Well, after some silly moments I made it home yesterday about 4:00 p.m. or so. Let’s see, when I was checking out of the hotel, this man who was standing by the counter went, “Whoa! You smell gooooood!” He kept going on and on about it. Then he said, “I can see why you’re married.” The man behind the counter said, “What?” And the other man said, “She’s married, and I can see why. She’s smelling fine!” It was a little weird and creepy that he noticed I had a wedding ring on and thought I smelled so good. Clinique Happy Heart. Get some and attract weirdos just like I do. :sweatdrop:

I made it to the conference with no problem. I just wanted to add that the reason I went to McDonald’s so many times while I was gone is because it was the closest thing to my hotel, and I didn’t feel brave enough to venture out and find food elsewhere. My workshop on copyright was pretty good. A lot of my teachers are doing things they shouldn’t be. Hopefully they won’t be sued. Lots of people apparently left the conference on Thursday night to try and beat the snow. Lots of people left yesterday morning too, so all of my workshops were pretty empty. I ate lunch by myself at T.G.I. Fridays. I’ve never eaten in a restaurant like that by myself. It was definitely weird. I had to walk around in the snow and stuff. It was really cold. It started snowing in Louisville about 8:30 or 9:00 probably.

As I was eating lunch, a brilliant thought came to me. I hadn’t gotten all of my first choices of workshops since I registered kind of late. I thought that maybe since lots of people were leaving though, I could get into a workshop that I had really wanted. (The reason I wanted it so bad was because you get free software valued at $200.) I decided that I couldn’t possibly adequately learn all about 5 different types of animation software in an hour, so I decided to try and find out of I could switch from the animation workshop to the other one which was about creating newsletters and school newspapers. I asked someone at the registration booth, and she told me to go ahead and show up to the workshop I wanted and it would probably be okay. And it was. Only me and one other girl showed up. I got my free software though, so all was well.

I made it home mostly with no problems. It was hard to see driving out of Louisville. A lot of the road signs were covered in snow which made it hard to tell where I needed to go exactly. There was pretty heavy snow all the way past Elizabethtown. Once I got into Muhlenberg County, the snow decreased dramatically. By the time I was back in Hopkins County, the snow was like non-existent. It was really lame. They had cancelled school yesterday due to “the threat of snow” and it didn’t even snow all day really! Luckily, I got home just in time. The place to turn onto my road was starting to get slick. After I got home, it started snowing harder and snowed pretty much all night I think. We have probably at least 8 inches of snow. It’s crazy! It hasn’t snowed like this in forever. You could actually build a snowman out of this!

Pouncy has had a cold for the past few days: runny nose, runny eye, and sneezing. She was also having some trouble breathing it seemed like. I decided when I got home yesterday afternoon that she needed to go to the vet. They were closed. I took a hot shower though and had her stay in the bathroom with me. We also turned on the humidifier for her. The vet was supposed to open at 7:30 this morning, so I called and the vet said the roads were really bad and he wasn’t going to be there long. Luckily, the vet is like 5 minutes away. We bundled up Pouncy and took off through the snow. She usually freaks out about the car, but she did okay today. She also did okay once we got in the vet’s office. She didn’t freak out about the dog or cat that were also there. The doctor was the only one there, so he was also having to answer phones and everything. Once we got in a room, we had to wait quite awhile. Pouncy got anxious and antsy and started freaking out. She was panting and sounded like she might hyperventilate and stuff. She was growling and hissing, biting and scratching and trying to get away. She hates the doctor. Always has.

The doctor finally took a look at her and couldn’t believe that she’s almost 18, has FIV, and has been doing absolutely fine for the past 3 and a half years. He said she’s outlived any FIV statistics that there are. He did say she definitely had a bad cold though. He gave her an antibiotic and some medicine for her eye too. He said to keep taking hot showers with her too. It’s important that she doesn’t lose her ability to smell, because if she can’t smell her food she won’t eat. Luckily, she is still eating and everything. She just looks so pathetic and sounds so sicky. :(( I hope the medicine starts helping her and she feels better soon.

Luckily Pouncy is an inside cat and doesn’t have to deal with this —-> (And the pile is getting bigger.)

My head is throbbing.

Today was just another long, busy day in my long, busy week. I’m so sick of testing. We’re still doing PLATO testing of course, and for the grade not PLATOing I’m giving them the STAR Reading/STAR Early Literacy tests. I cannot stand STAR. It is such an invalid test. It’s pretty useless actually. It gives teachers a reading level, but big deal. There are lots of ways to get a kid’s reading level. Most of them take more work on the teacher’s part mind you, but the teacher’s the one who should be dealing with reading levels, not me in the computer lab. I could rant and rave about STAR all day, but I won’t. I’m too tired to do that. :sleepy:

Funny how kids get dumped on me sometimes. There are three Jehovah’s Witness kids in our school. They don’t participate in any holiday activities, so they usually come hang out in the lab with me. Today, no one could deal with this autistic kid, so he ended up in the lab with me. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against kids with different religious beliefs or kids with disabilities, I just find it humorous that I end up with those kids when no one else can deal with them.

