March 31, 2014

From everything I had heard, testing was supposed to be horrible. But for the most part, everything went smoothly this morning. Although it was all probably a fluke.

When I got to work this morning I uncovered the computer (because I put sheets over them for the weekend), turned all the computers on and logged into them, folded the sheets, got my testing signs ready, picked up testing tickets from the principal, and then went to help one of the kindergarten teachers with a survey she had to fill out. From her room I went up to the resource room and installed the testing software on a laptop before heading back down to the lab and laying out the testing tickets at each computer. There was one kid testing up in the SPED room and that presented the only real trouble during that first test. The software wasn't working on the laptop so I ran up and reinstalled it and all was well. Until a little while later when I was called back up because the actual test wasn't showing up, just formatives. There was nothing I could do but it was eventually solved by the principal who had to reactivate the student. There was also one kid missing tickets but the principal was able to print those off in time for the kid to finish both sections of the first test. Only one kid wasn't able to finish but that was mainly because he spent most of his time not even looking at his computer screen.

There were a few minutes between tests which gave me enough time to set out their testing tickets. That test also went smoothly except for the kids that were supposed to test in the SPED room because the rest of the laptops up there had the same issue as the one I had already fixed. Luckily there was enough room in the lab for the kids to come down and test with supervision. And all the kids finished.

Right after that test I went back up to the SPED room and reinstalled the testing software on all of their laptops before taking my lunch break. The morning really flew by. During lunch I was able to sit down and catch up on emails and there had been several about testing during the morning. The main one was saying we needed to run a small program that would change the path of testing information, so instead of going to our server first and then to the university, it would just go straight to the university. This is supposed to solve some of the issues people have been experiencing. I was reluctant to do it because everything worked fine for us but I went ahead and did it on all of the computer in the lab. And then went up to the SPED room again to do it on those computers but I have no intention of doing it too all the laptop carts I installed the software on because those probably won't be used for testing anyway. While in the SPED room I also reinstalled their printer on all the laptops because at some point during the weekend the IP address changed and the printer was showing as offline. But I got that resolved.

This afternoon I worked on the spreadsheet I made for one of the fourth grade teachers to track the math tests she is giving for one of her Masters classes. I made it awhile ago and I should have left myself notes on some of the formulas because there was one (sumproduct) that I was at a loss to explain. I'm not entirely sure what it does or why I used it but I was able to tweak everything and get the results the teacher was wanting, so I'm not going to think too much about it.

I also messed around a little bit with slideshow stuff. I'm still trying to figure out how I want to put the name of each kid on their slide. I've got ideas but I need to actually take the time to run through some tutorials and mess around with stuff and hopefully get something that looks good.

On my way home I stopped at Target. Going in I knew I needed gum and peanut butter, but I also knew there were things I was forgetting. I ended up getting a lot more stuff than I was expecting but all of it was stuff I had thought about at one time or another over the weekend.

Tonight I played on my keyboard for maybe an hour. I didn't really make any noticeable progress but practice is practice. This attitude won't get me anywhere but I know the keyboard thing won't last too much longer. None of my hobbies do. They are all ephemeral in one way or another. But I do enjoy them while they last. I'm thinking of maybe finding some bass clef sheet music to print off just so I can label the notes and work on getting better at actually reading bass clef for what it is, not just moving treble clef notes down a spot.

And now I am going to go to bed because today was kind of exhausting and I didn't sleep very well last night. After an hour of laying in bed and not getting anywhere I got up and read a chapter in a new book, rather than picking one of the several books I am currently in the middle of. Tonight I plan on falling asleep shortly after my head hits the pillow.

March 30, 2014

I made it to bed at a decent time last night and was up by 7:45AM this morning. That made for a long day with not a lot going on. I caught up on YouTube videos and now I really want to buy Goat Simulator. It is a very ridiculous game but it looks like a lot of fun. I probably won't end up getting it until the price drops though because $10 seems a little steep.

I dug out my keyboard and started relearning the song I started learning however long ago. I can't remember how far I got previously, somewhere on the second page, but today I almost made it through the second page. I'm playing the song from one of my bass guitar books, where I wrote in the notes above the music. What I really need to do is learn how to read bass clef. When I started playing the trumpet I wrote in the notes but eventually I learned to read treble clef. And that makes bass clef so confusing because it looks exactly the same, but an 'A' in treble clef is a 'C' in bass clef. I need a way to compartmentalize the two. Given enough time I can figure bass clef out but I'm just translating it from treble clef, rather than really knowing it on the bass clef. But if I can get past that, I can actually read the music as I play it, not just memorize it. I might get there eventually.

Tonight I did laundry and watched TV, catching up on About A Boy (which I thought would be a good show, and it is, but who knows if it will last), rewatching the series finale of Psych, and watching the latest episode of Cosmos. I have always wanted a badass telescope and every episode of Cosmos just makes me want one more and more.

Tomorrow is the beginning of State Assessments and from what I've heard, it is going to go horribly. Something to look forward to.

March 29, 2014

I don't really have a bucket list but if I did, eating Chinese food takeout, the whole meal, with chopsticks, would be near the top of the list.

Today at work I spent most of my time finishing Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray. The title could be shorter. As for the book, it was good but it was also incredibly depressing. In the beginning I had forgotten that it was a real story and was surprised by how realistic it seemed. And then remembering that it was in fact non-fiction brought on all the sadness. It hurts to know that situations like the ones depicted in this book are occurring on a daily basis and are all too common.

When I wasn't reading, I added a few rows to my scarf and I did a little actual work. Yesterday we had to cancel a few shows because people forgot to transfer movies on Thursday night. That was all fixed today but the picture randomly went out on one of the movies when it got to the movie (after all the trailers and ads played), and a projector had a scaler malfunction so the preshow looked all snowy like a blocked channel back in the day. The scaler was fixed by unplugging it and blowing on it. High-tech stuff. The other issue was solved by restarting everything. Another high-tech solution.

After work I made dinner and then did nothing with the rest of my night. Other than reading articles online and watching YouTube videos. Maybe I can find something more productive to do tomorrow. Probably not.

I got my bill from the urologist for my surgery and after insurance covered about $850, I only owe $1200. Only. That is still a whole lot of money. Like whole bunch. But I was expecting it to cost more so there is that. I kind of feel like with my knee I got charged separately for the anesthesia but I could be wrong. And I hope I am because I don't really want to pay more that $1200.

March 28, 2014

I had a very productive day today. And tiring. State Assessments start next week so this was kind of my last day to put the testing software on the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade laptop carts. I went around to check with each teacher beforehand and got a rough idea of when I could come back and not interrupt their class. I started with the fifth grade cart and right off the bat I thought I was screwed. To install the software for all users on a computer, I have to copy a folder to the desktop and then run a .bat file from that folder as an administrator. I had four laptops ready to go and as I tried to run the file on the first computer, nothing happened. Other than an error. I thought maybe it was the computer so I tried another computer and got the same thing. I thought maybe something had happened to my copy of the folder so I got on the Global drive where I had originally copied it from but couldn't find the folder anywhere. So I did a little more thinking and decided to look at the .bat file and see if I could get any hints from there. And I did. The code in the .bat file referenced the folder on the Global drive, and considering that folder was missing, it was causing an error. So I copied my folder to the Global drive, and after trying once again to run the file from the desktop, all was well. I'm sure I'm the last one still installing the software but even so, I kind of just saved the whole district a lot of grief by putting that folder back where it should be.

The sixth grade cart went off without a hitch but the fourth grade cart lead me on a scavenger hunt for the key to unlock the cart. I started on the third floor in the fourth grade room, then went down to the first floor to check with the librarian because she was the last one to see the key. From her I learned it was with the fifth grade cart, which is right next door to the fourth grade room, so I went back up, got the key, and started my work. This one took me a little longer because along with the testing software I also added on the fourth grade printer to all the laptops. I could do that at the same time that the testing software was installing so my stay wasn't extended too long. I also became the keeper of the laptop cart key because the librarian thought that was a good idea. I kind of get why we have a key but I haven't known a cart to ever be locked (until today) and I'm not sure what good it will do for me to have the key. That's just one more thing I have to carry around with me. What would be more useful is a key to the computer lab so I can unlock the one door of the double door setup that frequently remains locked.

