Friday, March 30, 2007

OH THE HUMANITY!


They changed the layout of Desktop Defense! And added a new tower! And a new enemy! GAHHH!!!

Feeling better again


I've been in sort of a weird headspace for the last few weeks. Hopefully most people haven't noticed, except for the ones I whine to, "I'm miserable!!" etc. So thanks to those people for putting up with me on MSN and IRL. Thanks also to Dave for talking with me tonight. It's amazing how if there's a problem...and you TALK about it...suddenly the problem seems so much smaller. I tend to build stuff up in my head and then it blows up and it's a big messy brain boom teary issue. I managed to talk about what I felt was a problem (with me) before it got to the BMBBTI stage and he helped me figure some stuff out.

Anyway.

Hopefully I'll get called in to teach tomorrow. This is going to be a lean paycheque. With spring break last week and only being called in for half a day, I'm going to wind up with a $100 payday. Woo.

Thursday, March 29, 2007



In the spirit of the book binge, I thought I ought to do a literary meme.


Take the list below, paste it into your own blog, and mark them as follows:
READ for those you’ve read;
WANT TO next to those you are interested in;
AGAIN & AGAIN next to those you’ve read and loved, over and over;
REPEAT for those you’ve read more than once, without necessarily loving them;
MEH for stuff you read and weren’t impressed by;
STARTED for those that just never got finished;
and leave blank those you don’t care to read.

My own addition: ON THE LIST for those I plan to read in April.


1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) MEH. I read it after watching the movie. It's better than the movie. But that's kind of like saying that a beating with baseball bats is better than a beating with lead pipes.

2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) ON THE LIST

3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) READ

4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) READ (on a weekend camp in Victoria during Girl Guides.)

5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) MEH
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) STARTED-ON THE LIST
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien) ON THE LIST I really must finish these books, or else turn in my geek card.

8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) AGAIN AND AGAIN

9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) READ and loooooved.

10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) READ (twice? maybe?)

12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) NONONONONONONONO!

13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) READ

14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) WANT TO (loved "World According to Garp")

15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden) WANT TO, ON THE LIST

16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Rowling) READ

17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald) READ

18. The Stand (Stephen King) READ (twice?)

19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling) READ

20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) WANT TO (I've never read any of the Bronte books or Austen. And I'm an English major. Sheesh.)

21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) READ (twice, I think)

22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) AGAIN AND AGAIN (I reread stuff I've got around. I had it around in high school)

23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) READ

24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) STARTED

26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) AGAIN AND AGAIN

27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) WANT TO

28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) AGAIN AND AGAIN

29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) WANT TO

30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)

31. Dune (Frank Herbert) READ (must reread...didn't get it in grade six...wonder why.)

32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks) READ (I liked this book a lot)

33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) STARTED, WANT TO, ON THE LIST

34. 1984 (Orwell) READ (online...I love project Gutenberg!)

35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) AGAIN AND AGAIN

36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)

38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)

39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) AGAIN AND AGAIN in junior/senior high(there are some NAUGHTY bits!!) Couldn't get into the most recent one.

42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)

43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)

45. The Bible READ, (parts over and over)

46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) STARTED

47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) STARTED

48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) STARTED, ON THE LIST

49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) WANT TO

50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) STARTED

53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card) AGAIN AND AGAIN (If you haven't read it...GO READ IT!!!!)

54. Great Expectations (Dickens)

55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) Meh

56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence) WANT TO

57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) READ IT

58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)

59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) AGAIN AND AGAIN

60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)

61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)

64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) AGAIN AND AGAIN

65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)

66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) AGAIN AND AGAIN

67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)

68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

69. Les Miserables (Hugo) STARTED

70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding) MEH

72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)

73. Shogun (James Clavell) READ

74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)

75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) AGAIN AND AGAIN

76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay) WANT TO

77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn READ I think

78. The World According To Garp (Irving) READ (loved!)

79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence) READ (SO GOOD!!)

80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White) AGAIN AND AGAIN

81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)

82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) READ

83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier) AGAIN AND AGAIN

84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind) READ (great series!)

85. Emma (Jane Austen)

86. Watership Down (Richard Adams) READ

87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields) WANT TO

89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)

90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer) READ

91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)

92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) AGAIN AND AGAIN (again with the reading of things on hand.)

93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck) WANT TO

94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd) WANT TO

95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) READ

96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) READ

97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)

98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)

99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Since I read anyway...


I'm part of the April "Book Binge". Rules can be found at Mary P.'s site "It's Not All Mary Poppins". I'm excited. :D

book binge

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Randomness


-I'm feeling better now...gotta cut back on the caffeine though. Yikes.

