The Houghs' 400th Episode: And the Sun Rises

Happy New Years Day, nation.

You know, I always feel bad for this holiday - nobody really celebrates it.  I've never actually heard of anyone celebrating it, come to think of it.

Now, before you guffaw "wait a sec, me and my wife always go over to so and so house's for their annual New Year's Eve bash and watch plastic Ryan Seacrest attempt to fill Dick Clark's shoes," I'll point out that you - like every other average Mohammed around the world (was gonna say 'Joe' there, but technically Mohammed is the most common name in the world, so there you go), celebrates New Years Eve.  The night before the holiday.

Keepin' it gangster.

New Years Eve isn't a federal holiday - it just acts like one.  Kinda like when you see suburban white kids at the mall sagging their pants and wearing flat-brimmed hats.  Thug Life, you're not fooling anyone.

Oddly enough, though, three states decided that New Years Eve should get some points for trying so hard for so long, and decided to make it an official holiday - Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

And speaking of Michigan, I think it's time to pull back the curtains and formally announce this. . .

The Houghs are moving back to Michigan.

I'll let that sink in for a sec.  Take your time.


Okay.


Years ago, when Kris and I first moved down here to America's Junk, we envisioned being down here for five years.  That was the initial plan, at least - move down to Florida, snatch a couple of teaching jobs off the local Teaching Tree, go to grad school and get a couple Masterses to become more marketable, transfer our teaching certificates back up north, and move home.  Maybe pop out a few sons along the way, who knows.  Five years seemed realistic at the time.

Jesus. . . let's take a step back and see what the hell really happened.

Camden Landings, 2007

Well, as you may or may not recall, in early January of 2007, Kris and I moved down here with a 26 ft moving truck crammed with every, last thing we owned, no job prospects a little under $3,000 to our name.  All the Florida jobs that were miraculously falling from the sky that we kept hearing about in Michigan were nowhere to be found, and the apartment we had selected (off the internet, back in Michigan) was terrible.  Small, dirty, and in a questionable neighborhood.

Still, we manned the trenches and dug in, and over the course of three months we pumped resumes and cover letters out to everywhere we could.  Our bank account dried up like the Sahara, and things weren't looking very good at all. . . but then, in mid-March, Yours Truly landed a teaching job.

The Houghs, pre-offspring

That started in August.

The light was at the end of the tunnel. . . we just had to get there.  We both worked two jobs for the next five months - Kris at 7-11, me in the garden center at Lowe's, and both of us working as part-time tutors at Huntington Learning Center.  We were broke, but we were paying our bills on time, and somehow always made it work.

I was drinking Miller High Life Lite, if that helps describe the level of poverty we were living at.

Hotwheels

I bought a flashy 2005 Ford Focus from Carmax, Kris got a job taking care of babies at Kindercare, we bought some fish, and the school year started.  Shortly afterwards, Kris got knocked up and we realized we needed a bigger apartment.  We also realized we should probably move closer to my school, since I was leaving my house every day at 6am just to make it to work on time.

(This was ridiculously overpriced)

In April of 2008, we settled in a ritzy, over-priced neighborhood a half-hour south of Conway called Hunters Creek, and moved into a three-bedroom apartment that was leaps and bounds above our old apartment.

Virgil Q's.  For life.

In June, we had Alayna. . . a girl.  Fezzig wasn't fond of her, but grandparents were, and we started receiving relatives on an increasing rotating schedule over the next seven years as a result.  My second year of working in a ghetto school started, and I decided to get grad school over and done with.  Kris went back to work, but at a different school called Primrose, which caters to the Hunters Creek yuppies and their spoiled children.  Things were looking up.

Then the recession hit.  And everything ground to a halt.

Every creature you see here died well before its time.

We were convinced we were going to lose our jobs.  At my school, a quarter of the staff was laid off, and as a second-year teacher, I was convinced I was next.  Our fish died off, but this probably had little to do with the recessoin.  We watched as more and more friends and relatives back home in Michigan lost their jobs and were forced to move out of the state in order to find work.  The idea of someday moving back to our homeland seemed more and more unrealistic, and the notion began to fade away in the distance.

Junk in the trunk.

