I feel a little like blogging, but about what I am not yet sure. I seem to have finally hit some kind of grading stride where I’ve overcome my natural inclinations to procrastination and am getting a lot done. I am also doing “that which I am doing” at school, thus not bringing my work home with me. This is a good thing.

I don’t feel like I got much of a weekend as I took three students to the state Chess tournament in Jefferson City on Saturday. My coaching of Chess is gratis work that falls under the abstract heading “institutional service”. They are at least paying me mileage for the trip. Not from St. Louis though, just from the school.

Financing of clubs is an obnoxious part of how teams are set up in my institution. I deposit student funds from club dues into an account. Then, when we need something, I front the money and petition the district to reimburse me from the account that I supposedly manage. They don’t cut the check until after the board approves the deal at a monthly meeting – so I can get stuck fronting funds for the better part of a month. Last month that was eighty bucks. It could be more this month as we are ordering T-shirts. Ah well, tis the nature of bureaucracy and it behooves me to have an iron clad paper trail where student funds are concerned.

Some people just don’t have sense enough to come in out of the rain:

I have two new potential job offers for next year. I’ve been contacted by administrators and encouraged to apply. I am in a difficult position in that I love my current job, but it is far from where I live and I am always exhausted. We are no longer entertaining the notion of moving there. Now it seems that there is work closer to home that pays significantly more, several thousand dollars, and yet I feel committed to where I already am and actually love my job – but what I love most is teaching and that is potable. There are no easy answers in this line of work, where a game of musical chairs plays out over your entire career.

The district courting me offers more money, a more challenging (and potentially violent) student population, a more strenuous teaching schedule, a less strenuous commute, and a host of other pros and cons made more tangible in that I have already worked for this district in the past and so I know what I would be getting myself into – they also know me so the offer is more likely in that they came to me. I suppose time and money are the bottom line factors. A higher wage with a reduced commute seems like a win win. It’s hard to say just yet which way the wind will blow and I won’t really have to decide until/if potential offers become real offers – say mid March.

I am going back to work at the puppy mill as well. I start teaching an Ethics class for them on the twelfth of March – Monday nights. I know the material like the back of my hand and they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. The class is really an introduction to philosophy class and I so rarely get to teach that stuff, I can do it mostly from memory with minimal preparation, that it will be more pleasure than obligation. They offered me a Composition class as well, but the grading load of a writing class is prohibitive.

I know, I am insane; I am also a man with many debts making a living wage for the first time in several years and thus I need to make the most of people willing to pay me.