QUICKIE UPDATES

Now that I'm teaching this summer, my focus is on survival (being prepared for classes while not letting the rest of my life go down the toilet bowl), but here are few areas of real news:

HELEN'S HOUSE

Our offer of $270,000 to the Guatemalan family that owns the Crestline house we're interested in was accepted. Ann went up a week ago for the inspection and found very few major issues, so we're going ahead and buying the house. Latest closing date would be July 9. Right now, she is investigating how we'll pay for it. Paying it all cash seems like the best option (and keeps the price down), so we're checking on how we can wing that between Ann's funds, my funds, and the sale of a piece of lakefront property in Crestline Dad held onto for years. It should bring in about $40-50,000 in today's market. We gave first dibs to the neighbor so he could add to his property without getting his view destroyed, and Ann said he's taking us up on it. (She refused to budge on price, however. We can only be SO kind.)

CAL STATE JOB

After the intial flux of the first couple of weeks, I have ended up with half the teaching hours I was promised. Tuesdays and Thursday I was scheduled to teach three courses for 12 hours a week total (grammar, spelling, and listening/speaking), but my afternoon course was canceled after not enough registered students actually showed up to make two sections, so only one section was needed (not mine). I was disappointed from a financial viewpoint, but relieved that I wouldn't have 6 hours in front of a class packed into single days. That's intense in the teaching profession. (We also do LOTS of prep time outside f that, so don't poopoo my horror at the 6 classroom hours!) So, now I teach six hours a week, just mornings. I already did one subbing job last Wednesday, so that possibility may come along once and a while. And new, shorter ESL programs will be coming along later in the summer, and the director Nina Ito said she might well need my services for some of those.

UCLA JOB

I finally heard from Prof. Hinnebusch, who runs the US grant program to catalog resources for all the less commonly taught languages. The Iraqi student who had been doing the Arabic part decided he could continue this summer after all, so that left no position for me. Too bad. It would have been a nice balance to the teaching at CSU-Long Beach.

UCLA EXTENSION CLASS

I have only two weeks left in the Macromedia Flash course, and I have to say I won't be sorry it's over. It's been one of the least organized and most stressful classes I have taken in many a moon. Plus, stuck in between my two teaching days on Wednesday evenings 7-10pm, it has interfered with some much needed prep time for classes (not to mention sleep).

TOOTH TALES

June 5 was the second major installment in my latest dental venture. (Remember the abcess from back in February?) The space where the pulled tooth was is now filled (with a temporary crown), some tiny flakes of bone were inserted in the jaw area to grow into more bone support, and a permanent implant screw has been installed. Much less bleeding and mess this time. The end of the process won't be for another six months, when the good dentist will install a permanent crown (on the present implant - thankfully). A lot of moolah merely to replace what was there and perfectly natural to begin with!

More later ...