Thank God for public Wi-Fi...
Today I had to take two parts of the PRAXIS exam (the tests for teachers, at least here in Louisiana -- I don't know about elsewhere in the country). Fortunately, my ACT score was high enough to exempt me from the PRAXIS I test, so today I had to take the Secondary English Content exam and the Secondary English Pedagogy exam, the first at 7:30 in the morning, the latter at 2:15 in the afternoon.
Quite a gap.
I got to my old alma mater, Nicholls State University, at 7 a.m. only to find a long line already forming outside of Peltier Hall. I got in line and popped on my iPod -- occasionally I have a glimpse of foresight, such as I when I thought to put my earbuds in my pocket before I left. At 7:30, they finally opened the doors, at which point everyone scrambled to find the correct room for whichever test they were taking. At the room, they had to check us in one at a time to make sure we were in the right place. As a result, the 7:30 exam didn't actually begin until just before 8:30 a.m. It wasn't too difficult, although I was a bit lost on a few "who wrote the following passage?" questions. Some were easy (Lewis Carroll and Nathaniel Hawthorne), while others took an educated guess (I know it wasn't Dickenson... was it Emerson or Thoreau?).
We left at 10:30 (even if you finish early, you aren't allowed to leave until the time is finished), and rather than driving an hour home, spending two hours there and then driving back for the next test, I went to the Coffee Table shop behind the NSU campus where -- thank goodness -- they offer a public Wi-Fi connection. More foresight: I had my laptop computer with me. I spent about an hour and a half putting together two portfolios to print out and take to the Wizard World Philly convention next week. Both portfolios contain a resume and snippets about my work (the two novels and the play). One of them contains writing samples of mine with characters that don't belong to me (specifically a Justice League Unlimited script and a Betty and Veronica script. Yes, I know. Shut up.) The other contains pitches and script samples for two stories of my own, the long-nomadic Evertime and a relatively new idea I have called Miracle that I'm really excited about.
I've got both of those ready. Monday I'll go to a Kinko's or some such place and print out a mass to bring with me, and I'll spend the three days of the con schmoozing them into the hands of any editor who will give them a second glance.
Now I'm just browsing around online for a little while. Still have a half-hour before I'm going to leave for the next test.
Wish me luck.