February 28, 2013

 My major accomplishment for the day was finishing all of the seating charts for the upcoming state assessment. I might make a few minor changes tomorrow but then I can print them out and give them to the teachers so they can make sure I didn't put any kids near each other that shouldn't be near each other.

When I wasn't working on that, I read with kindergarteners, had my second grade literacy group, updated assessment software on laptops, edited and printed out bookmark things for one of the cooks, and had a few classes in the lab. This afternoon the high school jazz band came and performed. They had some good musicians but their guitar plays left a bit to be desired. It made me realize I probably could have played guitar in the jazz band in high school. It wouldn't have hurt to have one extracurricular activity.

Yesterday during kindergarten literacy centers, three of the four kids in my group were pulled out to have their hearing checked. My group was playing a matching game and it is not much of a game when there is only one kid playing. He was also really good at matching games. We went through both sets of cards a few times but still had time left so I started making him match two pairs of cards before he could take them out of play. He got pretty good at that, too.

Tonight I had the second half of my Chipotle burrito for dinner and it was nearly as good as the first half. Then, some time later, I went and saw the new volunteer kid. It ended up being an hour-long visit and most of that time was spent filling out the form for his class ring. It doesn't seem likely that he will actually get one because I don't know how he will pay for it, but he did have a lot of fun looking through the catalog and filling out the form.

And once again, it is time for me to go to bed.

February 27, 2013

 We got about an inch or two of snow last night but luckily it wasn't a problem cleaning it off my car this morning. It was a tad bit icy so I dug out my old hiking boots which I don't think I have worn since high school. They may actually be the same boots I've had since middle school and wore to Philmont but I can't remember that far back and my dad has all the pictures. And it isn't really that important. The point is that I didn't have to worry about slipping on the snow and ice, which is a constant fear with Chucks, or worry about getting my feet wet. That's my story.

At work I finally started working on my seating charts for the state assessment. It is as much a pain in the butt as I thought it would be. I have to make them for third through sixth grade, two different charts for each except for fourth which needs three. Not fun. I'm getting there though. Slowly. Along the same lines, I started upgrading the testing software on the second and third grade laptops. Those are going to be the go-to laptops for the kids testing outside of the lab. The upgrading involves deleting the old version and installing the new one, which actually doesn't take very long, but I'm doing it on over twenty laptops and finding the time between classes and working on the seating charts is a bit hard. Much like the seating charts, though, I'm getting there.

We had another character assembly today. Each month there is a different character trait and teacher nominate the students they think exemplify those traits. Or more accurately, the kids that haven't gotten an award yet because everyone gets an award. Anyway, each month a staff member is nominated by the students as the staff member of the month. This month the sixth grade teacher was nominated. The reasons given for her nomination included her love of shoes and fashion and other crap. As the resource teacher pointed out, none of the reasons given for her nomination had anything to do with her being a good teacher or staff member.

Tonight was Chipotle night and it was delicious. I can't remember the last time it was that good. Hopefully day two will be just as good. The rest of my night was spent with random internet stuff and continuing my Psych marathon. I have made it to the second disc of the sixth season. I am on track to finish it up by this weekend so I can watch the season seven premiere. I'm looking forward to that and it is difficult not watching it right now. Instead, I think I will go to bed. Sleeping is nice.

February 26, 2013

 I came outside this morning to see that my windshield frost cover had flipped down, so instead of covering the top three-fourths of the windshield, it was covering the bottom one-fourth. Not ideal. Thankfully there wasn't too much frost to scrape off.

At school today I continued work on organizing the test tickets. I got them divided into classes and alphabetized and got a start on pulling out the kids who are testing separately. Near the end of the day I started thinking about seating charts. I discovered that due to how the test numbers were assigned, each subject test will most likely have a different seating chart. This is annoying. Throughout most of the day I was increasingly deterred by the thought of coming up with those seating charts. Within the last five or ten minutes of work I had a stroke of genius. I decided that trying to go alphabetical with the seating chart I am going to separate kids into piles based on their test number and then just pull from each pile to make the chart. I will run into a problem fairly quickly because of the test numbers being assigned on the grade level, not the class level, so the numbers won't be evenly distributed, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Possibly tomorrow.

