End of Summer Vacation 2010
So my last entry was over 4 months ago. I guess being a full fledged adult that comes with such important perks as being more emotionally stable, I don't have to update every other day about my life and feelings. So it is August 22, exactly 8 weeks ago my summer vacation started after my first year of teaching. I told myself I'd make a big livejournal post talking about my entire first year of teaching but I just was too lazy to be that reflective. Overall my first year went very well, students respected me but also thought I was cool. I tried my best to mimic teachers in my past who I thought had good classroom management like my old Biology teacher Mr. Hutch, and I think I got as close as I could. It's ok to joke around in my class but when we have to get work done you shut the hell up.
I thought I would be writing this entry sitting in another apartment in another city but I'm back in my apartment in Colonial Beach. My prospects for employment in 4 specific places fell through. I could have gotten hired in another random town, I'm sure, but I was picky on where I was willing to move because I wanted to do it only one more time and then I'd be done for the next 20 years or so. I can't lie, I'm a little bummed about coming back. 90% of the friends I made from last year moved away to various places. That's how it goes with me though, I always know someone for 6-12 months and then one of us goes some place else. That's probably why I enjoy the anchor provided by still having a lot of friends from high school that I talk to on a daily or weekly basis.
I am taking a neutral view though, once my foot heals I'm going to go back to the exercise program I was doing and that is going to take a lot of my free time up. They are changing our school schedule from a 7 period day to block scheduling, so I'll have to re-do all of my lessons so I'll be just as busy this year after school. It's hard to have a social life during the week for me when I wake up at 6 a.m., am at the school until 5 p.m., eat dinner, watch some TV for an hour, exercise from 6 - 7:30 p.m., shower, do the dishes, and then watch TV or play a computer game with friends from home for about another hour before bed. I think the only friend I know who knows what that is like is my friend Vince. I think his job is more stressful than mine because he's in the corporate world, but our schedules equally suck.
Anyway, my summer vacation was fun, I thought. I spent the majority of it at home in West Middlesex. There were things that used to be such a staple of summer life that I didn't do this year. I golfed maybe 5 times total, didn't eat at Steak N Shake once, no Scrappers baseball game, went to the movies maybe a couple times, didn't play tennis once, no summer gamefest. A lot of my friends were poor and couldn't afford to do much, which I can understand but it still sucks. I think it was July 19 or something I broke my toe in a swimming pool at Ryan Gelesky's and that put me out of commission for a lot of stuff for 3 weeks. I love being very active in summer, and that was probably the shittiest thing that could happen. I also just got the hospital bills for it, $500 AFTER insurance, awesome, right?
I was able to spend a lot of time with my investing portfolio because of my lack of mobility, which was fine with me. I learned a lot more about strategies, made different option trades trying new techniques like spreads. I pretty much have been crushing it as of late. Other than taking a small $40 loss on Coca-Cola, I've been 100% on my trades. I am getting better every month, I feel. I've been giving serious thought to quitting my job if I can reach that critical velocity of profits every month. If I could make $2,500 every month consistently in profits I'd probably quit. I mean to be honest I'm nowhere near that. Over the summer I made like $500 a month, but as my portfolio increases in value, I can invest larger sums to get larger returns, just have to hit that critical point, won't be this teaching year, that's for sure. It's also harder to invest when I'm teaching the entire business day and can't follow news or analyze charts.
The highlight of the summer just happened. Labor Day weekend 2009 some of my friends came down to visit me in Colonial Beach and we decided to plan a trip to the Outer Banks, North Carolina for summer 2010. 11 months later the plans finally happened and we made our way there. My drive was a lot easier so I enjoyed that, too, lol. We ended up getting 13 people for the house, I think all but one was a West Middlesex graduate. I won't go through every detail but it was pretty sweet. I got to golf there, my foot didn't bother me too much. It was awesome golfing right by the water, the course was just very different than what I was used to playing. I had some awesome moments, like chipping it in for par off the green. I shot an 88, but I did take a couple mulligans. Probably my only complaint about the trip was sleeping on an extremely uncomfortable bed, which led to very little sleep which made me slightly cranky at times, but everything else was awesome. Even though people think the Outer Banks is a really cliché place to vacation, I'd like to go back again next year with the same people, it's definitely something to look forward to.
