or both reasons on Tuesday night, and the emails went out yesterday afternoon to let them know. I have eight or nine remaining out of my nineteen-person class, and of those remaining students, most of them are doing just fine -- they're following directions, they're doing the assignments, they're writing in their journals, and they're asking questions when necessary. Most of them will more than likely pass the course with no issue. Some of them don't need 011 at all, as they're good writers on their own already. Others? Well...

The rest of Tuesday went fine. Nothing of note or consequence happened, really. I spent most of the day grading through my 102 students' proposals and annotated bibliographies, and/or actively stalling for time so that I wouldn't do that and nothing but that all day long. Most of my friends, as we're hip-deep in April, are frantically trying to do everything they can in their own classes (as most of them are still grad students) to wrap up the semester, as well as take care of their own students' work. They don't have much time for socialization these days...if they're even there when I'm there.

I did, however (as mentioned in my last post) fax all of the apartment application and information stuff to the apartment manager in Omaha, including a pay stub and photocopy of both sides of my driver's license, so that the ball can get rolling on that for processing and the like. Said manager called me shortly thereafter to confirm some of the numbers on the form, as the fax had scrunched it down and made them hard to read in a few places. She seems sweet and helpful, and was really nice.

Daisy does her walkthrough of an identical place in that complex tomorrow, with said manager, I'm guessing -- not our place, but an identical one, as all of the buildings are set up the same and because ours won't be open until May 1. I reminded her to take measurements of not only the apartment itself, but of stairways and doorways leading up to and into the apartment, as knowing those widths and heights will make moving in easier. The mattress for the bed, for example, can bend -- but the pieces of the frame and the box springs can't...in addition to whatever other large, inflexible furniture/appliances and the like we have to move in there, such as my washer and dryer.

She did tell me that there's an elevator, though, which will absolutely make moving those large, cumbersome things much easier.


This morning (and I'm about to leave in a few minutes) I have my conferences with my 102 students in lieu of actual class. Each of them will sit down with me for ten minutes or so, sometimes less (depending on how well the student is doing in the class) and we do a little one-on-one chat. 102 classes are required to do this, though I almost wish I'd done it on Tuesday afternoon instead of this morning during normal class time. Still, it's pretty painless, if a little longer than my class would normally run. I probably won't be home before noon, as the last conference is at 11:05. I don't have to stop anywhere on my way home, though -- I went to Walmart to get cat litter and other necessities on my way home after class last night, since it was still so nice and warm.

Anyway. Off I go. I'll fill you in on other happenings later.

Cha-ching, Part I

Spring semester: day fifty-six

My federal tax refund posted to my bank account last night while I was asleep, thereby increasing the amount of money I had in there by 4X or so. This is good for multiple reasons, obviously, the least of which being that I just got my Chase (Amazon) card bill last night before I went to bed. One of my first duties will be to pay that card off completely and zero out its balance. That's the card I use, primarily anyway, for gas in the car.

About half of the rest will go to other bills and the like, and then the remainder will go to Daisy. I'll also remind you once more that I get paid again in three days, so this isn't the only money I have coming to me. Finally I feel like I have a little breathing space again, and enough actual money to get some things taken care of both for now and in the future. The federal return alone is more than a month's worth of my normal pay deposited into my account all at once, for reference there.

Now to wait on the state of Kansas return, which has to be a paper check for me as I didn't file it online (and there's no direct-deposit option on the paper forms). If I've already gotten the federal return, the state return can't be far behind.

If I were a wealthier man, I'd put the tax refunds into professional car maintenance or repairs, or get another vehicle. I'm not a wealthier man. I have bills to pay and a wedding/living situation to help fund coming up in the next few months.

I slept relatively well last night, for once; I didn't use my standard sleeping pills, but took melatonin instead. Three melatonin pills (not even 1mg total) may be what does the trick for me from this point forward. The problem with melatonin is that sometimes it works really well for me, and sometimes it doesn't work at all -- and I never know which time will be which. Overall, I'm fine with this; I only have about another month (almost exactly another month, actually) of teaching and needing to keep a teaching sleeping schedule during the week anyhow. After that, all of my focus goes to sleeping when and how I can or need to as I ready for the move, packing and cleaning everything possible, etc, and the wedding following that, until I secure another job in Omaha.

Daisy has taken an interim supervisor position at her job, which puts her in direct charge of several of her fellow employees, but not on a permanent basis, and with no apparent other changes to her actual duties (or pay raise, as of right now). It will also change her shifts from Friday-through-Monday nights to Wednesday-through-Saturday, and doesn't affect the time she has on the docket to take off for moving or for the wedding. To be blunt about it, it's probably worth it just to be able to get off the godawful weekend shifts, though the new hours for her aren't much better -- 6PM to 5AM. Right now she works 8:30PM to 7:30AM. She doesn't know when it's going to start yet, either.

"It means I wouldn't get to see you for a good period of time," she said, in reference to after the move and the wedding.

That really depends on when and where I'm working once I get up there and once we're married. As you may recall, I've applied for several positions within said company as well. I've not been contacted about any of them yet, but I have applied for them. Working similar shifts, or staggered shifts even would make it much easier. Otherwise she's right -- if I'm working a daytime job someplace, teaching or otherwise, I'd more than likely be getting home at the time she was getting ready for work, and vice-versa. Half the week we'd be on opposite schedules again. This isn't a huge problem now, as we make it work when I'm here in Kansas and she's there in Omaha, but once we're married it may be a much more stressful issue if we're still barely getting any time together even though we live together.

Of course, I've done this before -- I worked nights in the grocery store many years ago while my ex worked and went to class during the day. It's not exactly pleasant or convenient for anyone involved. If I worked a Monday-through-Friday daytime schedule of 8AM to 5PM, Daisy would be sleeping in the daytime the latter half of the week, and I'd be working on two of her three days off. We'd only have Sunday together when neither of us had to work, and with her working until 5AM Sunday morning, she'd be sleeping all day when I wasn't. If I worked nights somewhere, I'd more than likely have a similar schedule to hers (four days instead of five, probably) but unless our schedules matched up pretty closely, we'd still have trouble getting time together. No, obviously, it's not ideal no matter which way you slice it.

We'll just have to play it by ear and figure it out as it happens, I suppose. Because of my applications to her company, there is a good chance that for at least part of the week, I would or could be working with her if I'm hired on there. I have, though, applied for many other different jobs with different hours and locations -- something that I shall keep doing over the course of the next two or three months until I can get some interviews and the like set up, and possibly get hired on someplace.

The rain and storms that were supposed to happen yesterday never came; it sprinkled for a few minutes yesterday afternoon, and that was about it. It would be nice to get a torrential downpour for about half an hour or so one day I was out and about so that my car could get all the dust rinsed off of it while in one of the parking lots at school. I need to take it over to the car wash at some point soon, once the weather gets into the mid-to-high 70s every day and stays there, but I'm not going to do that while it's still relatively chilly outside and when highs/lows are still in the 30s-50s. Plus, I have to have quarters for that, and I don't have those right now. I never have, nor do I carry, any cash on me. Ever. The car looks so good when it's been freshly-washed, even though a fair amount of its paint is chipped and faded (mostly on the hood; the black paint on the hood has faded so much that it's almost grey). I take the car over to the car wash about twice a year, roughly.

Today it's only supposed to reach the mid-60s, but I'm still wearing shorts because fuck it, I want to wear shorts.

