Busy, busy, busy! I had so much to write about earlier, but it has all sort of flown out of my head at the moment. I guess I will talk about today and then move backward if I have time.
Today I woke up early to color my hair, and took PunkRock to work. I met with an old student of mine who is now going to college for Aerospace and AstroEngineering. He wants to come back and do some teaching assistant stuff for me, and I am really excited about this. I love my Astronomy class, but there is only so much time to blitz through the material. He is going to offer some bonus events and activities with me, to supplement the material. He is going to host a day to do model rockets, and to talk about rocket engine design over time. We had a good couple of hours together at Panera, and I have some plans now laid out to introduce his information. So cool! My former student is really psyched up about it too. He was really effusive about how my class changed his entire future, and how it got him interested in space as a career. That made me feel good - I am inspiring!
After our meeting, I went home and picked up DarkKnight and our daughter and we had lunch together at the Dutch Market near where we live. Our daughter has been job hunting, and she applied at a candy shop there, and then later at a restaurant in town. I had a one on one talk with her in the afternoon about her long term planning - I was under the impression she was really eager to move out by February, but she was under the impression that she had til summer. I was relieved that we have more time to launch her, but I had to clue her in that, hey, we're moving! Why this never registered with her - since we talk about it a lot! - I have no idea, but we are on the same page now. She has an interview on Tuesday, and she is busy now applying lots of other places. We laid out a budget, and figured out how long it was going to take her to save the security deposit for a place, as well as money for a car. I think she is more excited and feels good that we have a plan. I know I definitely feel better!
Today I also found time to work on the annual financial goal setting for me, PunkRock and DarkKnight. I am happy to say that so far this year, we did everything we had planned. I did a lot of number crunching for 2017, and I have a lot more to go before our meeting in October where we come together and make sure we are all aligned and in agreement with our plans. This year it will be heavy on credit repair (which is underway already) and our goal of getting a mortgage. There will be changes with our health plans too, that we need to discuss, and with buying a house, means looking very closely at our life insurance. I am thinking that in March we are going to meet with a financial advisor before we start looking seriously at houses, to go over our credit, our savings and our retirement plans. I feel like we are in a good place, but I also know I am not an expert.
It was interesting today, because I was talking with PunkRock last night about my career plans for next year. He was under the impression I would be searching for a job in January, but that is not the case. When I was talking to DarkKnight today at lunch, he brought up the same subject, and I explained to him the same thing I did PunkRock. If we are moving in May, I see zero reason to look for a full-time position that I will leave in 5 months then. Especially since I am type A - when I get a job, I give it 100%. Trying to get our daughter launched, working on credit, searching for a house, and then packing our current place up - yikes! My plan right now is to teach one or two sessions of Biology, as I am fairly certain that i have plenty of students who will sign up. Then, after we relocate, I will take a look at how things are going, and make a decision then. If we stay within a bubble of distance from where we are now, there is no reason why I can't continue my business, or even expand it. If we move a distance away, then I can either decide then to launch and try to continue, or close it down and find outside employment in our new location. So, it's a big "we'll see" right now. Both of the guys are cool with that. I did crunch a lot of numbers to make sure that what I would be bringing in would be ok, and we should be absolutely fine. So, that's good.
Honestly, I am not super excited about teaching Biology again, but, well, I have several students who haven't taken it yet, and they most likely would. I don't like leaving money on the table, and even less, I feel like I owe it to these kids to offer it. They need to get a good education. I feel good to know that the parents trust me and that the kids enjoy my curriculum.
See, I knew I would run out of time to talk about things. Gah! Oh well. TTFN