Improvising at its worst

This week looks promising to be a bad week. Or at least a bad start to the week. Where to start? I don't consider myself addicted to the computer. I don't think I'm addicted to the Internet. It's an extremely nice "luxury" to have and to kill time with. Many of us don't realize that we literally have the whole world at the tip of our fingers when we access the Internet.... until we don't have access anymore.

I lost my Internet connection for two whole days. TWO days! That's a mighty long time for me, especially when everything is riding on the Internet. I do lots of planning and rely heavily on the Internet to supply me with ideas, pictures, and worksheets. Of course, I also use the Internet as a fact checker. Imagine teaching a few adults that "dog" is a verb. Ok, maybe not that extreme but you get the idea.

Apparently, my computer decided to go off the deep end and start acting crazy. It was spamming the servers so the DSL company shut me down. I fixed the problem so I am back up and running now (obviously) and am trying to catch up on two days worth of checking emails, websites, and news.

Loss of Internet at home brings Improvisation Number One: Working at school during lunch and later, in an office frantically printing my GED lesson 10 minutes before class (I decided to revamp it, I wasn't happy with what I did a couple weeks ago). Doing stuff at the last minute is NOT fun and stressful. J and P - WHY do you do it!? You're both crazy.

What else has happened to me? Well, the projector at school decided to break too. That put a crimp in my math lessons. Improvisation Number Two: I decided to use the SmartBoard instead and have my students work off that. THEN the next day, the laptop connected to the SmartBoard decided to block us out and refuses to accept any logins and passwords. That gets rid of my plans to use PowerPoint too. What next? Improvisation Number Three: The teacher whose class I'm teaching has paper, posters and junk plastered all over BOTH chalkboards - so guess what? I had to write on a teeny tiny chalkboard that's about 8x8 inches. Fun.

Today, I had to go to an appointment at 8am which meant I would be late for school. I figured about an hour and half of wait time and meeting time which would get me back to school by 10 at the latest - which would allow me to teach my Language lesson at 10:15. Right? Wrong! The stupid office made me wait TWO hours before they even saw me. Needless to say, I was pretty annoyed. This also meant I arrived too late to teach Language. Which comes.... Improvisation Number Four: My teacher is insistent that I cover Deaf Culture for 5 days (bummer) so I couldn't bump up Language today. Yesterday, the teacher wanted to finish an old lesson she started but never finished. So - I have three days to teach them a week's worth of Language. It'll be fun cramming and modifying my lessons!

After my appointment, I had to stop for gas. I was in a hurry and cars were lined up, so I grabbed the first available pump I saw. I stepped out and guess what. Stepped into a very sticky puddle of spilled gasoline. Yay! My shoes were sticky for a while after that.

AND - I had a bad hair day today. If any of you saw me today (and P did), you'd frown. I learned my lesson - I'm not going to bed with my hair wet without brushing it. It.doesn't.look.good.

GED class went very smoothly tonight, thankfully. I'm hoping tomorrow brings a new beginning and ends the not-so-fun week I've been having so far. Wish me luck!