Daisy and I have scheduled for her to come down here for her days off next week; she can't do it this week because she's doing the walk-through of the apartment on Friday morning, and has plans with her friends for tomorrow and for Friday night. This also allows me to give her whatever tax money is left over in person instead of needing to mail the check to her, and gives me time between now and then to use the refund money for the stuff I need to use it for beforehand, such as paying bills and the like. We originally weren't planning on her to come down here again until around the end of the semester, when we'd be doing the bulk of the packing/moving work -- but I'd rather not have to wait more than another month to see her again, obviously. I desperately need some decompression time -- time where, just for a few days, I don't have to be stressed about the packing and moving and wedding, time where Daisy and I can relax together, cook some actual meals, go out to a movie, and just be comfortable around each other -- shutting the rest of the world out. No, my responsibilities don't stop; I'll still have papers to grade next week and lesson planning to do, but I can shuffle that around when necessary (especially as she'd have to leave on Friday morning at the latest) to deal with it when she's not here. We don't like to go any longer than possible without seeing each other, obviously -- long-distance relationships, even long-term ones that will end in marriage in a few months -- can be really stressful and taxing if you don't at least get some time together fairly often. That's why she always comes down here, or I've gone up there, about once a month or so for a few days at a time.

Today, as you probably know, is my long day -- and most of it will be spent holed up in my office on main campus, working on things that need to be done while I'm there. I long for a Tuesday where I don't have a ton of things to do on campus, but those days are done now -- it's basically all business for the hours I'm stuck there from this point forward, and today I have the bonus task of making sure the application and info for the apartment, along with a copy of my driver's license, are faxed to the apartment manager in Omaha for everything to progress smoothly. I need to call said manager once the documents are faxed to make sure she gets them, as well. Then, of course, I have to teach my 011 class tonight, which will run longer than usual as I have a lot to cover in there. I just know that by the time I get home tonight, I will be looking forward to going back to bed -- even though I did sleep well last night. It'll probably be mental exhaustion more than physical, and I'll probably be able to sleep quite well again tonight after getting home -- especially as I won't have to get up early and do anything tomorrow but, well, pay bills with the money I have now.

Shadowboxing

Spring semester: day fifty-five

Upon my trip to Walmart Saturday night, I was able to get one box. One.

No, I'm not kidding.

This isn't because of a lack of boxes (okay, well, in some cases, it was), but because they had cordoned off most of the store as they were getting ready to wax the floors. The checkout girl -- who, as I told Daisy, I'm pretty sure has a crush on me because every time I'm in there she eye-fucks me, even if I don't go through her line -- told me that because of that, there was a really small truck order and as most of the aisles were blocked off, the stocking crew wouldn't get to them until after the floors were done.

The one box I did get was a vinegar box, ironically, and it was relatively large -- but that was only because I literally picked it up out of an abandoned aisle and took it with me. I asked one of the other associates who was stocking the toy aisle if I could have some of his boxes, and he looked at me with deadened eyes (or incredibly stoned eyes, I don't know) and told me "Uhhh....I dunno, man, but you can ask a manager or something."

For fuck's sake. I just wanted like five boxes so that I could get a bigger jump-start on my packing. I've worked retail before. I did it for years. And I was a stocker during that time as well. Do you know what happens with the boxes? All of the boxes? They go into a box-crusher/baler machine, and are disposed of at the back dumpster. Seriously. All of them. That's it. Nobody has to ask a manager for a goddamn thing. I was a manager on the night shift at the grocery store I worked in.

"Okay, well, far be it from me to get you in any trouble or anything," I said, trying my absolute hardest not to roll my eyes (and probably failing), before walking away.

Daisy said that all of the stores in Omaha will save boxes for you, but you have to call in advance for them and pick them up between 6 and 7AM. The reason I waited to go shopping until the middle of the night was to cut out the middleman, so to speak, and just get some of the boxes from the stockers in the aisles. If I do that, I don't have to call ahead, and I can pick and choose what I want/need instead of whatever gets thrown into a pile for me to pick from at the ass crack of dawn. Ironically enough, I don't remember what my ex did for boxes several years ago when she moved out -- I was more of the don't-let-the-door-hit-you-in-the-ass mentality to keep track of such things.

Of course, in moving here five years ago, I was coming straight out of that grocery store job, and was able to pick whatever boxes I needed on whatever nights they were available then. As an English professor, I don't generally come across that many boxes in my line of work, except for paper boxes. Which, yes, I'll more than likely end up getting several of. They're useful. I'll ask West campus to start saving them for me, as I can't exactly take a stack of boxes with me on the shuttle bus back and forth (or to and from my class there) in any sort of feasible way. At West campus I can just throw 'em in the trunk or backseat.

I do still have a few of my boxes from moving here that long ago, but most of them have already been filled and sealed up from my previous packing. A full third of the spare room is filled with boxes I've already packed and sealed up.

So I got the one box, at least. I also got a roll of duct tape (since I'll need it) and another box of the Hefty Steel-sac trash bags, the super-heavy-duty thick ones (at $10 a box, they'd better be), so that I can trash what needs to be trashed in the coming weeks and months. I only have a few left in the old box -- I'll need more. I also got a pistol hose nozzle for the garden hose, as the nozzle I have now is a "watering shower wand" and doesn't exactly give off a ton of pressure for washing things or rinsing things off. I'll be doing a lot of both before I leave this place.

Yesterday afternoon I edited through my 210 students' projects, and attempted (and failed) to make lesson plans for my other classes. I was just too burned out after using half the ink in a new pen to mark them up. Their big, final project is something that most of them haven't done before, it can be more than twenty pages long (depending on how large the scope of said project is) and requires a lot of research and time invested into it. That's why I give them a month to do it before they turn it in (they started it during their Spring Break) and we have two weeks of peer-review and drafting before it's all due -- and before they do their oral presentations on it the week afterwards as their "final exam" (because they don't have an actual final). I've mentioned that I love teaching 210; it's easy to teach, the assignments are fun and straightforward, it operates on a much different weekly schedule than the other courses I teach, and the students who take it tend to -- for all intents and purposes -- know their shit. As a professor I can change up or modify the lesson plan a bit to suit the course, and change around dates and the like much easier than my other courses as well, and this has worked wonderfully -- so far, this entire semester, I've only had one solitary absence in the course, from one student who was stuck at work late one night and couldn't make it to campus for class. I don't think I've ever taught a class where there's only been one absence, once, the entire semester.

Also, the fact that the class will end completely, with all grades calculated, tallied, and on the books on April 23 -- almost three weeks before the actual semester's end -- is a huge bonus as well. As mentioned before, I could stretch the class out and force them to come in on April 30 and May 7 as well if I wanted to, but there is quite literally nothing left to do on those days. As it is now, aside from telling them how to do their oral presentations, there's nothing left to teach these eight students I have, students who don't have to be told repeatedly that they have to proofread their papers and cite their sources, students who don't have to be continually reminded of due dates or be given "come to Jesus" talks about the quality of their work or the importance of following directions. They all already have the instruction and skills they need to do their work -- now all they're doing is that work.

It's a very dark day today -- while it's in the 60s, it's so dark at 1PM that the streetlights are starting to click on. We're supposed to get rain and storms (though it's not doing anything now) through tomorrow morning, basically, but the plus side is that today is supposed to be the coolest day of the week -- by Wednesday and Thursday the high temperatures are supposed to be up around 80 or so. The weekend was relatively warm, as well; I wore shorts to work on the deck, and was able to break out the flip-flops to get used to them again when it was warm enough during the daytime.

