Normally, I get “off” work about two weeks after the teachers.  (The teachers are “done” the day after the students’ last day, though “done” is about as accurate as describing my summers as “free” or “off”.)  During that two weeks, I’m expected to pack up and organize the contents of two labs and help the admin team “finish off” everything for the previous year and prepare for the next.

After that, I’m “free” to do what I want.  For me, that usually means spending time getting my house back in order. (Who has time to clean during the month of May? Hardly anyone working in MY school!)  I also try to take training classes from the district.  It’s not required for my job classification, but I love learning.  Plus, I really hate hearing someone in the school talk about something computer-related that I don’t already know.  (I hate feeling dumb!)

However, this hasn’t been a typical year.  Thanks to the taxpayers and the blessed bond that was passed months ago, we are finally getting new equipment to replace our 11 year old lab equipment.  (Sad as it sounds, we had students who were younger than the equipment that they were using to learn about computers!)  Because it’s such a big undertaking, the district decided that they wanted to swap the equipment over the summer.  So I spent extra time rounding up the worst computers in the building and swapping the lab computers for them.  Then I helped set up the new equipment, which included reimaging the hard drives so that they had the “latest and greatest” software load from the district.

The district allocated a whopping 7 hours for me to do this job.  After a little math, I found that there was no way technically possible to get everything done in that amount of time.

But I’m a school employee, and just like everyone else in our school, I do whatever it takes to get the job done.

Also on my agenda this summer is a project that I’m doing for one of our Special Ed teachers.  Every school has some sort of book room that’s separate from the library.  The book room has books that the special ed teachers use with students who are behind in reading.  In our school, the book room has been split for years.  Some of the books are in one room.  Some are in another.  Others are in a corner of the library.  This teacher was put in charge of unifying and organizing everything.  It took her about 5 seconds to realize that she needed some computer-based way of keeping track of the books.  It took about another couple of weeks of visiting schools throughout the district to see how they are dealing with the issue.  Without exception, she found the solutions that were being used were either clunky, inadequate, or downright useless.  So we got together and came up with some requirements for a whole new system.  My summer project, which I rather took on myself, is to create a web-based application for her and our teachers to use.

What can I say?  I’m a masochist!  Besides, it will keep my programming skills fresh.  And hopefully, it will help the teachers and children in the end. I’m a sucker for the kids and the teachers!

So I’m busy, even though I “have the summer off.”

This is not to say that there’s been no time for fun and relaxation.  I’ll be back in a couple days to share what I’ve been up to in the way of relaxing.

The retreat was held at Our House in Milford.  We went there last fall for the “Christmas in July” retreat and had a blast.  Angie, the owner, and her mother, Ann, are absolute dears.  They cook and clean for us and generally make us feel like we’re at home.  The place is decorated with handmade quilts.  Kitty sent them a new addition… Some hand-stitched needlepoint pictures!

People ask me where this place is, and the truth is that I’m geographically impaired enough to not know for sure.  Kitty always drives, which leaves me the luxury of chatting and staring out the window.  So the best I can do is “Go South until you pass the big inflatable bugs, then go two exits past the exit with the Starship Enterprise.  Not very exact directions, but they work for Kitty!

To tell the truth, Our House in Milford is out in the middle of nowhere.  The first time we went there, everyone in our car was absolutely sure that we’d taken a wrong turn because we went into a little town with a stop sign and then crossed the road and meandered past some plastic covered houses, a cornfield, and a few cows before we saw the sign for the retreat.

But once you get there?  It’s a treat!

Rhonda from the Shabby Sheep was already there as were several other people.  We claimed a couple tables as our own and dropped our bags in our bedroom.  Then we kicked back our heels and relaxed for the rest of the weekend.  Everyone ooh-ed and ah-ed over the progress that I’d made on the Earth Maiden Shawl with Micki’s handspun.

A little later, my friend Angela showed up.  I was really happy about this as I knew that Kitty and Angela would hit it off fabulously!  We laughed and talked and knitted the rest of the night, and it was SO relaxing!

I’m an early riser, and Saturday morning was no exception.  The advantage of early mornings is the wonder of sights like this:

A sixteen year-old girl named Alanna was there for the retreat, and she’s an early riser too.  (She blames tutoring.  I blame brilliance!)  We watched the sun rise together.  One of the dogs from the farm down the road came up, and we petted the dog for a bit before going back inside.

At around ten, I started my first weaving class!  We used a little Cricket loom.  I used some yarn that I’d purchased years ago from the Woolie Ewe but had never used because, despite the fact that they all claimed to be from the same dye lot, they were vastly different in color.

