I have had a migraine for the past few days, and therefore have not been up to much beyond nursing the baby on the couch. Sadly, this also means that not much of interest has occurred, except for back to school night, and national delurking day.

(If you lurk, say hello! I will try and hit the blogs I skulk around in and say hello as well!)

To begin with, Marlena’s school is located in one large “group learning” room. Yes, her class is separated from the other classes by a few bookshelves and a chalk board. I would find that learning environment beyond distracting, but Marlena (and her teacher) assures me is it not. Her teacher is very nice, and seems very interested in teaching my child to love education, which is by far more important than teaching her social studies and math at this age. Even better, she only has 18 students in her class, instead of the 28 she had last year. This means smaller groups, more individual attention, etc.

Their class cubby has it’s own computers, a mini-library, and a little fold up closet for the kids stuff. It is a cozy and colorful little set up.

Of course, while we as a nation spend billions on the war in Iraq and research for more advance people killing weapons, my child’s teacher is limited to two reams of paper per month, for a class of 18. She often has to send the children home with a book, instead of sending the kids home with homework, simply because she is out of paper to run copies of the homework off on.

Lee and I will be giving her a case of paper this week, because really, REALLY?

She also requested a donation of glue sticks for art projects, as they are almost out of glue.

In fact, in lieu of bothering all my friends and family with the myriad of fund-raising items that are sent out each month, I have a new plan. I won’t be asking you all to buy wrapping paper through the school, or cookie dough you don’t need, or sausage and cheese sets. Instead, I am going to ask you to please send me a small check to support Marlena’s education. After receiving said small checks, I will confer with her teacher, and then go to Costco or Staples and buy the supplies Marlena’s class needs for the year. That way we can all participate in her education directly, instead of through an intermediary who will skim 50% to 80% of the money off the top. You can also click on the ChipIn widget on the sidebar to contribute.

I am so tired of seeing my daughter’s education suffer for lack of money. I am tired of seeing companies make money off of school fund-raising. Why on earth is it more acceptable for a cookie dough company to sell cookie dough through the parents and children, and donate half the profits to the school than it is for each parent to send the school a check at the beginning of the year? I don’t want the added calories, I just want to support my child’s education.

So, that rant is over, for now. Oliver, having fallen asleep in his johnny jump up again, is playing my tune. He awoke as soon as I moved him from what appeared to be a hideously uncomfortable position, but was apparently actually quite cosy, and is now demanding to be held.
Oliver asleep in his Johnny Jump-Up:

My mac is repaired, but the photo library has nothing in it. Somehow either I or my mac erased four years of pictures. To add insult to injury, my backup program, that I faithfully used everyday, isn’t restoring the pictures. I would be crying my eyes out over the lost photographic bounty if there weren’t a few silver linings to my stormy computer horizon.
I am a prolific techno-crafter. I love to turn photos into DVDS, web albums, etc. I have about six solid DVDS with pictures on them that I have made for father’s day, wedding anniversary, and simply my own pleasure. Therefore, many of the best and most important pictures are still on those DVDs, simply waiting to be reintroduced to my iphoto. I also have several online photo albums set up in my .mac account. These date back years, so they will have many of the most emotionally valuable pictures. I also was able to recover a few hundred photos from other libraries on my mac. Best of all, my iPod has all the photos from 2003 through the beginning of August. I used it as a last ditch back up mechanism, and to show people pictures of the family while I travel.

Of course, now I have to figure out if there is some way to transfer all those lovely images from my iPod back into a form where they can be edited and printed, without eradicating them the moment I plug the iPod into the mac and the auto-update begins.

I am thinking I will see if I can download them on to Lee’s or Marlena’s computer first, as they claim you can use your iPod to transfer files to a new computer, but I am going to wait until my computer-savvy hubby gets here. This little batch of photos would represent my last back up set, so I refuse to touch them without assistance from a professional.

On another upside, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with my mac otherwise, it is running just fine and the hard-drive doesn’t seem to be failing. It may just be that something glitched when I uploaded the new iPhoto program. Happily, this means I am back online and able to work (and Blog)!