In the fall of 1990, four years after graduating from college, I decided to begin a masters program at Virginia Tech. I began by taking one course a semester at their Northern Virginia Campus. By the fall of 1991 during my third class, America was at war with Iraq (the first gulf war) and the economy was in the toilet thanks to the first Bush. My school system had major cut backs and would no longer reimburse teachers for graduate school. Being a teacher and making very little money I could no longer afford to attend graduate school. So I quit.

Now that I am 40 and a little more comfortable money wise, I decided I should look into going back to graduate school and work towards a masters degree. This time I’ve decided to look into UVA (The University of Virginia). I received a course catalog in the mail and thumbed through it. I found that they have an information night about which degrees are offered and what is involved with going back to school. I have taken several college classes over the years and a few graduate level courses but I haven’t been in school on a regular basis for 13 years. I’m not sure I’m up for it. So I went ahead and signed up for the information night. It’s tonight. Since the budget cuts of the early 1990’s, my school system has reinstated reimbursement for graduate level courses but they will only pay for one class a year. At that rate it would take me 10 years probably to finish the degree. So I’ll probably have to pay for half of the classes along the way. I can afford that I think. What worries me is if I’m up for studying, doing research, writing papers, possibly taking the GREs. I will find out what I need to do this evening. I’m a little nervous about it but I need to find out.

Of course I watched Big Brother 5 last night. I can not tell you how much I can’t stand Jase. He is driving me crazy. He is so fuckin arrogant. He is the guy in high school that you hated because he was so popular, good looking, smart, and athletic. I was so hoping that he would not win the veto last night. But of course he did win it. He took himself off the block. Now he’s in for at least another week. Thursdays show should be really good. We’ll see if Scott gets kicked out of the house like I suspect. We will also get to see the reactions when the two twins enter the house together. There are other people in the house who have twins. I just wonder if they will reveal that all the sets of twins have been trading places without anyone knowing. They’ve only showed us one set doing this. And of course we’ll find out who the new Head of House (HOH) is. I hope it’s not Jase!

Last night for dinner I had this Stouffer’s frozen dinner. It’s the fish filet and macaroni and cheese dinner. It was actually pretty good. The down side was that it had 17 grams of fat and only 1 gram of fiber. Not good for someone who is trying to watch what they eat. I just can’t pass up some delicious mac and cheese. I love mac and cheese. I have it so rarely these days that I totally enjoyed it. The fish was pretty good. I covered it with ketchup. I put ketchup on lots of things. The bad part about eating the fish is that I’ve been burping that fish taste since I ate it last night. While I enjoyed eating it at the time, I don’t feel like tasting it every time I burp. Gross!

Last night I watched Bill Clinton talk about his book on Letterman. For a man who has been out of office for 4 years, he sure sounds like he is on top of what’s going on. He spoke with intelligence and candor with Dave. He’s so obviously still interested in politics. If he were able to run again, I’m sure he’d be elected. He spoke about how successful his book has become. But he also mentioned how successful Hillary’s book has become as well. I think he still has a way to go before he eclipses the total number of books worldwide that Hillary has sold. Impressive anyway. I have no intention of reading his book only because it’s too big. I can’t devote that much time to a book. Bill also spoke pretty highly of John Kerry. He had some suggestions for how he could improve his standing in the polls. He talked about the convention as well, saying that he didn’t think his and Hillary’s appearances took anything away from John Kerry’s spotlight. By the way, you can download the speeches from the convention at the iTunes music store. They are free. I downloaded them but haven’t listened to them yet. Anyway, I think Bill did a great job on Dave last night. It was interesting and a bit funny at times. If you are a Bill Clinton fan at all and you didn’t see it, you missed a good show.