The last few weeks have flown by. One of the downsides to not teaching classes is that every day feels exactly the same as the previous day, and it's harder to have a feeling of progress. But I did hit my first project milestone, which is the completion of the grading rubric for the remedial mathematics program. It's not a big milestone, but it's done.
I got an upgrade in my workstation at school, which is fun. I now have a two-monitor setup, where one of the monitors is a touch screen. The second screen is nice, though at a certain level is just feels excessive. My brain and eyes can't track information across both screens simultaneously, and so most of the time one of the monitors is basically unused. It's nice to be able to "spread out" my stuff, but it's kind of like having a lot of horizontal surfaces at home. Stuff just finds a way of filling the available space. Unfortunately, I don't think that the work I'm doing really gains much from the touch screen, so I feel like it's going to be an underutilized resource. Hopefully over time, I'll find reasons to cover the screen with fingerprints.
I've also got a pen/tablet drawing pad. This is actually the more functional upgrade, as I'm supposed to make math videos this summer, and this will allow me to do it in my office instead of trying to hunt down empty classrooms to use the Sympodium devices that we have. I've also started to play with Camtasia, which is a video editing/production software program. It's pretty easy to use, and it probably does a lot more than what I'm making it do right now. But one step at a time. I first need to get used to talking to myself in my office. It's surprising how self-conscious I am when I'm "teaching" to nobody. When I have an audience, my mind is focused on communicating ideas. When I don't have an audience, my mind is focused on listening to myself talk. I hear every inflection and every phrase that I rush or slur together, and I feel like I should go back and fix it immediately (by stopping mid-sentence, and backtracking to the previous sentence). With a little practice, I think I'll get over it. I'll need to, because otherwise it will take forever to make these videos.
I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but I've finally finished dealing with the debt collection agency and the credit report. Next time, I'll start the process by threatening to sue the collection agency. It seems to be a pretty effective tactic.
Our new senior pastor arrives for good this weekend. And I'm glad. I got an email today that announces his opening sermon series: "Vital Signs of a Healthy Church." This is the sort of strong vision-casting from the pulpit that I've been hoping to see. That, and I'm simply tired of listening to terrible sermons. The guy that was filling the pulpit was not good at all. I walked out on a sermon a couple weeks ago when the preacher spent the first 10 minutes reading the wrong passage without realizing it. It took someone from the congregation to call out to the pastor to tell him he was in the wrong passage before he stopped. How can you not know what passage you're preaching from? Even if it's a sermon series that you're using from the past, surely you've spent the time to review it before going on stage, right? But it's over, and I'm glad.
I'm doing some landscaping in the backyard. And by "some," I really mean "some." I'm actually pulling out more plants than I'm putting in. I spent about an hour today digging up one of the bushes. I had already hacked off most of the branches, and so it was all digging to get underneath it so I can pull it up. There's something oddly satisfying about destroying a plant that I don't think will be matched by maintenance and upkeep of plants. The landscaper who did the front yard a couple years ago told me that the oleanders only need to be pruned once a year. They don't appear to be very expensive plants, so if I end up killing them, it's not a big deal. (I'm mostly concerned about what will happen in the fall when I have my first pruning experience.)
I'm going to call him back by early next week and give him the okay to do his thing. He's going to pull out the old irrigation system and put in a new one (for the two oleanders he's planting, with the idea that I might do something more in the future). He's also going to pull out a few unwanted plants and a lot of unwanted weeds, and do some general cleanup. He's only charging me $250, so I'm pretty happy with that. (I was thinking it would cost somewhere between $300 and $400.)
The last thing I would need to do is buy backyard furniture. Then maybe I'd actually spend some time back there, but not until the end of summer. Sitting outside in June, July, and August is not something that I think I want to do.