August 31, 2014

Today is going to be another truncated entry because it is late and I am tired.

I woke up early this morning so I could take apart my bed and move it out to the garage. This way I didn't need to worry about the movers trying to maneuver around all the crap still in my room.

The movers came at ten o'clock and ended up taking two trips, I think finishing up around three o'clock. It was really hot and muggy outside so I was not envious in the least. It was a tad annoying to see how effortlessly they made moving all the heavy stuff look. They were really nice guys, though, so I'll forgive the fact that they are in way better physical shape than I am.

At one point they were having a bit of trouble getting a couch out of my mom's room and they called me back to ask if I had any suggestions. I asked if they had a saw. Eventually they ended up having to take off the bedroom door and the hallway closet door to get a bit more room to move. When they finally got it through I said “thankfully it's a really good looking couch so all that effort was worth it.” This was funny because it is a very ugly, pinkish, flowery couch.

When it came time to move the washer and dryer, I learned how to disconnect the washer in under thirty seconds thanks to a quick search of the internet. I was impressed. The dryer was easy but the washer was a pain in the butt. The water shutoff handles were pretty corroded and it took me quite awhile to get one of them turned all the way off. My hands are still a bit sore. Later on in the new house it was discovered that the plug for the dryer is different than the outlet in the wall. That sucks. Also, we need to get new water hoses for the washer.

After the movers were done, I loaded up the pickup with stuff they weren't able to take. I was going to drive the truck over but my sister and her significant other were there and the significant other ended up taking the truck and my sister took her car. So I spent a bit more time and filled my car up with more stuff before going up to the house.

We eventually had dinner, Little Caesar's, and it was really good. I was tired and hungry so I went for cheese pizza and didn't care that eating all of that cheese is pretty gross. After dinner I stayed with the dogs while my mom went back to the house to get more stuff. The dogs haven't quite adjusted yet, which is understandable considering they have only been in the house for a few hours. They're a bit nervous still. Although they're doing better than the cats who were hiding under my mom's bed until the movers started taking it apart. Then the cats escaped to the basement, which is where they are still hiding. At some point we will need to get them over to the new house.

Currently, I'm at the “old” house because it has the internet and I needed to get pillows and other things. As soon as I finish this I'm going to load things up and head back so I can go to bed. Hopefully the rain has stopped because it was torrential a little while ago. I can't remember the last time it rained so hard. But now I'm off.

August 30, 2014

Today I moved several hundred books and DVDs, all of my tools, heavy boxes, and dresser drawers. I think everything on my body hurts, especially my back and feet. I lost track of how many times I went up and down stairs and the number of trips I took to and from my car and the pickup truck. I cleared off two bookshelves, leaving one more to go, and all of my DVDs.

It was a long day and I just want to sleep. I could write a lot more about this day probably but it is almost eleven o'clock and I need to clear off my bed so I can go to sleep and wake up at six o'clock. I moved my dresser out of my room and the desk is staying, so that leaves my bed for the movers, who are coming at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. My goal is take my bed apart and get it out into the garage before the movers get here so I won't have to worry about my room still being a complete mess. The main problem is that I took all of my tools over to the new house today. I'll need to get the mattress and box spring off and see how the headboard is attached so I can run over to the new house and get what I need. But that is something to worry about in the morning. Right now, I need to clean off my bed. So I'm going to go do that. Thankfully we don't have school on Monday so I can sleep in, if I am able to sleep in the new house

August 29, 2014

Today my mom took off work because she closed on the house this morning and spent the rest of the day moving stuff with my sister, her significant other, and his friend. I did not participate because I went to work. I got an email this morning saying my request had gone through to add links to the laptop carts. I went down to one of the second grade rooms and tried out one of the laptops and after a bit the screen refreshed and the links appeared. An apparent success. A little while later I got a call from the guy in charge of fulfilling the request to see if it had worked. He is the same guy that came in to fix the trust relationship with my computer at the beginning of the year. Also the guy who was apparently banned from going out to schools for awhile because to many people complained about his demeanor. I think he is getting better though because he was nice for the most part when he came to the lab and today on the phone he was also nice. Throughout the day I went around and checked on all the other laptop carts and they all seemed to have gotten the links except for one. It is a Boys & Girls Club cart so I wonder if that had something to do with it. The initial script was run but then nothing happened. I didn't try restarting the computer and trying again so I want to do that before I email the guy about it.

I printed off more books for the SPED substitute. I think thirty-eight of them. That took a little bit of time. I also made and hung up the sign-up sheet for MAP testing, which starts the week after next. Too soon. I've gotten a few seating charts returned which is a faster return than last year so hopefully that continues.

I got two long pieces of brown paper off the big rolls of paper because my mom thought about hanging it over the big front window. I think maybe I actually thought of it but she liked the idea. But then she ended up buying something at Home Depot to temporarily cover it and lost interest in the paper. We still have to figure out how to actually cover the window because it is over the stairs so it is too tall to reach with a regular small ladder.

This afternoon I got an email from one of the second grade teachers that didn't make much sense. I think she had already had the conversation in her head and then forgot to write it all down in the email. I made the assumption that she wanted me to come down to her room at three o'clock and I didn't have a class in the lab so I did. I figured I was going to keep an eye on the class while she ran up to get some games from the Resource room. It turns out she wanted me to take her class out to recess. So I did. I had completely run out of things to do so I was up for anything.

It was my first real look at the new playground and from my adult perspective it just looks scary. There is a giant thing the kids can climb that seems to be at least twenty feet tall. Something that would have been awesome as a kid, and the kids climb right up to the top without hesitation, but I just stood there waiting for someone to slip an fall. There is also a tilted spinning doughnut-shaped thing that I think should only be sat on but the kids like to stand on it (nine or more at a time even though I guess the PE teacher said the maximum should be six) and then slowly walk around until it gets out of control and they start falling off. A couple kids fell off awkwardly and walked away a bit painfully to find something else to do.

The second graders took a snack out and I ended up holding crackers for one of the girls. At one point she fell off a swing and landed hard enough to knock the wind out of her. I walked over to make sure she was already and it looked like she was on the verge of tears but she got better once she got her breath back. When I knew she was going to be fine I told her that if it would help her I would eat her crackers for her. She kind of snapped out of being scared from losing her breath, smiled, and took her crackers back.

The teacher came out to get her class but I ended up staying outside and talking to the other second grade teacher. Again, I had nothing to do but it was also kind of nice out in the shade and I was having fun talking to the teacher.

At one point when we were out there a big plane looked like it was trying to land in the middle of town. There isn't an airport in the middle of town so this was a bit of a concern. It had the landing gear down and everything. It got low enough that we couldn't see it over the building or nearby trees but once it got past the building we saw it start to rise back up again and head in the general direction of the airport. Very strange.

I think I'm getting slightly better at conversing with people. I initiated a conversation with one of the paras the other day in the workroom but I still kind of suck at initiating conversation. But I'm getting better at asking question inside of a conversation in order to keep it going. I usually just answer the questions of the person I'm talking to without asking any of my own. Today when I was checking the laptop cart in the third grade room the kids went to lunch and it was just the student intern and me in the room. She started the conversation but I kept it going by asking about her weekend. There is still a great internal debate before I decide to ask a question, one that I am entirely conscious of because it is still not natural enough for it to just happen, but I am getting better at acting on the opportunity to ask questions and engage in a conversation. Progress.

The Gifted teacher came in and gave me a Chipotle gift card for helping her set up her tablet the other day. She didn't have to do that but she insisted because she said she would have taken the tablet back if I hadn't been able to do what I did because she couldn't figure it out and the people at Best Buy said it wasn't possible. So I thanked her for the gift card and apologized for her not getting her money back by returning the tablet. I didn't actually look at the gift card until I got home, figuring it would be ten dollars at most. It ended up being $50, which is way too generous. I only messed with it after school for about an hour and a half. But I'm not complaining.

After school I headed up to the new house because my told me stop by. A lot of stuff had been moved in but it also didn't really look like it. She had a recliner in the living room, boxes and a couple chairs in the dining area, and some dishes in the cupboards. But the house is officially hers now. She's finally got the keys and doesn't need call the realtor to come let her in. That is pretty cool.

When I got home I started putting books in my backseat. I had a blanket on the back of the seat and stacked a couple of rows of books along the back seat, making so many trips, and then through the blanket over the stacks and shoved big pillows between the books and the front seats to hold them in place. It ended up working out really well.

