This is seriously, seriously fucked-up.

Totally the Winner!

This one totally wins the poster contest:

My GIMP book came in a few days ago, and I am learning all sorts of stuff about things.  This is Odysseus telling his story to King Whats-His-Name at the beginning of Book 9.  It has SEVEN different layers!

Just to clarify things...

We've gotten a few concerned emails and phone calls since my last post.  We really are not just going to move off with no plan at all.  If we have no teaching jobs by about mid-June, we'll find something--anything--that we can interview/apply for as soon as we get there.  We've got enough savings (for about the first time ever) to make it a few months without jobs.

I love you guys mucho mucho, but seriously it is not my plan to live in a tent in a horse pasture until someone calls to offer me a job.  Don't worry.

Here's to hoping things know how to take care of themselves!

We've ended the lease on our house, and we still don't have jobs anywhere else yet.  We started packing this weekend, and plan to go...somewhere...in July.

So far, we've had interest from Eagle, Colorado and Idaho Falls.  But if nothing pans out, we're waffling between three cities we think we can just show up in and make things work out.

Missoula

Pros: We have friends there.  Good friends.  Friends who have offered us the bottom floor of their house or a pasture to pitch a tent camp in until we have jobs.  Liberal.  Full of hippies.  U of Montana.  Good, mild weather.  Small.

Cons: Small.  70K population may be too small to find jobs (especially education jobs with insurance). 

Idaho Falls

Pros: Pretty big.  Cheap (4 bedroom house=$800-$1000/mo.).  Farmy.  A few hours from the Tetons.  Summers hot, but not too hot.

Cons: Pretty vanilla.  The San Antonio to Missoula's Austin.  Close to mountains, but no actual, visible mountains to speak of.  Cold winters.

Boise

Pros: Metro area about 600K people.  Lubbock-like weather.  Way cheap housing.  Reputation for liberal politics.  State capital=state jobs.

Cons: Never actually been there.  Have heard it called "consumerist" (although we might not even notice, coming from Vegas).  Pretty far from Rocky Mountains.

So we are still waffling about.  Hopefully, something will come up.  Tyson is going to Idaho Falls in two weeks for a promising-sounding interview, and maybe our path will be illuminated.

Windsor

Another result of fooling around with GIMP.  I loved doing this kind of work with charcoal and erasers when I was in college.

Polyphemus Eats Odysseus's Men (Book 9)

Created with GIMP.  I'm pretty sure it's capable of a little more than this, though.  I've got a book coming from Amazon, so Tyson will stop hassling me about getting this convertible-tablet laptop.

News Briefs

...or boxers, if you prefer.

I got rejection #2 today from a charter school in Nampa (next to Boise).  I figured since I'd applied six weeks ago and hadn't heard anything that I didn't have the job.  

I applied for a job as a research assistant in Eugene, Oregon, that sounds interesting.  I am probably only just qualified, but if they read my cover letter and letters of recommendation, I should at least merit a phone call.  I hope.

Boise finally posted their open positions--one in middle school English--that I was able to apply for with just a few clicks.

Helena doesn't have much going on in the way of high school jobs right now, but I'm hoping they just haven't posted yet.  They just barely got elementary jobs up last Thursday.

Anyway, jobs for next year are about all I am thinking about just now, even though I should be making a power point for American Modernism.

So keep sending your positive vibes our way.  I get the feeling this is going to be another seat-of-the-pants move.