Ten hours (and two fabulous meals and more visiting with everyone else), I had completed my first weaving project!  The edges are a bit wobbly, and the weave isn’t 100% even, but it’s mine!  I used the lighter of the yarn for the warp and the darker of the skeins for the weft.  The result is a really nice plaid.  Interestingly enough, the ends of the scarf look like stripes.  I don’t know how it happened… It just did!  (I gave the left-over yarn to Kitty, who was sure she could make something cool from it.)

I think I’m smitten by the weaving bug!  I didn’t buy the Cricket loom though.  It didn’t make much sense to buy a loom that I’d likely quickly out-grow.

Sunday started out well, but quickly went downhill.  As I was photographing Kitty’s fabulous cabled coat, I somehow managed to drop my expensive camera.  I was (and still am) inconsolable about that.  It pretty much ruined my mood.

However, it did not stop me from signing up for the summer/fall retreat.  In fact, Kitty signed me up for an extra day!  So we will be returning to Our House in Milford in a few months!

Apparently, she was given a password to an online area where she could sign up for classes for the following school year, and the students were supposed to finish their selections by Friday.

I asked her what she had already.  She laid it out:

• 1 credit (two semesters) pre-AP Calculus
• 1 credit (two semesters) Environmental Science (What the…???  In high school?!?)
• Orchestra (double blocked for both semesters for 1 credit)
• 1 credit AP English
• 1 credit pre-AP US History

She was still trying to figure out how to add in the rest of these in the last two years of high school:

• Latin III and IV (She thinks that she might want to be a linguist so she wants to take all four years of Latin.  Plus she needs three Latin credits to earn the “Distinguished Achievement” diploma.)
• Phys Ed (she has to have 1.5 credit hours to graduate)
• Health (she has to have .5 credit hours to graduate, and the Nutrition class that she took for some reason doesn’t count as a Health course even though they measured her body fat and required her to keep a food diary for an entire semester.)
• Technology (1 credit hour to graduate)

Basically, the only way to do it is if she bows out of things that she loves in her Senior year (like Latin IV) and/or only have Orchestra every other day and/or goes to summer school.  Or she can can help prove the theory that “Distinguished Achievement” really means “Neener! Neener!  I have a time-turner and you don’t!”

She’s not amused.  She’s freaking.  And I’m totally helpless.

Well, maybe not totally helpless.  I can do two things:

1.  Send a message to her counselor asking for help figuring it out.

2.  Vent.

I’ve done the first.  Now I’m going to do the second.

This morning, I had a talk with one of my co-workers while I was fixing her computer.  The topic was state standardized testing and how ALL students are expected to be competent in the same things in order to graduate or move on in school.

I know I work in a school, and it’s pretty un-PC to say, but WHY do legislators think that ALL students have to be capable of doing the same things at the same time?  What ever happened to appreciating people for who they are?    Why is it so bad that little Jimmy or Jenny is not a great book learner but a brilliant artist, muscian, or athlete?     In my daughter’s case, why does she have to give up things that she loves and will likely use in her future (orchestra, art, and Latin) so that she can take classes that don’t interest her and will likely be forgotten and never used again after she finishes with the classes?

Why are kids who are already proficient in an area forced to sit through the same things because it says on a list of requirements somewhere that they HAVE to take the class?  My daughter can handle technology better than most adults that I know, and she has been able to do so for years.  The lack of a technology class isn’t going to turn her into a mental midget when it comes to computers, but neither will taking an additional course necessarily make her better.  So instead of taking things that will interest her and help her grow intellectually, she has to sit through a course that will in all likelihood make her resent the subject more.

It’s just stupid!  We’re churning out cookie cutter kids reduced to the lowest common denominator and calling it “success”!

–  Deep breath –

I’ve vented enough. Nothing has changed.  I’m just disgusted, and I can’t help but sympathize with my daughter when she says, “No!  High school does NOT prepare you for real life!  In real life, you have a choice whether to stay in a situation that stinks!”

I’ve sent a message off to her counselor.  Hopefully she’ll have some advice.

I have a feeling that nothing she says will make my daughter happy.  Requirements are what they are, even if they do stink!

Little Grump and I talked about it for something like two minutes and then said, “Oh yeah!  You can count on us!”   So we signed up to go to the facility on Sunday mornings to work a four hour shift.

Unlike the local shelter, this facility is about a half hour away.  So we woke up early and left our house at about 7:15.  (We had to allow for a quick zoom through the Starbucks drivethrough!)