The tiring part of all that running around was the fact that one cart was on the second floor and two were on the third floor. I lost track of how many times I went up and down but I think I was on the third floor at least five times today. My right knee is still bothering me and all the stairs didn't help.

When I wasn't all over the place I scanned more sixth grade pictures and messed around with adding the kids' names to the slides. Because I'm wanting to use a wood background I thought it would be cool to make it look like the names were carved or burned into the wood. That ended up being a tad more challenging than I would have liked. And in the end I am a little worried that the names will be too dark to see when the slideshow is played in a fairly bright gym. My next idea is to do a nameplate of some sort.

After work I did some laundry, had dinner, and then headed to the theater. I spent my night reading, knitting, and watching all but the first twenty or thirty minutes of Sabotage. Wow. What an awful movie. Even with the expectations that come with an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie it was bad. I couldn't help but think it had to have been written primarily by a twelve year old. They probably had to pay some to take the writing credit. Or maybe the lost a bet. There is a car chase near the end of the movie and in the last showing a patron shouted out that it should have happened forty minutes earlier. The movie is basically just a whole bunch of horribly written dialog that wants to sound smart and pretend an elaborate plot is being developed, with a small amount of action every half hour or so. It was just terrible.

I didn't get off work until two o'clock but thankfully we don't open until noon tomorrow. That is way better than last week.

March 27, 2014

About three-quarters of the way through adding borders to all of the sixth grade pictures I decided I wanted to also add a shadow around them because I came up with a new idea for the slide layout. I am going to have the background look like a wood table or desk and the pictures are going to be laid out on it, at overlapping angles. It would look too flat without the shadows and I wanted some realistic depth to it. Then I had to figure out how to do the shadow. The first tutorial I found kind of worked but not really because there was the white border around the picture, the shadow around that border, and then another white border. That would work if my background was white but it isn't. The next tutorial introduced the obvious solution of putting the picture on a larger, transparent background. It was a fairly convoluted tutorial that I had to tweak a bit because it wasn't quite right, and I didn't realize until I was almost done that I could have cut out several of the steps which turned out to be pointless because I already had the white borders around the pictures. But I managed to get all the pictures finished and made up a test slide and through it up on the wall with the projector and it actually looked pretty good.

I had a lot of time to work on that today because there were field trips today which wiped out reading groups and classes in the lab. Thankfully I had something to work on. I also had a brief refresher of Excel graphs when one of the SPED teachers got frustrated trying to make a graph and sent one of the paras down with her laptop to see if I could figure it out. It took me a couple minutes but eventually I stumbled upon a lucky guess and deleted the text in the first cell, and a graph showed up. I think I briefly messed around with graphs last year with the fifth graders but I haven't really made graphs in Excel since college. And maybe even high school. But having nothing in the first cell seemed like it was a thing, and it turned out to indeed be a thing. When I ran into the SPED teacher later in the day I couldn't resist giving her some crap and asked if she wanted to go make some graphs. It was funny.

The kindergarteners had a performance today. One song about animals rolling over and falling out of a bed was very repetitive, reminiscent of 99 Bottles Of Beer, but all the other songs were good. My favorite being the one where each verse changes the vowels in Apple and Banana to different vowels. I'm sure it has a name but I don't know it. Kids attempting choreography is still the best thing.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight. I called the house and one of the other kids answered and said my kid wasn't there but he would let him know I called. I never heard back so there's that.

I ended up spending my night watched DVRed stuff and knitting. Thrills. I think I might be getting a cold. There is something going around the school and that's never good. I coughed a couple times today and it hurt but most of the time it wasn't a bother. But I still feel a bit off. I'm tempted to take some medicine before going to bed. That sounds like a good idea.

March 26, 2014

I was pretty sure I was going to send out some emails today looking for work but one of those potential recipients stop by the lab before school with a project. I think they were reading guides, at least that was my guess. I cut out a bunch of strips of construction paper and then cut a chunk out of each, so if you turned them upside down they would kind of look like a squat table. I don't know if that makes any sense. Anyway, then I laminated them and cut them out, but not cutting out the notched area so it left a kind of laminated window. All I know is that they looked better than the example I was given and she was happy with them when I showed her the finished product.

When I had finished with that I scanned in new sixth grade pictures. And then started to add a white border to all of the pictures because I decided that would look good. My idea now is to give each kid one slide with all of their pictures on it. Or at least the pictures that will fit. I had the same idea awhile ago and actually started messing around with it but now I'm back to it. It looks better in my head now so I think the break was a good thing. I got hung up on the layout, which I haven't attempted yet this time around, but that will be my next step.

I “fixed” several laptops today. For one I turned the wi-fi on, two required me two restart the laptop, and the most work went into one where I had to take the bottom off and pull the hard drive out and put it back in. And thankfully that worked. There is another laptop that I have had to do that to, twice now, and the hard drive obviously needs to be replaced, but it'll have to die for real before that happens. And considering I'm not even supposed to open up the computer towers in the lab to blow some air in there and clean them out, I doubt I'm supposed to be taking apart laptops and messing with hard drives. Whoops.

After school I didn't really do anything and then I watched the series finale of Psych. It was incredibly sad because it is my favorite show and now it is over. But is was also an incredibly good finale. They had cameos by people they have been referencing since the beginning and I will admit that I raised my hands in triumphant fists when a new cameo was revealed. There was also a nod to Monk at the end which was subtle and smile-inducing. What I really liked about the finale was that everything was wrapped up nicely but nothing was actually brought to an end. It wasn't final. The characters and the world was left open so you can imagine things caring on as normal, even if there won't be further documentation of it. This also leaves room for optimistic hopes of the rumored movie or spin-offs or the occasional holiday special. My hopes are very high. And now I feel the need to start a Psych marathon.

March 25, 2014

Rather that leaving my house around eight o'clock this morning like I usually do, I got to work a little before eight o'clock for a meeting. The meeting was to figure out who would be testing with the kids who have accommodations on the State Assessment, and where they would be testing. I didn't really have any input into those decisions but I'm the guy who made the spreadsheet that showed all the kids with accommodations, what those accommodations were, and when their tests were. So I was at the meeting so I could be in the loop and then go back with the information and update the spreadsheet to include the who and where. And then I printed off and made several copies to give to all those involved.

After all of that, I finished up editing sixth grade pictures that I got yesterday. And then the new ones I got today. There is one that I am particularly proud of because the original picture was really beat up and after a lot of work I got it looking pretty good. I still need to figure out the slideshow itself, though. I've got some ideas, I just need to try them.

When I had finished up with the pictures, and when there wasn't a class in the lab, I added more fonts to my ever-growing collection. At some point I need to install them. And then deal with the frustration of having to scroll through so many freaking fonts to pick one I want to use.

When the second grade class was in the lab this afternoon the teacher had them all stop for a minute so she could tell them how to correctly pronounce 'assess'. It apparently comes up in Type To Learn 4 and for weeks now the kids have unwittingly been pronouncing it in a very similar way to the plural of 'ass'. It is really funny and a couple weeks ago when the teacher mentioned that she should probably correct them I offered her the alternative solution of deciding that this is the generation that would start pronouncing it like the plural of 'ass'. Maybe next year.

After work I returned DVDs, bought my Powerball tickets, and then came home. I get two sets of numbers at a time for Powerball and I do my best not to look at the ticket so there is still a little bit of potential when I first look at the drawn numbers. At least for the one set of quick pick numbers. The excitement at the possibility of winning has died down and I fully embrace the reality of the odds and the fact that I will never win the jackpot, but it is still a fun vice, especially for those few seconds between seeing the numbers and checking my ticket.

Tonight I finished watching 300. Just like Titanic, I know the ending but go into it hoping for a different outcome. No such luck this time. But it is still a badass movie. After that I watched the latest episode of Cosmos. It makes me want to dig out Death By Black Hole and read it for a third time. And buy all the science books ever written. In middle school my favorite books were collections of mini-biographies of famous scientists and inventors. Someday I will figure out what those books were called and add them to my collection.

