busy, busy, busy

Well, I've been out here in cyberspace, trying to update the people I love. Here's my story.

1. Jeff has been home a lot more, which has been a blessing.

2. The Hope House Free Medical Clinic has been consuming a lot of my time lately because I made a promotional slide-show/presentation for them. That's a lot of work, but it was very effective.

3. I sent Grandma in Maine a DVD of the Gurk side Christmas together. Due to this, I learned many things. Our JVC video camera is very tempermental. Sometimes, it gets stuck in safe mode and is rendered useless. The screen says to take the video tape out and put it back in again. Well, I'm here to say "It don't work!"

I searched on-line to find that many people have this same problem with their JVC camcorders, and they were just as frustrated as I was. After much searching over the course of three days, I finally found a website that claimed to have a solution to this safe mode problem. I was so excited, until I read what they did to their cameras. The site had many recommendations to whack the camera on the side with an open hand near the speaker. Surely, I thought this was nuts, but I was desperate. So, I gave my video camera a good whack by the speaker, and sure enough, it worked!

Soon after that, I found out the hard way that our computer's hard drive doesn't have enough space to do much video work. After many hours of sorting, dumping, and burning to CD's, I still did not have enough room. So, I dumped software that could be easily reloaded from the internet. I dumped all of Jeff's and my music from our vast CD collection. After successfully burning two copies of Christmas video, I had to start downloading and reloading several pieces of necessary software.

Needless to say, Grandma better like the Christmas video because there is no way to express the effort I went through to get that done for her.


What number are we on...oh, yes...4. I have become a popular substitute teacher. This is a good thing, but it's also not the greatest. Many people want me to sub, but I only want to work 2-3 days a week. So, now I'm doing more two weeks on and one week off. I'm glad for the work, but I'm just not used to it anymore. Then, I become more well known by doing a two week job, and other teachers want to book me for their vacation times. The cycle does not end. I'm really glad that people appreciate my teaching abilities.

5. My subbing career is predominately in Middle and High Schools. I have to be to work by 7:15 for two and a half weeks. Fortunately, Jeff has 8:00am classes, so we go to bed between 9:00pm and 10:00pm. This is a stark contrast to the past 3 years where we have gone to bed around 12:00am. Change, change, change. (Also, we've had some late night phone calls that wake us up because "the Bates always stay up late." Well, I'm here to tell you, not anymore!!!

6. I began guitar lessons. I'm really excited about them because I am actually learning!!! This contrasts a very bad experience I had last year with guitar lessons.

7. I may be giving guitar lessons soon to many people from our church. This would ideally make me substitute teach less. I'm booked for several weeks of subbing already through the end of the school year. This may just compound our schedules.

Well, that's enough for now, but I have been busy.