November 13, 2014

This morning I wasn't needed in one of the kindergarten classes for literacy centers but I was called down to help with the other class. Despite my group being less than interested in drawing all the animals going to school, things went alright.

The librarian had a dentist appointment this morning so she asked if I could come down and help the library assistant with the first grade class, mainly because all the book fair stuff is out and that stuff is very distracting. They watched a video of book trailers for some of the books available in the book fair and then they were supposed to check out books if they were able to or “gently” look at the book fair books if they weren't checking out a book. This was confusing to several of the kids. Some completely ignored the option to check out a book because they just wanted to look at the book fair books. These were usually boys wanting to look at the Minecraft books. Minecraft is pretty great so that is understandable. Other kids couldn't quite grasp the concept that they couldn't check out the book fair books, even after being explicitly told several times. It was kind of amazing. My main job during all this was to make sure the kids weren't being rough with the books and that everything ended up back where it started, not on some random shelf or in the hands of the kids as they left the library. I also read There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly to one of the kids. I've got to say it is kind of an annoying book because we never find out why she swallowed the fly. It very well could have been an accident but she refuses to say. Just fess up lady.

While standing there looking at all the books it really made me want to write children's books. Or young adult books. I like writing and it would be really cool to have books published. My grandpa did it but he wrote textbooks, something I have no desire to do. I like BSing and that is more in line with books for kids. When my brother was little I used to enjoy making up stories for why things were the way they were. My version of fables or whatever those stories are called. I probably should have written some of those down.

This afternoon I had the kindergarten classes in the lab. Minus the kid who needs some sort of focus medication, everything went alright. Later on third grade came in and that was pretty fun. The teacher was trying to help one of the kids with a fairly complicated word problem on Odyssey (mostly complicated because of the wording of the questions) and they were going around in circles with it. At the end of it all the student intern and I were trying to explain it to her and we were going around in circles and I'm not sure if we ever quite got there but when we were done talking about it the teacher looked at the kid and said “Alight, did you get all that?”, and he just shook his head. It was pretty funny.

Throughout the morning and afternoon when I had downtime I started reading through the chapter for my third reflective journal entry. I didn't ever get around to starting the entry because I was getting hung up on the meaning of “information service”, which is the main topic I am supposed to cover in the entry. After dinner I finally decided it was related to a service industry, so libraries are in the industry and they offer and information service. Once I came to that conclusion I managed to knock out several hundred words. If I get time tomorrow at work I might be able to finish it up but if not I'll probably have to wait until Sunday because I'll be focused on other class stuff when I'm down there for the weekend.

Speaking of, the professor sent out an email that he is wanting to start a little earlier on Saturday morning and cut breaks short so hopefully we can wrap things up a couple hours early. I guess the chance for snow is supposed to increase to 70% before our normal finish time and the professor wants to try and beat that. Regardless, I should be coming back into town with several inches of snow on the ground. I guess winter is here or something.

November 12, 2014

This morning I woke not too long after four o'clock because I had an itchy throat and kept coughing. I tried some sips of water but that did nothing so I ended up getting a cough drop. That helped tremendously and I ended up falling asleep with it under my tongue. Thankfully it stayed there.

I participated in second grade reading groups this morning. A college basketball player was there for most of the time so kids would go back one at a time to read with him. His go-to question was asking people where they were from, kid or adult, which was kind of funny but I definitely couldn't walk into a room full of kids and strangers and not feel totally uncomfortable and awkward, so I think he handled it well. As for the centers, I started with helping kids write letters to deployed soldiers, then was a girl's partner on a word scavenger hunt around the room because she didn't have a partner, and then I had a small group of kids reading tiny stories and having to decided if they were to persuade, inform, or entertain. Other than one kid who really didn't want to write his letter, I would say everything went pretty well.

After that I had the second grade classes in the lab. I had one teacher get on Type To Learn and take the pre-test. Then I had her try the drone control game on the level I'm at. The kids hate it because it is timed and they fail it repeatedly and can't move on until they beat it. On my level, I get thirty more seconds than the kids but I also have to type long sentences with big words. I think when I beat it I only had three seconds left. The teacher didn't quite make it.

I went down to the library to give the librarian the disc with all the student pictures on it because she needs it to update her student profiles in the computer and because the lunch lady asked for it. They use it in the lunch room to check kids out. Their picture pops up when they type in their number to get their food. Well, last year she got the disc and the central kitchen lost it and it took me forever to figure out how to get the pictures I had saved in the right setup so the librarian could upload them for her thing. So this year I gave her first dibs. In theory I should be getting another disc at some point that has higher quality pictures on it. We'll see if that happens.

