February 10, 2014

It felt good to be back at work again, even if it is only for three days this week. This morning I helped out with literacy centers in kindergarten and reading groups in second grade. Both were pretty uneventful.

Throughout the day I worked on an Uno game for one of the resource teachers. She found one online that she liked but she didn't want to pay for it, so she printed off the example page and asked what I could do. It probably would have looked better if she sent me the file but I didn't think about it until just now, oh well. Instead, I scanned in the page, and did a bunch of editing in Gimp and then put it all into a Publisher document. I think it came out pretty well but she wasn't around when I finished so I'll find out sometime whether it works for her or if I need to make some changes.

My afternoon was spent with a couple classes in the lab and storybooks. I finished one page and started another. Baby steps. I'll get there.

After work I went and ordered flowers for my mom and sister for Valentine's Day and then went to the grocery store. I would have liked a basket but apparently they don't have baskets, just carts and stumpy carts. I went with a stumpy cart and I just felt ridiculous. I don't like carts. And the stumpy carts have a short handle so I either had to take small steps or walk with the cart off to the side. Not a fan. But I got food and the stumpy cart provided a sufficient means to transport that food around the store.

When I got home I read some of my book, had dinner, played a little BF4, made some pipe cleaner flowers, finished watching Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones, and watched The Covenant. Mortal Instruments was alright. Not great but it could have been worse. I'm mainly just disappointed with the representation of Bane, the warlock. He was my favorite character in the book and they pretty much missed the point in the movie. And then there was The Covenant. I was intrigued by the trailers but never got around to watching it. For years I had forgotten the name, only remembering that there were four guys with superpowers. On a whim I typed that exact phrase into Google and The Covenant was the first thing to pop up. Thanks to Netflix I was finally able to watch it and I can say it wasn't really worth the wait. All the rock music gave away its age and the final fight scene went on and on and on and on. It was also an incredibly obvious movie, the bad guy was a given from the first time he walked in front of the camera. But whatever, I've seen worse. And the blond girl is hot.

Now I think I'm going to go to bed. Maybe read a little first. Last night I think I went too bed prematurely and spent way too long falling asleep. I am hoping to avoid that tonight.

February 9, 2014

Yeah, I really don't have anything for today. I did a whole lot of nothing. YouTube, Netflix, BF4, pipe cleaner flowers, laundry, Brussels sprouts. Very exciting day. Doing laundry, I washed another goddamn pack of gum. That makes three or four. I've lost count. Which is ridiculous. I've been doing laundry most of my life and can't remember the last time I washed something in my pockets, before the last couple of months. It's getting out of hand. And this tie I didn't catch it until after the dryer, so I had the fun experience of scraping piece of gum off the walls of the dryer. I'm not sure how many pieces of gum I started with but I hope I got all of them and don't end up finding random bits in my clothes.

On Netflix, courtesy of Brazil, I watched The Book Of Eli. I have never seen the whole movie straight through but I think I have seen all of it in bits and pieces when we had it at the theater. And it was exactly as I remember it, except for the very end. I still like it though, even more now that I know Braille.

I also started watching The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones. My friend had me read the series and it was alright. Not really my cup of tea. If I remember right, and I have no idea if I do, the two main characters are half siblings but they spend most of their time flirting with each other because they don't know they're half siblings. Gross. But I could be wrong. Also, my favorite character from the books was the warlock, Bane, and I have been very disappointed with that casting. I was expecting someone much more extravagant and funny. And, I just checked on the siblings thing and it turns out they aren't, even though they thought they were for the majority of the series. So still pretty gross. The tattoos also look not that great. Just saying.

I'm only about halfway through the movie but I'm going to pause it and go to bed. Another long ahead of me. All three days of it.

February 7, 2014

Another day off from school and another day of not a lot going on. I played a little BF4, watched stuff, read stuff, and made a couple pipe cleaner flowers. Last year I made a bunch of crocheted hearts and put them in the teacher's lounge at school for Valentine's Day. This year I thought I'd make pipe cleaner flowers. I'm fairly certain we don't have school on Valentine's Day, or the day before, so we'll see how many I can make by Wednesday.

At work tonight I worked on my crocheted blanket and read more Cheese Monkeys. I finished up the last couple of rows for one skein of yarn and started on one of the dark blue skeins I bought yesterday. It is slightly different than the old dark blue I was using but I don't think it will be too noticeable when all is said and done. I also left it at the theater because I open tomorrow and it is getting big enough that it is annoying to pack it away. I'm really not sure what I'm going to do when it gets closer to being complete. I'd say only work on it at home but most of the work has been done at the theater, mostly because I can lay it all out on the desk. Working on it at home is kind of a pain because I don't have the same kind of room.