Yesterday one of the second grade teachers mentioned that she had watched a documentary about vegans and it included footage of the horrible treatment of animals at some factory farms. I have seen a lot of that footage and it truly is awful. She said she will most likely continue eating meat but she is strongly thinking about cutting back or giving up certain meat. Today we were talking and she said she typically watches serious stuff like documentaries, scary movies, or suspense movies but she thinks she needs to try some lighter stuff, because she watched a documentary about happiness. I mentioned my current Psych marathon and Modern Family. She had heard of the latter but hasn't seen either so she might be checking those out. Psych should definitely be watched by more people.

Speaking of, my goal to catch up with Psych before the season seven premiere tomorrow is a bust. I have made it to the last disc of season five which is close but not nearly close enough. I've still got two more episodes of season five left and then all sixteen from season six. I might try to knock that out this week and then watch the season premiere this weekend. It will give me something to look forward to. Although I was looking forward to it tomorrow, so... whatever, I'll just build the anticipation by putting it off a few more days.

We were supposed to get another round of snow last night but that never happened. We are getting some tonight, however. I was planning on not putting my windshield frost cover on until later in the night when any wind had calmed down so as to avoid it being blown forward again. I ended up going out a little earlier than intended before the snow had built up too much and scraped it off so I could put the cover on. Fingers crossed it will stay in the right place.

February 25, 2013

 “Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I am a deeply unhappy person.”(Looking For Alaska, 124)

I am drawn to the darkness yet it is the one thing that I truly hate. Absolutely loathe.

I spent a large portion of my day cutting up test tickets and sorting them into classes and then alphabetical order. I made it through third and fourth grade and halfway through fifth grade. Leaving me with sixth grade tomorrow. Then I'll need to figure out the seating charts for each class because two kids with the same test can't sit next to each other. I don't think seating the kids in alphabetical order will actually work considering the tests were assigned while the kids were sorted by grades, not by classes. It might be a pain in the butt, but I will save that judgment for later. The rest of my day was pretty much the same as always. I'm tired now so I can't think of anything else worth mentioning during my work day.

Tonight I watched a few YouTube videos and then a few episodes from season five of Psych. My lack of episode watching on Sunday may have hindered my ability to make it through season six by Wednesday. I'm not going to rule it out but it will be close. I may have to put off watching the season seven premiere, which won't be a problem considering it currently takes me at least a week to watch stuff on my DVR. I still need to cut ties with my DVR.

Yesterday I turned off my cellphone because I got tired of the minor anxiety it was causing me, frequently checking it to see if I had missed any texts or emails. I'm not that popular and I rarely get anything of importance, so there really isn't much to miss. I must admit I feel better having it turned off. Life was much simpler before cellphones. People don't need to be constantly available. And if there is something of relative importance, people know my email address, my home phone, or where I live.

It isn't quite ten o'clock but I'm am going to go to bed. I'm tired.

February 24, 2013

 Nothing much to write about today. Just another Sunday. I played video games, watched YouTube videos, and almost made an attempt to watch DVRed stuff. I could go into detail on any of that stuff but I don't really feel like it. It was a very blah day and I can't bring myself to write about the same old thing.

We're supposed to be getting more snow either tonight or tomorrow night. I'm thinking tomorrow. I'm just hoping it isn't enough to cause another snow day. I'm tired of snow days. The weekends are long enough. State assessments technically start for us this week but no one signed up until next week but I still need to cut out all of the student tickets and organize them. That will involve a lot of cutting. Then I'll have to figure out seating charts so kids with the same test don't sit next to each other. I think the tickets may be arranged in alphabetical order by grade rather than class, which will make it a little more difficult, but I should have plenty of time to figure it out. Fingers crossed. I just want to go back to work, Thanks to parent/teacher conferences and snow days we've had two four-day weekends in a row and I'm kind of tired of being home.

