Isolated and lonely?

This morning while I was getting ready for work, I watched an interview on Canada AM that made me laugh. They were interviewing a U of C professor named Michael Keren, who has written a book on bloggers. (The Canada AM website also has an accompanying article here.)

I got a kick out of his comment that "individuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world." Now, I'm sure this is true to some extent, but I just can't see how this applies to most bloggers. Almost every blog I've ever read was written by people who have perfectly normal social lives.

Isolated and lonely? That's kind of harsh. Alright, maybe I am lonely, but I don't blog because I'm lonely.

As a matter of fact, I met my best friend and fiance through my blog. Hah! Take that, Michael Keren!

Scratch that...

The highlight of my day WAS that I drove around in Sean's car all by myself (see previous post), but Sean just got a call with some exciting news.

We officially have our first place together!

We're moving into an apartment building in the City Park area. It's an older building, with about 6 suites in it. It's the apartment that we checked out a couple of weeks ago, if you've been reading my blog regularly. I'm especially excited because we're allowed to move in around the 9th of February! The landlord is even giving us a bit of a deal.

Oooooh, now I'm excited. Anyone have any good ideas for creating cheap art to decorate the place?

So much for this weekend!

So I had psyched myself up to go to that Arts Ed workshop right? Well, it didn't exactly happen.

On Thursday I got home from curling practice and I was making myself some supper, when all of a sudden my stomach started burning. I managed to eat a sandwich and vacuum my house, then the stomach flu hit. It seems that ever since I got that Norwalk virus a few years ago I've been getting really nasty stomach flus. This one was almost as bad as the one I had at Thanksgiving, and that one was BAD.

I was so relieved when Sean showed up on Friday night. He called before he left to see if he could pick anything up. He brought me soup, crackers and ginger ale. He is such a sweetheart! He took care of me all weekend too, which is a pretty big deal because he generally doesn't have sympathy for people who get sick. Must be nice to get sick once every 3 years (although since he met me he's been sick quite a few times... sorry!).

We were going to drive in to the nearby "city" for something to do and for me to pick up some much needed groceries and supplies, but when I could hardly stand up in the shower for 2 minutes I decided it was probably not the best idea to go out shopping. Instead we spent a REALLY lazy weekend here in town.

This morning I woke up feeling pretty good. The highlight of my day is that I drove around town in Sean's manual car with him for awhile (stalling only once!) and then... I drove by MYSELF! He insisted that I go for a spin alone and I must admit, I do feel a lot more empowered now that I did it on my own. I just did a big loop around a couple of blocks but I forced myself to drive near the rink, where I knew there would be people, and to drive down Main Street.

This weekend, little crap town... next weekend, Saskamatoon! Watch out sidewalks, here I come!

I have the powah!

This has been the longest week I've had in a long time. I can't believe it was only 5 days ago that I was in Saskatoon. It's been an alright week, just a long one.

The kids were so wired today! They went skating in the afternoon (I don't teach them gym so I didn't absolutely have to go... aww shucks!) and every 15 minutes they would ask me how long until lunch. I told them first thing today that skating wasn't until after lunch. Argh. I wish kindergartens could tell time. And of course my principal came in today to watch me teach, and the kids were so giddy that they couldn't really concentrate.

If I don't get a teaching job next year it's going to be difficult to go back to a non-professional job atmosphere. It's nice how much I'm trusted to make decisions, although it's probably not a big deal to the seasoned teacher. Today, for instance, I got a call from another LRT in the division, wondering what my plans are for tomorrow. It's the "turn-around" day so the students aren't at school tomorrow, and some LRTs were planning on meeting to work on this stupid Alt Ed stuff. I had planned on not going because of an Arts Ed workshop scheduled for the elementary teachers, which I assumed I was required to go to.

So when the LRT called I thought I would check with my principal. To my surprise, she told me I could choose whichever one I wanted and felt would be the best. I didn't expect to be given an option, so I wasn't really sure what to do. So I called my superintendent and she also said it was up to me. How cool is that?!

In the end I decided to stick with the Arts Ed workshop. I think it will look better when I apply for jobs around Stoon this fall, since I am not eligible to apply for special ed positions until I'm certified.

Tonight I'm going to take it easy. I'll call Sean, who's in Calgary for a couple of days, vacuum my house, clean the bathroom, work on some homework and watch Grey's Anatomy. They could only find 3 curlers for tonight so they cancelled it. Fine by me!!

I'm so proud of her!

