Choose Your Fighter

The school is holding a door decorating contest for the holiday season. Winter Wonderland is the theme. I asked the class, and they wanted to participate. 

Rather than try to figure out a design, I opened it up to the class. What did they want our door to look like? We brainstormed, and they decided to have a couple snowball fighters. 

Of course, our snowball fighters would have to be the students. Eddy, who is an artist, drew bodies and hats. One of the IAs took pictures of the students. (The non-fighters got their pictures on snowflakes.) And we could easily print those pictures out. 

Which two students would be our fighters? I figured we would draw names for it. But Sydney said she didn't want to be one of the snowball fighters. So, I asked the class: who wanted to be a snowball fighter?

Leanna and Antoine raised their hands. No one else. 

That was way too easy. I repeated the question. 

Flash's hand went up. Then Logan's. Then both Sushi and Brittany wanted to be included. (Pizza was not at school that day. He had gone to Disneyland.) 

That was more like what I expected. So, we wrote down names, but them in a convenient paper bag, and we had Sydney draw two. (She had no stake in the outcome, so I figured she'd be the fairest person to pick.) 

Who did she pick? Leanna and Antoine. 

Well, okay then. 

Their pictures were printed bigger. Their heads got attached to Eddy's snowball fighter drawings. And it turned out way cuter than I expected. 

This post was written on Sunday. Edit on Wednesday night: WE WON SECOND PLACE!

A Little Knowledge...

I put up the outside Christmas lights the first weekend of this month.  I tested them before putting them out.  They lit.  No problem.  I thought that was the end of it.

My Christmas lights are the white ones in that mesh-type thing that are designed to decorate a bush or some shrubbery.  I pull them across my balconies.  It's a quick and easy way to light the balcony without twisting a single strand of lights around the railing (which I did for a couple years, but I did not like).

The night after putting up the Christmas lights, a section of them went dark.

The next day I went through and made sure all the bulbs were in place.  After touching one, the lights all came back on.  I thought I had fixed it.  I had.  For about 20 minutes.

During daylight hours, I went back to the lights to find which bulb had come loose.  It turned out one of them had burned out.  It was easy to find as the bulb had turned black.  I replaced it, and again I thought I was done.

That night, that section stayed lit for about 20 minutes.

The next day, I went to replace the burned out bulb to find that it was the same one.  So, I watched it.  When the lights were on, I could easily tell which bulb burned out as it was the brightest one on the strand.  And, of course, it burned out again.

I realized that I was going to have to replace the whole thing, because that one spot was going to continue to burn through bulbs.  But I'm kinda lazy, especially about the Christmas lights.  Having to take the whole thing down and put a new thing up was not my idea of a good solution.

What I needed was a way to bypass that one spot on the strand.

That's when it occurred to me.  What I needed to do was to somehow connect a wire through that one spot so the rest of the strand would stay lit.

I found that I could pull the bulb out of the holder that put the bulb in the strand.  I needed a wire to go across that holder to keep the electricity flowing to the rest of the strand.  This wire would bypass where a bulb would have been.  It would have been silly to sacrifice a bulb every night for 20 minutes of a fully-lit strand.

I found some old twist ties, removed the paper, cut a wire to fit just over the holder, and glued it into place.  The next day (the glue needed 24 hours to dry), I put the holder into place.  It lit.  Hooray!

I did this on Wednesday.  So far, the lights have remained lit.

This is a fix for this year only.  Next year, I'm going to have to replace that whole strand.  (Maybe next year I can find some colored lights that blink.)

Classroom Decor

Ah, seniors.

It was one of those lovely days where I passed out work and they did it. I didn't get any whining or complaining. And although it took some effort on my part to get them to pay attention to what I had to say (the general instructions at the beginning of the period), once I had their attention, they listened.

It was a government class. The teacher had this on the wall...

...and I spent the day fascinated by it. (You can also find it here.)

It's hard to tell what it is in this image. All those lines are the lifetimes of all the presidents. The red part on their lines is when they were president. The other colors represent other positions: the military, senator, representative, governor, etc.

I kept going over to the poster to stare. I found it fascinating how the lines overlapped--who was alive when who was president. And then various bars would catch my eye and I'd have to walk over to see what they meant.

Yeah, I know, I'm weird. But stuff like this fascinates me.