March 24, 2014

It felt kind of weird being back at work today. It seems like it has been so long, and at the same time, like I was there yesterday. It was also strange no being in discomfort while at work. It has definitely been awhile since that has been the case.

I didn't have anything going on for most of the day. That means I spent most of my day looking at and downloading new fonts, adding 124 to my collection. In the afternoon I got some more sixth grade pictures so I spent the rest of the day, between classes, editing those. Sometime soon I need to start working on the slideshow itself. I definitely don't want that to be a last minute thing. I want it to look good.

After work I went and got my haircut. The lady who cuts my hair just moved into her new place but starting next week she will be in another new place. Her goal when she sold her business was to open a little hole-in-the-wall place and continue cutting hair on a smaller scale because she wasn't quite ready to retire. After being unable to find a small place of her own she ended up renting a chair in a small place. But now one of her friends is looking to retire and is going to sell her business to the lady who cuts my hair. So she will have her hole-in-the-wall and I will have to find her new location. I might do a dry run before my next haircut so I don't end up slightly lost again.

Tonight I knitted a little more on my scarf, caught up on YouTube videos, and started watching 300. I've heard the sequel is a bit sexist and isn't that good but the original is badass. And despite the reviews of the sequel, I do want to see it at some point.

March 22, 2014

Waking up this morning sucked. Last night could have been my first full night of sleep in I don't know how long but then my alarm went off less than six hours after my head hit the pillow. Good grief. One of my main goals for Spring Break, and any break for that matter, is to sleep in and just get more sleep in general. I have done the opposite this past week. Between my kidney stone and my sore throat I really haven't had much of a break.

Being stuck at the theater all day today was productive in terms of reading and knitting. I finished one book, one novella, and took another seventy pages out of the book club book. The book I finished was All You Need To Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. I wanted to read it because Tom Cruise's newest movie, Edge Of Tomorrow, is based on the book and the trailer looked epic. It will obviously be quite different from the book but I was still intrigued enough by the trailer to get the book. I wasn't disappointed. I wish the ending had been different, and I hope they change that in the movie, but other than that I enjoyed reading it. And it made me want to watch Groundhog Day, which I need to do.

The novella I finished was Ajax Penumbra 1969 by Robin Sloan. It is a prequel to Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, giving a brief glimpse into the past of Mr. Penumbra and how he became involved in the bookstore. I really enjoyed the novel and the novella was a nice addition to the story. It is short enough that I think in the future it should be collected together with the novel and sold as one book.

As for the book club book, it continues to easily hold the title of the most depressing book club book to date. Based on the story alone it would hold this title, but it goes above and beyond by being a memoir, so all these horrible things actually happened. It is sad and disturbing and awful and unbelievable and depressing. I'm not quite halfway done yet but all I want is that happy ending.

I added over a foot to my scarf today without any mistakes. I'm pretty happy with that. Still no telling whether or not I'll finish it but I'm making progress.

It snowed tonight. I think a couple days ago it was in the 70s and now we have snow. Make up your mind Weather.

I once again got off early tonight, which meant I only had to work sixteen hours today.

March 21, 2014

I want to be super passionate and knowledgeable about a specific topic or field of study. Like a scientist or artist or musician. But I also want to know everything about everything. This leads to a conflict within myself that I have yet to overcome.

I didn't do much with my morning, nothing memorable anyway, but I eventually had my urologist appointment. I got there about five minutes early but I should have got for fifteen because I had to start by going across the hall and getting my x-ray. I'm beginning to worry how much radiation Marie Curie was exposed to before it killed her. The lady who did the x-ray was the same one who did my x-ray years ago when I first went to see a urologist, but she obviously didn't remember me. Whenever I recognize someone who doesn't recognize me it makes me wonder how often I am recognized by people who I have no memory of.

I'm not sure what time I finally got called back to see the doctor but I was out of there fifty minutes after I arrived so that's not to bad. My x-ray ended up being positive, showing no obvious signs of the kidney stone, although the doctor did mention that he was pretty sure he saw more stones in my left kidney. Not surprising, unfortunately. I'd also feel safe assuming there were more stones in my right kidney but that one wasn't in the x-ray. So that sucks but hopefully none of them will become large enough that they lead to another hospital visit. There is always the chance that they forever stay in my kidney and very break loose, which would be fine with me. In the next couple of weeks I need to go in and get some blood work done and in about a month I need to do the twenty-four hour urine collection. And then near the end of May I'll go back to see the urologist and hopefully those test will reveal some possible solutions to my severe ability to create stones. The doctor is fairly confident that a solution can be found, and he sounded pretty convincing with that confidence, but after however many stones I've had now, call me a skeptic. On the plus side, I got to keep the fragments of this stone so I can add them to my collection.

At work tonight I continued reading one book and started reading the next book club book, Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard by Liz Murray. I made it through the first two chapters, seventy pages down, and it is rough. Based on the title, it obviously has a happy ending, but getting there isn't going to be easy. And I'm just reading it, not living it, which I can't even imagine. As each new thing comes up I can picture it happening to the kids I work with everyday, and I know some of them live lives that are very similar to this book, and that makes it even more depressing. These book club books do a good job of making me really dislike humanity's potential for awfulness. On a more positive note, I also worked on my herringbone scarf tonight. I've made it to about eight inches but I'm still not entirely sure about it ever being finished. It is just so involved. But I'm getting a little faster I think. The things that annoy me are the one weird stitch several rows in, which I believe lead to me adding a stitch, which I didn't catch until several rows later. I would have pulled everything out when I recognized the weird stitch but I had no idea how to put the yarn back on the needle because everything is so twisted. Same goes for when I realized I added a stitch. In the added stitch situation I just dropped a stitch, and it's almost not noticeable, and probably isn't to someone that isn't looking for it, but I know it's there.

On a final positive note, I got off early tonight, around 1:15AM instead of 2:30AM, so now I can get six hours of sleep before my double instead of five hours. I had really looked forward to all the sleep I was going to get over Spring Break and I haven't had a decent night yet.

March 20, 2014

I woke up several times last night but I think it was only due to bathroom breaks, not pain or my throat. So that is an improvement.

I went to Hobby Lobby today to see if maybe they had the right color of yellow yarn for my blanket. They didn't. It is still the bland color. It looks like if I ever want to finish the blanket then I'm going to have to change up the pattern a bit. That is unfortunate. For my first blanket I bought all the yarn at once and then never got around to finishing it. This time around I have gotten pretty close to finishing it but made the rookie mistake of not buying all the yarn at once and now I am paying for it. Lessons have been learned.

On my way back across town I stopped and rented Father Ted and Black Adder. I have only seen a Christmas episode of Black Adder but I have always wanted to watch it so I went for it. By the time I got home I had about an hour to hang out before heading back across town to pick up Chipotle. It feels like forever since I've been there. And it was delicious. At least partly due to eating while it was still warm, not reheating it. After dinner I had a bunch of YouTube videos to show and my mom actually sat through all of them. It was a shock.

I didn't plan on having a visit with the new volunteer kid but when I called the house he answered. I thought he was still out of the house but apparently he has been back since last Tuesday. I probably would have learned this last week but I didn't call because I was dealing with the kidney stone. When I called he had just started making dinner so we pushed the visit back until 8:00PM.

It ended up being a pretty good forty-five minute visit. We went to Sonic and I asked him a bunch of different questions, some of them in several different ways just to get an answer. Not interrogation-style, but just to find out what had happened because getting the kid to talk about stuff is like pulling teeth. According to him he got really angry about school and house stuff and punched a whole in the wall. So he was moved to the treatment facility for a week to work through that. He said they had some group sessions and he learned some coping mechanisms for when he gets angry. Although he felt like the whole thing was boring and pointless because when he gets angry all the coping stuff goes out the window. He had a black eye which he says he got from horsing around and his hand is still noticeably swollen from punch the wall even though that happened over two weeks ago. The email I got from my supervisor said he had tested positive for alcohol and several drugs but the kid didn't mention anything about that. At the moment he has a black eye, that he said he got while horsing around, and the middle two knuckles on his right hand are still pretty swollen from punching the wall (and the stud in the wall and a ceramic sink). It has been over two weeks and that seems like a long time for something to be swollen without something worth looking at happening in that hand.

