May 7, 2013

Today was a Tuesday. Just another Tuesday. We had two more back-to-back MAP tests this morning and those were just as fun as they always are. I had a couple first graders come in to finish tests and one of them was the girl that takes at least a few hours to take her tests. I think it is more torturous for me than it is for her because she seems to be in her own little world during most of it.

This afternoon the math enrichment teacher was trying out various science projects for Boys & Girls Club. One of them involved microwaving a bar of soap and I don't know what the ultimate goal was but it was a complete failure. It ended up smoking really bad and for a little bit she was afraid she was going to burn down the school. She ran up to the office to let them know that if the fire alarms went off it was her. She was using the microwave in the teacher's lounge which is across the hall from the computer lab. The teacher's lounge and the hallway both smelled overwhelmingly of the burnt soap, which at first, in small doses smelled like suntan lotion, but then progressed to more of a grill smell. Whenever someone would ask me what the smell was I would just reply it was the smell of science. I thought it was funny.

It was one of the kindergarten teacher's birthday today and my mom planned to have her called out of the lab during their lab time so all the kids could sign a card for her. Fifteen or twenty minutes into their time, the office still hadn't called so I eventually went up to see what was up. The receptionist my mom talked to wasn't there so I asked the other one to call the lab and say the principal needed to see her. She called twice but apparently the phone didn't ring in the lab so I went back to the lab and told her that the principal wanted to talk to her. My mom got through the first two rows of kids before the teacher came back and we stealthily hid the card so the teacher didn't see it. Thankfully she picked the first row to follow her out of the lab, followed by the second row, so I snagged the third row and had them sign it before they caught up with the rest of the class.

Later on in the afternoon I brought the card down with my present for her. I printed her off a clown card in Publisher and on the front typed “Happy Birthday and also Happy Teacher Appreciation Week as well” and then on the inside I wrote (in big enough writing that she could read it): “Both of these events are significant. Your birthday is proof that time is perpetual. And Teacher Appreciation Week is a reminder that you have chosen to do something productive and worthwhile with your life. And for all your efforts you are shown one whole week (minus the weekend) of appreciation. Things could be worse.” I tried to go for nice and a little funny.

After that I headed back to the lab because I had briefly abandoned the second graders who were figuring out Wordle. The other second grade class tried to use it yesterday and it would only work for maybe a couple kids, so I looked into it today. I found that it didn't work at all in Firefox, occasionally worked in Internet Explorer, and worked all the time in Chrome. So there was a brief bit of upheaval trying to switch kids over to Chrome today when the other browsers weren't working, but then it was down to helping them pick out the colors they wanted to use.

When I got home from work I had hummus and pitas for snack and talked to my friend on the phone about his possible future court date due to a minor fender-bender. I also ended up having hummus and pitas for dinner as well, along with fake chicken nuggets. With birthday cake for dessert. With the rest of my night I wrote my monthly report for my volunteer thing, downloaded free books onto my Kindle, and watched YouTube videos. I also tried on the green hoodie I got from Old Navy. The green is different than how it looked online but I assumed it would because the picture online wasn't real. It was one of those were they take one picture of one hoodie and then change the hue so pretend it is different colors. The real hoodie color is a little lighter than the one online but I like it. I have to send it back however because I got a tall and it is too long. I normally like tall stuff because regular clothing is often too short. Not this time. So I am going to send it back and hope that the regular one is a good fit. If it is I might end up buying a couple more in different colors just so I can change things up.