"One Big Holiday"

We managed to survive the holidays, though not without casualties: Michelle's been sick since the day after Christmas, which caused our New Year's celebration to be cut short (apparently vomiting up lots of mucus is cause for concern? I dunno).

Regardless, it's been nice to have some time off. I actually feel rested, which is a unique treat. I'm sure this feeling of ease and restfulness will come to an abrupt end Monday morning, but for now I feel rather nice.

Chad was in town this week and spent a couple of days with us. Of course, since Michelle was sick, that meant we mostly sat around and watched DVDs. In fact, we watched the entire 11th season of the Simpsons yesterday. I'm not sure whether or not I should be proud of that fact.

The cats have loved having us home so much. They don't really alter their behavior any, it's just that they have us to sit on for several hours a day, and that's grand.

One of Michelle's Christmas presents was a Sim City collection. She's spent most of the past week playing Sim City 4. I may have to stage an intervention.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Liam Finn, "I'll be Lightning"

"So Hip To Be Square"

I completed my first week of actual tutoring yesterday. The more I do this, the easier it seems to be. The system they've put in place is pretty straightforward and easy to follow, it turns out, and for the most part I enjoy what I'm doing (when I can get past my nervousness at jumping into a new, if only part-time, job). Working with elementary school students is very different than working with high schoolers. Part of it is their attitude: these kids haven't hit that point where learning is an unpleasant or undesirable thing yet. I remember high school with at least a measure of clarity still (I mean, it's only been a decade since I was there), and I do recall a certain reluctance to listen to most of my teachers and a general lack of desire to work or put effort into things. Admittedly, I apparently had the same lack of initiative back in elementary school and middle school, at least according to my parents, so maybe I'm not a good case study. But these kids, for the most part, are really enthusiastic about the tutoring, and they generally have a good attitude and do whatever I put in front of them.

Thanksgiving is fast approaching. I guess we're doing it with Michelle's folks again this year, as has become our tradition. I do admit that I rather miss some of my old traditions, such as falling asleep on the couch while football plays on the TV.

We're still trying to figure out what we're doing for Christmas: staying here or going up to New York. I'd personally like to go to Oklahoma again, but I know it's unrealistic and not something we can really handle again just yet. We're thinking about it for next year, though, which'd be nice. And I'll see the family in March anyway for Clif's wedding...and again in May for Scott's wedding.

Part of me really wants to hear the new Guns 'N' Roses album, Chinese Democracy, that comes out in a week and a half or so. Not because I particularly like the band, but because any album that took something like 15 years to get recorded is either going to be pretty solid or really, really crappy. I kinda lean towards crappy, but like I said, I'm not really a fan.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Huey Lewis and the News, "Hip to be Square"

"Tell Me Where It All Went Wrong"

Another Spring Break is drawing to a close, and I have to say I wish it'd last another three or four days at least. Time off is nice, y'know? And there's really not another break until the end of school in June. It annoyed me the last couple of years, but having Spring Break in April makes more sense when the school year ends that late.

This week is my birthday, though. So it's got that going for it. Dunno if I'm ready to be 28. I feel that, at that age, I should be an adult. But I don't feel like an adult. I mean, I spent a good amount of time this past week playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl (I've unlocked a lot of characters, too!). Adults are supposed to be interested in investing and yardwork and stuff like that, right? I still watch cartoons.

Michelle's been baking all weekend. We're heading over to her parents' place later this afternoon for Easter dinner. We have no idea what it will include, but there will be pies at least.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Camera Obscura, "If Looks Could Kill"

"Home, Home Again"

We're finally back in Fairfax after a week on the road. In that time, we drove some 2800 miles, visited eight states, and spent way too many hours in the car.

The worst driving day was definitely Wednesday, despite it not being a tremendously long day. We went from my grandparents' house in Ponca City to Memphis, Tennessee. It damn near killed us. It snowed, rained, or sleeted the entire day, and we were completely exhausted. Making it to Memphis was a tiny miracle, really.

Yesterday's drive wasn't so bad. Shorter than we'd hoped for, sure, but the vibe in the car was 100% better and we weren't nearly so exhausted. We ended up staying in Seviersville, TN, which I think only exists because of Dollywood.

Anyway, being home is great. It was good to see all the folks for Christmas, but there's something comforting about coming home and finding the apartment still standing and the cats happy to see us.

Michelle used her Christmas money to buy a new 80 gig iPod, so now I am dealing with iPod envy. We also picked up a 750 gig external hard drive to back up our computers with. All we need is the Airport Extreme wireless router (from Apple, of course!) that we can hook the external drives into and have them always accessible, and our network will be complete!

Y'know, that last sentence was probably ridiculously grammatically incorrect, but I'm too tired to care.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Neko Case, "Hold On, Hold On"

"I Think It Was The Fourth of July"

Happy Independence Day, folks. We here at Casa de Branco-Cottrell spent it grilling burgers and watching Moonstruck and Seinfeld. Good times, good times.

Summer school's started up, and the students are not particularly happy about it. I can't say that I blame them: summer school isn't the most fun possible for a bunch of kids who really just want to relax and forget everything they've spent the previous 9 1/2 months learning. There's also the stigma that's always been attached to attending summer school; i.e., that you are dumb or stupid if you have to go to summer school and you must've flunked a bunch of stuff during the regular school year.

That's not really the reality for summer school at Accotink. We call it ESY--Extended School Year--and the idea isn't so much remedial "damn you're stupid kids" as it is "these children would benefit from extra educational services during the summer so they maintain and further develop necessary academic skills and don't forget everything over the course of two and a half months away from books, blackboards, and teachers." A lot of people might say I'm splitting hairs there, but there's a very different tone and approach between the two.