After eating dinner, the second half of my Chipotle burrito, I went up to the house to start making all those trips in and out transferring the books from my backseat to the basement. I met my mom's boyfriend for the first time but we didn't really engage in conversation because I was a man on a mission. Very brief first impression, he seems like a nice guy.

The neighbor lady was sitting in the bed of a pickup truck in her driveway with two dogs, watching her kid and her kid's friend ride around the street on big-wheel bikes. She may have been smoking pot. A good first impression. I also couldn't get her to acknowledge my presence. I didn't wave or anything but I did keep looking over there, knowing that I would wave if she looked my way. Her husband didn't look over either. Not really a bad thing I guess because I'm not really the social neighbor type so I don't mind everyone minding their own business.

When I had finished unloading the books I brought I took a little breather and tried to figure out how to program the garage door opener buttons on my rearview mirror. I thought there would be something about it in my manual but there wasn't. While messing with that I decided to go back and bring my cutout over and put it right inside the walk-in pantry next to the refrigerator. That has been my goal since I learned of the pantry. I doubted I would be able to do it unnoticed tomorrow so tonight was the perfect time. I just hope no one notices its absence from the basement before they stumble across it in the pantry. When I went to get it I took a moment to look at a video on YouTube and learned how to do the garage door opener thing. So after putting my cut out in the pantry I programmed my mirror buttons to open the garage doors.

The rest of my night was spent doing not a lot. And now it is almost one o'clock in the morning and I want to wake up early to get a start on moving more stuff. I need to get a lot of crap out of the way of the movers by Sunday. Tomorrow is going to be a really long day. And I need to stop typing now so I can at least get a bit of sleep tonight.

August 28, 2014

So, my mom locked her keys in her car again. For the second time in two weeks. Thankfully this time she didn't actually leave them in the ignition with the car still running (although we later found the car doesn't lock when the keys are in the ignition and the car is running). This time, who the hell knows why it happened, but she found out when she needed to go to the bank during her lunch break. She caught me in the hall, again frazzled because she was late getting to the bank, and I gave her my keys so she could take my car. She repaid me by not moving my seat back so I slammed by knee into the steering column, leaving a gum wrapper on my passenger seat, and leaving my already sad windshield visor in a crumpled mess on the passenger side floor. Thanks mom. I gave her a bunch of crap about that stuff, along with once again forgetting her keys. She is now carrying a spare in her purse at all times. The hope is that it is due to her being preoccupied with the new house. If that is not the case she joked that I might end up getting the house to myself when she gets put in a home.

This morning I finished all of the hole punching for the second grade teacher and got everything on rings. Not to blow my own horn but the final product looked really good. My exhaustive attention to detail paid off. I am super glad that project is over though.

On and off throughout the day I was able to get back to my desktop wallpaper project. I had a vision of adding color to the lab and it worked. I used the same teddy bear with the glasses I added to it that I used for the sixth grade slideshow last year but left him as a normal teddy bear. But then I colorized it, eventually getting eight different colors so they transitioned like a rainbow. I found a blackboard that I used for the background but I also colorized it to roughly match the color of the bear. Then I went around the lab adding the new desktops going from red to orange to yellow to green to blue to indigo to purple to violet. I followed the same pattern in each row so it is more like a rainbow and not just random colors. It turned out looking pretty much like I saw it in my head and it looks pretty cool in the dark. I'm happy with it.

Also, when figuring out how to change the desktop wallpaper for all users on a computer, I think I also stumbled across a way to add an internet shortcut (a real one, not just a redirecting webpage that I make) to all desktops so it won't get randomly deleted. Editing through Group Policy is a great thing. Being able to add links in this way would have been good to know a week or two ago but oh well. I might still use it. Today I put in a trouble ticket to get links added to several laptop carts and an old link deleted, so we'll see how long that takes to go through. If it goes through.

This morning we had an anti-bullying assembly that consisted of a ventriloquist/illusionist. My first thought was that my was going to love it because she was a fan of Jeff Dunham several years ago. My second thought was Gob on Arrested Development saying “Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money.” The whole performance was a roller coaster. It started pretty funny then got kind of sad, then was a little creepy and confusing when no one could quite figure out which staff member one of the puppets was hitting on, then sort of funny, then sad again, then there was a video from the nineties (if we're being generous), and ending with what seemed like a really forced anti-bullying message, which had been hot and cold throughout the performance. There were good parts but overall it seemed like an act that hadn't quite been perfected yet. A puppet hitting on a teacher would be the first thing I cut out.

Shortly after work my mom, sister, her significant other, and I went up to the new house for the final walkthrough. A few minor things were pointed out but other than that it looked ready to go. The fence looked really nice, other than the spots where they need to fill in some gaps along the bottom, and the yard came out looking bigger than I originally thought it would be. The carpet also looked good and felt good to walk on. The room where I plan on putting my computer and whatever else got internet and cable as well as an air vent. They apparently completely forgot about the air vent and had to go through a lot of effort to get it in the room. The room also didn't have a ceiling fan and my mom thought they could just take it out of one of the rooms upstairs but the builder said he just went ahead and ordered a new one because one probably should have been in there in the first place. My mom signs the papers tomorrow morning at eight o'clock and then the moving in begins. I won't actually be able to participate until after work but I have my work cut out for me.

After the walkthrough we all went to the Chinese buffet for dinner. It was delicious and I ate way too much. I had a little macaroni and cheese because I splurge when I go to the Chinese buffet, but I mostly ate a lot of green beans a fried rice. I normally get rice noodles but they never got refilled.

I wanted to be able to focus on moving this weekend so I put my nose to the grindstone and did grad school work tonight. I read the two chapters in the research book and then wrote a response on the discussion board answering the instructors questions. We also had to respond to two of our classmates' responses, so I did that as well. And now my weekend is free for moving. Yay.

I called my friend's mom's friend tonight but she already found another dog sitter. The money would have been nice but I'll probably still be moving stuff and working on school stuff so it works out.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight because I was supposed to have one with him yesterday, because he was working tonight. But then he ended up getting called into work last night. Yet another week without a visit. This hasn't been a great month for visits.

I got a text from the manager at the theater tonight asking if I wanted door or box shifts because it didn't look like they would be scheduling projection shifts any time soon. I didn't have time to respond (also I forgot) but I think I'm going to decline. Maybe on breaks or over the summer but during the school year it really won't be worth it because it would screw up my sleep schedule and I wouldn't be able to study like I could upstairs. It appears I stayed at the theater long enough to just fade away. It was inevitable.

August 27, 2014

When I got to work this morning instead of jumping directly into cutting word cards I went around the lab and updated Java on all of the computers. It needs to be updated for some random test we have to administer to a random group of kids during MAP testing. Sucks to be those kids. It also sucks to be me if another update comes out before the test and I have to go around to all the computers and update it again.

One of the fifth grades classes was the first in the lab today and no one cried over having to use keyboard covers during Type to Learn, so that was an improvement. During the time they were in there the teacher asked about her password for Odyssey. It seems like teachers weren't given a new password. So I logged in and brought her information up and we attempted several times to change her password. For the kids I changed it to a single letter because that's what it has been for the past two years and it is easy enough to remember. We tried that with the teacher and it didn't work. It needed to be at least four characters long. Then it needed to have at least two letters and two numeric characters. Everything she tried seemed to miss some previously unmentioned criteria. She eventually managed to get one that worked.

And I bring all this up because when we were working on that the topic of my desk came up and how it was covered in permanent marker over the summer. She got kind of excited and wanted to try writing on it was an Expo marker because she read how if there was permanent marker on a dry erase board you could write over it with an Expo marker and then erase it and the permanent marker. So she grabbed the marker and drew on my desk. It didn't work and now I have a faded red circle on my desk. Then she ran upstairs because she also read that hand sanitizer could be used to remove permanent marker. It also didn't work but for awhile my desk was sanitized and I got a small bottle of sanitizer out of it. So not a complete loss.

I finished cutting all the word cards today and got a start on punching holes in them. I spent a long time coming up with a way to get consistent hole placement on the cards and ended up taping a couple pieces of cardboard on the hole puncher as a guide. I originally wanted to use two or three of the hole puncher punches at once but after some trial and error I found it was easier and faster to just use one. I got a pretty decent start and got three or four of the kids finished today. I'm pretty sure my shoulder will be at least a little sore tomorrow from pushing down on the hole puncher so many times. While I was in the workroom working on that I helped one of the paras fix the copier and I talked with another one (who was an intern last year) about her teaching future. She said she wanted to work with SPED but everything she wanted to do required a Master's degree and she didn't have anything specific in mind so she decided to take a year to think about it. Wise choice. Until that year turns into six.