While we were sitting at Sonic his grandpa pulled next to us but the kid didn't see him until he walked into the building, the door to which was right in front of us. It looked like instead of placing his order like everyone else he walked in to place his order and then stood there and waited for it, even though I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do that. Strange. While he was standing there, the kid kept trying to get his attention but his grandpa never noticed him. At one point the kid tried to get his friend to say something to his grandpa, but it was the friend's first day and he wasn't convinced that the kid wasn't trying to play a trick on him so he said “I'm gonna go ahead and not do that.” When the grandpa finally came back out the kid was finally able to get his attention and they shouted back and forth through the window a few times, because instead of coming over the grandpa stayed by his truck and the kid stayed in the car. A little while after the grandpa left, the friend came back out and asked if that was really the kid's grandpa, because it turns out he is kind of stalking the friend's sister, even coming to their house a couple times asking for her. That was creepy to hear and incredibly awkward. How do you react when your friend tells you that your grandpa is a stalker? The friend managed to lighten the mood a little bit when he said he had to get back to work because he needed to save money for college because he wanted to do something with his life and it all started at Sonic.

Now I'm going to go to bed. I've got my urologist appoint tomorrow afternoon and then work at the theater. It looks like I'll be there until at least two in the morning so that's something to look forward to. I am also hoping to do some laundry in the morning. It is looking to be an action-packed day.

March 19, 2014

“There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse.”

I made it about two hours last night before my throat woke me up. Then I was up for another two hours before falling asleep for about four hours. Goddamn my throat. This morning I decided to try an allergy medicine instead of a cold medicine. I was forced to cough a few times during the day but I would like to say it worked. Although my throat is really only a bother in the morning and the middle of the night. We'll see if the one pill was enough to cure me or if I'll once again be awakened in the middle of the night. If that does happen, I'm going to pop another pill and hope for the best.

I ended up pulling out all the knitting I did yesterday and started over with larger needles. I could probably go even bigger but I won't. The herringbone stitch takes so much time. It is fairly simple but also complicated, requiring a little more concentration than I'm used to, and there are just so many steps for each stitch. And it looks good but not as impressive as the work requires. Unlike cabling or something, which is really simple but looks super complicated. But I'm still only a few inches in and I can easily see this becoming another aborted scarf.

On the way to pick up my car from the body shop today we passed a car accident. There was a car that looked a little crumpled and then there was a pickup truck in the middle of the road, perpendicular to traffic, and on its side. Based on all the crap that looked like it was one in the pickup truck, I would say it was a possibility that the truck even rolled. I live in the world and drive a car, so I've driven by a lot accidents, but I don't think I've ever seen a car on its side.

As for my car, it looked brand new, unlike the truck. The rear bumper looks perfect, they completely cleaned and vacuumed the inside, and washed the outside. It looks awesome. I don't know about $500 worth of awesome but for the sake of my bank account, I'm going to say it is. And that'll probably look like nothing after the hospital bills start coming in.

And that was pretty much my day. Now I'm going to try and go to bed because it is still a decent hour and maybe I can sleep through the night. That would be sweet. I just want to get back to a normal sleep schedule, although that will be thrown off by working at the theater this weekend, so it really won't matter.

March 18, 2014

I only got about six hours of sleep last night because my throat woke me up early but it was a straight six hours. The best sleep I've had in awhile. My throat bothered me most of the morning but eventually got better as the day went on.

As for my day, not a lot going on. I had real food throughout the day, not just crackers and popcorn and jello. It is so nice not being constantly aware of my kidney.

Tonight I made Brussels sprouts and pasta for dinner. Two separate things, not Brussels sprouts pasta. Both were really good though. After dinner I decided I wanted to do something so I learned the herringbone stitch and started knitting what could eventually be a scarf. Although I am considering pulling it all out and starting with larger needles. Or never touching it again. We'll see.

I spent the majority of my day watching all three seasons of Father Ted. My sister said I should check it out and I am glad I did. It is a British show from the 90s and it reminds me a lot of Black Books. Not really in terms of subject matter, because they are entirely unrelated, but the humor is similar. The main actor is really funny and I made the mistake of looking him up online. It turns out he died right after they finished filming the third series. The really sucks. He was apparently known for doing spot-on impressions of political figures in Ireland, and there are videos of it on YouTube, but it really doesn't mean anything if you don't know the person being impersonated.

Every now and then my throat catches up with me and I have a coughing fit. Which seemed to get worse the later the night got. I am hoping it doesn't impede my sleep but I'm not going to hold my breath. Although breathing aggravates my throat so maybe I should try holding my throat.

March 17, 2014

The urge to pee continued today and once again came to nothing. I am hoping that the operation left just one decent-sized chunk (which I felt late Friday night, I think). And now it just needs to come out. Sooner rather than later would be great. Yesterday I tried the medication they gave me that was supposed to help with the constant urge to pee feeling but all it did was turn my pee bright orange. It was nice to know the medicine was actually doing something but unfortunately it wasn't anything useful, like taking away my discomfort.

Despite my discomfort and exhaustion, I left the house this morning to drop my car off to get the bumper fixed. Finally. I had kind of gotten used to it, and it really wasn't that noticeable unless you were at the right angle and looking for it. But I want my car to look good again. Originally it was supposed to be done by Wednesday but now it could take until Thursday. Not really a bit deal because I don't have any plans but Wednesday would be nice.

I spent my day catching up on YouTube videos and watching TV. Far from exciting. Some would even say boring. And I might be inclined to agree. I need to do at least one productive thing during Spring Break.

Four minutes after eleven o'clock this evening I passed several chunks of my kidney stone. The biggest piece is about on-par with some of my other ones but not nearly as scary looking. Had they all been in one piece it would probably be a different story. With as much discomfort as this one caused broken up, and then getting an idea of what it could have been, I am starting to think more highly of the lithotripsy operation. It really would have been nice if the stone had been completely pulverized so I wasn't completely miserable the last few days, but I guess it is better than what it could have been. My new hope is that I'm am done with this stone now. There might still be some little pieces that need to come out but it seems like the big bit is over. Hopefully. Now I just need to get over the tickle in my throat.

March 16, 2014

This is being written the day after because last night kind of went to crap. My day was alright, just boring. I reheated the Spangles fries my sister got me but instead of going for the microwave or oven, I tried it in a pan with a little bit of oil. I burned a few of them but overall it worked out really well. I might have to try it again when the opportunity presents itself.

Around five o'clock I started to get the constant urge to pee feeling, regardless of any actual need. That is usually a good sign, meaning that a kidney stone is on the last part of the journey. It is also incredibly annoying. Especially if nothing comes of it. It is nearly impossible to sit still when it feels like you're about to pee your pants. It is also entirely impossible to fall asleep with that feeling. And it wouldn't go away. I spent my night fidgeting, dancing, pacing, jumping, bouncing, and rolling around. It was exhausting and never ending. And it didn't help that I didn't have dinner, only a few crackers around two o'clock in the morning. Around 4:00AM the feeling calmed down a little bit and I got maybe about two hours of sleep over the next four hours, in small increments, frequently interrupted by real bathroom breaks and occasional flair ups of discomfort. I was also dealing with my sore throat, a headache, and a mild fear of water intoxication after the amount of water I was consuming. Needless to say, I've had better nights.

March 15, 2014

My hope that my big kidney stone had been crushed into dust, was crushed around two o'clock this morning. I started to feel achy enough to pop a pill, which I had avoided earlier in the evening. A little before 4:30AM it kicked in for real and I took another pill before I got up and danced around for the next hour or so. I probably should have gone with the higher dosage Oxycodone but I didn't. Which I guess worked out because if I had I probably would have been nauseous and not able to dance around my room. Although it may have also done something for the pain, which the Hydrocodone didn't even touch, and that would have been nice.

Today I didn't really do anything. I was still achy on and off throughout the day and spent most of my time laying on my bed, enjoying my heating pad. Later in the day I was finally able to move to my computer chair but it was still a little while before that was fully comfortable. I played guitar for a little bit but really I couldn't find the motivation to do anything. Not really different than any other day but at least today I kind of had an excuse.

