My main goal for my time at work this morning before the actual
school day started was to get everything set up on my laptop so I
could record a local radio station. One of the paras at work has a
son in a band and they were on the radio this morning for a brief
interview and then to play a song. My mom asked me if I could record
it and I knew I could as long as I could find a stream of the radio
station online, which I was able to do. I then did a few trial runs
just to make sure everything was going to work out. It would have
been real annoying to get done recording everything only to find out
the volume was muted somewhere along the line. I can't remember what
it was but I did have a hangup at some point but I got everything
worked out about ten minutes before they were supposed to be on.
About five minutes before they came on I started the recording. I
listened to a little bit of the interview but then I had to go down
for second grade reading groups.
The second grade teacher was gone today and my favorite substitute
was there, so the class didn't have their normal centers. I didn't
really have anything to do, other than write an annotated
bibliography, which I was avoiding. Plus, my favorite substitute is
always entertaining.
Instead of the regular reading groups, the substitute was going of
the outline of a story (characters, setting, beginning/middle/end).
They had done one example before I got there and shortly after I
arrived the substitute read a story and then as a class they figured
out the outline. It turned out maybe they were supposed to do that
individually after she read the story but she just told them to copy
down what was on the board. I wish it were surprising how many kids
weren't able to finish that relatively simple task in the
considerable amount of time they were given. Then she handed out
another blank outline sheet and told the kids to make up their own
story. This was also a fairly difficult task for some of the kids
who just couldn't quite get it. At the beginning of the task the
substitute suggested they write a story about “the computer guy”
and several of them took her up on that. I didn't hear all of the
stories but I know in at least two of them I go married, which all
the kids found hilarious.
When my time was up and the class had to go to PE, I went back to the
lab to check on my recording. The radio stream crapped out after an
hour and a half of recording but that was more than enough to get
what I needed. I then spent quite a bit of time chopping it up.
There was a fair bit of struggle because at certain points I couldn't
get it to cut or copy and then I ended up pasting the wrong stuff.
But I got it all figured out. I ended up making to MP3s, one that
included the band's entire appearance, with the interview and the
song, and then a second one that was just the song. I then emailed
both to the para. I didn't know if maybe the radio station would
give them a copy of their time on air or what but if not, maybe the
para will like my recording. If she ever checks her email.
After lunch I briefly stopped down in the kindergarten room because
they were having their Halloween party. The kids were sitting at
their tables with a plates of food and drawing on tiny pumpkins with
markers. It was one hell of a party.
From there I went upstairs because the gifted teacher told me she was
having trouble connecting to the wireless with her tablet again. The
Guest wireless was set to automatically connect which was part of the
issue but I also think maybe she was typing in her username and
password incorrectly. The physical keyboard she has for her tablet
is kind of a pain. I ended up typing in my information and it worked
straight away. After that it started connecting automatically so
we'll see how long that lasts.
Later in the afternoon we had a chemistry assembly. Every year a few
kids from the chemistry fraternity on campus come and put on a little
demo. Minus the kindergartener who was burned to the point of
blisters all along his backside when one of the guys dumped liquid
nitrogen on the floor, it was a really good show. And the burned kid
didn't come to light until much later so that didn't affect the show.
It was the same old thing as the last two years in terms of the
parlor tricks but the presenters were much better. I don't even
remember who did it the last two years. I could probably go back and
check my entries to see what I had to say about both but I am almost
positive neither of them even came close. The one guy must to
standup on the weekend because he was real quick on his feet and had
comebacks for everything. He would called kids out by what they were
wearing, like “turn around tiger stripes” and “yes, you, blue
shirt”, but the best was probably when he called a kid “green
sleeves” and then in an offhanded way, like it just came to him,
quoted a line from the song. As for the demonstrations, because the
presenters had more personality, they were better, and the last one,
which involves exploding two balloons, they both made a huge boom. I
am vaguely remembering that maybe last year the weather was kind of
bad and the people then blamed the lackluster explosions on that. No
excuses needed this year.
Tonight was my first night back at the theater in a long time. At
least since August. At least I think I worked in August. Either
way, it feels like I have been gone forever but at the same time it
feels like just yesterday. I feel sad about that. Coming back here
feels comfortable because I've been here so long but I also hate it.
I really hope this library thing works out.
The reason for my return is basically because corporate implemented a
few new things, and along with some other things, a lot of stuff is
kind of broken. At the moment: one projector has to be wired into
another one in order to work, one has to have the move manually
started (it was two but the second was fixed tonight) and that one
has to be technically started three times because the first two times
it stops after a few seconds, one has to have everything manually
started, and at least one won't bring the scope lens down when the
movie starts. That last one is part of the new corporate thing.
Apparently they got tired of mislabeled trailers so instead of
putting scope trailers on scope movies and flat trailers on flat
movies, now it is just flat trailers across the board, regardless of
the aspect ratio of the movie. This means if it is a scope movie,
the lens has to stay up during the trailers and then go down right
before the movie, which means another cue, which means one more thing
that can go wrong. And it is already going wrong. This all seems
ridiculous to me but at least for the time being, it means I have a
job. Although, I was pretty much having to do all of this stuff
before, I just wasn't making a big deal about it. If tonight is
anything to go on, however, things have certainly gone downhill since
this summer. Along with fixing all the projector stuff, I also
cleaned the stairs leading up to projection because they hadn't been
cleaned since I left and they were covered in popcorn. And I went
down and helped clean theaters because now they have to justify my
position more. Which means going down to clean every now and then.
Whatever.
We had a late show
of Halloween (which a whole
nine people showed up for) and I needed a break after reading the
assigned chapter and article for my research class, so I went down
and watched the last half of Fury.
That is a really intense movie. I feel like a lot of times they
held the viewers hand in terms of making it obvious what was going to
happen at certain points, but I still enjoyed it. At some point I'll
have to watch the whole thing. But not tonight because they theater
is closed, obviously, and it is also almost two o'clock in the
morning and I have been up since before the sun.
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