I also helped format a resume reference page for one of the student interns and showed a couple of the resource teachers how to insert special characters in Word and Outlook. Along with helping kids in the lab with random computer things. Not a bad day overall. Depending on how sore I am tomorrow from punching holes.

After work the librarian and I went to the tech meeting. For real this time. It was a good sign when we walked in and there were lights on and other people around, unlike last time. The meeting covered a lot of stuff and lasted about an hour and a half. The meeting also covered a lot of stuff that didn't need to be covered and probably should have lasted well under thirty minutes. At least fifty percent of the talking was just bragging about crap no one cared about. My theory is that the tech guys are trapped in their little world all day and these meetings become a soapbox on which they can perch and go on and on and on about all the amazing things they do. All of which are covered under their job description and most of which everyone else doesn't need to know about. Another forty-five percent of the information might be mildly interesting to see in bullet-pointed email but doesn't need to be gone over in detail at a meeting where people are extremely indifferent to the details. And the remaining five percent is actually useful information. In the meeting today, that took the form of finding out that I could submit trouble tickets asking for certain links to be added to computers or taken off and they could run a script that would dump it onto all the computers at once. Who knows how long it will actually take to get someone to run the script but it is nice to know that I will potentially not have to go around and install Odyssey on all the laptop carts. I'm going to get the cart information tomorrow so I can send in those tickets and see how things work out.

The librarian dropped me back off at the school after the meeting and then I went to Chipotle. While I was waiting to pay I felt a tap on my shoulder and ended up turning all the way around because the person kept moving. That person being a sixth grader from school. We spoke briefly and then I headed home. My burrito was pretty good. After dinner I showed a bunch of videos and then later on in the night ended up standing in the living room for quite awhile talking with my mom and sister. It is interesting how liberal my mom and I are and how different my sister is.

With all the chatting, I accomplished very little tonight. So little in fact that some might even consider it nothing. Which is a more accurate description. I'm definitely going to be screwed when we can start moving into the new house. Tomorrow after work we're going to go for the final walkthrough. It will interesting to see the house pretty much finished.

And now it is somehow midnight. What the hell. I still haven't quite gotten back to my school year sleeping schedule. I seriously need to work on that. After the move maybe.

Lastly, because I just remembered and listened to the voicemail again, I got a call from one of my friend's mom's friends about dog sitting for her. I need to call her back tomorrow. It would be next Wednesday or Thursday through Saturday afternoon. I will probably still have a lot of crap to move into the new house at that point but if she hasn't found someone before I call her back I will probably take her up on it. I'm not getting shifts at the theater so the extra money is nice. It is also way out of my comfort zone which I am always trying to expand (though often with very little effort). I guess it could also be considered networking, which I will need someday. It is a good skill to develop and I will need it to find a job after grad school so I might as well start practicing now. We'll see what happens.

August 26, 2014

Currently, Tuesday is the day of the week where I don't have a class until 1:30PM. This will change soon when literacy centers start in kindergarten because I will be helping out down there for at least a half hour in the morning. But for now, I've got nothing. Today I spent my morning continuing to cut word cards for the second grade teacher. I did that most of the day actually. I started around 8:15AM and cut until noon. In the afternoon I had three classes in the lab but other than that hour and a half in the lab, I was in the workroom cutting. It made for a long day. Also a relatively quick day. I kind of just zoned out all day and got lost in my head. I can't remember what my schedule is like tomorrow but I might be able to finish the cutting phase. With some rough math I figure I've got about an hour and a half of cutting left. Hooray for that. But then I've got to move to the hole-punch phase. I foresee that being a bitch. It almost definitely will take me longer to complete than the cutting. And be worse on my wrists. My plan at the moment is to use some masking tape to make guides on the three-hole punch in the workroom so I can use at least two of the hole punches at a time, doubling my output. Three would be nice but I'm not sure about that. I also hope I can do more than a couple sheets of cardstock at a time.

I had a lot of interaction with fellow staff members today thanks to being in the workroom every time they would come in. I spoke with many of them several times throughout the day and they were always surprised that I was still cutting paper. And glad that I still had all of my fingers. One of the first grade teachers was telling me yesterday about her son cutting himself and having to go to the hospital. Today, one of the SPED teachers told me that when she was a para she lost her concentration for a second and cut off the tip of her thumb. The teacher she was talking to drove her to the hospital and after the nurse at the ER chewed her out about not having the missing piece, two of the teachers back at school dug through the trash (because the custodian had already cleaned up the mess) and found the tip, bringing it to the hospital so they could reattach it. It was successful but she said she doesn't have any feeling in it anymore. I hope I maintain my clean record. I didn't even get a paper cut today. One of the fifth grade teachers cut only a few sheets of paper today and managed to get a paper cut. Let's hope I can keep the streak going.

One of the paras brought up my cross stitching today because she is interested in having me make something for her. She said last year before she even knew who I was she heard about my inappropriate cross stitching. I told her to come up with what she wanted and I would make up a pattern. At first she was thinking about something for her kitchen, and came up with a phrase but I can't remember it. When we were looking at possible borders in the lab I ended up coming across a cross stitch that said “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, you're fucking disgusting.” That became an instant favorite so there is a chance I'll end up making that one.

The last class in the lab today was third grade and they seemed to be a ticking time bomb of illness. One kid threw up in the hallway on the way to the lab, one went to the nurse during lab time, a few others weren't feeling well, and the student intern felt sick. All that leads me to believe sickness is in my near future. I even started feeling a bit flushed by the end of the day but I think it was just from standing all day in the workroom with the air conditioning blowing on me, freezing me out. I feel better now so I'm going with that.

After work I stopped by the bank to deposit my dog sitting money and then went to Target to buy stuff. I got food and orange juice and wanted to get a planner or calendar of some sort to keep track of school stuff but couldn't find one.

I packed a little bit when I got home but it was very halfhearted. Didn't even come close to filling a box. I blame getting distracted by some of my old cellphones. Those of the flip variety. There were so small and compact. I miss them. I liked being able to carry more in my pocket than my phone. Two of the phones were by Samsung and I discovered something interesting. The rubber on the oldest one (the cover for the headphone jack and the bumpers, had started to dissolve. It had basically become a thick, sticky liquid. Very weird. The rubber bumpers on the slightly newer one had also started to dissolve but wasn't completely liquified yet. I've heard of old batteries leaking but not rubber dissolving.

I watched the first official lecture for one of my classes tonight. Later this week the instructor is going to post a discussion based on the two chapters we are supposed to read this week. We will then need to write a response as well as respond to two other students' responses. I made it into the second chapter this weekend but I will probably end up re-reading everything because I can't remember it off the top of my head. I also need to continue reading the book for the other class and see if I can figure out how to do the reading journal. I am hoping the instructor will post an example.

Right now I am listening to some Me First And The Gimme Gimmes because they released a new album this year and I just learned about it last week. I'm a fan and they've still got it. At the moment I like the old stuff better but that is almost always the case. Nostalgia makes everything better. Also, it seems that in general, myself and maybe most people, will always like what they originally fell in love with better than what comes after. Even if the band does get better with each new album. I can really like the new stuff but the old stuff has a deeper connection.

But enough of that. I wanted to get to bed earlier tonight and it is already 11:30PM. Not what I wanted. So I'm going to stop now so I can at least beat midnight.

August 25, 2014

This morning I realized I was a bit of an idiot last night. Last night I did laundry. Before going to bed I pulled one load out of the dryer, cleaned the lint trap, threw in a new dryer sheet, shut the door, and went to bed. Completely forgetting the important step of moving my last load from the washer into the dryer and then starting the dryer. Whoops. Thankfully I didn't need anything in that last load today.

Most of my Odyssey links were still on the computer lab computers today but last night (or this morning, I can't remember) I had a genius idea. I would make a page that automatically redirected to the Odyssey website. Then I could put that shortcut on the desktop and not worry about it being deleted as a “broken link” like a regular shortcut.

After a little Googling I found the code I needed because I didn't want to waste my time trying to figure it out myself. It didn't need to turn into another student database situation. I didn't need to actually design a page, just paste the code in, so instead of using Word I went old school with it and just used notepad. Then I dropped the file and the icon I made onto my network drive and snaked my way around the lab, putting it on all of the computers. It was the same multi-step process as my shortcuts link page, putting it on the public desktop, but it didn't take me too long. But then I realized after the first class came in that I messed up. I dragged the file and the icon from my drive to my desktop, then to the public desktop folder, then made a shortcut of my file so I could change the icon. I guess when I made the shortcut it was created on my desktop, not the public desktop. I did it right on the first two computers but then started doing it differently for some reason. So I had to go back around and move my shortcut to the public desktop folder. My bad. I'm going to double-check things tomorrow and if they are all still there I'm going to start putting it on laptop carts.

This morning I finished up cutting squares for one of the kindergarten teachers and then took on another cutting project from one of the second grade teachers. I didn't realize it was going to be so big. I was working on cutting squares on Friday when she was in the workroom photocopying all this stuff on cardstock. I also helped her un-jam the copier. It turns out she was making all the word cards for her kids and all of them need to be cut out. It isn't all the kids but the ones who have them have a whole bunch of cards. It's going to take me forever.

We had the first fire drill of the year today while I was cutting cards and the alarms are just as loud as they were last year. And it was at least 100 degrees outside so that was lovely. After coming back in I watched a second grade class for a few minutes while the teacher went to the bathroom, and then I went back to the lab to help one of the first grade classes. Getting them logged into the computers is still pretty rough. I would like to fast forward a month or two when most of them have it all figured out. It doesn't help that most of them are having to log into the computer for the first time as well as remember another log in for Odyssey and Type to Learn. We'll get there.

I spent the rest of my day cutting cards and talking briefly with whoever wandered into the workroom. I made it through the first three sets of cards today with many more to go. Before leaving for the day I set up the internet on the music teacher's intern's laptop. The guest access thing still hasn't been figured out, no word from the tech guys, so I set her up on the regular network after manually setting it up on her computer.

Tonight I had all the intentions in the world to start start packing but then I ended up not even touching a box. In my mind it is all going to work out and I'll be ready for the movers to get all the big stuff on Sunday. I also won't be surprised if I am horribly unprepared for their arrival. My goal is to make a whole bunch of trips back and for on Friday after work and then all day Saturday. That seems like plenty of time, kind of, but I'll need to have a lot of stuff packed up before then so I can spend my time moving stuff rather than packing stuff. I'm interested to see how things go. I also have some grad school stuff to worry about throughout the week and possibly a visit with the new volunteer kid. It should be a fairly busy week. Ending in a new house.

August 24, 2014

Another morning of waking up way too early and hitting the road before the sun was up. Thankfully my legs had recovered a little but I still kept the pace a tad slower than previous walks. The dog continued her tradition of keeping the cicada population in the neighborhood in check. I think finding and eating them on the street is her favorite part about the morning walks.

The rest of my day was fairly boring. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, crocheted a lot, and played a lot of Minesweeper. I'm not exactly sure why I played that but I did and actually had fun. I played on the small beginner setting so I actually had a chance and in a way it kind of reminded me of Sudoku. I also packed up my stuff and cleaned the house a bit. My sleeping pad flattened out the carpet in the bedroom so I vacuumed so it looked normal again. I also washed the few dishes I used and put those away. I stepped out in the back yard a few times for some fresh air and was dreading the evening walk because it was over 100 degrees outside. Thankfully my friend's mom got home around four o'clock so she had the honor of going for the walk.

When I got home I took a shower and eventually ate dinner. I watched a few YouTube videos but spent most of the night watching livestreams, doing laundry, and playing a little CS:GO. I knew I would be awful at the game so I went with the deathmatch gamemode because I could get infinite respawns and the chance to try out different guns. True to form, I was awful. I got into Counter Strike a little bit on the original Xbox but I wasn't too great back then either. I almost broke even in one of the games but in the other I was almost killed twice as many times as I killed other people. And I think most of my kills were actually against bots, not actual people. A lot of my deaths were also caused by bots, which is sad. I felt better when I was constantly annihilated by guys with fancy looking guns because I know they have put a lot of time and/or money into the game, whereas I have played less than two hours and have spent no money in-game to get fancy things.

The coming week is going to be a long one. I need to work on grad school stuff, work stuff, and start packing in earnest for the move. The moving should start on Friday and continue through the weekend and beyond. Work stuff will involve installing shortcuts on a bunch of laptops. I looked through my entries from last year and saw that my solution to disappearing links was my shortcut page I made in Word. Regular internet shortcuts get deleted. There is apparently a hot fix for it but it involves modifying the registry and seeing as how I'm not even allowed to open up the towers and blow them out with air, I doubt they want me modifying the registry. So, until another solution is offered by the tech guys, I'm going to stick with my shortcut page being the easiest option to get to the new Odyssey page. This of course assuming that most, if not all, of the plain internet shortcuts I added to the lab computers and fourth grade laptops were wiped over the weekend. But I'm going to stop rambling about that because I have been tired for awhile now and I am looking forward to sleeping in my bed tonight.

August 23, 2014

I slept a lot better last night but still didn't get enough sleep because my alarm went off at six o'clock. That is way too early for a Saturday. Way too early for any day of the week really. That is when my alarm usually goes off during the week but I tend to ignore it until 6:30AM or later. But not when I'm dog sitting. Thanks to my alarm actually being five or six minutes fast, I was out the door by six o'clock, off on another journey.

This morning I was apparently feeling adventurous and we ended up going a bit further than yesterday morning, almost a mile and a half. We went up to the main road like yesterday but instead of taking the first side road we kept going up to the main intersection. It actually wasn't too bad and it wasn't as hot as it was yesterday morning.

I spent the bulk of my day watching YouTube videos, crocheting, and reading a textbook. I read one chapter and made it a few pages into the second before having to give up and take a nap. I took one after getting back from the walk in the morning but it wasn't quite enough apparently. It doesn't help that textbooks, no matter how interesting, tend to be a natural sleep aid. My friend's mom also has a piano so I spent awhile messing around on that. I have forgotten most of the one song I was working on but I remembered a little more as I messed with it and then spent time just making stuff up.

Tonight's walk started in the same way as last night, taking the trail up to the zoo. Then we continued the circuit, going by the high school and the cemetery and back to the house. That circuit was just under a mile and a half I think. Or just over. Either way, it was shorter than the first night when we went up to the zoo and then turned back the same way. I could have saved myself a lot of time had I known where that trail was. Although I probably would have killed myself on the railroad tie stairs.

After the walk, feeding the dog, and watering the flowers, I went home to take a shower and eat dinner. I planned on heading back at eight o'clock but tonight was the season premiere of Doctor Who, featuring Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor, so I ended up staying until around nine o'clock. It looks like I'm going to be a fan of the new Doctor. I was already a fan of Capaldi and, at least with the first episode, I am a fan of his interpretation. He is playing kind of a quirky old guy and I like it. I already want to watch the episode again.

On my way back to the house I stopped and got a strawberry shake at Sonic. It was good and I don't feel quite so bad about it after all the walking and sweating I have done in the past couple of days. When I got back to the house I watched a few episodes of Modern Family before going for the last walk of the night around the block.

I'm tired now and will have to wake up at six o'clock tomorrow morning, but a show about Billy The Kid just came on the Discovery Channel. We'll see how far I make it into the show. Sleep is incredibly tempting.

I'm not sure when my friend's mom is supposed to be back tomorrow. Hopefully she will text me. Or I guess I could text her. If she is going to be back before the evening walk than I'll go home and take a shower after the morning walk. If not I'll wait until after the evening walk. Time will tell. As long as I am home with enough time to do my laundry.

August 22, 2014

I'm not surprised in the least that I slept horribly last night. I started out sleeping on my air mattress on one side of the bed because there were outlets over there for my alarm clock. I can't remember all the reasons I ended up moving but I think it was primarily due to being too far away from the ceiling fan so it was getting kind of hot. It was also too quiet. I liked when the air conditioner kicked on every now and then because it was nice and loud but it didn't stay on for very long. When I moved, sometime after midnight, it was to the other side of the bed, under the ceiling fan, and also brought my laptop into the room so I could play some music and add a bit of noise to the silence.