As for everything else in my world, things are...relatively quiet for the moment. Daisy has been working her normal schedule, which requires her to be asleep during the day during most times I'm awake. There's no more wedding planning news, aside from a few of her extended family members who have RSVPed (bringing our total of known guests up to around 66 or something like that). We've also been trying to help my brother -- who is my best man -- find inexpensive airfare out here and back, as he's flying in from Pittsburgh. He's been having a rough time affording the trip or scheduling for it, as he not only has a job but a wife and three kids to support. Daisy found round-trip flights for $379 on Priceline, and we told him that if it was necessary to save money spent on hotel costs, he could stay with us in our place. We have air mattresses; I have one of my own, and Daisy/her family have at least one or two more. I used to sleep on mine all the time in the spare room when it was too cold to sleep downstairs in the winter (before Daisy got me the electric blanket, of course); it's actually fairly comfortable. We may have a few people staying with us, actually -- we also extended that offer to Rae, as well as to one of Daisy's friends who will be flying back in from NYC (if she can make it, that is).

I also told my brother that yes, while it is important to me that he's there and is my best man, it's not more important than being able to pay his bills and support his family, and as he doesn't make a lot of money as it is, I told him that if it is not financially or otherwise feasible to make it out here, it's okay and I'd understand. In fact, I understand his situation better than most would, due to the fact that I also work my ass off just to make ends meet, and he's about the only person I'd allow to basically "opt out" of the wedding because of it. My brother has a lot of proverbial irons in the fire; neither he nor his wife work in traditional office settings, they have to buy their own insurance now because of Obamacare, and they do, as mentioned before, have three kids -- all of whom are homeschooled. I told him to keep us posted and we'll do what we can to accommodate him if necessary and help him out on the logistical aspect of things. My brother is also not the type of person who wouldn't tell me if he wasn't able to make it -- he'd be sure I knew well in advance.

As for the other family-related stresses and issues I've been dealing with for the past several days...who knows what's going on there. I've basically washed my hands of the situation at this point and don't want to be involved with the drama/bitching/pissing-and-moaning involved with it -- it's a colossal waste of my time and energy, and I have enough things to take care of on my own in not only the day-to-day, but in the upcoming weeks and months.

This afternoon I will be creating lesson plans for my classes this week, though those lesson plans will be fairly sparse as we're beginning the big wrap-up of the semester (and that takes several weeks in most cases). I'm collecting two sets of papers tomorrow -- one in each of my classes -- with the larger set (my 102s) needing to be graded by Thursday morning due to conferences (and, y'know, me giving those papers back to them in their conferences). This means that tomorrow afternoon, regardless of how nice it is outside, I'll be spending most of my hours grading through those...only to get another set of papers tomorrow night, papers I'll be grading over this coming weekend. Wednesday night in 210 we're doing full peer reviews of full project drafts, and on Thursday morning I'll hold those aforementioned conferences for my 102 students. I've already done one of the conferences, as I have a student who has to be out of town for the latter half of this week. Said student is probably my best student in that class anyway, so that's not a big deal.

My 011 class will require the most work this week (at least teaching-wise, anyway), because I'm collecting their papers, assigning the next one, covering two chapters in the book, covering a short story, and then will be giving them a simple, fun take-home quiz. Teaching this class may be easy, yes, but it may also be difficult, depending on how many of them actually show up. As I've mentioned before, they're dropping like flies -- I'll have several more who will fail not only due to absences, but mathematically if they don't come in this week and turn in their papers. Not one single student in ANY of my classes, even the ones who had already failed for the semester due to absences and/or not turning in work (and believe me, I've told the ones who have), withdrew from my rosters by the drop date. Not one. Oh well -- it's their grades and GPA, not mine.

And, of course, I have to get gas in the morning before I leave town -- as is customary on Tuesdays, you know. Gas prices have been going up like crazy over the course of the past month or so; for a while, I was getting it for about $3 or so. Now it's hovering around $3.60 and hasn't really gone down any. If anything, it's fluctuated between $3.49 and $3.69 depending on the week, which is insane. Now, I remember paying about $4.20 a gallon in 2008 and probably early 2009, but shit, it's never been this high here for a prolonged amount of time like this since I've been living in Kansas. For months on end last year I was paying $2.88 a gallon or so. I have the money to pay for gas, obviously -- I'm not destitute -- but damn.

Of course, I'm still (rather impatiently) waiting for my tax returns as well. I/we need that money soon. I have bills that will be coming in over the course of the next two weeks, and Daisy needs what I can give her shortly thereafter as well. The federal return should be processed more quickly this time because there's no check that needs to be cut -- it's direct deposit. I'm starting to get twitchy -- not because I can't pay my bills, because I can, but because that money needs to be in my possession soon so that it can be put to use for necessities for both myself as well as Daisy.

So that's what's going on here right now. Now it's time for me to do my lesson planning, eat something, get a shower, and go to bed early this evening. It's Monday night, after all -- even though the weather may be nicer now than it was earlier this semester, Tuesdays are still godawfully long and gruelling for me, and I still need to get the necessary rest to be able to be awake and running for fifteen hours straight between two different campuses.

Don't Mean Nothing, Part II

Today, in my continuing battle to fend off stress and depression, I put on my work clothes and work gloves, and cleaned off my back deck.

It took about two hours, and at the end of it I had two full/overflowing trash bags -- one full of recyclables and the other full of trash/dirt/stuff that desperately needed to be thrown away.

Now all that remains on the deck is the garden hose/sprayer and a few ceramic and plastic pots that I want to save and use. The rest of the deck is bare and has been hosed down/hosed off. I saved some of the planters and the tomato cages in case Daisy's parents want them for their own garden, as they might find them useful (if they don't want them, I'll trash/recycle them too) and I had to save the grill (even though it's about useless and is rusting through) because I have nowhere else to put it and it's too big for the dumpster can -- at least this week -- with everything else in it. I'll probably offer it for free at the garage sale, and then if nobody takes it I'll disassemble it and trash it.

Next week is the garage and storage room. I'd do that tomorrow, but I don't have any more room in the trash/recycling cans for the stuff I'll throw out, and Monday is garbage/recycling day. Again, the goal is to not only get everything cleaned off/cleaned out/thrown out that I don't need, but to also get everything ready for the city-wide garage sale a month from this weekend as well. The garage and storage room is also a big job -- it'll take several hours as there's a lot of stuff in there that, simply put, needs to go away, and both places are probably crawling with spiders just waking up for the spring.

I came back in from the deck and stripped down to wash my dirtied work clothes/gloves, as well as the fleece blanket I recovered from five years' worth of sitting on the back porch (it's perfectly fine, though the way it was sitting made the sun bleach it out in a tie-dye like pattern), and took a shower before applying for a few more jobs at one of the colleges in Omaha. When I logged onto their site, I found that they must take their time in reviewing all of their applications (or there are just a ton of them), as only one of the positions I applied for was currently under review as of right now. Oh well. A few more applications can't hurt. I applied for one of the positions that had been open six months ago, but had closed and reopened again, and applied for another in advising.

I then messaged Daisy, made something to eat, and cleaned out the freezer -- finding some stuff in there I forgot I even had. I used three bags of frozen fruit (cherries and raspberries) to make a blender full of smoothies to drink over the course of the next few days. I loaded up the dishwasher again, but won't run it until I get some vinegar to splash in there (seriously, try it -- your dishes will be cleaner than ever before). 

