Even though the first two years of the 2000s were not entirely happy, they did help set up the end of another era of my life from which I moved forward.
2002
With the mentally disastrous 2001 out of the way, I was determined more than ever to make 2002 a great one. My first agenda was to keep my documents for job interviews aplenty and hone my interview skills. I had gotten into gear in 2001 quite late and the probability of me getting a job in the 01-02 year was highly unlikely at this point, so 02-03 was the one to shoot for.
In December I had reunited with Jody, a friend from the previous year. We had begun to get quite friendly the first time but something had gotten interrupted. Knowing me...it was me. At any rate, she seemed to want to give things another shot. Even though this was to be another short-lived relationship, at last I got some long unfinished business done and out of the way if you get my drift. Twenty nine years is a LONG time for sure. As Matthew Broderick's character Jerome says in Biloxi Blues..."This doesn't have to be the greatest experience in my life...I just want to get it over with." I did, notch in life made, moved on.
Interviews were still happening, mostly in the Central Valley, though I remember one in San Jose. There was one just southeast of Fresno in February that produced an interesting side effect. As I was heading back north along CA 99, I was in the left lane when a compact-looking car passed me in the shoulder. He saw too late that the shoulder was ending and he began spinning in both northbound lanes. There was no if or and about it, I was going to hit him. I let out a fatalistic scream as the collision happened.
Strangely, I really don't recall what happened to the car or driver. I was under the impression that he was able to drive away, though some spectators claimed he went over a bridge to a pit below. The police arrived and concluded what I did. As it was foggy out, they also wanted to make sure we were all safe. My car was towed someplace and I was taken to a local motel. Shaken, I called Scott to let him know what was what. Had I a brain, I would have just asked him to come get me and leave the car to scrap. However, I was a bit in shock and just glad to be alive. The next morning, I was taken to the car by a cab and stupidly elected to pay $700 to tow the car back to Santa Rosa. It was undriveable and got towed away for good anyway. The driver was never found...kind of an unfinished minor chapter in life to this day.
In the meantime, sub jobs were driven to in the beater pickup we had, and it worked fine. Weeks later, I decided to try to finance a car. My dad offered help but I wanted to do this one on my own name...and in the end I got a 1996 Toyota Corolla. It was a pain to have a new payment on something other than bills and credit cards, but this baby was mine.
An interview in Sacramento looked promising, but then I had another for the Clark County School District in Las Vegas...once again in Fresno! I drove there late one day, spent the night, and did the interview in the morning. It seemed to go well and I went back home to keep doing what I was doing. Then, one day in April, I got a big packet in the mail saying I was hired by the CCSD!!
There really is no clear way to describe my feelings at that point. I was overjoyed that someone finally hired me. I was excited that a new adventure in life was starting. I was ECSTATIC that I was going to finally be living by myself for the first time in life. Now, having said that, I really have no complaints about my time rooming with Scott. He is my best buddy from college and always will be. As our joke went, we were just a year short of a common law marriage. It was now time for not only me to live on my own, but him as well. He needed time to let himself grow and explore without me in the way. On top of that, his family had always been good to me and I would miss his parents a ton, as well as June.
Of course, I had forms to fill out and fingerprints to take, but that was all pretty easy. Soon I started getting calls from different principals and before I knew it, I was selected to teach at Tom Williams Elementary as a 1st grade teacher. Being Internet-savvy, I looked it up online, and the principal, Dr. Linda Griffiths, sent me some brochures on affordable apartments. Yes, I was going from free room to rent payments in the near future, but I looked forward to it...it was part of a new freedom.
You know that 'lame duck' period between an election and inauguration? That's what May to early August essentially was. It was just a waiting game. I didn't have a whole lot in terms of loose ends. Kimberly was teaching in San Jose, Karen and Grady were getting ready to get married, and Scott was likely counting down the days to when I left. I had no current female interests to say goodbye to. One thing that rattled me just a bit, though, was that my ed school friend Jacqueline had gotten married to someone I had not even met. It was none of my business really, and I was happy for her, but we talked fairly regularly even after graduating, so I felt a bit betrayed. A bit. I was moving soon, so none of it mattered.
In early July, I flew down to San Diego so that my mom and I could drive up to Las Vegas to check out my school and look into an apartment. It was a fairly stormy drive and there was a lot of rain, thunder and lightning as we got closer to Vegas. We got a pretty cheap room for Vegas on a Friday night:$59 at Circus Circus. The next morning it was a whole lot nicer out, though quite humid for the desert. We checked out my school, which turned out to be an outdoor school...meaning classrooms were accessed from outdoor corridors. Then we set about getting myself an apartment. The best value was a $500 one bedroom near Nellis AFB. I signed papers for an hour, put down a deposit, and now had a place to come to in just three weeks. Coming back to San Diego, I learned an important lesson: NEVER drive back from Vegas on a Sunday! A normally 5-6 hour drive turned into 8-9 hours with everyone coming home.