And it’s now official- it’s so hot, kids are not allowed to go outside for recess. This means they have to stay cooped up inside watching movies or something. Poor teachers.

I have said news. Chunk is sick. He was sick about a month ago. He got this big swollen lump on him. I came to the conclusion that he had eaten too much. I have him a pea (this acts as a laxative for fish), and his lump shrunk in size. Well, now the dude is pretty darn huge and looks like a pinecone. He has dropsy. If you click on the link, you’ll find out that Dropsy is most often fatal for fish. I’m treating him with antibiotics, but I’m not holding my breath. He looks really bad. He’s still swimming around like crazy though. He doesn’t seem to be in any pain. He’s not gasping for air or anything like that. It’s sad though because I’ve had Chunk for over 2 years. I’ve had him since my first year of teaching which was in Lexington. He’s been through a lot with me! I hope he’ll get better, but I don’t know what the chances of that are.

Work has kept me super busy lately.

This week was the first week I actually had classes in the computer lab. Whoa. Of course, I spent all this week going over the rules, expectations, and procedures with students. Last year, I didn’t really do that because I was hired after school had already started. The rules were already in place. I am soooo sick of rattling off my rules. I am so sick of saying the same thing over and over. Boorrrring.

The kids all really like the new lab setup though and the ocean theme I have going on. I bought a betta fish for the lab. I got another female (girl power) and my mom helped me pick her out. She was kind of unusual. Most female betta fish are very light in color. All the ones I have ever seen anyway. This one is a really deep purple/blue/black mix. She’s very pretty. I named her Techie (like…Technology…). The kids LOVE her. I figured they would. However, each time I had a class and introduced Techie, it started a huge chain reaction of kids who either had a fish, knew someone who had a fish, saw Finding Nemo (there’s a tiny Squirt the turtle in Techie’s tank), or other miscellaneous fish stories. I had to nip those in the bud. If I let them keep talking about fish, we’d never get anything else done. A girl had a betta fish that almost jumped into her orange juice one time though….

In between classes I spent this week helping sort out the Scantron machine and the GMADE software. We finally got a computer setup so I could install the software on that computer so it wouldn’t tie up mine in the lab. Luckily, I’m not going to end up being the one who has to scan all those 460 something tests. Yay! I also spent a lot of time working on the computers. I didn’t have to do anything too major this week. I mostly had to reset data locations on some of our software/programs. There are a lot of things that the technician needs to come fix. On our new work order system we use to place work orders, it gives us a graph of all the total number of work orders in the district. My school has the most with 60 something. The second highest number is like 20 something. It’s ridiculous. I don’t know why anyone else isn’t having as much trouble with their new computers as I am. *rolls her eyes* I mean, there are just certain things I can’t do. Whatever.

I had a lab attendant meeting on Friday. We got some goodies: a Kid Pix book with a cd-rom that has some pretty cool activities/lessons to do with kids, a new flash drive (a 2 GB one this time), and a cd with all of our lab manuals on it. We can throw away the huge binders now that just sit around and collect dust and take up space. Yay! My friend who works in the lab at another local school asked the Technology Resource Trainer if she thinks they’ll ever hire certified teachers to work in the labs. She said no, that they did that several years ago and had to go back to hiring classified assistants to do it because of the lack of money. Lame.

My dad’s going to race tonight. I don’t think I mentioned this before, but my dad does have a race car. He’s raced a few times each year for the past 5 years or so. I think he wants to start doing it more regularly though. Last time he did okay, his car just didn’t go very fast. He got a cam or something though that’s supposed to make him go faster now though. My camera doesn’t take good pictures at the track. The lighting is bad and the cars are moving of course, so it’s hard to get a picture.

I had to get a new aquarium for Freebie. His tank’s filter sort of died. I don’t know what happened exactly, but green algae started invading. So, I just went and got him a 10 gallon tank like Chunk’s. He seems to be waaay happier now. I planted several plant bulbs in there. I hope they grow. The one in Dazzle’s tank has grown, and she really likes it.