The plans for the rest of my night are to go to Walmart in a bit for some boxes and some groceries (such as the aforementioned vinegar), and then come home and go to bed. While I know what I'm teaching next week, I haven't yet made my formal lesson plans and I haven't edited through my 210 students' draft projects yet. Yesterday wasn't a great day, and today I've been working around the house on different things almost since I woke up, so I'm rather tired. I don't even want to go to Walmart tonight, but there are things I can no longer wait on -- I need stamps, I need cigarettes, the cats need another bag of their food, and I'm on my last roll of toilet paper. I'm also dreadfully low on actual food for myself in the house. I considered ordering a pizza -- as I do have the money for it, yes -- but decided against it as I wasn't in the mood. I haven't had pizza since the weekend before our last big snowstorm that closed down the university for a few days, but I have to be in the mood for it and it has to sound appealing to me before I'll get it.

I've been making a mental list for stuff I'll need to do/get when my tax refunds come in before I send the rest of the money to Daisy for living expenses/apartment and wedding stuff. I need to pay down my credit cards, for example, and pay whatever bills I have -- including paying for the Publisher's Clearing House stuff I got for the parents. I also have a few items on Amazon -- important ones, not frivolous purchases -- that I need to get, such as some cables/adapters, possibly an inexpensive shop-vac, and an external HD to backup my files (which I've needed for years, badly, and I've been putting off getting). The rest goes to her for whatever she needs/we need, and she may end up socking some of it away so that we can open a joint checking account with it, as that's one of our first priorities once we're married -- it'll make any cash/check wedding gifts really easy to deposit and keep track of in one place, plus (obviously) it'll become our primary bank account. My bank account in West Virginia is going to be practically empty once my job at the university ends and I get my last paycheck near the end of May, as that's what I use to pay all my bills with and I'll have to pay all of them off shortly before and/or shortly after I move, closing accounts with the electric/water/cable companies and the like.

I actually may not have to close my cable (read: internet) account, just transfer addresses on it -- Cox is in Omaha, too, and they have the same plans/rate structure as they have here. I know this because Daisy's parents have the same plan/internet speed I do, and pay the same I do every month for it -- we looked it up. So it may be fairly easy to just call them and say "Hey, I'm moving, here's the new address, turn it off here on date X and on there on date Y," and just hook up the modem and router when I get there. Even if they do some shady, somewhat underhanded business practices sometimes, they've always had wonderful customer service. I told Daisy this and told her to hold off on anything involving the cable, because if I can do that I'll just do that and make it easier.

I filled out the apartment info sheet/application tonight in its entirety and now have it ready to go; all I have to do is print it, print a copy of my pay stub, give them a photocopy of my license, and fax it all on Tuesday.

"Is there anything utilities-wise included in the rent?" I asked Daisy. "For example, most apartments include water and trash in the rent, some include gas or cable/internet as well."

Don't laugh; the last actual apartment I lived in included water/trash and gas in the rent; some big, expensive places -- even here -- include free internet as well. In my last apartment, I only had to pay a $40 or so a month electric bill and a $30 a month internet bill in addition to the rent -- which was, sadly, half of what this place's rent will be. You bet your ass I want to know if anything's included for the amount we'll be paying to live there.

"Trash is," she said. "Or water. I can't remember. I think it's trash."

"Most cities/areas bundle that together," I said. "I've never lived anywhere that didn't."

My water/trash bill here in Newton is $80 a month, if not more. They added an extra $20+ charge to our bills every month about three months ago to help pay for the new water treatment plant. This month, my water bill was $82. Bills in Kansas are outrageous for everything. I mentioned before how my electric bills here in the frozen tundra of winter are usually over $200 a month -- that wasn't a joke. This month it was $150. The most I ever paid for electric anywhere else I lived was about $70 a month -- and that was in the hottest of hot summers when the window-unit air conditioner had to be running near constantly. I try not to run the central air here any more than I have to in the summer, because it does the same thing to my electric bill that the furnace does. Luckily, I won't have to deal with that anymore.

According to what the apartment manager lady told Daisy, the average utility bills for that apartment are much less than what I've been paying here -- but remember, it's also for an apartment and not a house. This is good, because we'll have enough financial finagling to do anyhow regardless of where we're working, whenever and wherever I can get a new job up there.

Anyway.

None of the stressful family issues have been resolved; I don't exactly expect them to be resolved anytime soon, either. There's nothing I can really do about any of them, so in the meantime I have to put my focus on, and spend time on, the immediate things that are going on in my life and around me, and take care of issues one thing at a time. Life goes on. Even train wrecks get cleaned up eventually, right?

Tomorrow I shall sleep in and get up whenever I wake up to work on all of my student stuff, pay at least one of the PCH order bills, if not both, and be a hermit the rest of the day. I'm really glad my weekend is only halfway over. The feeling of knowing that I can sleep as long as I need to sleep in tomorrow -- hopefully to decompress and alleviate some of the stress around me -- is somewhat comforting, at least.

Don't Mean Nothing

Spring semester: day fifty-four




It's been a...rather difficult past 36 hours or so. I've been really tired, my allergies have been killing me, and I've been dealing with snags and problems with almost everything from every angle. I wanted to go to bed hours ago, despite the fact that I didn't wake up until nearly noon today and it's only 11PM now. I'm just...what is the best descriptive term to use here? Weary, I suppose. There are a lot of things going on, and all of them are stressful with only a few of them being good. The biggest one involves family and personal issues out of my control, and while I'm not going to get into them here, let me say that they are indeed distressing -- but nobody's dying, or anything like that, so eh.

It turns out that I don't have to mail the apartment info to the manager lady who's working with Daisy; I can fax it all to them on Tuesday when I get back to campus. The manager lady was, however, nice enough to email me with the mailing address if I need it. So, when I get to main campus on Tuesday I'll make all the copies and printouts I need of everything, and I'll more than likely fax them all up there that afternoon. Daisy gets to do a walkthrough of an identical place on April 11th to get a feel for it and the space/take measurements/etc, and as soon as everything gets cleared she gets to sign the lease on the 1st. I will sign it as well upon my move-in up there, whenever we get all of that worked out.

Daisy wanted to know if I want her to go pick out some furniture before the move -- her parents are apparently giving us at least one couch and maybe a chair for the living room, but she wants to have some more stuff around the house (obviously) before the wedding.

"It doesn't matter to me either way," I said. "I trust your judgment. If you want to go get some stuff before I move in, and set it up before we get all of my stuff up there, that's fine."

"I didn't want to pick anything out without you if it was important to you that you help choose," she said.

"Eh, again, doesn't really matter to me. If you see something you want, and we can afford it, go for it, babe," I replied. "When I get my tax refunds, whatever I send to you, I expect you to do whatever you want/need to do with it. If you want to get furniture with it, fine. If you need it for rent/deposit/other expenses, that's fine too."

I only said this because I wasn't sure where this magical furniture money was going to come from. Neither of us are exactly rolling in wealth at the moment -- tonight, for example, I paid my electric and water bills, effectively cutting my bank account balance in half. She explained to me that she had a budget for everything involving the wedding and the move, and right now she was currently quite a bit under-budget because she got such a great deal on the catering -- less than half of what we were expecting. And Nebraska Furniture Mart (which is based in Omaha) not only has a massive selection, but an apparently massive clearance section.

Yeah. It's that big. It takes up a large chunk of that section of town. No foolin'.

