Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
New Things
I started training for my new job as a Dietary Clerk.
I finished reading my first ebook on the ereader i got for Christmas (Hard Times by Charles Dickens. I enjoyed it a lot).
I conveniently got two books in the mail today: Remedial Christianity and Language through the Looking Glass (it's an introductory linguistics book).
My resolution for 2012 was to become a vegan. I actually read The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone and thought it had a lot of great advice about living a vegan lifestyle. I've been trying all sorts of new recipes and enjoying it very much. Tonight I made curried sweet potato soup and braised red cabbage. I've also given up alcohol and caffeine.
I sound boring. Maybe that's why I don't blog much any more. Every night I've been journalling on paper (then reading an ebook). I feel happier: I am happy working, cooking, eating, reading, knitting, walking. I like the pink sky in the mornings and the sunsets at 5pm.
I finished reading my first ebook on the ereader i got for Christmas (Hard Times by Charles Dickens. I enjoyed it a lot).
I conveniently got two books in the mail today: Remedial Christianity and Language through the Looking Glass (it's an introductory linguistics book).
My resolution for 2012 was to become a vegan. I actually read The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone and thought it had a lot of great advice about living a vegan lifestyle. I've been trying all sorts of new recipes and enjoying it very much. Tonight I made curried sweet potato soup and braised red cabbage. I've also given up alcohol and caffeine.
I sound boring. Maybe that's why I don't blog much any more. Every night I've been journalling on paper (then reading an ebook). I feel happier: I am happy working, cooking, eating, reading, knitting, walking. I like the pink sky in the mornings and the sunsets at 5pm.
Friday, December 23, 2011
The Christmas Letter
I've been suffering from blogger's block, but maybe it will be good for me to work through that now.
My mom receives Christmas cards with Christmas letters in December. I read them when she leaves them lying around the house. I thought I would take a stab at writing my own.
My Christmas Letter 2011
I wept copiously on January 1st, 2011.
I went back to Bordeaux, France on January 13th and studied full time at the school for foreign students learning French on the Université Bordeaux III campus. I had serious jet lag and took up calligraphy. I listened to radio classique and practiced foundation hand and textura quadrata night after night.
I rented a harp and took harp lessons from the principal harpist of the Bordeaux orchestra. That was great.
My friend Ashlee from Alberta visited me for 10 days or so in February. We planned to go south to the Spanish border but my friendship with M. dissolved and the travel plans fell through.
In March I celebrated my 22nd birthday with champagne, a lovely cake, and some people I didn't know well but later grew to know better. One was a Winnipegger and her visiting boyfriend. The other was a robotics engineer from Australia.
In April I visited Ashlee in Edinburgh, Scotland. I went to the International Harp Festival and did a Wire-strung harp workshop. I also saw some great harp concerts and drank a lot of Irn Bru. I read some terrible, terrible chick lit on the shores of Loch Ness. I did not see Nessie. I ate food that I had heard mentioned by characters on Coronation Street (sausage rolls, eccles cakes, fish and chips and mushy peas that I regretted later on).
I worked a bit as a translator of French fitness videos into English. I also went into the recording studio to dub over a Pilates video and a Latin Aerobics video.
D. came and we went to St-Jean-de-Luz for a few days. We went to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, and then ordered a bunch of food from the one euro menu at McDonalds, also in Bilbao. Then we went to a village called Etsaut (even French people didn't know where it was) and rented a donkey that we took hiking in the Pyrénées. We went to Paris. I was also in Paris in April. I do not like Paris. I did like Musée d'Orsay because I took an Art History course in Bordeaux and most of the paintings were in Musée d'Orsay. I surprised myself by how much I could enjoy museums. Now I'm all museum'd out and traveled out.
I came back to Winnipeg in time for convocation. Then I went back to Kenora and worked. I went to Toronto in August and found Jesus. I lost him sometime in November and I'm still trying to figure out where he is exactly (I checked at the right hand of God but God said that he thought he might have gone to the restroom).
I moved to Fredericton and lived with 11 roommates and a landlady with 7 or so cats. She bred Persians and Himalayans. I did three months of my B.Ed. before withdrawing and moving back to Kenora. When I write all this out and think about the things that I am not writing it does seem to make sense that I ended up back here.
My family is doing well. Dad retired last year. Mom retires next year. She is going on a trip to England this Spring. H. is studying Environmental Design at the University of Manitoba. She sleeps at school sometimes, when she sleeps at all. I am happy that she is so into what she's doing that she'll do that, but I also think that it's a messed up world we live in when people have to do that sort of thing for school. I. is in the army reserves and is going to B.C. in January to shoot snow packs and cause controlled avalanches. I think this is every man's dream job.
If this were a real letter I would come up with some conclusion. I'm not sure what it would be. I wonder if anyone would even care to read it because it seems like all I did was move around a lot. Other people usually write about trips (check), and births and deaths (I didn't really have any this year). I guess you could conclude that my life is fairly frivolous. I don't think I'm really a wanderer, I was just masquerading as one during 2011.
