February 25, 2016

 This morning there was more testing. None of the sixth graders finished their writing test. Well, one of them did but because no one else did the teacher said he might as well come back to it tomorrow so he can read over it again. This is the kid who skipped fifth grade and he was done reading the passages and taking notes in under ten minutes. He then spent the next hour writing his response and based on the size of the scrollbar it was a novel. At the same time, most of the kids in the class did exactly what I told them they should probably not do, which was spend almost an hour taking notes. Or staring off into space and then telling me they were still taking notes when I asked if they were ready to move on. It was annoying. In their defense they were having to read (or listen to) two passages that started with something written by Herodotus and something else written in the early 1900s. Not something I would pick to read first thing in the morning. Especially with an opening line like this:

“Moreover also the answer given by the Oracle of Ammon bears witness in support of my opinion that Egypt is of the extent which I declare it to be in my account; and of this answer I heard after I had formed my own opinion about Egypt.”

What the hell is up with that sentence? It's like word salad in print.

There was an assembly this morning but I missed it, along with one of the sixth grade classes, because of testing. This afternoon I had classes in the lab and I edited sixth grade baby pictures. Progress is being made. I haven't been keeping track but I think I'm close to finishing the pictures I have so far. Although that might just be optimistic thinking.

Yesterday I got randomly bored at work and looked at the old typing practice things that have been on the bookshelf at the front of the lab since I started. I never really gave them much thought but yesterday I became curious so I started looking at them. There are five or six of them and consist of a keyboard with a small, one line screen similar to a simple calculator. They require four AA batteries and a few of them still had batteries in them. Two of them had batteries that had burst open. The date on a few of the batteries was 2001, so they've been around for awhile. I tried one of the lessons and one of the games. The game scrolled letters across the screen and each level got progressively faster. It was made infinitely harder at the higher levels because the letters had to blink out while moving to the next spot on the screen. It was fun but I had to stop because my left wrist and forearm are bothering me again.

After work and for the rest of the night I accomplished nothing. And I feel kind of crappy about it. I've got a lot to make up for this weekend. It's really frustrating. I think part of it is feeling overwhelmed, not only with the semester workload picking up, but also the fact that I need to start applying for jobs. And this will quite possibly involve jobs that aren't anywhere close to home. Moving away bothers me because my family is here and I'm not good with keeping in touch. My mind tends to be wherever I am and I don't give much thought to where I'm not. It would be nice to move somewhere and try out a new environment but I also don't want to lose touch with my family. So I've got all that piled on top of work and schoolwork. My mind is being pulled in a million different directions at once and all I want to do is escape.

Right now I'm going to escape into dreamland. I'm tired.