So, anyway, she may do that. I reminded her that I have a fair amount of furniture I'll be bringing with me regardless, though most of the more useless stuff will probably be brought with me just to throw it away or recycle it, as I can't do that here (at least not easily, anyway). All of the living room furniture, for example -- save for my coffee table and TV stand -- will be gotten rid of. The futon is broken, badly, and the couch is really heavy and practically useless. That's why Daisy wants to look for furniture. She's looking for stuff to replace that furniture, as she doesn't have living room furniture of her own. I've given her my blessing to get what she needs if she can find it.

I've tried to keep myself busy and de-stressed by doing work around the house. Tonight I did all of the laundry I had to do and went through my DVDs and video games collection in order to pick and choose the ones I needed to sell. I will soon do the same with my videotapes, music CDs, and books, in order to ready everything for the yard sale next month. Tomorrow, if the weather permits it, my big task is to try to clean off the back deck and trash everything that needs to be trashed, as well as hose it all down and make it as clean as I can. That'll take at least two hours or so, if not longer, and I'm not going to do it if it's cold and/or rainy. I'll have to do the same thing in another week or two with the garage and storage room -- I really can't wait any longer on that, and cleaning what I can out of there now will only be helpful for later when we're readying to move. Every week, I want to clean out another room or area of the house so that it's easier to pack up when I need to pack it up, and that will involve a lot of trashing and recycling of different things. Everything I can get rid of, I will be getting rid of. That's just what needs to happen, sadly. It can't really be avoided. I've probably wasted too much time now as it is, and will be busting my ass between now and the move to get everything done.

I also have to go out tomorrow night -- probably around this time -- to do my grocery shopping and see how many boxes I can get from Walmart as well. I have a lot of different things I need to get that cannot wait any more, and I desperately need to acquire some more boxes if I want to continue to be able to pack things as well. Ideally, at least with my clothing and dishes and the like, once I wash them I'd like to pack them directly into boxes right out of the dryer and dishwasher so that it'll save me time, and that way I'll get that stuff all boxed up gradually instead of all at once in a panic. I've been doing this for what I can, but obviously I can't do it for everything.

The grocery shopping, of course, is another issue altogether -- while yes, I can get some things I need, I also have to eat everything I can out of the freezer and pantry between now and when I move so that it's not a mess to move overall. That means the week or so before I move, I'll probably be surviving on a few pizzas or Hot Pockets or something like that just so that I don't have to migrate a ton of food with me to Omaha. Daisy is already planning to stock the house with everything she can when it comes to foodstuffs, so the less I have to bring with me, the better. I have stuff in the pantry, even dry goods, which have been in there since I moved into this house in 2009 (or worse, they've been in that mix of stuff since I lived in Missouri), and that stuff needs to be tossed or donated.

I'm not a wasteful person, but after so many years of living here and so many things I've just...accumulated, I feel like so much of it is just going to go in the trash or recycle bin. And I really don't know how I feel about that, or how I'm supposed to feel about that. In another life, another time, it was useful to me, or otherwise I wouldn't own it...but now? I have so many things gathering dust and cobwebs. When the great gutting happens, it's going to be swift and brutal.

Oh well. It's all for the greater good, I suppose. I am starting a new life in Omaha, essentially. I'll be a married man, a husband to my wife -- and, eventually, a father. That's what's important to me now. There are only so many things I can keep, and only so many things I need. It will feel good to leave Kansas behind, honestly. I've done my time here, I've paid my dues, and now it's time to move on -- and I'll move on as a much different, wiser, battle-hardened person than I was before I came here.

Homeward Found

Spring semester: day fifty-three

I entered class on Tuesday night to thunderous applause and cheering, as an April Fool's joke that I didn't get until they explained it to me. I'm not sure what was more sad and pathetic -- the fact that they'd only cheer and applaud me as a joke, or the fact that out of the nineteen students on my roster, only six were there, setting a new record for futility in that course. Spanned across both classes I taught on Tuesday, I had four different students automatically fail for absences alone. I waited until yesterday to send out emails about it, lest said students think said emails were an April Fool's joke in themselves.

While yes, that's four fewer sets of papers and exams I'll have to grade this semester, come on, man. There's like, a month of classes left. And they're paying for that F, too. Quite literally. It costs money to go to college, you know.

I never outright failed a college course. There were courses (well, one or two) that I should have failed, buuuuuut...I either dropped them or buckled down and did just enough to get my C (one or two courses there), or there was a hell of a grading curve on the final exam that got me a B in the class (Astronomy 101). That astronomy course was set up like a graduate-level astrophysics course, and was taught by the chair of the department at the time -- and I think what happened was that he tried to fail everyone, the department wouldn't let him, and he had to pass us all. Hah.

Anyway. So that's disheartening, but it's less for me to grade as the semester winds down, so moving on...

The rest of my week was fine. Normal, even. No cases of mistaken identity, no morally-questionable flyers hanging up anywhere, no bizarre coincidences or other strange circumstances -- I taught my classes, I came home, I went to bed, and I got up to teach my classes the next day. With the exception of the threat of some nasty thunderstorms last night -- storms that never hit me here, but were all around the area and were pretty to watch -- this was just like any other week.

Lingering effects of the storms, which were close enough to make some beautiful lightning for my drive home from my night 210 class and light up the skies here in Newton while I was eating dinner last night, persisted into this morning. My electric flickered like crazy several times this morning when I got up, and kicked me off the internet at least twice. I'd put the car in the garage when I came home last night as there was the possibility of large hail, but I did so for no reason -- nothing at all hit Newton except for a bit of very light rain/sprinkles. It's that time of year, though; tornadoes and severe storms are firing up all across the midwest, and we have officially entered "tornado season."

I have friends and family who have never lived out here who have, in the past, asked me how I can do it (meaning, live where there are tornadoes all the time) without going crazy. It's an odd question for me, really. I've lived in the midwest, in both Missouri and Kansas, since 2006. In another few months, I'll be able to add Nebraska to that list. In that time -- all of that time -- the closest a tornado has been to me has been...oh, 30 or 40 miles away? Something like that. Give or take a few miles, anyway. Now, mind you, I've had some close calls; some of the twisters in the April 2012 tornado outbreak were pretty close to me, and if some of them hadn't changed direction they could've taken out Newton (some EF4s hit about an hour or so north of me, and a few smaller ones hit around the Wichita area). However, the one thing I can't stress enough to my friends and family who don't live out here is that the midwest is big, and the midwest is flat and stretched out. A lot. There's a lot of open space here for tornadoes to roam through, and especially in Kansas, most of that open space is farmland or fields, not cities or towns. Obviously, that doesn't mean tornadoes don't hit cities or towns out here (just look at Joplin, Moore, Greensburg, or Andover) -- but the risk of living out here during tornado season is nowhere near what people outside the area think it is. Unless it was being tested (and they test it every Monday at noon) I've never heard the tornado siren in Newton go off, and I've been living here for five years. Even when I lived in Missouri, I only heard it go off maybe three times over the course of the three years I lived there. Most of the severe thunderstorms, even, that I've lived through out here aren't comparable to the worst thunderstorms I lived through when I was in West Virginia. It's an overblown, overhyped statistic. Daisy and her family lived in Florida for some time -- I'm guessing they saw many more tornadoes there than they see in Nebraska.

Now that I've said this, of course, watch a tornado threaten my wedding day.