February 23, 2013

"And I vaguely remember Lara smiling at me from the doorway, the glittering ambiguity of a girl's smile, which seems to promise an answer to the question but never gives it. The question, the one we've all been asking since girls stopped being gross, the question that is too simple to be uncomplicated: Does she like me or like me?" (Looking For Alaska, 64)

Wrists and forearms be damned, I played Black Ops 2 today. I learned last night that this is a double XP weekend and this morning I discovered that it also meant 24/7 Nuketown. That is the only map I enjoy playing and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I had a few good games in the beginning, a whole bunch of crap in the middle, and then I ended strong. The crap in the middle came from lag issues. It seemed like no matter what lobby I got into I was never quite in sync and several of the games went through mid-game host migrations. I could chase a dude around and shoot him two or three times in the back, point blank, and not get a single hit marker. There was even one instance where I shot in front of a guy and when I turned around to run the other way I got a hit marker and the kill. It was all kind of frustrating but obviously not enough for me to stop playing.

Tonight at work I watched Psych, added a few more rows to my blanket, and read a size able chunk of Looking For Alaska (hence the quote at the beginning of this entry). It was pretty much a carbon copy of last night at work. In fact, most of my days tend to be carbon copies of previous days. I would say I need to work on that but I've been saying that since high school. I need to actually do, not think.

February 22, 2013

Today I was going to try out Deus Ex: Human Revolution but instead I jumped back into Hitman: Absolution. After planting a bomb in an illegal gun cache I waited several minutes for my target and a dirty cop to return. It's not always an exciting game. And the guys never returned so I planted the bomb in a stairwell I knew my target would go back to and then went across the map to take out my other target. He was interrogating a dude and I meant to save the guy and kill my target before he shot the other guy but I didn't time it right and the guy got shot right before I strangled my target. It was actually for the best I guess because it meant one less witness. Right after I hid the bodies I used my instinct vision and saw my last target was walking down into the stairwell so I set off the bomb and exited the level. I felt like a bit of a badass.

I had to work tonight so I went out before I got in the shower to unbury my car. The driveway had already been shoveled but I started by shoveling out more around my car so wouldn't be walking all over it and making it take longer to melt. To get the snow off I used a broom. There really wasn't much ice so I didn't need a scraper and the amount of snow definitely warranted something more heavy duty than the brush on one of my ice scrapers. The broom worked really well and I was able to get pretty much all of the snow off in about thirty minutes.

Right as I finished a giant city plow truck came to clear the street. My sister had sent a picture earlier of the job the city did in front of her driveway. Which consisted of them just driving by and shoving all the snow to the side, which just creates small mountains of snow in front of all the driveways on the street. A street filled with a bunch of old widows who drive tiny cars and lack the ability to dig their way out. Thankfully the city did a better job in the cul-de-sac. Several years ago they piled a lot of it in front of our driveway and you had to get a running start in a truck or SUV to get in and out of the driveway. A couple of my friends went back and forth over it several times to help pack it down. Now that I have a car, I'm glad they left the bottom of the driveway unencumbered so I didn't have to dig my way out. Although I may shovel out a little bit near the edge. Maybe.

At work I started to read Looking For Alaska again, finished another skein of yarn on my blanket and started a new one, and I finished the fourth season of Psych and started the fifth season. It was a pretty good night for finishing and starting things. My goal with Psych is to finish the sixth season by the time the seventh starts this coming week, I think in Wednesday. I've got plenty of time so I feel like it is a fairly safe goal.

February 21, 2013

 “I have two dogs. They're out of hand.” - A kindergartener.

Today was a snow day and they made a good call. We got a bunch of snow. I don't think we made it to a foot but the drifts were over a foot. I can't remember the last time we got this much snow and it is kind of great. I would have liked to go out and go for a walk or make a snowman but I am a grown man that lacks suitable clothing for snow. So I stayed inside.

I really wanted to play Black Ops 2 but my wrist was beginning me not to pick up a controller. Instead, I played computer games. Typing tends to aggravate my wrist, as well as too much Xbox, but playing games with the mouse and keyboard seem to go alright for the most part. Thank goodness for that. Today I finally jumped into Hitman: Absolution and Max Payne 3. I was patient and managed to get both games at over 75% off. Well, at least one of them was more, one may have just been 75%. Either way, I saved a whole bunch of money and that makes the games that much better.

For Hitman: Absolution I started with the sniper challenge and have yet to finish it completely. The ultimate goal is to kill the target as well as all the bodyguards. The closest I got was all but two of the bodyguards. So close. On top of that ultimate goal, one of the challenges is to take everyone out with headshots. That one is deserving of the name because it is challenging as hell. And its completion is required to unlock the last challenge. Which means I am two challenges short. With each challenge completed you get a percentage bonus to your overall score, so you have to finish all the challenges to get the maximum bonus so you can get the maximum score. Needless to say, I am not ranked very well in the global hierarchy.

