Month: January 2017

2017 – Day 18

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Well…this just about sums it all up…

What a wild couple of days.  A three-day weekend and now day two of no school, this time due to the ice storm we started getting late yesterday afternoon.  

This is only my second year in Moses Lake, but I’ve been told that the weather we’re experiencing is not typical and no one recalls the district being closed this many days before. 

I received a text that the Transportation building was closed, but only checked my messages after getting into work at 4:30 AM.  No worries, though, I have more than enough to keep me busy today.  The one upside of this is that the temperatures have warmed up a bit; no more wearing long-johns to bed. 😉 

I completed and submitted my assignment for Statistics and Probability: Module 4 – Examining Distributions and now am working through Module 7 – Sampling.  I’m hoping to get this module and assignments completed today and that will only leave two more modules before I can take the pre-assessment (again).  

Module 7 – Sampling completed and submitted.  Now it’s time to tackle Module 8 – Designing Studies.  

It’s still really nasty outside.  The roads have about 1/2″ of ice on them.  

I have an ’07 Jeep Commander.  I’ve had this vehicle since August, 2009, and have put almost 175,000 miles on it since.  Aside from having to replace the starter a couple of times, a bad solenoid on my transmission, replacing the front bakes three times, and having a buggy electrical system that likes to randomly lock my doors, it’s been dependable and probably hands down the best snow vehicle I’ve ever owned.

I’m thinking that I might want to get something more fuel efficient for my drive back-and-forth to Winthrop on the weekends, but I think that’ll be sometime later this year.  I do like all things Subaru, though.

It was so nice to get my workout in early.  Every day that we’ve had no school (5 days over the last two weeks), I’ve been able to leave work around 1:00 PM and go to the gym.  Otherwise, I’ve had to go either early in the morning (around 5:00 AM – and I’m not very inspired at that time in the morning) or after work which is generally around 6:00-6:15 PM.  My routine is around 1.45 hours so by the time I’m done it’s time for me to go to bed so I can get up at 3:00 AM the next morning.  The good thing about this routine is that my weeks fly by.

2017 – Day 17

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Humpf!  Because of a dire weather report, the district decided to cancel school today.  I’m all caught up on work and am now designing a relational database for pupil transportation management which means I need to bone up on MySQL!

Day one with no toiletry bag (first world problem) as my old bag has been torn apart to draft a new pattern, but somehow I screwed up on the side panels and need to go back to the drawing board – which I hope to do this weekend.

I had a great three-day weekend and am looking forward to summer break when I can put in four 10-hour shifts and take Fridays off.  

 

2017 – Day 16

Monday, January 16, 2017

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and as a public school employee, I’m able to enjoy today off.

I can’t recall ever hearing a member of my family disparage another person based solely on the color of their skin.  In fact, I remember my mother telling me that her father (who was 100% Irish and was born in 1903) had told her that the Irish we’re once referred to as “white n*ggers” because they were perceived as a threat when they began immigrating en masse during the later part of the nineteenth century.  They were though of as unclean, Catholic, “breeding like rabbits”, and taking away jobs from more deserving “Americans”.  Funny that we’re going through something similar today, but with Hispanics (and to a lesser degree, Muslims).

Not much to report on the home front; lots of laundry and ironing and I worked a couple of hours on my toiletry tote, but ran afoul when I was piecing the sides to the body.  There was too much fabric which was causing an issue with the stitching.  I need to go back to the drawing board; I may need to cut my sides a smidge smaller to make everything fit together.

It was a pleasant drive back down to Moses Lake.  I’m in Taj Mahtrailer and about to head out for a bond committee meeting up the road.  We’ve got a little less than a month to go before the bond vote and we’re having committee meetings every Monday up until the vote.  There’s also a bond meeting in the school board room tomorrow at 7:00 PM and I think I’ll go to that as well.

 

2017 – Day 15

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Another gorgeous morning looking out from our home here in Winthrop.  It’s 11º outside – practically shorts weather.  

Today is a day of staying in and relaxing and studying.  I’m working through Statistics & Probability and am having to re-study 4 modules.  As part of my success plan (for failing the assessment twice), I’m having to keep detailed handwritten notes for each module, then complete comprehensive worksheets, and finally, meet with a course mentor after completing each module.  This is a LOT of work and has taught me a lesson: never attempt taking a course’s assessment a second time unless you really know the material.  This is a pain. 🙂

I’ve completed an introductory course on WordPress and I’m about to delve into an introductory course on HTML.  I’ve decided that along with getting my BA in Business this year, I also want to learn HTML, a scripting language like PHP, a RDBMS (probably MySQL) and Java.  If I still have time, I may try to learn some Ruby.  

