May 14, 2013

I've thought of a possible reason for why I stop doing thing, or take a break from them. Like not drinking caffeine or eating meat or more recently, not eating candy. I fear change and the unknown and I think by giving up little things, I am able to create a sense of change that is still low risk. It is an interesting thought.

Apparently my grandma fell off a chair yesterday and broke her leg. And I didn't have a clue until this afternoon when I got a text from my dad saying she was out of surgery and doing well. I texted my sister and she caught me up to speed. She figured I had been getting dad's texts about the whole thing but I had not. I already rarely hear from my friends, now I can't even get an update about my grandma breaking her leg. I do exist right? We can't even go with the excuse that I don't have my phone on because I have had it on every day since my birthday. It is all a little frustrating.

But moving on to the part of my day before I found out I was far out of the loop.

My day was productive and pretty much all focused on the yearbook. I finally got class pictures from the second grade teacher, which only leaves one of the first grade teachers, and she is supposed to bring in her camera tomorrow. I also went around getting pictures of kids that were missing pictures, and getting ones for the missing staff. As of now I am down to one kid and one staff member (and needing permission from a second). Hopefully I can get both tomorrow because the goal is to compile everything tomorrow afternoon.

Getting all the pictures took awhile and then I spent the majority of the rest of my day editing the pictures I took and rearranging the class page layouts to accommodate pictures I hadn't counted on, and ones I wouldn't be needing. I had two edits that I was particularly proud of. The first was the first grader who was beaten by her dad and taken my social services. I believe she came after picture day and the only picture I could find of her was taken more in landscape mode than portrait mode. So I put it in the frame for the yearbook picture, scaled it so her head was the right size, and then used the smudge tool to make the background (which was thankfully just a plain blue) go all the way to the top of the frame. And I smudged out some of her stray hair while I was at it.

The second edit was of one of the Chinese kids who moved back to China a few weeks ago. I took a picture where he was standing with his teacher, dad, and the lady who worked with him on English, and cut all of them out of it. I cropped it down so that it was the right sized but there was still his dad's hand on his shoulder and part of the language teacher because she was standing slightly behind him. So I again used the smudge tool and continued the lines of the risers that were in the background, and made the adults blend into nothing. It turned out surprisingly well.

The best picture I took was of a fourth grade girl who has a lot of problems. She is smaller than her kindergarten brother and it seems like the only real excuse for her behavior issues, and her size, is that her mom was on drugs when she was pregnant. Anyway, when her teacher told her to follow me so I could take her picture, she got this giant-eyed stare on her face as she walked to her desk to drop off a paper (staring at me the whole time, not where she was walking) and then she came out into the hall with me. It was like she was afraid I was going to abduct her or something. And then for the pictures she wouldn't smile. The first one I took (which is the best one) she still has this crazy, wide-eyed look on her face and her lips are pushed out. I couldn't really use that in the yearbook so I went with the second one, which looks like a mugshot. I gave the kindergarten teacher a copy of the first picture because he wanted to make a card out of it for the principal.

After school I drove over to the IT department to buy a copy of Microsoft Office 2010. The whole district is upgrading to that next year and teachers and faculty were able to get a copy for $25, which is way cheaper than the retail price. I got it not only because it was super cheap, but also (and more importantly) because that is what I will be working with next year. I wanted to avoid the compatibility issues I have had to deal with this year thanks to having Office 2003 at home, Office 97 on my work computer, and occasionally getting files from people that were in Office 2010. Now we'll all be on the same level. I can also spend the summer familiarizing myself with it so when I need to help students and staff next year, I'll have at least a bit of a clue as to what I should do. I ran into that last week when one of the resource teachers needed help with Excel, and I knew what needed to be done on older versions of Excel, but it took me awhile to figure it out on the 2010 version. So I see my purchase as an investment, one that should have been paid for by the school, but whatever.

Tonight I completely caught up with my Watch Later list on YouTube and then spent an hour or two reading Ender's Game. I also worked a little on my signature and I think I have found one I like. I'm going to keep messing with it though. Now I am going to go to bed because I am tired and want to sleep. The best reason ever given for wanting to go to bed.