Today was early release so this afternoon I didn't have any classes. I spent the morning before reading groups to work on my second reflective journal entry and I spent this afternoon finishing it. I am right at a thousand words, and I'll need to go back and edit it, but for now I'm good. I think the plan will be to get the rough draft done for all the entries and then I can go back and touch them up. This entry was a long rant about bureaucracies and then a long bit about who uses public libraries. Apparently high-income households with high levels of education use them way more than people at the lower side of both scales. This makes sense but at the same time it doesn't. So I explored that. Tomorrow I'll need to start on the third entry.

After school I came over to the old house and on my way over I got a low tire pressure warning. I think the same thing happened last year on the first really cold day. Which today was. When I was about to head down to Chipotle I texted my dad to see if he would have any time before Friday to fill up my tired. He texted me while I was on the road that he had time then so I turned around and headed his way. We got my tires topped off and froze our asses off while doing it because not only was it freezing out but the wind was also incessantly blowing. When we were finished we went inside and ended up talking about his job for awhile, because the thermostat is broke and it is 48 degrees in the building, and we also talked about the real side of Fury and what it would actually be like psychologically for those guys. And then my brother and I talked about livestreams and Halo for a bit.

Chipotle night had been pushed back until six o'clock because my mom had a book club thing, and then she said she was going to be late because they got started late. With my detour to my dad's, I didn't even head across town until almost six o'clock. This sucked for me because the area around Chipotle and Jimmy John's sucks at that time. I lost count of how many times I had to drive around the block to get a parking spot for Jimmy John's. It was way too cold to be walking for any length of time. After the nth time around the block I got a spot right in front of the building but then I had to wait while they filled a party platter. That was slightly annoying but whatever.

I only had to circle the block twice to get a parking spot at Chipotle. I had to wait in a normal line there and it gave me time to spot their newest menu item. I vaguely remember reading about it awhile ago when they were trying it out in a few restaurants but sofritas has finally made it our way. I don't know what sofritas means but it is basically just seasoned tofu. It looks kind of like shredded chicken and it tastes like seasoned enchiladas. I don't know if I will end up getting it every time but it was an alright change. I liked it.

At the moment I have a headache and my left forearm hurts, probably because I have been typing so much recently. So I am going to call this entry good so I can stop typing, take some ibuprofen, and go to bed.

November 11, 2014

I forgot to mention that I got an email from my group member yesterday who is working on the presentation. She sent the PowerPoint she has come up with so I spent some time reading over it and sending her some corrections. Just the obvious things I noticed as well as some things that didn't quite match up with what I remembered from the articles. Hopefully she will find that helpful.

Today was a very slow day. I had kindergarten literacy centers this morning so that took up thirty minutes. And the sixth graders came down to the lab for fifteen minutes to practice their typing. I spent my free time reading through one of my textbooks and starting my second reflective journal entry. I ended up working on that off and on throughout the day.

The first graders also came in and I was talking to the teacher about the Odyssey login because the password is ridiculously long for first graders. It's too long for some of the second and third graders as well. And it's too long for me because I log in all of the kindergarteners so I have to type it in almost a hundred times every week. Anyway, the teacher was talking with someone who said he knew someone somewhere in the chain of command that can change Odyssey passwords and they will actually stay changed, unlike when I did it several times and it kept changing back. So the plan is to get the password changed to the kids' lunch number, just like their username, for kindergarten and first grade. That will be nice.

The afternoon wasn't anymore exciting. Normally I have both kindergarten classes but we had an assembly that overlapped both of their times so they ended up not coming. Just in case I typed in the log-in information for the second class and then after the assembly I went around and hit 'enter' on all the keyboards to log everyone in. And they ended up not showing up but that ended up being a good thing because I finally learned how to close browser windows with a keyboard shortcut (alt+F4) which is way easier than having to go around and do a bunch of mouse clicks.

The assembly was the second graders' Veteran's Day performance, which they gave for a bunch of veterans after the parade, then they came back to the school for the assembly, and they had another performance tonight for their parents. That sounds exhausting. It was a decent assembly but there wasn't a lot of choreography so I've got to say I've seen better.

After school I went to Target to get some things. I mainly went for cough drops and peanut butter but I also decided to get cheese sticks. I normally get the Weight Watchers brand, not because I'm health conscious when it comes to cheese sticks, but because they taste good and they string well. But it appears that Target is no longer carrying that brand. There wasn't even an empty spot for it on the shelf. Instead I went with the Target brand because it was the cheapest, so their plan worked. I haven't tried it yet but hopefully it meets my requirements of taste and stringiness.

