Near disaster

This has been a tough week. Late last week I spilled over half a gallon of vinegar in the back of my van. I carry vinegar often for the science experiments, and the tops are just pop tabs, not screw tops. If it tips, it spills. Usually they are wedged in and might spill a tiny bit. This time, it gushed. It took days just to dry, but now it still smells like vinegar. Plus, it's 9 years old and hauls dirty kids often :) It is quite stinky. So today, I am going to get it detailed, including the upholstery cleaned.

But the real disaster happened about 10:30 Wednesday night. I was grading papers and putting the grades in my computer gradebook. I have 9 classes, over 100 students, with 30-40 assignments per student each year. I have wonderful software that helps with that, and I love it. But it has a learning curve and i still don't know everything about it. I got to thinking about Bill going to ACC this summer, and needing to finish his transcript. So I thought I'd just go over to last year's file and pull up his Chemistry grade. When that was done, I couldn't figure out how to get back to the current year. I searched and searched. I found so many duplicate files all over the place, and yet none were the current school year. I began to panic. I tried to delete old files. Somehow, and I really do not even know HOW, I must have deleted the most current version. Yes, the whole year. Database of classes, students, ALL of it. That represents HOURS upon HOURS of work. I wason the verge of tears. I tried to recreate it and couldn't even get that to work. Finally, at 2 am, I gave up, defeated. I was dreading having to start from scratch.

I went into classes Thursday morning, gathering information as i could. Now I do keep a paper gradebook, so it was really a matter of data entry. But that's a heck of a lot of data. By the time Chemistry came around, Bill was there to help me. He interns in that class with me. He searched for about 10-15 minutes and found an old saved version from about October somewhere in my documents. So, if I can't find anything else, it will at least avoid the initial set up that takes so long in the fall.

It's a good thing my kids are strong and healthy. I'm managing to make a mess of my life all by myself.