November 2009

Shopping estate sales for deals

November 13, 2009

Five-Cent Nickel features a nice guest post by Craig Ford, proprietor of Money Help for Christians. Craig holds forth on ways and places to find a good deal, among them yard sales. Just last night, I was congratulating myself for having found one of my all-time best buys—a deluxe “Rabbit” wine opener that normally sells [...]

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Ghost developments

November 12, 2009

Yesterday I spent the afternoon hanging out with my friend Kathy, who lives up against the White Tank Mountains that form the Valley’s western boundary. The far west and east sides of the Valley were the scenes of the most frantic building campaigns during the late, great Real Estate Bubble, whose collapse has affected the [...]

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Die cast…

November 11, 2009

The interview at Glendale Community College went well. I think. But then…what do I know? Their strategy is to hand you a C-level student paper and ask you to grade it in 15 minutes. Then they take a half hour during which you are to respond to six questions. So it’s a whirlwind trip that [...]

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A whole flock of chickens

November 10, 2009

Let’s count some chickens before they’re hatched! Today I’m going to interview for a full-time teaching job at a nearby community college. The likelihood that they’ll hire me is about zero, but miracles happen. So I dare to daydream… ♣ If I get this job, the first thing I’m gunna do is buy some decent [...]

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Managing a large workload

November 9, 2009

Full-time faculty at the community colleges here teach five and five: five sections a semester. That is a huge workload, especially for English faculty, who teach almost nothing but composition courses. A few senior people manage to land survey of lit courses, but most are teaching comp and remedial sections. It’s unlikely Glendale Community College [...]

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Median income, median savings?

November 8, 2009

Chug on over to Free Money Finance, where you’ll find an interesting article and discussion about some figures FMF has found, suggesting few Americans are ready for retirement. FMF is spinning off an article that dispenses advice on using your home equity to help finance retirement, but his attention is caught by some figures the [...]

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