Work - Week 5 over

It's the end of week 5, of 8 this term. I am so tired that I was histerical laughing at a picture I found online. I'm feeling the pressure getting to me by the end of the week. It's like a cloud that descends on me, while I keep trying to stave it off. I'm starting to count down the classes left until the end of term, which with all the public holidays and parent-teacher interviews left isn't many by now. At least I am easily planning my time for next term. It's that there are soooo many things to get done in the one day on top of the band students and the classroom management issues. I'm tired. Thankfully this is only an 8 week term. Unthankfully I have to write reports already.

With all the work I'm doing at the moment I am leaving the house at 8 and not getting home to 6.30 some nights. I walked around the supermarket in a daze tonight especially so I don't have to leave the house tomrorrow. I made sure that I got something nice to eat in the morning. I'm going back to bed in the morning before I have to get the house work done. At least I don't have to talk to anyone in particular. No-one asking me about when their lesson is or whatever.

My birthday recently was a heap of fun. I enjoyed having dinner out with family, and I danced like an idiot in my loungeroom while M and I finished off a 700ml of Vodka between us. What a night. I saw the sun come up.

Despite the download issues I got my new ipod working, finally. It's one of those things I have been wanting for a long time, but haven't got around to buying it. Even better if it's a gift.

Right, off to bed for a few days before I think about facing week six.

By the way, this was what made me laugh till I cried. I have some new year 7 band students this year that have seemed like this. Awesome.

MSVCP71.dll

I've been having this issue with PDF files on my computer, I kept getting this error message that told me mscvp71.dll was missing, reinstalling might solve the problem. Which it didn't. Came across an answer somewhere that said to download the file and put it in the /system32 file folder, in the programs folder.

Hey presto, 12 months of adobe angst solved. No thanks to the adobe help files or 'knowledgebase'.

I. AM. AWESOME.

Let me know if this helps anyone else!

VCE

My birthday is over for another year. I got some fantastic presents and a very enjoyable dinner out with family and friends. I had a lot of fun with friends and a now empty bottle of Vodka later in the night too...

I've been working so hard lately, I've been coming home exhausted at the end of the week. There is so much to be done in a day that I seem to be one of the last cars in the carpark every night. The department has a big hole in it at the moment, which is a lot of the problem, the other classroom teacher has left to pursue another job at a different school and we were unable to fill the position with a music teacher before the school year started and thus have a non music teacher infront of the year 7 classes.

We're getting geared up for going on tour at the moment, to China this year. We are having two new instrumental teachers starting, and moving the instrumental lessons to a different area in the school. I've been writing lesson plans for my own classes, and the other teacher. I've had an enormous increase in the number of year 9 students in OzRock and teaching students to play drums, piano, guitar, bass and vocals at the same time in the one room is hard work. I'm also recently the VCE teacher, which means getting my head around the curriculum while teaching it in order to prepare these students for the big exams at the end of the year.

I travelled to Melbourne this weekend to go to the VCE music teachers conference to learn more about the VCE course. I've come away from it feeling a lot more confident about what I'm supposed to cover this year. It's a lot about sifting through all the theory stuff in order to teach the right thing, rather than just teaching everything. At this stage I'm feeling really good about it all. See how things go when we all get closer to the exams...

Post #200

This is offically post number 200, hurray!

I didn't realise how long it had been since I last posted. One of the reasons is I have been super busy at work, and too tired to think about anything much when I get home. I'm trying to get so much done at work that sometimes I don't get recess or lunch, or I only have 5 minutes to eat before the bell goes. The other reason is kind of stupid, the D button has fallen off the keyboard at home, and it's annoying to type as I have to continually make sure that the little rubber presser stays in the centre of the letter. As I type lots of D's when I write, it just annoys me.

Anyway, at the start of school we found out that one of the teachers in the music department was leaving, he's gone to take another job at a nearby school. It's sad to lose him, as I didn't have much time to work with him, and its hard to lose him because we now have two people doing the work of three in the band and classroom program. We have another teacher taking the year 7 classes, but he isn't much trained, so it will fall to me to make sure he knows enough to teach the students how to play something or they will all get angry. And I not only have to think about 'what' to teach them during the year, I also have to think about 'how' a non music person teaches someone, or lots of someones, how to play music. I think to myself that it is a piece of cake, but I have to remember that musical instruments can be really daunting when you haven't any experience at all. At least it is only year 7. And possibly only for this year. It would be interesting to have a new music person, but scary because you don't know what this other music person would be like and you have to work with them all the time and if they are weird or scary then it makes work hard. I'm lucky with the other music teacher still there, we get along so well. I think that some people are a little jealous or intimidated by the working relationship that LT and I have. I've heard a few comments around the staff room and one of the parents made a strange comment about not wanting to intrude on the fun we were having. Anyway.

Other than work things are going great. I have had my hair cut today, with a touch up to the highlights. I had a fair bit of the length taken off, I'm always suprised by how light it feels when you have it cut. I can feel it moving around on my back, but it's mostly just the newness you feel when you've been to the hair dresser.

The garden is looking pretty good out the back. I need a huge trailer load of dead branches taken away, I'll have to ask the parents if we could have a bon fire soon. We must be out of fire danger season. I'm not sure if there are permits required. But who would know, anyway. It would be great to have a few beers and stand around watching stuff burn. I'm a bit of a closet pyro, I think. Hehehe. So, about the garden, I mowed the lawn the other day, (M is out of action on the mowing presently) and put the grass cuttings on the garden beds. Amazing how just a little bit of dead grass can make such a difference to the look of the yard. That's why I want to put garden beds and mulch down, so that even if there aren't any plants in the yard, it will look good. And then I can put in plants gradually.

M found out recently that he has a stress fracture in his foot. It had been paining him for about a week before he went to see the doctor, and three weeks after that until the doctor was definate about it. He's chosen the bandage and crutches option, which he uses at work. If he had a plaster cast he would go crazy, because he wouldn't be able to walk, or drive, or work, and boredom is a real killer. He struggled enough with the appendix operation he had just before the wedding, I was given the dubious honour of chosing the DVD collection for him to watch. Hard work. Especially as we struggle to find something to watch when we both go to video ezy.

Right, I'll post some more stuff soon, right now I've had enough of the letter D.