Journal

Thursday, January 19, 2017 The district’s closed again today; the roads are pure ice here at the Transportation Department.  And with temperatures predicted to rise, there may be a lot of standing water on the roadways later today. I completed Module 8: Designing Studies for Statistics and Probability and only have Module 12: Conditional Probability and Independence to complete before I can retake the pre-assessment.  I really want to get this course completed and then complete College Algebra.  There’s only 41 days left in this term.

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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.  

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 […]

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 […]