May 15, 2014

After school yesterday the fourth grade teacher found my cutout in her passenger seat. I don't think she was scared but she did find it hilarious and laughed all the way home. This morning she went back to scaring people. When you walk into the kitchen, the cooks' office is off to the left and you have to walk around the big metal thing that the food is put in during lunch. The fourth grade teacher put it right by their office door. It was discovered by the cook's granddaughters, who is a third grader (and probably shouldn't be in the kitchen). She walked in and immediately screamed. This brought the cook in, who also screamed. But they wanted to leave it for the other cook to find, who I will assume also screamed.

The cutout was then moved to the PE teacher's office but I didn't hear how that went. From there, the fourth grade teacher put it behind the milk case, which is in an alcove in the gym. I think that caught several kids off guard and a lot of them commented on it to me later in the day.

I scared a sixth grader today, much like I scared a fifth grader yesterday. I was standing just inside the computer lab when the sixth grader came in to get something out of the printer. I went to move slightly out of her way and she jumped because she thought I was the cutout until I moved. It was pretty funny.

Today was a pretty chill day. I had a class in the lab in the morning and the teacher gave me a list of websites and wondered if I could check them to see if they were still websites. It is a list that she gives the parent's of her students over the summer for ideas of safe and educational places for the kids to go on the internet. I was going to have to type everything in already so I asked her if she wanted me to make a new list that looked a little better. She said go for it so I did. I started by putting the list in Excel so I could sort them alphabetically because it was kind of annoying that they weren't in alphabetical order on her list. All but two of the sites were still around and I added a couple of my own suggestions. Then I pasted the list into Publisher, added a title with a fun font, a border, and a couple clip art pictures at the bottom. I saved it as a PDF so she can email it to parents and they can just click on the links. I also printed her out a copy so she can make copies and send it home that way as well.

When I was done with that, one of the receptionists asked me if I wanted to organize all the paper that just came in, and I had nothing to do so I said yes. Earlier in the year I reorganized all of the construction paper and it looked a lot better. I was a bit anal about it. The same held true for the cardstock and copier paper. I lined up all the loose paper in the shelves so it looked nice and organized the extra in the cabinets above based on color. I also came up with a better way of organizing the white copier paper that we generally leave in the box it comes in until we need more. The boxes are made to perfectly fit two reams of paper side-by-side, and that makes getting the paper out a little tricky. So I left two reams on the bottom but then put the rest of the reams in the box, on their side. The ones left on the bottom were so the reams on their side would come up over the edge of the box and be easier to grab. Genius stuff right there. I ended up doing this because there were a couple stacks of reams on the counter. The other day the sixth graders took a few boxes of paper to their classroom, I'm assuming it was science fair related, but when they brought it all back, there were a lot of loose reams. Enough for me to nicely organize two boxes.

The last two kids finished their MAP tests today. Better late than never. I'm still waiting for tests to be deleted but hopefully that will happen by tomorrow, Monday at the latest, so I can finish printing off reports and getting them to the teachers. We're down to less than a week of school left and MAP stuff is still a thing. Hopefully it won't be so late next year.

Before dinner tonight my mom showed me a picture of where my cutout ended the day. The science fair was in the gym tonight and someone had posted the cutout right as you come into the gym, with a sign around it's neck saying something about look with your eyes, not your hands. The sign was worded better than that but I can't remember it exactly. Either way, I thought it was pretty funny.

Chipotle was really good tonight. Probably aided by the fact that my burrito was only $1.80. I think the two girls working at the end of the line felt sorry for my burrito that only contained rice, beans, and cheese, and rang it up in some fancy way that saved me a couple bucks. I am totally cool with that and wish it would happen every week.

I found out right before dinner that my brother's prints were finished at the frame shop. I was tempted to go pick them up but I also wanted to eat dinner, and I picked dinner. I'll swing by and get them tomorrow. I'm anxious to see how they turned out.

I had a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight. A whole fifty-minute visit. When I got there the front door was open and all the boys were working on the floor in the living room. The carpet and pad had already been pulled up and was out of the house and the kids were working on pulling the tack strip up. My kid was eager to get out of a little work. We went to Sonic and talked about random stuff. Work, school, welding, movies, video games, books, the Holocaust. All the usual things.

On my way over to the visit I got to follow a pilot truck through a construction zone. I was stopped by a dude with a sign and waited there for several minutes until I saw a truck come over the hill with a line of cars behind it. He pulled over and turned around in front of me while the line of cars passed by. Then I followed the truck, along with all the cars behind me, into the other lane and up the hill. It was weird driving on the wrong side of the road, following a truck with flashing lights and a giant sign that said “PILOT TRUCK FOLLOW ME”. I kind of felt like I was in a NASCAR race, following the pace car. But at a much slower speed.

And now it is time to sleep. The last couple of nights have been midnight nights. It is just after 10:30PM and I have been ready for bed since the middle of the afternoon. I'm ready to sleep.