Friday, March 6, 2026

Friday: no school

The kids didn't have school today so we just had a nice day that almost felt like a Saturday.  Some work, some play.  Isaac and a friend went rock climbing and then came to our house for a little bit.

Joshua decided not to end reading time at the end of the day.  Phew.

Thursday, March 5, 2026

Thursday: half days

The kids had a half day of school today.  Isaac also had his math class in the afternoon.

Isaac also managed to convince Ben that since he had math class in the afternoon, he shouldn't have to go to school in the morning.  

So I brought Joshua to school in the morning, and then picked him up after my first class.  We all ate lunch at home, then Isaac and I went to Hope for our afternoon classes.

The half day really broke up my day.  Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but there were a few extra things I needed to deal with today.  Although I managed to get many things done, I'll need to do a little bit of work this weekend to finish up the important items for Tuesday.

Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Wednesday: boring day

It was my boring day.  I started the laundry.  I got more cat litter.  I got groceries.  I stopped by the library.  By this time it was almost lunch - so I put away the groceries and then had lunch and a nap.

I did a few other miscellaneous chores when I woke up and picked up Isaac.  A half hour later I went to pick up Joshua.  I made dinner and went to karate.

I may have had my last evening reading time with Joshua.  He said he wants to be done with book time and we'll see if that sticks or not.

I won at Azul tonight by two points.  Isaac was trying to be mean in the last round, as appropriate, but didn't spend all the time to fully understand my board and made the wrong choice as he was trying to be mean so I got more points than he was expecting.

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Tuesday: computer programs

Moodle was finally up again this morning.  CIT has done a nice job keeping me informed...it was mostly fixed yesterday around noon but they wanted to wait until this morning.  They had a good reason that I didn't completely catch.  

I also needed to put midterm grades in today - my computer in my office won't connect to the system.  This is the second this has happened, so I guess I need to put a ticket in to CIT.  I give them so many tickets.  At least most of them are low priority.  I can reach the system from home, so it's an easy temporary fix at least.

Monday, March 2, 2026

Monday: county country

Ok, who in the world made the two words 'country' and 'county' both look so similar and be used in similar contexts?  It's the worst.

I was signing Isaac up for high school next year and got to the field to fill in the county.  Ok.  I, as always, have to pause, think about if there is an r in the field.  Then, once I figure out there isn't, I put in the county.  But I have to pause every single time there is a county.  

Oddly enough, if I have to fill in a country it usually isn't a problem.

I found a good picture of Isaac on the third route from the competition.  I didn't get a picture of him this far through the route.


Saturday, February 28, 2026

Saturday: Scrapyard QE

Scrapyard's rock climbing for USAC was today!  It was amazing to wake up in our own home and only need to travel 10 minutes to get to the competition.

Isaac competed in the morning and the routes were hard.  It started with a pink route.  I think one person finished this route the whole morning.  It didn't go all that well for Isaac, but honestly, we expected that.  Even the demo video for the route looked really hard.

Next was a red route.  We thought this route might be possible, but when it was seen in person we changed our minds.  There was an outcropping that was very difficult to get around and then it was slippery to get up to the next point value.  Isaac didn't get any points on this one either.


Next was a black route.  This one looked hard...hmm, I'm saying that a lot...but Isaac got to the 5 point hold!  We weren't really expecting that, but he figured it out near the end of his time.

Lastly was the yellow route.  This one looked to be the easiest, as easy goes, and it was also the one Isaac got farthest on.  It took several tries, but he was able to get the 10 point hold.

A friend from church came to watch Isaac climb too, and his youth leader got there for the last climb.  The last climb was the best, so it was nice.

In the afternoon Ben and I judged while Isaac did some miscellaneous running tasks.  I had route #4 for F-13.  It must have been on the easier side because about half the athletes finished it.  All the athletes got the 10 point hold.  It was an easy route to judge though.  Ben had route #3 for F-13 and said it was really hard.  Judging was more interesting than I expected.




Friday, February 27, 2026

Friday: Moodle emergency

It was a nice day.  I did a few normal chores and then started working on the LEGO room.  I cleaned one small cabinet and apparently it was not being utilized well because when I was done it was almost empty.  I also cleaned the front of the doors - I'm not sure how one of them got so messy.  It's in the basement!

My moodle course disappeared from the website this evening.  I received an email from a student saying, "did you close Moodle?  I can't see it."  I thought that was the weird, obviously, so went to look.  My ability to even see the course was gone.  So I put in a ticket for CIT.

But, it was after hours.  I wondered if I should call the emergency line for CIT.  I checked with Dad - I figured he would know if this was emergency level or not.  He said it was.  So I called campus safety and said I had a tech emergency and needed to contact the on-call CIT person.  They called back a little later - I felt pretty bad about it, but it seemed like it was the right answer in the end.  They were trying to do some updates in advance of a different update that was going to happen on Sunday, but it didn't go quite as planned.  They thought they had fixed everything, but obviously not.

Fast forward about an hour and I could see my course again.  However, it wasn't really fixed - there were some issues getting half the students back into it.  The on-call guy had called three other people and they got it mostly working but not fully working.  The long and the short of it was they wanted to hide the course for the weekend and then it would be the #1 priority for Monday morning.

I have some work arounds and so said that was ok.  Tuesday is pretty light in regards to homework, so it just involved me sending an email with some links in case people are trying to get ahead or catch up.  It was annoying, but it was also new!  I've never gotten to call saying that I had a technology emergency.  All my requests tend to be low priority.