March 6, 2014

Waking up this morning was rough. I was not a fan. I like sleep and it was definitely lacking last night.

At work today I had so little to do. I went up to see if the resource teacher had anything she needed cut out and she did but only one game. So I copied it onto card stock and then cut out all the cards. It didn't take me very long. Another little project was scanning transcripts for one of the fourth grade teachers so she could mail them to one of the jobs she is applying for. That also didn't take very long. Second grade reading groups went well today. My first group only had three kids which was very manageable, and my second group was pretty independent so I ended up playing a game with my first group. After lunch I helped a student intern (who worked at the theater until recently so I've known her since she was sixteen) get Skype working on her iPad, helped one of the kindergarten teachers get her iPad hooked up to her projector, and went to the third grade music recital. The theme was animals who didn't make the right animal sound and a doctor trying to fix that. The doctor was played by a girl who had a few different solos and she was surprisingly good. Surprising because she tends to be quiet and reserved. Overall it was one of the best assemblies all year.

I actually spent a lot of my day listening to podcasts and on Dafont.com, downloading fonts. I think I ended up just shy of seventy fonts. That's a whole bunch.

After school I went to Chipotle and then should have taken a nap but I didn't. I planned on just going to bed early, but around eight o'clock I remembered that I was going to pick up popcorn tonight. And we have a late show so I can't pick it up until 11:15PM. Not fair. I just want sleep.

My mom missed Chipotle night even though my sister waiting until seven o'clock, because she was supposed to be home by six or six-thirty. Instead my sister and I ate and watched YouTube videos. My mom ended up not getting back until almost 7:45PM. Just a lot late. She missed out though because I had some good videos this week. My sister brought over these peanut butter cookies that she referred to as rejects, because she made them and wasn't happy and ended up making a different kind. Then she tried to salvage the first ones by dipping half of each cookie in chocolate. I really liked them. They were kind of bland but I like bland stuff. Often times peanut butter cookies are too rich but these weren't. They were also incredibly airy or fluffy even, not dense like cookies tend to be. The chocolate added a whole other layer to the mix. I would like them plain, completely covered in chocolate, or just half covered. They were really good.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid because apparently he is in a bit of trouble. There was a court hearing today but I didn't go because I didn't find out it was scheduled for this morning until this afternoon. But at the court hearing my supervisor found out that the kid was put into a PRTF (which I think means Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility) on Tuesday after he tested positive for alcohol and several drugs. Yeah. I tried calling the foster dad three times tonight but couldn't reach him so I'm still not exactly sure what happened. Right when I thought this case was becoming a boring cakewalk. It really is sad but also probably not that surprising. A few months ago he got a warning for getting drunk. And lately with his new job he's been missing a lot of school. And the town he currently lives in doesn't have the best drug reputation. My old volunteer kid told me he had been in foster care there for awhile and didn't want to go back because he couldn't go to the park without people asking him if he wanted drugs. This still sucks though. He's a smart kid but he's still a kid. I would imagine he's probably lost his job now, too.

March 5, 2014

This morning was group picture day. The staff picture was at 8:15AM and my kidney was feeling a tad twingy but I powered through. The arrangement was switched up this year, with a row of people standing on chairs in the back row, a middle standing row, and a front row sitting on chairs. I was dead center in the standing row because I think I'm the tallest. Or I'm just incredibly photogenic and the needed some of that in the middle of the photograph.

Work-wise, I didn't have a lot going on. I scanned a couple pictures, fixed a laptop by turning the wi-fi on, messed around a little bit with slideshow stuff, and had a few classes in the lab. And that was pretty much it. I would like to work on the slideshow but my video editing software isn't at work. It is the one time I wish I had a laptop.

I messed around with the yearbook a bit and quickly became frustrated when I tried to supplement missing pictures with pictures from last year. Even though they are the same size, width and height at least, the ones from last year come out taller on the page. And how the page is created, all the pictures are compiled on a single layer as a background. The company really talks up their picture editing options but that is only for pictures you manually put on a page. I can't touch any of the student or staff pictures. It is pretty annoying.

