Class, meetings, prep for the weekend, listing, Alexa

Class yesterday was a really good one. There was timely and helpful participation, lots of interest and just the right pacing of the material through the day. My voice lasted for the class, but I began to fade around 2:30 and had to struggle through the last hour. It did not affect the presentation too much. I try to time the class to end around 3:15 to 3:30 each time I present the eight hour class and the way the class flowed  out yesterday worked out more smoothly than in the past several presentations. Questions from the participants helped to spur discussions and let me know how to emphasize the most useful information throughout the presentation. I have one more class next week and then I will be finished teaching for the year. I should probably look up how many classes I have taught this year just for fun, but I have not looked at that yet.

Most of my morning – just about all of it – was taken up by a series of meetings and a group game that served as our 4^th quarter get together as a company. It was fun, but it took far too long. We spent about two hours on a murder mystery put on by a company that does those sorts of online activities. I do not mind participating especially since I now have the internet capacity available to get involved. It was a pleasant distraction and we got to visit together as a company which is still spread over the entire United Stated.

Kimberlyn came over this morning to work with Mama to get things made and organized for Trade Days this coming weekend. Mama has conscripted Gracie to go to Trade days with her. I will probably be called upon to help Mama get set up, but I will not spend all day with her. Hence, Gracie going to keep Mama company and to help her sell her Color Street Nails. I am praying that they have a good day. Mama needs a good day in her business. I am also praying they have a good day for the things Mama and Kimberlyn are making. They have narrowed their focus and are concentrating on a few hygiene items, mask spray, lip balms, bath salts, etc. They also need a good day of sales of those items. I think the mask spray is a great idea.

I have spent a little time over the past few days making a list of all the projects I need to get done in the house and around the farm. It is a very long list and some of the projects are large – not expensive – but large. I have not made a list in a long time. I am not sure why. It just did not seem needed. Now I guess it is needed so that I can keep every long dark evening on track and not waste too much time doing things that take time and are entertaining but produce nothing worthwhile. Plus I get sidetracked too easily and I need a prompt to get busy on the things that need to get done.

A few days ago, I was looking for something we had misplaced – I do not even remember what that item was – and stumbled across an Echo Dot I had packaged in a Ziplock baggie and set aside. After we got our internet installed, I looked again for the Echo Dot, but I could not remember exactly where it had been as I had located it while looking the other lost item – I do not remember if we found that item or not. But I did find the Dot and attempted to setting it up on the new internet service. We are set up on that service with a line-of-sight signal, so we are not charged for usage but rather for the speed at which the service delivers the internet to us. Since it would not matter how much data Alexa requires to operate, I worked several hours at setting it up unsuccessfully.

I finally came across a document that gave me the necessary insights and instructions to get the Dot to connect to our router. Mama especially loves using Alexa. She has almost no one to boss around now and Alexa is willing to follow her bidding instantly. For the moment, it is playing music suggestions as Mama gives them. I suspect that when she discovers we can have plugs installed to operate lighting in the house but commanding Alexa, we will try that out as well. So far, she has not had Alexa answer the phone for her, but that will be happening soon. She has her phone on speaker the entire time it is in use anyway. Why not use a really good speaker to take the call for her? Especially when she figures out, she does not have to get up to retrieve her phone to answer the call. It is not a fool proof system for getting calls but it will have some functionality she can use.

I spent my lunch hour getting hay from the goat barn to the calf, the girl goats and the boy goats. It was time well spent since Mama and I have to go vote in a special runoff election this evening.