May 4, 2015

 For a very brief period, it was one thousand years in the future, as I mistyped the year while trying to type today's date. I can say with almost complete certainty that my journal will not be around in a thousand years. Not even the faintest of thoughts that it existed at all. Or that I existed for that matter. And if that turns out not to be the case, I can say with almost complete certainty that I won't know either way. I would be interested to see what does exist in a thousand years, though. If one thousand years in the past is any indication, I imagine things will hardly be recognizable.

Today we had MAP testing and assemblies. The first test went normally and then the second test was split in two, with a break for the first assembly in the middle. It was the high school choir but I only caught the last two songs. During the majority of the performance I was back in the computer lab, popping keys off a keyboard so I could clean out the puddle of juice lying within. One of the sixth graders spilled half a juice box on the keyboard during his test (a perfect example for why food and drink should not be allowed). I gave him disinfectant wipes and q-tips to clean up as best he could, which turned out not to be that good, and then after they left for the assembly I popped the keys and cleaned up the rest.

After lunch a fourth grade class tested and all but three of them finished before the afternoon assembly. Those three were supposed to return after the assembly but they didn't so they'll have to come back another time to finish.

The second assembly was a magic show. I think the overall theme was supposed to be respect. Or some other 'R' word. I can't remember. I think that was only halfheartedly tacked on so the magician lady and her assistant husband could give their performance in schools. The performance itself was pretty awful. They apparently travel all over the country doing their show but it felt like they came up with it an hour before they went on stage. The tricks weren't that great, they even had to start one over because they messed it up, and the jokes weren't that funny.

For one of their final acts they turned the gym teacher into a ventriloquist dummy by putting a funny hat on him and a mask over his face that had a mouth that could be controlled by the assistant husband. They asked for all the female faculty to pick out a male faculty member for the honor of being the dummy and it was apparently determined beforehand that it would be the gym teacher (even though he wasn't aware of it). Thankfully it wasn't me because it was embarrassing and I would not have been a good participant. It started off kind of funny but then it got embarrassing and kind of mean and just not funny anymore. The gym teacher was a good sport about it and played along, so good for him. If the duo makes a return next year, however, I will probably be too busy to go. This was not something they should have gotten paid for and it was kind of a waste of time.

I went back to the lab after the assembly and waited on the fourth graders to show up but they never did. While waiting I noticed an email from one of my professors saying there was a problem with sharing the group projects between groups so one member of each group needed to turn the pages into a PDF, which the professor would then share with all the groups so we could do our final assignment for the class. I posted a message to my group members saying I would make the PDF, mainly because I had some time on my hands. It was kind of a pain in the butt because all of the links, when copied into Word, added in an extra link after them that said “links to an external site.” So I went through and deleted those to make it look better, and readjusted the letterhead and bottom pictures that I made because they didn't automatically adjust to the size of the page. And I made a few other formatting tweaks just to make everything look good. Then I got back on and saw a message from one of my group members that said she had already sent an email to the professor volunteering and that she was almost done making the PDF. Dang it. I posted mine for the group but let her know I wouldn't send it to the professor and that she could send hers. Tonight the professor sent all the group PDFs to everyone and I've got to say, mine looked a lot better than the one my group member made. Kind of disappointed she beat me to the punch just because now everyone is going to see hers as a representation of our group. It's not awful or anything, and all the information is there, it's just the formatting of it all. I like having presentable formatting.

When I parked my car at work this morning I tried to check the weather on my phone because it looked like it might rain, but I couldn't get the weather to load. I ended up leaving my umbrella because the last several times I brought it I ended up not needing it, usually to the point that it was hot and sunny outside when I left work. Well, not today. It was pouring outside. I heard it start pouring maybe forty-five minutes before I left but then it quieted down so I was hoping it had stopped raining. It hadn't. I was completely soaked by the time I reached my car.

It has continued to rain, most of the time in great quantities, and that has lead to a bit of flooding at the old house. My mom noticed it when she met the realtor over there this afternoon and it is happening in the room where the new carpet was put in. My mom took a big fan over after dinner and my sister and her husband met her over there with another fan and a vacuum. They ended up pulling up the carpet, throwing out the pad, and leaving the carpet up to dry. But the water is still coming up so my mom just went back over with towels and she's going to take off tomorrow so she can hopefully get the problem fixed. We're not entirely sure how that will happen. Hopefully it isn't something ridiculously expensive. All my mom wants to do is sell the house and all this crap keeps happening.

I spent the night working on my research paper. I started lists of pros and cons, and listed what article or video the idea came from so I'll be able to go back and reference it in my paper. I also read two or three articles. Only a lot more to go. Linked data is still a really interesting topic but I would still much prefer writing an annotated bibliography or literature review, as opposed to an analytical research paper. Those three words together just sound super daunting. And tomorrow is already Tuesday. Good grief. It's eleven o'clock now but I'm going to try and get another article or two read or skimmed through and hopefully find some useful information.

The research paper is for the same class that I have discussion posts for every week. And we have another discussion post for this week. Due to the research paper the professor is being nice and making the post optional. We won't lose points for not participating but we can gain points if we do participate. Seeing how my research paper is going at the moment, I'm going to try and participate and get some extra points, just as a bit of a buffer in case my research paper doesn't turn out as well as I would like. Better safe than sorry. I figure I might have time at work to read enough of the chapter for this week and/or write the post itself. It looks like it involves evaluating another website, like we have done previously, but this time it is based on five criteria. I need to find the right balance of doing that while also working on my paper. The paper is worth a lot more so it wouldn't make any sense to negatively impact the quality of my paper by working on the discussion post.

Anyway, I'm going to get back to reading and babysitting three dogs. I let them down in the basement because of the all the thunder and lightning and rain, which they aren't fans of. Now they're just hanging out, listening to piano lullabies with me. It would be nice if I, too, was just hanging out, not dealing with the internal turmoil of my last week of school for the semester.