The Magic Eight Ball told me yesterday that the day was not going to be one of the better ones, and oh man*, was it right!

First I went out to find that my car had been broken into. Fortunately(?) my stuff is old and nothing appears to have been taken. (What? They didn't want my headphone-to-cassette-player-interface?) I'm not sure whether the fact that it is a stick shift has anything to do with it not being stolen. There is a chance that I inadvertently left it open and it was just a kid walking along checking car doors, I suppose, since there was no damage to any of the exterior locks. So, they threw the stuff from the glove box all over that car, and left both doors ajar, and that was that. The door handle on the driver's side was ripped off (? Why? Makes no sense...) but that was the worst of it. I had to head on into work, so didn't take time to make a police report. That could wait until the afternoon, right?

Except that by the end of the day, I had no voice and was definitely not up to calling anyone. I took my temperature when I got home and it was over 102 deg. I really had a hard time believing that, so I took it at least twice more. I was in a 2nd grade classroom all last week and on Friday, I made the mistake of starting an apple last week, and not finishing it before all the kids came back in from recess. It got to collect all the germs that are present in a 2nd grade class for the rest of the afternoon. At the end of the day, I looked at it and decided that I certainly needed to wash it before finishing it. Guess that wasn't enough. ;-) I felt a cold coming on all weekend, and I guess yesterday was the last straw.

So, picking up the pieces, I cancelled today's job last night, and went to bed early. The fever has definitely come down, although there's still a remnant. I'll spend most of today sleeping, I guess, since my morning coffee hasn't helped revive me at all. If the car doesn't get called in until tomorrow, that's fine too; the only reason to report it would be if there is something similar going on in the rest of the neighborhood. I've got a job in the afternoon for both tomorrow and Friday, in the same 2nd grade classroom as last week. I should be fine by then, but you can be sure I won't be leaving any half eaten apples around for kids to breath on!

* I'm dating myself right here. Current vernacular has replace that phrase with, "oh, dude!" but that just doesn't sound right to my ear yet. Even though, when you look at the two phrases, they are really exactly the same thing.

Postscript:
I hadn't realized how hard that flu hit me. It wasn't until the end of March that I started feeling myself again, not to mention, until I started getting caught up with everything that had been impacted.

ooooh... stormy weather. Just Sunday I was thinking that it was almost like spring, and now here today, there's rain and wind and quite the winter weather. Good incentive to clear the area around the fireplace and have a fire!

I'm still struggling with getting to bed on time. That certainly is a priority goal when the alarm goes off in the a.m., but somehow I get a surge of energy just when I should be winding down. Even if I get to bed close to when I'd like to, I wind up picking up a book in order to wind down, and then I read until it's too late.

The plan for last night was to bring my homework (which keeps getting put off as well) to bed, work on that for 30 minutes and crash. Instead, since I was late getting up there, I opted out of the homework. This was the right choice, as I didn't want to spin my brain up. The wrong choice was when I picked up the inevitable book instead. It wasn't as late a night as it has been recently, but still later than I'd like.

I think the answer is, strictly no books after 9:00. Period.

Arrgh! What a wretched bunch of kids. I suppose all teachers run into this. Everyone wants to teach the ones who want to learn. No one wants to teach the ones who don't want to be there *and* the ones who don't want to be there are making it challenging for those who *do* want to learn.

I suspect this conundrum is at the heart of the failings of our educational system. If you look at the populations who have high scoring students, I have to wonder what you would see if you looked at their population overall.

And it makes me wonder how and if I fit into this system at all.

Monday the 13th... far worse always than any Friday could be... It's the type of day that you just put your head down and get through.

Went to the School District HR office to see how the 'Pool' applications work. Turns out that they hire from those applicants, knowing that they want them but don't know for which school. I applied last year for the elementary pool. Today they told me that it was just that the ones they hired were more qualified. That true even with all my STEM experience? Do I believe that?

Wow. It's Saturday. And worse than that, it's Saturday evening. The day is gone, and I've done nothing towards ticking things off the To Do list.

Well, I haven't done exactly 'nothing'. The DH and I had a lovely dinner to celebrate Valentine's, since he'll be off playing with FIRST robots that evening. And I've looked over the posts that are finally starting to show up on my two on-line math classes (probably high time, since we're all supposed to have posted *and* commented by tomorrow ;-).

