Compy 3000!

It's here! And more beautiful than I could have thought it to be. That's right, my computer has arrived. After watching Aaron painstakingly put together the case with the motherboard, processor, fans, and wires, I realized this was probably a job best left to him, while I did the girl standby and held the light for him so he could see in the small crevices of the case.



The living room is covered in boxes and packing peanuts, but mostly because I couldn't get them all in the box and was tired of messing with them.

Now all I need to do is customize it to my liking and fill it up with junk! With over 100G of harddrive space, this could take a while.

school rant...again

Okay, so I get home from class this morning to find a message on my phone from the secretary at the Office of Field Experiences in the College of Education. She says that she didn't recieve my check for the liability insurance, or proof of insurance at all, and that I also need to have an updated status sheet.

Well, I wrote the check yesterday, I still have the copy of the check in my checkbook. And two months ago, in order to get into the College of Ed. I needed to have an updated status sheet, and they said it was fine. Well, now it's not fine, and they've lost my check.

To top it off; the Office of Field Experiences is right next door, literally, to the classroom we were in today, the classroom we are always in. The Office knows when we are having class. Obviously, I would be in there. Why not peek your head in the door and say, "Hey, Andrea, I need to talk to you when you get done," instead of calling me and then not answering your phone when I called you back? Seems too simply, obviously.

Grr.

Oh, the physical and peeing in a cup yesterday went well, and the nurse even gave me some stuff for the itchy spots on my elbows. Yay!

the dreaded blue screen of death

Is it good when your laptop starts making clunking noises? And is it good that whenever it clunks, the music quits playing? And then you get the blue screen of death...that's probably not good.

Yeah, I think the harddrive is going out on my computer. Aaron's working on building me a new one right now, price checking and stuff, so maybe by the beginning of March I'll have a new computer! It'll be a desktop, 'cause I'm tired of laptops...they get confused and bogged down too easily.

Yay, new things are so much fun...even if they are expensive.

employee appreciation party

Ahh, what is more fun than seeing your co-workers lose their dignity and self-respect more than going to the annual employee apprecation party, and watching them get trashed? Well, I could probably think of about nine gajillion things that are more fun than that, but with the chance to learn how to play Texas Hold 'Em poker (free!), win $100, and other prizes, why not go?

We arrived a little after 4:30pm, picked up our envelope and signed in. The envelope had 2 complimentary drink tickets and a free $10 coupon to redeem at the cashier's cage. First stop, the bar for a Jell-O shooter (that was weird, I'd never had one before), then to make sure my name was on the list for the Poker Tournament. It wasn't, so I got put on near the bottom, as an alternate. Crap. I was really looking forward to playing!

I did sit down at a live game that was going on, which consisted of three of the four owners of the casino...that was a little weird. But they're all really nice guys. I did get into the tournament in the end because a lot of people didn't show up, and I ended up sitting at the same table as my favorite owner of the casino, 'cause he's really friendly and was giving me help haha. I won the first hand of the game, but after that, I either folded or lost my hands. Boo. I made it to the second round with $1400 (fake money, since you didn't have to buy in), and it was gone pretty quickly. I eventually went all in with my last $200, thinking I had something...only to forget I needed a Queen. Poop.

At my casino, I'm not allowed to play the slot machines, as I might memorize the numbers of the machines that jackpot and rip off the casino (some guy did that a couple of years ago, and now everyone is being punished, because that is not a Gaming law, that's the House rules). I'm also not allowed to play Black Jack because it's a game that is against the House, and they don't want people to think that employees and dealers are in on it together, cheating. All I can play is poker there, and I was already out, so Aaron and I went up to the neighboring casino to play some games over there.

I lost about half my money at the Black Jack tables, but won it back at the Star Wars slot machine (fun game, btw). Then after the headache-endusing smoke (and that might have had a little to do with the three drinks I had before we got there), I decided it was time to leave, or my head might explode.

Oh, and I won a complimentary meal. w00t.

All in all, an okay night. But I still wanted to kick ass at the poker game. It was my first time, though. I haven't played any kind of poker since junior high when I had no social life (or driver's license) when my family would play poker every New Year's. But that was way before Texas Hold 'Em came out.

Okay, so that was a long, probably boring post...sorry.

real quick

I thought I would take a few minutes to stop into my blog and see how things were. A little dusty, it seems, so I guess that means I've been neglecting my blog due to the fact that I just spent the last week in a different town in a classroom full of 17 first graders. I will never ever teach first grade, that is for sure.

Then straight from that into work, tonight is our Employee Appreciation party, so Aaron and I will stop in there for a little bit; I'm going to play in the poker tournament and learn the game (since I can't play the slot machines or blackjack due to my position in work as a cashier), and hopefully win some money!

School started off with a bang today, we're already getting into bigger and harder things, and I have so much crap to do! I had to video tape my first ever lesson with the kids last week, and now I need to preview it so I can hand it in to my teacher so she and I can preview it together *gasp!* I hate watching myself on camera. Hopefully I didn't do anything too dumb.