Other random things. I watched Ghostbusters and a documentary about the Improv on Netflix. I thought about watching The Hobbit but that seemed like more of a commitment than I was willing to make. Maybe tomorrow if I can get a full night of sleep. My sister brought me two large cups of fries from Spangles, one of which I ate. They are probably my favorite fries.

Now I am feeling pretty tired so I think I'm going to try and go to bed. We'll see if my throat and kidney actually let me sleep tonight. I was annoyed last night not just by the pain and discomfort but also because it kept waking me up from a really cool dream. I managed to get back into it once but it was lost after that. So fingers crossed for cool dreams, and at the very least, a decent night of sleep.

March 14, 2014

Today was Pi Day, and I had no pie. But I did wake up at 4:30AM this morning so I could get ready and get to the hospital by 5:30AM. My mom drove me and she tried to give me crap for my outfit (pajama pants, crappy skater shoes, a t-shirt, and an old hoodie) and I informed her that I was going to the hospital for surgery, not going to Wal-Mart.

I thought it was a bit ridiculous that I needed to be there two hours early but it ended up working out pretty well. I answered a bunch of questions, changed into my drafty gown, got an IV, went for an X-Ray, answered more questions, waited a few minutes here and there, got the doctor's initials on my left leg just as a final indication of which side we were working with, answered more questions and then went to the OR.

Before being knocked out by the anesthesia my bed was raised up and I moved myself over to this hammock-like thing. I had the version of lithotripsy that takes place in water (I am told) so I'm assuming that hammock thing kept me suspended in the water.

Under anesthesia you have no sense of time but the procedure took about forty-five minutes and they said it was successful. There was a chance that the doctor would have to go in to put dye or leave a stent. The nurse I had when I woke up told me they hadn't had to do that but later on when I got my appointment card my first nurse said the appointment would include stent removal, and indicated that on my card. I am hoping the first version was correct because they remove the stent when you're awake and that sounds uncomfortable. Anyway, I remember everything in the OR up until I fell asleep and my first memory coming out of anesthesia was feeling a little groggy but looking up at the florescent light which had a cover over it that looked like blue sky and clouds. It obviously wasn't real but when I mentioned it I think the nurse thought I thought it was real because she mentioned how we were on the second floor of a four-floor building.

The requirements for me to go home were to drink, pee, and eat. I almost immediately had to pee and the nurse gave me a jug which I positioned under my blankets even though I knew it was pointless. I get stage fright in public bathrooms so there was no way I was going to go while in a bed with a flimsy curtain around it located in a much larger space, with women talking just on the other side of the curtain. Just to try it out she helped me sit up on the edge of the bed but that obviously wasn't going to work either. They ended up taking me back to my room and then walking me to a bathroom where I could have some privacy. And I started peeing almost immediately. I hadn't had anything to drink since the night before but they had pumped me full of fluids and for a little while at least it felt like I was never going to stop peeing. But I did because that is a thing that happens in the real world and ended up back in my room. After being told things and shown instructions, taking another bathroom break, having my IV removed, and getting dressed, I was wheelchaired out to my mom's car.

The best part of the whole thing was probably the fact that there were several hot nurses. Even though most of them probably saw at least my butt at some point because those gowns are very drafty. I need to find a hot nurse girlfriend. There are some nice student interns at school but girls in Education seem to always be married or in a serious relationship. I know nothing about the typical relationship status of nurses so I can pretend they are often single and that I have a better chance. Even though I don't because I don't talk to girls. The worst part of the whole thing was the tape removal from around my IV. I'm a dude so I have hair on my arms and each piece of tape was full-on stuck to a hairy place on my arm.

When I got home I made a bunch of toast because the jello cup I had at the hospital wasn't doing anything for me, and I wanted to take a pain pill and I wasn't going to trust that on an empty stomach. Then I spent the afternoon lounging on my bed, napping, and watching YouTube videos.

For dinner I had IHOP because that is what I had after my knee surgery and it sounded amazing. I ended up getting a kid's cheese omelet (because I figured it was small and it was the only omelet that didn't come with a bunch of stuff that I would just be asking them to take off), the biggest mozzarella sticks I have ever seen, and french toast. It was all so good, even though I took most of the cheese off the omelet and could only eat one and a half of the mozzarella sticks. From Monday to today (Friday) I lost almost ten pounds, and I think tonight's dinner did a pretty good job of making up for that. I could stand to lose some weight and get in better shape but I don't really need to lose the weight like someone with an eating disorder.

My throat was actually feeling better after the hospital, despite the breathing tube they put in while I was knocked out, but it has been getting progressively more annoying as the day has gone on. I'm pretty sure it is going to interfere with my sleep tonight. That sucks. Dealing with my kidney should be enough of a thing at one time. But I guess not.

Now I am going to take another pill because I am feeling achy and then I might just lay here and listen to music. I have the hardcore pills I got earlier in the week but I think I will take one of the less powerful Hyrodcodone I got today because they don't make me feel nauseous. I don't plan on moving around so nausea shouldn't be a problem but I'll save the big stuff for when I have big pain.

March 13, 2014

Last night I woke up a little before two o'clock, maybe 1:45AM, because my throat was bothering me so much. And I ended up staying up past three o'clock drinking water and sucking on cough drops. Thanks to my throat it was a fairly restless night.

Today was regular day at work. I was exhausted but my kidney didn't hurt so that was nice. My goal for the day was to finish organizing test tickets. I ended up being at work an extra twenty minutes but I got the job done. The tickets are printed off by grade so after cutting them out I had to divide them into classes. Next I pulled out all the kids with accommodations that will be tested outside the lab. Then I organized each class in seating chart order so I can just walk along and put the tickets on the computers without having to fumble with them. I had to do this I think eight times for each class because of the different sections for each test. It took forever. Then I paper-clipped each organized section, the in-lab group and the accommodation group, and them paper-clipped both of those together because more often then not the accommodation kids take their tests at the same time as the in-lab kids. All of this is a very tedious process but it makes testing go a lot smoother when it is done in advance. It also helped me catch five or six kids who for one reason or another didn't have tickets printed for them. We had one kid like that last year that we didn't catch and it was a pain in the but trying to get her a ticket every time her class had a test.

The only thing I have left to do is finish putting the testing software on the laptop carts for fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. Pretty much everyone will be testing in the lab and I already put the software on two laptop carts, so there are more than enough computers, but better safe than sorry I guess. Now we just need to figure out the test. Some schools in the district have already tried taking the test because the window is open, but so far we have a 0% completion rate. Most kids can't log-in, others have had crashes, if a test is stopped it can't be restarted, and on and on. I think we still have another week after Spring Break before we start so hopefully everything will be fixed by then. And hopefully they can get the practice and formatives working over Spring Break so classes can actually experience the new test before they have to take it. Right now the formatives are a good simulator for the real test, in that they are broken.

On my way home I bought some Gatorade and Powerball tickets. When I got home I ate a banana and mixed the Magnesium Citrate with some lemon-lime Gatorade. I don't really like that flavor of Gatorade but I figured it made sense with the lemon flavored Magnesium Citrate. I guess it worked but the MC was so overwhelmingly tart. It's like someone dissolved Warheads and every other sour and sweet candy they could think of into carbonated water. I managed to down it fairly quickly but yuck. I washed it down with some deliciously plain water and then had a few crackers to cover it up. It took about two or three hours to kick in but it did eventually. I was reading about how it works and that is fascinating, but experiencing it is annoying.

Right now I want to go to sleep, and have wanted to since around the time I woke up this morning, but I am waiting to see if the anesthesiologist will call me back. I missed the call earlier and immediately called back and left my number on a beeper (which I guess is a thing still) but haven't heard back. I was a little surprised to even get a call because the last time I scheduled a kidney stone surgery, the more invasive one, I didn't get a single call the night before. And so far I've gotten three or four. I am feeling way more comfortable about this one. The only thing that I'm a little worried about is my sore throat. I called the doctor today at school and talked to the nurse. Apparently as long as I don't have a fever, chills, or upset stomach, then I should be fine. So I should be good if nothing drastic happens overnight. We'll see how I feel in the morning.