When I got home I attempted to take a nap but the dogs kept randomly barking. I gave up after awhile and eventually it was time to meet my friend at Chipotle. While walking into the building I had a repeat performance of PetCo awhile ago, when I came out from buying dog food and discovered that my trunk was open. Tonight I didn't realize it until my friend and I sat down in the window and she asked if that was my car with the trunk open. It was. It wasn't snowing or raining and it was right their in front of us so I decided to see if anyone would be a good samaritan. There were probably ten or so people who either walked by it, glanced at it, or full-on stared at it. But no one shut it. We sat and talked for quite awhile before going out to my car. I shut my trunk and then we drove around the corner to go to the coffee shop and talk some more until it was time for the show. Coffee smells amazing but coffee shops stink.

I'll be honest. I didn't even have the slightest interest in going to see the band. And that is nothing against the band because I like their music. I just wanted to hang out with my friend who I haven't seen in seven months. So I said I'd go to the show. I was less than interested because of the last time I went to one of their shows. The girl I was seeing at the time blew me off before the show, ignored me throughout the show, and got on the bus and left with the band after show, without saying goodbye. It kind of sucked. And on top of that, the music was so loud I couldn't actually hear it, only feel it, which I didn't realize was a thing. But I went to the show tonight, and the music was too loud again, but I could actually hear it this time. And I did enjoy myself because they put on a hell of a show. There was a lot of dancing around and light up boxes and smoke and other stuff. It was really good. The only real downside (other than the music being too loud because that's the only way it can be played in a bar) was that I didn't get home until close to 12:45AM. Way past my bedtime.

March 4, 2014

A day without kidney pain is a good day, I must say. Minus bathroom breaks, I got a full night of sleep and I made it to work on time.

I am pretty much caught up on everything at work which means I need to figure out more stuff to do. I worked on the slideshow stuff a little bit today but I'm caught up on the aspect ratio of it. It will be projected up onto a square screen but I think I should make it widescreen. Which I probably will, but I'm still thinking. I am also still trying to work out how I want to display the pictures, if I'm going to put all the pictures for one kid on one slide or one picture per slide or something else entirely. I still have a lot of time to figure it out, and I don't even have half of the kids' pictures, but it would be nice to get the game plan figured out.

The main productive thing I did today was finally take a look at the online yearbook. The PTO mom I'm working with already created all of the pages for the book but nothing has been populated yet. So I messed around with it and figured out how to upload all of the student and staff pictures. Then I figured out to populate each class page with the right pictures. When I got it all figured out it ended up being a lot faster than making the pages in Publisher like I did last year. The trickiest part was trying to get the teacher pictures for each class on the class page. I couldn't add it like I wanted to from the picture I had already uploaded, so I ended up uploading each teacher again and then putting their first name as 'Mr.', 'Mrs.', or 'Ms.' to get that right. I should have been able to manually move the pictures around but it wasn't working for me so I cheated and put a space before the 'Mr.', 'Mrs.', or 'Ms.', which bumped it to the front of the alphabetical order line and put the teacher first on each page. I'm going to keep messing with it and see if there is a better solution but for now it works. Tomorrow is retake picture day and I am hoping that all the newer kids will be there and get their picture taken so we don't have to worry about taking the pictures ourselves. I also hope that we get a copy of those pictures. I don't think we did last year. They'll have over a month to get it to us so fingers crossed.

On my way home I got my Powerball tickets and I got to keep the card I filled out with my numbers on it so next time I should be able to just hand them that again. That will make the whole process more efficient.

I made Brussels sprouts for dinner and they were delicious.

Tonight I watched a few YouTube videos, mainly two long interviews with Conan O'Brien. And then I spent the last three hours listening to possible slideshow songs. So far I've got eight on my list. I went with the classic cover of Over The Rainbow but also tried to pick a bunch of recent songs. I thought about going with songs from the year they were born but I haven't actually looked yet. When I did the math, and realized most of the kids were probably born in 2002, that made me a little depressed. It feels like 2002 just happened and for these kids it has been their entire life. I feel so old.

March 3, 2014

Turns out my kidney stone is still around, doing its thing. I've been perfectly fine for however many days now and then this morning, around 5:15AM, it kicked into high-gear again. And unfortunately not just for an hour or so like it has been, but for four and a half or five hours. Once again my fingers are crossed that this was the end of the first part. I don't enjoy the second part with the constant urge to pee, but I'm kinda over the pain part so I'd like to move on.