I rather like teaching summer school. The atmosphere is much more laid back and relaxed, I can wear jeans or shorts to work (I always wear sandals during the summer; once the school year ends, the shoes get put away and I'm barefoot as often as possible. This is what comes of being raised in Oklahoma, I think), and we take the students on field trips each day. Some of the field trips are pretty cool--we go see movies, play laser tag, visit nifty museums--and I think the teachers have at least as much fun (probably more, in some cases) as the students. I also get to tackle a different subject--writing--that offers a unique set of challenges I don't encounter in history. In terms of writing ability, our students really run the gamut, so you have to be able to ratchet your thinking up and down in terms of expectations of ability and such. But it's pretty groovy overall.

I bought Michelle's birthday presents tonight. Well, ordered it, anyway. Should arrive by the end of next week, I think, and then it's just a matter of keeping the presents hidden until her birthday actually rolls around on the 25th. I think she'll dig what I found for her.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: The Decemberists, "Yankee Bayonet"

"Found A Flat, After That..."

So 2006 decided to smack us with a parting shot on Friday: Michelle was laid off from her job. This has made her (understandably) upset and frustrated, but we're doing our best to tighten the belts and work around the issue. She's already started applying for other jobs, gotten in touch with her headhunter, and applied for unemployment so she at least has some money coming in (it's actually pretty good, too: about $300 a week for 22 weeks). It'll be rough for a month or so, but we'll get through this. We don't think it will take her long to get a new job, possibly one that pays better.

We spent New Year's Eve just hanging out at the apartment. Her sisters and a friend of ours came over and relaxed with us. We played some Trivial Pursuit, chatted, ate junk food, watched Seinfeld, and I played quite a bit of Final Fantasy XII (as I have over the past week...like 10 or 11 hours' worth this week alone). It was a low-key, laid-back New Year's...which is fine by me. I don't really like big parties or large crowds.

I have to go back to work tomorrow. Also have to return to education classes. To say that I'm not happy about that is to grossly understate the case. However, I can, tomorrow, sign up for the Fairfax County Public Schools Teacher Fair. I fully intend to do this, because an extra $10,000 a year would do wonders for securing our finances and making it possible for us to do what we want to do (like buy a new car in the next year or so).

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Bob Dylan, "All I Really Want To Do"

"On Certain Sundays In November"

I find it hard to believe it's already November. Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away. Christmas and the New Year are just around the corner. My final semester here at OU is only two and half months away from beginning. It's hard to imagine I've already been here almost a year and a half.

Each day marks the longest I've remained in one place since I started college. Oh, sure, I kept the same dorm room for three years at Ozarks. Even had the same roommate(s), Chris and JP. But we always had to move out for Christmas (though we could leave our stuff there) and completely in the Summer, stuff and all, only to haul it all back up three flights of stairs in August again (and that was always hell, let me tell you). When I started attending OU, I lived at home because I hadn't had time to look for an apartment in Norman. I'd been in Yellowstone all summer and only found out I was attending OU my last day in the park; when would I have had time to apartment hunt? But the last week of September, I found the apartment at Parkview. They let me move in, and I started living there full time the first week of October. I'm still there, having lived in the same place through the summer for once. That's a little odd to me, but comforting, too. It's nice having a single place to always come back to, someplace a bit more permanent than a dormroom.

Don't get me wrong--after three years, that room in McLean Hall was starting to feel like home. We always had the same room, I always had the same bedroom in our room (it was a little modified suite--a common room and two little bedrooms). There was continuity there. We'd hang up the same posters again, though each year there were new additions (I still remember when Chris got the Army of Darkness movie poster. That was one of my favorites). When I left Ozarks, it felt like I was leaving home. Especially since the home I was returning to never did feel like a real home. See, my parents moved over Christmas my Junior year at Ozarks, and the house we moved in to lacked a bedroom for yours truly. I sleep in the study when I go back to Shawnee. It's called my room, but there's always a part of me that feels it's not home anymore. Instead, it's where my parents live. Not to mention the fact that the longest I've actually stayed there since we moved has been about a month. The summer between Junior and Senior year was spent on the road with my dad every week, so I was only home for the weekends. The next summer was spent at Yellowstone, and we left only a week after school got out. So the longest I ever stayed at home was when I came back from Yellowstone and lived there for part of August and September.

So I guess I'm developing an attachment to my apartment, despite its rather ghetto-esque appearance and general feel. The toilet doesn't work well, there's no central air, the heater sounds arthritic, the floors are ancient linoleum that I can't keep clean unless I'm willing to sweep and mop every other day (which I'm not), and I can hear the train every time it goes by or the football game whenever we're having one. Despite all these things, the place kinda feels like home. It fits around me like a second, clunky skin of mortar and concrete and aging building materials. It's not the prettiest or most comfortable place in the world, but it's a place to call my own, a space for me, and I'm content with that.

All of which means I really do not want to move come May. But I'll kinda have to, or in late July/early August at the latest. Why? Because it's on to the next school. May seems like the most likely time to move because that's when my lease ends, and I don't want to have to sign a new one just to stay there a couple of months. But at the same time, I have nowhere to store all the stuff I've accumulated there, no place to put it at home. I'm a bit torn as to what to do, to be honest. But I guess that'll all be taken care of as it comes up. No point trying to burn bridges I haven't crossed yet. No, that sort of behavior is only suitable for bridges that've been crossed, because that means then I can't go backwards.

~chaos cricket

Song of the Moment: Rhett Miller, "This is what I do"