Mr T's rants and ravings

I miss teaching. I don’t miss the paycheck and I could do without grading for the most part. But in general I miss being in the classroom. I taught a class today – sort of. I was a guest speaker at a management class at Bentley today. (Sorry I didn’t warn anyone but it was of those get there just in time to talk, have lunch with the professor and leave sort of days.)

It’s not exactly like being the regular teacher of course. And frankly the class was not as responsive as I’d like. But they had almost an hour of class that included a lot of math, numbers and I gather not exciting things before I started. And it was lunch time – people were eating when I started. It just felt good to be teaching though. The professor said I did a good job and a second professor who was sitting in asked me to talk to her class later this month. Always a good sign.

While eating lunch with the professor I told him that I missed the classroom and he asked me where I had my resume in. Well I don’t have any out. I’m thinking that I may send some out though. Not for full-time employement though. Without a PhD there is no way I could get the kind of paycheck I am getting now teaching full-time. And I do like my current job. What I am thinking is that a night course or perhaps a Saturday course might fit into my schedule. I’d have to be careful with my travel but it could work. I just have to find someone who is looking for someone with my background. Who knows – it could be fun.

Like a lot of people we turn the thermostat way down when the weather gets warm. The house pretty much warms up naturally and in fact often gets hot enough for air conditioning. You hardly wants to see the air conditioning and heater fighting for dominance during the summer so the best thing is to turn the thermostat way down and out of the way. Our furnace is responsible for hot water or we’d probably turn it off completely.
Some time in the fall, as the weather gets cool, people start turning their furnaces back on or their thermostat back up. This can get complicated at times. How cold do you let the house get before you turn the heat up/on? How long do you just get dressed sooner or warmer? How long do you wait for nature to warm up the house? How concerned are you about saving money on the heating bill? This last question is really important as heating oil is 2-3 times as expensive as it was a few short years ago.

This used to be easy for me. We ran the heat so that the house never got below 69/70 degrees. Why? Well my mother in law lived with us and her health was poor and she just could not handle being cold. Anything much below 70 degrees would not be tolerable for her. In fact at times we supplemented the heat in her room with a space heater and warmed it up more. She passed away about a year and a half ago and that excuse is gone.

What a lot of people do is to turn the heat down during the night and during the day when people are out of the house. They just warm it up for the late afternoon and evening. Not an option for me as I work at home all day. If I get too cold my productivity suffers. The last few days the house have been between 62 and 64 degrees in the morning. For me that is cold. I get dressed right away and have been wearing long sleeve shirts and stuff. But I’d rather avoid jackets or sweatshirts if I can. The house warms up on its own to about 70 by the end of the work day and the evening which Mrs. T is home is comfortable. I’m not sure how long that will last.

There are several things keeping me from turning up the heat. One is cost of course. But perhaps the biggest thing is ego. Do I really want to admit that I am “weak” and that the chill is too much for me? And what about the environment? Shouldn’t I avoid burning oil as long as possible?

At some point I will give up. I have a chill in me today and my office, the warmest room in the house, is only 67 degrees. Well maybe I’ll just run the space heater in here. What would you do?

I belive it was A A Milne (of Winnie the Pooh fame) who said that “the benefit of being messy is that one is always making interesting discoveries.” Well I can get pretty messy. This is especially true when it comes to my desk and office. In fact my office got to be such a mess that I abandoned it and set up my laptops in other rooms in the house. Well that can only go on so long and today I started day tow of the great office clean up.

It’s not done yet. I’ll need at least another day but I am at least working in the office now. I made a few discoveries along the way. I found a couple of bills that needed to be paid – last month. Oops. I found a telephone credit card that had gone missing so long ago that I had actually gotten a replacement card. And it was somewhere I was sure I had looked before. I guess I didn’t look that well. I also found a $40 gift card to Best Buy. I got it last December while Christmas shopping and misplaced it.

I shred documents with identifing information on them these days so somethings I would have thrown away un opened I now open to see if they should go in the shredder. Opening one such piece of mail I found a refund check for $180 that I didn’t even know was coming. It came a couple of months ago but it is still good. Thank goodness I found it now.

I’ve thrown out a lot of papers and stuff that was just plain old. So much has gone into the shredder that I had to empty it twice. I still have to clean off the desk, a cabanet that I want to replace and there is this stack of things beside the bookcase still to go. But I can vacuum the rug at least and I can walk everywhere I want again. The foton is clear enough not only to sit on but to lay down on. Who knows I may even hook up the TV.