I also made significant progress towards reducing the sleep deficit that I've been insisting on maintaining throughout the week. This is actually a pretty good thing, since I've felt hints of illness nibbling at my edges lately, and I really don't want to get sick. Especially for a silly reason like refusing to go to bed on time. The Pirate Cat, btw, thought that the extended nap time was a special treat, just for him. No wonder he's never around at bedtime; he sleeps the entire day these days, with or without a bed buddy.

So I guess I can't call the day a complete waste; but I certainly didn't tackle the multitude of things that I keep saying I need to.

Got up, went in to work with the Kindergarten class again today; came home; discovered that the DH wasn't going to be available to help me pick up my car from the shop; ran through e-mail, etc,; picked up The Girl from campus; coerced her into helping me pick up my car; rewarded her with dinner; and now it's time for bed.

Well, at least I know where all the time went today... ;-/

It doesn't seem like I got much done today. I'm not sure that really true; I made it in to work with the Science Olympiad students, we got the 900 up to the garage to have the belts worked on (ouch - almost $500 for new door hinges), and got the oil changed in the 9000. I looked at what is required for my Experimental Design event that is coming up oh so much sooner than I really think (I need to make up two events: one for March 10th and the other for the 17th) and started looking for interesting ideas to build an event around. I got the bills paid and my hair washed and trimmed and my shampoo made up with my essential oils.

I think it feels like I didn't get anything done because I'm avoiding doing the things that I know I really need to. I didn't go over to talk to my Volvo expert to see how much effort I should be making to keep the '77's parts in circulation (the alternative and easy answer is to donate it to the Humane Society, but then it will just be sold for scrap and crunched up). I didn't go walk, and I know I need to get out and do that (even better would be to get out and run, but that's even more involved). I didn't get the backroom picked up; it still has all the stuff we dumped back there to make room for the paramedics over a week ago. I certainly didn't straighten up the parallel mess in the front room.

So that's why I feel like I didn't get anything done. And I'm still not sure how to resolve that.

Yup, looks like things are back to normal alright. I was up to midnight finishing up and scanning the Probability homework that was due. Things had gotten put off due to the preemption of the previous weekend and getting ready for the Science Olympiad invitational.

So, today I get to chase kindergartener on ~6 hrs of broken sleep. Not fun. No complaints about the kids; they're delightful. But it's a full day, and I need my wits about me to keep us all on track and on schedule. So more sleep would have been better.

Well, that went surprisingly well. The Remote Sensing event was much more 'do you have the right stuff in your notes' and not as much 'figure this out'-type activity as I normally like, but it was finished in the early evening, which continues to be unusual and surprising for me. I was also the 2nd one done grading. This is in part due to my having my sessions during the 1st and 2nd hours; in part due to having grading help (a *huge* help!); and in part due to having a lot more multiple-choice and matching questions.

Now, to get the Experimental Design events ready for next month!

Back to the same-old same-old. Spend all of Wednesday and Thursday pulling my Remote Sensing Event together for our Invitational this Saturday.

Wednesday was productive; I pretty much knew what I wanted on that part of the test, and it was just a matter of tracking down the data. AND recording the sources. Since this is a practice test, we give the teams a copy and I want the sources to be the best, most useful ones I can provide the students.

Yesterday was less directly productive. I was trying to find an activity that 1) was different than the ones I've done before and 2) still useful and representative. FINALLY late in the evening I found the one I wanted.

Now to write *that* part up today. Hopefully that will go quickly, and not be another marathon. When I did this for last month's Invitational, I found that I *liked* not being up until 2 or 3 the morning before the event. So that's the goal again for today.

Well, things seem pretty much back to normal. The DH was checked out of the hospital yesterday around 11:00. We had expected nothing to happen until the afternoon, so I had to scramble to get coverage for the class I was monitoring to get down to pick him out (a sub for the sub... good thing I've built up lots of good karma with that school; they were great!). When he first called me, I got the impression they had cleared him out and he was sitting in the lobby in nothing but his bathrobe and hospital socks, but turns out they weren't quite that close to turning him out onto the street.

He was back to working with the FIRST Robotics last night at the school and will resume his sports regime this coming weekend. Amazing, and we're grateful.