We'll say that helped but I still had trouble falling to sleep. It didn't help that the dog is apparently a light sleeper because she would randomly, halfheartedly bark at stuff and shake her collar a lot. At some point I remembered my friend's mom saying she took the dog's collar off at night because she jingled it a lot. Taking the collar off helped a lot and I did eventually fall asleep. Kind of. I estimate that I didn't sleep more than three or four hours last night. It sucked.

It especially sucked at six o'clock in the morning when my alarm went off. Somehow I managed to get up to turn it off and then got dressed to go for an early morning walk. It was already over eighty degrees outside even though the sun wasn't quite up yet. We went for about a mile walk and it was way nicer than last night. Not nearly as hot and not nearly as long. It was also a decent way to wake up a little bit. I don't think I would have survived the day on so little sleep if I hadn't gone for the walk.

At work, things were done. I can't really remember what was going on at the beginning of my day. I know I did something but it is escaping me. I know I made an icon for the new Odyssey link. It's pretty sweet. I messed around with putting it on one of the computers in the lab but I didn't want to commit to putting it on all of the computers in case the links disappear over the weekend. I remember desktop links disappearing last year or the year before when I added them and I can't remember what the solution ended up being. I know my shortcuts page that I made in Word ended up being a solution but I can't remember if I ever came up with one for actual internet shortcuts. I need to mine through my old journal entries and see what I had to say about it. Maybe sometime this weekend.

I remembered yesterday or the day before that one of the kindergarten teachers asked me if I wanted to cut out some paper squares for him awhile ago so I went down and got the paper today and started that job. I worked on that off and on throughout the day and nearly finished. I was tempted to stay longer to finish it up but I already stay an extra hour and a half this week and I don't want to get in trouble for staying on the clock too long.

This afternoon my mom came into the lab looking a bit frazzled. It turns out that in her hurry this morning, because she was running late, she left her keys in the ignition and the car running when she got out. This was at eight o'clock and no one noticed it until one o'clock this afternoon when they parked behind her. I normally park behind her but I was also running a little late so I was a few cars behind. While walking by her car I was on the other side of the street and a school bus was passing between me and the car, so I didn't notice it being on. It also runs really quietly so that didn't help.

She actually had work to do so I offered to go home and get her spare set of keys because the class in the lab was all set and their teacher was in the lab so I didn't have anything to do. I peaked in the door window to see what the gas situation was like but couldn't see the indicator. It ended up being pretty close to a line and I assumed it was the empty line. So I raced home, driving the speed limit because that's what I do, grabbed two spare keys just in case, and drove back to the school.

When I hit the unlock button on the spare key I didn't hear anything but when I checked the door it was unlocked. I leaned in and saw that she actually had just over half a tank of gas left. Not bad considering it had been idling for so long. I turned it off, shut the door and locked it. After not hearing a sound with the spare key it kind of makes me wonder if the door was actually locked in the first place. I never thought to try the handle before I left because when my mom came in to tell me about it she said she had locked the keys in the car. But maybe the car has a thing that prevents it from locking if the keys are in the ignition and the car is on and in Park. At some point my curiosity wants to find out if that is the case. It would have saved me a lot of time if I didn't actually have to drive home.

After school I went home to eat a snack before going over to see the dog. I decided to go for a walk before feeding her dinner and then going home to take a shower and eat dinner myself. That worked out pretty well and the weather was slightly more bearable than last night. My friend's mom had mentioned a trail going around the cemetery and leading to the zoo and I had wanted to take that yesterday but wasn't exactly sure where it started. The dog solved that problem for me tonight because she walked right to it, like she read my mind. It was a little freaky. It was a cool little trail, a bit overgrown at times, and the railroad tie steps were too big and left a lot to be desired in terms of consistency, but I liked the walk. I had kind of wanted to take the trail back last night when our walk had lead to the zoo but there is no way I would have been able to find it coming from the other way, and the stairs would have been dangerous in the near-dark.

I was briefly tempted to keep going from the zoo, taking the same path we did last night to get back to the house but I was feeling alright and didn't want to push my luck, adding another mile to the walk. So we turned around and took the trail back. At least according to my phone the walk ended up being just over a mile long, and it was bumped up to a mile and a half later on in the night when we took a walk around the block.

After feeding the dog dinner and water all of the flowers I went home to take a shower and eat dinner. Then I came back to the house. My plan was to spend the next couple of hours reading one of my textbooks. I sat down in a comfortable chair, put my feet up, and read everything up to the first chapter before my eyelids got a little too heavy. I was listening to classical music on NPR and that combined with my reclined position and my lack of sleep last night turned out to be a lethal combination. It was a nice nap, though. And I'm still tired, so I'm going to bed as soon as I finish this. Hopefully tired enough to actually fall asleep. I would like nothing more than to sleep in but I think the plan is to wake up at six o'clock again so I can go for a walk before the temperature starts suck too bad. It's also nice when no one else is really out and about.

I'm not sure what the plan is for tomorrow. Other than reading a textbook. I really want to get at least one chapter read, preferably two, which isn't much to ask for considering they are two fairly short chapters. Other than that, who knows. Maybe watch YouTube or play some video games. Or something else entirely.

August 21, 2014

I had a another productive day even though I nearly ran out of things to do at one point this afternoon. The first thing I did when I got to work was print out some reading books for the SPED substitute. I started doing it yesterday but only had about five minutes to work on it before I went upstairs to help the gifted teacher.

Sometime after that I went up to the third floor to install the new Odyssey link on one of the fourth grade laptop carts. That was a nice change from installing Type to Learn on a laptop cart. With the addition this year of the Public Desktop not being hidden I was able to add the link in under five minutes per computer. That is way better than the twenty- to thirty-minute minimum of installing Type to Learn.

I finished getting my MAP spreadsheets ready and I also made the blank score sheets that I use during testing to write down scores. The only things left are the sign-up sheet, which I can't make until we get our actual testing window, and then the lab schedule I make based on when teachers sign up. Or when the principal signs teachers up.

Near the end of the day the SPED substitute came down and asked if I could print off more books. They apparently went over really well and they read through all of the ones I printed off this morning. Before the end of the day I had time to print off about ten more but the goal is another forty-eight books, which is a lot.

After work I went home and grabbed a few things before heading over to my friend's mom's house. I wanted to get there before five o'clock because the cable guy was supposed to come sometime between five o'clock and seven o'clock. It wasn't too much later than five o'clock when he showed up. I wasn't entirely sure what was wrong other than the TV didn't work. He ended up having to switch out the cable box and told me it might take anywhere from three hours to have a day for the picture to actually show up. He said everything checked out but with the increased cable traffic with students being back in town the process was taking longer than usual. It ended up taking maybe thirty minutes so that was nice. It was back on before he came back to pick up the tools he forgot. Right after it came back on I turned it off though because I was watching YouTube videos.

For dinner I had the cold second half of my Chipotle burrito. I would have liked it warm but I couldn't figure out the ancient microwave. I don't even know if the thing works. I could have used the oven considering that is how I used to heat up my burritos, but I was hungry and didn't want to wait an hour before eating. I also had some roasted red pepper hummus with my chips that my friend's mom bought for me.

I almost had a visit with the new volunteer kid. We were good to go but then he got called into work. I'm going to text him tomorrow probably just to catch up on things.

After dinner I went home and got things I would need for tonight. I was told I could sleep in the bed but I don't like sleeping in beds that aren't mine, I'm not Goldilocks, so I grabbed my sleeping pad and sleeping bag. I also changed my clothes and shoes so I could take the dog for a walk when I got back. I don't actually have clothes suitable for walking. Nothing athletic really.

It was still around 100 degrees outside even though it was almost eight o'clock when we went out and I wished I had shorts. On occasion there was a nice breeze but for the most part it was stagnant and hot. I pretty much just followed the dogs lead because I figured she new what was up. The walk ended up lasting for over an hour and I think we went about two miles. I was tired and drenched by the time we made it back to the house. I don't think I am going to be as adventurous tomorrow night. I'm supposed to take her on a morning walk also and I hope I am able to move. It will be a much shorter walk. Nowhere near the high school or the zoo.

With the cable guy and the long walk tonight, I didn't get any textbook reading done. I'm ahead in one of them but I need to start another one for next week. Tomorrow night I'm going to get some reading done.