As for the actual game, I am liking it. It reminds me of both Assassin's Creed and the latest Batman games. It's got the stealthy stuff and crowd blending thing going on which is fun and challenging. I think I might start watching some playthroughs of levels I have completed to see how other people get through the levels. There are so many different ways to finish each level which would lead to a lot of replayability if I actually had the time to replay games. As it is, I barely have the time or attention span to finish a game.

Max Payne 3 was also a lot of fun. I'm still trying to get used to the controls because some of the buttons feel a little weird to reach for. This as lead to me not utilizing bullet-time to it's full potential. Bullet-time is freaking awesome and I definitely need to use it more often. My main complaint about the game, which is more of an annoyance than a complaint, is the random words that will pop up on while the characters are talking. I don't get it. It seems pointless and it takes me out of the experience a bit. Other than that, and getting used to the controls, I am liking the game.

Tonight I called the new volunteer kid's foster dad to let him know I wouldn't be coming tonight because I didn't feel comfortable driving on the highway and interstate. Not worth digging my car out and risking all the idiots and potentially disastrous conditions for a most likely short visit. Wasn't going to happen. We should be good for next week though.

Tomorrow is another snow day and I think I might try out Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Another game that looks cool and can't suck too much because I got it for at least 75% off. I think we might be getting more snow but I'm not sure. Regardless I will have to go to work at the theater. Unless we do in fact get more snow and the roads suck. If that happens I'll just call in because I rarely do anything work related while at the theater. I don't want to risk horrible drivers against my new car just to go to a job, where I get crappy pay, and watch DVDs or read books. That is ridiculous.  

February 20, 2013

 I forgot a few things yesterday. As I suspected. The first is my massive gas card bill. I always have a couple weeks before they are do so I usually take a week before getting around to paying it. Well, I guess my last bill arrived later that normal and I ended up not paying it until the day it was due. I'm not sure but I'm assuming they count the day it arrives, not the day it was postmarked. My latest bill arrived and it felt really soon considering I just paid the old one last week, and it was padded with $27 in fees along with the amount of the last bill plus this bill. I'm going to wait a little bit and see if they will send an adjusted bill but if not I might end up paying the whole thing a let them refund me a hundred bucks.

So that bill sucked but I ended up getting to park in the parking garage last night for free. I ended up in a long line to get out and when I got up to the front I put my ticket in but it popped right back out. There was a guy standing there and he grabbed my ticket and said he would have to let me out. He went up and did something to the gate thing and raised it up. I hesitated for a second expecting him to come back and let me pay but he didn't so I slowly drove out, looking around, expecting something bad to happen. But it didn't. And I saved a few bucks.

The last thing from yesterday. A middle school choir came and sang at an assembly. I think it is a bit cruel to make pubescent kids sing in a choir. Especially the boys. The boys were all awful. But that isn't the point. The point is there was a girl in the front row, that at least from my seat in the very back of the gym, looked incredibly like a middle school version of my ex-girlfriend. I have never actually seen pictures of my ex in middle school but I'm guessing here. Several weeks ago a new second grader started and she reminds me a lot of a second grade version of my ex. I feel like I am being haunted by the ghosts of ex-girlfriend past. It is creepy.

Now onto today. I finished all the individual schedules for the paras and resource teachers and whoever else is sitting with a kid during assessments. I got them all passed out with the help of one of the newest paras who was a student teacher last semester. She was able to tell me who some of the other paras are, who I know but didn't know their first names. I got all but one passed out and I think that one has the wrong name. I think the principal accidentally wrote down the name of the student instead of the para. I'll have to figure that out later.

This morning I read with kindergarteners. One of them is my favorite to read with because she has a really high reading level and she does all the voices. More and more frequently it seems she hasn't been reading at home and she doesn't really need to, at least like most of the kids need to, but she really likes reading. This is evident when she doesn't get to finish the book during the reading time and asks to take the book home so she can see how it ends. I think it is awesome that she has that level of interest in the books but it is also sad that she isn't getting the chance to read at home. Her mom might even be an English teacher, which makes it even more sad. Today's book involved a magician and one of the tricks was cutting a lady in half. She asked me if he really cut her in half and I was so tempted to tell her how it is done but I don't really want to ruin magic for a five year old so I just told her that it was an illusion and a magician can never reveal his secrets.

