Priorities

A few weeks ago, my life was slow and predictable. Today, I’m as busy as I’ve ever been. In late August, I bought my 2004 Dodge Durango. She’s a beauty, and she runs great. Except, a few weeks ago, the check engine light came on. After some research, I found out it had something to do with the coolant system. I took her to a local shop, they checked her out, and told me I needed to replace the thermostat. Not only that, they told me I needed to flush my radiator because apparently the thermostat leaked parts into it or something. All told, it was gonna cost me over $400. My dealer told me to wait and not pay for anything yet; he was going to check in with the company handling my four year warranty. After not hearing from him in weeks, I paid him a visit yesterday. He told me he was going to personally fix my car today, and he would pay for half of the repairs. I dropped off my car in the morning, drove his loaner minivan to work, drove the minivan back after work, and stopped by his office. He found nothing wrong with the radiator, but he flushed it anyways. He replaced the thermostat, and all seems well. Oh, he also still had my title in his files. He finally delivered that to City Hall, so I finally registered my car. I chose this awesome centennial edition license plate. It’ll match my USC School of Cinematic Arts Alumni frame, once I buy it.

This week, all the teachers are supposed to be posting their mid term grades, so it’s busy. It’s also Homecoming Week, so everyone’s scrambling to do everything around there. Since the school uses Infinite Campus, there’s going to be many questions and cries for help, which I received a lot of today. The school did not have a regular tech guy for about a year, so the superintendent (my boss) took the reigns and did as much as he could. But he messed up a lot of things. Since learning so much about Infinite Campus the last few days, I’ve been going through how the system has been set up at this school. Teachers had way more rights than they should have had. For example, all teachers had the right to delete students from the system. They also had access to student’s grades and transcripts that weren’t even in their classes. The superintendent gave them this access because he had no idea what he was doing. Some teachers weren’t even assigned to classes, so they’ve been writing everything down by hand, too afraid to ask him for help. Once I came on, though, a flood of questions came in. Some were easy: some teachers are new here (like me), and they didn’t know how to do simple things. I taught them. For others, though, I had to dig deeper into the system and see what the hell was going on. Stuff that should have already been in there wasn’t, so I had to recreate it. Everything seems like a mess, and I can totally foresee myself spending the rest of the year fine-tuning this system. It’ll be worth it in the end, I think.

Finally, I worked out today. I decided to do the 30 day Insanity: the Asylum workout once more. I spent last December doing it, and I’ve never felt or looked better in my life. I’m hoping to get back to that so by November, I could do the hybrid workout. I know what to expect this time around, so I shouldn’t run into any problems. I did notice today, though, how much stronger I felt and performed. My energy was high, my intensity was surprising, and my bounce was springy. There’s this workout where I use the agility ladder to do in and out abs. In the plank position and over the ladder, I jump into the first square with both feet and immediately shoot my feet back and get into the plank position again. We progress from the first to the second to the third box throughout the workout, and when I got to the third box, I noticed how much stronger I felt doing it. My explosiveness was greater, and it really surprised me. Even though I haven’t been working out the past week, I’ve been making shakes with my whey protein powder, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. I think that has made me stronger. It’s an amazing feeling. Also, in the past few weeks, I’ve lost four pounds. Progress.

I don’t have time anymore to think. I miss it, but I like being busy. It’s tough to figure out not only what I want, but also how to set priorities. What’s more important to me? I need to figure that out.