Tonight after dinner I nearly finished my second reflective journal entry. I went on a bit of a rant about bureaucracies and whether they should exist in libraries. I'll probably have to go back and trim it down a bit but for tonight I counted it as progress. It would be great if I could finish the entry off tomorrow and finish up a third one by the end of the week. That would put me ahead of schedule (while still technically being behind schedule because I didn't do the writing throughout the semester).

November 10, 2014

This morning my favorite substitute wasn't subbing but she stopped by the school with a present for me. She was at an auction and when the item came up she thought of me. It is a ceramic bowl with a hole/notch in it with a ball of yarn and a few knitting needles. It came in a box and is called a Knit Wit Kit. I did a bit of research online and it is apparently handmade in Nepal, which is cool. It comes with a pattern for a headband so I think as soon as school is over for the semester I'm going to use the yarn it came with to make her a headband. Maybe crochet a flower or something to put on it. It is a really cool gift, that I don't deserve, but I'm glad I have it. The idea of the notched bowl is so simple yet completely genius. I can't wait to try it out.

I normally would have had second grade reading groups today but the student teachers were there so I wasn't needed. I was productive with my time. Before I checked on the second grade reading groups I went down and fixed a printer issue they were having in the kitchen. Next, I typing up instructions for the fire/CO alarm at home. I also found a user manual for it but I didn't print it, just downloaded it. I still had some time left and one of the SPED teachers asked if I could put Reading Counts on the SPED laptops so I went up and did that, along with adding printers to one of the SPED teacher's laptop.

The second grade classes in the lab went well. Both were fairly uneventful. The tiny kid who was born angry actually came up to the teacher and politely explained a problem he was having. That was probably the first time he has ever done that. He usually just freaks out and gets supper angry.

With the rest of my downtime throughout the day, which there was a lot of because I only had one class in the lab this afternoon, I worked on my reflective journal. I managed to finish my first entry. Only six more to go. I was way over the word limit and kind of started to trim that back but ended up running out of time.

After school I got my hair cut and then didn't do anything productive until after dinner. That is when I went back and trimmed my reflective journal entry. It took a lot of work but I eventually got it down under a thousand words. Now I need to knock out another entry. If I can keep up the pace of two a week, that will leave me with just one to do in the final week. That definitely sounds doable. And not just because it has to be doable. I think from here on out I will pick a few important points from each reading and go into more detail on those rather than trying to touch on everything. That will save me from having to trim back my entries after I write way too much.

Right now it is just about freezing outside with a really strong wind. I think it was somewhere in the 60s today and it has since dropped thirty degrees. It is supposed to be even colder and windier tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. There is actually a chance for snow this weekend when I go down for class. The cold kind of sucks and the wind makes it worse, but I prefer the cold (not so much the wind) over it being hot as hell. I wouldn't mind a lack of snow for quite a bit longer, however.

November 9, 2014

Last night, in the middle of the night, I was yanked from my slumber by the sound of a blaring alarm. It went silent a short time later and I was quickly able to forget about it and fall back to sleep. It happened again around six o'clock in the morning. I made it to my door this time before it went silent and I ended up back in bed until much later.

It turns out, one of the fire alarms upstairs is acting up. In order to get the alarm to stop you have to push the button on it but sometimes this results in a test which sets off all the alarms in the house and warms of a fire and then warns of carbon monoxide. My mom didn't know this at the time so when it warned of carbon monoxide she ended up turning off the furnace and opening a window. We eventually decided the detector was just being a dick. This afternoon it started chirping like they do when a battery is low, which really freaks the dogs out. Apparently it isn't a battery thing because when a battery is low the detector actually says that, it doesn't just beep. I ended up pushing the button and found out about the test cycle thing. That worked for awhile but then it started chirping again so I switched out the batteries. Eventually it started happening again so I unplugged it and took it off the ceiling. There is another detector maybe two feet away in the next room so there isn't much worry there. After taking it down I learned about all the beeping stuff because it has information on the back of the detector, but no instruction manual. I'm going to try cleaning it out with some compressed air, because maybe it got dusty or something during construction, but if that doesn't work, we should be fine without it, at least for awhile.

Today involved a lot of unproductive avoidance of writing my reflective journal. I did eventually get about three or four hundred words written, which is good, but also bad because I'm way over the upper limit of a thousand words per entry. My method has involved basically summarizing everything while adding in the occasional reflective comment. I think maybe I need to give a brief overview of the topic and then pick one or two things to talk about, going into more detail on those things, rather than quickly talking about all of the things. I'm not sure if I'm just going to cut out stuff from what I've already written or just rewrite the whole thing. I don't have much time to figure it out so that should keep me from dwelling on the choice for too long.

