Good news, everybody!

(Wow, two posts in one day. I'm not sure I've ever done that on this blog. Okay, technically, this post is going out the next day. Hey, it's insomnia, what can I say? I'm still up, it doesn't feel like the next day yet. What? Oh, yeah, the post...)

One of my major goals that I wanted to accomplish ASAP this school year was to renew my certificate early. It expires at the end of June, and after the drama and trauma of the last renewal, I wanted to get an early start on it this time. Fortunately, a nice healthy tax refund has pushed that forward even more. So I wrote to the local ESD today to ask how many clock hours I had available. I need 150 to renew, but thanks to a class a couple of years ago, I could squeak by with 130.

I have 182. Okay, this just got a whole lot easier! We have a day off coming up soon, so I plan to go into town and get that taken care of then, if I don't manage to do it all through e-mail before.

And no, the extra hours won't help me move up the ladder to a higher salary. I'm stuck where I am for now until I can finish my master's degree. But that's my goal for next year.

A Jolt of Excitement

As a new hire in a new district, they have to do a criminal background check. This involves taking fingerprints. No problem, I've had it done before. But when I went in a few weeks ago to the local (to my new district) ESD office to get prints, they had a fancy digital fingerprint machine that kept getting smudgy images. The technician did what he could, but it clearly wasn't enough, as the state patrol rejected them. Now what? The district sent the prints back to me, they arrived yesterday, and I called the state office for advice. "Well, you could go to the state patrol office in the state capital and get them redone there." I was out the door within fifteen minutes. To be sure, it's not a short trip, but it beats heading to the other side of the state to try it again on a malfunctioning digital machine. I got there in a little over an hour, got a nice set of clean, crisp prints (done with old fashioned ink), and was back before the evening rush hour even got bad. Since I had no other big plans for the day, it all worked out well.

In the meantime, we're still trying to buy a new house and get this old place cleaned and pressed to show other potential buyers. We're going to have to bite the bullet and pay someone to clear out the jungle back yard, it appears, as that's already scared off some potential buyers. Yeah, like we can afford that, too...