In fact, I changed the font on my page because it was too small for me to read on the Mac. There are some curious little differences on the Mac that pop up here and there; for one, I don't see the specially colored scrollbars anymore. In general, everyone's pages look fine, although I do need to make a few changes in mine. I'd like to change it without really changing it, if that makes sense. Suddenly it seems too wide to me, and I'd like to stick in a column or two. But I don't create pages in HTML (although I tinker with them in it, like changing the font name or size), and I'm a little leery about messing up my page with the new software I've got. I'll see what I can do with it. You'll be the first to know.Here's a nasty little mission I'm going on tomorrow. One of the application requirements for K's grad school is that she take the PRAXIS test. This is the national test that teachers take in their subject field, apparently; I am old enough not to have taken it, as it did not exist in 1975, when I was certified to teach English K-12 and be a school librarian K-12 in the state of New Jersey. But I digress. So she's got to take this Social Studies test -- she majored in world history -- and it's only given a few times a year, I guess, and only in a "central" location. New Jersey, remember, is a very small state in area (although not in population), so they figure that everyone in the state can get to Rutgers, our state university, for a test. Which begins at 8:00 am, but the test-takers must arrive by 7:30. AM. For us, Rutgers is a little over an hour away, so we have to leave at, say ... 6:00 am? In the morning? I do hope they have another "central" location in South Jersey -- preferably not the fetid hole that is Camden, although there's a Rutgers campus there -- or else those poor saps from Cape May are making a three hour drive each way. Which wouldn't be so bad if the test started at 10:00 or so.
And what does this have to do with me, you're asking? As well you should. I am driving her there. Why am I driving her there? Well. Well.
This is a kid who, remember, lived in Berlin for a semester. Lived in an apartment in Washington, DC for a whole long time. Went away to college, even.
Can't help it. Her driving freaks me out. I think it freaks her out, too. Remember, when she was at the learning-to-drive age, she was sick and out of school for a long time. She failed her driving test the first time -- on her 17th birthday; that's the age here -- and that shook her confidence. Then, that first year when she should have been driving all the hell over the place, she was mostly home, sick. If she went out, or went any distance, one of her friends drove. She got into the habit of only driving when she was alone, and only locally. I don't think she has the experience or confidence to drive down the Garden State Parkway, with its potential shore traffic, at the asscrack of dawn, to a place she's never been before, all to take a test that has bearing on her admission to school. Am I over-reacting? Oh, probably. I also want to avoid the clusterfuck of getting a phone call from her at 7:35:
"I can't find the building! I don't know where to park! I'm late, they won't let me in, now I can't go to grad school and I'll have to work at The Giant Jeans Conglomerate forever!"
Because not only would that happen, it would fall on me. Therefore, I drive. I've been there before. Based on the directions, both the parking garage and the building the test is being given in are on the same street and block where I lived and went to grad school at Rutgers ... oh ... 30 years ago.
The other kid, on the other hand, is a kickass driver and will go anywhere, any distance. She inherited the long-distance driving gene from both her father and mine, and is never freaked out if she's lost, just challenged. Sure, I worry about other crazy drivers on the road when she's out driving to, oh, I don't know, freaking Toronto, but I'm not worried about her.
So that's the PRAXIS story for tomorrow. I'll bet they don't even have a test for school librarians.
