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!
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.
I've grown tired of squatting down or laying/sitting on my garage's horribly spalling concrete floor. So, I built myself a "lift" for my scooters.
I built it using wood that used to be a partition wall in my basement, screws that were left over from building a friend's deck, and a mobile tool base I've had hung on my garage wall for years. The only thing I had to buy, were some longer lag screws for attaching the base to the frame.
I used my ramps to get the scooter up onto it. I decided it was best strap it down to the table, in case of dumbassery.
It's definitely not as nice as an actual lift, but for a total outlay of a couple bucks, I'm pleased.
Time to get to work on the Hooligan. I want to replace the fuel sending unit, so the gas gauge will work. That's the only real flaw on this great little machine, which I practically stole for $600. It's a flaw that led me to walking the scooter to a gas station twice.
The rear tire spring a slow leak towards the end of the season. With 2,600 miles on it, the tread is low enough that I'm not going to mess around with trying to plug/patch it. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try and get one stock replacement Maxxis rear tire, or spring for a set of Continentals like I put on my Zuma this spring. I've been really happy with the Contis, but I also have no complaints about the Maxxis tires either
Tomorrow my district is resuming in-person schooling, in a hybrid model. I can't say I feel great about the procedures and protocols my district has implemented, but I've been so depressed teaching on Zoom that I can't help but be happy about it anyways. Lets just say if I were to dare say that in my union's Facebook group, I wouldn't be very popular.
I almost didn't get to join the kids tomorrow. Friday morning, my 5-year old woke up vomiting (clear/phlegm). She was fine after a bath and some breakfast, and never had a fever. We called her out of school, but she insisted on doing her homework.
Unfortunately for her, I still had to drag her to the doctor for either an alternate diagnosis or a negative covid test, so Daddy could go to work on Monday.
The doc was unable to give an alternate diagnosis, and though we both knew damn well she was fine, we had to give her a covid test. The kiddo, as usual, was a total trooper. No complaining, no crying, and happy to get a sucker (she also asked for a second sucker, so her big sister could have one).
I've been treading water all weekend while awaiting results, because I didn't know if I would be able to be in the building or not. The test came back negative tonight. I let the powers that be know, and started making plans to not be in the building, because I figured it was too late.
At almost 9:00 local time, I got clearance to go into the building tomorrow. I am very glad I don't have to endure the torture of teaching my kids on zoom, while 40% of them are in my shop without me.
Worst kitchen appliance ever, for your time.
@thebarber said in Bringing politics back to the front page:
Crap, well I guess pesto base it is.
Tomato doesn't count. Get out of here with your "facts"!
@svend First shot or second? I had basically no reaction to the first. The second knocked me on my ass today. I'm feeling much better now though.
@smugaardvark I was pretty miserable for most of the day. I woke up from an afternoon nap around 4:30 feeling a whole lot better. I'm still a little sore, but not too bad.
@smugaardvark Smart. I had basically no reaction to the first, but the second sure knocked me down for a day. I feel ok now.
@smugaardvark Small world! I love the Soul Red CX-5 we got my wife. I wish she'd let me drive it more.
@aestheticsinmotion It's been years since I've seen a Papa Murphy's, but they are pretty dang good.
Now, fruit on a pizza? That is disgusting.
@ranwhenparked Scam. FB Marketplace has been absolutely inundated with these scammers for months. They don't seem to care.
