Thursday: parade

Today was the big day!  The weather had been looking cold and rainy earlier in the week, but it was getting slightly warmer and less rainy as the week went on.  By this morning it was 62deg and 40% rain.  However, two hours later it was 61deg and 100% rain for the whole time.  Needless to say, it changed several of my plans.

My plan ended up working quite well.  I picked up Isaac and we quickly ate lunch at home.  I dropped Isaac off at Hope College, putting him in my office, while I parked the car closer to the end of the parade.  The parade isn't really all that long, about 1.5 miles, but I expected Isaac would be rather tired at the end and didn't want to make him walk a loop.  

The rain was drizzly at this point and it continued this way through the rest of the afternoon.  However, it wasn't windy so my umbrella worked well.

I dropped Isaac off and he exchanged the umbrella for a poncho.  I then walked down the parade route a bit and found a place to sit.  It was rather nice to be by myself.  It made it easy to navigate and I didn't need to watch kids and make sure they weren't bored or wet.  I saw a ton of people that I knew, although I didn't say hi to all of them since some were far away.  (I also saw one friend three times!  One while they were heading to street scrubbing, one during scrubbing, and one while they were coming back.)  If I get to do it this way again next year I might consider doing the street sweeping.  (Joshua had a full day of school since I didn't take him out for the parade.  They watched a movie and I think it was the best choice for everyone.)

Isaac is the bass drum on the inside...so two people in from the edge.

After they went by my spot I got to walk the rest of the parade on the sidewalk with them.  Usually this went fine, but there was one place that I went in front instead of behind and ended up walking in front of a few people.  It wasn't obvious were I was supposed to go though!  Luckily, a lot of it was empty chairs.

Afterwards we went back to the ice cream sandwich wagon from yesterday and both got ice cream.  Isaac was pretty cold by this point...the poncho kept him warm enough during the parade, but he had wet hair (from before putting his hood up) and cooled down quickly.  We decided to eat near my office which luckily had a blanket.

Wednesday: tulips

Cheryl and I went on a walk this morning.  The weather was lovely and there were a ton of turtles out sunning themselves.

After school, we met Cheryl by Centennial Park for some treats and tulips.

There weren't many tulips left.  There was some wind and rain this weekend and not many survived.

Tuesday: more alarms

This morning, around 5:45am, I awoke to a chirp.  Oh bother.  It isn't an urgent chirp, and I don't want a repeat of a few weeks ago, so I continue to listen.  I hear four chirps, evenly spaced.  Ok, I'll figure out what's going on.  I stand up and reach for my robe...and the chirps stop.  Well, I'm invested now.  I do my house check: fridge, oven, freezer.  I continue to not hear any more chirps.

I think a bird was playing a trick on me.  Ben thinks the bird will be back tomorrow to show its friends the new trick it discovered, but I'm hoping the bird got a good laugh and is gone.

Joshua seems to be enjoying rock climbing more lately.

Tornado was cute.

Monday: life

Well, I've finished grades.  Mostly - I still need to enter the grades into the system but that will only take a few minutes.  I also went on a lovely walk with a friend and started to get a hold on the chores that I've been ignoring.

Sunday:

It was a pretty normal day today.  

Joshua took Horizon outside today and took his job as handler very seriously.  Horizon always runs out the back doors, but usually stays pretty close.  It is mostly just annoying.

Oddly enough, Tornado is more likely to bolt out the front door, but if a back door is open for a while (as I try to corral Horizon back in) he might go out.  Neither cat goes out the garage door because we honk at them and scare them.

Friday/Saturday: keeping it real

 As normal for exam week, I'm behind on house chores.  I'm currently over halfway through grading the final exam...so things are moving forward.  Slowly, but surely.  I finally got around to running the dishwasher (twice!) and was able to sort the laundry and put away the last the groceries.

In an order to keep it real, here's what the kitchen looked like for most of the week:

Thursday: exams given

All my exams have been given.  All the non-finals have been graded.  I just have the final exams to finish grading and I'll be done with the semester.  

I have one student who insists on using the LOOKUP function.  I didn't teach it in class because it's old and doesn't work as well as newer lookup functions.  Now, I (usually) encourage students if they want to use alternate functions - I learn about a lot this way.  However, I just really don't understand why this student won't update to XLOOKUP, which is significantly better.  Oh well.  They received some points for things that LOOKUP can do and didn't receive points when it was used improperly.