March 12, 2014

This morning I had my appointment with my new urologist. My first impression is that I like him. My last one was a nice guy but I was never fully comfortable with him. And his suggestions were a change in diet and exercise, which I did and just made more kidney stones. So I have moved onto a second opinion. To deal with the current kidney stone I am having a lithotripsy on Friday, and I have to be at the hospital at 5:30AM which sucks. Lithotripsy is when they identify where the stone is and then blast it with a shock wave to break it up. I will have to be knocked out for this and according to what I've read, this is to prevent any discomfort and because it takes awhile and they don't want me moving around. My throat is still a little sore and I've been a bit coughy tonight so I am hoping that doesn't become an actual sickness by Friday because I would prefer not to push this back anymore. I want to get it over with and move onto figuring out why my body is way too good at making stones in the first place.

I was still feeling fairly good after my appointment so I ended up going to work. All day I felt tired and hungry and somewhat uncomfortable, but it never evolved into actual pain. Which allowed me to have a fairly productive day. I cut out the test tickets for state assessments, organized them into classes and specific tests, and got a start on organizing them further based on the seating chart for each class. Not a bad start. I also had second grade reading groups and a few classes in the lab.

After school I went and got the stuff I have to to drink tomorrow to clean me out before surgery. It says it is lemon flavored but I think I am going to buy some Gatorade or something to mix it with. Had I been thinking I would have bought that today when I was getting my Powerball tickets but I can do it tomorrow when I am buying my tickets for Saturday. Normally I would do that on Friday but that obviously won't work out this week.

Because my diet will be restricted tomorrow, and possibly the next day, and because I was feeling relatively alright today, I finally had the second half of my Chipotle burrito for dinner tonight. It was nice having real food for once.

After dinner I had the yearbook meeting. Which ended up being a pointless waste of thirty minutes. It ended up only being me and the mom I have been working with. The two people who didn't need the meeting since we already know what we're doing. We needed the other parents who expressed interest in helping to actually be there but not even one of them showed up. So we talked about a few things and then called it quits.

I am hoping I am still feeling decent tomorrow so I can get some more work done before Spring Break. Normally I wouldn't necessarily be looking forward to a week off but this kidney stone has been kicking my butt and I could really use a little vacation. Preferably one free from pain. I'll feel better about it though if I can tie up some loose state assessment ends at work beforehand though.

March 11, 2014

Today, work wasn't going to happen. I was up throughout the night and not too long after six o'clock this morning I threw up again. Not the best way to start a day. I ended up spending the majority of my day laying on my heating pad on my bed. I watched YouTube videos, took a bunch of naps, and started reading a new book because I only have four or five others going at the moment.

Around eleven o'clock I was starving and ended up slowly eating a bunch of toast. At 11:30AM, with the toast safely in my stomach, I took another pain pill. On the instructions it said that taking it with food might help with the nausea and I was hoping the toast was enough. Another tip was to lay down for an hour or two after taking the pill, trying to not move your head. So I laid back perfectly still and and closed my eyes for the next two hours. I did move on occasion and it was enough to feel a bit of the nausea to return so I would quickly return to playing dead.

Around 5:45PM I felt game enough to have a pudding cup and a jello cup. Butterscotch pudding and strawberry jello have never tasted so good. A couple hours later I was feeling pretty good and thought I might be up to finally eating the second half of my Chipotle burrito from last week. Then my mom told me to think about it coming back up. That instantly made me lose my appetite for a burrito. Instead I went with a banana, more pudding and jello, a cheese stick, crackers, and living on the edge, a few buffalo cheddar chips.

I spent the rest of the night watching a few shows I had DVRed. At the moment, I am still feeling pretty good. I am still a bit achy but I haven't had any significant pain for several hours. Fingers crossed that holds for awhile. I was hoping to have an appointment with a urologist today but I wasn't able to get in until tomorrow morning. Which means I'll be missing more work. And that sucks because there is still a lot to do before state assessments start. But maybe my kidney will hold out and I will be able to get in another day of work before Spring Break.

March 10, 2014

It is embarrassing how long it took me to find my doctor's number in the phone book this morning. I started looking up the name of the office in the normal white pages because that is where it used to be. But apparently it has moved. Then I tried several other variations of everything I could think of, both in the white pages and the yellow pages, and got nothing. Almost ten minutes of that and I was already late to work. Then, as I was about to head to the door I had the brilliant idea to look up 'physician' in the yellow pages. Success. The office didn't open until 8:30AM so a little while after getting to work I called and made an appointment for after work.

My only real bit of productivity today coming up with and committing to an idea for putting teacher portraits on their class page. Because I can't move portraits on a page to where I want, just shift them to the right, I shifted the whole first row down to the second. Then I added the teacher portrait, which came out way too big so I had to do a lot of work to make it the same size as the kids, onto that line with their name in a big font next to it. I might makes changes to it later but at the moment I think it looks decent.

Around lunch my kidney started hurting and it only got progressively worse throughout the day. But I made it all the way to the end, mostly because the last class in the lab was planning on breaking the ice and trying a formative test for the state assessment. I'm glad I stayed but it didn't go well. On the Language Arts test they could answer all the questions but when the kids got to the end and clicked Review, an error popped up and kicked them back to the test menu, not saving the results. On the Math test, the kids couldn't even answer the questions. They could start on any question they wanted but as soon as they answered it and attempted to move on, they would get an error and booted back to the test menu. Kind of frustrating. Hopefully that can get sorted out before testing starts.

Right after school I went to my appointment. From my x-ray I learned two things. The first is that I'm not a malingerer, I have a kidney stone, and it is possibly around 6mm big. That is a new record for me. It is generally believed that stones over 4mm cannot be passed on their own. This made sense when I saw that after almost a month of dealing with it, the stone had barely left my kidney. That was disheartening. It was after five o'clock by the end of the appointment but in the morning they are going to call and schedule an appointment for me with a new urologist. I told my doctor that I had tried my current urologist's advice and just made more stones so I was interested in another opinion. This guy is apparently fairly new out of residency so hopefully he will have some more updated views on kidney stones.

I also mentioned to my doctor that Hydrocodone and Oxycodone don't seem to have much effect on me so he wrote me a prescription for Percocet. On one of my trips to the ER they had to combine that with other stuff before I could feel any relief but my doctor gave me a really high dosage. I took the first one and kind of felt it but not really so two hours later I took another one. And two and a half hours later, shortly after finally managing to eat a little bread and butter for dinner, the Percocet hit me like a ton of bricks. In fact, I am picking this up again after just running to the bathroom to throw up. Nothing like copious amount of bread and water shooting out of your mouth and nose. And now my sore throat hurts even more. I hadn't shut my bedroom door when I ran to the bathroom so when I got back I had to bribe Tanner with a cracker to get him off my bed and out of my room. And then had to give a cracker to Alfie and Beau to keep everything fair.

I had a few bouts of decent pain throughout my evening, which I spent most of lying on my heating pad and watching YouTube videos. My goal is to go to work tomorrow but if tonight was any indication I don't know that I'll make it. And I don't know how soon or late I can get in to see the urologist. Right now it is late and I am tired so I am going to eat a few crackers and then go to bed. And hopefully not be disturbed by pain throughout the night.

March 9, 2014

Much like yesterday, today kind of sucked. The only bright side was that I wasn't at work today. Around five o'clock this morning it felt like maybe the stone moved a little bit and unblocked my kidney so I got a little bit of relief. But all day my kidney hurt. It never really peaked out but it is definitely a sharp ache. The only time I feel kind of okay is when I'm laying kind of on my side with my heating pad. This, along with a big lack of sleep last night, lead to a lot of napping today. A lot. So I didn't do much of anything today because when I wasn't incredibly uncomfortable, I was sleeping. I am really hoping that I will feel completely fine in the morning. I am doubting it though. Regardless of how I feel, I will be calling my doctor in the morning and scheduling an appointment. Either after school if I am feeling good enough for work, or as soon as possible if I am still feeling like crap and can't make it to work.

Now my throat hurts. I had a couple spicy chips for dinner and I think they are too blame. Cough drops aren't doing a thing. My life is great right now. I want to sleep, even with all the napping, but I think I'm going to bounce around for awhile and see if I can get lucky and find some relief.

