Here�s the short version: It�s official, I�m going to be a Latin teacher. Decided as of approximately 1:45 or 2 pm Friday, dateline Bellingham.

I don�t really know what to say, there�s not that much of a story except that while I was having lunch with Catharine and Julie and Morgan I guess there was a moment where I simultaneously stopped bullshitting myself that there was anything else that I could want to do more and got selfish � like, that I could *do* what I wanted � in a way that is often difficult for me. Catharine, another one of the items on that form I had to fill out when I was doing that thing was something like Is there anything else you feel we should know about you? and in addition to a few other things along the lines of "My hands have gotten so cold they�re numb and I can�t believe I�ve been waiting in this line for almost four hours when I couldn�t care less about why I�m doing it" I put "I know it�s sounds dorky, but my dream job would be teaching high-school Latin." It�s not that I am trying to revoke your earned credit and that of the whole damn wonderful day in B-ham; I only wish to point out is that secretly I have been hoarding the same currency.

I do not have to be a programmer! O frabjous day. Many years ago I read a puff piece in some local publication, probably Seattle Magazine, like a crap smalltime version of "Profiles in Courage," and this one was about a woman lawyer who also volunteered for a ski rescue squad or something like that, and several months ago I remembered it because in the article she recounted how she�d suddenly decided to go to law school over lunch with a friend at Red Robin, which is where Steve spent a big chunk of his waitering years. In the article the lawyer has some kind of charmingly rueful comment � you could tell that it was the opposite of spontaneous, that she probably has friends who will stab her to death with a spoon if they have to listen to it one more time � about how Red Robin hamburgers are not cheap to begin with but oh because of the life�s course that was mentally committed to over this one it must have been the most expensive one ever. Well, I lost track of time while we were at lunch and ended up with a parking ticket, and I know it�s not the same thing but I was happy to have to pay it, I got out a pen and my checkbook and Julie gave me a stamp and I wrote the check on the spot. Thank you, City of Bellingham, thank you for my ticket and thank you for the tens of thousands of dollars I will have to spend in the course of re-Latinizing myself, getting another degree, opting out of some so-called peak earning years, doing coursework I suppose in etymology and comparative linguistics and ancient history and the like, thank you from the bottom of my heart for saving me from a life at the mercy of C++.

I am not going to think about the possibility that I will have to move to California for a few months x number of years down the line to get certified or ditto far away, out of Seattle or out of the state, to get a job. The night is young, so let�s party: the short-term game plan, version 1.0 of which I will be shoring up over the next few weeks, will merely be to conduct myself in a manner consistent with the goal of ultimately obtaining full-time work as a high-school Latin teacher within commuting distance of Seattle, and I�ll worry about the rest of it later. That manner would include such actions as getting in touch with the Princeton Review and attempting to get hired as a tutor, starting coursework (nothing at the level I want is offered for the session that begins in October), calling the School of Education at the UW and making those fuckers work for their money by finding out answers to questions they are not often asked, studying in my free time, looking up some Latin teachers at nearby schools and offering to take them to lunch so I can pick their brains � that sort of thing. I bought some grammar books in Bellingham too. So this is the new world order.

M.A. in Classics, I�m betting, over the M.Ed. We are almost certainly looking at private schools. On the one hand oh well, but on the other hand this sounds like a fair tradeoff for not having to get an Education degree. So if I work on Latin for the next few years and ditto what would become recommendations, eventually come up with the type of textual analysis or research paper I�d also have to submit as a writing sample, maybe I could start the M.A. program in two years, try again in three if I don�t get in � another bonus to the Princeton-Review scenario is that I�d learn how to ace the GRE � and doesn�t that all sound very nice? Yes it does. A guy I know has a friend who was ambivalent about going back to school at age 35. He did not relish the thought of getting his Ph.D. at 42. All right, said the guy I know, but how old will you be in seven years if you don�t go to grad school? It is cheesy and also the right, the only, way to think. Steve knows a Latin teacher at a posh private school in Bellevue, she will be first on my lunch list, who doesn�t even have a Classics B.A., but (1) I�m sure this is fluky; (2) I personally wouldn�t want to teach Latin without M.A.-level work and I�m not disciplined or confident enough to do it on my own; (3) even if it�s not fluky, an applicant with more book learnin� looks better than one with less; (4) I would like to go to some school. Friday evening on my way back to Seattle just before I got on the highway it was time for a new cd so I put in "Raw Power" and it occurred to me that I was probably the only future Latin teacher who was listening to Iggy in the whole world at that moment. In a way outside the one in which I was responsible for it, the supposition and the moment made me awfully pleased.

How good is the Classics program at the UW anyway? I should find out. Having to go somewhere else would really not be ideal, but I will do it if I have to.

