Well, There It Is.

I came home yesterday and found that new people had moved into the apartment. I exchanged several words with my roommate, who allowed people to move in although I had made it clear I wasn’t planning on moving out until the end of January. We tried to sort things out with the landlord, but he was pretty ambivalent to the whole situation.

So, If you need me, I’ll be at my father’s house.

Some good news — I finally heard back from another high school I’ve been looking at. I’ll be calling them first thing on Monday to set up an interview.

Well, there’s a plus to staying at my father’s while I look for teaching jobs and an apartment in whatever area I end up teaching: the cable modem makes using the internet fast again.

I went down to the high school again today, to observe the music classes and to meet with the district music supervisor. It was sort of an impromptu meeting–and in turned out to be a kind of informal interview. Here’s the gist of things. First of all, there is an opening in the elementary school for a choral/general music teacher right now. What this guy wants to do (he has his Ed.D. from Nova University, which apparently, so I heard, he got via mail) is find someone who will work as the elementary school teacher until the end of the year, and then move to the high school to be an instrumental teacher. That’s absolutely ridiculous. There is no possible way he’ll find someone who is equally good and committed to both elementary choral teaching and high school band — especially marching band. His reasoning for the line of thought is because it would “be easier for him to kill two birds with one stone.”

Anyway, he seemed to really like me, and would like me to come and have a proper interview with the elementary school principal, with the intent of getting the elementary school job and most likely moving up to the high school in the fall.

I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with that. High school band is where I want to teach. Not elementary school. Not chorus. Plus, it’s really the students who are missing out if they are not given an teacher that really desires to teach singing to little kids.

Of course, if I do move forward with the elementary school job, it would be a (fairly, but barely) decent income that would allow me to move to the area and live by myself. If I don’t, I would either be a substitute or temp (or both), which would not allow me to live by myself in the area. Well, I need to call him soon to let him now what I’d like to do. I’m leaning towards telling him that the elementary school thing is not where I want to be, and that it’s going to be difficult to find a good high school instrumental teacher who would be willing to put up with a job where they don’t want to be. He’ll end up with someone who’s (probably less than) mediocre at both jobs.

I’m not alone in thinking the guy is crazy. The band director and the president of the Board of Education are actually on my side about this. The high school principal agrees with the band director as well. Hopefully someone will be able to show this guy that he can’t sacrifice the students to what might be “easier for him.”

Bloggers around the world have joined forces by raising their “voices” and posting their Years in Review.

I will not be partaking in this ritual. Those close to me know what the deal is, and those who are interested in finding out about my mistakes can email me.

Instead of looking at the past, which I have been doing internally for a while, I will look to the future, to the end of 2002, and think about what I will be able to say on December 31.

Here is my entry looking back on the year 2002.

For some reason, my rommate thought I was moving out tonight. I’m not sure why, since I most definitely told her I was moving out at the end of January. So, there are two new people moving into the apartment at the end of the week. I’m not quite sure how we are going to work this out. If I could find a new place to live by the end of the week, I would gladly move out, but I just don’t see that happening.

Happy new year.

Once again, here I am contemplating moving again. I moved up here to beautiful north Jersey to be closer to a job I no longer have. When my time at that organization ended, I realized there is absolutely no reason for me to continue living up here, so I told my roommate I’d be out by the end of January. At the time, I thought I would have heard a word about the teaching job in south Jersey by now. As it turns out, more items needed to be submitted for my application, which I couldn’t do while in Arizona, and when I returned the district decided to take a holiday vacation and won’t be back in the office until next week.

Today I went to the town to search out apartments close to the school, and I found some good candidates. However, my first dilemma is whether I should be looking for a one-bedroom place or a two-bedroom place. I’m not sure if I can afford a one-bedroom. If I don’t get the job, it’s almost certain I won’t be able to afford to live by myself unless I happen to come across another job that pays a decent amount.

To live in a two-bedroom apartment would make more sense financially, but there is the issue of finding a roommate. My only two options are some dude from Italy who is in the military, or a friend who living with could be a tense situation.

One of a couple of things can happen with this teaching job. The first is that the current band director stays at the high school and a position is opened for an assistant with which he can share the workload. This would be the ideal situation for him, the students, as well as me. The second option is that the director’s supervisor gets his way and moves the current teacher to the elementary school, leaving an opening at the high school for all of the current director’s workload. Since the director has been trying to get an assistant for ten years, and they really need to keep adding more music programs in the high school because of the new standards, this would be an unfavorable position for anyone looking to take over, and even much less favorable for someone stepping in as a first-time full-time music teacher. If this is the case, I don’t think I would want the job anyway.

So, do I move to the location now with the hopes that the first scenario will play out and that I am the one to get the job? If I move and don’t get the job, or it isn’t the job I want, I could be stuck there for a while.

There is, however, a third possibility which I haven’t even counted on. Maybe I should move to an entirely new place (say the Baltimore area) and just start from scratch. Maybe I’d teach, maybe I wouldn’t. I feel I have many skills, but I feel I am pretty unfocused with them. This brings me to my fourth possibility.

Go back to school and get another degree. But in what area of study? Music? Information technology? Linguistics?