March 8, 2014

Today kind of sucked. My kidney started to hurt shortly after I woke up and never really went away. I went to work, despite the discomfort and thankfully made it through my shift. I spent a lot of my time with my eyes closed, trying to pretend my kidney didn't really hurt. The rest of my time was spent reading, both a book and the newspaper.

My current kidney theory is that my stone almost completely blocked my left ureter. My basis for this is that I didn't seem to be going to the bathroom as much as I should have been considering the amount of water I was drinking. And, shortly after drinking a good amount of water, my kidney would start hurting and my left side would become sensitive to touch.

I had a few crackers for dinner but spent most of the night feeling nauseous. I also did a lot of jumping up and down, with some time spent curled up in a ball on my heating pad. Needless to say, it was a long night. My goal was to put up with it through the night and then go to the ER on Sunday if things hadn't improved. It is now close to 4:00AM but I think I can finally go to bed. Not because my kidney is all good now, it still hurts, but combined with my heating pad and just the right position (and being completely exhausted), I think I can get some sleep.

March 7, 2014

After sending an email out about the popcorn this morning, I emailed one of the resource teachers and one of the second grade teachers to see if they needed any work done because I couldn't take another day of downloading fonts. Neither teacher failed me. For the second grade teacher, I entered grades, made copies, printed off information about a couple famous people, and returned books to the library.

The resource teacher had me make an idiom game for her. I made the cards where I picked an idiom from a list and then used it in a sentence. Some of them were pretty tricky but was eventually able to come up with twenty-four sentences. The second part of the project, after printing the cards and cutting them out, was to laminate them. The only problem was that the laminator was broken. Before I knew this I mentioned to one of the ladies in the office that the laminator needed more plastic. The broken part was that the plastic kept wrapping around the rollers and jamming. It appeared to be due to static. After quite a bit of work we eventually got it working. Or so we thought. After it heated up I started running cards through and the plastic ended up wrapping around the back set of rollers, which I hadn't even seen before. So I cut out the wrapped up plastic and slowly ran it through until it was for sure coming out the back and not getting hung up on rollers. By the time all of that got figured out I only had time to cut out half of the cards before the end of the day. But I felt pretty accomplished about it all.

The representative from the yearbook company stopped by today. He's kind of an awkward old man. And it was an awkward conversation. He asked me how things were going and if I had any problems. I mentioned the problem of portraits from last year coming out bigger than the new ones and the fact that I could get the teachers' portraits to stay at the beginning of their class on the individual pages. But it turns out he really didn't want to know about any problems because he just suggested I try calling the support number. Not very helpful but whatever.

After work I stopped by my sister's house because she had more of the chocolate dipped peanut butter cookies for me. Then I stopped and got Powerball tickets and a newspaper because the headline said Crimea had voted to annex itself and join Russia. This ended up being a very misleading headline because what they actually did was vote to move up the vote to annex itself. Close but not really.

The talent show was interesting. There were some good parts but for most of it I couldn't really see or hear what was going on. The stage is too low and the sound system sucks. There were also thirty-four acts. That's asking a lot and our talent pool at the school isn't that deep. There were also four different versions of Let It Go from Frozen. It all ended up taking two hours but it felt a lot longer. But I'm glad I went because there were a lot of worthwhile acts, at least of the ones I could see and/or hear.

When I got home I had dinner and watched some TV. At the moment my kidney is feeling kind of weird but I am going to try and go to bed because I am really tired and I have to work in the morning. I just want to sleep.

March 6, 2014

Waking up this morning was rough. I was not a fan. I like sleep and it was definitely lacking last night.

At work today I had so little to do. I went up to see if the resource teacher had anything she needed cut out and she did but only one game. So I copied it onto card stock and then cut out all the cards. It didn't take me very long. Another little project was scanning transcripts for one of the fourth grade teachers so she could mail them to one of the jobs she is applying for. That also didn't take very long. Second grade reading groups went well today. My first group only had three kids which was very manageable, and my second group was pretty independent so I ended up playing a game with my first group. After lunch I helped a student intern (who worked at the theater until recently so I've known her since she was sixteen) get Skype working on her iPad, helped one of the kindergarten teachers get her iPad hooked up to her projector, and went to the third grade music recital. The theme was animals who didn't make the right animal sound and a doctor trying to fix that. The doctor was played by a girl who had a few different solos and she was surprisingly good. Surprising because she tends to be quiet and reserved. Overall it was one of the best assemblies all year.

I actually spent a lot of my day listening to podcasts and on Dafont.com, downloading fonts. I think I ended up just shy of seventy fonts. That's a whole bunch.

After school I went to Chipotle and then should have taken a nap but I didn't. I planned on just going to bed early, but around eight o'clock I remembered that I was going to pick up popcorn tonight. And we have a late show so I can't pick it up until 11:15PM. Not fair. I just want sleep.

My mom missed Chipotle night even though my sister waiting until seven o'clock, because she was supposed to be home by six or six-thirty. Instead my sister and I ate and watched YouTube videos. My mom ended up not getting back until almost 7:45PM. Just a lot late. She missed out though because I had some good videos this week. My sister brought over these peanut butter cookies that she referred to as rejects, because she made them and wasn't happy and ended up making a different kind. Then she tried to salvage the first ones by dipping half of each cookie in chocolate. I really liked them. They were kind of bland but I like bland stuff. Often times peanut butter cookies are too rich but these weren't. They were also incredibly airy or fluffy even, not dense like cookies tend to be. The chocolate added a whole other layer to the mix. I would like them plain, completely covered in chocolate, or just half covered. They were really good.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid because apparently he is in a bit of trouble. There was a court hearing today but I didn't go because I didn't find out it was scheduled for this morning until this afternoon. But at the court hearing my supervisor found out that the kid was put into a PRTF (which I think means Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility) on Tuesday after he tested positive for alcohol and several drugs. Yeah. I tried calling the foster dad three times tonight but couldn't reach him so I'm still not exactly sure what happened. Right when I thought this case was becoming a boring cakewalk. It really is sad but also probably not that surprising. A few months ago he got a warning for getting drunk. And lately with his new job he's been missing a lot of school. And the town he currently lives in doesn't have the best drug reputation. My old volunteer kid told me he had been in foster care there for awhile and didn't want to go back because he couldn't go to the park without people asking him if he wanted drugs. This still sucks though. He's a smart kid but he's still a kid. I would imagine he's probably lost his job now, too.

March 5, 2014

This morning was group picture day. The staff picture was at 8:15AM and my kidney was feeling a tad twingy but I powered through. The arrangement was switched up this year, with a row of people standing on chairs in the back row, a middle standing row, and a front row sitting on chairs. I was dead center in the standing row because I think I'm the tallest. Or I'm just incredibly photogenic and the needed some of that in the middle of the photograph.

Work-wise, I didn't have a lot going on. I scanned a couple pictures, fixed a laptop by turning the wi-fi on, messed around a little bit with slideshow stuff, and had a few classes in the lab. And that was pretty much it. I would like to work on the slideshow but my video editing software isn't at work. It is the one time I wish I had a laptop.

I messed around with the yearbook a bit and quickly became frustrated when I tried to supplement missing pictures with pictures from last year. Even though they are the same size, width and height at least, the ones from last year come out taller on the page. And how the page is created, all the pictures are compiled on a single layer as a background. The company really talks up their picture editing options but that is only for pictures you manually put on a page. I can't touch any of the student or staff pictures. It is pretty annoying.

When I got home I attempted to take a nap but the dogs kept randomly barking. I gave up after awhile and eventually it was time to meet my friend at Chipotle. While walking into the building I had a repeat performance of PetCo awhile ago, when I came out from buying dog food and discovered that my trunk was open. Tonight I didn't realize it until my friend and I sat down in the window and she asked if that was my car with the trunk open. It was. It wasn't snowing or raining and it was right their in front of us so I decided to see if anyone would be a good samaritan. There were probably ten or so people who either walked by it, glanced at it, or full-on stared at it. But no one shut it. We sat and talked for quite awhile before going out to my car. I shut my trunk and then we drove around the corner to go to the coffee shop and talk some more until it was time for the show. Coffee smells amazing but coffee shops stink.

