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.