the garrison show

so i’m trying to help my parents clean out their basement (which has been buried in stuff for all of recent memory) and i came across a shoebox full of some of my old toys. sweet!

here’s the thing, though. i was going through the box trying to decide what to keep and what to toss, and every damn piece of plastic in that box was a gun, cannon, missile, bomb, rocket, laser, or some combination of the previous, i.e. a laser-guided rocket gun. what gives?

i’m not the first nor the smartest person to notice this, but i did notice it. is it any wonder that we solve international conflicts with an army? is there a better way?

i could easily try to blame this on my parents. i could say their habitual fear of pizza delivery men and minorities leaves them no choice but to lock the door compulsively. i could say that, but i know it’s really my fault.

i’ve been traveling around a lot, making my driving tour of virginia and catching up with old friends, and this means i keep a lot of clothes and things in my car. i pull into my parents house last night damn exhausted and leave everything in my car to get the next morning.

so the next morning, it hits me that i should do some laundry. for no particular reason, i put the clothes i’m wearing in the washing machine and go out to my car to get the rest. i realize right as i’ve gotten outside the garage that my car is locked and the keys are inside. no big deal.

except the garage door is locked, too.

so i’m seriously standing outside my parents house in my underwear with no car keys, no house keys, no phone. luckily they live in a quiet neighborhood on a pretty big hill so there wasn’t too much danger of being seen by random passerby’s, but there was a lot of danger of looking like a damn idiot all morning.

i checked for the extra key where it used to be (when i was in high school!) and was not surprised to not find it. so i draped myself in a old sheet that was lying in the garage, and bravely walked over to our neighbor’s. luckily, someone was home.

unfortunately, the whole damn family was home. the husband, the wife, the two kids, and the husbands parents, are all treated to a lengthly showing of me in my skivvies while we have a good old laugh about getting locked out. well, most of us were laughing.

long story short (well, it’s probably too late for that), i talked to my mom and figured out where the key is now and let myself back in. crisis averted.

i will miss some things about being unemployed. the ability to sleep in till 11:00, to stay up till 4:00, to spend a day watching movies, reading a book, or writing a short story, to visit long-lost friends in faraway places, to dream of vacations i could take (but never actually do), and just generally fart around in my underwear for far too long. well, hopefully i will miss them.

i think i will be coming up on a dilemma that i might as well start thinking about now. i’m hoping that i’ll miss all those above perks because i think i’m getting close to the end of two applications, which if everything goes as planned, will result in two comparable offers. both of which, i cannot accept. thus the choice.

option #1 involves technical consulting for a pretty large company. i’d be in the government group, most likely stationed in DC (which is exactly where i want to be) but with no guarantees but also the opportunity to travel most places in the world. the work could at times be interesting, but could prove in the long run to be mundane. think officespace, although i have reason to believe it won’t be nearly that bad. i have a good number of friends who work for this company and though i wouldn’t expect to work with them, i’ve gotten a generally very positive review. even though i’ve been teaching high school for the last three years (which is my job-holding record), i feel like this is going back down my real career path. in 3-5 years, i’m doing much the same thing, unless i get bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.
option #2 seems more divergent to me. i would be doing education research and helping write standardized math tests. it seems i would have two primary responsibilities: (1) write and review test items and (2) statistically measure and analyze the validity and reliability of existing tests and test items. this may be more intellectually stimulating and i may be able to get a free graduate degree out of it. if so, this would provide direction for my career. i could see myself getting a degree either in statistics or cognitive psychology. both of those are fascinating to me and could lead down really interesting roads.

the first option will probably do better financially, unless you account for graduate school tuition with option #2. my instinct says option #2 might be more interesting, but i could be wrong about that.

what am i missing? what do you think? what should i do?

and where should i take my last vacation?