And I will end with some of my favorite quotes from Cheese Monkeys tonight:

“Never fall in love with an idea. They're whores: if the one you're with isn't doing the job, there's always, always, always another.” (p. 144)

“Instead I sat in the Belly that night and toured the brothel of my head for the right approach to show me some leg...” (p. 146)

“But beware: You can be crippled by too many choices, especially if you don't know what your goals are.” (p. 159)

February 6, 2014

There was a very small opening between piles of snow to get out of my driveway this morning. And then there was a trash can making that opening even smaller. And I'm not coming at it straight on because I'm parked off to the side of the driveway. Needless to say, I backed into a pile of snow and had to pull forward and come at it again. It didn't help that my back window seemed to immediately freeze over as soon as I started to reverse. But I did manage to get out of the driveway, no thanks to the trash can.

In my car the temperature is displayed next to the clock. This morning it said -2 when I got in my car, and dipped down to -4 during part of my drive to work. I didn't even know it could display negative numbers. I would have been fine never finding this out.

Because of all the snow, all the streets surrounding the school were much narrower today. There was a bunch of snow where I usually park, and I could have pulled it off if I drove a truck, but I drive a car that is very near the ground, so I drove around the block. One of the streets on the other side of the school is narrow to begin with but this morning there were cars parked over a foot away from the curb on both sides. I barely fit. I ended up parking on the corner adjacent to the open I usually do. So I was parallel to the side of the building rather than being parallel to the front of the building. Not that it really matters.

Work was pretty much the same old thing. I finished working on my MAP spreadsheets, completely updating them with the data from the Winter round of testing. Now I can focus on other stuff, most importantly the storybooks. I didn't actually work on those today but I plan on doing that in the near future.

I helped out with literacy centers in kindergarten this morning and their room was freezing because the AC was messing up. It was a drastic change from the lab which was also broken but in the opposite direction, turning it into a sauna. I had the listening center but the space heater popped a fuse or breaker or something, killing the CD player, so I ended up reading the book to my group before we went over to the tables to work on their favorite toy drawings.

I also had second grade reading groups but it was sort of a catch-all day due to it being a two day week, so I just kind of wandered around the room, talking with the kids, getting them to kind of halfway stay focused. It was a lot better than trying to get a group of them to listen to a story two or three times in a row. And having to hear the same story two or three times in a row.

There was a middle school choir assembly today, that I learned about when there was an intercom announcement saying it was going to be slightly delayed. I had already logged in the first kindergarten class to Odyssey in case the assembly ended early enough. Thanks to being delayed, it didn't, but I left right after the last song so I could log in the second kindergarten class. And then they didn't show up because apparently right after the choir assembly there was a fundraising assembly. I think all this was mentioned in an email at some point but I obviously forgot about it. So I logged into twenty-two computers, and then logged forty-three kids into Odyssey, all for nothing. I certainly don't need the practice.

After school I went to Hobby Lobby to get pipe cleaners for a possible craft project. I also had my dark blue yarn with me to check on the color match with the dark blue yarn in stock. And I got really lucky because it was a decent match. Way better than the last time I checked. So maybe at the theater this weekend I can work on my crocheted blanket.

From Hobby Lobby I went to Chipotle and then stopped by one of my bankets to get a blank check so I could get the information I needed to add that account to my Roth IRA account. Now I can withraw money directly from that account, rather than writing a check to myself and depositing it into my other account. When I got home I added it and made another payment into my Roth IRA. It is kind of scary putting so much money into what is essentially one big gamble. I just need to remember to check my next bank statement because to verify my account, the IRA company is going to make two small deposits and then withdrawal it, and I will have to tell them the amounts. I could check my account online but the last time I tried setting that up it was pretty much a fail. So I'll just wait for my paper statement, whenever that shows up.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight because I didn't want to trust the roads. I'm sure the highway and interstate would have been decent but maybe not, and all the roads leading to the main roads would probably suck. I didn't want to risk it. So instead we texted. Turns out he had three snow days so there wasn't a lot of education happening on his end this week. I asked him if he did anything productive with his free time and he said that he slept a lot, so productively conserved energy. I thought that was pretty good.