Miraculously, the nation turned itself around.  I kept my job, and started my third year of teaching.  Kris got pregnant again, and we realized we were going to have to move again.  Around this time, her old car (her Chevy Malibu, that she had owned since college) died on her, and she was forced to buy a new car, eventually settling on a 2007 Chevy Uplander (a mini-van with an SUV front.)

Feeding a bird. . . some bird.

Fezzig wasn't fond of all the attention Alayna was getting, and was plucking all his feathers out and biting us constantly, so we regrettably gave Fezzig away to a couple of crazy bird ladies from Palm Beach, where they renamed him Ricky and gave him a better life.  In February of 2010, we moved into a problematic but affordable house in nearby Southchase, a neighborhood right next to Hunter's Creek that's just as safe and nice as Hunter's Creek, but half the price.

This house was a complete piece of shit.

Our house, however, had issues from the get-go.  The drier only dried if the exhaust pipe was stuck out into the garage, meaning we had to crack the garage door whenever we ran the drier.  The second bathroom tub leaked whenever we gave Alayna a bath, and consequently soaked the carpet in the adjoining Man Room.  Our refrigerator didn't refrigerate, our dishwasher leaked, our fence had fallen down, and there were termites. . . but we rolled up our sleeves, rallied our friends, and fought that house for the next year and half.  We painted, we repaired, and we made that house work.

Trouble brewing. . .

In May of 2010, Kris shot out Abby (another girl), so fast she couldn't get drugs to numb the pain, and consequently bellowed like a Balrog and peed all over the doctor.  A couple months later, I graduated from grad school with a Masters of Education (Arts in Teaching). received my Professional Teaching Certificate, having completed my third year of teaching under a Temporary Certificate.  This Professional Certificate guaranteed me a job for five years, and I was lucky to get it - I was the last year of teachers to which the state of Florida awarded tenure (all teachers who came in the year after I did wouldn't be so lucky.)

While my career was taking off, Kris' stalled.  She had been let go at Primrose and went on unemployment for about eight months, which provided her with plenty of time to raise two kids in our ramshackle house.  This may seem like it could've been an opportune moment to return to Michigan, seeing how I had achieved what I had set out to and Kris was receiving a steady paycheck for raising our girls, but the Rust Belt states were still feeling the wallop from the Great Recession.  There were no jobs at all in Michigan, and the future there was bleak.  We'd been in Florida for 3 1/2 years, and Kris and I realized we'd have to wait a couple more years before moving home.

Courtesy of two annoying, little girls.

Eventually, in 2011, Kris got a job at a much better childcare center - Sunchild Academy (also located in Hunter's Creek.)  I was still slugging away at my ghetto school, but had recently switched to 6th grade from 7th, making the change from teaching World Geography to the much more badass Ancient History (one of my passions.)  The following year, we realized that we'd had enough of paying rent for our current house, and decided to buy one of our own.  We snooped around and eventually found the perfect starter home for our family, which we bought from an elderly couple who more or less sold it to us because they liked our kids.

In May of 2012, on the 35th anniversary of the release of Star Wars, the Houghs moved into their very own home.  In doing so, we realized this meant pushing Michigan back a few more years.  Even though the economy was improving, we knew that we had to build up some capital if we were ever going to successfully make it back up in Michigan.  We bought our house at a time when the housing market was just starting to recover from the Recession, and over the next couple of years we saw the value of our home make leaps and bounds.


Alayna started Kindergarten that fall, and we bought a dog (a dachshund mix named 'Jigsaw') from a rescue center that we promptly renamed Watson, and in the winter of 2013, Kris and I sat down and decided that it was time to move home.  Of course, moving a family of five across the continental United States wasn't going to be an easy task - it wasn't going to be as easy as renting a 26 ft truck and setting off without job prospects.  No, we had to meticulously plan this move out.


And that's what we did.

Smitten with the Mitten

We started aggressively saving for the move.  Using Dave Ramsay's snowball method, we paid off both of our cars and started rolling our monthly car payments into a Michigan Move fund.  We began purging items in garage sales and getting rid of things we knew we weren't going to take with us back north.  When the 2014 school year started, as Alayna started 1st grade and Abby started VPK, Kris got a new job as an administrator at her school and I was elected department head of the Social Studies department.  We decided to move back to Michigan at the end of this school year (in June of 2015), and so I selected to not be paid over the summer, so I could condense the bigger paychecks into the school year and  put the difference into a Summer Readjustment fund, separate of our Michigan move fund.

