November 26, 2013

I managed to come up with another relatively witty email announcing the giant bag of popcorn I brought to school and it was appreciated by at least a few. And the popcorn was appreciated by at least a few more.

I finally finished the third storybook and got a start on the forth. In that one, I made it to a page where the kid completely colored over the text so it was kind of hard to read. I initially thought I would zoom in and color each letter black. After the first letter I gave up on that idea. Instead I put a text box over it, set up the right font, typed the text, and messed with the size and placement until it came pretty close to matching the original. It actually look pretty good. Before calling it good I also want to try it with white font to see how that looks.

A good chunk of my day was spent with the storybooks. I also helped out with second grade reading groups (which went pretty smoothly) and in the afternoon we had another character trait assembly. This month was Caring. It was the same old thing but at the end of it one of the sixth graders got to hit the principal in the face with a pie. We had a silent auction a week or two ago and one of the prizes was the chance to hit the principal with a pie. She came out wearing a shower cap, goggles, and a trash bag. And it was pretty great. At the end she hugged the kid so he got covered in pie too.

Amazon had a flash deal today for the 3DS XL at $150. I logged in a minute late and it was already gone. From what I've seen on forums about the flash deals this time around, a lot of them are instantly gone, like the second they go live. And there was at least one game bundle that went live on one coast before the other. Kinda messed up. It would have been nice to get the 3DS but I can still get it less than that with my gift cards at Target. I'm still going to wait until at least Monday or Tuesday to see if any more deals pop up. Target will be selling it for $150 Thursday through Saturday but I'm fairly certain that is in-store only and I have no interest in actually experiencing a Black Friday crowd. So if it's not online I'm not going to get worked up about it.

Tonight I played more Ocarina Of Time on the N64 and made some progress. Fought a few ghosts, learned a new song, caught a bunch of chickens, and bought a mask. It is so weird not having a dedicated joystick to control the camera. It makes the game that much more of a challenge.

I ended up watching a bunch of rock climbing videos tonight. And more specifically, bouldering videos. I have always been in awe of the finger strength of rock climbers and the videos tonight just reaffirmed that awe. It is insane. Being able to support your entire body and pull yourself with one hand that is gripping a tiny, half-inch deep grip is super-human. In the World Championships they seem to always have an obstacle where the climber starts under a ledge and has to go upside down and hold on with their feet while they turn themselves around to get in the right position to move higher up the wall. It's incredible. In another life I want to be super motivated and athletic. Not necessarily competitive, but motivated.