I continued trying to help one of the first grade teachers set up the tablet she got her husband for Christmas. It has been a struggle. Today I learned that you can change a Hotmail password through Gmail. This was not what I intended to do but we managed to get it switched back. Last time I left her with the task of setting up a Gmail account. She wrote down the address and the password but when I tried logging in today both were wrong. I ended up figuring out the Gmail address she created and then reset the password to the one she thought it was. Each time I had to check the username or password to see if it would let me sign into the table I had to go across the hall to the workroom (where they have a wireless router even though no one needs a wireless router in the workroom and it would come in handy every day in the lab). This ended up taking all of her half-hour lab time and it was still setting stuff up when she had to leave so I don't know if it actually worked. My fingers are crossed.

I ended up getting a lot of exercise today, including my exercise before work. At work I went all over the school passing out the assessment schedules. Then I ended up on the third floor and the second floor looking at computer issues in the afternoon. I could use the cardio of going up to the third floor every day but I don't think my knees would be up for it. Or my lungs.

Halfway through the day they canceled school for tomorrow. We are projected to get anywhere from six to twenty-four inches of snow starting tomorrow morning. The teachers got their wish. I am looking forward to it but I'm hoping we don't get a ridiculous amount because I don't want to miss Friday as well. We just had a three day week last week and another one will really kill my next paycheck. I'm not sure what I will end up doing with my day but it probably one involved Black Ops 2 because my wrist is bothering me again. I can't remember the last time it hurt but this time is definitely related to the insane amount of time I put into Black Ops 2 in the past couple of weeks. My wrist brace has disappeared but I need to track that down. I probably won't be able to work on my blanket either. This all means tomorrow is probably going to be really boring.

Tonight was Chipotle night and I ended up getting a bowl for dinner and a burrito for tomorrow. That is how I prepare for a potential snow storm. The bowl was really good but I think it would have been better without the cheese and sour cream. And if I hadn't eaten the entire thing in one sitting.

Now I am going to go to bed. I have been tired for awhile now and I don't plan on setting my alarm but it would be nice to wake up at a decent time so I can experience more of my snow day.

February 19, 2013

 Today feels like one of those days where I had stuff to write about but failed to write it down and have since forgotten it. I always say I am going to work on it but I have apparently not gotten around to it yet.

The teachers favorite topic of conversation today was the possibility of a snow day on Thursday. Teachers love snow days. Way more than kids. And I can understand that. I like them but I would like them more if I was still getting paid for the missed day. But I have very few personal hours and I already wasted some of them on the last snow day. So I won't be doing that again.

My day at work was mostly spent working on the individual schedules for the people who will be testing kids out of the computer lab during the state assessment. I think I got all but one or two of them done so that was fairly productive.

While I worked on that I listened to a few episodes of Brian Posehn's podcast Nerd Poker, which consists of him and his friends playing Dungeons & Dragons. I like Posehn but I mainly wanted to listen to the podcast because Mr. Sark from Machinima Respawn is the Dungeon Master. I have always been interested in D&D but have never played. I don't know that I would want to play but I think it would be fun to sit in on a game just for the entertainment of it.

Other stuff happened at work but I am going to skip that stuff because I can't really think of anything worth mentioning. And I want to go to sleep.

My friend went to a movie this weekend and she mentioned possibly hanging out tonight. Then she got asked to stage manage a lecture by a playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan Lori-Parks. So she invited me to that. I had never heard of the lady before but it ended up being a really good lecture. It was basically an inspirational kind of thing with tips for success using examples from her own life. She was really funny and including the Q&A afterward, it lasted two hours, which flew by. My favorite part was her story behind one of her plays. She was sitting in a canoe talking with her friend and one of her random ideas was that she wanted to make a riff on The Scarlet Letter and call it Fucking A. That play ended up becoming a companion piece to another play she wrote first, and much different than she originally planned, but she still used the title, which is great. My favorite one-liner from the lecture was “Being an artist isn't about being cool, it's about being.” Deep stuff.

