Back and Forth Across the Pond

You would think with all the news articles claiming the employment market is excellent for college graduates that I would have an entire lineup of jobs waiting for me when I started looking for them. I not only earned my degree last April, I did so with highest honors. I was in the top 2% of my class, for Pete's sake! I have job experience, too. Before I married Steve, I had worked for close to 15 years. Yet when I entered the job market in late December/early January, I got nowhere. I applied to many jobs, but no one ever called me for an interview. At long last that changed. I have been hired by a national tutoring company. I went for my fingerprinting today. Once they confirm I am not a criminal, I will begin tutoring. The program is in Bradford County, which is about 30 minutes from here. I will be helping kids with their reading and math. We have a national program called No Child Left Behind, which provides school districts with funding to insure kids who aren't performin...

. . . we'll be in England. We really can't wait. Yesterday, Steve would periodically announce, "Just two more months." It's a bit of a pain losing the day in travel coming over. We leave on Thursday, but aren't there until Friday. But oh well. We also lose several hours upon arrival, because we're sleeping! LOL Actually, I'm hoping we'll sleep well on the flight this time. We have to be at the airport at 5 a.m. for a 7 a.m. flight. We arrive in New York City at 9:46 a.m. and don't fly to Manchester until 10:10 that night. We gave ourselves 12 hours to play around New York City, because we love it there and haven't been for quite some time. So I'm hoping that after a long, full day of walking around New York, we'll be exhausted. Especially with the flight leaving after 10 p.m. That's our normal go-to-bed time, so I'm hoping we'll drift off. My first trip to England was scheduled similarly to this. I was up about as early ...

It was Sunday and Steve was making himself some breakfast. My breakfast was easy that day: Two Special K waffles into the toaster. Steve was making poached eggs and hashbrowns. He likes the frozen hashbrown patties. He puts them in the microwave for one minute, then into a hot pan on the stove. Our microwave has a quick cook feature where you can just press a number and it will cook your food for that many minutes. For instance, you press "2" and it will cook for two minutes. Well, Steve was distracted and he was thinking he would cook his hashbrowns for 60 seconds. He pushed the "6" and the "0" and walked away, forgetting all about that handy-dandy feature. Four minutes and twenty-four seconds later, the microwave starts smoking. Luckily, Steve spotted it and stopped the cook cycle. He opened the micro's door and smoke billowed out. The burnt smell was very heavy. Inside was his charred patty. He poked at it, but it was welded to the plate. A second l...