August 8, 2013

As assumed, waking up was terrible but I managed it and made it to the school by 8:00AM. We met in the library and all of the teachers and staff were there who have laptops and/or iPads. To goal was to introduce them to the Windows update, the new email system, and get email set up on their iPads. And for the most part all of that was a success. There are still random log-in issues, and at least one person can't get into their laptop, but overall it was successful. The best part was fixing the Wi-Fi on the gym teacher's laptop. At the beginning of the meeting he told me he had to hard-wire it because the Wi-Fi had stopped working at the beginning of last year and no one had been able to fix it. I don't know who tried but my attempt involved flipping the Wi-Fi switch on the front of the laptop to the 'ON' position. And it worked.

After the meeting I went down to the computer lab to try a few student log-ins to see if they would work. This year, so far anyway, we don't have a generic lab log-in, which is going to be a pain. At the beginning of last year there were a lot of kids who had messed up log-in information but we were able to use the generic lab log-in to get them on the computer until theirs had been corrected. But this year that won't be an option. Each kid will have to log in every time. At the moment the first grader log-ins are the same at the were in kindergarten, which is just their lunch number and a slightly more complicated password. But even that is tricky for first graders because a lot of them haven't memorized their lunch number yet and the password involved a capital letter and a '-'. Tricky stuff for small kids.

One of the receptionists wanted me to take pictures of the new teachers and staff members to go up on the wall at the front of the building so I got a camera from the librarian but she didn't have a memory card. I used that as an excuse to go home and eat lunch while I got my memory card. And then I went back to the school and awkwardly took pictures of people I was meeting for the first time. No big deal. I think I got everyone.

Then I came home and finally got to take a nap. But it was fairly short because my new phone showed up and I wanted to set that up. Which I did. It turned out to be a lot bigger than I thought it would be but I am liking it so far. I'm glad I didn't go with the Galaxy Note 2 because that thing is even bigger and I don't think I could seriously used it.

Around 5:30PM my friend came and picked me up and we headed over to our other friend's house. We were going to go night fishing. Our friend still needed to eat dinner so we went to get gas and bait and then swung back around after he had finished eating. And then we headed out of town to go to the river. When we got out there I mentioned how it looked like a place we would go camping during Boy Scouts. And my friend said we had in fact camped there, multiple times. So there you go. I always just got on the bus and never really paid attention to where we were going.

On the way out there we passed through a bit of a rainstorm and when we got to the river it was still raining so we sat in the car for a bit until it stopped. And then crossed our fingers and climbed in the boat. As we headed up the river we stopped several times to put PVC poles in the water with lines and bait attached, and tied a few lines to logs, until we got quite a ways up the river where we dropped anchor and put out several rods around the boat. My friends have fishing licenses but I do not so I was more along for the ride and the company. And it didn't really matter with the rods because where wasn't even a nibble.

Quite awhile later we pulled in the rods and headed back down the river, collecting the poles and other lines as we went. On the bank right by one of the poles there was a group of people shooting off fireworks and throwing firecrackers into the river. We came flying around the bend with the boat lights on and I'm pretty sure we freaked them out for a minute because they immediately stopped with the fireworks and firecrackers and they stopped talking and turned off all their lights. Like they weren't just being completely obvious. Once they realized we were some sort of authority they started up again. My friend is going to school to be a game warden and he said he couldn't wait until he was one so he could do something about assholes like that.

The rods had been a failure but we did catch two fish. A channel catfish that my friend estimated to be about two or three pounds, and then a much bigger catfish that was in the upper-teens poundwise. My friend was hoping for a giant flathead catfish (one of his friends caught a 65 pound flathead) but I'm glad we didn't get one because a fish that big sounds terrifying. Watching them pull in the bigger fish was kind of exciting but the smaller one was a bit sad looking laying in the boat before going into the water bucket, and I mostly just felt bad for both fish. And the bait fish. I had the same sort of feelings when I was a teenager and stopped fishing and those feelings have only been solidified since becoming a vegetarian in college. But, I had a really good time hanging out with my friends on the boat in the peaceful dead of night, and it was way better than going to the bars, surrounded by drunk people and too-loud music.

We loaded up the boat, headed back to town, dropped our friend off, stopped at the gas station to get ice for the fish, and then I made it home around 2:00AM. Another late night but it was at least better than 4:00AM.