JamMasters

To date, we've basically saved up around $9,000.   Mom and John are flying down in March and driving our first truck of stuff back up for us and keeping it at their house and my brother Chris' house in Midland.  This first truck will mostly be my library (as you know, I have an insane amount of books), closet clutter, seasonal stuff, storage items, crap from the garage and patio, and anything else we can live without for three months.  Then, when the second truck rolls out in June, it'll be furniture, clothing, and more regularly-used household items.

First arriving in Florida, January 2007

This has been years in the making, and it's going to be complete insanity over the course of the next six months selling the house, looking for work and a new place to live back home, orchestrating the logistics of the move, and severing all of our ties here in central Florida.  But this has always been the plan, since the very beginning.  Florida has always been temporary - we always knew we were moving back to Michigan some day.

And now that day has come.

- Brian

Battling Through the Homestead

Hey players...

I'm beginning to appreciate the trials and tribulations of America's house dweller.

Over the course of the last week or so, we've slowly but surely moved in all of our belongings and begun the after-work/weekend process of moving, unpacking, cleaning, hanging up, consolidating, and rearranging.

This process is oodles of fun.*

Fortunately, Dad and Cindy flew down and were able to help us out a ton (which was nice of them, seeing how when they bought their tickets initially, they had do so under the pretense that they would be enjoying a peaceful, low-key weekend with the grandkid in our old place - apologies have since been widely distributed).

Again, the Voigts were also able to help us out a ton, which was also nice of them. Adam spent an afternoon in our attic in an attempt to remedy our dryer dilemma (yes, we can't dry clothes for whatever reason - good times, but to no avail.

Aside from repeatedly borrowing his tools and manual labor, we've had to purchase all sorts of new home/lawn pleasantries - all kinds of crap for the place, as well as a lawnmower, weed wacker, tools, fertilizers, pesticides, and everything else one could think of - in order to turn three years of negligence into awesomeness.

That's been met, thus far, with moderate success.

Part of our rental agreement was that we'd pay less in rent each month if we put some work and 'love' into the place, so we knew going in that we'd have odd jobs around the place to keep busy. Making the place livable from the get-go, however, definitely proved harder than we once had anticipated.

Again, it was because of others that we can really claim victory, here. My folks and the Voigts were invaluable over the last week or so, and now that we've got most of the big stuff out of the way, there's some breathing room. Breathing room, folks, means we can now turn our attention towards work (hooray), grad school (double hooray), and bills (mega hooray).

Cheers,

- Brian

* I wanted to try using this word in a sentence. Having done so, and not feeling great abou it, this will mark the only time in this blog's existence that I do so.

Side-Project Shmorgasbord

Booya.

Finding oneself out of work for the week is an awesome, awesome thing. Granted, grad school still feels like work, and I generally do have a lot of crappy homework to do, but a week off is a week off. Its time for side-projects.

This week, I've got a couple things planned. Not necessarily major things, per se, but stuff that I've been wanting to do but haven't yet had the chance to work because of work and (get ready for it) grad school. Side-projects that are to be tackled this week include the following:

Long Ridge Writing. I've got to submit a story to these guys by the end of the month, so hopefully I can finalize this and mail it out before heading back into the school year. So far the writing program is working out real well, and its by far the coolest thing I'm doing right now... cross your fingers this stupid story thing gets finished this week.

Tattoo Design. Christ (brother, not spouse) and I are getting some ink done when I go home in December for Christmas. Initially we were going to get brother tattoos done with Jeff, but since Jeff is leaving for the Air Force in March, he can't get anything new done without messing up his enlistment (not sure how that works, exactly). So, in the meantime, Chris and I are getting separate work done. He's not sure what he's getting yet, but I know that I want our family's coat of arms and motto on the inside of my left arm, right above where I have my existing adinkra symbol from Ghana. I want to try and finalize the design before heading home, so a week off is the perfect time to do it.

Organize iTunes, iPhoto, and iEverything else. Yes, nerdery galore, but its necessary stuff that, while boring to hear about, keeps my sanity in place and my day-to-day sense of normalcy running as it should. Don't make fun of me.

