February 21, 2000

I am totally bummed out about the fact that I did not get all of Independence Day on the videotape. See, it was only a two-hour videotape and I forgot to record at the slow-playing speed or whatever. So it got right to the point when they're docking with the alien mothership and uploading the virus, and then it shut off and kicked me back out to regular broadcast TV, which was playing "It's a Miracle!" at the time.

I was so depressed about not being able to see the rest of ID4 that I sat there and watched the rest of "It's a Miracle!". It was actually sort of interesting. See, there was this couple, and they were out shopping with their grandson, and while they were loading up their van, some carjacker hopped in and drove off with their van -- which had their grandson in the back! Oh, no! They started yelling for help and a couple in a Jeep Wrangler heard them and started chasing off after the guy in the van. They wound up chasing him down the highway, during which time, they "tried to cut him off in traffic like we saw on TV, but that didn't work." (This quote, in my opinion, was the best part of the entire show.) Finally, the guy turned into a dead-end road by accident, and the Wrangler couple called the cops, who came and caught the guy and recovered the van and the grandson, so everybody lived happily ever after.

And if it hadn't been for my technological incompetence, I never would have seen this heartwarming story.

God bless ICQ. I was talking to my Mom on ICQ yesterday. Usually I just call her, but yesterday we both happened to be online at the same time, so I was talking to her via ICQ instead. We were talking about my choice of employment and where my career (or lack thereof) is going.

I told her that I'm thinking of staying at my current job, instead of quitting to become a teacher. My reasoning is that my eventual goal is to open my own bookstore anyway, so why quit my present job to go do another job that I'll just quit in a few years anyway? Besides, I like my current job a LOT more since they hired the new girl to do all the crap that I hated. (It's not crap work by its nature, it's just work that I am not very good at doing, so I hate it. The new girl seems to like it OK.) Also, my current job pays me a little better than I'd be making as a teacher, at least at first.

Mom said that those are good points, but that I should consider which job would bring me closer to doing something that I loved. She said that she's in a job that she likes, but not one that she loves, which is why she's never been entirely satisfied with her job. She also pointed out that even if I'm just staying in my job to make money until I can open my own business, that's years of my life in which I'm just "putting in time," and I might as well be putting in time in a job that I love.

I just don't know if teaching is the job that I'll love. I liked student teaching, for the most part, although I didn't like being exhausted all the time and never having any time to myself. I'm just not sure I want to take my life in that direction right now. I really am serious about opening my own bookstore. I'm looking into taking some business classes at the community college, and doing some serious reading on self-entrepeneurship. It's not a whim. I don't want to be an office worker for the rest of my life.

We'll see how it goes.

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