There have been some big updates on that front, actually -- this morning Daisy put down the deposit on our new apartment. It opens up on the 11th for our own walkthroughs, and it's available to us to begin moving into on May 1 -- when we'll formally take rentership (is that a word?) of it.

This is, to be sure, exciting, but nerve-wracking news. I, of course, will be teaching for the first half of May -- and what time I'm not teaching will be spent giving/grading final exams and packing/cleaning this house. During those two weeks or so, I can only assume that Daisy will be moving her own stuff/furniture/etc into the place, and once the semester ends we'll both be doing the same with my own stuff, with the goal of me being completely moved out of this place by the end of May (with some time to spare, more than likely). We've discussed the logistics of this at length, especially when it comes to timeframes, moving trucks being rented, utilities being shut off and bills forwarded, etc. It can be done easily if we schedule our times/days effectively.

As for the place itself, I've seen the floor plan and I've seen the photos -- it's nice. It's a second-story two-bedroom, two-bathroom place, something like 1400sqft, and it's in a very secure complex with access to two gyms and two swimming pools. Daisy's oldest sister used to live in the same complex several years ago, so she and her family are at least somewhat familiar with it as it is. It's six miles from the parents' house and about the same distance from the wedding venue, it's in a decent part of town, and there's easy access to major highways/roads/interstates. There's also only a one-time deposit for the cats, and unlike other places, they don't require the cats to be declawed (because yes, many places do require that inhumane, barbaric procedure on your cats before they'll let them in), and while it's a little higher than our original price range, we can still afford it -- Daisy herself will be able to cover May and June's rent alone, and I'll be able to help her along with whatever money I can send/provide from my tax returns once they arrive.

My point? Daisy did a good job here. I'm really proud of her.

This is not all set in stone yet, obviously; all that's been paid for thus far is the deposit, which reserves the place for us; no leases have yet been signed (and won't be until May 1, of course). If we change our mind for some reason between now and then, Daisy gets the deposit back and we wash our hands of that place. That's unlikely to happen, of course, since that would put us back at square one, but it's good to know on some level that we're not completely locked in/locked down yet. In the meantime, I was sent the "application" for the place (y'know, since I'll be living there and all) by the apartment manager, which I'll have to mail out in a few days via snail-mail -- while I could do it and send it back via email tonight, they need a copy of my driver's license. Like, a photocopy of it. I don't have a scanner (and as far as I know, the department doesn't have a functional one either; the one we had broke over a year ago, and it was taken away/not replaced when all of the new computers were installed earlier this semester). So that has to be photocopied and mailed. They need my information, even though Daisy's the one signing the lease, because I'm the only one of us who has a rental history -- Daisy does not. My rental history is good, obviously, so that doesn't matter, but they need to have something on record there.

I'm actually quite excited, as nerve-wracking as all of this is for both of us. While I don't fear change or anything like that, at least not in this instance, I do dread the amount of work, cleaning, packing, and moving I'll have to be doing in the course of the next two months or so. Not to mention all of the work and coordinating surrounding the wedding and its guests, as well.

"You talk about the wedding and coordinating everyone's travel and plans like it's something you have to worry about," Daisy told me a while back. "You don't."

"Yeah, actually, for my side I do have to worry about it," I said. "You know, at least for most of the people on your side, who's coming to the wedding and who isn't, and when they'll get there and how things are going to work. And the vast majority of those people already live in Omaha or the surrounding area. For me, it's not like that. I've got a lot of people flying or driving from out of state, I've got a bunch of people I've invited who haven't RSVPed, so who knows if they're actually coming even if they say they are, and the people in my groom's party, even, are coming from five different places. I have to make sure they can all get here and all be here at the same time for the events that are going on -- and with these people, I have to be on their asses about it, otherwise this is going to be a complete and total mess on my end."

I don't even know my parents' travel plans -- my mother hasn't been in contact with me for a week, and the last time she was, she told me she didn't know what their plans would be because she didn't know what they'd do with their new dog while they were gone, since they can't bring said dog (or their cats) with them. My brother, who is my best man, is seriously concerned about the time and logistics of making the trip out here, especially since he's not exactly independently wealthy (and has a wife and three children who, though they were invited, can't afford to come). I haven't seen Parker once this semester, and have only talked to him back and forth very briefly on Twitter or Facebook since, oh, early December. April and her husband are fine and are completely on board, though I don't know what their travel plans are (but they're taking care of it). Rae, I assume, will be driving out here herself. The rest of my wedding party and guests who I know are coming have still yet to tell me where/when/how they're going to work everything out, and who knows when/if they actually will. Rae has offered to split a hotel room with a group of them (as there's a decently-sized group from the department who are either in the wedding or will otherwise be there), but I don't know if any of them have made any plans yet.

Yes, I do have to worry about these things. I do have to "keep on" people about it, or otherwise the wedding day will come and nobody from my side will be there because they fucked around and didn't take care of what they needed to do when they should've been doing it. I'm a pretty laid-back guy most of the time, but when people agree to be part of something and commit to it, then basically ignore it and/or hem and haw about it until the last minute, I can and will get just as dictatorial with them as I do with students in the classroom who don't follow directions.

Daisy doesn't have to deal with this sort of stuff with her people -- even those coming from out of state (or even Canada), be they friends or family or both, have made their plans, they've RSVPed one way or the other, they've done what needs to be done and set aside the time to be there at the wedding when it happens, and they're excited about it. When I can barely get anyone on my side to do the same, or even care enough to try? That's depressing and sad, and I'm really not even sure what that says about me as a person.

Still, there is some hope in the world when it comes to my friends and family, even those who aren't attending said wedding -- one of my longtime friends messaged me last night to ask for the wedding registry information, as she wanted to get us something. I found that incredibly sweet, honestly. She doesn't have to do anything for us (nobody does, really) but it was an amazingly nice gesture.

Since we now know how much room we'll have (approximately) we've trimmed down the registry quite a bit; I took off a lot of the large furniture and other more expensive (or now unavailable items) I had on there (a few dressers, a chest freezer, a coffee table, two different couches and chairs) and added a few more smaller items that we'll need -- some bathroom stuff, a few towel sets in different colors, etc. Do people even still use wedding registries anyway? Is it tacky to have a wedding registry, even? I don't know. I haven't been married before, obviously, so I have no clue. I don't know if either of my parents had any sort of registry set up for their previous marriages. I'm also hoping, not-so-secretly, that a lot of people just bypass the registry completely and give us gift cards, cash, or checks. We absolutely will need the money, especially as, while I have applied for many jobs and will apply for many more, I don't know where or when I'll be working again after the semester ends.

Anyway.

The other wedding development this week was that Daisy booked the catering from Fazoli's -- and got an excellent deal on it. It cost about half of what we were originally expecting, which (of course) cuts down on the overall costs for the wedding. This is good, as we now have an apartment -- or will have one soon -- to pay for. With the catering set up, everything is now in place for the wedding itself but the little things we'll do in the last few days beforehand, such as the small amount of decorating necessary and getting the speakers/sound system for the music (which, apparently, we're borrowing from the husband of one of our friends). I'm guessing much of the money from my taxes that I give to Daisy -- however much that may be -- will go towards paying for the incidentals and for stuff we have to have real cash on hand for, such as paying for the security guard at the venue (because yes, we have to do that) or for the photographer or the cleaning crew.

Or, y'know, for the cat deposit on the apartment.