With the rest of my night I played a bit of BF4 and watched YouTube videos. My first game in BF4 sucked because when I joined my team was already pinned down to one flag (out of five) and there was no getting out of it. I kept trying to push but it needs to be a group effort, overwhelming the enemy and pushing them back, and none of my group was pushing. That seems to be a big problem in the large, close-quarters matches, trying to get everyone to push at once. They tend to just find a corner and hunker down. This is all well and good when you are on the team doing the pinning but when you are against a wall you need to push, or get crushed against the wall and wait for the match to end. In the second game, I was on the team doing the crushing. For most of the game we only held three of the flags, which makes the game more interesting for both sides because everyone has more options in terms of how they get around the map. At the very end we ended up pushing forward and captured four flags but up until then it was pretty fun. Still one-sided though, which isn't as fun as when the teams are evenly matched and the whole game is a back and forth struggle. The best part of the game though was that I managed to beat out the other sixty-three players and ended with the highest score. My K/D ended up being positive but I didn't have that many kills, and over half of my points came from dropping ammo boxes and getting resupply points. Thousands upon thousands of resupply points. I ended up with 63 resupply medals, which is insane. And cool as hell because I finally came out on top, which far removed from my usually spot somewhere in the bottom half. It'll probably never happen again so I made sure to save the report for the game. The only thing cooler was in BF3 when I one a game of Gun Master. Unfortunately that happened before I could record gameplay so I have no proof of it. Just the memories.

February 5, 2014

Snow Day: Day Two. Just as boring as the first. Not productive in the least. So basically a waste of two days off. And I'll probably do the same thing Friday until I have to go to work at the theater. Unlike yesterday, I did leave the house, long enough to dig my car out. The guys came and cleared off the porch and driveway, and they came after the city so they were able to clear out the bottom of the driveway where the city guys had left a mound across it. Even with the driveway clear, I still had a massive amount of snow on my car as well as all around it. I started my using a broom to push and brush the snow off my car, and then used a shovel to dig out around it. Slowly working my way around the car. I think it ended up taking about an hour. And I know I'm going to be feeling it in the morning. As well as the bit of exercising I decided to engage in before going outside.

With the rest of my day I played a little BF4, read part of one of the books I'm reading now, watched YouTube videos, and read news articles online. Such an uneventful day. A day that really felt like a Sunday. And then tomorrow we go back to school for one day before having a three day weekend. Although I'll be at the theater for two of those days. And by the looks of the schedule I will be closing on Friday and opening on Saturday. That sucks big balls. Sort of. Depending on how long I'm there Friday night and how early I have to be there on Saturday morning. It is kind of nice not closing on Saturday because I can get to bed at a better hour. And Friday will be a little better because I won't have to wake up at six o'clock to go to school. So really, this weekend won't actually be that bad. But I still hate the place, despite giving me an excuse to catch up on my book reading, so it still sucks big balls.

February 4, 2014

Snow Day: Day One. Today kind of felt like a weekend, with a lot of snow outside. Throughout the day I monitored the snowfall outside my window, gauging it by the amount piling up on the front porch rails. When I woke up there was about two inches and at the time of writing this, there looks to be about six inches. This is not surprising because the snow was non-stop all day. Most of the time it looked like powder sugar coming down but occasionally the snowflakes got a bit bigger and came down with a bit for vigor.

On this side of my window, I didn't really do much. Treating my day like a typical Sunday. I played some BF4, watched some YouTube videos, watched some TV, and other things. Kind of disappointing really. Such is life.

I bought eggs yesterday because I wanted to start adding those into my salads. And today I hard boiled eggs for the first time ever. I have eaten quite a few in my day but have never had the opportunity, or need, to actually make them. Until now. And I totally nailed it. At least one of them anyway, the other five are still shelled. I left them out for a little bit on the counter before putting them in a pot with what I wanted to be cold water but it was apparently my first time using the sink because I couldn't remember which way was cold and ended up with some hot water, and then cold, so it was average water coming about an inch over the top of the eggs. I covered the pot, brought it to a reasonable boil, removed it from the heat, and left it covered for about thirteen minutes, before digging the eggs out and putting them in a bowl of ice water. Hours later when it was time for dinner, and the salad I was having with it, I peeled one of the eggs, relatively successfully, and when I cut into it, the yolk was a bright yellow and perfect. Kind of makes me wish I made more than six because I'll probably screw it up the next time.

While I was waiting for the eggs to come to a boil I also rinsed off some Brussels sprouts. The first time I made them they were good but a bit soggy, and I figured they were either cooked too long or maybe still a little wet from being rinsed off. So I got an early start to give them plenty of time to dry, as well as patting them dry with a paper towel. When it came time to cook them I mixed everything together in a bowl, making sure to use less seasoning than the first time when I used way too much, and I roasted them for a shorter period of time. They turned out better this time around. I think I could still cook them for a bit less time but they were pretty delicious.

