Today marks the midpoint of September – so far it’s been a surreal year, and I for one will be happy to see it exit stage right.

Little Dude has been having issues already the first week of school – their Zoom classrooms were somehow hacked (just the middle school – neither the elementary school nor the high school had any hacking issues, which I find rather odd). Someone was joining the password-protected classrooms and leaving vulgar comments in the chat, and inappropriate images on the screen.

Needless to say, they’ve ditched Zoom for Google Classrooms, but while there’s no hacking so far, Little Dude keeps getting kicked out of the classrooms several times each class. Not sure if it’s the wifi they supplied, or the Chromebook, or user error – we’re hoping to get it squared away sooner rather than later.

Meanwhile, we’ve had to tighten the monitoring of Little Dude – he spent the first few days not paying attention to the classes he was in, lied about turning in assignments that not only didn’t get turned in, but he hadn’t even started them, getting into Google Meet to chat with his friend when he’s supposed to be in class (or doing his school work), and spending an inordinate amount of time Google searching random video games (he’ll be sorely disappointed when he finds out any downloads won’t happen on that school laptop). 

In other news, Princess Nagger, who has been doing online school since 8th grade, is a senior this year. A senior! Of course we’ve been spending the better part of the last week scrambling to shuffle electives and whatnot (to avoid the really boring classes…heh!) so this year will be a good one.

The first official class day isn’t until the 21st, so there’s a little bit of wiggle room to get things finalized, with the help of an amazing advisor. I’m quite happy that two of the chosen electives are Veterinary Science and Digital Photography. Those I’ll certainly enjoy being a ‘Learning Coach’ for!

I don’t know how many of you are hip to the fires we’re having out here on the west coast – it’s pretty bad. Here in Washington, the smoke has reached ‘hazardous’ levels in our area:

This has been our view for an entire week. Some days it’s even thicker than that, this is the ‘best’ in the entire week, and a couple hours after I took that picture, it got thicker again. It gets worse after the sun goes down. While that’s not an odd view on a ‘normal’ foggy day, that’s all smoke, my friends. And it doesn’t get ‘burned off’ by the sun like fog does, it’s just been persistent day and night for well over a week.

We were supposed to have some relief today with a forecast of rain, but apparently the system that was supposed to bring us relief, fizzled out, so we’re looking at this sticking around at least until the end of this week, provided the next system due in on Thursday, actually formulates and shows up.

The air is acrid and headache-inducing – we’re about 70-ish miles from the closest fire, I can’t imagine how people are coping even closer. This has been the worst fire year ever – thanks, 2020.

OK, enough of that – let’s move on to the funnies, shall we?

This cracked me up:

With the fires and the wind storms last week, we had intermittent internet – so this really cracked me up:

This is hilarious:

This cracked me up:

This is hilarious:

This is funny:

This cracked me up:

This is so me:

And I’m just going to leave this right here for you:

That’s a wrap for this week – you know the drill, link up and join in the , everyone is welcome. Please stay healthy and safe!

Signature

.

Link up your Random (or not) here:

Mister Linky’s Magical Widgets — Easy-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.

Keeping the random alive (barely) – feel free to snag a badge and play along – one for my wino friends:

Stacy Uncorked

And one for my non-wino friends:

Stacy Uncorked

.

5 Comments

  1. Sorry to hear about issues with online learning. I just think it’s better in person for most people. Not everyone, of course. I like online learning for myself, but kids… not so much. Hope it all works out. That cassette sure brought back memories! And I wish I had the courage to do what the cat suggested! LOL

  2. #1 Son’s refusal to do his school on computer was the reason we had to give in and send him to a small private school, so you have my sympathy.

    The funnies are great, and i am praying our Gulf Coast rain fizzles and yours appears.

  3. Stacy,

    The problems with distance learning is bound to happen. I’ve read somewhere how parents aren’t allowed to keep tabs on their kids but that just sounds like a recipe for disaster. Guess who’ll get blamed in the end? The parents, right? Yeah, it’s craziness! Some kids need more guidance to stay on track. WOW, Princess Nagger is a senior! I know what you’re thinking, “Man, did that ever happen fast!” and you’re right having done that three times here. The best of luck to your senior. I’m sure she’ll excel at everything she sets out to do! Thanks for hosting the random fun, my friend. 😉

  4. Good luck with this school year. I’m having a hard time just getting my youngest to get up on time to check in. It’s HR Monday this week. I can’t wait to hear how that goes. the best learning he’s done this year is anything he’s self taught. Our Schools checked out in March and didn’t require any learning until Sept. If they were there, and checked in between March and June, great but our Districts were mostly interested in knowing the kids were OK and hearing what they wanted to do and learn. He’s learned more from online Scouting meetings since March. For the Fall he’s just not an early riser, so waking up at 10am vs 920am in PJ. 🙂

Comments are closed.