bummer

Today Dave had two interviews but he knows he didn't get one of the jobs and highly suspects that he didn't get the other. There was a lot of good competition and so far Dave has two "real" years of experience teaching in addition to a long-term sub job and a part-time job at a private school. Honestly Dave wasn't that excited about either job, but they were in good locations in relation to our soon to be home. That soon to be home is my grandma's empty house just outside of a medium sized town (at least medium for this area). I think the day has drained a lot of our emotional energy, especially since it was looking so good to begin with.

Yesterday was a better day... worked, got packing done, and went on a date with Dave. We have a "date bucket," as I call it, that we draw different date ideas out of each week. This week was one of Dave's selections - bowling. He knew where to find a cheap bowling alley but I had forgotten about construction on the freeway so we got caught up in that for a while, Dave was not pleased. There were only a couple of cars in the parking lot but the place was open. The place looked large to me, about 15? lanes, although I think the space was enhanced by not having much to fill it. There was a man and woman bowling continually (since before we got there and still going after we left), and a grandpa with two grandchildren in another lane. We got our shoes and after a brief argument about whether it was alright to wear street shoes on the linoleum (not the wooden lanes) or not, we got started. I am not a good bowler by any stretch of the imagination. Dave claimed to not be good either, but I think getting two strikes in a row moves you up into the "good" category, maybe that just shows how poor of a player I am. I started out with a solid "0" on my first turn. I slowly got better while Dave steadily got better, and then something strange happened. Dave clearly knocked down 7 pins, and yet the scoreboard lit up with a big "X." The three remaining pins stayed up but it was now my turn apparently. I decided to roll with it (seriously, no pun intended) and managed to knock down at least two of the pins which caused me to get a 6 and the pins were reset for my second shot. On this second shot (with all 10 pins intact) I knocked down three pins and received 3 points adding up to 9 for this round. Now since I only knocked down the 3 pins, there were seven still up for Dave. We finally decided to reset the pins each time it did this and found that any time we knocked six or seven pins down the machine decided we had gotten all ten. I ended the game with 110 (sadly this was probably an all time high) and Dave had 148... he even got a fake turkey with a couple real strikes and 7 combined by the faulty machine. Once we started the second game the staff saw what was happening and graciously offered us another lane. This machine worked perfectly which meant I ended with 65 and Dave with another 148 (so he must have done better this time since there weren't cheats). It was a sucessful date with some yummy chicken covered in barbeque sauce, ham, cheese, green onions, and tomatoes following the games.