January 24, 2014

The fifth grade glass that failed to show up to their test on Wednesday actually showed up for their test this morning. So that was a good start to the day. Except for actually having to stand there and watch them take the test. There is a kid in the class who has a pretty good sense of humor and at one point during the test he asked if I could pronounce a word for him so I looked and said "Quadrilateral... it's a thing." I added the last bit because he was looking at me like he wanted me to give him more a hint. And then he replied "Well, it apparently is a thing" and then he went back to trying to figure out the question. That definitely seems like one of those "had to be there" kind of things but it was pretty funny.

There weren't anymore scheduled tests today but I did have a fourth grader come in during my lunch to start a test. When I didn't have a test or a class in the lab I worked on storybooks. Slowly making progress. I took a break from that to go watch the school spelling bee. A few rounds into it I felt bad for the kids missing words but I also wanted it to be over with so I was conflicted. The best were the first graders because there were always after a taller kid so they would walk up to the microphone stand and slowly pull it all the way down to their face. And they had a tendency of running or skipping back to their seat after they spelled their word. Not surprisingly they were out pretty early and that is when the whole affair just got boring. I couldn't hear all the words because the acoustics weren't that great, but of the ones I could hear, I could spell all but three or four, and I guessed a couple of those correctly. So if I got lucky enough not to get one of those words, I totally could have one the grade school spelling bee.

After school I really wanted to take a nap but there really just isn't enough time. I usually get home between 4:20PM and 4:30PM, and then start figuring out dinner around 4:50PM so I can be eating by five o'clock and have enough time to change and get together everything I need for the theater. I could eat later but I don't like the feeling of eating and then running out the door. That timeframe does leave enough for a twenty minute nap, which would be good, but it takes at least five or ten minutes of laying there before I drift off and a ten minute nap is just sad. This all means I didn't get a nap.

The theater was uneventful. I spent the whole night in relative silence (projectors are noisy), reading Orphan Train. I made it within about forty pages of the end so I can finish that up tomorrow. I think I've made it to the happy ending portion of the book. Hopefully, anyway, because there was a lot of dark stuff in the hundred pages or so I read tonight. Thanks to the midnight show, and the two bastards that decided to go to it, I still have another hour to read but I need a break from the book.

I also fixed the 3D lens on one of the projectors. I fixed it a long time ago and it somehow held up this long, but today it became unscrewed. The last time I had to take the whole thing off completely and then use a plastic knife to hold the loose nut bit inside the lens housing in place while I screwed it onto the bit connected to the main projector lens. I tried to do the same thing tonight but couldn't get the lens off. Instead I got lucky and held it in just the right way to get it screwed back in place. It is definitely a flawed system because you can only spin it one way, to put the lens either in front of the regular lens or put it up for 2D movies. The second you turn it the other way, the whole thing unscrews, and you're screwed. But the 3D lens in powered and has a cord connected to it, so if you only spin it one way, that cord starts to get wrapped around the connecting piece. Because of this, you have to unplug the lens when you want to move it, and then plug it back in, and it is one of those round power plugs with a bunch of little pins that get bent easily. It's a pain in the butt. I fixed it, though. Again. And hopefully it will hold out for as long as it did last time. It'll probably be screwed up by next weekend.