Stress, Craziness, and Broken Laptops...

Last week was the beginning of the three weeks of crazy that I had been dreading.  Ask any teacher and they will tell you how much they hate Halloween.  It is funny, because I used to love Halloween when I was younger.  Now I dread it.  The kids are crazy the whole week.  Then Halloween comes and that craziness doubles.  We had a Halloween parade at our school, then each class had its own party.  I got lucky this year.  I have a parent who planned and ran the whole things.  The funniest part of the party was the fact that we had a lot parent helping.  

I had never met most of this parents before and they were meeting me for the first time on Halloween.  I was also dressed as Lucy from "I Love Lucy."  So, it was just kind of weird to met them for the first time in a costume.  I knew it would be crazy that day, so I thought it went well.  This year it was a littler weird, the kids  (while still crazy) were actually better on Halloween than they were on the day after.  The day after Halloween they were full on hyper.  Every time they went out to recess they would be eating another piece of candy.

This next week, I am dreading for a whole other reason.  We have parent-teacher conferences this week.  Can you tell how excited I am?  Conferences are on Wednesday from 3:30 pm-8:00 pm, and on Thursday from 2:00 pm-6:00 pm.  Then, we get Friday off as a compensation for working the extra hours.  Conferences are really stressful and I am always glad to have them done and over with.  So, all of the teachers are going crazy trying to get grades in, reading tests done, and trying to gets report cards printed and sent home.  To add to all of the stress, fourth grade is in charge of cleaning the faculty room for the month of November and we have bus duty next week.  Fun.

The final week of craziness is the week before Thanksgiving.  I am on the DART (district art) committee and I have a meeting on Tuesday.  Then I signed up to help test for ALPS (it is like an advanced placement program) this week.  There is a meeting on Wednesday for an hour.  Then testing in on Thursday and Friday night, and on Saturday morning.  On Thursday night, my sister is flying into town.  So, I will have to rush from the testing session and hurry to the airport to pick her up.  This week I also got some more news.  I was asked to help organize and run our school science fairs (there are two of them) around March.  All of the teacher were also told that they need to plan for three 1/2 day subs during the week before Thanksgiving so we can have balanced literacy training as a team.  Sub plans are hard to write and we were all trying to figure out a way to avoid having subs teach the new math program, because it is so complicated!

Once I get passed these next few weeks, I am hoping things get a little easier.  Danielle and I are driving to California right after school on Tuesday, the week of Thanksgiving.  I found this really great price on a Jet Blue flight, plus I had a credit from a previous flight.  It made the price even cheaper.  I am glad that she will be able to drive down with me.  I hate that long drive and having someone with me will really help.  I am not as worried about the trip back, because I can leave earlier in the day.  I just hope that I have good weather along the way.  I keep hearing rumors that, because of the really dry winter that we had last year, this year will be really bad.   A girl at Walmart told me that she heard that we were supposed to get more snow than we had in the last ten years.  :(

In other news, I had to buy a new laptop this week.  I have been having a few issues with my laptop lately.  Mostly with my power cord.  Power cords are really expensive and you never how long they are going to last.  My dad has already tried to fix my cord, but nothing really sticks.  I have also gotten the "blue screen of death" a few times and had a feeling that one day it would totally die and I would lose all of my stuff.  I was hoping to get a few more years out of my computer, but what can you do.  I have had my laptop for about five year, which is longer than a lot of laptops last.  My dad had also been telling me that it might be time to get a new one for awhile now.  So, I found this really good deal at Walmart.  I, of course, called my dad to talk about brands, prices, and performance.  Those of you who know me, know how long it takes me to make big decisions.  So, when I made the decision to get the laptop, I needed to get it before I talked myself out of it.  There was another guy ahead of me that asked about the same laptop.  We were told they didn't have it in stock, it wasn't in the warehouse, and they had no idea when they were getting more.  Crap!

I went to a few other stores trying to find the laptop, but no one had one.  So, I went home and tried to find the laptop online.  I looked everywhere and could find no record of it anywhere.  At work the next day, I took some time and tried to make some calls to other Walmarts in the area to see if they had.  I only had to make two calls before I found a close store that had two in stock.  I asked if the could hold it for me; but they told me that they could only hold things for an hour.  I broke out my sob story of how I am a teacher and I can't leave until a certain time because I am trying to teach my fourth graders.  They gave me special person to put in on hold until I could get there.  After work, I hurried to the store and asked for it.  They got it from the back and I bought it with my credit card (which I hate using, but I considered this a financial emergency).  

When I got the thing back home, I discovered that it had the new Windows 8 (this was part of the reason that I had a hard time finding the laptop--they had just released it this week).  So far, I do not like Windows 8.  It is like they tried to take the app features from tablets and put it on a computer.  It is a little frustrating.  I feel like I can't find anything!  My dad sent my a link to "Windows 8 for Dummies."  I am choosing not feel insulted.  I plan on reading it as soon as I can.  Hopefully, that can take away some of that frustration.  I forgot how long it takes to get a new laptop ready to use.  I have moved some of my important things over, but I still have a ton of stuff to switch over.  Thank goodness I got a new computer before my old one completely died.  It makes the process a little easier.  

I think that is all of my news.  Other than the fact that I came really close to be in a very bad car accident this week.  I was driving on a main road by my apartment.  This lady was trying to turn onto the road from side street.  She didn't even look when she made the turn.  If I hadn't swerved into the other lane she would have slammed into the middle of my car.  I was so lucky that there were no cars next to me; that isn't usually the case of that street.  It is normal very full of cars.  She didn't even notice what she had almost done.  I honked at her.  She didn't even look up.  I get that mistakes happen.  People drive in autopilot and things happen.  People should at least acknowledge their mistakes.  

Okay, that's it.  I hope everyone else is under a little less stress.  Take care and I hope all of you make it through the holidays in one piece!