If I had one wish for 2012, it would be stability, and that we all learn to want what we have. Maybe that's two wishes.
Merry Christmas.
Just for the heck of it, here's a poem I wrote after reading my Mom's 2011 Christmas letter. She always writes a paragraph about me which always makes me feel a bit awkward.
My mom receives Christmas cards with Christmas letters in December. I read them when she leaves them lying around the house. I thought I would take a stab at writing my own.
My Christmas Letter 2011
I wept copiously on January 1st, 2011.
I went back to Bordeaux, France on January 13th and studied full time at the school for foreign students learning French on the Université Bordeaux III campus. I had serious jet lag and took up calligraphy. I listened to radio classique and practiced foundation hand and textura quadrata night after night.
I rented a harp and took harp lessons from the principal harpist of the Bordeaux orchestra. That was great.
My friend Ashlee from Alberta visited me for 10 days or so in February. We planned to go south to the Spanish border but my friendship with M. dissolved and the travel plans fell through.
In March I celebrated my 22nd birthday with champagne, a lovely cake, and some people I didn't know well but later grew to know better. One was a Winnipegger and her visiting boyfriend. The other was a robotics engineer from Australia.
In April I visited Ashlee in Edinburgh, Scotland. I went to the International Harp Festival and did a Wire-strung harp workshop. I also saw some great harp concerts and drank a lot of Irn Bru. I read some terrible, terrible chick lit on the shores of Loch Ness. I did not see Nessie. I ate food that I had heard mentioned by characters on Coronation Street (sausage rolls, eccles cakes, fish and chips and mushy peas that I regretted later on).
I worked a bit as a translator of French fitness videos into English. I also went into the recording studio to dub over a Pilates video and a Latin Aerobics video.
D. came and we went to St-Jean-de-Luz for a few days. We went to the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, and then ordered a bunch of food from the one euro menu at McDonalds, also in Bilbao. Then we went to a village called Etsaut (even French people didn't know where it was) and rented a donkey that we took hiking in the Pyrénées. We went to Paris. I was also in Paris in April. I do not like Paris. I did like Musée d'Orsay because I took an Art History course in Bordeaux and most of the paintings were in Musée d'Orsay. I surprised myself by how much I could enjoy museums. Now I'm all museum'd out and traveled out.
I came back to Winnipeg in time for convocation. Then I went back to Kenora and worked. I went to Toronto in August and found Jesus. I lost him sometime in November and I'm still trying to figure out where he is exactly (I checked at the right hand of God but God said that he thought he might have gone to the restroom).
I moved to Fredericton and lived with 11 roommates and a landlady with 7 or so cats. She bred Persians and Himalayans. I did three months of my B.Ed. before withdrawing and moving back to Kenora. When I write all this out and think about the things that I am not writing it does seem to make sense that I ended up back here.
My family is doing well. Dad retired last year. Mom retires next year. She is going on a trip to England this Spring. H. is studying Environmental Design at the University of Manitoba. She sleeps at school sometimes, when she sleeps at all. I am happy that she is so into what she's doing that she'll do that, but I also think that it's a messed up world we live in when people have to do that sort of thing for school. I. is in the army reserves and is going to B.C. in January to shoot snow packs and cause controlled avalanches. I think this is every man's dream job.
If this were a real letter I would come up with some conclusion. I'm not sure what it would be. I wonder if anyone would even care to read it because it seems like all I did was move around a lot. Other people usually write about trips (check), and births and deaths (I didn't really have any this year). I guess you could conclude that my life is fairly frivolous. I don't think I'm really a wanderer, I was just masquerading as one during 2011.
If I had one wish for 2012, it would be stability, and that we all learn to want what we have. Maybe that's two wishes.
Merry Christmas.
Just for the heck of it, here's a poem I wrote after reading my Mom's 2011 Christmas letter. She always writes a paragraph about me which always makes me feel a bit awkward.
I aborted that plan
came home
to wear slippers and drink
tea out of the fine china
gilt edges
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
I rant about technology
Luddite:
one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change.
This is apparently in the top 10% of lookups on the online Merriam-Webster dictionary (which happens to be my online dictionary of choice).
I self-identify as a luddite. The irony of blogging about this is not lost on me.
I went to two workshops last week about using technology in the classroom. We learned about wikis, blogs, twitter and edmodo. I am not opposed to using technology in the classroom; there are ways in which it can be really useful. I do think that it's misused a lot though. Example: we were shown a blog where every student in a grade 1 classroom had their own blog. These kids do not know how to write yet! There were Smartboard screen caps showing the screen while an audio recording of their voices played explaining a pattern they had drawn. I would add a link here except I find the whole thing totally creepy and weird and do not think that 6-year olds should have an "online presence", so I am really not going to promote that.
Apparently it's really motivating for students to write for an audience. My question is, if everyone is producing, who is the audience? We are all caught in up in our technological illusions of grandiosity. As a blogger, I am no exception.
