This morning I woke up at six o'clock. That is what I did for most
of last year but then switched to 6:30AM when I lost interest in
exercise. By the end of the year it got ever closer to seven
o'clock. This year I attempted six o'clock a few times but then
settled on 6:30AM. Fascinating stuff. Anyway, I got up early today
so I could stop by the mechanic before work to have them look at my
tire. Which they did. It was misting outside while the guy looked
at it, so that was annoying, but he said the gash in my tire appeared
to be mostly cosmetic damage. I guess it is located on the thickest
part of the tire and there isn't any sign of bubbling, which would
indicate a cut deep enough to compromise the integrity of the tire.
He told me to keep an eye out for bubbling but as long as that wasn't
happening I should be fine.
That was relatively good news. Good because I haven't been driving
on a dangerous tire and I don't need to immediately drop money on
replacing it. At some point I will probably replace it, just for my
own peace of mind. Then I could maybe keep the tire as a spare,
since my car doesn't have one. Despite the news, I still swapped
cars with my mom because I didn't want to risk it on the small,
winding highways for my trip this weekend.
There was a test first thing this morning and it went pretty well.
One of the kids in the class is the one I had to send to the office
last year during a test because he became incredibly uncooperative
and started clicking random answers and attempted to leave. He is
still an awful test taker. Today he would spend at least five
minutes on a question, sometimes much more, and after finally picking
an answer, would immediately make an exasperated sound and huff in
dismay at the first glimpse of the next question. More often than
not without even really looking at the question. It was super
annoying. I felt bad for the kid next to him, who happens to be the
smartest kid in the class. He's in fourth grade now but when he was
in second grade the teacher joked that he didn't think the seating
chart in the room was working so she told him to do it and he came up
with a better one. So this kid, who actually makes an effort of
these stupid tests, is elbow-to-elbow with the kid who is constantly
moving around and making noise and being distracting. And he still
somehow manages to get the highest score in the class. I'm
impressed.
After that test I had the second grade classes in the lab. By the
end of the second class I was able to finish cutting out my vowel
slider things I made for one of the resource teachers. I am happy
with how they turned out. Slightly impressed. More so or in a
different way than other people might be when they see them because I
know how much time I put in to actually measuring everything and
making sure it all worked out.
This afternoon there was another test. It went smoothly, no overly
annoying kids, and all but one kid managed to finish. I wasn't
surprised by this because she was a slow test taker last year as
well. That seems to be a fairly persistent trait. If a kid is a
slow test taker, they're a slow test taker. I should probably warn
teachers about these kids in advance, and the ones who test in the
lab but should probably be locked in a room by themselves.
The last class of the day was out of the lab a little while before
three o'clock, and after shutting down all of the computers and
printing off some stuff for this weekend, I was out of there by
3:15PM. I normally don't adjust another person's drivers seat but my
mom is quite a bit shorter than me and there was no way I was going
to drive for an hour and a half completely squished behind the wheel.
So I adjusted that. But I left everything else the way it is. And,
if I forget to move the seat back, or don't even attempt it because I
have no idea where it started, my mom won't have to worry about
hitting her knee on the steering wheel like I did after she moved my
seat forward and forgot to move it back.
My mom didn't have much gas so I filled it up and then headed home to
pick up the stuff I packed for this weekend. I didn't bring it with
me to school because there was the chance that I would have to leave
my car at the mechanic and I didn't want to have to drag it all out.
I also wanted to make a sandwich for dinner and grab some snacks.
I was on the road at 4:06PM and the drive went well. I didn't miss
the tricky turn like last time when I briefly attempted to turn the
wrong way on a one-way off-ramp. In fact, I didn't make a single
wrong turn the in the entire trip. I referenced my printed
directions several times, just in case, but it was almost as if I
knew where I was going.
On the final stretch the speed limit was 65MPH but the line of at
least sixteen cars that I was in the middle of only occasionally hit
50MPH, most likely by accident, and spent most of the time around
40MPH. When we eventually got to a widened area with a passing lane,
we all sailed by the really old dude in the white suburban who had
been leading the parade. Problem solved. Or not. Apparently the
Wal-Mart semi next in line wanted to keep the thrills going and he
eventually slowed back down to the same speed. It sucked, not helped
by the fact that I really had to pee.
I pulled into town at exactly 5:30PM and my first stop was a gas
station to use the restroom before heading on to the university
library. I parked and ate my sandwich before heading inside around
5:45PM. I thought that would be pretty early but all but a few
people were already there. That was unexpected. I ended up take a
seat in the back, which I had no problem with because I like the
back. A lady sat next to me who moved from Colorado (maybe to go to
this school) after thirteen years of being a hairdresser. I'm really
impressed with the ability to cut hair, honestly. It seems like
someone that should be really simple but it's really not. It's kind
of like musicians, they make it look easy.
As for the class itself, it went well. The professor seems like a
pretty cool guy and he cracked a lot of jokes which is always nice.
I printed off all the slides and stuff before leaving work today and
then he proceeded to hand out pretty much everything I had printed
off. Whoops. I like being prepared, though, and my printouts were
better because they left me room to take notes.
In the second part of the night we broke into small groups to discuss
different topics. I actually contributed to the conversation in our
small group, although I started to feel a little lost near the end.
I didn't chime in during the larger group discussion. To me, joining
a conversation feels like double dutch, trying to find the right
moment to jump in. I am getting better at doing it in one-on-one
conversations and even small groups, but I'm not quite there with
large groups yet. Hopefully I still manage to get some participation
points out of this weekend.
At the end of the night I managed to find my hotel without a problem,
minus a small error in the Google directions. They told me the hotel
would be on the left, but there was no place to actually turn left,
unless I wanted to drive over the small mound that was a median. I
ended up having to drive down to the next intersection and then go
through a parking lot to get back on the highway and get to the
hotel. But I got there.
I ended up having to wait awhile because there was a chatty guy in
front of me. I learned that he is from Alaska and works on a yacht.
He doesn't use social media because he “multi-dates” and that
wouldn't turn out well. He is here for a birthday/reunion and he
brought twenty pounds of salmon and that much or more of lobster.
He's got a twenty-six year old daughter and six year old
granddaughter. And he uses face-time tech support a lot on the
yacht. He also gave wise words of advice to the girl behind the
counter who was in training while going to school full time. Those
words were basically if you're going through life and everything is
easy then you're coasting downhill.
I also learned from the yacht guy that the group of older gentlemen
sitting off a ways in the lobby were there for their 50th
class reunion. I really wanted to go over and ask to just sit in on
their conversation. I like grandfatherly types. I didn't catch a
lot of what they were say but I did overhear one of them say: “The
instructor advised me to drop the course after my highest score on
anything was a negative twenty.” Hilarious.
My room is alright. Not almost a hundred dollars worth of alright
but it's alright. I really just want to go to bed but tomorrow we
have to sign up for our small groups that will cover a case study
from one of our books. He told us what cases we have to choose from
and I want to look them over and maybe pick out some that I would
like to do. I probably won't get to sign up until after most
everyone else because I'm slow like that, but we'll see. I just hope
I don't get stuck with the one about porn in the library.
The professor also gave us a paper he wrote and said we don't have to
read it as homework but we could discuss it briefly tomorrow if we
wanted to. So I'm going to try and read that. I read the first
couple of pages when I got into the room but stopped to write this.
It is about his belief that we will never become a completely digital
society, which is an interesting topic. But I am also tired. I've
got thirty minutes to meet my goal of getting to bed by midnight.
Tomorrow I think I want to wake up around 6:30AM so I can get ready
and walk over and check out the free breakfast. I get to order one
item for free off the guest menu at the restaurant. Hopefully that
item is an actual meal, not just a side of beans or an egg or
something. We'll see. I kind of like that it isn't a buffet-type
thing where all the good stuff is gone by the time you get there.
Class starts tomorrow at nine o'clock but our adviser (who remembered
my name) said she would be there by 8:30AM, so I might try to be
there around that time since fifteen minutes early is apparently not
that early. I thought class went until six o'clock tomorrow but it
is actually five o'clock, which was a pleasant surprise. Although,
the class tonight made me wish I was actually in a “normal” class
again, not one that is mostly online, because I like the classroom
setting. But, the professor believes that the mostly online model
with a couple face-to-face meetings is a better system for learning
because we have to become self-guided learners. Or something like
that.
I've been tired since I started driving down here today, so I'm going
to call this good and see if I can look over some case studies and
maybe read a paper before going to bed.
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