I'll be honest. I didn't even have the slightest interest in going to see the band. And that is nothing against the band because I like their music. I just wanted to hang out with my friend who I haven't seen in seven months. So I said I'd go to the show. I was less than interested because of the last time I went to one of their shows. The girl I was seeing at the time blew me off before the show, ignored me throughout the show, and got on the bus and left with the band after show, without saying goodbye. It kind of sucked. And on top of that, the music was so loud I couldn't actually hear it, only feel it, which I didn't realize was a thing. But I went to the show tonight, and the music was too loud again, but I could actually hear it this time. And I did enjoy myself because they put on a hell of a show. There was a lot of dancing around and light up boxes and smoke and other stuff. It was really good. The only real downside (other than the music being too loud because that's the only way it can be played in a bar) was that I didn't get home until close to 12:45AM. Way past my bedtime.

March 4, 2014

A day without kidney pain is a good day, I must say. Minus bathroom breaks, I got a full night of sleep and I made it to work on time.

I am pretty much caught up on everything at work which means I need to figure out more stuff to do. I worked on the slideshow stuff a little bit today but I'm caught up on the aspect ratio of it. It will be projected up onto a square screen but I think I should make it widescreen. Which I probably will, but I'm still thinking. I am also still trying to work out how I want to display the pictures, if I'm going to put all the pictures for one kid on one slide or one picture per slide or something else entirely. I still have a lot of time to figure it out, and I don't even have half of the kids' pictures, but it would be nice to get the game plan figured out.

The main productive thing I did today was finally take a look at the online yearbook. The PTO mom I'm working with already created all of the pages for the book but nothing has been populated yet. So I messed around with it and figured out how to upload all of the student and staff pictures. Then I figured out to populate each class page with the right pictures. When I got it all figured out it ended up being a lot faster than making the pages in Publisher like I did last year. The trickiest part was trying to get the teacher pictures for each class on the class page. I couldn't add it like I wanted to from the picture I had already uploaded, so I ended up uploading each teacher again and then putting their first name as 'Mr.', 'Mrs.', or 'Ms.' to get that right. I should have been able to manually move the pictures around but it wasn't working for me so I cheated and put a space before the 'Mr.', 'Mrs.', or 'Ms.', which bumped it to the front of the alphabetical order line and put the teacher first on each page. I'm going to keep messing with it and see if there is a better solution but for now it works. Tomorrow is retake picture day and I am hoping that all the newer kids will be there and get their picture taken so we don't have to worry about taking the pictures ourselves. I also hope that we get a copy of those pictures. I don't think we did last year. They'll have over a month to get it to us so fingers crossed.

On my way home I got my Powerball tickets and I got to keep the card I filled out with my numbers on it so next time I should be able to just hand them that again. That will make the whole process more efficient.

I made Brussels sprouts for dinner and they were delicious.

Tonight I watched a few YouTube videos, mainly two long interviews with Conan O'Brien. And then I spent the last three hours listening to possible slideshow songs. So far I've got eight on my list. I went with the classic cover of Over The Rainbow but also tried to pick a bunch of recent songs. I thought about going with songs from the year they were born but I haven't actually looked yet. When I did the math, and realized most of the kids were probably born in 2002, that made me a little depressed. It feels like 2002 just happened and for these kids it has been their entire life. I feel so old.

March 3, 2014

Turns out my kidney stone is still around, doing its thing. I've been perfectly fine for however many days now and then this morning, around 5:15AM, it kicked into high-gear again. And unfortunately not just for an hour or so like it has been, but for four and a half or five hours. Once again my fingers are crossed that this was the end of the first part. I don't enjoy the second part with the constant urge to pee, but I'm kinda over the pain part so I'd like to move on.

I didn't make it to work until 11:30AM today, which made the day go by a lot faster. I made lab schedules for state assessments and messed around in Gimp, trying to come up with a background for the sixth grade slideshow. So it was a somewhat productive day considering my late arrival.

When I got home I took a two hour nap. It was wonderful. With the rest of my night I watched TV and finished watching The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. It really is a good movie. I like the music and all the different locations. There is such a contrast between the stark city and office shots and then being in the ocean or the top of a mountain. It makes me want to go do stuff. I need the motivation to do stuff.

And now I'm tired but not really sleeping-tired so that is going to screw me up tomorrow. Even if my kidney stone doesn't mess with me again. Maybe I'll read a book.

March 2, 2014

In school I learned that if I gave myself a week to do something, I would take a week. Or given a month, I'd take a month. Today that knowledge came back to me when I spent all day writing my court report and month report for my volunteer thing. Put together, there probably wasn't more than thirty minutes of work to do, but I took all freaking day. Ridiculous. I got both of them done though so that's a plus.

When I wasn't slowly typing reports, I took breaks to go to the library book sale and have dinner with my family. At the last book sale I only got three books but this time I went all out and got eight. Unfortunately I still don't have any room for books. Haven't gotten around to making or buying any bookshelves. Instead, I started a new stack of books, this one by my door. Someday I will have proper shelves. Someday.

While pretending to type reports, I watched The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty and then half of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. I had no idea it was a remake but a few weeks ago I found the original, a Danny Kaye movie from 1947. I'm a fan of Danny Kaye and the original Walter Mitty was really good. I liked how each time he went into a daydream he played a different character. After finishing that, I started watching, what I now know to be, the remake. I saw in theaters, not actually in a theater, but I still enjoyed it. And still enjoy it. I like Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig, and the music. I wasn't able to finish it today but I'll finish off the last half hour or so tomorrow. Or eventually.

For dinner we had Freddy's and barbecue. That was the original plan and after potential problems with logistics we almost ordered pizzas, but then we didn't. We solved the logistic issue (the fact that my mom didn't want to change clothes to go buy the food and my sister and her husband weren't going to come get my mom's credit card to go buy food). The solution, me driving my mom's car (because mine was covered in snow) to go pick up my sister to go get food. Whenever I drive my mom's car I don't adjust the seat because she has electronic buttons for that and there is no way I'd ever get the seat back to the right spot. This is a bit of a problem considering I am way taller than my mom and my knees end up crammed against the dashboard. But I manage it, and I avoid getting into accidents because there is no doubt my legs would be crushed if I got into one. Anyway, dinner was good. And I ate way too much food.

Now I am waiting for The Oscars to get over so I can go to bed.

March 1, 2014

Today was a very boring day. To say nothing of my days in general. At work today I read. I read a little on my Kindle but spent most of my day finishing Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris. I really liked the book. It was just like the stuff I have heard him read on This American Life. And, in my head, I read the whole book in Sedaris' voice, which made it that much better. Near the end of the book there is a story about how he has been writing an almost daily diary for the last thirty-plus years of his life. I found this to be a very relatable story, due to writing my own journal for years now. He mentioned that for however long now he has created an index for his diary. So if he writes something that he thinks is interesting and can be turned into something later, he'll note it in his index so he can look over it and easily find the story later. I like that idea. The vast majority of my daily writings are all filler but every now and then I have something that at least seems somewhat interesting. I might need to start looking into the index idea.

The only eventful thing at work was when of the movies went to a black screen after the trailers, so the movie sound was still playing but there wasn't a picture. I had hoped that turning off the projector and then turning it back on would do the trick but it didn't. So I did that again but also restarted the Doremi, which is the local computer at each projector, where the movies are stored. The first time I tried that it froze and the power button wasn't working to force-shutdown the computer, so we had to pull the plug. It all took a little longer than I would have liked but I eventually got the movie going again. Which is way better than not getting the movie going again.

At some point before I got off work it had started to snow. It was more of a frozen snow than a flaky snow. But it hadn't been going on for very long by the time I left so I didn't really have to worry about driving in it. Thankfully. Later on in the night it started to sleet and tomorrow we are predicted to get at least a couple inches of snow. I am glad that I didn't have to close tonight and that I don't work tomorrow, so if the weather does end up sucking I won't have to worry about going out in it. Although the library book sale is going on this weekend so it would be nice to go to that. Even though I have no room for more books.

Tonight I did nothing. It was one of those nights. I briefly thought about playing video games but that didn't end up happening. Instead I watched YouTube videos and clicked around the internet. What I'm really looking forward to is going to sleep and being able to sleep for many consecutive hours. And now I've jinxed myself.