Power Up!

For the past 2 days I've been in Columbia at an assistive technology conference. It was pretty interesting and I learned a lot. There were some things that were a bit over my head because many of the seminars were assistive technology for blind/low vision. However, I did go to one on captioning videos, which will really come in handy. Sometimes videos aren't captioned so I'll have to probably script them myself. The presenter showed us a free program to use to caption. You still have to type it all out, but I think it's better than just giving the student a script to follow. While I was there, I said to Michelle that I wished there was something that along with captioning could sign to the person. Well, apparently there's a thing called SigningAvatar. They weren't at the conference, but I looked it up on the internet and it is so cool. I think I'm going to sign up for a trial to try it out for one of my students, and if it's something he likes, I'll ask the district to purchase it. It wouldn't take the place of an interpreter of course, but it could be used in place of an interpreter for videos. Or maybe when he's reading, he could type in the word and get the sign, or even have a book signed to him while he follows along.

I got a few demo CDs for different programs that I might check out.

By the way, why is it so cold again? It's messing with my walks! I started to do a Wii workout the other day, but I guess I upped the intensity before I was ready and/or tried to work out too soon after eating because after 5 minutes of run/squats/run, I felt like I was going to throw up, so I stopped. I never got back to it because I was trying to get my student teaching videos to send through email. I've been having issues with it. The files are too big to email. I'm working on trying to figure out how to splice the video into 2 on iMovie so I can upload it onto YouTube. One video is around 20 minutes and it said videos should be 10 minutes or less. I've never uploaded to YouTube before. I'm hoping that it works so I don't have to make a DVD and send it. I'm not so good at the video part of computers, I guess. Well, that's about all for now. Bye!

I took a night off walking last night. I was pooped when I got home. Today we had a meeting before school about the budget cuts. Not a pretty picture. 6th grade had clubs today and I headed up the Walk and Talk group so I got to do my walking then. Granted I didn't get to really walk at the pace I would normally, but we walked for about an hour. We probably went about 1-2 miles. The school is right next to Longview Lake and there is a park around the lake so I took the girls through the park. It started raining towards the end but we made it inside before it started raining too hard.

Today was an early release day since it was Take Your Child to Work Day. I just worked on stuff and got caught up. I stayed late for the school carnival. It was supposed to be outside but with the rain they had to move it inside. I had fun being the target in the pie throw but I couldn't see most of the time from the whipped cream fogging up my goggles. Not many of the kids even know me so I never even had a line. But I was pretty covered by the end. My shower cap had slid up so I had it in my hair. I left right after that so I could get straight in the shower. Now I'm just relaxing, hoping that this headache goes away soon.

Today was day 3 of my evening walk. Chris joined me tonight since he was home. Last night my iPod kept me company. Maybe I'll keep updating like this every day to keep myself accountable for actually going out and walking. I'm trying to work on making some changes in my eating habits. For my lunches, I've been avoiding taking chips as much as possible. Instead I've been taking fruit, carrots, or cheese and crackers along with my sandwich. I've been thinking about switching to ground turkey instead of ground beef. I know Chris won't go for it for himself, but I could easily make a turkey burger instead of a regular hamburger if we have hamburgers. We have a lot of ground beef, because it's quick and easy, but I know it's not the healthiest. The other night we decided to have steak instead of burgers and it was really yummy. So we might try to do that more often.

I'm really ready for this week to be over. I'm looking forward to Emily's birthday get together on Friday evening. I need to blow off some steam. Keep me in your thoughts. I've been really frustrated lately with some things.

Weight Loss

So today was the second day in a row that I walked for 20 minutes around the lake! I've been trying the past few months to lose some weight. I joined the Biggest Loser challenge at work. I started out working out with the Wii using EA Active. I did that for about 2 weeks, and then started getting sick so I got off track. Today was the last weight in. I'm proud to report that I did not have to pay once (you pay if you gain). In fact, I lost 8 pounds!

6 weeks until summer!out

I can't believe my first year of teaching is almost over! It's been a whirlwind. I just found out on Friday that I will be teaching summer school. That's a relief. Granted there's still 4 weeks of the summer that I won't be working but I'm hoping that things work in my favor for my certification. I finally got everything in and submitted to the state for my certification! It took a little longer than I expected because of needing extra transcripts, and then something would get lost, and it just seemed to be never-ending. Then last weekend I went on the dept. of education website to check the status of my application and it had been accepted!! What's more, is that instead of certifying me from the date it was accepted, they certified me for the whole year!!! I'm super excited about that, in case you can't tell. Why? Well, I've been paid a teacher associate salary all year. If the state says that I've been certified for the whole year, there's a chance that I'll get back pay. So keep me in your prayers because that would help me out a whole lot. I had planned on having all this paperwork in and finished back in January and having my raise already. I should be getting the certificate in the mail this week or next week so I'll definitely be taking it to my boss as soon as I get it.

There's a lot of other stuff going on at school, but I can't really talk about it on here since it involves my kids. I do know that I'll be moving up to the middle school for a good chunk of the day next year. I also have a new room at my home school for next year. It's bigger and not next to the bathroom. It's very distracting this year. Every time anyone uses the restroom next to my room you can hear the toilet paper being rolled, the flushing, and the washer and dryer that's in there (it's a staff bathroom).

In other news, Hobbes seems to have allergies, or something. We noticed a couple of weeks ago that he was squinting his eye and it was watering. So Chris took him to the vet and they did a test to see if it was scratched. It wasn't, so they gave him some medicine for allergies, since the same thing happened last year. He had to go back for a follow-up last week and he was still squinting. So now they want to test for herpes or glaucoma, but Chris told them that we would wait and see with more medicine. I think that they are just trying to make money. So we'll see what happens. We might look for another vet for a second opinion.

Well, I think I've written a long enough book for now.