Welcome to the neighborhood.
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The crazy thing is this is at the old house but the new one is only about 10 houses down the street. I don’t know who would have done it out of the current neighbors.
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Congratulations, and hoping that the utilities people don’t get too confused by your having service at two different houses in the same street!
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I just send invitations for a small get together for my birthday for the first time since 2019. Not the usual big party due to the renovations but I actually get to see friends for my birthday.
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Hope it works out! I tried to have a get together for my birthday, but things fell through so nothing happened.
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Today I drove for two hours to my parents’ old house, filled up my car with my mother and some belongings then drove for three hours to their new house and finally unloaded my car and my parents’ car.
I am so exhausted but also so glad my folks are finally in their new home. I even briefly got to see the sea today.
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It’s teacher contract renewal time in the bengeile house, and my Lovely Wife, after lots of pep talks from her husband and close friends, took the leap and left her nightmare factory of a teaching job in favor of a much smaller-scale, mellower teaching job. She’ll go from managing a caseload of 75 teenage special education students in a poorly managed public charter school to being a classroom teacher to 12 5th graders at the parochial school where she grew up. We’ll lose about 20 percent of our household income, but should get a much happier matriarch in return.
I, on the other hand, get to keep my admittedly decent-for-an-Idaho-teacher paycheck, but also get to untangle the Gordian knot that my school board and district administration have made of the local English Language Arts environment. Since May there have been book bans, budget cuts, massive turnover in teachers, and somehow the simultaneous redefining of teaching standards AND dropping of standards-based instruction. But I also get to teach graduating seniors this year, which I am super stoked for.
Onwards!
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I’m curious, you have to get a new contract each year?
Even if it’s essentially the same one as you had before?
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Over here it used to be that ALL teachers got “verbeamtet” which meant they are public servants with lifetime jobs. They could quit of course but they could almost not be fired. To be Beamter means you earn less than an industry job but you get a ton of security: secure job, great health insurance and a good pension. And state in general is a good employer with good benefits. However these days most teachers do not get to be Beamte and get payed even less and do not have all the other advantages… I think that is a mistake.
In any case, yes, I am also curious about yearly renewal… that sounds stressful.
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I’d completely forgotten your previous post, so when this was the first thing that popped up it was… menacing? disconcerting? a bit Scarfolk?
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It is similar here for the public schools. There are occasional layoffs, but the teacher shortage is pretty dire, so firings are exceedingly rare. What does happen, though, are sudden changes to teaching assignments. I could go from a student load of 100 advanced high school students in 6 class periods to teaching 500 junior high students split between 3 in-person and 8 virtual classes. Most teachers that stick with it through their first 5 years stay with it for their full career.
The pay is also not great. Idaho has a relatively low cost of living, so it is a living wage, and I have some extra administrative duties that bring it additional funds. A big downside it that education has become a hugely political issue, and school policies are rapidly becoming tools for political posturing.
The parochial schools, where my Lovely Wife will be working, pay significantly less, but are a much less politicized and stressful place to work.
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Or so we have heard.
It saddens me.
In almost every country, we pay teachers too little. Education is so important. So spending our money as a society (or societies or even species) on ensuring that the next generation is armed with all the knowledge we have and then some should be a much higher priority than it is.
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No no no. Don’t you see? Education is bad. If people learn critical thinking, they will be able to observe how screwed over they are by the system and might try to do something about it! We can’t have that! Better ignorant so they just listen to the talking points they are fed. /s
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My partner was an elementary music teacher. Her salary was less than the cost of child care while she was teaching. She became a stay-at-home mom and got a $700/yr (effective) raise to spend more time with our kids.
Of course, we live in Kansas, the state where the board of education sued the state for criminally under-funding the schools, in violation of the state constitution.
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Yeah the ‘at what point does the childcare surpass the salary’ conversation is an awkward one.
My partner works in healthcare and if our parents didn’t help with a couple of days of childcare she would have quit her job for 5-6 years
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I am decidedly over being a people manager. That is all.
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My wife often wondered if it would be worth trying to get a part time job, for times when the kids are in school or therapy. Well, the therapy schedule was so sporadic due to cancellations, that there’s no way she would be able to give accurate hours of availability to an employer, and with them only going to school a few days a week, and wanting her to be able to be home on the weekends, there was just no way. Any part time job would likely have been minimum wage, or just a bit over it, and I guarantee if we needed to deal with child care, it would have more than absorbed any money she made.
Luckily, as of last month she is currently employed as a caregiver for one of our children, through a program for disabled children which started this option during the (ongoing) pandemic, allowing a parent to be an employee. Currently, this is planned to end in the middle of October, but it is possible it will get extended, as I think it has been extended before. In any case, 40-60 hours a week for the next couple of months is a good chunk of change for doing stuff she would be doing in any case.
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I am having a great time wasting am evening exploring how much more capable the Raspberry Pi 4b is at running RetroPie than the Raspberry Pi 2b.
Contra is just as good as I remember…
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Had 16 people over yesterday for my birthday party (bday was last week). It was almost like the before times. Though it would be twice as many people then and I tried to skip hugging everyone this time (some didn’t catch the memo) and I „kind of“ made everyone test before by sending them my own test results 
They all caught that memo… I am so happy I got to hang out with so many friends. We had a little BBQ, a bit of beer and just lots of talking 
The first guest arrived at 1pm and the last people left just after midnight.
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