So tomorrow will be my first day of work as an air conditioning technician. I’m trying to remember my other first days of work. I can’t remember how I felt before starting my first day at Davio’s. I trained for a few days, for free, before they hired me. So it was more of an extended interview feeling. I remember feeling very nervous before my first day at Thurgood Marshall Academy. That was a total overload, as every first year teacher knows. Other first days…I’m drawing a blank. I guess I’ve had a lot of jobs “just to get me through.” This is the first job I’ve actually spent time preparing for in a very specific way. You could say that I spent time preparing for teaching, via my high school and college educations, but the timeframe between deciding to apply for my first paid teaching job and the first day of work was literally, like, two weeks. Like a lot of teachers, I guess I ended up teaching out of necessity. For this, I made a well-researched decision a year ahead of the schooling, and then two accelerated terms at Tech cranking through the lab book. I realize now I never picked up my lab book after it was graded. I do have, however, my text book, prominently displayed on my new used bookshelves, alongside two spirals and two binders—my sum total knowledge of vocational school.

I’ve got my clothes laid out next to my tool bag and my lunch in the fridge. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up early and make a good breakfast and drive down the road to check-in at work. They’ll put me with someone for the first few days, and that will be that. Pretty soon I’ll be handed the keys to a truck and a Nextell and off you go. Looking forward to that first pay check.

We are moved in to our new house in Seneca! The house has good bones but certainly has its fair share of needed repairs. Thankfully nothing too major, and thankfully we are just renting, so that things like the plumbing aren’t coming out of our pocket. But in terms of deep cleaning, gardening, and drape hanging, we have been putting our all in these past seven days. (Has it really been a week already?)

I’ve got a To Do list three pages long which includes such gems as “build shelves for books” and “prune trees in front yard”. Fun Fun.

On the job front, I’ve got two irons in the fire, one glowing red hot, the other whose temperature I’m not quite sure about. Hopefully I will know which one to use on Monday morning. At that point, I expect to be employed as an HVAC technician.

On Saturday I will drive a 17 foot U-haul containing all of our worldly possessions to an address in Seneca, SC where Laura and will live for at least two years, the longest continual address I will have ever had in my entire life. Side note: what tense is “will have ever had”? Future-past perfect? If for what ever reason you’re interested in reading some good literary fiction about my soon-to-be home, check out One Foot In Eden by Ron Rash.

On Monday I will meet with two different HVAC companies and hopefully secure a job. I will be sure to remind both companies that I recently graduated from Horry Georgetown Technical College with EPA, ICE, and NATE certificates, and that during our end of year job fair, I was given honorable mention for “Top Tech.” (The two “Top Techs” were a master electrician and a mechanic, both 50+; not so bad, considering the competition, I think.)

Reading Girl W/ the Dragon Tattoo and loving it. Also excited about the new vacuum cleaner we bought recently (Shark Navigator).