Saturday, July 18, 2015

Got a Good One For You All

Thursday evening I came home from being gone all week for some training in Southwestern Maine.  My evening routine, especially when someone has to work in the morning, is to prepare the coffee maker to start the coffee when we get up.  I'm off so it didn't matter to me, but my husband had to work.  

Well, our coffee maker needed to be cleaned.  The "clean" indicator light told me so.  Which means a process that includes vinegar and such, which would take longer than I was willing to devote just before going to bed after a 5 hour ride home.

So, yesterday morning I started the cleaning process.  I filled the reservoir with vinegar and let it go through the process.  I then filled it again with water to rinse the vinegar out, then tried to make a pot of coffee.  The light just blinked and it beeped at me and wouldn't stop until I turned it off.  I just didn't get it.  I tried unplugging it to "reset" it, which didn't work.  As far as I was concerned, our coffee maker was broken.

Well, this morning I'm mourning the loss of our coffee machine, which I left on the counter untouched.  Probably because I was hoping there was nothing wrong with it, and it just needed a break. 

Hoping that this morning would be different, I went to the coffee maker and decided to try again.  I decided to refill the reservoir with water when I realized that it was empty.  EMPTY.  I filled it, made sure there was coffee grounds in the filter and an empty pot waiting to be filled and lo and behold the coffee maker worked!!

Talk about feeling stupid.  I guess my coffee maker is smarter than I am.  It was trying to tell me that something was missing....water.   Needless to say, I enjoyed my coffee this morning.  Gotta laugh at myself.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

Professional Development During Summer Break?

Why yes!  And I'm the one who scheduled them, too.  Sometimes I just frustrate myself.

I've been off from school for the second week now, but for the next two weeks I've got two professional development opportunities going on.  I swear, those are the only ones.

In my defense, they're both applicable to the social studies that I'm now teaching, and one of them was an offer that was hard to refuse.  

Next week I'll be participating in a program at the university just 20 minutes away on Acadian History.  I've taken the course before when I was in college, but this is different and geared for teachers to be able to apply this information in their classrooms.  It won't cost me anything because my district is providing me their vehicle for the week, and lunch is covered for me as well.


The week after I'm going down to another university, one I haven't
been to before, but about 6 hours away.  This is on how to use the ArcGIS program in my geography class.  This one covers everything.  Meals, lodging, travel, and after I finish the work I'm expected to do, I get a stipend too.  Can't turn that down either.  Fortunately, I won't be going downstate alone.  I'm picking up a professor at another university about an hour away, so she can help me find where we need to go.


Both will be work, and I'm still working on my plans for this fall, so anyone who imagine teachers on summer break always by the pool or at the beach doing nothing all the time are seriously mistaken.