Christmas 1996
Merry Christmas and warm Pace, Florida greetings! Yes, that’s right, you get to endure another Christmas Letter from the Wilcox’s… so here goes!
Becky finished up her History Education degree at UWF in the spring by doing her tour of duty as a student teacher at Milton High School. Despite some rough days, she really enjoyed it. To keep her busy in the summer, she decided to join the wonderful world of retail. She got a job at Michaels (a craft-lover’s paradise) to earn some extra money, so she says, although I’ve always thought it was really so she could get the employee discount. After a few months of dealing with the sometimes angry, sale-hungry shoppers, she was ready for a change.
In this area, it is known that teaching jobs, especially in history, can be as rare as snowfall. I don’t know if we’ll get any snow this year, but Becky did get a job teaching American History and Law Studies at Pensacola High School. PHS is considered to be quite rough, so needless to say I was a bit nervous about her taking a job there. I was disappointed when I found out that she couldn’t take a bazooka to school, and she vetoed my idea of her wearing a bulletproof vest everyday. Actually, she has had less trouble with the kids at PHS than the ones she had at Milton. She especially enjoys her classes that have honors or above average students.
At PHS, Becky has had to deal with something else. When she started, they told her that despite the fact that she didn’t know anything about cheer leading, they felt she was the perfect person to be the Freshmen Cheer leading Sponsor. Well, as it has turned out, she has spent a lot of time working with all three cheer leading squads. Becky insists (and I can testify) that she spends more time doing cheer leading stuff than she does teaching stuff. At least we can both say that we know a lot more about cheer leading than we ever imagined. Luckily, after basketball season, there aren’t very many cheer leading activities left.
My job with A+ Network has gone fairly well in the past year. In July, I received a promotion to Software Engineer. Although I’m not really doing anything different, it is nice to have a better title to put on my resume. I mention my resume because in May, A+ Network and Metrocall (another paging company) announced they were merging. “Merging” has been the term that people at our company have used and “buying” has been the term that employees of Metrocall use. Needless to say, it has been a little unsettling, and there’s no telling what the future may hold.
In May, I was sent on a business trip to Texas, and I was able to purchase an extra ticket for Becky. After experiencing a little of the hill country of Kerrville, we spent several days in both San Antonio and Austin — taking in the Alamo (of course), Natural Bridge Caverns, and the River Walk. Other than getting coke spilled all over me at the Spaghetti Warehouse, it was a wonderful trip. Even so, the coke wasn’t that bad since I got a free T-shirt out of the deal. The trip made for a nice, early celebration of our one-year wedding anniversary.
In August, we made our big move to the new house.
We decided earlier in the year that we had had enough of apartment living and headed out to find a house. Since, nothing seemed to quite suit our tastes we decided to build. In the end, we landed up with a nice little brick house in the huge metropolis of Pace, Florida. Despite all the home-ownership chores, we absolutely love it.
With our move to Pace and Becky’s teaching job, we faced some changes in our lifestyle. We have started riding to work together several mornings a week. Becky seems determined to make a morning person out of me (all be it unsuccessful still) as we leave the house around 5:45 A.M.
The house has also afforded me the chance to do some home improvement type stuff. While my blunders have been many, I still don’t think I’m in the Tim Allen category yet, but if you have any contact with Bob Vela, put in the good word for my idea of a “This New House” series.
I guess that’s about all I have room for, so we’ll just say Merry Christmas and may God bless you this next year.