In the next weeks, I alternated between getting my stuff together, watching TV, barbecuing, and driving to the coast and back. The closeness of the ocean was one thing I would forever miss. My favorite place to go was Goat Rock, where on a clear night you could see thousands of stars out in the cool northern coast air. I had gotten to know Sonoma County as my home for 8 years, and a significant life era was coming to an end very soon.
And then it happened. My dad rented a Ford F150 and brought up some glass tables he and Becky weren't using, along with a rocker. I had packed my stuff in boxes, but the boxes wouldn't fit into the truck and my car...so we transferred to trash bags and it fit much better. We had a goodbye to Santa Rosa dinner with Scott and took off at 2:00 am. We stopped on I 5 for breakfast, then cut across CA 58 toward Barstow and then hit I 15. We hit my apartment complex around 1, signed some papers in the office and paid rent for month 1, and then spent a hot humid couple of hours unloading the truck and car. Thank heaven I was allowed to take the bed I was using at June's house.
After unloading, we got back in the truck and sought out a decent place to eat. After driving down Las Vegas Blvd quite a way, we saw a sign at the Stardust for Tony Roma's...ribs and a cold beer sounded really good then! After that, we headed back to the apartment and both crashed. It had been a long day! The next morning, my dad quietly left me a check to get some household supplies and got an early start back home. That guy keeps a fairly rigid schedule, always has!
I woke up, got up, and looked around. It was official. I was on my own for the first time in almost 30 years! There were a lot of things I WANTED to do, but the first thing obviously was to get some gas and grab some breakfast. There was a Chevron close by for $1.43 a gallon. The clerk inside gave me a lead on Blueberry Hill just up Las Vegas Blvd. I went there and had a pretty good breakfast...and would do that every Saturday for the next four years. After that, I went to the nearby Walmart and did some basic food and supplies stocking up. The rest of the day I organized my videos and other things. One thing I did not have was a microwave, so the rental office let me borrow one until I got my own.
I had arranged for phone service, gas, and a cable hookup for when I arrived, The phone was hooked up when I got there, I just had to wait on Southwest Gas and Cox cable, both of which arrived on Monday. There was just a week to putz around and get oriented. One day I visited my school and met Dr Griffiths and the new assistant principal Kristie Rodeles. I also had to get my computer Internet figured out from the computer my dad let me have. Eventually I got my own computer and printer from CompUSA.
One thing became pretty obvious to me pretty quick: I was living in the desert. That might sound like a big DUH, but it is significant if one is used to a fairly to mainly humid climate. It took some adjusting, especially the bright glaring sunsets. Another thing was the vastness of the Vegas Valley, which comes out to about 600 square miles. Whereas I was used to driving around and hitting different towns every 7-10 miles (or 3-4 in PA), here it was Las Vegas (taking up the most space), North Las Vegas, Henderson, and if you were adventurous, Boulder City just past Railroad Pass. I ventured to Hoover Dam one Sunday and noticed that trucks weren't allowed over the dam on U.S. 93 after 9/11.They had to travel down U.S. 95 to a place called Laughlin and cut over from there to U.S. 93...a fairly long detour. I had yet to travel to those places, but I was a desert newbie.
On August 13, the CCSD new recruit welcoming extravaganza began. We were treated to all sorts of food and drink while being lectured on this and that...stuff that had nothing to do with teaching itself. During these sessions, I got to meet some of my co-workers at Tom Williams, new just like me. There I met Madelyn Levine, Charlene Ohl, Louise Pell, and Halie Zimmerman. At these meetings we learned a lot about the health plan, the union, and the credit union. I also learned a bit about the year-round system, something I was about to learn fairly fast. In fact, I was on track 2, which meant that after 3 weeks I would be on my first vacation! Some news people were there and I was elected to be our table's spokesperson.
After the intro district crap was over, it was time to go to our schools and learn some real skinny on what went on. I was already given some math materials called Investigations, but it seemed quite over the head for a newbie. We also learned a bit about the reading program, some slush called Literacy 2000, as well as the boss's expectations. At the school meetings, I met a lot of new people who'd become regulars in my professional life (and social media life later on): Scott Gupton, Christie Shearer, Jennifer Plank, Bob Boucher, Beth and Josh Danielson, Richard McMahon, Leslye King, Nikea King, Steve Walk, Paul Minkler, Heidi Costolo, newbie like me Kathleen Everett, and Helene Herrera, among others. It was fairly daunting, but the experienced members of my first grade team Jennifer and Christie helped me to figure out how to make a barely acceptable bulletin board and be ready for August 26.