I also did laundry and listened to This American Life while trying to distract myself from writing. I tried Type to Learn but it turns out you need an internet connection. That makes sense but it would be nice to have an offline option.

Tonight we had a family dinner night. Chinese food is delicious. I got steamed rice and broccoli, rice noodles, and french fries. French fries are a must when ordering Chinese.

After dinner I came over to the old house. I restarted my computer and now I have sound again, so that is nice. I don't mind wearing my headphones but they get a little hot after awhile. I got an email from my group member doing the presentation that she almost had it done yesterday and that she would email it when she finished. Haven't heard back so hopefully everything is still good. She's got until next weekend so there's plenty of time.

At the moment I am distracted by YouTube videos and I need to head back to the new house, so I'm going to call this good.

November 8, 2014

I got a solid five hours of sleep last night, after being up for close to twenty-two hours, and being at one job or the over for about seventeen of those. Five hours what not enough sleep.

I will admit that when I got to work this morning I played Minecraft for awhile on my computer because I couldn't bring myself to engage in anything too intellectually stimulating. At least something that I will eventually be graded on. I'm not currently enrolled in an architecture class resulting in the evaluation of my Minecraft house. Unfortunately. On my laptop I only have the one world I started back when I got my laptop and I didn't feel like creative building so I started a new survival map. I usually play on Peaceful because I like building and exploring in peace. For my new map I decided to bump the difficulty up to Easy just to keep things interesting. I did turn on griefing though so a Creeper doesn't come along and blow up something important. I also turned on the keepIventory option because I don't want to be way off somewhere and lose all my stuff when a overpowered skeleton shoots me repeatedly.

I spawned on a tiny island and rather than swim off to look for land I decided to make the best of it. My plan is to build the island up, kind of treat it like a Skyblock map, and make it a little oasis in the middle of the ocean. Although there is a chance there is a giant landmass just out of sight or that I'm at the center of a lake or something, but I'm pretending I'm off in the middle of nowhere. I also will probably not make it all that far in the building up of things because I don't have any plans in the foreseeable future to play again because I need to write my reflective journal for class.

Speaking of, I added to mine today. I nearly made it through the first chapter of the first book. One more to go and I'll be done with the first entry. The first of seven or eight I think. We've only got about a month left of class so I'm going to need to knock out about two entries a week, rather than one every two weeks as it was laid out in the syllabus. If I had it to do over again I'd like to say I'd follow the syllabus, but I doubt I would. I've already done all the reading, so I have that going for me, but I'm also going to have to skim over everything again in order to jog my memory so I can reflect on it. At least the textbook is interesting.

When I was avoiding writing, I watched bits of Interstellar, including most of the beginning that I missed last night. I also watched most of John Wick. That is a movie that I may have to buy. Probably not, but I'd definitely watch it on Netflix. There are little interludes throughout the movie but it's pretty much constant action and Keanu Reeves is a badass. Overall it's just a good action movie with the overarching theme of revenge.

Tonight I eventually got around to writing my discussion post for this week and responding to two of my classmates' posts. It was harder this week writing the post because the professor never posted any guiding questions for us to answer. The discussion assignment itself looked different to previous ones so I originally thought he set it up wrong, but by the middle of the week people started posting, acting like it was just the same old thing, so I jumped on the bandwagon because the professor never came back around to fix things. I thought maybe we would be doing something other than the typical post but again, the professor never said anything.

The sound randomly stopped working on my computer. It might just be the speakers but I don't think so. According to Spotify it is my sound card, which I hope isn't the case. My headphones still work and they're plugged into the optical port, which I think it on my sound card but I can't remember. I need to try restarted my comptuer but I have so much crap open right now I don't want to go through the hassle.

I downloaded Type To Learn 4 tonight on my laptop because I was in the mood for some typing games. I practiced a few different times during the past week on one of the typing practice sites I have found and at one point I was close to 80 wpm. My average seems to be in the low- to mid-60s but it would cool to bump that up. I'm not sure if TTL4 will work without an internet connection but we'll find out.

I have had the hiccups no less than five times today. It's getting out of hand and my body is getting tired of it. Each time it has happened after I have coughed. Just a tiny little cough, too, because I'm trying to avoid full on coughing so I don't irritate my sore throat. I've had about enough though. Having the hiccups once or twice a year is annoying enough. Having them five times in one day is just ridiculous.

November 7, 2014

My throat hurts, I'm tired, and I want to go to bed. Sadly, that may not happen for another four hours, sometime after three o'clock in the morning.

