The old guy at book club last night was telling us how his parents
had the only ballet bookstore in New York way back in the day. I am
assuming it was a bookstore specializing in books about ballet. His
mother was apparently very small and everyone assumed she used to be
a ballet dancer, which she hadn't, but she didn't mention that fact
and played it up for the customers. Also, because it was the only
bookstore of its kind, when kids would come to New York to do ballet
stuff they would eventually end up at this bookstore. And when their
parents hadn't heard from them in awhile, they would end up writing
this bookstore asking about their kids, and the old guys parents
would basically be the go between, telling the kids they needed to
check in with their parents.
Yesterday the first assessment of the day took forever for some kids
to log in, today it was the second assessment. At least half the
class had to try and log in more than once, some kids more than five
times and on multiple computers. It seemed like maybe every other
school in the state was trying to take the assessment at exactly the
same time. Eventually everyone was able to take the assessment, even
if some of them had to start half an hour late.
I have to collect the scratch paper after the assessments and
“destroy” it for security reasons and during the second
assessment the teacher came up and handed me a piece of scratch paper
and said “Here are all the answers.” I mentioned that I would go
sell them on the black market and she replied “Probably not from
that one.” Later she handed me another piece and said “Now this
one you can sell, it has a lot of right answers on it. You need to
cut me in for half.”
We had another assembly today, this one was the second grade classes
singing and doing little skits. I think the whole thing was called
School Days, I didn't get a program, but it was pretty good. The
first song sounded very old-timey to me and it just seemed like it
would be a musical interlude in a movie from the 1930s. I couldn't
get Laurel And Hardy out of my head. Then there were the occasional
hip-hop songs which involved attempts at choreographed dancing. It
was so epic. Not a single kid was in time to the music or to anyone
else. They were all definitely dancing to the beat of their own
drummer. And several kids were really getting into it. I loved it.
After the first dance number I turned to my para friend and told her
that second graders dancing was my new favorite thing. After the
assembly my para friend and I put away chairs but we actually got a
lot of help with it today. We decided that maybe we have just been
setting such a good example that other people are wanting to join in
the fun.
My sister recently bought a Cross Canadian Ragweed USB-bracelet that
was supposed to come loaded with a bunch of music. Instead it came
broken. Whenever she plugged it in, it would ask her to reformat it,
which would delete anything that was on there, if there actually was
anything on it. So she asked me to check it out. I downloaded a
file recovery program and was able to get a bunch of stuff off of it,
including 30 songs. The strange thing was that after I got
everything off and reformatted the bracelet, I couldn't get all the
stuff back onto the bracelet. There wasn't enough room. It was like
that triangle that when you cut it up into pieces and rearrange them
you end up with a triangle that has the same dimensions on the
outside but there is a hole in the middle. Except kind of the
opposite of that because I took a bunch of stuff out but couldn't get
it all back in. So maybe like when you take something apart and end
up with an extra screw? Yeah, that analogy makes more sense.
Anyway, the point is I was able to get the music off of it. I'm not
sure what all the other stuff was but hopefully it wasn't important.
But if it is I still have it backed-up on my computer.
Tonight I had the visit with the new volunteer kid. It was a pretty
good forty-five minute visit. I was a little worried it wouldn't
happen because when I called the foster dad he was over here but said
a visit would be fine. So I crossed my fingers and headed out on my
thirty minute trip in the hopes that the kid would get the message
and have the time or interest to hang out. But he did so it was all
good.
When we got in the car I asked him how he was doing and he said
“excellente”. I then asked him how school was going and he said
he had just gotten a 'C' on his English test. I said maybe it was
because he was speaking in Spanish. Classic me. Another zinger.
For the rest of the visit we continued talking about school stuff.
His English test had been over To Kill A Mockingbird
which is a book I didn't read until late in college or maybe even
after, but it is one of my favorite books. I really related to
Atticus Finch. I actually need to read that book again. I could
definitely see it as a once-a-year kind of book.
On the topic of the kid. I got on
the Jostens website today so I could recreate his class ring. My
supervisor got the money for it but the order form he gave me seemed
like the ring was a lot more expensive than I remembered. So I got
on and entered everything just how he had it until I got to the type
of metal. I was thinking White Lustrium because that is what I got
and it is the cheapest. It looks good and I think it is more than
enough for a ring most people don't wear for too long. So I left
that option on White Lustrium, which was the default, but when I
tried to move onto the next question, a window popped up asking if I
wanted to upgrade the metal type to Silver Elite for only $144.
Only. By default that option was picked so if you clicked to go on,
the metal type would be switched to Silver Elite. So kind of a
tricky way to get people to spend more money, even unintentionally.
With the Silver Elite the ring came out to just over $400 before tax.
With White Lustrium it came out to under $265 before tax. I emailed
my supervisor about all this and my recommendation was White Lustrium
but we'll see what she thinks.
And on that note, I'm going to
almost go to bed. I need to edit my recording of my day and then go
to bed. I am tired. So I think I will edit my recording tomorrow.
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