I actually am a shop teacher. Middle school shop.
I finally paid off my student loans.
Truth be told, I borrowed less than $12k to get through the last year of graduate school and student teaching. I worked and saved along the way, my grand parents paid the bulk of my bachelor's degree (back when in state tuition was entirely reasonable). I am very fortunate for all of that.
The interest rate was like 2.5%, so I never bothered to try and pay it off early. I set it on autopay at $97/month, and let it ride. I'm still happy it's over though.
Just got Pfizer vaccine round 1. Round 2 is scheduled for the 25th.
Eat it 'rona!
Birddog posted this on Facebook. For those of you who remember him, I'm working on getting him to come to the hyphen. I think I'll get him here eventually.
Anyways, @Chariotoflove this one is for you.
Both of my daughters love Lego. Only two of these sets are for me. The biggest and the smallest. I was actually going to buy my little one an additional set, but it's been out of stock. Today she asked me if she could have that Panda Treehouse set for her birthday. Damn right you can kid!
This was the best Christmas ever. Almost all of their gifts involved some sort of building or creativity. Be them the Lego sets, musical instruments, or art supplies. Both of my girls were super happy and thankful. They spent the day building Legos, playing with cars, drawing, playing "music" and just generally having fun.
My father-in-law came over in the afternoon. Unprompted, the girls drew thank you drawings for him for their presents. We all watched A Christmas Story together, and then had a delicious breakfast casserole for dinner, followed by apple pie, ice cream, and of course cookies for dessert (I am so fat!).
After the girls went to bed, my wife and I watched The Blues Brothers together. It was a great way to end a damn fine day.
Today was the kind of day to remind me why everything else is worth fighting through.
I hope you all had a Merry Christmas, whatever form it took for you.
The Hammer thumbnail was clickbait, sorrynotsorry.
A little background. I teach middle school in a fairly wealthy town, but I work on the poor side of that town. My school has a sizable population of children for whom English is not their first language. This is a challenge under normal circumstances. While we'll fully remote ... oye ... It's not going well. I really feel for those kids. They struggle so hard. Many of them had little to no schooling in their home countries. They often don't speak their native language particularly well, nor can they read or write in it very well (or sometimes at all).
One of my classes, a 6th grade class, spent a month learning to use an online 3D modeling program called TinkerCAD. (Brief review: very easy to use, not particularly capable or precise though. It's good for the youngins to get started with.) This class has a bunch of the ESL kids in it. They are often grouped together, because we only have one bilingual aid. One of those kids missed most of that month, because she didn't have reliable internet at home. She also speaks almost no English.
About a week ago we moved onto another unit. Since these kids won't be in the building at any point during my class, I have been showing them videos of different skills. Today I showed them a video we made of how to change a bicycle tire inner-tube, for example.
As most of the class is watching the video, I'm watching their chromebooks on a monitoring program we have to make sure they're all doing something. And I was stunned to see what that particular girl was doing. She was not watching my video, but she was on TinkerCAD.
She was not modeling anything I had assigned in that month she missed most of. No, instead she was building 3D models of furniture, and doing a damn fine job of it! I was blown away! It's the little things like that, that keep me going. That kid may have a lot of struggle in front of her, but she is one that I know for sure is going to succeed.
My Secret Senna package arrived from @S65 today! I was very intrigued by the large, but not heavy package. I hadn't a clue what lay within. The only things I had put on my wish list were a couple of oil change tools (I have a hard time thinking of things I want, when somebody asks me what I want). I knew it wouldn't be those, the box was way too big.
I was wrong (as usual), as the first item was indeed this nifty magnetic drain plug tool. Very nice!
The big surprise though was underneath, swaddled in much bubble wrap. Check out this vintage Honda Helix ad!
It's even nicely framed and matted. How freaking cool is that!?!
These lines in the ad perfectly sum up my feelings about scooters.
I love riding my scooters so much. I look positively ridiculous on them. I am a large fat man, with a greying beard, and the fashion sense of a baked potato. Some people laugh when they see me.
I. Don't. Care.
I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm just having fun, and you can't wipe the smile off of my face when I'm on my scooter.
As somebody who every year for the last three years, has ridden hundreds of miles in a weekend on my scooter with my buddies, just because. I can absolutely confirm: The destination is indeed irrelevant.
Thank you so much @S65 for the very thoughtful gift! I absolutely love it!
