May 20, 2014

I'm so tired right now and it is kind of hard to think. Late nights are rough. And this will probably be a short entry because I want to go to bed.

I watched the slideshow in the library with the principal today and it looks pretty good on the big screen. I might possibly get paid for the time I put in at home, thanks to the librarian who mentioned to the principal how much work I put into it. The principal asked me to estimate how much time I put in and I told her I'd get back to her. Not counting the time I spent messing around trying to figure things out, I'm thinking I worked on it for about fifteen hours. That is probably a conservative estimate. It would have been interesting to keep better track of my time spent on it, including while I was at work. I spent so much time scanning and editing pictures. But I am happy with the final product. It took me awhile to come up with an idea but it looks just like it did in my head. Now I just need to cross my fingers that it will work on Thursday. There was one slide today in the library that went black for a couple seconds, and I'm not sure if it was something on my end or the hardware, but I'm going to burn at least one more DVD and I have a digital copy. My only problem with the digital copy is it doesn't have the opening menu, and I put a lot of work into that menu. I could always render it out or copy the DVD as an ISO file and it would have the menu on it.

One of the sixth grade classes performed their play today and it was really good. They wrote it collectively as a class and all the characters spoke in the way kids actually talk so it wasn't stuffy or boring. It was funny. One girl's character was constantly on her phone and all her lines were either text acronyms or preceded by “hashtag”. There was also a lot of movement, with kids coming in and out of the scenes on both sides of the stage and coming in from behind the audience. It was just really good.

After the play I was putting away chairs, along with the help of some kids, and one of the fifth grade teachers. My old pal from chair duty last year when she was a para. She mentioned that we were back at it. We kinda went full circle. I then found her sunglasses on the floor and returned them. And she was lucky, I only recognized them because I had just been looking through school pictures to add to the district-wide slideshow they make for the beginning of the year.

I spent a lot of my day going through folders and drives, backing stuff up, moving stuff, and deleting stuff. My organization isn't the best but I think I have all my important stuff backed up in at least a couple places. It would be nice to have examples and templates for next year. I also went through all of the papers piled on my desk, separating them into recycling, trash, and things that needed to be shredded. When I went to the shredder one of the fifth grade teachers was struggling a bit. I noticed that a red light was on next to the green light so I turned it off and opened up the front. My knowledge of the shredder is kind of like my knowledge of cars (and a Mitch Hedberg joke). With cars, if the needles is close to 'E', I can fill it up with gas. With the shredder, if the red light is on, I can open it up and see if the bag needs to be changed. In this case, it was pretty full, so I pulled out the shreds stuck in the cutter and then shoved everything as far down in the bag as I could. Then I got the door back on, which is a feat because it only has two hinges and the top one is broken so the door doesn't close when the bag is so full. And the shredder doesn't work when the door is open. And the bag was pretty full and the door wasn't closing. So I stood with my foot braced against it while the fifth grade teacher shredded and then took my turn. And almost immediately put too much paper in and jammed the thing up. It is impossible to pull out a half-shredded stack of paper that is wedged in a heavy-duty shredder. In case you were wondering. I pulled and pulled and only managed to rip some of the paper in half. Eventually I figured out that when you hold down the button used to turn the shredder off it will put it in reverse, which allowed me to get the paper back, break it into more manageable stacks, and finish my shredding.

After work I got gas and then went to Target, where I bought some things, ran into a sixth grader and her mom, and then went to buy a Powerball ticket. But I ended up not doing that because there wasn't a parking spot so I just drove by and headed home. Tomorrow.

I am still fighting with my shower. I bought a plunger at Target and went nuts on the shower but there wasn't immediate success. It eventually drained, very slowly, so a short-lived progress was achieved. It is time to call in the big guns, though. I'm tired of it.

Tonight I did nothing. Watched some YouTube videos, listened to a bunch of music on Youtube and Spotify, and now I am finishing this up so I can go to bed. I was going to mess with the slideshow some more but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I was also going to cast-off the purple scarf and weave in the ends but I couldn't bring myself to do that either. I'm just so exhausted. And I have now been typing for forty minutes. I should have gone to bed an hour ago.