Tonight, amongst other things, I watched a live debate between Bill Nye and a leading Creationist. It made me glad to believe in science. I have nothing against religion, when it isn't used as an excuse to hate and oppress and kill people, but there is something about Creationism that I find scary. It was just so strange seeing this guy debate his view that seems to be so contrary to common sense. He basically took the view of Occam's razor, that the simplest answer must be the only answer. Rather than try to figure out why stuff exists and how it came to be, just say God made it and move on. That just seems sad. Life and existence is so much more interesting than that explanation. And it is strange seeing someone so convinced that the Earth is so young. Honestly, I can't comprehend a 10,000 year old Earth any better than I can one that is billions of years old, but 10,000 years is way too short a timespan for all the things that have happened in our history. That and all the other things the only make sense if you ignore all the artifacts and other things discovered by science. In the end I could find out that I'm wrong about everything and religion is the answer, but for the time being, my common sense leans toward tangible evidence, not a book compiled a long time ago using passed down stories.

Tomorrow will be Snow Day: Day Two. And hopefully, for the sake of my paycheck, it won't become a trilogy. At some point I will need to go out and unbury my car. My forearms still kind of hurt from all the sweeping I did the other day to unbury my car so I'm not looking forward to that. Today I think one of the neighbors came and shoveled a path on our front porch to the door. It was very random, and in the end it was also pointless because a few hours later there was no evidence that it had even occurred. And maybe it didn't actually happened and it was all a figment of my imagination? 

February 3, 2014

Today went by incredibly fast. And it wasn't particularly action packed, it just sort of happened. The first part of my day was spent downloading all the MAP reports and printing them off for the teachers. That took awhile because it involved not only the class reports but individual student reports. So much printing. But I got it all done fairly quickly.

I only had two classes in the lab today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. And I had second grade reading groups this morning but that was fairly uneventful. Which was nice. I had the listening center and they were listening to a story about George Washington Carver. Before they read the story they had to write down what they already knew about him and questions they wanted answered. One kid thought he was a president and another wanted to know which president he was, in terms of number. So close yet not really. The most surprising thing was that they actually sat through listening to the story. That is unheard of. And from the story I learned that he added his middle name of Washington when he went to college (I think) and there was someone else named George Carver, he came up with over 300 uses for peanuts and over 100 uses for sweet potatoes in order to prove their value to farmers, to get them to start rotating their crops which would improve the soil.

This afternoon a tech guy came to fix the broken computer. It has been broken for weeks, at least a week or two before MAP testing started. He replaced the hard drive and checked that it would boot up, which is did, and he called it good. Later on I went to check it and when I turned it on I immediately got a blue screen of death. After that, every time I turned it on I would have to choose to start Windows normally. When I got to the unlock screen it took at least three seconds for the computer to recognize my key presses and switch to the log-in screen. Then when I attempted to log in, I would get the Welcome screen with the spinning icon but it would never make it to the desktop. It would either spin forever or sometimes go back to the lock screen. So who knows. I need to submit another trouble ticket.

After school I went to the pet store to get dog food, the gas station to get gas, and Target to get foodstuffs. I really only intended to get trail mix but ended up with a lot more. Including Brussels sprouts because I want to make those again.

Tonight I played BF4 and had a lot of fun. I found a 64-man Conquest server that was 24/7 Operation Locker with a whole bunch of tickets. The first two games were pretty bad and we got beat with the other team still having over 1000 tickets left. But then there was some balancing and every game after that was a pretty close battle up until the end. It was a bit of a cluster at times but even when my team was getting completely dominated the first two games it was still fun. With fewer players it is easier to get completely pinned down and picked off before you can get a shot off. With 32 players on each team, it can be a lot easier for one side to cut off all the paths, but there are so many players that you at least get to kill a bunch while you're stuck in your spawn. I also learned the choke points are an easy way to get resupply ribbons by dropping ammo boxes where everyone is stuck. Thanks in part to that, and using some XP boosts I have gotten in battlepacks, I went from level 17 to level 23 tonight. That is pretty ridiculous. I feel I got somewhat lucky with the evenly matched teams but I added the server to my favorites so I can try it out again.

This afternoon the preemptively announced a snow day for tomorrow. The snow is supposed to roll in sometime tonight and continue through tomorrow, with up to ten inches of snow. So just in case that happens, school was canceled. And if we get all that snow, on top of the incredibly cold temperatures we are expected to have on Wednesday, school may be canceled that day too. That would kind of suck because it is an early release day and I'm supposed to go to a meeting after school and help a teacher with his iPad. But if Wednesday is also a snow day, then this will only be a two day week because we already have Friday off. I've got stuff I could be doing at work, and I like getting paid, so I would prefer not to miss anymore than I have to. I won't mind sleeping in tomorrow though. Especially because I am currently up way past my bedtime.