Oh, and I am never making antipasto again, and I am not having another dinner party (n > 3) for as long as I live at the bacon shack. It�s just not feasible. The carrot cake recipe is adapted from the one in the "Frog/Commissary Cookbook," which is also where I got last week�s steak salad; look who�s digging fleischsalat now. The explanatory blurb above one of the other salad recipes reads, "We don�t know how the adjective 'classic' became attached to this salad, especially since it is generally not our style to use so pretentious a title." Here is the subtitle of the cookbook: "Hundreds of Unique Recipes and Home Entertaining Ideas from America�s Most Innovative Restaurant Group."

It�s not even fun when it�s that easy.

I�m having a hard time writing for the diary lately. There�s a vague sense of disloyalty � to whom or what? It�s complicated, I can�t figure it out yet � around the fact that here, I�d have to be writing around Steve and Steve does not and will not read the diary. I feel sure though do not know why either that I�d feel differently if it were fiction, if it were movie reviews. There�s another sense in which my idiot Gastro job spoiled me, because now the conundrum is that I�m hooked on diary writing, I get cranky when I can�t (even though for "can�t" read, essentially, "don�t want to") but the act has become defined by its being done on time that is not my own � OK, time that I am getting paid for. I might have to start enforcing a diary-writing time slot or maybe becoming a regular patron of that internet caf� � make it, in the same way in which I wrote about my job-application uniform last week, my single-use office. Or I might have to get a job.

The Latin project does put an interesting wrinkle into the more immediate get-a-job one. The job I get will have to be one that can be made accommodate-able of certain factors; I�m going to be throwing it elbows. Since I�m going to have other more personally meaningful stuff going on, I am not going to want to have to bring work home or take on much stress. On the job, I don�t want to have to comport myself like a Kool-Aid drinker, I want to be able to do my work and go home and to have that be fine. I don�t even have to like it all that much � or, no, something more like I can rationalize being a little less choosy � because I will only be doing it for two or three years. It won�t be what motivates me, and although I�ve never been in this situation before I suspect that knowing that will cause me to feel free of it, to think less of it, not to think of it, and I am looking forward to that. Most of what I�ve been beating myself up for over the past few years will cease to become an issue, and maybe I�ll even be less bothered by those motherfuckers who insist on telling me how much they make and how much they�re worth � maybe there is more I�ll get free of. On Friday in Bellingham, on the way to lunch I was talking to Catharine and the TF (TF: is it cool if I use your real name?) and Morgan about the interview I�d had the previous day and how ambivalent I was about it. I told them how on Thursday night I realized I�d forgotten to eat dinner and Steve bet that it was because of the interview, that I�d been too jacked up on adrenaline to notice I was hungry. He was wrong, though, I realized, because only a few hours after it happened I had begun to catch myself forgetting about the interview from moment to moment, it seemed to have made no impression on me at all. I�d thought about this on the trip north and figured out that my ambivalence was due to what I perceived as the hiring manager�s ambivalence towards me � if you write a very particular cover letter that honors the specific job, then also what you�re hoping for, I only realized this while I was driving, is to be reacted to as an applicant with like particularity. And from the hiring manager I didn�t have that, which didn�t exactly hurt my feelings but it did unsettle me. I didn�t think that I�d like to be working for someone who wasn�t glad that it was *me* down the hall. So we sat down at the lunch table and I was explaining all this, plus the dead-endness of it was a small disappointment that lingered, and everyone totally sympathized and it felt good to have that kind of permission to say to myself, Well, there�s some possibility that this is not the job for me after all. Then the conversation turned to other things and then I found myself mentally committing to, you know, the course. After that, and as I kept thinking and plotting, I mostly forgot about the interview and the potential job, but the funny thing is that now that my priorities have changed � sorry for the clich�, I�m rushing to finish this entry � that job or one like it becomes much more attractive. Being choosy and holding out for something nifty, which I had only just made permissible, become entirely the wrong thing to do. Think about it: steady hours, no commute hell, some slack time, some flextime. And if you�re not giving of your personal self to a job, you cannot take the salary as an insult. Probably easier said than done, I know. But with logic on my side, I will practice. And health insurance, I am reminded (best wishes, Kitty, I am thinking of you), is something much to be desired. I could even apply for dumb secretarial jobs with a dumb secretarial version of my resume and at the interviews say, "Look, here�s the deal. I�m out of here in two or three years, but your end of it is that in the meantime I will be the best secretary you�ve ever seen and I will consistently be worth much more to you than you�re paying me." Steve says I�d be surprised how many employers will play ball, and I am skeptical but he�s had far more jobs than I have so I guess I should trust him. Someone called my cell phone this morning from a number I don�t recognize and left a message, and is that about setting up a second interview? I don�t know. I kind of wanted to wait until I�d posted this until I investigated, and I kind of wanted to feel out the maybe of it.