It's been a long time since I posted something on the site. People still ask me if I plan to do another Probe sometime, but I really don't have a chance. It would be impossible. "I can't even keep my website updated." I sub everyday, which is easy, but I also pick up Lydia at daycare and usually play around with her from about 3-9 or 10pm. When Keri has her I'm usually cooking or picking up etc. While I have her Keri does laundry or pays bills etc. It's really difficult for either one of us to get anything done if we don't have eachothers' help. Some nights we go shopping or something, but we don't go out until the weekend. We usually get in one or maybe two shows on Tivo when Lydia starts napping around 7:30. (Our favorites are Buffy and The Shield.) After 10pm the women go to bed and it is my alone time, but I still need time to walk the dogs and make lunches for the following day. I go to my usual sites on the Internet and by the time I do one or two emails I'm a vegetable. It's not a hard life, but definitely a world different than the lifestyle I had when I published The Probe. I did get to go out and do some drinking with Bill and friends in Sac over the weekend and the weekend before that Stacy and Brad came over, we got Showtime for the Tyson fight and then went to the Pleasanton Brewery while Lydia hung with my mom. So life is not all routine. In fact we are spending a week in Maui later this month. Keri works pretty hard everyday and her employer is rewarding everyone in the office with a week at the Sheraton in Maui. They are even throwing in an extra $300 spending money for every couple. This is on top of her large bonus. Today I was in a classroom and trying to get some reading in as usual. There was some cocky-ass senior who loudly asked me what I was reading. (He was angry because I wouldn't let the class move seats and he was trying to get under my skin.) I held up my Maui travel book. He read the title and said "Maui??" searching his young brain for a smart-ass comment. I just shrugged and said, "I'm going to Maui." It was kind of funny, shut him up. I watched the movie "Ice Age", in Spanish, six times today. The teacher I covered didn't even have a prep period, tough day. Other than the travel book I read the day's paper and the latest issue of the New Yorker. There was a really goofy article trying to vilify the people who run the nuclear power plant near New York. After 9/11 there are people who want to shut it down. They are afraid terrorists are going to attack it. The author was trying to suggest it was unsafe because there weren't enough roads to evacuate everyone in a ten-mile radius of the plant. I doubt terrorist are going to bother with a nuclear power plant. They'd do more damage and have less security to deal with by going after an oil refinery or chemical plant. The radiation fall out from a nuclear power plant explosion wouldn't even kill a fraction of the people that could be killed by crashing into a busy nightclub or something. How many people died at Three Mile Island? None? The worst nuclear power plant accident in history, the Chernobyl "disaster" killed only 26 people. (Yet it got 100 times more bad press than the chemical plant disaster in India that killed 900 people.) More people die in coal mines and oil refinery accidents every year than have ever died from nuclear power. France gets 80% of their power from their numerous nuclear power plants. No one has ever died from them or grown three arms. They build them next to schools because they are safer and cleaner than industrial plants. Nuclear power plants only let off steam so there isn't any pollution from them at all. The people that work at nuclear power plants get exposed to more radiation from material in their homes and gardens than from the controlled atmosphere of their work sites. Plus, in France they recycle their spent fuel rods so they don't have to worry about digging a big hole in the desert to bury them in. It's, by far, the cleanest source of energy in the world, but easily frightened Americans got so brainwashed by large scale scare tactics that no amount of logic will quell their irrational fear of those spooky looking cooling towers.
Anyway, so I'm still a sub teacher, I like to read and it's not that bad, even when it's bad. It's the easiest job I ever had. Back in '96 I took courses to get my full teaching credential, but stopped before the student teaching portion because I was too involved with The Probe. I tried to go back in 2001 but found out that my Social studies waiver from Cal Poly had expired and the school refused to issue a new one. Without the waiver I'd have to pass the SSAT and Praxis which I really doubt I could do now, plus it cost $300 just to spend all weekend trying. Even people straight out of school usually opt for the waiver (an extra semester or two of classes). Anyway, two weeks ago I met with an advisor and she suggested I petition Hayward State for a waiver. She said they are more student friendly than Cal Poly. Chances are they are going to review my transcripts and tell me I can qualify if I take two or three classes at Hayward State to meet updated standards. However, I have to finish my student teaching this year. In order to do that I have to get a "4/5 letter" from a Hayward State explaining that I can begin student teaching because I am 80% of the way there with my waiver. The advisor told me these are hard to get so I need to "beg" - really let them know my career depends on it. I also have to take an added computer class requirement. I have to finish all of this in 2003 because my classes from '96 will expire at the end of the year. If I don't have my credential by then I have to retake those other classes. I did look into taking the test, but the next one is scheduled while we will be in Hawaii. Besides, the advisor told me I had to get current History, Psychology, and Geography text books from Advanced Placement high school classes if studying was going to do me any good. I test about twice as smart as I am in real life, but I really doubt I could pass that test. I'll probably try in the summer anyway. I was stressing about all of this while ordering my transcripts from Cal Poly and Chabot and it made me sick. I puked and blamed it on some frozen shellfish I ate. I should have done all this shit when I was young. I don't have any tolerance for it anymore.
Things are good though.