When we got there, the attendant asked if we were afraid of any particular animals.  He said some people hated insects and arachnids.  I knew that we didn’t.  (Neither one of us squash spiders or crickets.  No… We carefully pick them up and set them outside.)  He asked about snakes or slimy things.  Nope… not that either.  (Little Bear has been the resident gecko rangler since we moved to Texas.  Those little guys are quick, but Little Grump is quicker!)  Since we didn’t seem to be afraid of anything, he put us to work with the reptiles.

Now, we’ve handled some reptiles before, but we’ve never seen such an array as we did today… Lizards, water dragons, turtles in all shapes and sizes, and more.  We even saw a large slug, which had just had babies.  (Did you know slugs were asexual?  I didn’t!)

Our first job was to go through and change water, feed animals, and “check for deads.”  We had to go through the reptiles and find any ones that might have perished.

In one cage, I was sure I found one that was dead.  It’s legs were all splayed out and it looked flatter than a pancake.  It wasn’t until Little Grump reached for it and it took off like a shot that we realized that… whoops!  It was still alive.

Which is just proof of the what we learned today… It’s not always easy to see if a reptile is alive or just comfy!

We also found a toad that chirped like a cricket instead of croaked.  We saw that turtles actually use their claws to arrange their food while they eat.  And we saw a long tailed lizard that looked like a tiny snake with four feet.

It was a very cool experience, and we plan on going back next week.  Little Grump hopes to be able to help with the small mammals next week because she wants to learn about more animals.  (Besides, she though she saw a lemur!)

I’d be happy with the reptiles and amphibians again.  They’re actually rather cute and calming!

Out of all of the episodes, one of my favorites is “Blink”.  In this episode, a young woman named Sally Sparrow goes into an old house to just explore and, after peeling back some old wallpaper, finds a note warning her not to blink.   It’s spine-tingling and has that wonderful twisting of time that makes me think of paradoxes and other, as the Doctor calls it, “wibbly wobbly time-y whimey stuff.”

At one point, Sally explains to a friend why she likes to explore old houses.

Kathy Nightingale: What did you come here for anyway?

Sally Sparrow: I love old things. They make me feel sad.

Kathy Nightingale: What’s good about sad?

Sally Sparrow: It’s happy for deep people.

I can really understand what Sally means.  It’s sad to see once beautiful buildings fallen into ruins.  However, with the passing of one thing, there’s always the birth of something else.  All of houses that have been abandoned have a history, and it’s kind of fun sometimes to think about days gone by and think about the things that happened there.  And sometimes, it’s good to feel sad about things that aren’t so personal.  (It’s been a really emotionally trying time lately for quite a few of my friends, so it’s good to find something a bit more distant as a target for the sadness.)

When I saw the site The Ruins of Detroit, I couldn’t help but think about Sally Sparrow.  The site is a collection of sad yet beautiful pictures of scenes in modern day Detroit.  The pictures are heart-breaking in some respects, but they’re awesome too.  Check it out!

I remember back to the time after 9/11 when both Mr. Grump and I were laid off within about a month of each other.  We never saw it coming!  No amount of planning could have helped.  One day, we were a couple making a combined salary well into the six figures, and then… Poof!  Three weeks later, our only income is whatever unpaid overtime we were owed.  Then a year went by as we pounded on one door after another while trying to find new employment.  And then one day, he got a job offer from a company to which he’d never sent his resume in a state neither one of us had ever considered as a potential home.

Life is funny.  Today was another example of God’s rather odd sense of humor.

This has been a rough week at work.  Ever since break, work has kicked my butt!

Recently, the district decided that it wanted to try out a new system for the teachers to request my help.  It’s a pain in the teachers’ necks, but I see it as a way of guaranteeing my job security.  (Heh… If the district sees half of what someone in my job position does in one day, they’d be hard-pressed to say that the school doesn’t need my services!)

Then we returned from break.  I’d asked the teachers and staff to unplug all computer equipment over break to save money and wear and tear on the equipment.  When we came back and started plugging things in, almost nothing worked the way that it did before.  Network printers started giving odd errors or not working at all.  Computers were able to connect to the network one minute but not the next and won’t reconnect until everything is powered off and then on again.  Even the phones stopped working like normal!  Teachers and students were not amused, to say the least.

So for the past two days, I’ve been running myself dizzy as I went from one corner of the school to the other to attempt to fix issues.  (The district’s new facility for reporting issues got quite the work-out!)  By the time the day was over, I was exhausted!  I finally left about 5:30 (after work, after Computer Club, and after touching base with a couple of the teachers about printing issues).  I was tired, and the only thing I wanted to do was eat a large dinner and then pass out on the couch.  To say that I felt battered and humbled would only begin to explain my mood.

But life is funny sometimes.

