September 4, 2014

Last night I wanted to see if I could get one of those speed limit signs that shows how fast you're going to show 1 mph. I know for sure I saw a six, maybe a five, but I don't think it goes below that. I'm going to try again tonight if no one is behind me.

This morning when I got to work I headed down to the third grade room to work on the laptops again. On the way I was stopped by the music teacher who introduced her kindergarten daughter to me. I knew she was in the class my mom works with but I only know a few of the kindergarteners at this point in the year. Anyway, the music teacher told me that her daughter came up to me last night and asked when my mom was coming back because she doesn't like the substitute para, which seems to be the general consensus. The music teacher explained that my mom had just bought a house so she needed to take some time off work. And then while we were standing there, the music teacher dropped a bombshell. She looked at her daughter and told her that I was my mom's son (which sounds weird to say without names but whatever). I have never seen such a look of disbelief on a child's face in my life. It was the definition of a stunned look. It was hilarious.

Then while we were standing there someone pounded on the outside door. It ended up being my favorite substitute. We talked briefly and then I went and got my phone to show her some pictures and the dishcloth I'm still crocheting. After talking for a bit I finally made it into the third grade room. I spoke with that teacher about crocheting for awhile because she used to do it a lot when her kids were young. I made a start on the laptops before getting called next door by my favorite substitute to figure out an overhead projector thing. And I was called back later to help with a VHS thing. Despite all that, I managed to make it through the first set of laptops, minus one that wasn't cooperating. One or two of them actually had the remote update but all the others required me to do things manually.

Most of the rest of my morning and some of the afternoon was spent editing pictures of the custodian and Evel Kneviel. I have one school picture of the custodian from two years ago and I used that to put his face on the Kneviel pictures. There was a lot of editing involved, including a bit of perspective shifting of the custodians face and a lot of smudging and cloning and color tweaks to make his face look aged enough to match the look of the Kneviel pictures. It was a fun project and I ended up with three pictures that didn't look half bad considering I have no formal experience in photo editing. I just kind of make it up as I go and read a tutorial every now and then. When I got the pictures done I added borders and shadows to make them look nice and then made a background to put them on in Publisher, turning it into a small poster or flyer. I made several copies for the office lady and emailed her a PDF of it so she could send it to the other maintenance people so they could print it off and put it up places. The office lady put her copies up around the building.

With the rest of my day, when there weren't classes in the lab, I printed off my blank score sheets for MAP testing next week. For a couple classes I somehow managed to miss the first five or six kids, so I had to go back and add them in and print off new sheets. That was pretty strange. But now I'm ready. I just need two more seating charts so I can type them up.

After work I stopped by the old house for a bit before heading to the new house. My mom made contact with the cats today but decided to wait another day or two before traumatizing them again by trying to get them into the carrier and taking them to the new house. Seems like a smart move.

At the new house I read one of my textbooks for awhile, stopped for dinner, and then continued reading until I finished a chapter a little before 8:30PM. Then I headed back to the old house to watch the latest episode of Doctor Who along with some YouTube videos. I have fallen horribly behind on my Watch Later list. There used to be a 200 video limit but that has obviously changed because I currently have 280 videos needing to be watched. I'm never going to catch up. Certainly not tonight because I'm going to finish this up and then go back to the new house so I can sleep.