Tag: high school

Two Fast, Too Furious

The title of the post is just a pun. No one is furious. Unless you count being furious at the dictator cheeto for being recorded saying that Covid was a killer all the way back in February. That’s not what you get furious about. What you get furious about is that 50% of the idiots who vote still think he’s doing a great job, the fucking dogs.

Anyway.

51 minutes ago I finished my second intermittent fast. Two days in a row of no eating between 9:00pm and 1:00pm the next day. Something tells me that I’m going to get sick of this really quick, but for today… Two fast, too furious. Or something like that.

I’ve started having a little problem with my Apple Watch. Yesterday it froze on me. It went to sleep and wouldn’t wake up. I rebooted and everything was fine… or so I thought. About an hour later I saw a no-connection error icon. What? I checked my iPhone and sure enough the phone and the watch were not connected via bluetooth. I re-connected them and it was fine for a while but eventually it disconnected again.

I went to Wise Master Google and it told me to just toggle the bluetooth function on my iphone. That seems to have worked so far, at least for a couple of hours, but I have been having a little bit of an issue connecting to Siri. Its only working when my phone and I are in the same room. Weird.

My step son just wrapped up his second day of school. He did it all from his room. He’s in the living room doing music theory homework on the electric piano right now. As of today the full remote schooling is still just for this week. For now though, it’s such a relief to know he’s not going into the coronaviral plague pit otherwise known as the high school. I really don’t want him to go back, at least not without a vaccine, and not a rushed-poison-election-year-gimmick vaccine. I’m so tired of this.

So how are you all doing?

Methuen High School Teacher Tests Positive for COVID-19

Jen pointed me to this article tonight.  The Lawrence Eagle Tribune is reporting that a teacher working at Methuen High School has tested positive for COVID-19.  Hooray.

This is going to happen everywhere.  Returning to school now is going to be a disaster of life threatening proportions.

Fortunately, while the teachers have gone back to school already, the students have not.  According to the article, classes will start remotely next week and then in early October they will switch to a hybrid model where students will be in the school buildings part of the time and learning remotely the rest.  So it’s very bad news for the teachers in the high school who now have to quarantine, but it could have been worse.

I just hope the teacher who tested positive is okay.  Get well soon, if you’re experiencing symptoms.  If you’re asymptomatic then get rid of the virus soon.

This does not actually affect my family.  We do live in Methuen, but my step kids’ father does not.  At some point, long before I was a part of the equation, it was decided that dad’s address would determine their school district, so my step son goes to school in dad’s town.

Here’s a copy of the article, along with a link.  It was published yesterday and it was written by Bill Kirk.

Teacher at Methuen High School tests positive for COVID-19

METHUEN — Just a few days into the new school year, a teacher at Methuen High tested positive for COVID-19, forcing the district to implement quarantines and contact tracing, according to Superintendent Brandi Kwong.

Teachers reported back to school Sept. 1 for professional development, Kwong said. She said the positive test will not impact the start of school for students, which is Sept. 14 for online classes. A hybrid of online and in-person classes starts Oct. 5.

“Protocols were followed and were successful and it will not impact our reopening,” Kwong said. “We worked with the Department of Public Health, the nurse leader and the principal at the high school.”

As a result of the positive case, a number of people who came into contact with the person, including children who have been in the building, have been quarantined.

According to an email obtained by The Eagle-Tribune, at around 6:30 p.m. Thursday Principal Richard Barden reached out to teachers at the high school.

“I have been notified that there is a COVID-19 positive case at Methuen High School,” he said. “If you are identified as a close contact you will be notified by a local board of health or a contact tracer who will explain recommendations for quarantine.”

Barden could not be reached for comment.

Mayor Neil Perry, who serves as chairman of the School Committee as part of his official duties, said protocols were followed informing people who may have come in contact with the teacher.

“We have to expect this,” he said. “It’s a test of how we handle it. … As people go back, we are going to have some cases.”

School Committee member Ryan DiZoglio said he found out about the case from postings on social media Thursday night, after which, he said, “my phone blew up.”

“I got 15 phone calls in 20 minutes,” he said, noting that some came from from teachers who work in other schools, including Comprehensive, Timony, Marsh and Tenney grammar schools.

“A lot of their concern is, ‘Why weren’t we told about this,’ which is ridiculous,” he said. “Teachers are very concerned they had to find out from Facebook.”

He said all teachers in the district should have been notified.

“Not knowing anything is concerning,” he said. “They want reassurance that we are containing it, everything is fine and we can move forward.”

Kwong said she did notify members of the School Committee, but that only teachers at the high school were notified of the positive test.

Jonathan Becker, president of the Methuen Education Association — the union representing teachers — did not respond to a voicemail or email seeking comment.

Lunch Time Post

Hello and welcome to today’s lunch break blog post.  Enjoy!

There is a lot of stuff going on today.

Last weekend I found two scary looking problems in our cellar.  We have a water leak somewhere and it’s ending up underneath the floor tiles.  It doesn’t seem like a lot of water, but it’s damaging the tiles a little.  I think I know where it’s coming from but I need to get a plumber in to look at it.  While I was investigating that I noticed that some of the HVAC duct that runs along the basement ceiling was actually coming apart.  There was one spot where the duct was detached from the ceiling and it looked really, really scary.  It looked like the ceiling wanted to collapse.  That’s not in any way what was going to happen, but that’s how it looked.

So step one is get the scary looking duct checked out and step two is bring the plumber back.  The HVAC folks came this morning just before I punched in to work.  All set.  It was just a couple of brackets that popped lose and there was nothing wrong with duct itself.  Sigh of relief.  The problem was fixed, some extra support was added, and life is good.