Little Grump and I got home.  She went in to take a shower.  I checked the voice mail before I surrendered to the big comfy couch.  And this is the message I received.

“Hello, this is [xxx's office].  We just wanted to call to ask you to come by.   We have a  check for you here.  It’s really large.  We want to see you to hand it over because we don’t trust the mail with it.  Give us a call or come by.”

This year saw lots of changes at work.  The principal was replaced with an interim principal, and then a new principal was hired over the summer.  So I had three bosses in one year, and they were all very different from each other.  Fortunately, I worked well with each of them.  I have developed a good relationship with my new boss (i.e. she thinks I can do anything!), so life is good at work.

Mr. Grump’s work continued to be busy enough to require him to do some overtime.  He seems to be content, even when it means he has to go in to work on Sunday.  Unfortunately, work interfered with our holiday travel, but he didn’t have to work long hours over the holiday.  So life is good there.

Little Grump turned 16 this year.  While most kids would be chomping at the bit to start driving, she took driving lessons over the summer and then declared that she wasn’t ready for the responsibility of driving.  I’m not sure but the lesson where someone was driving in the wrong direction on the highway and heading towards her might have something to do with it.  Still, I have to respect her when she admits that she isn’t ready.  Most teens are so cocky that they can’t even conceive that anything can go wrong.  She knows better.   She’s not dating anyone right now.  Again, she sees things much more realistically than most teens.  She doesn’t feel like she has the time to devote to a real relationship.   She also doesn’t feel like she needs a boy to make her important.  We’re very proud that she is so independent!

So overall, life is good!  Yeah, we’ve had some bumps, but nothing that got us down for long.  We’re blessed by good friends, and while our family is far away, our hearts are always with them.

At the end of the year, I like to look back over photos that I’ve taken through the year.  Thanks to my new digital SLR, there are thousands.  Most of them are from school.  Many are of Little Grump.  Quite a few are of my knitting.

As I look at my completed projects for the year, I have to admit some amount of pride.  I’ve done some pretty big projects this year.  Equal Parts took me months to complete!  Several were pretty complicated and required concentration.  Many of my projects were baby gifts, and everyone who received those baby gifts were pleased with them.

Knitting Projects 2009

My favorite project of the year are the cabled ones… the Gretel hat and the baby Trellis sweater.  There was a time when I wouldn’t even have tried projects like them.  Now, I not only do them but like them enough to have others see them!

I’ve already got a list of projects a mile long lined up for 2010.  I also have four projects from this year to finish.  It will be interesting to see how many of them I actually do!

Me?  I’m playing with my new toy!

The Amazon Kindle!

The truth is that Mr. Grump gave it to me on Saturday.  He must have received it in the mail on Friday and spent a good part of the night playing with it.

On Saturday morning, I woke up to find him sitting in his favorite chair.  He had a silly grin on his face and looked like he was about to pop.  I commented how weird it was to see him awake so early and then sat down on the couch.  When I went to pick up my laptop to check my mail, I noticed something sitting on top of it.

Then Mr. Grump (who is really no grump at all!) started telling me all of the great things it could do.  In all the time I’ve known him (22 years… wow…), I’ve rarely seen him so excited!  He then apologized for giving it to me early, but he didn’t want to wait.

So I’ve been spending most of the last couple days exploring web sites and playing with my Kindle.  I’ve found some sites through which I can download books for free, figured out how to transfer them directly to the Kindle without using the wireless network, and found a tool that allows me to convert PDF files so that I can zoom in on the text.  (The Kindle supposedly handles PDFs natively, but it’s hard to zoom in on the text.)

So far, we’ve all had our time with the Kindle.  Little Grump is reading “The Tale of Genji”.  Hubby has been browsing around all of the stuff that I’ve loaded on it.  And I’ve had some time to bond with some of the classics that I read as a child.  Little Grump and I agree that we miss the tactile feeling of turning pages, but I’m really going to appreciate reducing the clutter from books that I’ve read and then piled into a corner!

I also received a 32 GB memory card for my camera, some new jammies, a meat thermometer (don’t laugh!  I asked for it!), and an official NFL football made in the factory in the town where I went to college.

Little Grump scored big, but then, she always does.  She was amazed at Santa’s ability to remember the exact poofy vest that she’d said that she wanted three months ago.  And she was thrilled with her video games.  (Obviously, except for dinner, we won’t be seeing her for the rest of the day!

Hubby is a happy guy too.  He didn’t receive anything as cool as what I received, but he was very pleased with the videos he received and with the Bengals merchandise that I remembered he’d wanted.

Overall, it’s been a nice Christmas so far.  We had a white Christmas, and we have happy family.  What else could a girl want?

