Not that anyone reads my sporadic musings, but I have this thought. When someone is mean to you I offer only this advice. What goes around, comes around. If you just wait, jerks get their comeuppance.

The Lexus Scholarship Competition was a tremendous amount of trouble for me. I thought it would be easier that last year, but alas, no. The students were much harder to deal with this year than last. I'm hoping that is an anomoly. My own students won 1st and 3rd place in the vocal division and won $5000 and $2500 respectively. Thanks Randy Knapton for making such an event possible.

You don't get every job you apply for. You don't get every job you are qualified for, even when you are the most qualified for the job. No one knows how you get jobs. It is a mystery.

I see that Dell computers are up again on the stock market. That's good for them, but I don't know why they are up. They sold me a broken computer and then for six weeks have stalled me in endless hours on the phone about fixing it. It has sat like a lump on the floor, a giant doorstop, waiting to be used. Finally a tech came out this morning at 7:30 A.M., what an hour, and replaced hardware. Instantly the machine sprang to life and even now I am writing on it. The Dell technicians in India have insisted from the first day that their computer was working perfectly and the only problems had to be with my internet provider. They have been rude to me, insulted me, and wasted my time. They have lied to me, cut me off, failed to call me back even when we have had appointments to talk. They have forced me to dissassemble the machine and put it back together. Only when that failed did they send out a tech and then "poof" everything worked. Everything the techs on the phone told me was a lie. Everything. Not just wrong, but a lie. I expect them to go out of business.

I hope we have enough money to retire soon. That may be impossible and I may end up working at Wal-Mart as a greeter. I know we'll have almost enough money to make it. But almost isn't enough now is it? Our finances looked pretty good when we turned into the new millenium, but the Bush era has been ruinious for ordinary people. If I had the money in a mattress instead of having it invested, we would have considerably more. Even if the stock market returns to profitability, years of growth have been lost. So what kind of job will I do in my 60's? Will children still want me to teach them to sing? Will that be enough?