Categorize Vinyl. I've been meaning to categorize my vast album collection, if only for insurance purposes - if there were a fire or something, I wouldn't know half of what to replace, and I've got some great, great pieces of music that are definitely worth saving.

I'll stop now, but that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what I have in mind for this break. I probably won't get half of it done, but its nice to aim high once and awhile. More than likely, I'll just end up sitting on the couch and decompressing in front of the TV between spurts of chasing the Cannonball around the house.

Let's do this.

- Brian

Here We Go Again...

well... summer's over.

'time for yours truly to tear off his muslim man dress and strap on his grown-up pants (which, surprisingly, still fit despite two or three months of loafing around the house like a trailer park occupant).

not that i know many trailer park dwellers working on their master's. still...

anyway, my reason for typin' is this, friends: i officially started back and my school today. no, not with kids (that's next monday). just with staff and faculty. we had a half-hour 'welcome back'/staff meeting, and then were excused to our rooms to begin (or, in my fortunate case, continue) setting up our rooms. as you already know, i was smart this year (yes, me) and returned to the school a week earlier than the crowded educational masses in order to call dibs on all the sweet (i.e. ungraffitied) desks, tables, and book cases. it was a good thing, too: this place was a friggin' mad house today. i'm so glad i wasn't one of our new teachers (we have about a dozen or so) coming into all of this - nothing was up and running for them, and folks were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

chickens, by the way, do run about with their heads cut off... but its not as comical as you might think. they fall a lot.

anyway... i have a parent open house on wednesday that should be interesting. my biggest turnout for parents is about 2/5 of the total parent population for my student roster - adults don't seem to care about their kids' education down here. who knows. it sucks, but its how crap works down here. i'll keep you posted with more hilarious banter from this first week back (what i can disclose publicly, at any rate) - stay tuned.

warmest regards,

mr. hough

Purgatory, of Sorts.

well folks, i feel as if i've been driving through iowa for the last three weeks.

hear me out.

i believe i mentioned before how time-consuming raising a kid can be. not only are they expensive, but, when you're all alone at home with them for an extended period of time, they literally suck the life force out from inside you. i'm not exaggerating. i think, in all honesty, the reason why i'm coming across so dramatic with all of this is because of all the many, many things i had planned for my ultimate summer vacation this year, i've accomplished probably 12% of it. that's it. maybe 15%. the vinyl collection has yet to be cataloged. my book has been neglected like a red-headed step-child, as has my writing through long ridge. to this day, i have yet to crack open any of my school resources for lesson planning the upcoming 2009-2010 school year. i manage to get my lazy ass up and into a 30 minute work-out two or three times a week if i'm lucky.

in fact, the only thing i have managed to stay on top of this year is grad school, and that's only because i'm paying out the ass for it and i don't want to fail.

...furthermore, grad school isn't fun, so its not like my summer's been totally awesome because i've been staying on top of my studies. holy borefest.

no, friends, this summer's been pretty wasteful - looking back i feel like i've pissed away a decent chunk of it. sure, the kid's birthday weekend was eventful, and we did have a great family vacation to treasure island two weeks ago... but those remain the high points of my summer. in a few days, we depart to michigan for a week-long stint at my dad's cottage on eight point lake. that's the highlight of my summer; once we return from michigan, at the beginning of august, its all downhill from there. i start getting back into school mode, and, before you know, i have to return to work and begin prepping for next year's batch of students.

...and that's the summer. absolute purgatory.

- brian

(happy birthday, mom!)

Snazzercisin'

what's up, players.

we're about three weeks into the summer, folks. three weeks have gone by and i've managed to accomplish little of what i had initially set out to do. the lesson planning for the upcoming 2009 - 2010 school year? yeah, not so much. the writing? a little, but not nearly as much as i'd prefer. the mundane side-projects - cleaning up my iTunes libraries, working on iMovies and slideshows for family, cataloging and organizing my vinyl record collection (i know, shut up) - here and there.

the problem in my inefficiency so far this summer stems from one, blatantly obvious source: my daughter.

chasing after this one year old time bomb takes up practically every, single, waking moment of my daily routine, and my consequent inability to get anything done, day in and day out, is driving me insane. nothing gets done with a kid in the house. feeding, changing, bathing, playing... and i though the wife was high maintenance.

on a plus side, folks, i have managed to somewhat land myself into a pseudo workout routine of sorts. for about 30 minutes a day, a few days a week, i bust my ass on the Nintendo Wii Fit, which, for those of you who can generally be found living under a rock on most days, is a videogame that utilizes a sensor-based board so that the user can exercise whilst playing videogames.

i know it sounds stupid, folks, but it works. at least it does for this guy, at any rate.

i should probably be doing it everyday - despite all of this exercisin', i think the remainder of the day where i'm loafing around my apartment playing super-dad is canceling out all my hard work - but, for the time being, i'm holding onto that almighty clothing standard of dudehood: medium sized shirt/32" waistline. that's my 38th parallel, and i'm going to hold that line as long as i can.

speaking of which, its time to get off my ass and start this evening's sweatfest.

cheers,

- brian

Summer Vacation. Engage.

here we go.

technically, my summer vacation started monday. i'm sorry for the two-day late start.

monday was a half day for me, more or less, but we were all required to go anyway. had to turn in my school laptop, my set of room keys, get a bunch of other random blah-blah signed off on. not too difficult. most of the day was spent working on the book in my now-barren classroom, as i had taken care of most of the cleaning-out and wrapping-up process the previous friday.

getting paid to do nothing is awesome... which is why i'm looking forward to the next three months.

last year, about this time, we were prepping up for the cannonball's arrival. the three months that followed were lack-luster in terms of shenanigans, as we ran on little or no sleep and every move we made revolved around the newborn. this summer, yours truly has a few initiatives that he's going to try and push through before he has to once again juggle a bunch of ape-ish teenagers come mid-august. they are as follows:

1. keep up on grad school crap and finish assignments as early as humanly possible. this is way easier than it sounds. yes, i have nothing else to distract myself from getting my master's, now that i'm done with work... except for that whole 'kid' thing. you try writing terms papers while a toddler is ripping DVDs and books off the shelves and screaming her ass off. go ahead.

2. develop a work-out routine. this hasn't been nearly as difficult as the grad school crap - i've actually managed to get off my ass every day since school let out. this should account for something, too, as it comes from someone who despises exercise just as much as he despises cats or diane sawyer.

3. work on my writing. now that i've been accepted into the writing program, and am getting professional advice and guidance, i can finally start the ball rolling with freelancing writing. (if i can find the time).

4. update and manage all mundane side-projects. lots of boring shit that isn't really important or entertaining, but time-consuming and eating away at the back of my conscious. clean up my files on the computer. finish the last african adventures movie. organize all my work files. pfft...

5. prepare lesson plans and classroom management/discipline plan for the 2009-2010 school year. bwah-ha-haha! yeah right...

we'll see how all this crap works out with me now being a full-time housedad. i'll be in touch, kids...

the world's greatest DILF,

- brian

The 3rd Annual Hough Disney Adventure (with Pictures)

holy crap... touristing is a tiring, tiring affair.

over the course of the last week, i have successfully traded in my dress slacks for swimming trunks, my I.D. lanyard for a disney fastass, and my pen holster for a straw hat and eye-patch.

i have ceased writing papers for grad school, and have replaced this time-consuming practice with the art of aimlessly walking about over-priced theme parks in the pursuit of themed rides with animatronic robots and short lines.

i have substituted my relatively healthy lunches at work for deep-fried dishes of God-knows-what, and my morning pots of coffee for blenders full of daiquaris and margaritas. instead of tolerating the hordes and hordes of teenagers, i instead tolerate the blistering florida sun and 95 degree weather.

...and it has been awesome.

as we come to the close of yet another, successful hough clan extravanganza, i feel it necessary to point out that this adventure, though quite similar to the previous endeavors by our people, marked the first inclusion of the next generation of houghs setting foot on disney property.

our nephews (blake and bradley) as well as our own tax deduction (the cannonball) broke in their amusement park shoes in proper form. true, while our kid has traversed some of the parks before, this time around saw a greater indulgence in rides and so forth.

alayna tried her hand at several rides over the course of the last week - she liked some, hated others. we've included pictures, here, for your review, and urge you to check out the following site (my dad's) in order to further review what i'm sure will go down as the grandest of all hough family disney vacations...

...until possibly next year, when we do it all over again.

http://web.me.com/jhough/JHH_iWeb/Florida_2009_-_Part_I.html

http://web.me.com/jhough/JHH_iWeb/Florida_2009_-_Part_2.html

http://web.me.com/jhough/JHH_iWeb/Florida_2009_-_Part_3.html

horribly exhausted and sun-ravaged,

- brian

One Down, Nine to Go...

holy crap, do i ever hate grad school.

nothing about getting a masters is cool. nothing. that first class i took was absolutely horrible, i learned absolutely nothing that would either benefit me as an educator or my students, and if i have to take nine more classes at this rate - a horrid 72 weeks of excrutiating crappiness - i'm going to stick a gun in my mouth. if i have learned anything from the last eight weeks, friends, it is this:

do not go to grad school.

sorry for the pessimism. though, while i'm on a rant of sorts, if that wasn't enough, the job situation still isn't 100% concrete for next year. yes, that's right - again. no one seems to know what's going on with the school next year, who's staying, who's getting canned - so that added stress hanging in the background isn't helping out much either. i'm close to punching out greeters at target, if that says anything.

but, i suppose there's really nothing much i can do about the crappiness of grad school or the economic clusterf*%# the education system down here has landed itself in - i might as well just clench my teeth, close my eyes, and brace for the worst.

in closing, here's a weird video of our kid bathing with a parrot. enjoy:

- Brian

Fever Dog and the Great Phone Adventure

this has been a week from Hell, folks...


it all started off with my folks coming down for a quick visit last weekend (...that's not the 'hell' part.) that itself wasn't too bad at all, mind you - on the contrary, it was rather cool. we had a great visit with the parentals, and they - dad and cindy - got to revel in the grandparent role for a weekend in the tropics with a quasi-new grandbaby. everybody wins.


the morning they left, however, alayna was getting sick. a precursor, as it would turn out to be, of the horrible, horrible things to come. now, at some point in time in the middle of the night, while the kid was hacking up a lung and starting to cry, kris got up to make a bottle to help her back to sleep. alas, in doing so, in the pitch black darkness, kris spilled a crapload of water and baby formula all over our kitchen countertop... where my cell phone was charging.


... and guess what happened next?

well, i'll spare you the clever, long-winded narrative and just tell you that the ball and chain ruined my phone. and, to make a long story short, kris and i both divorced our motorolla razrs and got new phones. kris bought a new sony erickson phone (with which she has since developed a strong love/hate relationship), and yours truly upgraded to a blackberry pearl flip phone (see picture). at this point in time, folks, i should tell you that i love the damn thing. i am writing it into my will. in fact, if it were at all possible, i'd divorce kris, marry the phone, and make hordes of little phone-babies that i could then turn around and sell on craigslist... where, contradictly, i cannot sell one, damn sword.

anyway.

moving right along to the other part of this whole blog posting title....
this whole phone fiasco took place on the eve of Great FeverFest '09, which rendered me and the cannonball completely bed-ridden and useless for nigh on two weeks. spiking fevers, hacked up lungs, and more fever blankets than one could find at an 1880s south dakota trading post (what up, history reference?!). it knocked the baby down first, and yours truly shortly thereafter. we'd soon find out that the both of us had a nasty case of bronchitisis, which had been making its way throughout my school (a.k.a. the germ factory) as well as the school kris and the kid spend most of their days at (also appropriately monikered the germ factory). i missed three days of work, kris missed a couple, and the kid was out for over a week.

...but guess what? we still got to pay for that week of daycare. which is awesome.


...NOT!!!


(i'm so glad i was able to use an early '90s reference in this posting)

- brian

On Being a Recluse...

sorry we haven't been in touch more, folks - both of us have been working like crazy lately, and its made keeping up on this thing nearly impossible. we'll try and maintain the weekly updates like we have been, but please forgive us if these updates don't come as often as they used to for awhile - we're up to the hilt in crap these days.

besides working full-time and tackling all of that nonsense, i'm still slugging my way through grad school and hating every, last minute of it. it's not nearly as fun as one would think a non-partying college experience would be (college, but without all of those wretched distractions like parties, shenanigans, and the like? awesome!!). but, like i've said countless times before, its a means to an end, and you folks will be hearing me complain about it all of the time on this here website-thingy. stay tuned.

in baby news, the cannonball still enjoys bath-time.

cowabunga:

- brian

Justification for Carpetbagging

hi gang.

for those of you folks out there who thought kris and i leaving our old apartment in clare and moving all the way down to florida was pretty crappy, please observe the following pics (thanks granny):

yeah.

that's our old aparment there on the second floor. the one all charred out and black. now, had we not moved to florida and become teachers, from the looks of it, our bedroom, our bathroom, and - and i shudder to even think about this - the man room would've been engulfed in flames.

...and i would've been pissed.

so, in light of this recent development, moving down here in order to kick off our respective careers was a decent play. now we just have to keep operation: uncarpetbag moving along at a steady pace for the next two years, and we'll be all set.

in conclusion, i hate grad school.

- brian

Here We Go Again...

i've been having an awesome week. i really have.

i have all of my lesson planning done between now and christmas. my gradebook is a well-oiled machine. i have a humongous, class project running eerily well that the kids (surprisingly enough) absolutely love. i was even voted by the 7th grade as the students' favorite teacher.

...and then we had a meeting this afternoon wherein the principle told us we'd most likely be reducing staff number again. cowabunga.

i survived the last fall of the guillotine by God's good graces and the seat of my pants, and was thankful to hold on to my coveted job for a second year. i don't think i'll ever know exactly how close i came to being one of those guys who ended up drawing the 'short straw,' and i don't think i'd want to. granted, i'm in better standing than i was last year - being a second year teacher now and beginning grad school in january and all (by the way, i found out today i was officially accepted). and i don't personally expect this year's staff cut to be as bad - or ominous - as last year's... but, at the same time, you never know.


regardless, being told that 'some people might be let go next year' was enough to put my super-awesome week into a tailspin.

it is, in truth, as my principal says, i suppose: "as goes the economy, so goes our school."

...and on that matter, folks, all i have to say on that matter is this: this whole economy thing better turn around real damn fast or else this guy (yours truly) is going to have to join the military.

(yo joe!)

- brian

Grad School = Big Pain in the Ass

i already hate grad school, and i haven't even started classes.

as stated before, i have no head for financial figuring-out, using fax machines, scheduling through various departments, calling different agencies and waiting for 3 to 5 business days for answers to simple questions, etc. etc. - all important aspects of the applying-to-graduate-school process. it should come to no surprise, therefore, that i've been having one hell of a time with the whole ordeal. this is absolute hell, folks. and is turning out to be even more of a pain in the ass than the peace corps application i had to undergo. not very much fun.

as it stands - and again, this is from what kris and i can gather (she's been doing her best to help me out with this, as i'm clinically retarded with this crap) - it looks like all i have to do in order to obtain my professional certification (the five-year renewable teaching certificate that allows me to keep my job) is complete my second year of teaching and take the graduate courses outlined in my masters program. that's it. i was convinced that i'd have to take a crap-load of undergraduate courses, thereby stalling my graduate classes and blowing handfuls of loot just in order to keep my job. that would've sucked big time.

then again, when you owe over $26,000 in student loans, what's another $20,000? i've already come to the realization that these loans are never going away, that i'll have to pass them on through subsequent generations as family heirlooms. i'm sure my great-great-great grandchildren will appreciate this.

...though by that time i'm sure we'll all be ruled by space gorillas and robots, so it won't really matter. (see picture)

fortunately, that's not the case. i get to start right away with the mega-hard classes... which i'm not looking forward to in the slightest. like i said before, folks - i hated college (classes). i'm not good at studying, i'm easily-distracted, i can't stay on top of due dates, and i'm arguably the world's worst procrastinator. so, more or less, i'm screwed with this whole grad school nonsense.

so why am i putting myself through this gauntlet of hell? because the houghs are on a timetable, that's why. when kris and i moved down here to florida in january of '07, we expected to live in florida for four to five years - long enough to obtain teaching jobs, finish grad school, and find work elsewhere. i think i've spelled this out before. ideally, i'd like to find a teaching job in illinois or indiana - somewhere in the midwest, close to michigan (there's practically a zero percent chance i'm going to find any work in michigan any time soon). it'd be nice to be able to make the drive from our place to home in less than 10 - 12 hours. now it takes about 22... and that was driving straight through, without a kid. that drive would be absolutely hell now.

sure, you can fly. but around the holidays, you get screwed with ticket costs and all those crap-fees. $700 - $900 to fly home for christmas for four or five days? not worth it, as far as we're concerned.

and so, with grad school out of the way - hopefully by the fall of 2010 - i'll be in prime positioning to start scouting out job prospects in the great white north.