I’m off to make dinner!

Until this year, there have only been two exceptions for our winter trip.  When Little Grump was one, we lived in Akron.  We thought it would be good to spend Christmas morning at our house.   Unfortunately, that meant that less than a half hour after opening gifts, we had to be in the car and ready to leave for Christmas dinner at my sister-in-law’s house.  The only other time that we missed Christmas in central Ohio was a few years back when the weather turned really bad the day we set out.  We spent seventeen hours on the road and went from our house to… our house!  About a half-hour south of Little Rock, the highway turned into an ice skating rink.  It took hours to travel from one exit to the next a mile later.  So we turned around and went home.  (It turned out to be a good thing.  An ice storm hit the Columbus area and left my sister-in-law’s house without lights or heat for days!)

We haven’t minded that much.  We love seeing the family.  And we love having a white Christmas.  Typically, if it’s not snowing when we get there, it’s snowing sometime during our trip.  This gives Mr. Grump, Little Grump, and I just enough of the snow for us to remember why we like living in Texas!

Alas, we won’t make it this year either.  Mr. Grump has been working on a project that is at a critical stage.  Bugs were popping up left and right, and his management wanted everyone on call just in case someone’s expertise was needed to track down a problem.  While he would have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off work, the travel days were gone.

We’re going to miss the family, but we won’t be missing our white Christmas.  It started snowing this morning at about 10 AM, and it’s been snowing off and on since!

Christmas Eve Day 2009

Happy Christmas!  Drive safe!

Things in the Grump household are especially busy this time of year.  When we’re not running off to an activity for Little Grump, I’m running off to one of mine.  I like to attend as many as the activities at my school as I can, because I get to take tons of pictures for the school web site and for the yearbook.   I really enjoy all of the craziness though.  It wouldn’t be the holiday season without so many concerts and parties!

I’ve been looking at the pictures I’ve taken this year with glee.  Mr. Grump bought a new telephoto lens for my spiffy digital SLR, so I’ve taken tons of pictures that the subjects aren’t even aware I’ve taken.  I have so many gorgeous close-up pictures of the school children!  All of them are totally candid, so I have caught some of them at times when they are at their most genuine.  I wish I can share them with the world, but alas… There’s that pesky confidentiality thing!  Anyway, I’m getting really excited about doing the yearbook this year!  (Remind me that I said that in March, when I’m killing myself to finish it in time!)

At home, I’ve been cooking up a storm.  I’m no Martha Stewart, but it seems my Buckeyes have become sort of an expected holiday treat at the school.  I’ll be taking some in on Friday to appease the folks who have been asking me when they’re going to make an appearance.  I also made Chex mix, puppy chow, peanut brittle (from my friend Rebecca), and chocolate covered pretzels.

In between all of that, I’m trying to finish up my Christmas knitting.  I don’t think I’m going to get everything done that I wanted to do.  Most of the items will wait until after Christmas, as the recipients are either very loving and patient or out of town.  However, I did want to complete two pair of fingerless gloves.

Tonight, I finished the first pair.

These gloves started out using a different pattern, but the pattern was so unbelievably poorly written that I frogged the original.  Then I tried the Maine Morning Mitts pattern as written.  I finished the first mitt up to the thumb and realized that there was no way they would work.  My tight knitting got me again, and they would have been too small and too short.

So I tried again with nine more stitches.  These fit me well, but I think it will fit the intended recipient perfectly.  Fortunately, the mitts are REALLY stretchy, so they will fit a wide range of sizes.

See my new mitten blockers?  Those were a gift to me from Lynne over at 7 Yaks.  Back when I was working on Bella’s Mitts, I wrote to her to ask her about mitten or gauntlet blockers.  She sells really awesome sock blockers that are clear and totally wonderful, and I thought that mitten blockers made out of the same material would be great to have.  She hasn’t even thought of such a thing, but she obviously found the idea compelling.  We exchanged a few emails over the course of the year, and then a month or so ago, I saw that she had finally released a version of them.  I was so excited that I ordered a pair right away!  Being the wonderful person that she is, she canceled my order and told me that she wanted to give me a pair for free for giving her what may turn into a profitable idea.

About a week later, I received not only one but TWO pair of mitten blockers.  One is shorter, perfect for mittens, and the other is gauntlet length.   They are fabulous!  The thumbs are removable so that they can be adjusted for different length hands.  I don’t know how she did it, but they’re perfectly sized for my hands.   I like them so much that I might actually purchase the next size smaller.  The other pair of mitten blockers that I need to make are going to be for a much smaller hand than mine, so I just might need them!