May 23, 2013

Today was the last day of school and it went by too fast. It didn't help that it was only a half-day. I didn't have anything to do in the morning when I got to work so I went down to the gym like I used to do in the morning at the beginning of the year. I did just about as much good at wrangling kids as I did then. The weird thing was I knew all the kids this time, as opposed to the beginning of the year when it was just a sea of faces.

After all the kids were picked up by their teachers, I again had nothing to do, so I went and hung out with the kindergarteners. Until the last assembly of the year. I usually sit in the back of the gym but today I ended up sitting at the front of the gym with the kindergarteners. It was strange being up there and I felt very exposed. The assembly covered the last character trait awards for the year, a tribute to the retiring music teacher, and a send-off for the sixth graders.

One of the fifth grade teachers has been putting in a lot of effort to get all the kids to learn a song so they could surprise the music teacher. Unfortunately her mother passed away last week I think so she was still out of the state today. We overcame this with technology. The principal was able to FaceTime her with the iPad and then held that up so the music teacher could see all the kids singing. The librarian also videotaped the assembly and is going to send that to the music teacher later.

The sixth grade send-off was pretty good but it would have been more meaningful had I known the sixth grade class better. I did get a little misty eyed when the teachers spoke about the kids. It really did feel like a funeral and not just a group of kids moving on to a different school. I don't remember my sixth grade graduation being that emotional. Although at the time I was twelve and probably fairly oblivious to everything other than being bored and not wanting to sing I Believe I Can Fly.

When the assembly was over I helped one of the resource teachers figure something out with archiving her emails. The same teacher I have been helping with emails recently. In the email program there is a cabinet where she had a bunch of folders with various emails in each one. She didn't know if she needed to do something different to archive those and I didn't want to mess anything up so I went down to the lab and messed around with it on my email because I didn't have anything important in my cabinet. I made some random folders and emailed myself a few times so I had stuff to put in the folders. I found that when I opened one of the folders in the cabinet and archived one of the emails in the folder, the folder would be recreated in the archive and the email would be placed in it. With that information, I was able to show the resource teacher how to do this, and all was fine.

Shortly after that I followed my favorite substitute teacher and her class out to recess and then stayed out there for the kickball game, staff against the sixth graders. I did not participate because my knees suck. My para friend didn't want to wear her hoodie so she asked if I could keep an eye on it for her because it was brand new and she didn't want it to disappear. I ended up holding onto it for her but I did ask her if she also had a purse I could hang onto. The game itself was pretty entertaining to watch and I believe the sixth graders ended up winning, despite the best efforts of the staff.

The day was pretty much over after that. I went back to the kindergarten room and ended up walking the two bus kids to the gym and hung out in there until the teachers arrived who usually have bus duty. Then I stopped by the office to get a yearbook and learned that I made at least one mistake. I called one of the sixth graders “Mark” instead of “Mary”. And she apparently doesn't even go by “Mary” but by her middle name. Something I would have known had the sixth graders come to the lab more often. To make it even worse, she was the one sixth graders who was actually nice to me and made the effort to talk to me. So I pretty much feel like a dick. My mom and the kindergarten teacher tried to help by saying a lot of other people looked at the book before it was printed and they missed it too, but I should have caught it. If I end up helping with the yearbook next year I am going to make up each class page and then send it to the respective teacher so they can double-check it. I really should have done that this time around.

After school the majority of the staff met up at a bar for lunch. It was a bitch trying to find a parking spot but I managed it after maybe ten minutes. Everyone else had already ordered by the time I got there and I got a water but the waitress nearly forgot to come back to get my order. But then I was one of the first people to get my order. It didn't hurt that I got a salad and fries. Not a lot of cooking required there. There were a lot of us there but they didn't do a great job of getting the food out to people. They would bring about three plates at a time, every five minutes or so. So it wasn't much of a group meal because some people were done before others had even gotten their food, but it was cool hanging out with everyone.

I was done with work for the day, and until August, but the resource teacher had more questions about backing stuff up, other than email, so I told her I would come back to the school and help her out. And I did that after lunch. She was worried that maybe something would happen to the drive where all the backup stuff was saved so we saved everything again to a thumb drive. While we were doing this my para friend was moving a shelf upstairs to her new classroom (because she is going to be a fifth grade teacher next year) and the elevator spazzed out on her. It started making this loud town and she freaked out that something bad was happening. The resource teacher was standing there and my para friend kind of shouted “Am I going to make it?” with a very concerned look on her face as the elevator doors closed. She ended up being fine.

When I had finished backing stuff up for the resource teacher I headed down to help one of the kindergarten teachers because he had a couple questions about archiving his email. And then I went across the hall to the other kindergarten teacher's room because she and my mom were packing up the room. I talked with them for awhile before heading home, stopping at the bank on the way to deposit a birthday check.

I didn't really do anything else with the rest of my afternoon. Other than taking a nap. It was a good nap though. The second half of my Chipotle burrito was better than the first. I am still considering a change next week. Maybe white rice and a different salsa. Although I am afraid the step-up from the corn salsa will be too spicy. Only one way to find out. Although it would probably be safer to get the salsa I am considering, on the side with some chips. But that would mean another week of my current configuration, and I want to try something different.

My Nexus 7 arrived tonight. I am liking it so far. I mainly got it so I will be able to write my journal entries at work when I am stuck at the theater until the middle of the night. I have also downloaded an app that allows me to send and receive text messages on the tablet which is cool. When I am at home I mostly use a program on my computer to send text messages because I don't like typing on my phone, but the size of the text on the pop-up message is small so I need to lean in closer to the screen to see it. The tablet app comes in handy if I am lounging back with my feet up and don't want to lean in to see what the text message says. This requires a Wi-Fi connection and I am wondering if I can tether the tablet to my phone so I can still use the tablet app when I'm at work or somewhere else without Wi-Fi.

I got the latest letter from my friend today. It has been a couple months since I sent my last one so I am going to have to get back into writing again. I need to start thinking about subject matter for my new letter. One interesting thing is that one of the questions she asked in the question portion of her letter, is similar to one I plan on asking her.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight. I called him twice before getting ahold of him and then he said he had some work to do and couldn't hang out. So much for trying an orange vanilla limeade at Sonic.

It is now late, and despite my nap this afternoon, I am incredibly tired. To the point my eyelids have become increasingly heavy. So I am going to go to bed now.