And now I am going to go to sleep. If I didn't have to write this I would have been in bed before ten o'clock because that walk took it out of me. I just hope I can get to sleep. I usually have trouble when I'm in a new place. Fingers crossed that isn't a thing tonight.

August 20, 2014

Today was a productive day. I managed to get all the kids divided up into classes in the new Odyssey. It went a little faster than expected because I was able to add several kids at a time. It was slower having to go through and manually change the password for each kid but I got there eventually.

I finally updated the shortcuts page I made last year, adding the new Odyssey link, removing some things, and rearranging other things. Then I went about the task of putting the shortcut page link and the new Odyssey link on all the computers in the lab. This year the process went a little bit faster because the Public profile and desktop weren't hidden so I didn't have the extra steps of showing hidden files. It also didn't take me too long to remember that I needed to make a shortcut of my shortcut file in order to change the icon to a yellow star so it stands out on the desktop. Excluding having to replace the old Odyssey link, the process included dragging my shortcut file onto the desktop from my network drive, creating a shortcut of the file, changing the icon of the shortcut to a yellow star, navigating to the Public desktop, dragging all of the files (the original file, the folder accompanying the file, and the shortcut) to the Public desktop, and finally hiding the folder and original file so only the shortcut with the star icon remains. And I only had to do all of that twenty-six times.

I got a very brief start on making my MAP spreadsheets. The first round starts next month and I've got a bit of prep work to do. I'm not looking forward to watching kids test again. That is easily my least favorite part of the job.

Right after the bell rang I went up to the third floor because the gifted teacher said she had a question for me. She got a new Surface Pro tablet and needed help getting it connected to the internet. She lucked out because I just learned how to do that yesterday when I was trying to figure out the guest network. Even though the main network shows up in the wi-fi list you can't connect to it without first manually adding it and making sure all the settings in various windows are correct. But I got it figured out, and on Windows 8, which I have never played with before. I'm not a fan. I can see the idea of it working alright with a tablet but not for a computer. It took way too many steps to get to the basic things I needed when I was figuring out the wireless. While I was at it I also added printers to the tablet and did my best to make the text and icons and windows and all that bigger on the screen so she could actually see them on the screen. The text was hard enough for me to read with my new lenses and she is working with tri-focals. The wireless and printers were a success, and making some of the text larger was a success. It doesn't seem like making the taskbar icons bigger is a thing but you can't win them all.

Helping the teacher with her tablet ended up keeping me at work until 5:30PM. That worked out alright because I was able to go get Chipotle and didn't have to worry about waiting to eat when I got home. Reheated Chipotle isn't quite as good as the real thing. My sister ended up not coming over because she had a headache. Her loss.

After dinner I spent a couple hours reading a textbook and then wrote my bio for my second class. I still need to figure out how I am going to get more organized with my classes.

I was going to write more but it is nearly midnight and I find myself tired and distracted and unable to form a coherent thought.

August 19, 2014

I spent most of my morning trying to figure out the Guest login problem for the student interns at school. And nothing came of it. I tried so many different things but it ended up just being a waste of time. When a intern clicks to join the Guest network a prompt should pop up, or in interstitial page, that asks them for the Guest username and password. But nothing ever comes up. There's a lot of thinking and then the computer tells you there is only limited connectivity or whatever to the network. I tried setting up the network with different settings on my computer, flushing the DNS, trying to find different domain addresses, three different web browsers, turning off the firewall and allowing pop-ups, disabling and re-enabling the wi-fi, and several other things.I even tried different things when creating the username and password. So, we're either missing a very important step somewhere in the process or something is wrong with the network. I want to say it is the network. When the Librarian emailed one of the techs he said he checked “it” and it worked for him. I think the “it” he was referring to was the username and password. Which is great news, but we can't get to the step in the process that allows us to use that information, so we need someone to come out and either point out what we're doing wrong or fix whatever isn't working correctly.

We got an email that students had been added/updated in various programs, including Type to Learn and Odyssey. It would have been nice to know that Type to Learn was going to be messed with before I put so many hours into it. Thankfully they haven't done anything more to it since yesterday when I changed a couple hundred passwords. The new troubling thing is Odyssey, with the new server and website. When I checked it last week all it had were teachers. After receiving the email, I checked again and now all the students are there, and when I tested logging in with student information, I was able to do so. The interface looks completely different until you actually open an assignment and then it is the same old thing. It looks like now I will have to go in and add all the students into the correct classes again. One student at a time. Hooray. I'm going to send out an email to the teachers tomorrow letting them know what's up. The old Odyssey site is still working but I'm not sure for how long and I don't want teachers to waste a bunch of time adding in assignments in case they won't be recognized on the new site. Then I will also need to go around to all the computers in the lab, and every classroom that uses their laptop carts for Odyssey, and change the desktop shortcut to the new address. Can't wait for that.

This afternoon I nearly finished my sub charts. I made one for each class, typed all the names in, and put in all the pictures that I had of students from last year. Sometime in the near future I need to go around and take pictures of all the new kids so I can add those in. Then I can print those out and distribute them.

Tonight I went over to my friend's mom's house to get dog sitting and plant watering instructions. It all seemed fairly straightforward. She wanted to go grocery shopping for me but that felt kind of weird because I don't like taking food from other people. After I wasn't giving her much to work with she ended up handing me a gift card to a grocery store and told me to buy what I want. I have no plans to actually use it. She's already paying me for the dog sitting. I would prefer just popping in and letting the dog out and going on the occasional walk, but she is more worried about leaving the dog alone overnight because she has never been left alone overnight, so I will be spending the night, Thursday through Saturday night. She gets back sometime on Sunday. I'm supposed to walk the dog in the morning, before dinner, and then a short walk before bed. That is a whole lot of walking. I need more exercise though so it is definitely for the best. Although I might reconsider that when it is a hundred degrees outside. I also need to water the flowers in the backyard every day and the ones in the front every other day, and refill her fountain with water when it is looking low. I'm kind of nervous about the spending the night part because I don't like sleeping in new places, and I haven't decided yet if I'm going to take a shower there or go home before work to get ready. She wants me to treat the house like I live there, what's hers is mine, but I feel more comfortable in my own space, not encroaching on others. We'll see how it goes.

When I got home I spent the next couple hours reading a textbook. Oh, the good old days. The book had a very dense start, filled with a bunch of facts and figures that I'm glad I won't be having to memorize for a test. At some point I might need to reference them in writing but I won't be tested over them.

One thing I realized tonight is that I need to figure out a good way to organize my classes so they feel more tangible. I think a good start will be printing out the syllabus for each class. Maybe type up a schedule with all the assignment due dates on it. I've also thought about getting a planner or something similar to write the due dates down in and put notifications on my phone. I need to get a better grasp of the scope of each class so I can get a nice pace going and don't get overwhelmed by stuff sneaking up on me. I want to go about it like a professional adult, not like a young college kid who takes a bunch of naps and works on stuff the night before it is due. That's the goal anyway.

August 18, 2014

Good news, all of the student information returned to Type To Learn over the weekend. This means I didn't have to manually enter in all the students. I only needed to divide them back into classes, which didn't take me too long. I also found out when the first class came in to use the program, that I needed to change the password for everyone. I was quickly able to do that for the class in the lab and then spent an hour or two changing it for all the other kids in the school. Apparently the default password is different this year and that information wasn't sent out, along with the information that all the students would be wiped and reset in the system. But now it should be all good.

Later in the day I was able to go up and finish installing the program on all the fourth grade laptops. That still took about twenty to twenty-five minutes per laptop. Even with as many as five laptops going at a time it still took me close to two hours to put it on ten laptops. Tomorrow I'll be putting it on three laptops for one of the second grade teachers. None of the other teachers have expressed an interest in having it put on the laptops in their room and I am perfectly okay with that.

I made another trip out to the preschool trailer to help install SMART Board software. It gave me a chance to walk on the new turf on the little kid playground and it feels pretty cool. It also smells like a tire factory so hopefully that goes away. I also didn't borrow a key from the secretary so I ended up having to walk all the way around the building to the front door to get back in. It would have been a nice walk if it wasn't close to 100 degrees outside.

I worked with the Librarian to relearn how to change staff passwords. That took longer than it should have. The whole process is very convoluted and way less intuitive than it should be. I think I figured out how to cut out a few steps so that should be good. Hopefully one of both of us remember how to do that for more than a day or two so we won't have to learn it all over again.