And on that note, I'm going to bed. I've been tired for the past hour and I need my rest.

 Last night I made it to bed before 10:30PM so waking up this morning wasn't a problem at all and I was actually able to exercise. I feel good about that. It turned out to actually be the start of a pretty good day.

I did all the usual stuff (read with kindergarteners, had my second grade reading group, watched over several classes in the lab) and had stuff to do in the in-between times. I finished adding in the paras and resource teachers to the testing plan for the students needing that for the assessment coming up, and I started making individual schedules for everyone. I also helped the third grade teacher figure out a projector issue. I would say projectors have been my main nemesis since taking this job. I have usually been able to find workarounds but I am only recently figuring them out. The teacher's setup should allow for her laptop to plug into the Elmo overhead projector and then have the Elmo plugged into the ceiling projector. I guess this makes it easier to switch between the computer and the overhead projector without moving a bunch of cords. My temporary fix was to just plug the projector directly into the laptop. Later on I came back and clicked around for awhile before trying to clone the laptop's monitor, like if the laptop was plugged into an external monitor, and this worked. It took me a few minutes to figure it out but I got there eventually.

That was pretty much the extent of my day at work. It doesn't really seem like much, but the day went by quickly and I am looking forward to tomorrow. There is already talk of a possibly snow day on Thursday. I guess we're supposed to get several inches of snow on Wednesday night. I can't say I would mind the chance to sleep in but that would be a day without pay and I have assessment stuff to work on.

Tonight I watched a few things on my DVR (I'm still on last week) and I watched some of my video game videos on YouTube. I don't feel like I have gotten any better at Black Ops 2 but my latest videos do show improvement over my earlier videos. I was tempted to play a few rounds tonight but I decided to take another break break from it. I don't know if I will make it to the weekend but I'll give it a shot.

It is still fairly early but I am thinking of calling it a night soon. I do need to get back in the habit of going to bed closer to ten o'clock so I can actually wake up feeling awake and ready to exercise. I need to compound the slight advantage I have given myself by not eating candy this month and get back into exercising every day. I feel better about myself when I do and I'm sure my health appreciates it.

 Nothing really worth mentioning happened today. I wanted to do so many things but couldn't find the motivation to do anything. I played Black Ops 2 for a little bit today and spent most of my time trying to play with a sniper rifle. I still suck at it but every now and then I go on a streak and it is great. My best moment today was seeing a dude jump off a back porch on Nuketown 2025, trying to do a 360 trick shot with a sniper rifle and I shot him out of midair. It was pretty amazing.

I have been feeling pretty down lately, not helped by the fact that I just read a depressing book about suicide. I need to come up with a way out of this funk. It is tiring and I am tired of it. I'm going to try and wake up and exercise tomorrow morning. That may help. Maybe. The morning will tell. Other than that, I think I need to do a better job at focusing on my future. My present is less than ideal and has been for quite some time and my future is the way out. If I can ever make it there. Thankfully this week I should have plenty to do at work so that will keep my mind off things for bit. Although I should stop ignoring that kind of stuff and take action. Soon?

Today was pretty much the same as yesterday. I didn't make any significant weapon progress in Black Ops 2 but I did end up prestiging again. I played for a couple hours and only got to play on Nuketown 2025 for the last two games, which was disappointing. Not so much the gameplay when I actually got to play. Well, the first game was a bit awful because I was using a sniper rifle which I am awful at. I want to level it up so I can get to the iron sights. I imagine it will be like a more powerful, long distance shotgun. Speaking of, the second game went a lot better when I was using the shotgun. Not stellar by any means but my gameplay generally isn't.

At work I spent the majority of my time finishing Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. Books about teenage suicide are only slightly less depressing about teenagers with cancer. It did make me want to re-read Looking For Alaska by John Green, which I would say is a better book. I did like Asher's book however, as much as one can like a book about suicide. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. It was good but far from complete. This worked in the sense that the story is told from the perspective of one person (not counting the narration of the tapes) so the story should wind down after he completes the tapes. But I could have used more resolution, not only for the main character but also in a broader sense, including the greater outcome from the tapes being in existence and being listened to. It was a decent book, though. I probably won't read it again but I am glad I did. Minus the sadness I am still feeling.