-I'm spinning yarn on my little drop spindle that I made all by myself. I'm currently working on a bunch of smaller than lace weight. Ummmmm...yeah. It's kind of taking forever. Another name for that is "cobweb". I think I may just keep what I've got and make a doll scarf or something. I'm getting impatient.

-New pics up on Flickr!

-Yesterday was only my second day in two months that I hadn't been called to teach. It was nice to have a relaxed day (aka...going out to MISSION to do a store...) and it was my mom's bday!

-Related to the Mission thing, I have the opportunity to go out to Mission/Abbotsford every so often. When I'm driving on the #1, I almost always get the urge to just keep on driving. Just follow the mountains and keep on going. I don't really want to live anywhere else but BC, but sometimes I just want the adventure and anonymity that starting over in a small prairie town would bring. I think I've been watching too much Corner Gas...

Monday, March 26, 2007

I don't feel good...


I'm all jittery and dizzy, like I'm having a panic attack, minus the panic. My heart is racing and my stomach is upset. I think I'm having a bad reaction to the Sixbucks Frappacino I had today. I asked for decaf, but there wasn't any. Gahhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Friday, March 23, 2007

*SNEEZE*


Whoa. *waves hands frantically in front of face* Lookit all the DUST here. GYEAHH!!! Spiderwebs! *scrubs at face and bats at the air* Yeechhh...

Hi. Here's been my last few weeks in a nutshell (hee hee...look at me, I'm in a nutshell! Help, help, won't someone let me out of this nutshell? /austinpowers)...

-subbing
-tutoring
-knitting
-semi-retail job
-Spring break, so reverse the order of the previous three
-playing THIS STUPID GAME THAT I CAN'T STOP PLAYING WITH (srsly, don't click the link if you have anything important to do. But if you do and you want to join our high score championship run, Dave created "wellipsis" no quotation marks if you play. Or if you know...you want to check out my high score in the normal difficulty. And Dave's [hard difficulty], but it's gonna be mine soon.)
-reading blogs and LJ
-knitting (more)
-karate (twice a week now, and I'm learning the last kata that I need to test for my next level!)
-weekly dizzy spells that last a few days (stupid Menieres)
-catching up on 24, Simpsons, Corner Gas and Robson Arms episodes that my computer kindly has been recording for me.

So, I've been here, I just haven't been posting here. I've been here since this is my portal to all my blogs that I read. So if you blog, I've been keeping up with you, even if I haven't been

I want to dedicate a full post to knitting and fibre arts and my new mascot (ZOMG!! SO CUTE!!!!!11!!ELEVEN!!) but my mom and I are on our way into Vancouver so that I can get some wool that has not yet been spun into yarn so that I can spin it into yarn myself. *SQUEE* (Anyone who thinks I was born in the wrong century, please raise your hands. Although, I really like the resources from the internet. So maybe not.)

Finally, my mom pointed me in the direction of this cartoon. I <3 it. I immediately printed it out and it's sitting on my stack of CD spindles waiting for me to find the tape. I think I'll probably be posting more of these as time goes on.

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.



PS: I got paid for teaching today again. I must say that I enjoy a job which pays me in two weeks what used to take me six to get. Yes. Yes I do.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

I thought knitting was supposed to be RELAXING!


My sock...the one I am SO CLOSE to finishing? I fscked it up. Now I'm ripping it back a bunch and cursing the whole time. *SNARL*

...so...tired...


I've worked at least half a day every day I've been able to, except two. One day I didn't get called and one I called in sick. This is insane, but lovely. I'm also still doing a semi-retail job and tutoring. Oh, and doing karate twice a week. So...if I haven't seen you in a while, I haven't seen anyone in a while. My alleged best friend and I haven't seen each other since Christmas Eve! I wouldn't be surprised if she's since found another best friend...one who can like...be in the same room with her. :P

I don't have my notebook of what I've done for teaching, so some of this is approximate.

Subbing days/eligible days: aprox 20/28
Longest stretch of time in a classroom: 5 days
Different schools: 14ish (gotta look it up)
Different classes: 30ish
Most students: 29 (high school)
Fewest students: 1 (resource)
Grades: K, 1, 1/2, 2/3, 3, 3/4, 4, 4/5, PE 10, Science 10, CAPP 10, English 10, English 11,

Thursday, March 01, 2007

The Teacher and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.


Today was the worst day of teaching I've ever had. I'm not going to go into much detail, since there's a lot of it...but I'll leave you with the final part of the theoretical post I'll be writing about it.

The girls held their ice packs to the various parts that had been hurt.

Then, we had a fire drill.


Best part? I'm back in that classroom tomorrow.

"You didn't die. No one died. There wasn't even a small fire." --Mantra I'm repeating to self tonight.