Some of the stuff I ordered from Publisher's Clearing House came in this week -- my Mother's Day presents for both of our mothers came in, as well as the tabletop fruit basket set that I got for Daisy (rather cheaply as well, I might add). I'm still waiting on the Father's Day present for Daisy's dad, and I still have to find something for my own dad as well, of course. The present for Daisy's mother was "on backorder" according to the shipping notification I got yesterday, and surprisingly, it arrived today -- so I'm guessing it wasn't on backorder for very long. I have to pay the bills for that stuff, as well as my electric and water bills, this weekend. I need to get more stamps for those as well -- not to mention the apartment information sheet/photocopy of my license -- which I'll get when I go shopping this weekend. I'm really hoping that my tax refunds come in soon, because I've got a lot of stuff to cover this month, and with the whole insurance screw-up on last week's check, I have about $200-250 less right now than I normally would to take care of it. Not to mention that, y'know, Daisy needs some money from me soon to take care of some of the aforementioned above things as well, and I can't give her any until I actually have some.

On the plus side? My insurance/dental/prescription cards are pretty. Too bad I only have about two months to use them (if I need to) before that coverage expires.

No, I haven't gotten any calls back or emails about the jobs I've applied for. Still waiting on those too. In the meantime, a large chunk of this weekend will again be spent looking for and applying for more positions in Omaha.

I have a somewhat light weekend ahead of me. I will be editing through my 210 students' proposal drafts, and will be re-reading/lesson planning stuff for my 011 and 102 students for Tuesday. A week from today, next Thursday, is my conference day with my 102 students, and they don't have a formal class but will instead be meeting with me for ten minutes each in the office I used on West campus last semester. Because my weekend is still fairly light (I'm between papers/projects right now) I'm going to be spending more time cleaning and packing, and will now certainly be spending time getting everything ready for the city-wide garage sale -- which is a month from today. I've made my decision that this is absolutely something I need to do, and I'm going to sell everything I can. That means I need to gut parts of this house in the next few weeks and will be organizing everything I need in one spot in the basement/bedroom so that I can easily move it in and out of the garage and house that morning. It'll not only make moving much easier but it will give me extra money, even if that extra money is less than $100 or so. It'll be worth the work just to get rid of a lot of the stuff, and again, it'll save me time on packing. If the weather's nice, I need to clean off the back deck this weekend and throw away/recycle everything out there, too.

So yeah, lots of stuff to be done. I'll keep everyone updated on everything, of course, as I always do.

Spring Chickens

Spring semester: day fifty-one
April Fool's Day

It's still, technically, Monday night -- even though it's 3AM. And, of course, despite the fact that I took my sleeping pills around 6PM, I couldn't sleep past 1:30 in the morning or so. Insomnia strikes again.

As you folks know, my insomnia and my sleeping patterns are weird. They're both made worse by my near-constant godawful spring allergies which will not go away until the climate stabilizes and doesn't flip-flop between temperatures in the 70s and temperatures in the 30s, 40s, or 50s. It was 73 outside when I went to bed last night -- warmer outside than it was in the house, even. It is 39 right now.

When I've slept over the course of the past week or so, it has been harder than ever to actually get up when I have to or need to. Like, really hard. I don't know why. I'll awaken and my body will fight with me to just keep sleeping. This is part of the reason why I slept until 3PM on Sunday afternoon -- my body just wanted to stay asleep. It didn't want to move, it didn't want to be awake and mobile, it just wanted to sleep and stay in bed.

Of course, when I woke up tonight/this morning/whatever you want to call it -- when I needed to be asleep whether I wanted to or not -- it was the exact opposite. I was awake, I was alert, and my body wanted to be up. There was no telling it otherwise, there was no reasoning with it (even though I'd taken sleeping pills eight hours before so that this exact scenario wouldn't happen), it was done. It had made up its mind: I was going to be up and awake. So here I am.

This puts me in a somewhat difficult spot. On one hand, being awake for 18 hours straight is, really, not that big of a deal for me. Hell, in undergrad I used to go double that without sleep on a regular basis, and did so in grad school sometimes as well. But I'm not that person anymore -- I'm older now; I tire more easily. I'm not, as they say, a "spring chicken" anymore. If I can (and it's rare that I can), I don't like being awake for more than 14 hours or so at a time -- if I'm awake at 5AM, for example, I seriously want to go back to bed for the night at 7PM or so. I awoke at 2AM, so this means that around 4PM this afternoon -- three full hours before my night class tonight even starts -- I'll really be getting tired. At that time I will more than likely be grading through all of the papers I will have collected from my students this morning, which will make it worse. Looks like my coffee pot in the office will get some exercise this afternoon.

This also isn't really a huge deal -- I can come home tonight and go directly to bed if I so choose, and sleep as long as I need to. I don't have to get up early tomorrow; my Wednesday class is a 7PM class, my 210 students. I can get rest without any issue.

Last night before bed, I applied for an editor position at a company in Omaha. Daisy found the job posting somewhere and forwarded it to me a few days ago, and it was the one website that, in the overnight hours, was constantly down for maintenance. Last night it was finally up, so I applied. As it's an editor position, there's a lot of writing and editing involved -- right up my alley for a guy who has taught composition English courses for over four years, was one of the nonfiction editors for the university's literary journal for three years, and before that, was a newspaper reporter with tons of articles written/published. Again, as I said, I don't apply for positions I don't have a shot at, or positions where I know I'm not qualified to do. This one seems to have gone under the radar quite a bit -- I get daily job alerts from Monster.com, and I've never seen it pop up. If I had, believe me, I would've applied for it in a heartbeat anyway -- editor positions are hard to find, and writing positions are even harder unless you want to work freelance (and starve, and end up having ultra-difficult taxes to do at the end of the year). I don't.

As an aside, Daisy has told me that she's doing the household taxes once we're married, filing jointly and all that. She does hers all online. I don't trust the online systems, really, and never have -- most of you know this about me. The one time I did my taxes online, I ended up owing the feds something like $60 that year. Every other year when I've done them manually I get a huge refund, and it's accurate, and I'm sure I'm not doing anything wrong (otherwise, y'know, they'd tell me and adjust my refund accordingly, which they've done once or twice in the past when I've made a mistake on a line here or there). I don't know what her refunds are like or what they'll be like when we file jointly, but she also makes a lot more money than I do right now...like, more than twice as much. A lot of her own refund this year was set aside to help fund the wedding, just like a good chunk of mine will be used to help pay the rent/deposit on our new place in Omaha once we get it. The rest of mine will go towards paying my bills down as much as possible, and possibly zeroing out the balance on at least one, if not both, of my smaller credit cards. I have the feeling I'll need those cards, if not desperately so, this coming summer.

Again, it'll probably be mid-month or so at the least before I get either of my tax refunds. The sooner I get them, the better. Obviously.

As it's chilly outside right now (37, apparently, according to my desktop weather app), I chose to wear a pair of pants, a t-shirt, and a zip-up fleece jacket today. It's supposed to be about 60 or so for the high -- if it were going to be that temperature all day, and was that temperature now, I'd probably wear shorts. It's not, so I'm not. I may get to wear shorts to teach in tomorrow evening, as it's supposed to be around 70 tomorrow and rainy. That means it'll be warm and slightly muggy in the evening. I am positively aching to wear shorts, short-sleeve shirts/t-shirts, and sandals to teach in every day. Spring thus far has been like a car whose engine will only fire up every fourth or fifth time you turn the key -- the rest of the time it just spins but won't turn over.

