| 3/22/99 I took John with me to teach tonight. Lots of students didn't show up; made me think it was a bad idea to quit my job. At least in retail I get paid to show up. I had a student at 4, the next wasn't until 8. There was some kind of award ceremony for 6th graders today, I guess. John and I spent a lot of time playing, though--I had him administer a technical skills test like the one I have to take in my euphonium lesson on Wednesday. The technical skills test is a big pain in my ass: scales, finger exercises, lip slurs, tonguing exercises, all kinds of drills that are so boring to practice, and I'm graded on how fast I can play them...it only happens once a semester, but what a drag. It's easy to put off practicing until the week ahead of time, and of course if you do that (don't know anyone who does that) you get nailed. I got nailed last semester. This weekend we went up to Mount Pleasant for a bit, stayed in a hotel there for the night, then Friday we got up and drove around. That's what we do for vacations. Drive around. Typically, we go north for a bit, then stay overnight. Then we drive west until we hit Lake Michigan. Then we hang out there for a while, and then we drive south, and somehow end up home. John loves this. I like it, too, it's fun, but I always yearn for the vacations I had as a child, when my family went south (driving, of course) to Florida, or South Carolina, or something, and we'd park at a resort for a week and hardly use the car. Just lying around somewhere, that's a real vacation. But this time, we altered the course! We drove EAST from Mt. Pleasant. Drove to Bay City (birthplace of Madonna! ooh...,) in one side and out the other, and headed into the thumb for a rockin' good time. We headed along the Huron coast to Sebewaing (happening place.....) Then we decided it just doesn't get much better, so we came back, through Vassar (the town that floods yearly) and Arthur (the town that consists of less than one square mile.) Stopped in Birch Run (the town that has been taken over by an outlet mall) and bought a new phone so that John can take our old, cheap one to GA with him. He's leaving Wednesday. Did I mention that I'm moving to Georgia? I broke the news to my parents yesterday. I don't think they believed me. I freaked out and freaked out and kept stalling and umming. My mom and I were in the kitchen and I had to keep running to the front porch to whisper frantically at John: "what do I say? what do I say? she just said I should move back home next year, what do I say???" and he'd look up from his Entertainment Weekly (he's catching up) and say, "I'm not telling them, if that's what you're asking." Finally, we were all sitting in the living room and my dad asked if I'd be looking for a smaller apartment soon, and I just blurted it out. "I think I'm probably moving to Georgia." Doh. Doh. I got a secret thumbs-up from behind the Entertainment Weekly. My parents did not react, which didn't surprise me. Then, a half-hour later, I started slipping up all over the place; we were looking at a map of Georgia and I said, "hey, we'll only be a few hours from the ocean." doh. "Maybe we could get a house closer to Atlanta." doh. I couldn't help it, John and I have been talking about this for months, and all of a sudden my parents knew about it. My parents knew about it. They know. God, I can't face them.
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