I graduated from high school with 12 other kids. I have known most of these people since I was 3 years old, so by the time we graduated, it felt like they were a huge part of me. Sometimes I loved them, sometimes I hated them. But inevitably we went our separate ways and now we talk once or twice a year, and sometimes not at all. I only talk to my best friends, Heather and Amanda, once a year if that.

Well the other night, I thought that I should call Heather and Amanda to see how they were doing, where they were and to tell them that I'm getting married this summer. I'm HORRIBLE at keeping track of phone numbers so I googled them.

I know that Heather has become a glass-blower, and I know she has won a lot of awards and stuff. But when I saw the sites that came up, I couldn't believe how professional her work is and how established she is as an artist.

So in a nutshell, I just want to brag about one of my best friends from my childhood. Check out these sites to see her work: pictures and info.

Where to start??

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders... we made a decision about the wedding!! Sean and I are getting married on July 21st, 2007. I'm so excited to be married.. and I'm starting to warm up to the whole idea of the wedding.

We want a simple wedding... immediate family at the ceremony and then relatives and friends can join us for a barbeque. Now we have the fun task of planning everything. The more I think about what we have to do, the more excited I am. Dammit, I'm such a girl...

Other points of excitement from the weekend:
- We checked out an apartment this morning. It's a beautiful character apartment building, and it's great because it doesn't smell like smoke. Poor Sean is going crazy in his current apartment because the guy in the basement smokes and it comes right up into his apartment. Hopefully he'll be moved in by March 1st.
- My car hit 300,000 km on the way home. I took a picture of my odometer.
- I bought this really cool fishbowl bulletin board display for my classroom. It has sets of different coloured fish (10 little fish and 1 big fish per colour) and it can be used for patterning (which my kindies love) and teaching about base 10.
- I still haven't screwed up my knitting. I actually managed to fix a few screw ups on my own.

That's all I know for now. If anyone knows of any good photographers in the central to northern Saskatchewan area, let me know!

A dishcloth with attitude...

Now that school is back into full swing, I decided it was high time to get back into my knitting. I've been exchanging piano lessons for knitting lessons from Angela (fellow staff member) but I haven't done anything since before Christmas.

Angela brought some yarn and I brought my knitting needles and we had a knitting hayday, if you will. She brought a pattern for a dishcloth, which was quite helpful. I'm not exactly good with straight knitting and pearling. When I first looked at the pattern, I saw "Knit 2, yo." Now, what the hell does that mean?! So I asked Angela and apparently it's common sense that "yo" means "yarn over". She laughed for a long time about that one. I say my dishcloth has attitude.

But you should have seen the work that I did when Angela was watching! It looked so professional! For some reason, though, I seem to have a knitting block when it comes to knitting at home. I literally did TWO stitches before I realized that I had messed up! Conveniently, I was going to see Angela later at aerobics (where she fixed my mistake for me).

Sigh. I don't know how I manage through these hardships.

At least I got mileage...

Do you ever have days where you don't feel like you accomplished anything at work? Today was one of those days.

We were asked to meet at the division office (LRTs, principals, ed psychs, administrators, etc) to talk about the new Alternative Ed policy. I'll try to explain what alt ed is. Most students are in the regular program (10, 20 and 30 classes) (the government has provincial curriculum guides for these programs). Some students, however, can't manage in the regular program, so they are placed in modified programs (11, 21 and 31 classes). In modified programs, the students aren't required to meet every objective set out in the regular program curriculums. I think they have to meet 50% of the regular objectives. Some students aren't successful in modified programs either, so they are placed in alternate programs (18, 28 and 38 classes). Alternate programs focus on basic life skills such as grocery shopping and doing laundry. You can actually go past this program and place students on functionally integrated programs, which is quite intensive. The one designated student in my school follows a functionally integrated program.

Anyhoo, Sask Learning came out with new policies and procedures for the alt ed program. So this morning we met and someone came out from Sask Learning to explain the program, help us "create dialogue" (puke, I hate that phrase) about what a student in an alternate program looks like, and to answer any questions we have. That part was fine; it was actually quite informative and it's laid out quite nicely in the fancy, paper-wasting documents they provided us. (Honestly, do they really need to use font size 80 with 2-inch margins? I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.)