We're still trying to figure out guest access to the wi-fi for student interns. It kind of worked last year but it wasn't great. So far this year it hasn't worked at all. I played around with it a little today but I'm going to take my laptop in tomorrow so I can mess with it some more. The problem with school laptops is that you have to log into them with staff or student information, which then automatically connects to the wi-fi. Even if you disconnect and the reconnect to the wi-fi it will use the information used to log into the computer, so we weren't able to try the intern information. At least according to the instructions, the Librarian has done everything correctly in setting up the username and password, so who knows. I came up with the solution of just using kindergartener login information, because it is relatively simple, and the interns won't have automatic access to a firewall-free internet, like they do with the guest network.

I started making sub charts today, which are just pages for each class with the pictures and names of all the kids in the class. These are helpful for substitute teachers. I'm using school pictures from last year and then I'll have to go around and take pictures for all the new kids, and the kindergarteners considering they're all new.

I got the form that the principal filled out when she nominated me for the award at the district meeting. It makes me sound awesome, which is really cool. I don't like a lot of public attention, so I'm glad I didn't win and have to go up in front of everyone, but every now and then it is nice to hear that all the work I do doesn't go unnoticed. It makes me feel good inside and I really appreciate it. I'm a fan of feedback, whether positive or negative, so I can continue doing what I'm getting right and so I can fix what I'm doing wrong.

After school I went and got my haircut and then I came home and started reading over the assignments for my first class. There are only seven assignments, two of which are just participation for the two weekends we go back to campus. There aren't a lot of points to be earned which means a lot more effort is going to be required to do well. I'm up for the challenge but I'll admit it looks a little daunting at the moment. I'm not sure about the second class because the new instructor just got access to the online environment today and sent out a message that he was hoping to have everything posted by the end of the week. Not the best start.

Tonight I watched YouTube videos, continued reading about the assignments, and wrote a little blurb introducing myself to the class. A lot of them have already submitted theirs and it seems like a majority have quite a bit of experience working in libraries. I have very little. That is intimidating but I also look forward to the opportunity of learning from them and gaining more insight into the field from their perspective on things.

August 17, 2014

To make up for such a long entry yesterday, today will be fairly short. I did very little today. I slept for about nine hours last night and that was glorious. Then I woke up and ate a giant cinnamon roll. I need to start eating healthier. It's hard to pass up a giant cinnamon roll though.

I paid tuition and read the syllabus for one of my classes. The other class didn't have a syllabus up yet so I'll have to look at that tomorrow when classes officially start. I am looking forward to actually getting a look at the classes so I can get a better understanding of what exactly will be required of me. Knowing that I have to get a 'B' or better still makes me a little nervous. I'll obviously be shooting for an 'A' but I'll feel more comfortable about that goal when I have a better feel for what the assignments are like.

The rest of my day was spent crocheting a little on my mom's project, and getting lost in a deep rabbit hole on YouTube. It has been awhile since I've gotten properly sidetracked to such a degree. I watched videos about the ukulele, trichotillomania, beatboxing, dancing, singing, Japanese precision walking, a couple performances by little Korean children that kind of looked like they were animatronic, photo restoration and coloration, video games, and other random things. I was all over the place.

August 16, 2014

I should have written this when I got home because at the moment I am incredibly tired and want to go sleep for ten hours or so. We'll see how this goes.

I woke up at six o'clock this morning. And then pretty much just laid there for about forty-five minutes before finally getting up. Fast forward a bit and I got ready and left the house a little after eight o'clock. For the first half hour or so of the trip it was foggy. Visibility was around a hundred yards and I occasionally had to use my windshield wipers to get the precipitation off my windshield. It felt like if I looked hard enough out across the fields I might catch a glimpse of Brigadoon.

The fog eventually cleared up and the drive was fairly uneventful until the tricky turn. I struggle to even describe the turn because it is hard to make sense of. It isn't labeled well and it is kind of hidden until you're right on top of it. I knew it was coming and when I saw it I turned on my blinker and started to take the turn. And then I saw some headlights and caught a “Do Not Enter” sign out of the corner of my eye. Turns out that wasn't the turn. It was the turn before the turn. It was for the cars coming onto the road I was on from the road I wanted to be on. I missed its existence when we went down for my interview so I wasn't expecting it. I made a quick correction, getting back into my lane, and then driving the hundred feet or so to the turn I actually wanted to take. I hesitate to think what was going through the minds of the drivers in the truck behind me and the truck coming up that one-way road. I probably looked like an idiot. After taking the right turn and getting on the road I needed to be on, I looked over and noticed my water bottle and all the papers I had the passenger seat had ended up on the floor in my violent correction from turning too soon. Hadn't even realized that had happened.

When we went down for my interview we ended up on the opposite side of town from the library and had to drive through town. The directions I got from Google turned out to be slightly different there at the end because I got into town right next to the library, so that was convenient. I managed to find the student union without a problem and got a parking spot right across the street.

I had never been in the union before but I knew the name of the room we were supposed to go to on the second floor so I climbed the stairs right inside the door. When I got to the second floor I took a look around. One way didn't look like it really lead anywhere so I walked the other direction and turned a corner, continuing to walk and eventually finding the room. I was shocked at my luck.

I grabbed my name sticker and name card for the table, signed in, and took a seat at the table in the back. A short time later a lady asked if she could sit down next to me and we ended up striking up a conversation. I'm glad I got a little conversational practice in at work in the last few days because there were several times throughout the day where I started conversations by asking questions, not just waiting for the other person to start them. This is a skill I should have learned as a child but I'm getting there.

Rather than standing up and introducing ourselves, which I was afraid would happen, we were tasked with talking to the person next to us and then introducing them. That was an interesting twist on the classic introduction and I appreciated it because it actually made standing up in front of a room of strangers a lot easier. Because I had already been talking with the lady next to me we had actually already covered most of the introductory-type stuff. We wrote it down and added some more stuff and then waited our turn. Which ended up being last because of how they were snaking around the tables. Some of my hobbies were mentioned in the introduction and during the first break and talked with a couple different ladies about knitting.

There ended up being quite a bit of diversity throughout the room. Not so much in race because almost everyone was white, but in terms of backgrounds. There were a couple people that came from Nebraska and Oklahoma. The lady I talked to had a four hour drive and I think it was another Nebraskan that drove eight hours. That is just crazy. Most of the people in the room were older with some probably around my age, and a few were recent undergrad graduates. Including myself there were six guys and the other fifty or so were girls. There were educators, current library workers, bookstore employees, telemarketers, office workers, and various other professions. It seemed like a fairly eclectic group.

Orientation started with a talk from the president of the university. He seemed like a pretty cool guy. At one point he asked graduates of the university to raise their hands, there were several. Then he asked them to keep their hands raised and asked the rest of us to look at them and remarked “look how bright they all look.” He told us a story from a couple days ago when he was sitting out on his back porch drinking coffee in the morning when a small group of freshman walked up. They asked several questions of him and it became clear early on that they didn't know he was the president of the university. Eventually they figured out the president lived in the house, and despite many hints that they were talking to the president, one of them asked if the president was inside the house and if they could meet him. The university has a lot of work ahead of them with that group. The last story the president had for us was about Abraham Lincoln. The university was started when Lincoln was President. He was the sixteenth President and the president of the university is currently the sixteenth president. He mentioned some qualities they share in common and ended with the fact that he avoids theaters, just in case.

After that the faculty members got up and introduced themselves. At least the ones that were there. One is currently in Tucson, Arizona so he recorded a video, which ended up being really funny. He recorded it on his laptop and he was sitting pretty close to it and talking quietly. He said he had to be quiet because he was in a public library. He said he was a librarian so he hangs out in libraries. Throughout the video he would pause and look around and at one point he commented that people kept looking at him like he had food. Immediately followed by the confession that he had just eaten a sandwich. Very funny.

We followed that with a brief tutorial on how to use Canvas, the online class environment, and it seemed fairly straightforward. Thankfully.

For lunch there was a taco bar. I was a little worried about the meat thing but I ended up being able to make tacos with rice, beans, lettuce, and salsa. That was way more than I expected. While trying to cut my hard brownie with a fork half of it shot off my plate and hit me in the chest. It was pretty funny. I ended up sitting with the same lady that sat next to me earlier and we were later joined by our adviser.