I didn't make it to work until 11:30AM today, which made the day go by a lot faster. I made lab schedules for state assessments and messed around in Gimp, trying to come up with a background for the sixth grade slideshow. So it was a somewhat productive day considering my late arrival.

When I got home I took a two hour nap. It was wonderful. With the rest of my night I watched TV and finished watching The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. It really is a good movie. I like the music and all the different locations. There is such a contrast between the stark city and office shots and then being in the ocean or the top of a mountain. It makes me want to go do stuff. I need the motivation to do stuff.

And now I'm tired but not really sleeping-tired so that is going to screw me up tomorrow. Even if my kidney stone doesn't mess with me again. Maybe I'll read a book.

March 2, 2014

In school I learned that if I gave myself a week to do something, I would take a week. Or given a month, I'd take a month. Today that knowledge came back to me when I spent all day writing my court report and month report for my volunteer thing. Put together, there probably wasn't more than thirty minutes of work to do, but I took all freaking day. Ridiculous. I got both of them done though so that's a plus.

When I wasn't slowly typing reports, I took breaks to go to the library book sale and have dinner with my family. At the last book sale I only got three books but this time I went all out and got eight. Unfortunately I still don't have any room for books. Haven't gotten around to making or buying any bookshelves. Instead, I started a new stack of books, this one by my door. Someday I will have proper shelves. Someday.

While pretending to type reports, I watched The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty and then half of The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. I had no idea it was a remake but a few weeks ago I found the original, a Danny Kaye movie from 1947. I'm a fan of Danny Kaye and the original Walter Mitty was really good. I liked how each time he went into a daydream he played a different character. After finishing that, I started watching, what I now know to be, the remake. I saw in theaters, not actually in a theater, but I still enjoyed it. And still enjoy it. I like Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig, and the music. I wasn't able to finish it today but I'll finish off the last half hour or so tomorrow. Or eventually.

For dinner we had Freddy's and barbecue. That was the original plan and after potential problems with logistics we almost ordered pizzas, but then we didn't. We solved the logistic issue (the fact that my mom didn't want to change clothes to go buy the food and my sister and her husband weren't going to come get my mom's credit card to go buy food). The solution, me driving my mom's car (because mine was covered in snow) to go pick up my sister to go get food. Whenever I drive my mom's car I don't adjust the seat because she has electronic buttons for that and there is no way I'd ever get the seat back to the right spot. This is a bit of a problem considering I am way taller than my mom and my knees end up crammed against the dashboard. But I manage it, and I avoid getting into accidents because there is no doubt my legs would be crushed if I got into one. Anyway, dinner was good. And I ate way too much food.

Now I am waiting for The Oscars to get over so I can go to bed.

March 1, 2014

Today was a very boring day. To say nothing of my days in general. At work today I read. I read a little on my Kindle but spent most of my day finishing Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris. I really liked the book. It was just like the stuff I have heard him read on This American Life. And, in my head, I read the whole book in Sedaris' voice, which made it that much better. Near the end of the book there is a story about how he has been writing an almost daily diary for the last thirty-plus years of his life. I found this to be a very relatable story, due to writing my own journal for years now. He mentioned that for however long now he has created an index for his diary. So if he writes something that he thinks is interesting and can be turned into something later, he'll note it in his index so he can look over it and easily find the story later. I like that idea. The vast majority of my daily writings are all filler but every now and then I have something that at least seems somewhat interesting. I might need to start looking into the index idea.

The only eventful thing at work was when of the movies went to a black screen after the trailers, so the movie sound was still playing but there wasn't a picture. I had hoped that turning off the projector and then turning it back on would do the trick but it didn't. So I did that again but also restarted the Doremi, which is the local computer at each projector, where the movies are stored. The first time I tried that it froze and the power button wasn't working to force-shutdown the computer, so we had to pull the plug. It all took a little longer than I would have liked but I eventually got the movie going again. Which is way better than not getting the movie going again.