The "fun" part was in the afternoon, when the LRTs were asked to begin developing the programs for Alt Ed. I think it's great that they're empowering us to develop these as a group since we will be the ones implementing and carrying out the programs, but we would have appreciated a better timeline to do this in. We started working on the programs today (there are 11 in total) and they all have to be done by May 1st and sent in to Sask Learning for approval at that time. Normally, curriculum developers are given time off to work but we are expected to do this on top of everything else. They're giving us release time from the classroom to work on this and meet in our little groups, but then that's less time we're actually in the classroom. Argh!

The majority of the group wanted to develop the ELA 18 program as a large group. I knew it was a disaster right from the beginning. There were a few people with strong opinions there, and they argued about every little decision. They had completely different philosophies and they weren't willing to budge from their point of view. Some amount of disagreement can be good, but this was downright unproductive. In the end, we decided to break up into smaller groups and work on it that way. At least I got mileage....

Surprise, surprise, I have a cold... that made sitting through this meeting and my Kinettes meeting this evening reeeeeeally fun. I think I need my tea and bedtime snack, then a good sleep. Wow, I'm lame.

A huge decision for me...

I suppose this blog is a perfectly good place for me to try to figure out my plans for the fall. Here's my situation:

I love what I'm teaching now, I love the kids I teach, I hate the place I'm in. There aren't many young people around here, and the young people who are here are all either married or dating someone, and they're all part of a "group" that I don't fit in with. They're nice enough, but I wouldn't say that I have any real friends here.

In fact, I don't have many real friends anymore. I still have my girls from university to some extent, but we've all moved away and have our own lives now. I came to this realization this weekend when Sean and I were discussing our friends (or lack thereof). I was really upset. I mean, Sean is my best friend but everyone needs other friends. I feel like I've been lacking something since I've moved to Saskatoon and then to my present location, and I think this is it.

So that's one part of it. Another issue I have to consider and decide on is my future plans, career-wise. I have two options: I can stay here for another year (my position isn't confirmed for next year yet, but it sounds like it will be), or I could move back to Saskatoon to find something there. There are pros and cons to each. I'm one of those "lists" people, so here's my pros and cons list (list items in no particular order).

Pros of staying here:
- work experience - my current position is the perfect combination of subject areas for me
- I do really like the kids here
- the money

Cons of staying here:
- no opportunity to make friends
- it would mean another year of driving back and forth to see Sean every other weekend
- I would be faced with the stress of looking for a job in a year since the longest I will stay here is for 1 year anyway
- some of my supervisors at work are changing and I'm not sure I'll have the support I'll need to do my job as well as I have been. I have no training in special ed and I depend on my current supervisor so much... and I'm not sure the person who replaces her will be as supportive

Pros of moving to Saskatoon:
- Sean - we could live together, get married this summer and basically start our life together
- the prospects of making some friends and finding a social place for myself
- less driving (my car isn't exactly new)
- I could take piano lessons
- hopefully gain new experiences in a different school setting to get my foot in the door in Stoon
- if I couldn't find a teaching or subbing job there, I could probably go back to work at the group home or at Cosmo Industries

Cons of moving to Saskatoon:
- there will be no guarantee of a job until at least May
- I may earn less money if I am subbing
- I may be missing out on valuable work experience in the field I want to eventually work in anyway

I think I know what my decision will be, but I want to be absolutely sure. I welcome any opinions and suggestions!!

On a different note, I think I'm getting the hang of driving a manual vehicle!! We cruised around town today and I only stalled twice. The REALLY exciting thing was that I drove when there were other vehicles around and I didn't even have a panic attack. I've had an interesting history with Sean's car (I thought I wrecked it in the parking lot of an Ontario mall, I freaked out in it driving home from Hamilton when I couldn't stop stalling it, and we generally have not gotten along), but I think I'm making peace with it. Sean's willing to trade it off on an automatic but I really want to try to figure this out since he did just buy it 5 months ago.

I'll finish this entry on a happy note. *big pat on back to myself for updating and for getting more comfortable with a standard*

My fifth blog in 5 months!!

Well it seems that way. I keep signing up for new blogs because I forgot my username, then I lose ambition. It's a vicious cycle.

I have nothing interesting to post about, but I'm taking a university class and I need to get back into the habit of writing stuff so I don't fail miserably. Check in if you'd like, but don't expect anything witty or exciting.

My amazing, incredible fiance Sean is here for the weekend. Since there's nothing to do around here, we drove to a nearby, "larger" centre for groceries. At the last minute, I decided to buy some grapes. I sure didn't notice how expensive they were. When I get home, half an hour later, I looked at my receipt and realized that I had paid $9.00 for a stupid bag of grapes. Boy, do I feel dumb.