NEW APPROACH

There's a whole lot of turmoil going on in my school building because "The Administration" is moving everyone around to new teaching assignments. The changes wouldn't affect me even if I were staying because, let's face it, no one else would be stupid enough to want to teach the Band. But everyone else is up in arms and lots of tears are being shed. It really kind of blows.

Yesterday, I thought I might try a new approach to my last two months here. Rather than allowing it to continue sucking the life out of me, I decided to just let everything bounce off. I went up and spent time mingling with some of the disgruntled teachers and made it my job to say all the things that they were thinking but - as people concerned about their future employment - afraid to say. It was a good day. It added a bit of levity to a really negative situation.

Last night, HE and I were watching a couple travel programs that TiVo had recorded.

[Sidenote: I love TiVo so much more than I ever would have imagined... especially now that TiVo knows what I like to watch and goes out of his way to tape it for me. I love you, TiVo.]

The first one we watched was GlobeTrekker: California. God, I want to go to California. Not so much the southern part as the north. I wanna go to Big Sur and up to see the giant redwoods. I wanna hang out in Garberville and smoke some weed with the hippies. Most of all, I want NOT to be confined to a boring routine, paying out the ass to live in crappy New Jersey for the rest of my life.

I don't have the big dreams of a fancy wedding, white-picket fence or brood of children. I've never been a big fan of "stuff" -- as a matter of fact, I am probably one of the few women alive who detests shopping. I want to come up with a way to make a living while being able to travel around the world. I want to live simply and authentically. I want to live free.

Is that weird?