January 15, 2014

More MAP testing today. And that makes sense because we are only three days into the testing window. Both were in the morning because it was an early release day. I think there are also two tomorrow as well but I can't really remember. The testing today was uneventful. Some would even say boring. In fact most would say boring because that is really the only word that can describe it. Without getting too poetic or flowery about it.

When I wasn't watching kids test, I learned about pandas thanks to Here And Now on NPR. It turns out the stomach of a panda is designed to digest meat, and that makes it poor at digesting bamboo. This is why they have to eat fourteen hours a day, to get all the nutrients they need. Also, pandas in general appear to not like eat other that much. Females only show interest in males a couple days out of the year when they are able to get pregnant. But regardless of whether or not the female actually gets pregnant, she will exhibit all the physical signs of being pregnant, up until she is supposed to give birth. Or not give birth. I imagine physical encounters between humans would be much different if women had to look and feel pregnant for almost nine months after every time they had sex.

After school I was going to wash my car because it is dirty but the weather is supposed to drop below freezing again tonight and I didn't think it would dry out before dark. Maybe that isn't a thing that matters but I didn't want to chance it. So maybe tomorrow.

At four o'clock I had to go to one of the high schools for a meeting about installing state assessment software. I was on time getting there but then not so much because all the doors were locked. I tried three sides of the building and ended up texting the librarian (who was already there because I parked next to her) right before someone happened to walk by and let me in. She had the same problem and was let in my someone walking by. And then right before we got to the library where the meeting was being held, I let someone in who was waiting at a door on the side of the building I hadn't checked. We told the tech guys running the meeting when we got in that all the doors were locked and they didn't seem to care. Good guys. So nothing was done and people trickled in a few at a time when they managed to get lucky and catch the eye of someone passing by.

As for the meeting, it was pointless. It contained about ten minutes of information and it lasted an hour and a half. Most of it filled with the weird tech guy telling us stories and I think he was trying to show off. It's the same guy telling weird jokes at the interview I had a couple years ago, where I played along because I wanted a job and then didn't get a job. The main point of the meeting was showing us how to install the testing software on laptops and he ended up forgetting the crucial step of running the setup as an administrator so it didn't work right. One of the ladies in the meeting ended up catching that in the instructions but we convinced her not to tell him until after all the laptops had been put away so we wouldn't have to stay there even longer and try it the correct way. The tech guys are also horrible when it comes to talking down to women. Or should I say great? At one point when he was showing us how to erase IP addresses from a computer his examples for how it would clean out an internet browser included “the fancy handbags you bought from that website” or the “$1000 pair of pants you got for $50.” He couldn't just say it'll wipe your cookies.

I went right from the meeting to pick up Chipotle. During and after dinner we watched Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2013. After stumbling across it some time ago, I now look forward to it every year. After dinner I filled out all the information to renew my background check and privacy stuff for my volunteer thing. One of my supervisors has a kid in kindergarten at school and volunteers to read with a second grader so she is going to bring the stuff to fingerprint me tomorrow at school. I printed out all the forms and filled them out tonight but after using the printers at school, inkjet printers look like crap. I don't print nearly enough to justify a fancy printer, or the price of toner, but they look so much better.

Tomorrow, more MAP testing, maybe some storybooks, maybe a car wash, maybe a visit with the new volunteer kid. Who knows what the day may hold. Other than possibilities. So deep.