Well, there’s still nothing definite on this damn teaching job. I had wanted to be able to fill in as a substitute for the current teacher, but that didn’t work out, with the Arizona trip. Luckilly, I’ve found out about some other open positions and I’m taking steps to get more information about those. The thing is, no one seems to be around to answer phone calls or emails.

There is the possibility that I may just pick myself up, get out of the state, and start over. I hear Seattle’s nice. Baltimore has always interested me. I could be at the perfect stage in my life to do this — have an adventure. Go off some place new and try to discover what I am really passionate about. Maybe it’s teaching, maybe it’s not. It’s been so long since I’ve taught, every so often I wonder if it really is what I want or if I’m even still good at it.

My roommate, while normally pretty unobtrusive, seems to be a little tipsy tonight. She’s carrying on awfully loud, sometimes in English, sometimes in French, sometimes in Giggle-ish, and sometimes in some other language which may not exist except for in her own alcohol-flowing-in-the-blood-stream mind.

Remember how over a month ago I said that one of the things I need to do is work out the problems in my personal relationships? If you don’t remember, this might help. In any case, sometimes they say that things get worse before they get better. In some ways, a few days last week were the worst days of my life. That’s even if you count the days in the car, driving to Florida with my family, back when my brother and I were younger. (It was a tough ride.) Things have a long, long way to go before we reach the “better” part of that statement above, but I am resolved to be the person I need to be. Love is a gift, and I took advantage of those who were generous enough to bestow that gift upon me. By betraying others, people will think twice or three times before trusting me with their heart. Friendships that will be able to recover will be that much stronger based on the connection we will be able to make. I am beginning to understand how to make that connection. The understanding begins with the ability to love myself, and loving myself begins the realization of what I need to do in order to be a person who deserves the love, trust, and faith of others.

It’s going to be a lot of work. It’s going to be a lot of work on my own.

After a little delay, I saw Lord Of The Rings. I was impressed. The countryside in New Zealand is beautiful. It just might have to be my next travel destination. Some day.

Tonight is my last night on vacation in Arizona. Alissa and I had a great time. We flew into Phoenix, stopping over in Pittsburgh without any problems. We picked up our rental car, a little Chevy something-or-other, to get us through the week. After finding our way to the hotel to check in, which was a little bit of a distance from the center of all the action, we traveled back downtown to explore. We managed to catch the first precipitation Phoenix had in a while, and it happened to be a pretty intense hailstorm.

While in Phoenix for a few days, we discovered the Scottsdale area, drove by Camelback Mountain (a mountain — almost in the middle of the city), visited the Phoenix Art Museum and took a tour, took a tour of Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s old office and current architecture school, ate in some random good restaurants, took a tour of the Desert Botanical Gardens, and shopped in a mall.

After our time in Phoenix, we traveled up I-17 to Sedona. The first thing we did in Sedona was take a Pink Jeep Tour of the area. Once that was done, we visited some shops and found our hotel. That night, the area got a couple inches of snow. We were lucky to get views of the moutains both with and without snow… I put some of the pictures online for Alissa already, but I’ll have more online at some point.

After more sight-seeing in Sedona, we headed up to the Grand Canyon. Despite the warnings of a Sedonite, we took the “Oak Creek Canyon” scenic route. Even with the snow on the ground, the drive wasn’t too bad. As we climbed up in elevation from 4000 ft. above sea level to 8000, there was only a slight increase of snow on the ground.

The area surrounding the Grand Canyon Park is not that interesting, but the park itself is huge. When we got into town, the first thing we did was head to the IMAX theater to see a movie about the Grand Canyon. It was somewhat interesting. We then headed into the Grand Canyon. By the time we got to a good view, the sun was already setting. The sun set in the west, as expected, which didn’t really make for a breathtaking view. So we decided to come back to the park before dawn to see the sunrise. I’m glad we did even though it meant waking up at 6:00 in the morning. The sun rose over the walls of the canyon on the opposite side of us, and I think the pictures came out pretty good.

We drove around the park for a few more hours taking in the canyon from several different points of view. When we tired of that, we headed back to Phoenix, which is where I am now. We decided on a whim to take a different way to the city, which ended up putting us in the middle of the Painted Desert and a Navajo Reservation. Tomorrow morning, we’ll be on our way to the airport, and soon after that, on our way home.

Tomorrow morning I’m getting on a plane and heading towards Arizona. If anyone’s curious, I’m taking US Air flight 181 to arrive in Pittsburgh at 10:45 am, and then US Air flight 155 to arrive in Phoenix at 2:29. I’ll take lots of pictures and I’ll try to have them online at some point.

As I predicted, I did not yet receive my first December paycheck from my recently-ex-employer. I’ll give them until today’s mail is delivered. For what it’s worth, here’s my horoscope:

It may be necessary for you to stand up for yourself today, dear Pisces. Don’t hesitate to get aggressive with someone if this is what it takes to get through to him or her. Just make sure that you are basing your action off of facts that you know to be true. Reality of the situation could be a bit clouded today so make sure you proceed with care. There is an electric energy in the air today that will help fuel your fire.