Even though the school year with the kids had not really started, I was getting some inklings about things already. The first was that Tom Williams was not exactly at the top of the achievement list. Another was that I had a lot to learn and a short time to get fairly decent at it. I was also to learn that parent involvement was a luxury, not a given. Plus, the copiers were always breaking down.
Luckily, as the first day came, I did pretty well. I had a small class so at least getting to know the names was a quick success. Soon after everything started, Steve Walk got me signed up for Project LIFE, a reading skills program taught by Christie Shearer and Jen Plank. A lot of the other newbies were doing it, and since I had no after-school life to speak of yet, I did it.
Before I knew it, track break had arrived. I took a jaunt to Santa Rosa to grab a few things I forgot, then drove down the coast to San Diego for a few days. There was nothing for me to prep for school in that time as I was kind of clueless still. When I got back in early October, the Investigations math program was deemed to be too much of a hassle by many so we went back to an older math program that still had materials lying around. Really, I was feeling my way around things, getting routines down and so on. Richard McMahon helped me to figure out an easy lesson plan grid on Word.
I got in with the Friday happy hour crowd just to have some social time. We hit one bar or another most every Friday, but my favorite was Main Street Station. Often I would dine out on my own Friday nights. For sure I was feeling lonely in a new town but I wasn't quite ready to hit the dating market just yet. For the time being it was work, TV, and my new Nintendo Gamecube. For Halloween, our grade level dressed up as Crayola crayons. We had a group shot taken of that...probably my favorite memory of that year.
In Nevada, they don't observe Columbus Day, but rather Nevada Day, the last Friday in October. There was a school carnival the day before, and first grade ran the pie throwing event. I got smushed a lot! There was also a dunking tank which was good to wash the whipped cream off the shoes. That weekend I visited my grandma and Bob in Arizona. Bob had a lot of tales of him teaching the Navy recruits back in the day. It was the first time I had anything in common with the guy.
In early November I had need of a dentist and got a triple root canal. That was less than positive, but I felt better later. Come mid November, my mom and Don came for an early 30th birthday celebration. We had a nice hibachi dinner and went to see Jay Leno. Later in November, I went to San Diego for Thanksgiving and my actual birthday. Since it was just me and my mom, we cooked a turkey breast and had some sides, but that was all we needed. This was also my first visit to her new condo in Carlsbad.
December rolled quickly with a surprise or two. The first was that Dr Griffiths was leaving and the second was that I was going to be Santa Claus on the last day of school. Griffiths was allowed to take some people with her to her new assignment and I got the distinct impression that some were disappointed they weren't it. I don't know if it was a loyalty thing or some people wanted to desert what they believed a sinking ship. There was a pretty nice staff Christmas party at Richard's girlfriend's house near Lake Las Vegas.
Then that last day came. I had a sub arranged and stayed on the QT putting on my Santa suit. The one toughie was the eyebrows...office clerk Dawn tried rubber cement...needless to say that left a bit of a burn! The gig was fun and before I knew it, the day was done. I was already packed for San Diego and stopped to see Rob Lander on the way down. He and some friends were going to see the 2nd Lord of the Rings movie and wanted me to come. I did, but fell asleep during some quiet film moments...of which there were many.
Christmas itself was good. My dad got me a new car stereo with a 6-disc changer. Hanging around family that Christmas convinced me it was time to get a social life upon return home...my new Vegas home!
2003
Christmas break was a nice even 2 weeks off, perfect for battery recharge. Upon return home, I decided to see what the online dating scene was like. I wasn't a bar person, it seemed too cheesy and fake. After some fumbles, I met a person named Kimberly Norman. After a couple of dates, I realized she had some personal stuff going on and I wasn't ready for all that...it might sound shallow, but really at that point I wanted to enjoy life and not get into a domestic scene I couldn't handle maturely. There were one or two others that were quick meetups but nothing came of them.
School was pretty much the same with the exception of our new principal Teddy Brewer. She actually wasn't new, pretty much a veteran and was pretty direct about our status: our standardized testing scores for 3rd through 5th the previous year tanked badly, and with No Child Left Behind in gear, there was no fucking around. I guess as a new recruit I wasn't as shaken as others, but the stress was felt by others. I actually felt good about Mrs Brewer, I felt I could talk to her and get advice when needed...a bit moreso than with Griffiths.
In February, 2 things happened. First, I went to Becky's mom's house for a birthday celebration (who i don't remember). I had assumed it was a sleepover event, but no. I went back home that evening. I did go back there soon after when my dad, his brother, and sons Chris and Craig came for a golf weekend. The other was my grandma's husband Bob passed away. I went to Arizona for the funeral. It was shameful how Bob's family treated my grandma, like the past 13 years had not happened.