And so I guess I'll end this entry. Tomorrow is day one of work, but at least they start us off with 10 teacher work days without students. They aren't giving us much time to prepare our classrooms for students, they are instead filling our days with bullshit like technology training, workshops, and school improvement meetings. Such is the nature of working in a bureaucratic field though, I guess. Goodbye summer 2010, t'was fun.
I thought I would be writing this entry sitting in another apartment in another city but I'm back in my apartment in Colonial Beach. My prospects for employment in 4 specific places fell through. I could have gotten hired in another random town, I'm sure, but I was picky on where I was willing to move because I wanted to do it only one more time and then I'd be done for the next 20 years or so. I can't lie, I'm a little bummed about coming back. 90% of the friends I made from last year moved away to various places. That's how it goes with me though, I always know someone for 6-12 months and then one of us goes some place else. That's probably why I enjoy the anchor provided by still having a lot of friends from high school that I talk to on a daily or weekly basis.
I am taking a neutral view though, once my foot heals I'm going to go back to the exercise program I was doing and that is going to take a lot of my free time up. They are changing our school schedule from a 7 period day to block scheduling, so I'll have to re-do all of my lessons so I'll be just as busy this year after school. It's hard to have a social life during the week for me when I wake up at 6 a.m., am at the school until 5 p.m., eat dinner, watch some TV for an hour, exercise from 6 - 7:30 p.m., shower, do the dishes, and then watch TV or play a computer game with friends from home for about another hour before bed. I think the only friend I know who knows what that is like is my friend Vince. I think his job is more stressful than mine because he's in the corporate world, but our schedules equally suck.
Anyway, my summer vacation was fun, I thought. I spent the majority of it at home in West Middlesex. There were things that used to be such a staple of summer life that I didn't do this year. I golfed maybe 5 times total, didn't eat at Steak N Shake once, no Scrappers baseball game, went to the movies maybe a couple times, didn't play tennis once, no summer gamefest. A lot of my friends were poor and couldn't afford to do much, which I can understand but it still sucks. I think it was July 19 or something I broke my toe in a swimming pool at Ryan Gelesky's and that put me out of commission for a lot of stuff for 3 weeks. I love being very active in summer, and that was probably the shittiest thing that could happen. I also just got the hospital bills for it, $500 AFTER insurance, awesome, right?
I was able to spend a lot of time with my investing portfolio because of my lack of mobility, which was fine with me. I learned a lot more about strategies, made different option trades trying new techniques like spreads. I pretty much have been crushing it as of late. Other than taking a small $40 loss on Coca-Cola, I've been 100% on my trades. I am getting better every month, I feel. I've been giving serious thought to quitting my job if I can reach that critical velocity of profits every month. If I could make $2,500 every month consistently in profits I'd probably quit. I mean to be honest I'm nowhere near that. Over the summer I made like $500 a month, but as my portfolio increases in value, I can invest larger sums to get larger returns, just have to hit that critical point, won't be this teaching year, that's for sure. It's also harder to invest when I'm teaching the entire business day and can't follow news or analyze charts.
The highlight of the summer just happened. Labor Day weekend 2009 some of my friends came down to visit me in Colonial Beach and we decided to plan a trip to the Outer Banks, North Carolina for summer 2010. 11 months later the plans finally happened and we made our way there. My drive was a lot easier so I enjoyed that, too, lol. We ended up getting 13 people for the house, I think all but one was a West Middlesex graduate. I won't go through every detail but it was pretty sweet. I got to golf there, my foot didn't bother me too much. It was awesome golfing right by the water, the course was just very different than what I was used to playing. I had some awesome moments, like chipping it in for par off the green. I shot an 88, but I did take a couple mulligans. Probably my only complaint about the trip was sleeping on an extremely uncomfortable bed, which led to very little sleep which made me slightly cranky at times, but everything else was awesome. Even though people think the Outer Banks is a really cliché place to vacation, I'd like to go back again next year with the same people, it's definitely something to look forward to.
And so I guess I'll end this entry. Tomorrow is day one of work, but at least they start us off with 10 teacher work days without students. They aren't giving us much time to prepare our classrooms for students, they are instead filling our days with bullshit like technology training, workshops, and school improvement meetings. Such is the nature of working in a bureaucratic field though, I guess. Goodbye summer 2010, t'was fun.