Working Girl

This has been quite a working week. In addition to my usual class schedule and momming about, I worked about 15 hours in the office at my uncle's store. Right now there's no set schedule to when I work, but at least it's hours and it's fun hanging out and working with my uncle. My sister also works for him sometimes and at points all three of us were in the office working together. We got a lot accomplished but we all got such a kick out of it that it hardly seemed like work at all.
It's a little surreal (and kind of a grind) to go straight from college teacher to file clerk in the span of a 12 mile drive, but it's nice to get down to Portsmouth even if all I really see is the big parking lot and the inside of the store. I like knowing that I'm in the store with my uncle and my dad and sister are across the parking lot working at my dad's office. It kind of makes me feel like Portsmouth is still my town and it's nice being even a small part of a family business.
There's still a ton of uncertainty about how I'm going to go about earning my living from here on out, but maybe just for now, just for the next month or so, I can be happy knowing that I've got it under control, at least for now.

Bubbling With Aloha

Are you looking to share a little Aloha spirit with a unique gift for someone? Well, you should check out what Kayla's Mama has to offer. Dianne, my friend and commarade in arms during grad school and a stint teaching in Japan, has launched a website for her new family-run business. Please take a visit. You may be able to find a great gift for your mom in time for Mother's Day. Mahalo.

Work It

Just a week or two ago I was driving myself crazy worrying about what I was going to do for work after the semester ends in mid-May. Now I suddenly have four different jobs to work in the next few weeks. Some of them are short term freelance assignments and another has more longterm possibilities. It may even turn out to be my next career. It's way too early to tell, but it's interesting to consider the possibility.

King Arthur Festival

Even though I haven't been feeling so great lately, I had promised my girl we would go to the King Arthur Festival at the Hammond Castle in Gloucester, so we went yesterday. The weather started out cool and rainy so we decided not to dress in costume. We both have decent outfits but no cloaks or capes and that would have been a necessity on a day with weather like yesterday.
The weather is probably what kept the Festival from being overcrowded. There was a good number of people in attendance, but not so many that we couldn't move around freely. We didn't get there until about 1pm, so we didn't really follow the day's storyline too closely. What we did see was very good and the characters are always interacting with the audience between their scenes anyway, so we got to chat a little with Hazel, the court's rat catcher and her rats, Queen Bellakane (I think it was), Morgan Le Fey-- an evil queen, Mordred and one of Morgan's servants. We toured the castle, which is really an impressive structure, and watched the Phoenix Swords fire show and the end of the Human Chess Match. The weather cleared up mid-afternoon and it turned into a really pleasant day.
The food offerings were limited to one vendor selling kettle corn and another selling fried dough, hot dogs, sausages and cheeseburgers. Nothing very medieval about those offerings, but the kettle corn was tasty. There was a decent variety of vendors selling clothing, jewelry, leather goods, chain maile, weapons, hats and other objects, as well as a woman doing henna body art and another pair of vendors offering massage and reiki. I managed to keep the financial damage fairly low, just buying up a skirt catcher for myself and couple of dragon related items for the girl. I looked at capes, but couldn't decide on one. The velvet ones are so pretty, but the wool ones are probably much warmer.
I would have liked to have taken more photos, but of course I forgot to charge the camera battery and ran out of power after taking just a dozen pictures. I have posted the ones that came out decently as a set on my Flickr account, of you're interested.

Making the Plan

It's been a rainy, dreary weekend so far and that's okay because I need the down time. I felt crappy all week and I'm pretty sure it's due to stress. The semester is going to be ending in a couple of weeks and that means the end of the university paycheck until classes start back up in the fall. I've been really worried about finding a job for the summer, but as fate would have it, my sister hooked me up with a couple of part time jobs that are at least a start in my quest for gainful summer employment.
I think next year is going to be my last year teaching at the university. The talk of the fulltime job that was being dangled in front of me earlier in the semester has evaporated and I'm looking at a third year of no benefits and not enough money to pay the bills and in the mean time the students are all still calling me professor and operating under the assumption that I have some amount of authority to change the way things are at the university. The gap is too big and too disappointing to me. I need a new profession. I've had enough of the bullshit of academia.

A Little Peace and Quiet

Maybe it's the spring weather or just the number of stressful things I've had to deal with, but I've been feeling pretty run down lately. After waiting 45 minutes in my office for a student who never showed up to take a make-up test, I came home to have lunch, work on a proofreading job and clean up a little before the student I tutor comes by for his lesson. Somewhere along the way an overwhelming urge for a nap overtook me and I decided to use the niftly little nap timer on my alarm clock and sleep for 25 minutes. This coincided perfectly with my neighbor deciding to let the dog out. The dog then proceeded to bark more or less the entire 25 minutes of my nap. My alarm apparently shut the dog up for a couple of minutes. He then continued to bark for a couple more until the neighbor put him back in the house. It is now nice and quiet in the neighborhood again. *sigh*

Jump Around

I came to get down,
I came to get down.
So get out your seat and jump around!
Because you know, if we all do it at the same time we might be able to bump the Earth into a new orbit and alleviate global warming and stuff.

Do You Know What Kind Of Bomb It Was?*

This morning I received an email from the admin marked IMPORTANT. It was a forward from the University president about a possible bomb threat on campus. The mail instructed us to check our offices for anything suspicious or that looked like it didn't belong there and if there was anything like that, to call campus police and an officer would come to provide assistance. I thought about calling and explaining that maybe I don't belong there. However, I did actually get up and look around the office. Just the same crap there as always.
*Can anyone place the line?