April 6, 2016

This morning when I got to work I went down and helped one of the kindergarten teachers clear stuff off her iPad so it was ready to turn in tomorrow for a new iPad. I helped the resource teacher yesterday, one of the second grade teachers this afternoon, the gifted teacher after school, and I'll be helping one of the sixth grade teachers tomorrow. It's become a thing.

I spent the rest of my morning, from 8:45AM until noon, on my feet in the lab watching kids test. There were three tests and each one overlapped each other so I didn't get a break. It was kind of rough but it made the morning go by pretty quick. Right after lunch a few third graders came back to finish tests and that lasted until almost 1:30PM when school let out because it was an early-release day.

On my way out of the building I stopped in the library to tell the librarian that the ESOL teacher was looking for her earlier and then I ended up standing around and talking to her for quite awhile. Sometime after three o'clock the principal came in and one of the sixth grade teachers. I stood around and listened to the sixth grade teacher and the librarian talk about the history of the school and all of the interesting characters that had worked there over the years. Like a known prostitute who overheard some kids talking about a certain subject at lunch recess and ended up calling all of the kids into the gym and started giving them “The Talk”. The cooks ran and got the principal. There was a lady who was always decked out in nice jewelry that no one understood how she could afford. And then one morning on the way to work the sixth grade teacher heard on the radio that she and her husband had been arrested for selling drugs. There was also a teacher who got out a pair of scissors and threatened to cut a boy's you-know-what off if he didn't quit playing with it. That kid grew up to become a serial rapist and is currently in jail, so maybe the teacher should have followed through. There were a lot of interesting stories and I think they need to be captured somehow. Either written down in a book that can be kept in the library (although maybe not accessible to the children) or maybe record an oral history. The sixth grade teacher, who has been at the school for over thirty years, is retiring at the end of this year so now is as good a time as any to capture his memories.

We all stood around and talked until around 4:30PM I think and then the gifted teacher came in to get help with her iPad. The principal and sixth grade teacher left and the librarian and I helped the gifted teacher. That lasted until shortly after five o'clock when everything had pretty much been settled and I had to duck out to get Chipotle. That was another three and a half hours on my feet and my back and legs are currently feeling it. But it was worth it.

Dinner tonight was good and my videos were well received. The rest of my night was mostly filled with tracking down articles about video game preservation. I found some good ones and tomorrow I'll need to skim them along with the video from the Game Developer's Conference and a few other resources so I can write my discussion post tomorrow night. I wanted to write that tonight but I didn't really want to base the whole thing on the GDC video, which is what would have happened if I wrote it tonight. So I postponed the writing.

I got my cellphone bill today. Or rather I got the bill for my credit card which Ting automatically charges for my cellphone bill. It's the only thing I actually use my credit card for. The bill was larger than usual and it turns out it is for the last two months, plus a fifty-cent late fee. They never got my payment last month, even though I have the stub in my file so I know I at least got the check in an envelope. I checked my bank statement that my checks pull out of and it had no record of the check going through so I guess it never made it to its destination. It's got me curious. It is either still in my car, which I doubt, or it was lost in the mail. I'm wondering if maybe it was the one I put in a mailbox outside the post office, which I can vaguely remember doing in the relatively recent past. There are four or five boxes out there and I never know which one to use but I assume none of them can really be “wrong”. But maybe envelopes can get stuck in them. Or maybe they fall trucks. I don't know. I really don't think I am at fault here but I can't really prove it, so I'm stuck looking like an ass. Kind of annoying.

Now I'm going to go to bed and hope I can sleep off my sore body. This morning I got up and ran on the elliptical, which didn't help in my long day of standing. Tomorrow I might sleep in.