Work went alright today. I helped out with second grade reading groups this morning. I started with one group reading a story, which took forever and they ended up not even being able to finish the story because it took them so long to get settled down. It was kind of annoying but not really because I've experienced much worse. They weren't malicious in their lackadaisical mood. Not all of them anyway.

My second group was a higher group and they were working on a presentation about earthworms. Awhile ago I was with the larger version of this group when they began the earthworm project. Today I just had three of them, the three who wanted to make a presentation on the computer, rather than make a poster like the other small groups. They were using an online presentation building tool that is kind of like PowerPoint but much more simplified. I kind of liked it but three different times today the girls managed to make everything they had disappear and they had to start over. I found out later where they were being autosaved to and they had at least five partial versions of their presentation. They'll have to sort that out later.

The adult, and current graduate student, in me cringes a little bit every time they would write something verbatim from the earthworm article they read because of plagiarism and all that. I also kind of feel like second grade isn't the time to be teaching about plagiarism or how to paraphrase what they have just read. I think that takes a level of thought and vocabulary that isn't quite there yet. It's just good that they're being exposed to the whole research process at such a young age. We can worry about original thought later.

My favorite substitute was in today for the library and one of the first grade teachers. She stopped by before lunch and we talked about grad school. I showed her my infographic, which she really liked, and we talked about textbooks. Later on in the afternoon I went down and helped her figure out how to work the overhead thing and the DVD player. And then at the end of the day I ended up walking out to her car with her. She was driving a new car because when she was at the dealership someone backed into her. They ended up giving her the keys to one of their corporate cars while they fix hers.

This afternoon I had one of the kindergarten classes because they had a sub and it is easier to schedule computer lab time. They were actually pretty well behaved. I can't say the same for the fourth grade class who came in after them. They were all talking almost the entire time they were in the lab. I wasn't going to waste my breath trying to get them to shut up because it's like wack-a-mole, as soon as I turn my back another conversation has popped up. In the last ten minutes maybe the sub asked me if they were supposed to be quiet and I told him that was the goal. He then announced that everyone needed to stop talking, the first person to talk would get a warning, and after that people would have to start pulling sticks (which is something kids don't want to do). They all became very quiet and there were only a few whispers after that. I would like to have that kind of authority but I can't really threaten them with pulling sticks. My only threats are kicking them off the computer and making them sit by the wall, sending them back to their classroom (if the teacher isn't in the lab), and sending them to the office (also if the teacher isn't in the lab). Those vary in their effectiveness depending on the kid.

After work I stopped by the volunteer office to drop off a couple forms they couldn't find in their records. They are being audited next week and are trying to get everything sorted out. I vaguely remember signing both of those forms when I first volunteered and went through training but if they can't find them, better safe than sorry.

From there I went to the old house for a little bit to check some things on the internet and then headed to the new house so I could eat dinner and then get ready for work. I had the second half of my Chipotle burrito, which was pretty good despite the builders of it yesterday. It would have been better had I gotten all of the rice that I asked for. Anyway, after dinner I went down to my room, which was dark because the curtains were closed, and just laid on my bed for a couple songs. I could have stayed there for the rest of the night. It sucks being back at the theater.

And speaking of, I am sitting there now. I ended up not going down to help clean tonight but I did have to take a bunch of trash out from upstairs. Empty boxed and shredded paper mostly. All the stairs didn't make my knee feel any better but I survived. My night was divided between looking at old funny internet pictures I have downloaded on my phone, and doing the reading for my research class this week. I still need to watch the video but I'll probably do that after I finish typing this. I may even add that bit on afterward but for now I haven't gotten that far.

We have a late show of Interstellar, which is over a three-hour movie with all of the crap attached to it. That means I will be here until at least three o'clock probably. When everything is said and done this could easily end up being a twenty-two hour day for me. And then I'll get about five hours of sleep before I have to get up and come back. It could be worse. There is an employee meeting tomorrow morning, which would mean about four hours of sleep at the most, but I don't have to come to it. Always a bright side.

And I'm back, at three o'clock in the morning. I spent the rest of my shift watching Interstellar. Not only because I was too tired to do anything else and it was the only movie playing, but also because I was interested in seeing it. It is too late to make any definitive verdict but I want to say I liked it. I missed the first thirty minutes so that may sway my vote, but as it stands now, I liked it. It was very epic in scale. I like epic sci-fi things and this fit the bill. I also liked the ending. Or at least the ending that was alluded to.

Now I'm going to go to bed. I'm sitting here now in the driveway at the old house because I didn't want to waste time going in but I needed the internet. And I can get it in the driveway. So there you go. But I need to stop typing because time continues to pass and I am tired as hell.