Made a book, wrote some lesson plans, need to create a story board, write another couple of lesson plans, and some other random things. We have this week of school, next week in school, then SPRING BREAK! I'll be staying here, of course, but that's THREE WHOLE DAYS of no school OR work!! And SEVEN whole days of no school! Can life get any better? Probably...but not at the moment.

Aaron got up earlier than me this morning (not sure how that happened, since he didn't have class 'til 12:30 and I had class at 8:00 this morning...but he made some cinnamin rolls before I went to class and sat up with me for a while when I was getting ready for class. What a guy.

It'd been really bitter cold outside the last few days last week, but I think it might start warming up a little...You know it's cold outside when the high of 16* feels like a heat wave!

But that's just a quick little update of what's been going on in my life the last week or so since I got on here the last time. I probably missed a few things, and there are probably some funny stories I could tell, but I just can't remember them.

Until next time!

sugared up kids

Omigod it's been a week! And quite a week it has been. On Monday I started my Junior Field Experience at my elementary school with the first grade class. Wow! They are a handful! I won't even go into details, but I come home every day exhausted from them, and I'm not even the one teaching anything (yet!)!

Tomorrow I teach my first real lesson plan to the class, which has to be videotaped for my Language Arts professor at the college, so she can review it. It's weird to write lesson plans for first graders, as we have always practiced writing lesson plans for 3rd grade and up.

We got some snow yesterday and today, and I had quite a bit of trouble getting out of my parking spot tonight at the apartment; I was parked with the nose of my car facing downhill, and a car parked in front of me. I couldn't pull straight through the spot, because of the other car, and I couldn't back out of the spot because of the ice. It took me over 5 minutes to get out of my parking spot. And I almost slid into the truck parked next to me (you had to be there...). Yikes. But I did make it out unscathed, and found a more level parking spot to leave my car in when I returned.

Valentine's Day was exciting at the school, and the children were hopped up on sugar today. When I got home yesterday, I slept for about an hour and a half, then woke up when Aaron returned from the store, where he bought ingredients to make us dinner - shrimp and scallops over linguini noodles, garlic bread, and some fizzy Korbel champagne (tart and bubbly...weird). It was a really nice dinner, and very thoughtful of him. I wish I could be more thoughtful like that...but I can't cook, and I can't ever think of anything to get him.

And that's about it for the last week. Busy, exhausting, and kinda fun.

happy days

Today marks the 11 month anniversary of Aaron and me, my sister's 22nd birthday, AND my mom getting a promotion at work!

I think we should all get a pat on the back.

*PAT*

the mighty tiger stalks his unsuspecting prey

treasures

Last night at work, a couple gave Tammy a roll of quarters to cash in, since our slot machines don't accept coins, only paper money and cashout tickets, which they print for you when you cash out of that machine. She said after running them through the machine that "some of them looked weird," but after pulling a handful of quarters out of the bag, she couldn't find any weird ones.

Well, she went to lunch, and I started looking through the quarters in the bag, pulling them out by the handful. And guess what I found? Seven dollars' worth of silver quarters! Ranging in date from 1935 to 1964, I think the last year they made them with silver. Tammy and I split the quarters, since she's the one who recieved them, and I was the one who found most of them, searching through over $200 in quarters. It seems to me that each of them are worth at least two dollars each, which doesn't seem like much, but it's eight times more than their face value, so that's a pretty good profit.

I think if I sell any, it's going to be the ones from the 50s and 60s, and I'll keep the 30s and 40s that I have. I'm going to check on eBay and see how much people are buying them for because there's a guy at work who's interested in buying some of mine.

That was just as exciting as finding the red seal five dollar bill back in October!

new stuff

Well, it's been a while since I updated, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Work and school are going well so far, but we haven't really gotten into the meat of the school year. I tried contacting my cooperating teacher today, but she was in a meeting, so I'm going to have to try on Monday if I have some free time.

In order to prevent myself from becoming sick whilst around a class full of six year olds, I bought some Flintstone vitamins with Calcium and some Halls Defense strawberry lozenges with Vitamin C. Hopefully that will help. I figure if I've worked at a casino dealing with dirty money for almost six months and didn't get sick, I can handle a bunch of snot-nosed kids, too.

W2s came in, and I sent them off in the mail to my dad today. Aaron ran some figures...if I claim myself as independent, I get $700 more than if my dad claims me. This is the last year he's going to be able to claim me, though, because I'm old, so I'll probably just do that, anyway, and get a buttload of money next year.

School's going to get rough soon, I can tell. I signed up for a test that we have to take before student teaching...$40 for a registration fee, then $75 for the test...so I got to pay $115 for a stupid test. I'd better pass it on the first try, 'cause I sure don't want to take it again.

Hmmm. Anything else? I think that's about it, really. I don't have a whole lot of time for anything else, although Aaron bought me Mario Kart for the Nintendo DS, so hopefully we'll be able to get a WiFi connection set up and I can play against Jill some time. And kick her ass. Hahaha.

Alright, I'm tired and need to crash. G'night!