Today, I’d also like to tackle sewing a throw blanket, but I need to learn how to make bias binding and how to sew it onto the blanket’s edge.  Thank God for YouTube.com!

Change in plan.  I ended up deaconstructing my favorite toiletry bag that’s begun to tear and fray.  I want to sew a couple new toiletry bags, one for myself, one for Tiago and perhaps a couple as gifts.  I spent the better part of two-hours ripping all the stitches, ironing the pieces, and working on drafting a pattern.

Here’s the original:

https://flic.kr/p/Q2s36z

https://flic.kr/p/Q2s6M2

Here’s the pieces broken down:

https://flic.kr/p/Q2LQn6

Here’s the pattern I drafted:

I want to use ticking that I will interface with some medium-weight canvas. 

I still have laundry to iron tomorrow before I head back down to Moses Lake: I don’t know if I’ll have time to cut out the pattern and get it sewn, but I’ll try – I don’t want to go all week without a toiletry bag.

I plan on doing a more detailed blog entry on making this bag.

What’s for dinner?  Tiago said we have some chicken that needs to be cooked.  We still had two bags of curry base gravy in the freezer and I decided to make chicken tikka masala.  If you’re not familiar with “base gravy”, it’s the foundation of a lot of Indian take-out recipes.  Here’s the YouTube video I used to make mine:

 
Chicken Tikka Masala

INGREDIENTS

800g chicken pieces
2 onions coarsely
2 tomatoes coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 tablespoons garlic
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 tablespoon coriander powder
1 tablespoon dried fenugreek leaves
2 tablespoons garam masala
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon palm sugar
2 tablespoons tomato paste
700ml heated base curry sauce
250ml double cream
1 tablespoon red food colouring powder (optional)
2 tablespoons butter
1 small bunch fresh chopped coriander
Salt and pepper to taste
Juice of one lemon

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat the oil in a large pan or wok over medium high heat
Add the garlic, chicken pieces, and the chopped onion and sautee.
Once the chicken is cooked, ad the base gravy.
When bubbling hot, add the cumin, turmeric, coriander powder, fenugreek leaves and garam masala.
Stir the spices around in and then add the tomato paste.
Allow the curry simmer for around 10 minutes.
Stir in the fresh coriander, season with salt and pepper and finish with a squeeze or two of lemon.
Serve over warm basmati rice.

https://flic.kr/p/QG9gPf

https://flic.kr/p/RgsjHx

https://flic.kr/p/PZ3DGf

https://flic.kr/p/PZ4yvG

https://flic.kr/p/QGaNn7

https://flic.kr/p/Q2R5aP

2017 – Day 14

Saturday, January 14, 2017

Today’s the first day of my three-day weekend.  Our friend Mark is visiting and we’re sitting around the dining room table trying to decide what to do today.  Tiago says the Lake Chelan Winterfest is going on so I think we’ll be making a drive down to Chelan for the afternoon.

We’re at the Lake Chelan Winterfest walking around in the cold and enjoying the ice sculptures.  We ducked into Local Myth Pizza for a bite before going braving the cold again.  Good food and good company makes the best Saturdays.

2017 – Day 13

Friday, January 13, 2017

And here we go again.  Grant County Airport is reporting -23º with windchill.  Per district policy, our threshold for no school is -15º and below.  We’ve decided to call a two-hour late start and we’ll reevaluate at 6:30 AM, but personally, I think we’ll probably call for another school closure.

Mother Nature decided to work with us with the latest weather report from the airport; -9º, but NO windchill, so we’r good to go ahead with the two-hour late start.  Ready or not, here we go.

 

2017 – Day 12

Thursday, January 12, 2017

And school’s closed again today (third day this week) due to weather.  The Grant County Airport is reporting a temperature of -23º with windchill and district policy states that school will be closed whenever there’s a sustained temperature of -15º or below.

I don’t mind snow days; it allows me to get caught up on work, but it would have been nice if this had fallen of a Friday – that way I could have left for home earlier.

