"Where the hell has this doofus been?!"

I'm sure the title is a question some of you have had lately. Truth be told, I've been way too busy burning my ass at both ends of the candle, and in the middle as well, at work. Last March, Southwestern College's Math dept. said it had a LOT of money in basic math skills funds to blow away. Being one of the first to volunteer his service, of course I offered to spend their cash!!! What started as four review sessions for the department's developmental math finals rapidly (as "within hours") turned into ONE HUNDRED EIGHT workshops over a 4-week period. Needless to say, I was kept extremely busy doing a lot of the work for these workshops: recruiting faculty to run them, writing the actual workshops, running the scheduling of the workshops throughout the college district, collecting & disseminating the workshop materials, and then actually running the workshops I was assigned to run. 70+ hours of work later, the district had a final exam review workshop unlike any other I've ever seen in San Diego during the 11 years I've been teaching college math.

So what has all this work lead to? Well, it formed a good capper on all the work I've done over the years as a community-college math instructor. I interviewed for a full-time tenure-track position at Southwestern College and ........ I got it. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaw!!!!! So as of this Fall '07, I will be a full-time instructor at Southwestern College (of course, pending my passing the 4-year tenure probation period). This is truly a dream-come-true for me. I've been hoping for this opportunity since the late '80's and I'm glad I finally got the opportunity to serve at my alma mater.

So what the hell does this have to do with my involvement in the hobby? Well, my new schedule makes the 2007 Chicago Show look as a lost cause. The only way I'll be able to make it there is if the club allows me to set up after their 9:00 pm curfew, a certain friend from Wisconsin is willing to pick me up at the airport (hey, no pressures there, KPeck!!!), and the airlines make more direct flights from San Diego available.

Okay, so what if I don't make it to Chicago? Then I'm definitely making the Atlanta show and MFCA next year. By then, I'll have the freedom to pick my own schedule, and I fully intend to arrange so that I won't have to work on Fridays. Pretty neat, eh?