Saturday, June 16, 2012

Catching up with you

It's been forever since I posted, I know. A lot has happened since then-- I got bangs now.

About 2 months ago I started an intensive CELTA program designed to teach me how to teach. It worked. Or, rather, it got me a job. I graduated and I had 3 job offers in a week. It was pretty amazing, and I'm incredibly grateful for it.

The program was 4 weeks long and took up nearly all of my time. You can find out more about it here. During this time, Jord was trying to finish up his first year and lock down that Master's degree. Right in the middle of all of this, I was trying to fancy up a presentation for one of my classes. This required the use of my laptop. I have a sweet laptop bag that was given to me by a former student of mine, and so I went ahead and used it to carry my precious cargo. Bad idea. The bag, though very nice and snazzy, is not a "running" bag. So, say, you're about to miss the train. This bag will not only ensure that you do, but will snap as you are running and allow you to drop whatever is in it.

My Macbook was in it.

This is the same laptop I've had since 2007, but I love(d) her. Jordan and I had been sharing her for the whole of our marriage. I knew that her time on this earth was running short, but I didn't anticipate her death at my hands*.

Spoiler alert! I broke her that day. Just the backlight. But she wasn't really operable at that point anyways.

Because school was pretty expensive for us we didn't immediately have the funds to fix her. We decided to go ahead and replace just the backlight first and see if we could limp by. After about a week and a half of using library computers for all of our work, we finally got the part in. Jordan installed it after watching a ton of Youtube videos. It was very delicate work**.

After it was in place, we had to team up to put the screen back on. Everything was going well-- until it wasn't. An LCD screen is a gentle beast and does not like to be pressed on with, say, a fat thumb. So that's exactly what I did. So she was operable but she also had this huge black circle right at the tippy top of the screen. Also, there were cracks. Everywhere***.

The story has a happy ending: right after all of this, Jordan called his parents and mentioned the laptop situation; they generously offered to buy us a new one! It was completely unexpected and amazing. We got our newest favorite toy about a month ago and she's perfect. Our old lappy is now being used like desktop. Eventually we would like to replace the entire display and use her like a laptop again. As she's been sitting still on our desk, the black spot hasn't traveled or grown and she's still working great. So no RIP yet. Not yet.

At the end of May I started working for a local language school teaching ESL to adult learners. It's a demanding and rewarding job, natch. I'm gaining a lot of practical teaching knowledge while Jordan is playing househusband.

Oh yeah, ladies. He has dinner ready for me when I walk in the door.

He finished up his semester on a very strong note, and he immediately started looking for a job. If you know George, you know that he can't not be doing something. So he works for a moving company most days and cleans the house the other days.

I've really struggled to keep our expenses low as I've been gone more, but he's really tried to take over the finances/grocery shopping/scratch stuff that I like to do. He hangs loads of laundry to dry, waters our garden and makes fresh bread every day. He's a champ.

He's also really into Minecraft.

Anyways, as this (very cold) summer is winding up, I'm excited to see what it brings. A whole lot of new things, it seems.

*I mean I did see it, but I didn't. I expect most electric things to be dead by my hands in the next 5 years.
**Swears were said
***"It's like a plumbah party"-- said by two girls talking about their cracked iPhone screens. Applicable here.



4 comments:

  1. Do you want to be Omar's personal English tutor? kthnxbye.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't know why I'm just now seeing this comment. I'm supposed to be getting alerts about this, bloggah! Jeez leweez.

    Yes! I would love to. In all seriousness, let's chat about this. If he is able to skype with me at least once a week, we can do dis...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good to see you back! Breaking computer screens are the worst.

    ReplyDelete