Another productive day.  I’m at my local Starbucks enjoying an iced soy mocha and working on two-step and multi-step equations for my College Algebra course.  

I’ve been happy with my weight routine, although I’m not taking weight off very quickly, I’m noticing that my shirts around my chest are getting tighter, but looser around my mid-section.  I think I’m putting on muscle mass and I recall reading somewhere that muscle had twice the density of fat so here’s hoping. 😉  Weight has been hanging around 269 lbs.  I really want to be down around 230.  I’ll modify my diet next week – I cannot live on ham sandwiches.

I’m going to tonight’s school board meeting to represent the Transportation Department.  I’ll only stay an hour; I have to be up and drive the roads at 3:00 AM.

There’s been three days without school this week due to weather; I hope we’re on tomorrow, but there’s a part of me that wouldn’t mind another “snow day” so I can go home early and be with my Boo.  I’m so looking forward to the three-day weekend.

2017 – Day 11

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Hump day.  The district’s closed today because of snow drifts.  I was up at 3:00 AM and drove up-and-down Mae Valley, Dune Lakes and around town.  I’ve never lived anyplace that gets the constant wind that Moses Lake gets and I encountered drifts 5′ high in some areas.  

The nice thing about snow days is that it’s generally quiet at work since there’s only a couple staff here.  It’s a good time for me to get caught up on work and I can also leave work early and go do other things.

I was able to leave work at 2 and go to the gym and get in a good workout.  I thought there would be a spike in patrons, it being New Year’s and all, but there were only a handful of people there.  Today was back and triceps.  I’m seeing slow gains, but I think that’s the best way to go – slow and steady.

Today I also finished Lynda.com’s WordPress Essential Training.   I highly recommend this for anyone wanting to get a grasp on WordPress.  I’m in the process of watching Lynda.com’s WordPress Themes.  Keeping a WordPress blog is helping me become familiar with the WP environment and I’m enjoying getting my feet wet. 

I’ve been playing around with my logo and have a few ideas where I want to go.  I really like the simplicity of my original logo and think that’s the one I’ll use for my day-to-day blog, but I always wanted to incorporate the design with other elements and textures.  I used Adobe Illustrator to design the logo and I also used a “scratchy”vector graphic overlay to give my design a “worn”effect.

Here’s the original design:

Here’s the same design with a “scratchy” vector overlay:

It’s a silly design, but I like it (and that’s all that matters). 😉

Okay, I better get to studying Statistics and Probability. YUCK! 

 

2017 – Day 10

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Neither one of my alarms went off this morning.  Funny thing that right now I’m taking Probability and Statistics in college and one of the probabilities I’ve had to work out was the odds of two alarm clocks both not going off and it’s a very small number.  Perhaps I should buy a lottery ticket.

Speaking of probability, I failed two attempts at my assessment for Probability and Statistics, and as a result, am having to go back and vigorously re-read ALL the material and take a LOT of tests.  Mind you, I only failed the second assessment by one point (I got 60% and the cut-off is 61%) and I did something I never do whenever I take an assessment, I went back and reexamined everyone of the 68 questions and changed my answers on around 10.  I think I should have stuck with my first choice in the majority of these questions, but I got stuck in doubting myself and that self-doubt bit me.  Oh well, it’s all good; I’ve already completed eight courses this term (well more than necessary) and only have Probability & Statistics and College Algebra to complete before this term’s over at the end of February.  

As a 47-year old I see that math is my Achille’s heel and the one subject that I keep trying to put off, but I’ve decided that I’m going to focus on getting a solid foundation on math; Khan Academy, here I come.  For anyone who doesn’t know about this site I can’t say enough great things.  I’m a kinesthetic learner and by watching the videos and using a white board (or in my case my iPad sketch pad) I am able to work out the problems and better learn (and hopefully retain) key math concepts.  I need to be sure to go back and “refresh” my memory so these ideas take a firm root in my brain – otherwise I forget the “how” and not necessarily the “why”.

I’m on the school bond committee and last night there was a “get out the vote”card signing event before the bond meeting.  People were asked to come in and write down some words of encouragement on a postcard that will be mailed to one of the 22,000 registered voters in Moses Lake.  The MLEA was very generous to provide food and beverages and I ended up stuffing myself while writing.

I took around 300 names and postcards and will be working on getting 100 of these done each day this week.  The bulk mailing will be sometime early next week.