News and Updates

1. I’m guessing that I didn’t actually break my toe last Sunday – I just bashed it all to hell.  It is mostly not purple anymore.  I’ve been able to wear normal shoes since Tuesday and go up and down stairs without too much fuss (always my standard gauge for measuring foot injuries).  And it’s pretty much stopped hurting.  The bruising did spread a bit but in a fairly bottle-shaped pattern so I’m feeling confident that won’t be a larger issue.  So three cheers for me – I didn’t damage myself as much as I thought.  Rah.

2. Somehow I have become the local guru for our new classroom management software down at Home Campus, which is a tremendous irony since I have been loudly vocal about the fact that this software program sucks stagnant swamp water and everyone involved in its development, marketing, and purchase should be publicly flogged.  Seriously – how do you build an educational software platform that can’t do submodules, can’t move items in bulk, can’t (without intervention from several layers of IT professionals) handle giving one grade to a lesson where students choose between multiple discussion forums to answer, doesn’t allow you to look over discussion posts without instantly marking them as read, doesn’t let you give subject lines for discussion posts in a forum, and can’t keep discussion forums in the order you want them without rearranging them every time someone makes a post?  But since I’ve been beating my head against this particular wall longer than most people on my campus, I am now one of the people they come to for advice.  I try not to cackle when responding, but this program needs to come with gift cards for your local liquor store and a 2x4 to beat against your skull to dull the pain when the liquor is not enough.

3. In all seriousness, I am fairly convinced that I now have minor nerve damage in my right hand from having to move 3000+ quiz questions by dragging and dropping them individually in that program last month.  I should file a claim.

4. When der Sturmtrumper is finally driven from office, there will be a reckoning.  It will not be pretty.

5. I stumbled upon a trove of old mini-DVD discs from a movie camera we had when the girls were little, and surprisingly enough they can still be played on my computer.  I’ve been having fun watching and remembering, and I’m copying them over to the computer in the fond hopes that I can update the format to something more accessible. 

6. It’s been seriously rainy here the last week or so – severe thunderstorms most nights, flood watches and warnings, the whole nine yards.  The cats are mildewed and the house feels like it just ran a mile.  The lawn is now approaching wild prairie status and we’ve forgotten what color the sky is when there aren’t any clouds.  Other than the lawn and the humidity, I’m pretty okay with this.  It beats August.

7. My brain has been playing some weird things on the mental jukebox of late.  I spent all day yesterday humming “I Don’t Want to Get Over You” by The Magnetic Fields, which is a strange one even for me.

8. I haven’t had to adjust my car seat in weeks, and it still doesn’t feel right just getting in and driving off.

9. On the other hand, I now have a repaired back tire and a new windshield, which combined are probably worth more than rest of the car at this point.  But my goal is to nurse this car for another five years, until Lauren graduates from college, since I’m enjoying not having a car payment at the moment and would like that trend to continue in these more expensive than usual years.

10. I put together a list of projects for myself and actually managed to get one of them done this weekend, much to my surprise.  I’m not sure what use this is, given that it is something of an archival project that literally nobody but me cares about, but it does feel good to have completed something.  Doesn’t happen very often, really.  Might as well enjoy it.