The future is here, and interpersonal communication is mediated through a cold, inhuman interface. Sure we can skype with people from around the world, but we can't hug them (but students are not allowed to hug each other in the school in which I intern anyway -- it's against the "hands off" policy).
I went to King's Landing today. It is a living museum that shows how people lived in the 1800s. Simple things that we take for granted took hours and hours to make. I, on the other hand, feel so removed from my own survival. My life is disturbingly abstract. I know nothing about agriculture, construction, or sewing. People were trapped in narrow, arduous lives 150 years ago by the lack of technology and the all-consuming task of surviving in the Canadian wilderness. Now I am chained to a computer because I am so dependent upon technology that I would most likely freeze or starve to death without it.
one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change.
This is apparently in the top 10% of lookups on the online Merriam-Webster dictionary (which happens to be my online dictionary of choice).
I self-identify as a luddite. The irony of blogging about this is not lost on me.
I went to two workshops last week about using technology in the classroom. We learned about wikis, blogs, twitter and edmodo. I am not opposed to using technology in the classroom; there are ways in which it can be really useful. I do think that it's misused a lot though. Example: we were shown a blog where every student in a grade 1 classroom had their own blog. These kids do not know how to write yet! There were Smartboard screen caps showing the screen while an audio recording of their voices played explaining a pattern they had drawn. I would add a link here except I find the whole thing totally creepy and weird and do not think that 6-year olds should have an "online presence", so I am really not going to promote that.
Apparently it's really motivating for students to write for an audience. My question is, if everyone is producing, who is the audience? We are all caught in up in our technological illusions of grandiosity. As a blogger, I am no exception.
The future is here, and interpersonal communication is mediated through a cold, inhuman interface. Sure we can skype with people from around the world, but we can't hug them (but students are not allowed to hug each other in the school in which I intern anyway -- it's against the "hands off" policy).
I went to King's Landing today. It is a living museum that shows how people lived in the 1800s. Simple things that we take for granted took hours and hours to make. I, on the other hand, feel so removed from my own survival. My life is disturbingly abstract. I know nothing about agriculture, construction, or sewing. People were trapped in narrow, arduous lives 150 years ago by the lack of technology and the all-consuming task of surviving in the Canadian wilderness. Now I am chained to a computer because I am so dependent upon technology that I would most likely freeze or starve to death without it.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
When the tales of brothers Grimm and Gorey have been outlawed
Get out your measuring cups and we'll play a new game
Come to the front of the class and we'll measure your brain
We'll give you a complex and we'll give it a name
Get out your measuring cups and we'll play a new game
Can't have the cream when the crop and the cream are the same
Liquid or gas no more than the glass will contain
When you talk about the hand of glory
Come to the front of the class and we'll measure your brain
We'll give you a complex and we'll give it a name
Get out your measuring cups and we'll play a new game
Can't have the cream when the crop and the cream are the same
Liquid or gas no more than the glass will contain
When you talk about the hand of glory
A tale that's rather grim and gory
Is it just another children's story that's been de-clawed?
When the tales of brothers Grimm and Gorey have been outlawed
I think they're gonna make you start over
You don't want to start over
Put your backpack on your shoulder
Be the good little soldier
Take your places now
'Cause we're all predisposed
Measuring cups, play a new game
Front of the class, measure your brain
Give you a complex and we'll give it a name
When you talk about the hand of glory
A tale that's rather grim and gory
Is it just another children's story that's been de-clawed?
When the tales of brothers Grimm and Gorey have been outlawed
Put your backpack on your shoulder
Be the good little soldier
It's no different when your older
You're predisposed
That's all for questions now
The case is closed
I think they're gonna make you start over
You don't want to start over
Put your backpack on your shoulder
Be the good little soldier
Take your places now
'Cause we're all predisposed
Measuring cups, play a new game
Front of the class, measure your brain
Give you a complex and we'll give it a name
When you talk about the hand of glory
A tale that's rather grim and gory
Is it just another children's story that's been de-clawed?
When the tales of brothers Grimm and Gorey have been outlawed
Put your backpack on your shoulder
Be the good little soldier
It's no different when your older
You're predisposed
That's all for questions now
The case is closed
Friday, September 23, 2011
Comic Sans
Disappointingly, I am not able to make this blog post in Comic Sans, but the topic is Comic Sans. The focus of my blog seems to be changing. I'm glad I specifically chose a vague name for my blog, because I seem to want to write about what ever I am thinking about, which is usually influenced by whatever I am doing. Last year I was living in France and trying to learn some French. This year I am learning about teaching.
I'm putting together a PowerPoint presentation for a lesson that I need to present for a Science Teaching Methods course. I'm going to actually teach this lesson to a grade 6 class in November as well, so I want it to be good. I had heard that using the font Comic Sans helped with reading comprehension, so I have decided to do most of the text on the slides in that font.
I'm not a fan of Comic Sans, it's a pretty undignified typeface, but I think it will be just right for my lesson on Arthropods.
I wanted to share this because I found it funny.
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