Flying solo...

My wife and the baby are off to Anchorage for follow-up check-ups. Two days. I don't like being alone that much these days. Maybe domestic life has spoiled me...

More Testing Fun...

We have many, many standardized tests that we give to our students in this age of testing mania. I counted up a total of approximately discrete testing "events" that students are required to sit for in the course of the school year. That counts reading, writing, and math tests as individual "events." Some of the tests are given three times each school year. The contrast is very strong with my school career, which was back in the stone age. I think that we took a standardized test every three years or so. I think that these kids take more tests by September than I took from kindergarten through eighth grade.

One of the tests is given on computer, and is internet based. I was in the middle of one of the tests yesterday when the power in the school went down. Voila. No server. No communication with the test site. In the middle of the test! Even after the school's generator was turned back on, our server needed to be reset. I was able to get in after things were back up and pause and restart the test for most of the takers. Not for everyone, though. A couple of kids had frozen test screens, and I just suspended their tests so that they can, I hope, finish them later.

Nice relaxing way to spend the afternoon. More testing today. I hope that the power will stay on...

Down the Stretch...

We have survived the twin traumas of Testing week and Cultural week, and are back to some sort of state of semi-equilibrium. We have Prom on Friday night, and Graduation coming up as well. There is to real enormous trauma, more like a management headache and a task that needs more hands than are sometimes available for the task. No biggie.

The light is beginning to rule our lives. There is less and less darkness, and my sleep tends to follow light and dark closely at this time of year. My kids are coming in sleepier and crabbier by the day. Getting them to do things is getting more tricky. No biggie.

My mind is filled more and more with thoughts of going back to Michigan to see my friends and family. It will have been nearly ten months since I have seen many of them by the time that we return. Although the holiday break in Anchorage was simpler and less tiring than our usual mad dash back east, we haven't gotten to see many of our loved ones in a long time. No biggie.

My baby was very cranky yesterday, but she woke up this morning with a smile for Daddy. That's why the rest of this is no biggie...

Tuesday...

Some people don't like Mondays. I get it. I think that Tuesdays are even less appealing. Maybe I just have end-of-the-year-itis. It happens. I also have this respiratory thing that has been hanging on for five weeks and won't seem to go away. I would really rather be home talking to Alice and my wife. Or maybe it is just Tuesday. I'm not sure.

We are attempting to ready ourselves for cultural week next week. The kids will focus on traditional activities in the afternoons. The mornings will be taken up with academics, at least in the upper grades. After that, it is four weeks to go. Some of us look as if we are hanging on the ropes at this point. I hope that I am not one of those folks...

Power Outage-No Big Deal...

For a small town, this can be a tough place to get information. You will recall that our latest interruption had been forecast to last a week. By the time that I got home on Friday afternoon, the generators were hooked up and running on the porches of the teacher housing buildings. A few hours later, my wife noticed that our clock on the stove was flashing. The portable generators will provide us with heat, and some limited electrical service in the hallways of the building, but no service in the actual apartments. The stove clock suggested that we had full electrical service.

A quick check of our computers confirmed that Internet service was also available. However, contacts on Facebook around the village (they were on their phones) suggested that most folks did not have power. This was very confusing to me, as the village tends to turn these buildings on last, because they are multi-residential, and use a lot of power. We continued to have service throughout the night on Friday. My only thought at the time was that the power was being rotated, and that we would go out sometime on Saturday.

That situation never took place. We apparently got left on because a bishop of the Orthodox Church was staying in one of the apartments in the other building. Full service was restored for the village on Saturday as they day went on. Repair crews have apparently restored our large generator to operational status. I am not sure of the status of the two other generators.

This may mean that our recent interruptions are at an end for the foreseeable future. It may mean nothing of the sort. It remains to be seen, as is so often the case out here. We had a pleasant visit from a friend from back home who is teaching up in Bethel. She plans to return for next year, and she got to visit with Alice, and take a side visit to our "sister village" of Napakiak, down the river.

For the time being, life is good. We have less than six weeks to go in the school year, and things seem to be moving along smoothly. I am getting over a nasty cold, and I need to get some grading caught up. But otherwise, there is little to do but to finish up and get ready to visit friends and family for summer vacation...

Power's Out!

Readers of this space will certainly understand that we have issues with our power plant. We have had somewhere around ten or eleven days without electricity since January 1st. They have come in various forms of inconvenience, ranging from the pain-in-the-ass variety to the shivering in the dark, no-water-pressure variety. We seem to have gotten it down to pain in the ass at this point. Our refrigeration is plugged into an outlet in the hallway that is apparently on the same circuit as the furnace room. We never unplugged it after the last go-around. We have little faith in the power system here at this point.

Word went out last week that the village had gotten its hands on replacement parts that would allow it to get our largest generator, which had been down for a while, back up and running. That process would take two days, during which we would have to go back to individual generators.

To make it short and relatively less painful, the power went off at about 11 am today. It has stayed off, and we are told that, for a combination of reasons which I do not understand, it will be off for a week. Fantastic. We are fortunate that our alternate generators have been hooked up at the teacher houses, because it is going to get cold again this weekend.

Testing went reasonably smoothly, and that part of the school year is over. We are now looking forward to preparing for next years' classes. I am in the process of ordering the books that we will need to get things off the ground come August. Six more weeks, and we are out for summer. The years keep going faster...

SBA Day Two

Second day of testing...my group did very well yesterday under somewhat challenging circumstances. We are very crowded here, and had to press the gym into service. We built our own enclosure, and the kids concentrated and cooperated very well. I was impressed.

We are back again at it this morning. There were a few more stragglers, and there are a few more sleepy faces. I plan on making the breaks a little more frequent today. I will probably make them shorter.

Alice is a funny sleeper. She slept in my arms yesterday for a couple of hours while her mom was catching a catnap. I could have tried to put her down, but it gives me a chance to have a little quiet time with my daughter, and that is at a premium during the workweek.

Alice has a tendency to squirm and grunt while she is sleeping. Sometimes, she is almost dramatic, making very loud noises of what sounds like dissatisfaction. I thought that she would wake herself up, but that never happened. Of course, I thought it was extremely cute. Of course, I thought it was extremely cute the other night when she had a diaper blowout all over my t-shirt. I am an idiot.

The light comes earlier and stays later day by day. The ground is still frozen, but spring is clearly here. Even this testing silliness speaks to the change of seasons. We have already begun making plans for the beginning of the next school year. One significant challenge will be the purchase of an automobile for use out here. With the arrival of Alice, our snowmachine days may be coming to a close. Now all that we have to do is to pick a vehicle, buy it, and get it out here. Piece of cake...