After lunch we listened to a panel of librarians. There was an academic, law, public, and school media specialist librarian. The academic librarian started and he didn't ever tell us what a typical day was like but his speech did kind of get me fired up to be a librarian. It was all about the history and importance of libraries and librarians. The next three librarians covered more of what their typical responsibilities are which was interesting. There was also a video from the archivist at the university because she was out of town and couldn't attend orientation. The major problem with the video was that it was shot vertically on a phone. It was hard to watch. But becoming an archivist still sounds like it would be fun. I don't know how old the lady in the video was but she was on the younger side and in part of the video she was explaining how she had to evaluate new items to be added to their collection. Her example was some cup or horn or something and when she looked at the date on the bottom it was from 1976, and she said “so it's pretty old.” Half of the room groaned and laughed because they were obviously around for 1976 and don't count things from that time period as being old. It was pretty funny.

When the panel was over we broke into two groups. One going to get their ID cards while the others, myself included, stayed in the room so our adviser could go over the information in the folders we were given. Then the two groups switched and we were free to go as soon as we had our IDs. When we were standing in line there was fairly consistent undergrad traffic filing by and they all looked so young. I commented to the two people next to me how waiting to get my ID card made me feel like a freshman again but I felt much older. As I sat down to have my picture taken the guy told me to hold until the flash. I immediately blinked when I heard the click of the shutter and the flash probably caught me in mid-blink and mid-explanation from me saying I had blinked. So the guy retook the picture, and I didn't blink. It actually ended up being one of the best pictures I have taken. I had in my head that we were going to be there until six o'clock but I think that is when we come down for class. After getting my ID, using the restroom, and walking out to my car, it was only 3:30PM.

Before heading home I went and found Spangels and ordered food to take home for dinner. I only took one wrong turn but it was easily corrected and I was able to get my food and an orange juice slush. The drink was probably a mistake because I had to use the restroom for the entire last leg of my trip home.

Speaking of, the trip, not the restroom, I went home a different way. According to Google it was slightly faster. I ended up crossing over the interstate three times, which seemed a bit excessive, and then took a long detour around farmland. I was a bit concerned when the road kept going east for so long but it eventually turned back north. And I eventually made it back home, in exactly an hour and a half, with a peak average MPG of 33.1, which I am happy with. The MPG that is, I wasn't that impressed with the time because it was supposed to be faster. Later in the night I took a closer look at the map online and discovered I had inadvertently taken the third suggested route, which did go farther east than the one I intended to take. In my defense, the road I was supposed to get one wasn't really labeled well and it ended up being a smaller looking road which was attached to the road I was on and a sharp bend. So if I had been drunk and kept going straight I would have ended up on the right road, but I kept with the curve, if that description makes sense. It turns out I got kind of lucky that the third route existed because if it didn't I may have ended up in Missouri before I realized my mistake. One of my fellow students ended up being about two hours late to orientation because she had gotten on the wrong road and ended up several towns away. I think that would have been worse than getting turned around and arriving home a little late.

Tonight I watched YouTube videos and started crocheting my mom's cotton thing. She said she doesn't want to use it as a dishcloth, maybe as more of a decorative thing, so I'm not exactly sure what I'm making. After persistent questioning I managed to get her to tell me how wide she wanted it, so that is a start. It took me a couple attempts to get the size right but I ended up pretty close. Now I just need to keep going. It'll end up being bigger than the one I made my sister so I'll have a chance to remember how to switch threads.

With frequent pauses to just sit here with my eyes closed and wish I was in bed, this took me around an hour to write. Good grief. I'm going to bed now.

August 15, 2014

Two things I keep forgetting. The first, I came back to a marker-covered desk. Permanent marker. All over the place. It was obviously done by the hand of a small, unsupervised child. I'm assuming one belonging to Boys & Girls Club. I was pretty annoyed. I borrowed some cleaning stuff from the librarian and it managed to fade the marker a tiny bit but that was about it. I think it may have worked on a desk with a laminate top or something similar, but my desk is metal. I think powder coated metal. I scrubbed with great fervor but the paint was starting to lighten so I gave up. I just try to ignore it now.

The second thing. The other day a couple of classes went to a nearby park for recess. While the kids played the teachers were approached by an angry mother and grandma who were there with seven kids. The grandma wanted to know why they were there and one of the teachers explained that the playground at school was currently under construction. The grandma told them that the kids could have played in the grass next to the playground. And the teacher explained that they couldn't because the whole area was a construction zone with dangerous equipment. The grandma didn't like that and told the teachers that this was a public park and it wasn't meant for them. Um... so it's a selectively public park? The grandma told them that she was going to call the principal and the school board. I don't know about the school board but she did end up calling the principal and complaining. The principal thanked her for the call. It would be nice if the grandma ended up calling the school board because maybe it would speed up work on the playground.

I spent a good portion of my day yesterday getting Type To Learn 4 ready for classes to use and today we had the first test. And it was a complete failure. By no fault of my own, thankfully, but it was still incredibly frustrating. When the first kid tried to log in, they couldn't. I tried it just to make sure and it didn't work. Then I logged in as an administrator and when I clicked on the management button I was greeted by an empty student list. There wasn't a student in the entire district. What the crap. They told us last year that scores would be wiped at the end of each year but I didn't think they meant they were going to delete all the students from the system. There is a button in the student management section that wipes the scores, you don't actually need to delete the student and start from scratch. I am hoping that today was some sort of transition period and they're just moving the database to a new location or maybe updating something. I really don't want to have to manually create accounts for a couple hundred kids.

On a more productive note, although at the moment pointless, I got Type To Learn installed on one of the fourth grade laptop carts and seven laptops in the other cart. Not bad considering it takes for freaking ever to install the program. And then almost as long to delete the one gigabyte install file from the laptop.

I made a short trip out to the preschool trailer today to install a printer. I couldn't get wireless to work without plugging the printer into the network, and the network outlet was in an inconvenient place, so the preschool teacher decided she was fine with just plugging the printer into her computer when she needed to print.

Most of my afternoon was spent making a few sheets that have pictures of all the teachers and staff, with their names and position. I nearly finished it but I need pictures of the new paras, which the secretary said she would try to get on Monday.

Tonight I agreed to dog sit for my friend's mom next weekend. She texted me yesterday, and I thought it was her because I recognized the dog's name, but it also could have been a complete stranger. I texted my friend to see if that was his mom's number (because I only have her home phone number) and never heard back, so I looked it up on the internet and was able to confirm it was her. She texted again today to say it was her, because she had forgotten that part, so all my research was unnecessary. She said in her first text that she had heard through the grapevine that I was a really good dog sitter. I have no idea where that rumor started but it has been persistent. Last year the librarian and one of the paras became convinced I was a good dog sitter. I have no idea why but they got it in their heads. There have always been dogs in my house, since the time I was born until the present, but I have never once looked after someone else's dog. It's just a very random rumor to have about oneself. I guess it's better than having salacious ones floating around. Anyway, I agreed to it and I'm going to go over Tuesday to get instructions. It will apparently also involve the watering of flowers and putting water in a fountain. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of staying at someone's house when they aren't there but I'm always trying to push my comfort zone, though I am rarely successful. In the past couple of days I have actually made an effort to carry on a conversation by asking questions, rather than just waiting for the other person to talk. So minor successes have been made.

Tomorrow will hopefully be another success, when I have to drive down for my graduate school orientation. It's a pretty straightforward drive, and I there recently with my mom and sister when I had my interview, but sitting in the backseat on the drive is a little different than actually driving. I am notorious for psyching myself out and taking exits way before the one I should be taking. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen.

I spent tonight looking at directions and I not only printed them out but also saved them on my phone. I plan on taking the “familiar” way down, which is how we went for my interview, but then coming back a different way, which should be slightly faster. I want to go down that way because it brings me into town right by the university, rather than having to drive through town with the other route, but I don't want to risk missing a turn and getting there late. If the new route coming home is a success I think that is the one I'll probably use when I have to go back during the semester for classes.

I'm feeling pretty anxious about the whole thing. Not just the drive but also finding my way to the meeting room and then interacting with strangers all day. I am more often than not a solo person but I also don't like engaging in new experiences on my own, hence why I don't engage in a lot of new experiences. But this will be another perfect opportunity to go way outside of my comfort zone. So far into uncharted uncomfortable territory. I am also really looking forward to it though, because this is the long-awaited start to grad school and hopefully a future I will be happy with. Or at the very least a job that requires a college degree. The ultimate goal.