Or, of course, it's only really warm and nice on the days I don't have to leave the house -- like it was all weekend when I was off.

I probably shouldn't make car references like that when I am now concerned about my car's ability to actually start and run, right? Right.

Anyway.

I mentioned briefly before that tonight in my 011 class, it's conference night. I'm a bit ahead of schedule with those students -- which is good, because I'm really right where I need to be overall in that class with its assignments -- so tonight is conferences and that's it. No lessons, no journal assignments/topics, no coverage of chapters or readings out of either textbook -- just the conferences. I told my students last week that if they don't have a draft of a paper to conference with me on, they may as well not show up, as they'll be sitting there doing nothing. I also said that of course, if they don't show up, they'll still be counted absent. If they don't conference with me, they're shooting themselves in the foot anyhow.

Why? Because on conference night, they're supposed to bring in a draft of their paper that's due the next class period. They're supposed to sit down with me at my desk and talk about it with me one-on-one. If they do that, obviously, I tell them all of the errors that need to be fixed, I show them places where their paragraphs/writing in general could be improved or added to, and I point out awkward wording to them so that they can go fix it and get a great grade on the paper when they turn it in to me the next week. In addition, they get other sets of student eyes on their papers when they trade them back and forth for peer-review while they wait. I don't require students to conference with me. They can do whatever they want, turn in a good or bad paper regardless of their conference, etc. But it is one of the ways I structure the class in order to help my students. Most professors probably don't do it the way I do. Most professors in my position probably wouldn't do it at all, or they'd opt for the more traditional workshop format for their papers (I believe that's the way the original 011 syllabus has it set up).

Therefore, if students don't conference with me, they're choosing not to get direct one-on-one help with me when some of them absolutely need it, and it's on them -- they're shooting themselves in the foot. But, then again, as more than half of my class has basically decided to stop showing up or doing any of the work at this point anyhow, I'm guessing those students don't care. I'll have at least four or five students who, if they don't show up tonight, will automatically fail for the semester. Most of them are the ESL students who shouldn't be in the class anyhow, and who seemed to give up on it and its coursework a week or two before Spring Break. Oh well. Again, I can't completely rewrite the class for students who barely speak or understand English -- 011 is a class designed for native speakers and writers.

Before you think I'm sounding cruel, cold, or uncaring, I will say that I've had many ESL students in my classes who have done exceedingly well in them, including in the classes I'm teaching this semester...especially when they've shown up, done the work, and asked for questions and guidance when necessary, of course. I can only do so much as a professor -- I am but their guide. I can't write papers for them, and I can't show up knocking on the doors of their dorm rooms or homes telling them that they have to come to class.

As I also mentioned before, I need to talk to the ESL/remedial director about this problem today if she's there and in the office (she's been really ill as of late), especially as I've got many students in that class who are about to fail either for absences and/or will fail mathematically after this next paper is due. This is the most problem-fraught class I've ever taught at the university simply because it's a night class and because a lot of students enrolled in it shouldn't be. My professorial evaluations for my classes, all of them, are within the next week and a half or so. I know the students who are there in my 011 class that night will give me good evaluations, because they're the ones who actually show up, do their work, and ask questions about their work.

As an aside, apparently they've changed the way evaluations are being done -- at least for adjuncts/lecturers -- from this semester forward. We got a memo about it late last week. Now all of us have to give our evaluations to the directors of whatever programs we're in/under so that they can individually evaluate us one by one. This has never happened before. I don't know what that's about, of course, but it's new, and the GTAs don't have to do it, just us. I had fleeting fantasies about them giving us raises for our good work, but I'm sure it's just so they can bitch at the instructors who get lower evaluations than others, and will probably use said evaluations as reasoning for not renewing their contracts for the next semester. I'm realistic.

Of course, I plan for this to be the last semester I teach at this university anyway, so it won't affect me any if that is what it ends up being used for. Which, of course, wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Today is April Fool's Day. On many April firsts in the past, I have not had to teach or attend class, and I could avoid all the bullshit involved with all liars' favorite day on the calendar. Unfortunately, this year that's not the case, as I not only have to teach but it's my long day as well. I don't find April Fool's Day jokes or pranks funny, and never have. It's not that I'm a gullible person, it's that I hate dishonesty in all its forms. As such, I don't make jokes or pranks, and when someone tries to fool me with one, I generally give them this kind of look:

It's just stupid to me, that's all. I told Daisy that it's one of the reasons I plan to hole up in my office this afternoon grading papers (aside from the fact that, well, I need to grade papers) -- it's so I don't have to deal with jokes and pranks from anyone. It's so childish. The worst part is that they're always hurtful jokes or pranks, too. When someone posts a news story, for example, that says Netflix has bought the contract and will be producing 26 new episodes of Firefly, that's not a funny joke. That's hurtful and angers/saddens a lot of people when it turns out to be untrue.

That prank, by the way, is an annual one, and appears every year on one site or another. I've already seen it once today. It's not a fun little lie or joke. It's just evil.

I have drained an entire pot of coffee in the four hours I've been awake thus far, and have noticed no increase in energy or alertness, nor any lack of fatigue. I told Daisy that when I get home tonight -- probably a little earlier than usual due to the conferences in my night class -- I will probably want to eat and go directly to bed. She doesn't have any plans for the evening, though, so it feels like I'm abandoning her when we actually have time we could be talking. I can't help it that much; I'll be awake and alert for at least a little while after I get home, but it will more than likely just be long enough to eat and check my school email/messages before I'll want to crash. It is a very, very rare occurrence that no matter how tired I am beforehand, I don't need to "wind down" when I get home. I can count on one hand how many times I've come home from work or school, disrobed at the door, and have fallen into bed to sleep the entire night/day through. No, usually I need about an hour or more of simple "decompression time" before I can rest. Tonight that hour will be spent eating and getting ready for bed...and then bed.

I can, though, take solace in the fact that three weeks from tomorrow, my Wednesday night 210 class will end. They turn in their final projects on the 16th, and then on the 23rd they give their oral presentations (which acts as their final exam), and the class is over at that point. If I had more students in that class, it would go another week or two until the actual end of the semester for those presentations alone, but as I only have eight students -- all of whom are doing really well -- well, we can wrap things up and be done. All of them are psyched up about this, too.

I've tried to plot out my schedule after that point because it'll be interesting to see my comings and goings for the rest of the semester:

April 23 (W): 210 class ends; no more driving to West campus (or anywhere else) on Wednesdays after that.

May 1 (R): 102 class takes their final exam, class ends. No more driving to West campus at all after that morning.

May 6 (T): The only day I have to be on main campus before final exams, and only for my night class's last session that night at 7. Also, probably the only day this semester I'll actually get to park on campus instead of taking the shuttle down.

Apparently, by the time the end of the semester rolls around, I'll be saving a ton of money on gasoline for the car and will be able to get some good sleep on a regular basis again. This also helps me out because it'll give me more time to be packing and cleaning up this house.

I also hope that the final exam schedules are released by the time May 6 rolls around, or otherwise I'm going to be completely out of the loop and will have to call/email the department administrator to have her forward me the times and schedules. With the department being shorthanded, I'm guessing it'll take longer to get those done and ready this year compared to previous years/semesters.

So that's what's going on in my life right now. I leave the house in about an hour (almost exactly an hour, actually) to start my really long, exhausting day of teaching. I keep looking at the calendar and mumbling to myself that I really only have a month of this to go, stay the course, stay the course, etc.