October 8, 2014

This morning there was a lunar eclipse and I decided that I wanted to see it. I set my alarm for five o'clock in the morning, which is technically 4:55AM because my clock is five minutes fast. That is way too early. But I got up anyway, put on some shoes, a hoodie, and a stocking cap, and went out in the backyard. By walking out past the house, into the middle of the yard, I was able to see the moon, which was about three-quarters of the way eclipsed. I got a picture on my phone by zooming in as far as it would go, and it didn't look great but by zooming in further on the final picture you can actually tell what I was taking a picture of. Shortly after taking that picture I heard the sprinklers come on in the front yard so I quickly moved back to the patio because I wasn't sure if they were going to come on in the backyard, too. After a little while they hadn't come on so I walked back out to look at the moon again. I had to wait for some clouds to pass and had just gotten another glimpse of the moon when I heard the sprinklers come on in the backyard. It was still dark outside so I couldn't actually see the sprinklers. I just crossed my fingers and headed back to the patio, hoping I got the timing right and wouldn't get hit. My timing was awful and I was broadsided by a sprinkler, soaking my left side.

I wasn't ready to go back inside yet because I wanted to see the moon fully eclipsed so I headed around to the front of the house and took up a position on the driveway in front of the single garage. It is set back a foot or so from the double garage so I kind of wedged myself into the corner so I could lean back, get a steady picture with my phone, and block myself a little from the slight breeze. This positioned turned out not to be the best but I got several more decent pictures. At least decent for a phone.

Sometime before 5:30AM the neighbors garage door opened and he headed off to work, I assume. He made it to the top of the circle before coming back down, this time I assumed he forgot something. The first time he left he backed out in such a way that his truck didn't face me. The second time he went the other way so his headlights crossed over me. I didn't think much of it and went back to watching the moon.

Twenty minutes later a car came down the road and I didn't think much of it because I was watching the moon. A little while later a second car stopped in front of the driveway and I was greeted by two law enforcement officers. Turns out the neighbor had seen someone at his neighbor's house who didn't belong. That someone was me, and I did belong there, but it was a completely justified call. I was wearing all dark clothing and probably looked like a bit of a creeper. It would have been nice had he not called the cops but at the same time, I think it is kind of great to know that the neighbor is willing to call the cops when he sees something suspicious at his neighbor's house. Anyway, I talked to the cops, giving the first one my information so he could call it in and check things out. I'm just glad I changed my address at the DMV because I probably would have been screwed had my old address popped up considering I didn't have my wallet on me or any other form of identification. I would have had to lead the officers around back and into the basement to get my ID because I also didn't have my keys on me. And going in the front door would have woken the dogs up and that would have sucked. I figured at the very least, if it got to the point where I had to take them around back and show them my driver's license (which still has my old address because I opted for the piece of paper because I didn't want to pay for a new card) I could have shown them the life-size plywood cutout of myself. That seems like pretty solid proof that I live there.

After maybe ten or fifteen minutes, everything checked out and the cops were on there way. The one apologized to me and I said it was alright because I was sure I probably did look like a bit of a creep dressed in dark clothing and huddled in a corner. I had explained to them earlier that I was just out watching the moon and that I had to move to the driveway after the sprinklers came on in the backyard. When I mentioned that it was a first-world problem that got a laugh out of one of the cops.

I went down to the library this morning to talk to the librarian about the update stuff I did yesterday that didn't seem to actually do anything, and we eventually talked about that, but I spent most of the time telling her and a para about my morning with the cops. A little bit later on I went into the teacher's lounge to show her the pictures I took of the moon and ended up retelling my story to all the teacher's and paras that were hanging out in there. I will admit, it is a pretty good story.

I finished making and organizing my MAP pie charts. I also briefly started on trying to come up with another way to visualize the data. Still haven't quite figured that out yet.

This morning while her class was in the lab I helped my fifth grade teacher friend come up with possible events for a school Olympics. The events I remember are typing, long division on the board, handwriting, erasing completely enough that you can read what is written on top of it, handing out papers, picking up a mess on the floor, and pushing seats back under desks or in the lab, putting headphones back on the computer towers and pushing stools under the tables. I think the whole thing has potential. We'll see if it goes anywhere.

It was early release and near the end of the day I helped the music teacher out with a YouTube dilemma. She made a song in GarageBand and wanted to upload it directly from her iPad to YouTube, something that she has done without a problem in the past. This time however, it told her it was only a song, not a video, and that it couldn't be uploaded. I tried converting it to an MP4 to see if that would trick YouTube but it didn't. I ended up having to download Windows Movie Maker, drop in the song and a random picture so it would be considered a slideshow/video (I picked a cute koala), and then put it into the music teacher's folder on the shared drive so she could upload it to her account and the kids could listen to it. It was a very convoluted process but I got it figured out.

Unsurprisingly, I accomplished now grad school work today. That is really starting to annoy me but I can't seem to do anything about it. I need to work something else out though because I'm going to be royally screwed in the not too distant future if I don't get things sorted out.

Chipotle night was good tonight and I finally gave my sister her birthday presents, which she really liked. She brought over some of the older photo albums from my grandma's house so if I have the time tomorrow at work I'm going to start scanning. The plan is to put a bunch of them on a page at one time, number them, and send them off to my grandma and ask her to tell me who's in the picture, and either the story behind the picture or the people in the picture. Then at some point when I get to the final product I plan on combining the pictures with the information. Somehow. I haven't actually decided how I want to do that yet.

And now it is almost ten o'clock and I have been up since five o'clock, so I'm going to call it a night.