Stories

I will miss the stories that I hear and yet I will not miss the depressing views of life that I often hear.

S has informed the class that he has eight kids--although I think he also said nine at one point.  He told me that the labs proved it.  He has custody of three of them.  He said that he was "locked up" from age 16-21 and then when he was out, he had never "done it" and he really got started!  Much of this he said quite publicly in front of the class.

He was excused on Wednesday to go to court.  Yesterday he came storming in saying he was going to prison again.  He paid his lawyer a lot of money and it did no good.  He hadn't slept all night and needed to do his tests and go.  He said he could get his GED in prison.

Actually he did pretty well on his post-tests.  He had done poorly at orientation but he didn't take it seriously then.

I don't know why he is getting sent back to prison.  It was for a 2009 offense and he was on probation. He may have failed a drug test.  That is my suspicion.  So now what happens to all those kids?

Practicing Retirement

I scheduled a makeup day last Monday and taught Tuesday.  I arranged for a sub on Wednesday and then Thursday was an open computer lab day.  The students attended pretty well through it all but it was a lot of work and disruption to arrange it all.

When I retire, I can travel without all those arrangements.  At this point, I am looking to even more complicated arrangements for the two weeks I want to be on the East coast in November.

Our time away was wonderful however.  Everything went so well--no usual travel stresses except for very minor ones.  The flights, the hotels, the meals, the sight-seeing, even golf for Jim--all was good.  We had rooms with views--higher level floors in all three hotels.

This morning I felt tired and a bit down.  We ended up laughing a lot in class and I felt much better at the end of the morning.  I hope the students did too.  I will miss that interaction a lot.