At some point before I got off work it had started to snow. It was more of a frozen snow than a flaky snow. But it hadn't been going on for very long by the time I left so I didn't really have to worry about driving in it. Thankfully. Later on in the night it started to sleet and tomorrow we are predicted to get at least a couple inches of snow. I am glad that I didn't have to close tonight and that I don't work tomorrow, so if the weather does end up sucking I won't have to worry about going out in it. Although the library book sale is going on this weekend so it would be nice to go to that. Even though I have no room for more books.

Tonight I did nothing. It was one of those nights. I briefly thought about playing video games but that didn't end up happening. Instead I watched YouTube videos and clicked around the internet. What I'm really looking forward to is going to sleep and being able to sleep for many consecutive hours. And now I've jinxed myself.

February 28, 2014

Holy crap, folks. I have finished the storybooks. I sailed through the last one today and got all of the PDFs copied over to the teacher's folder on the shared drive. I am finally free. It feels good to be done.

When I finished with that I was also able to scan more sixth grade pictures for the slideshow. And I started looking through old pictures that are still on the shared drive. They go back to when the current sixth graders were in kindergarten so I decided to go through them to see if there were any good ones. I think I've found a few. I still need to mess around with actually making a slideshow, though. I don't think it'll be too hard but it's probably best not to leave it until the last minute. I also need to look into the yearbook website. There is still about two months until that is due (a little bit longer for the slideshow) but that time is going to fly by. Especially with two tests that will take up a lot of my time.

Other than storybooks and pictures, I had classes in the lab (including two that weren't on the schedule but had subs so it was an easy alternative I guess), helped with second grade reading groups (where we worked on present tense verbs), kind of helped the gifted teacher with computer and robot stuff, and we had a character assembly (that was short and sweet).

After school I bought Powerball tickets and was shown a form I could fill out which they can scan and give me my tickets. This seems a little easier than having to tell the cashier the numbers I want. The girl today asked me if I wanted to keep the sheet and I said no, but immediately wondered if it was reusable, which would make it even more convenient. So I'll need to look into that next time.

Tonight at work I watched Non-Stop and read the latest issue of National Geographic. Non-Stop did a really good job of making everyone look guilty. It is annoying when it is obvious from the beginning who the bad guys are going to be. But it is also kind of annoying when it could be anyone. It is a very enjoyable movie though. A good psychological thriller, if that is the correct term. It reminded me of my favorite episode of Doctor Who, when they are trapped in a train-like car the whole episode. National Geographic was really good this month. The cover story was about black holes, which are always fascinating, but there were also interesting stories about blue fin tuna, horses, and bats.

And I will end this with several things I read in National Geographic.

"On his laptop the night before, Wilson had programmed the satellite tag on this fish to pop off on June 1 of the next year. Nine months and two weeks from this day, in whatever time zone the bluefin happened to be, the tag would send an electric current through the metal pin attaching it to the leader and dart in the fish. The electrolyzed pin would begin to corrode. Within a few hours it would sever. A bulb on top of the tag is made of foam that's incompressible and therefore buoyant at any depth. The tag would rise through the cathedral rays of the ocean toward the brightness of the vault. On breaking the surface, it would begin uploading the encoded secrets of this bluefin – its travels, its seasons, its dive patterns – to a small constellation of Argos satellites orbiting overhead."

If the Earth got sucked into a black hole, it would collapse to approximately 0.7 inches across, while maintaining its current weight.

"A sugar-cube-size fragment of a neutron star would weigh a billion tons on Earth; a neutron star's gravitational pull is so severe that if you were to drop a marshmallow on it, the impact would generate as much energy as an atom bomb.

"But this is nothing compared with the death throes of a star some 20 times the mass of the sun. Detonate a Hiroshima-like bomb every millisecond for the entire life of the universe, and you would still fall short of the energy released in the final moments of a giant-star collapse. The star's core plunges inward. Temperatures reach 100 billion degrees. The crushing force of gravity is unstoppable. Hunks of iron bigger than Mount Everest are compacted almost instantly into grains of sand..."

The horse originated in North America, migrated to Eurasia over the Bering land bridge, eventually died off in North America, and wasn't reintroduced until European conquistadores and colonists came to North America.