After a visit to Washington to see my sister and Derek in late February, I met a girl named Treasa. She was quite lively and without the baggage of others, and from time to time we got together and had some good fun. We weren't exclusive by any means and that bugged me a bit, but I enjoyed time with her so I let her make the rules.
In April, Scott came down for a visit during Spring Break. We took a jaunt up to Zion for a day, did some bowling, visited the Little Darlings 'gentlemen's club'. and saw a movie or two. It was good to see him and even better to see him off...I wanted to see Treasa.
In May, right before my final track break, I went on the 4th grade trip to Ely. It was a fun bus ride, a LONG bus ride! On the way, we saw Parranagut Lake, Cathedral Gorge, and the Ward Charcoal Ovens. At the latter, I was realizing how underdressed I was. It was May and wintry! At the Motel 6, all of us teachers got McDonald's orders in and delivered them to the students, then slept for the night in our own rooms. The next morning was quite snowy, we were wondering if we'd be able to be home. Luckily it cleared up and after breakfast we were able to go to Lehman Caves just west of the Utah line, then headed home.
Then it was time to understand the reality of summer in a year-round school, especially on track 2! The reality was, there WAS NO SUMMER except the weather, Thank heaven my apartment and classroom had decent AC. I was able to keep my apartment at 80 with a fan or 2 and stayed comfy. During the summer I met someone else on the dating circuit, a girl my age named Lora Head. We had a date and I really liked her, but she also had her eye on another person. Ah, dating! I was starting to feel like I hadn't missed much during my 20s.
And as the year came to a close, I felt the pain for the first time of saying goodbye to a class. It was tearful to be sure...my first class graduating to the next grade. Tearful on my end and the kids!
Also a thing to know in the year-round system is that the time between end of year and start of new one is akin to the time between rolls in a bowling frame....well, not that short, but still short!
As the new year was dawning, a couple of things came down the pike. One, I was getting Treasa's nephew Christian in my class. Two, my time with Treasa was ending. as she had gotten engaged. She tried to tell me this on the night before school started but I was in a bad mood as there had been a water leak upstairs and I had a bunch of flies in my apartment! I was in a much better frame of mind the next day, though it kind of put me off for the new year. The class itself was pretty good. We had gotten a new reading series called Trophies which kicked the ass out of Literacy 2000! Some of us teachers were also elected to do some literacy training off site once a week. The only trouble was that if a sub didn't take the job, we had to return to school. It happened frequently.
I was discovering also that being in the union had some perks, and one of them was reduced membership to a gym. I had put on some weight even when working the Ab Doer, so some fitness was needed. I started going to Gold's Gym a few times a week and with a trainer I was losing the poundage. At Jen Plank's wedding I was starting to look better already.
Even though Lora was interested in another guy, she was interested in being friends. Still being new in Vegas, I didn't have that many so far, so it sounded good. We are good friends to this day.
On the relationship front, I met someone named Genevieve, a nice but slightly neurotic redhead. We got together a couple of times, once with her friend Gigi. Gen wanted to get sexual and I was cool with that...until her husband called me. I hadn't known that little tidbit, and although nookie is almost always good, I had a standard or two in my moral code. It put her off a lot, but endeared me to Gigi...but more on that later.
Before I knew it, the end of October came and it was carnival time again! I got hit a lot, but this time there was no dunking tank to rinse off in. I visited my grandma that long weekend and came back to begin my track break. I was on track 4, so I got pretty much all of November off.
At the start, I met a girl named Indy(Indetheow) and we got together a few times, but like a few others, she was looking for something a bit more stable (like wanting to stabilize me). It didn't last long, but I'd see her again the next year.
I took a road trip to Santa Rosa and hung with Scott for a day or two and visited June. Afterward, I drove toward San Diego. On the way, I dropped off a bottle of wine for Kimberly and her new husband. It was a nice evening drive, listening to a James Patterson audio book. I stopped in San Luis Obispo for dinner and in Buellton for the night. I then hung in San Diego for a bit, but wanted to get back home...a social life was there at last. Not regular yet, but it was getting there.
Lora took me to a hockey game for my birthday, the day I got back. The thing with Indy had ended, but I was talking with Gigi more often, we even went to a movie together, I also met a girl online named Renee, Though there were no sparks there, we got together here and there for a few years.
The staff Christmas party was at Teddy Brewer's house. She had hosted a few gatherings before with her husband Dennis. They had a pretty nice home. Christmas itself was decent. I was looking and feeling a lot better than in the summer. I also wanted to get back home...I was anticipating some good time with Gigi.
But looming far ahead in the next year...an old trouble was coming at me.
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