Everyone at SLCC seems really nice; I had a hellish time getting over there (confusion with bus schedules), but once I got there, everything went smoothly. I have my sample syllabi, my textbook, the form for my ID card, etc. and so on -- I start teaching Monday. Meep.
I meant to go to bed early last night; I went to bed at eleven. But somehow Kevin and I ended up talking until almost three...first some relationship stuff, then we spent a while talking about students and grading. That was really neat -- I have a theoretical knowledge of some of the problems, and ideas about how to approach them, but he's got practical experience with it, and even better, his students may hate his class (required calculus) even more than my students may hate mine (required comp). You'll undoubtedly be hearing me talking more about pedagogy in the months to come, so brace yourselves. I'm getting excited about it again already. :-)
Somehow we ended up in a discussion of my abysmal abilities when it comes to handling my finances. (Oh, right, when we were trying to figure out if I could actually afford to teach here next year, or whether I'd need to go back to CA, and if I did *that*, if I could teach there, or would need to temp, or could tech write, or...sheesh...) I get all panicky when I think about money these days. I have a pile of credit card debt, and then there's the student loans just waiting (or rather, not just waiting -- waiting and accruing more icky nasty interest)...
The problem is that my instinct is just to pay the minimum balances, throw more money at the bills when I can, and hide under the covers, trying not to think about how much I owe. Kevin has gently pointed out that I really ought to refinance the credit card debt to take advantage of much lower interest rates...and that I really don't need to panic about this. That's what financial planning is for -- so you don't panic. He's undoubtedly right, but...meep. It freaks me out. I'm going to look into refinancing, but it's a good thing he's willing to hold my hand through this.
Hey -- I'm writing this at Borders now, and Kevin has just arrived, bringing with him some of my mail -- paychecks from that Wells Fargo gig. How appropriate! :-) I was going to keep reading lit journals (finished the stories in Ploughshares, ditto Ohio Review), but maybe I'll try to do some check figuring out instead. I should at least deal with the Clean Sheets checks I need to send out -- at least I know I have the money for *that*. :-)
So I'll talk to y'all later -- just one last thing. A few days ago a reader wrote in asking if copies of "Was it Good for You?" and "Dialogue" were online...he'd read Celeste's reviews of them and wanted to read the stories. Since those were some of the pieces I wrote for my book, I haven't had them on my web page, but I think at this point, anyone who buys my book won't be doing it solely to get a few stories that aren't online. So I went ahead and put them online -- check the stories page for them, if you haven't run into them before. They're both very short.