...178 to go! (That would be the school days until next summer, of course.) I'm still awfully tired and worn out (I hate getting up at 6:30; it's just wrong) but so far it's been good. I have a student who requires a lot of managing, and that's pretty wearing. I had expected it to be like this, though, and it's not worse than I expected, just more tiring. I think a lot of it is the newness factor, and the transition into my own quirky classroom system... once the routine gets established, I think the amount of on-top-of-everything-management I have to do will lessen, and I won't be so tired at the end of the day. It's kind of like this for a while, I think... there are periods of time during the school year when it's all smooth sailing, and periods when it's a whole heck of a lot of hard work. The beginning of the year is one of those hard work times. January will be nice. :)

I was thrilled this afternoon to fill my tank (well, it wasn't completely empty, but I'm so used to a quarter of a tank being iffy in terms of getting me over the hill to Santa Cruz and back again to work where gas is cheaper in San Jose), and have it only come to $24 (about 8 gallons). And to know I got 388 miles on that 8.17 gallons. Which works out to 47.4 mpg, according to my calculator. Hooray for hybrids!

I should clarify. I wasn't actually thrilled to pay over $3 a gallon, but I was thrilled that I wasn't filling my 6 cylinder BMW at $3.29 a premium gallon, going 300 miles on about 13 gallons (23 mpg). Hooray again for hybrids.

My apologies to those who are paying ridiculous prices to fuel low-mpg vehicles every few days. It sucks, and I'm not intentionally trying to be smug. (Unless you're driving a Hummer or something equally stupid, and then I mock you and say ha ha. Twice. Ha ha.)