Pouncy’s birthday was on July 6th. She is…. *drum roll* 17, SEVENTEEN, years old! She still acts like such a spunky little kitten. As a treat, we got her a plain Cheeseburger from McDonald’s (she always tries to get our food when we bring food home). She opened it and drug the top bun off. The she started trying to eat it. She picked up the patty and bottom bun and carried it off into the dining room. I finally cut it up for her. She loves cheese. It was so adorable. Pouncy is the bestest cat ever. I’ve had her for practically my whole life it seems. I can’t imagine not having her around!

She’s still doing just fine with her FIV. You’d never know she had by just looking at her. She’s still fairly thin, but she’s always been a tiny cat. Pouncy is so precious. :kiss:

Yesterday I got to thinking about fish. I needed to clean Chunk’s tank, and I was thinking how he looked lonely. I thought maybe I’d get him a friend. Of course, Chunk is huge. He possibly might have eaten one of my fish before who went missing. Also, he’s in a 10 gallon tank by himself. If I got him a friend, I’d probably need a 20 gallon tank. Then I was thinking how I wanted another betta fish. While in the swimming pool with Colin, I decided I wanted to go to the pet store.

I actually went to Wal-Mart first. Apparently, they don’t sell fish there anymore (not here anyway), which is good because last time I looked at fish at Wal-Mart, every single fish in every single tank was belly-up dead. Terrible. I went to our small, local pet store E&L Pets to see what they had. I found a nice 20 gallon tank with stand for about $140.00. I don’t think I really need to spend that much money on fish right now. So, I decided I probably wouldn’t be getting a friend for Chunk or a bigger tank. I looked at the betta fish, but none of them really jumped out at me.

I came home empty-handed. I did some looking online to see about finding a good gravel cleaner to use on Chunk’s tank. I came across this one that looked really good at PetSmart. Unfortunately, the closest PetSmart is in Evansville, Indiana. After agonizing over what to do, I decided at 6:30 I wanted to go to PetSmart. Colin hates fish. He wasn’t too happy about my decisions, but we went with me anyway.

When we got to PetSmart, we looked for the gravel cleaner thing, but all they had was a 50 foot one. I had wanted the 25 foot one. We got some cat food, cat litter, the 50 foot monster, and then I started looking at fish. I looked through all the betta fish (and there was a lot). I finally found a tiny female I liked that was kind of iridescent blue. She also has a sort of rainbowy patch by her face. I looked around at the other fish too, and found some Calico Telescope fish that caught my eye. The biggest one in the tank is the one I noticed first. It was a pretty fish. And then I noticed… the fish only had one eye.

A one-eyed fish? I had to have it. I decided at that instant I wanted that fish. I decided I’d put him in the 5 gallon tank and not get a betta fish. I asked the lady if something was wrong with the fish. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t sick or something. I thought maybe an eye was missing because another fish ate it off or something barbaric like that. I noticed there was a smaller one in the tank with only one eye too. She went to ask her manager about it. I waited for what seemed like forever. When she finally came back, she said nothing was wrong with the fish. He just has one eye. She also said PetSmart couldn’t sell me the fish because they can’t sell animals with missing body parts or ones with extra body parts. But… she said they could adopt him out to me and let me have him for free. So of course, I snatched him up.

Colin reminded me that I have several small betta tanks I could use if I still wanted to get a betta fish too. Duh! So, I grabbed the female I had been looking at and we headed to the check-out lines.

While standing in line, the girl in front of me told me how pretty Mr. One-Eye was. I think she was curious why it said “free” on his bag. I told her why he was free and that I wanted him because I have a one-eyed cat. She told her mom, so then the mom had to look at it. Then the cashier girl had to show it to another girl who works there and tell her how I am getting a one-eyed fish because I have a one-eyed cat. Yes, it seemed everyone was interested in my slightly handicapped pet choices. The total came to like $100.00. Once outside I looked at my receipt. They had charged me too much for the gravel cleaner. I went back inside to check, and suddenly there were 25 foot cleaners on the shelf. So, I exchanged the 50 foot one for the 25 foot one and got $32 back.

We got home at around 10:00. Colin read the directions for the gravel pump. We couldn’t hook it to the kitchen sink, so we had to hook it to the bathroom one. It wasn’t working like it was supposed to. We finally got it to work, then it stopped working. It was very frustrating. Water was everywhere. The bathroom sink was filling up and not draining fast enough. Colin began pulling wads of hair out of it. Hair that wasn’t ours. :sick: It was pretty rough for awhile. We were both tired and getting frustrated. Finally, we gave up. Colin went to Kroger and bought more water, and I started cleaning the gravel like I always do which takes forever. I think we finally got all 3 fish settled into their own tanks at around 1:30-ish in the morning (Chunk, Dazzle the betta, and Freebie. We were tired and hungry so… we went to McDonald’s and got Happy Meals.