While the guy was here working I heard from my step son that he left his insulin pod at home.  Yikes!  I told him I’d bring it to him once the tech left.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find it.  I looked everywhere.  He said maybe it was in his car and he went out to look.  Nope, not in the car.  I ripped the living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and his bedroom apart.  Nothing.  Where the hell is it?  I retraced my steps and looked everywhere again and finally found it.  It seems like he kicked it way under his bed.  All set.  I had to take a little personal time off from work while I drove up to the high school but that was okay.

When I got to the high school it was a little weird.  A police car followed me into the parking lot.  I don’t mean that to sound ominous, we were just driving along and he just happened to be behind me.  No big deal.  I parked in the front parking lot and he parked in the driveway… next to another police car.  Okay, two cops.  I then noticed that across the lot from me there were two more police cars.  Okay, four cops.  Was something going on?

I don’t think so.  The two parked in the driveway walked into the building together and they were super casual.  Just two coworkers hanging out.  I didn’t see the two cops from the parking lot, but no one inside was acting like anything out of the ordinary was going on.  I wonder if there was a D.A.R.E presentation or something.  Still, given the atmosphere in our country these days, seeing a bunch of cops at the high school was a little bit unsettling.

152/365 - Why so many cops at the high school? I saw these two and two others.

Back to the house, I pulled into the driveway and parked as close to the house as I could.  With a snowbank still on the side of the road, we are parking three cars into a driveway that is more or less exactly the length of the three cars end to end.  We need to park as close together as we can.  No wasted space.

I think I could have gotten a little closer today.

Untitled

And that’s my day so far. Fascinating, eh? Still need to schedule something with the plumber. It will likely be for next Thursday because telecommuting makes stuff like this easy.

Oh yeah, and I setup a trello board for RPM2020.

Tonight’s plans include making dinner for Jen and Harry, WATCHING PICARD EPISODE TWO (SQUEEEE!!!!!), and practicing the effin’ guitar!

HoHoHo, everyone.  Hope your day is going well.  Happy lunch break!

Snow Practice

So remember a couple of months ago when my band, El Pez Lagarto (the Lizardfish), played at my high school reunion?  Well the organizers of that little shindig, while putting the plans together, created a Facebook group and added every member of our class they could find to it.

Also, remember a couple of days ago when I posted a flyer that Kevin the drummer made to advertise our 2/1/20 show onto this page?  Kevin often makes flyers like that for our shows, but in this case the manager of the venue actually asked for one.

Well those two worlds just collided.  Mike just posted the flyer into the high school reunion Facebook group.  To quote the guy from Quantum Leap: Oh boy.

We’re practicing tonight.  We’re also supposed to get a mini-blizzard tonight.  I’m thinking I’ll take the less-expensive guitar with me.  What do you guys think?*

 

*Don’t answer.  I don’t actually care what anyone thinks.  It’s just a figure of speech.

 

On a totally unrelated note, did you know that Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage is on Netflix?  I didn’t know before, but I do know… because I just watched it.  It’s still my all time favorite rock music documentary.  It’s even better than the best rock mockumentary, This is Spinal Tap.  You could even say that the movie is so epic that by the time it ends it is being influenced by itself at the beginning.

High School Musical


This is an actual high school musical though, not the terrifying horror movie Disney put out a few years ago.

My step daughter is playing synth in the pit band.  She rules more than any of you people do.

Weird High School Dream

I had the weirdest high school drama dream last night.  I dreamed that we were living in an apartment.  The hallway outside of our room looked remarkably similar to the hallway the band room was in back in the old Tewksbury High School.

One of the residents, who was also a member of my graduating class, was murdered.  The killer was another member of my high school class.  A group of other class of ’89 folks was involved in a cover up.  My best friend was helping to cover up the cover up.  I was helping to cover up his covering up of the cover up.  I’m not sure how, but Steve Hackett’s song, “A Tower Struck Down” seemed to be involved somehow.

I kept having cops come and talk to me about my best friend’s involvement, even though he wasn’t directly involved at all.  Somehow they thought he was.  I also kept finding evidence that the cops were snooping my computer, and every time “A Tower Struck Down” showed up in my iTunes I would panic.  Eventually my friend and I started to crack and devised a plan to tell someone in the press where the body was hidden.  The reporter turned out to be the brother of still another high school classmate, although I don’t know if that person had a brother in real life or not.

I know we had given something, a map maybe, to the reporter, but that’s when I woke up.  

Hopefully, no one from the TMHS class of ’89 was harmed in the making of this dream.  The whole thing was really weird.  It involved people I haven’t thought about in 20 years.  Do I need therapy?  Do I need to listen to more Steve Hackett?

Idiot

I mean… how stupid do you have to be?

An 18 year old high school student from Methuen was arrested yesterday for making “terroristic” threats on his facebook page.  He did things like mention killing a lot of people, and outdoing the marathon bombers.  Here’s a story from the Eagle Tribune.

I mean… just… ummm… really?  I ask again, how stupid can you be?  I mean… you know… doing this at any time since 9/11 would be the absolute pinicle of stupidity, but to do it now… half an hour from Boston… today… just two weeks or so after two doucehcanoes set off bombs at the Boston Marathon… and to mention outdoing said douchecanoes?  I mean… I mean… Can a human be more idiotic than that?  Is it physically possible to do anything more stupid than that?  I don’t think so.  I think this is the single dumbest crime ever commited in the United States of America, if not the world.  This 18 year old high school kid now sits in prison with a $1,000,000 bail and he faces 20 years in jail.  TWENTY FREAKING YEARS!!!  How did this kid not see this coming?  He put the damn post onto Facebook for Christs sake!  How can a member of the human race be that stupid?  I mean… what the hell, kid??