The parts came in for my Hooligan, so today I headed to the motorcycle shop to get the new Michillen tires mounted, and pick up the fuel gauge sending unit. The weather was really nice too, so I spent some quality garage time putting things back together.
I got both wheels remounted, and reassembled all the crap that had to come off to get the rear wheel off. I also swapped that sending unit. Now the fuel gauge works, which was previously the scooter's only real flaw.
The weather is supposed to be nice again tomorrow, so hopefully I can get all the plastics put back together. I changed the spark plugs while I had the motor exposed, for good measure. I should also do an oil change, and possibly rear gear fluid, while I have it up on my work table.
I didn't take a progress picture, so here's a kitty cat instead.
So that means I can start licking doorknobs now, right?
I just finished grading everything that was submitted by the end of the day today. The frustrating thing, is that more students failed my class this quarter, than the previous four years combined.
The upshot has been I got to watch a couple of students who had put themselves into a hole, work their ass off this last week, and really do some impressive things. I got a few nice emails from students and parents.
I just did something I have never done before, put my email in vacation mode. I shut my school laptop off, and its not going back on until January 6th. If some Karen throws a conniption fit because their little snowflake failed, that's too damn bad.
Have a Hammer picture. This is where he likes to play with me.
Today has been a wild ride. My district amended their guidelines to 3' "social distancing" (measured nose to nose, so virtually shoulder to shoulder). This allowed us to bring all of the in-person students back 5-days a week in my school, starting today. We're still on a shortened day, with no lunch service.
Well, today was the first day of that. I spent most of the day sorting out new seating charts, getting kids used to new routines and procedures, and generally running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Oh, it's also the last week of the quarter, so three of my classes rotate out at the end of the week.
But that's not all! During my 3rd period I was informed that one of my students had tested positive. This explained why he and several of my other students were out. They're on the volleyball team together. As of this afternoon the student is feeling fine. He emailed me to ask what work he could do while he was home ... something none of his teammates bothered to do.
My principal inquired as to whether or not he was a student that I would have been in close contact with. Thankfully that's a negative. That kid has been doing so well, I don't think I spent 30 seconds near him last time he was in the building.
But wait, there's more! This afternoon the district announced that next month, the school board has decided they're just going to send it. Screw 3', everybody back in the building full time, with lunch service.
This is just stupid. The students have endured so much change. Our schedule has changed every 2-4 weeks this year. We'll be 6 weeks from the end of the school year, when they're going to change it all again. Just ride it out. Let all the kids parents get vaccinated, and go back to life next school year.
I don't have anything nice to say about the school board.
@brickman I haven't. I don't know how to do that either. Hopefully google can help me.
@rallydarkstrike said in This day sucked just like yesterday sucked (here's a cute picture though):
@shop-teacher Awwww, it's a baby and a baby Hammer chin!
Yeah, they're cute 
@boxer_4 I bet that made a helluva sound!
@vincentmalamute said in This day sucked just like yesterday sucked (here's a cute picture though):
@shop-teacher Too cute! Also, huge cat or smol baby.
Both, actually. He's a big old barn cat, much bigger than he was in that picture, and she was a little peanut.
My computer lab has been without power for two days now. Apparently the panel that supplies that room has a, "contactor that is being held out remotely someplace by a computer/program."
I don't know what that means, and the powers that be seem stumped. All I know is shits fucked yo!
I dropped back and punted yesterday to get the kids started on a project I was planning to do at the end of the year, but I didn't have anything ready for it. I made some videos today to get them rolling today, but my GoPro didn't capture any sound ... again. I spent an hour making them, wasted another hour trying to fix them, and then gave up. I have trouble-shot my setup and figured out that the Hero8 media mod, which was supposed to help me get better sound, now doesn't capture any sound. Money well spent eyeroll.
This week needs to fuck off already.
Here is a picture that made me happy to see on my FB feed. My oldest daughter and Hammer were babies together, and oh-so cute. Work may suck this week, but life is still good.
@functionoverfashion The '79 looks like Uncle Jesse's truck.
@pos_camaro My daughter, who is 8 now, has probably watcher the Brendan Fraser Mummy at least 20 times. We bought her the DVD for her birthday.
@sovande If you're ok with a smattering of f-bombs, I'd recommend Beverly Hills Cop 1&2. I absolutely loved those at his age (my parents didn't give a fuck about foul language).
Skip the third one though. It's really bad.