12/27/2001:
Bills, bills, bills! Money, money, money! I spent the day trying to figure out money issues. I’ve got bills to pay, budgets to calculate and stick to and debts to collect. Money is such a useful tool—I suck at bartering or haggling—but it can be a pain in the ass when you don’t have enough. I’m really digging my substitute teaching gig, but getting paid once a month is a drag. At the same time, it’s fun to test myself—to see if I can make it all work with just what I have. I’d rather be worrying about paying my rent and car insurance than worrying where I’m going to be sleeping or where my next meal is coming from. At least I can sit here in my bedroom and play on the Internet and listen to Neil Young and watch movies on my new DVD player (thanks mom and Pete!). Like every year, Christmas was good to me and I’ve got lots of new diversions.

12/22/2001:
I had fun substituting this week. I even got to throw a winter break party with my Thursday classes. Somer helped me bag up some candy to pass out to the kids and I rented a few holiday videos for them to watch.
Tomorrow I’m heading up to Arlington to hang with my family and Somer’s family and maybe even see a few old friends, if there’s time. Happy holidays!

12/12/2001:
I’ve been playing around with the look of the site (as if you hadn’t noticed) and I’m happy with the way it’s turning out. My homepage has been in a state of arrested development lately and I’d like to change that, but I’m still not exactly sure what I should do.
So far I’ve only worked one day this week. There haven’t been a lot of jobs in the subfinder system. I guess I should try to conquer my fear of elementary schools, ‘cause there’s almost always a few of those floating around.

12/09/2001:
I managed to work the rest of the week: a three-day job at a high school and a one-day job at a middle school. The three-day job was an interesting experience, ‘cause I got to know the kids, plus I took my first official disciplinary action against a student (the kid was cee-razy!).
I had an unexpected visit from some of my Arlington friends this weekend. I actually went out to a bar on Saturday night and drank a few beers. Today we went to the park and walked around, which isn’t something I do too much, so it was a nice change of pace.

12/03/2001:
I didn’t get a substitute teaching job today, ‘cause I kept holding out for something better, and then, poof!, there weren’t anymore jobs, so I ended up sleeping in. Oh well...