Russian Minds

This has been a great great week for my synthesizer; a mostly stressful week otherwise. My two new modules came on Tuesday: a Make Noise Maths and a Harvestman Polivoks VCG. So my little baby is growing up. I now have everything a "regular" synth can do (and way beyond!, a second oscillator had been my lacking point til this week). I did have to calibrate the Polivoks oscillator myself, which meant twisting a trim pot with a tiny screw and making infintessimal nudges of my fingers over and over as I test bestween the base note and the octaves and seeing if they're notes make it in tune. Took well over an hour. But I feel that much connected with my new badass oscillator. And they're not kidding about the new-old-stock Russian parts. There's a weird giant black thing hugging the back of the circuit board. I was supposed to have a parent conference Wednesday that didn't happen, but I guess there was a mixup when the administrator talked to the parent 'cuz they showed up yesterday (when I don't have a planning period) during my class and we had an impromptu meeting in the hallway. I think it went well, but the parent (that I've talked to a bunch already, whose son refused to let me help in tutoring and ended up storming off rudely) wants to shift blame when the son just refuses to cooperate at every step of the way. The administrator was supporting me and I think I held my ground pretty well. I did have to leave my class for quite a bit of time (so maybe their lesson wasn't the most productive that day). Oh, and now I'm remembering something that was said to me by a student on Tuesday. She said something along the lines of, Mr. _, you're actually a pretty cool dude; at the beginning of the year I didn't think so, but now I do. I laughed. That's funny, and nice, and funny. I had a somewhat similar experience in tutoring yesterday afternoon. Somewhat. Not many students, but there were a couple girls from geometry who'd been having trouble. So I went over some stuff with them and they were being very interactive and were really getting it by the end. And they were very happy and it was all very positive. So it was a very nice moment. I was super-tired yesterday. Was afraid I wouldn't make it through the day! Was up late 'cuz I had to catch up on grading quizzes. But I took a nap when I got home and even got to bed relatively early on top of that, so I've felt pretty great today. I did some videoing of one of my classes today. So I'm getting the ball rolling on that. Haven't watched it yet. Kinda scared to, but whatever. The administrator I had the parent meeting with yesterday came to talk to me about the student in question this morning. They've had meetings before about this and he was apparently rude and interrupting everyone so it's been a similar situation to what I've seen in class anyway. He also apparently got in a fight in one of his classes today. Which is sad in its way, because I can tell he has some anger issues (although it tends to be a defensive anger, not so much offensive), and that puts up a barrier which he won't let me past to be able to accept help. But now it's the weekend. And I am ready to...what? I think I have a some modules calling my name, screaming to be played with!