Wednesday, September 24, 2014

September 24, 2014

Today was a really quiet day. My first class went on a field trip today so they obviously didn't come down to the lab. My second class never showed up because they had a substitute and the teacher accidentally wrote down that the class was supposed to have PE. When it turned out they did, the substitute got flustered and just took the class out for recess instead. I had my next two classes but then I was done for the day. And besides not having classes in the lab, there weren't any classes in the music room next door until late this afternoon and half of the classes in the building had various field trips today so there wasn't a lot of traffic outside the lab. Time just seemed to kind of float on by.

I spent most of my day finishing up the magnifying sheets for the resource teacher. I can't remember how many I made but I think it was around twelve or fourteen. There was a lot of getting close to my screen to adjust things and then staring really closely at the printed pages to make sure everything was correct. Size three font is incredibly tiny. The original one that I was copying the idea from had size four font, which maybe I should have gone with, but three was the smallest size that was still easily legible. With a magnifying glass at least. Which the kids will have. I probably should have borrowed one from the resource teacher. She wasn't around when I finished so I just left the finished sheets on her desk, but I need to stop by in the morning to see if she's happy with everything.

I also added printers and pinned stuff to the taskbar for one of the paras who now works for Boys & Girls Club but still works out of the resource room, although she moved to the second room in the resource room. I don't know, it's strange, but she got a new laptop and she's been having me do stuff to it so it is easier to use and makes more sense to her.

Near the end of the day I started working on editing the pictures I took of one of the kindergarten classes yesterday. I did the same thing last year and the teacher uses their portraits for various things. Sometime soon we should be getting in the school pictures so I can make sub charts again but the kindergarten teacher wants the pictures for literacy centers which start next week, so I'm getting these ready until the official ones come in. I made it about halfway so I should be able to finish up tomorrow unless the sixth graders take all day to test. Which might happen.

I wanted the sixth graders to come in this morning and I emailed the principal about it yesterday but she didn't actually see the email until ten minutes before school was out this afternoon. So tomorrow could possibly be a rather long day of watching kids test. Some of them have so far to go. Part of me kind of hopes one or two are absent just to show that not testing until the final few days doesn't give you enough wiggle room for absent kids or ones that take forever to test. I think there was at least one test last year where I blocked off the last day to force teachers to sign up earlier to give us that buffer. The principal mentioned doing that again for the next test. It's kind of like giving me a month to do something. It may only take me an hour or two to do that something but I'm going to drag it out that whole month. There are some teachers that will use all the allotted time you give them, including the last day. And there are some kids that will take several hours to take a test if you don't give them a time limit. Thankfully most of those kids get a decent enough score that it kind of makes up for the fact they took so long. But sometimes it is only a few points above a kid that took the test in well under an hour. At some point it just isn't worth spending an extra two or three or four hours to get an extra couple of points.

After work I picked up dinner and then stopped by the old house for awhile before heading back to the new house for Chipotle night. We talked about our days a little bit but most of the conversation was about grandma stuff and how crazy that whole situation is.

Near the end of dinner the UPS guy showed up. I was hoping UPS would come around earlier at the new house but it was nearly seven o'clock when he came tonight. I'm hoping he just got confused by the address since it is a brand new house. We'll see the next few times I order something. Anyway, the UPS guy delivered the digital antenna I bought. I wasn't expecting miracles and that is a good thing. There were a couple channels that almost came in, a FOX channel that was watchable but the aspect ratio kept changing and there was a lot of interference, and there was one good channel. And it was the channel that the guide I found online said would be the weakest. Weird. I'm a little annoyed that PBS won't even kind of come in. But I don't really watch much TV anymore so I don't really care. I just want the internet. My sister spotted cable flags up at the top of the cul-de-sac so that seems to be a good sign. The original estimate was the middle of September, which didn't happen, so maybe sometime next month. I would be okay with that.

Tonight I came over to the old house to write this and watch the latest episode of Doctor Who. When my mom canceled the cable over here they said she had ten days but they apparently took the all of the channels away almost immediately because Doctor Who didn't record last Saturday. Thankfully I can watch it online. I liked this latest episode. No one died, at least not any of the characters they spent time introducing, which is unique for series eight so far.


Now I am going to go to bed because I have a headache and I think a major contributor is the fact that I spent most of my day intently staring at a computer screen. And my glasses still kind of bother me. So that combination is a killer. Sleep will be nice.

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