January 7, 2016

I don't like the placement of the six and it is very noticeable when I have to type 2016. Maybe by the end of the year but I doubt it. Just for the sake of the position on the keyboard, I miss 2015 and I am already looking forward to 2017. Much easier to type.

Last night I didn't sleep so well. I went to bed early and woke up several times throughout the night. At one point I got super hot and had to take a blanket off my bed. An hour or two later I was freezing cold and had to put the blanket back. My skin was also really sensitive because of my cold. And I was having to sleep propped up on pillows, which isn't very comfortable.

I ended up sleeping an extra hour this morning and it was still really rough getting out of bed. My cold had moved down into my chest over night, which isn't fun. I took an extra long shower and it would have been nice if I could have just stood there all day.

I debated about going into work before having a chance to call the doctor because I was worried about having something that was super contagious or something. I ended up going in, calling the doctor as soon as they started answering the phone, and got an appointment for about an hour later.

The doctor was pretty sure that it was just a cold but just to be safe he tested me for strep. He also gave me a prescription for an antibiotic just in case the cold I have now progresses into something more serious. He said I should be better in the next few days but if I get a secondary infection or something it would probably kick in by the weekend. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen. His main recommendations to combat my current symptoms are Sudafed and Ibuprofen.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I spent a lot of time working on pictures of the sixth graders for the art teacher. She wanted high contrast pictures of them that they can use for self-portraits or something. Originally I was making them so the face was mostly white and everything else was black. She wants to print them out on a full sheet of paper and that is a lot of ink. Today I perfected a better method using to layers. One high contrast layer that I lighten up so the background is white and you can still see the hair. Below that layer is a darker high contrast that shows the face better. Then I erase the face area on the top image so the face from the darker image shows through. I think it looks pretty good. Today I was able to finish one of the sixth grade classes, so only one more to go. I'll need to figure out what kids weren't here for picture day so I can get their picture and hope it is as easy to do the high contrast thing with my picture as it is with the professional school picture.

I also got my first baby pictures of a sixth grader and was able to scan those in. I'm not going to start editing those until I finish the pictures for the art teacher and a few other things I have going. I'm twirling a lot of plates at the moment.

Later in the afternoon I was invited to go to a meeting after work about robots. One of the first grade teachers was involved in this program and she volunteered one of the third grade teachers to be her partner. The third grade teacher wasn't feeling very confident with the whole thing so I was invited along because they figured when problems cropped up I would probably be the one everyone would come to. It is nice being included at the beginning for once, rather than being handed some random gadget and asked to figure it out. I'm interested to see how the robot thing turns out. It seems a bit involved for first and third graders but we'll see.

After the meeting I went to Walgreens because it was kind of raining out and I didn't want to walk from the Target parking lot into Target. And then through Target. And then figure out the pharmacy. So I went to Walgreens. I got Sudafed and I decided to fill the prescription for the antibiotic. That way, if my cold kicks it up to something nasty over the weekend, I will be ready and won't have to worry about going out and filling the prescription, especially if the weather gets crappy.

Following Walgreens, I went and got a slushy for my sore throat because that sounded amazing, and I ended up getting another Powerball ticket. No one won last night and the estimated jackpot for Saturday's drawing is $700 million. The jackpot yesterday seemed pretty ridiculous but $700 million is even more so. I still have no delusions of my chances of winning but it is more fun to think about when the jackpot is so high. I also kind of hope no one wins again because it is cool to see how high the jackpot is getting. I believe $700 million is the highest jackpot ever and it would be neat to see it keep going up. I also think the total is based on ticket sales, so the higher the total goes, the more interest people have, the more interest the more tickets sold, leading to a faster climb in the total. If the total is in fact based on ticket sales. At the same time, more people buying tickets means an increased chance of someone winning because there are only a finite number of combinations. It is interesting to think about. I will look back on this period of time with fondness when I am neck-deep in schoolwork again.

Tonight I played a little Tera and watched the Neebs livestream. Their main BF4 account that they play on is Neebs and they reached Colonel 100 tonight. At that rank you get a knife with a bipod knife, which is a reference to their BFF animated video series. That's pretty cool.

Now I'm going to go to bed. It seems to have taken about three hours but I think the Sudafed has finally kicked in. I can kind of breathe through my nose. I am hoping my slumber is more restful this evening. And that I wake up feeling better than I did this morning.