...at least that's the plan so far.

- brian

Flabbergasted

hey kids.

i was going to write about this yesterday, but, after a full day of work and a full stint of ridiculous ESOL education shortly thereafter, by the time i finally made it back to my humble abode last night it was nearly 8pm. and by that time, dear readers, i didn't feel like doing anything but having a drink and going to bed.

you see, i had about four hours of sleep tuesday night. i'm sure many of you did as well. after following the primaries and general election for the last 21 months - most likely closer than most americans and those of you who read this (though i know of plenty of exceptions and like-minded souls on either side of the partisan line) - i felt like it was my solemn duty to see this crapfest through... all the way to the end. that meant staying up to watch the polls close, and staying up even later to watch the speeches. perhaps not the most impressive of feats to some, but this guy - me - has the internal clock of an old man... and gets to wake up every morning at 5am and spew learning at barbarian teenagers all day long. furthermore, like i've said before, on wednesdays i also get to attend a three hour ESOL (english as a second language) instructional method course directly after work. loads of fun wednesdays are.

(pfft.)

anyway, i'm not about to go into a political rant here, folks, so don't worry. nobody wants that. the purpose of me writing this is to vocalize a concern i'm sure a great deal of us now have at this point in time:

what the hell do we do with all of our spare time now?

some folks aren't 'news' people. they don't care that much, they find it boring, whatever. more power to 'em. me? i'm a 'news' person. can't get enough of the crap, even if it is biased, dramatized and skewed beyond all rational thought. i used to religiously check online and read the headlines at least a few dozen times a day. i'd watch political analysts and chief strategists on tv, i'd listen to experts on NPR, i'd watch the polls and track the electoral map during whatever spare moment i could get my hands on. and now that barack obama has clenched the presidency, i'm at a loss.

i have absolutely nothing to focus my attention on.

work? yeah, sure. i suppose i could focus more on work. after all, kids need teaching, kids need social studies. but honestly... who enjoys devoting their free time to work? i mean really? i love my job - don't get me wrong, here - but i don't love it that much. i suppose what little free time i have now, and that i used to devote towards tracking mud-slinging through the associated press, will soon be devoted towards grad school and homework.

i can't even begin to tell all you folks how thrilled and excited i am for that hellfest to begin.

but in all seriousness, i have no idea what to do with myself now. i need to pick up a new hobby.

flabbergasted,

- brian

School Sucks

well, it looks like yours truly is one step closer to getting into grad school.

hooray.

i figured the threat of my temporary certificate expiring in a year was sound enough motivation for me to begin furthering my professional development. around these parts, one must take an additional 20 semester hours of additional education coursework on top of a three-year, non-renewable 'temporary certificate' (which is what i hold now) in order to obtain the almighty 'professional certificate' (which is five-year, renewable, transferrable license). from what i can gather, if i don't take 20 semester hours within the next year in a half, before my temporary certificate expires, i run the risk of losing my job.

...at least i think i do - i'm having one hell of a time sorting all this crap out.

generally i get easily confused with this crap: not getting straight answers from anyone, having to hold for an operator for nigh on thirty minutes before being told you've contacted the wrong department and they can't transfer you, losing important documentation and having different customer service represenatitives contradict one another over policy, etc. what's really, really great about all of this is that, like all other civilized businesses in the free world, the florida department of education (FDOE), whom i've been dealing with in order to get the ball rolling with my certification nightmare/grad school application, is only open from 9am to 5pm monday - friday. and guess who's unable to get to a phone before 5pm? yeah, that's right. me.

this, as you all well know, is impossible for yours truly unless i handle correspondence with aforementioned institution in the middle of my classroom. this crap gives me a headache.

if you can take away one thing from all of this, guys, it is this:

school sucks.

- brian