April 5, 2013

This morning I read with kindergarteners, helped out with literacy centers in both kindergarten classrooms, and had my second grade reading group. The reading group actually went fairly well relative to earlier in the week, despite a little housing around at the beginning. We managed to make it through Freckle Juice, almost all of the first packet, and about half of the questions that go along with the book. The second grade teacher is working on the same book and they still have more more chapter to read (granted it's six pages in a kids book) so we are ahead of them but I don't see that as a good thing necessarily. I imagine her group is getting a lot more out of it than mine considering she's a teacher and I am only moonlighting.

This afternoon I had classes in the lab and in between I worked on my Excel flowers while listening to This American Life. Not necessarily productive but the flowers look halfway decent. I also helped out the Math Enrichment sub with computer things and finished the enrollment sheet for summer school so I was a tiny bit productive.

I feel like there was something else but it isn't coming to mind. Yesterday I forgot to mention that I think the substitute receptionist was blatantly staring at my crotch, or at least my crotchal region for several seconds as I walked through the main office. It was kind of awkward. Maybe a brief glimpse into what it is like to be a girl, or a hot guy.

After work I wanted to take a nap but I'm not sure how successful that was. It seemed like I was just laying on my bed, trying to pretend I was asleep. Especially after the UPS guy showed up and the dogs went nuts. It was nice taking a little break though, even if it didn't help how tired I felt.

The UPS guy brought the cables so I cam hook my Elgato HD up to my computer. I had the chance to plug it in but I didn't actually check to see if it works. I am going to save that for tomorrow when I actually have the time to mess around with it.

At work I finished Space Chronicles by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It was an interesting book, as his tend to be, but it had a lot of repetitive information which did get a tad annoying. This was unavoidable I guess, due to the nature of the book, being s compilation of articles and interviews and whatever other short-form writings and speeches Tyson has given, but it still got a little old.

I also watched a large clinch of The Host. It was unfortunately a somewhat less than great movie. I liked the idea of it but the writing was ridiculous at times and it was just a little too cheesy. And not in the good way. Not surprising that it was based on a book written by Stephanie Meyer. Especially with the weird romance stuff.

Lastly, I may be slightly more deaf now. Or maybe my hearing is slightly less good? Because I'm not deaf. Anyway, I was given a few projector bulbs to destroy tonight. They are like mini-grenades and you have to explode them so they don't blow up unexpectedly somewhere in the garbage process. We used to have tall dumpsters so we could stand back and throw then really hard into the back wall of the dumpster with enough time to turn away from the shrapnel. Now we have a long shallow one so I was having to throw them down into it at a weird angle. The first one was a dud because it didn't hit right but I got the second one to blow up. I couldn't leave the first one unbroken and I didn't want to climb into the dumpster, not only because it was gross but I also didn't know if the bulb had been damaged and I didn't want it to explode in my hands.

So I went inside and got the old suction cup pole we use to change light bulbs that are too high to reach. The idea was to first try and grab the bulb with a suction cup, and if that didn't work, turn the pole around and blindly stab at the bulb with it until the bulb exploded. After several seconds I managed to grab the bulb with a suction cup and start to lift it out of the dumpster. As I lifted I was trying to slowly move it to the right over a small trash bag so that if it fell it would it that and not the hard dumpster bottom. It turns out I was wise to make this attempt but in the end it was just an attempt. When I had the bulb about a foot in the air the hold on the suction cup gave out and the bulb fell, hitting the bottom of the dumpster, and exploding. I saw a small flash of light at the center of the bulb before I was able to turn away, heard a really loud bang which made my ears ring a bit, and I got a tiny cut on my wrist from a piece of shrapnel. Not cool.