Over the past week or so, I’ve been redesiging my school’s website from scratch. I’m using Hugo to build it because that’s what I’m most comfortable with (as dense as it can be sometimes), and even though I’m weeks and weeks away from finishing it, I’ve been enjoying the shit out of the whole experience.

I love design. I love building things. I love trying to solve problems and trying to design something that will be critically important for so many people (parents, students, and staff). The whole experience has been incredibly fun, and it inspired me to make some changes to my personal site. So I cleaned some things up:

• I cleaned up both my header and footer and am mostly showing my About and Archive pages in my header and a simple copyright in my footer
• I updated my homepage to show a list of all my posts instead of breaking them up into sections
• I merged my Colophon page into my About page
• I removed the related sections from the end of my posts
• And I cleaned up a lot of code

I want to redesign the whole thing after I’m done with my school’s website, and I want to clean up the content folder in my Hugo project, as well as the code in my layout folder. I haven’t blogged as much as I’ve wanted to because of how I split my posts into two sections (journal and stream). Sometimes I would want to write a journal-type post but I didn’t have a photo to attach to it, and I didn’t feel like it should go in my stream. I don’t think that split works for me anymore, so I want to merge that and not think about it anymore.

I’m also thinking of removing my Typekit fonts and instead going with something more simple. I’ve been using Public Sans on my school redesign, and I’ve been really enjoying the look and feel of it. I don’t know what font or fonts I would use instead, but I find the search for them super exciting.

Finally, I bought Nova yesterday, and holy shit it’s amazing. What a beautiful and well-made app. I had been using BBEdit for the longest time but Nova is definitely my preferred code editor for now. It makes coding so much fun. And coding is so much fun.

And I’m exhausted.

Last spring, the school board voted to approve a 4-day school week from the usual 5-day week, and that meant adding an extra 50 minutes or so to each day, and boy did I feel those extra minutes today. My feet are throbbing, and the bags under my eyes feel that much heavier.

But one thing I didn’t realize (but that is super obvious in hindsight) is that I got to spend even more time with the kids, and I think that’s totally worth the longer days. I’m eager to return tomorrow, and I’m ready to do what I can to make this next year a great one.

Also, about two weeks ago, the exchange student from Germany flew into Missoula and met her host family, and today was her first day of school, too. I wrote about this back in April, and let me just say, she is simply awesome. Funny story: she had a nightmare the other night where she was at school but she kept entering the wrong classrooms. She somehow ended up in the elementary school and was with the little kids, and she was just worried that she would get lost on her first day because our little school is bigger than her school in Germany. But after today, it looked like her worries were just that, worries. I haven’t talked to her about her first day yet, but I’m hoping it was okay.

Sometimes my job can be stressful, and I’ve thought about quitting a few times in the past year, but it is moments like these that remind me how cool my job can be. Here’s to a great year for everyone!

Actually, the last day of school was yesterday, but life has been literally everywhere the past few weeks that I finally found some time to write about it today. I’ll miss the students, especially the newly graduated seniors that I’ve seen grow up for the past seven years, and I’ll miss the little kids, many of whom I can’t wait to see grow up. The last week of school for the teachers is next week, so I still have some time left with them¹. Then I have the entire summer to work on some projects, to reevaluate my life, and see where I want to be come fall. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like the coronavirus will impact us much next year², so it seems like things are starting to feel normal again.

In hindsight, this was probably one of the better years for me in terms of my job and my relationship with the staff and students. I had more highs than lows, and I can only hope for more good things next year. But now I’m looking forward to this three-day weekend, the shorter week next week, and the entire summer to enjoy. The 2020-2021 school year is officially in the books! Phew.

Last week, I received two gifts by two teachers and friends I work with. The first was this wine by our 5th grade teacher:

I laughed out loud when I saw it. It references a few inside jokes that I won’t get into here.

And the next one was this beer by our 4th grade teacher:

Other than the fact that I think the elementary school is trying to turn their tech guy into an alcoholic, I appreciated both gifts. I’m not at all a wine or beer connoisseur, but I found both got me sufficiently drunk, so I highly recommend them both.

Before I accepted my current job, I didn’t know if I liked kids or not. But now, I can safely say I absolutely adore them. They give out hugs freely and they always want to play games. Such a lovely set of souls.

Some snow has melted and the weather was a bit warmer. One of the students must’ve made this snowball and set it here on the table. They all leave for Thanksgiving break tomorrow and I will miss them, but I will enjoy my extended weekend, too.

It’s snowing. Coming from southern California where the weather was always 70° and sunny, the snow in Montana makes me happy.

Only the K-5 students are back today. I’m glad the kids can enjoy this short week with friends and in relative safety.

But we have a long winter ahead.

Monday:

Tuesday: