Ocean City, Lindenwold Lions

This past Wednesday, Joce and I decided to explore the Jersey Shore (note: it's not the "coast," it's the "shore"). We figured we won't be able to go anytime soon with Jocelyn starting law school next week, so might as well do it now. Atlantic City seemed like a good choice, so made sure we had parking places marked on our GPS and mid-morning we set sail. On our way, Jocelyn was reading that the boardwalk in Atlantic City wasn't all that classic and the more we thought about it, the more it just sounded dirty. There was also a little blurb about Ocean City and how it's kept it's vintage appeal, so halfway there, we changed our course. Luckily Ocean City isn't too far from Atlantic City and in the same general direction.

After a little traffic and finding parking, we walked up on the boardwalk. It was great. Very clean, very dry (no alcohol), and very family friendly. It's amazing to me how 50 pizza/burger places, 25 fry places, and 75 ice cream/custard/water ice places can make it in such a small space (numbers exaggerated), but they all seemed to have a healthy business. We checked out 4 of the mini-golf places and decided on Congo Falls. It has not only 1, but 3 very-themed and decorated mini-golf courses! The solomon's mine course sounded good and it had a PG rating! It was this time when I found out I had brought the digital camera, along with a change of batteries, but failed to check if the memory card was in it. Yes, I performed a classic digital-camera blunder - forgetting the memory card. After mini-golf, we had a medium bucket of fries and a Cherry-Coke. The medium fry turned out to be fairly large, but there wasn't a large variety of health-conscious eateries around. '

Joce really wanted to lay out on the beach, but it cost $5/person to get on the beach and we were trying to be as cheap as possible. I wanted to go on the huge ferris wheel, but that would have been $8. We figured we'll do the ferris wheel some other time when we're there during the night and spend the $$ on the beach. There were little stands set up every so often to sell these beach passes, but when we tried to buy one, no one was around. We thought we could play dumb if someone comes by and asks us for our beach pass, but no one did. Score one for the Fowlers! Free beach passes!

After getting home, I saw there was an email from Lindenwold High School requesting an interview at 11am the next day. They said they tried contacting me by phone, but the phone was disconnected. I specifically took my phone to the shore to make sure I had it if someone called, but I think they used the local area code (856) instead of my area code (512). Anyway, I emailed them back saying that I would love to come in for an interview.

The next day I got all cleaned up and prepped for the interview. I even shined my shoes. I got to the high school and after spending a good 5 minutes figuring out how to get in, I stepped into the office. I didn't get the warmest of greetings, but I did notice a plaque on the wall rewarding students for how many decimal places they calculated Pi for Pi Day (3/14). Awesome! I met with the interim principal and the math specialist. As you can image, they loved me and often times I got a, "right answer" response from the principal. :-D We talked for a good 30-40 minutes, then they asked me to sit outside the office while they talk. I patiently waited and immediately said, "yes" when they asked if I had time to interview with the superintendent. Now, I'm used to school districts being larger and the superintendent being in charge of many schools, but there's only 2 elementary schools, 1 middle school and 1 high school in the Lindenwold School District, so it wasn't as intimidating as I thought it would be. She was real nice and, of course, asked me the harder questions. She went on and on about the great things the school has to offer and the history of school. It was nice seeing her energy and excitement about the school. When I couldn't think of any other questions to ask, she asked if I was interested in the job and offered it to me on the spot. I immediately accepted. One thing I still can't get over is the health insurance for the teachers. It's a no-contribution family plan. So Joce can get on my insurance without having to pay anything at all! This is a HUGE difference from Austin where I would have had to pay over $600/month to get her on my HMO insurance plan. This is actually an answer to our prayers since we recently found out that the Rutgers insurance doesn't cover a whole lot.

So great news! I've got a job with insurance that Jocelyn can get on for free and Joce is starting law school this monday! YAY!!!