I have now completed another 14 string squares for the quilt.
14+33=47
72-47=25
I have 25 more string squares to make. Then I can start piecing it all together. Then there is the quilting proper, but I don't think I am going to do a hell of a lot of that. We will see.
Yup, they are singing my praises now that I am leaving high school and going to college. Its nice that they are singing my praises at any time, but I do remember this from the last time I was teaching. A lot of people 'got round to' telling me I was any good once I announced that I was moving on. I could have done with a lot more praise in the thick of it, not once I was down to a very thin edge.
All is well on the western front. Looking forward to the new start, have some plans that I am going to implement to make a better start this time round. Rule No. 1: they get a seating plan, and they stay there till i know everyone's name.
Went and got a job for the rest of the year this morning, and I am very happy about it. I will be teaching four senior classes for the rest of the year - no juniors which is a mixed blessing, and will be spending the time all in my own room. There will be a couple of junior classes coming into the room but the majority of the time IT IS MINE!!
I haven't had my own room for ages, and I'm looking forward to it.
So to celebrate the new status of having a fairly long term job, I went shopping and bought Liberty wool underwear. Dangnabbit, if I'm earning all this money, surely I have the right to be warm.
We have a dishwasher, and lo, it is a great and wondrous thing after doing dishes by hand for the last 20 years to pop them in a machine and then unload them clean. But there has been a problem - the hard water in Wanganui means i have had severe limescale deposit, and the glasses look disgusting, and the dishes look dull, and the cutlery is grey and the cups are brown. But in the weekend I bought dishwasher tablets with the POWERBALL. Normally, these things don't make a blind bit of difference, but cost the earth. You know the stuff, you pay more for it because it is advertised, and to give the product prestige they jump the price up.
But this dishwasher stuff, its da bomb. Everything looks so clean including the inside of the dishwasher.
Its been making me happy all day.
I am now a special case in the tech department of my ISP. Apparently, I am the only person who can not send mail, even though all my Cnections are sweet. And newly sweet due to being re-created. And the tech person who is all knowing is going to ring me rather than me having to ring them.
Hope they fix it, web mail sucks
I'm celebrating the decisiveness of me - I bought the paint for the dining room, and I'm going to get stuck into it this weekend. After years of reading home improvement and design articles, books and magazines, I'm going to 'improve' my own home.
I'm excited.
In other news, we have been putting up with screwed up, shabby and useless car mats for about 2 years - today I found out I could have bought new ones for ten, yup, TEN dollars.
Stupid me.
And yes, I bought some.
Getting really sick of incessant chatting under my talk in the class. I'm being paid to talk, but they are being really rude. Gonna try not talking when they are... And sending more of them out.
And maybe a seating plan.
I did some relief today with senior classes - they are certainly easier in some ways than the juniors. I didn't have to fight for Ctrol, or shout, or engage in mob Ctrol. They come in, sit down, and seek opportunities to do nothing. Juniors, the ones I teach anyway, generally seek chances to do something, anything, especially anything exciting. On the other hand, the inertia can be a little overwhelming.
Today I saw the mountain, Ruapehu. Its a long way away! But beautiful. Strangely, Taranaki is closer, but harder to see.
Got feedback from both supervisors on one chapter (very rare) and of course they disagree. This is a feature of most people's thesis process, so I guess i should settle in and enjoy the process/progress. And start dreaming up some justification for the middle path.
My mail won't download :( And it doesn't clear off the website, so I have 3000 odd messages there. Perhaps there is a Cnection! (or lack of, heh)
Hell, bad taste doesn't immediately ping any diodes. I've thought of the literal thing of things that taste bad, but even then nothing interesting happens in the grey matter. Then there was all the bad taste events with children vomiting, and the pooh and so forth, but i don't want to talk about that tonight. There's some of the stuff that people including me say at school, but no, I'm drawing a viel over that. A heavy one, its the weekend.
So i'm drawing a blank, a tasteless one...
had a lovely day imploding coke cans - the kids liked it, and I managed to make it educational. Tomorrow, insane things with candles.
The Csensus seems to be to chill out with Cn, and let him play for whoever he wants to. i can go with that.
Bought senior son a new pair of sneakers today - they have diodes on them and flash in red and blue. Kids have great stuff these days, I would have loved to have brightly flashing shoes when I was five.
We have been experimenting with paint colours, and though i haven't actually put it on the wall, I think we have found The One. So I will slap a bit around in the weekend, and we will see what everyone thinks. Even strangers off the street think the first colour is too dark, and it is the thing that bothers me about it, so we are having the same colour but a lighter tone, and all should be well.
I think i have made half of the string squares for the quilt. Going on Thursday nights is working out well for me.
Cn has been playing soccer for the Panther's. They are coached by a very nice man, but they are not learning many skills. There is a lot of mucking round, and I don't think the kids have learnt anything so far. They have a pretty good time, there's no pressure.
His mate in his class at school has been playing for the Bumblebee's. And they rock. The kids know to aim for the goal, and they are learning how to do headers, and how to kick the ball. Coach turns up with a plan, and there is a bit of discipline going on. They win quite a lot. Tonight Cn learnt a couple of things already.
Because he was invited to join the Bumblebees, and said he would give it a go. So we went tonight, but he found it was pretty hard work, and so he started to just drift, fairy like, round the back of the field, till he actually lay down for a rest. !
He knows he would learn a lot more with the bees, but he doesn't want to have to do the work. I'm afraid I'm pushing for the bees, cos if you are going to do this stuff, you might as well learn to do SOMEthing. It is usually more fun doing sport if you have some skills, and you only get them if you put a little effort out.
So we wait and see. h was totally into it, and spent all the time he could playing with the ball. They do have about 8 balls there, so they had one spare for him.
Interestingly, Cn reckoned he would rather read a book. And he can't read.
Also, he is only five. But if i let him just muck round now, am I setting an acceptance of a behaviour pattern that will be a big problem later on? Or am I reading too much into this? Should I just let him clown around, so he doesn't associate this stuff with work?
Today I got a work space at school, so I now have a space to keep my resources, folders, marking, lunch, textbooks and so forth. Its absolutely fabulous.
Took h to the doctor for his seCd MenzB injection. No reaction at all so far. We just have no real drama round here. On the other hand we have no food really either, as the planned trip to the supermarket tonight didn't happen, because this man came and took the meter board to pieces, then put it back together without Cnecting up the hot water, and sorting all that out took quite a while.
On the up side, we bought our very first pot of test paint today, and I slapped it up on the dining room walls. Its called hazy lavender, and it looks all right so far. It is darker than I was planning, as it is a dark room I was planning a sort of sunshine yellow. Then Adam pointed out that would clash badly with the kitchen, and so I suggested a pink shade (we have pink glass in all the top parts of our windows) and that got a nod. So now we have paint patches.
I spent a fair bit of the morning ringing various organisations up like appliance repairers, phone companies and banks, and getting some stuff organised. I used to be very shy about ringing up anyone I hadn't been to visit. It wasted a lot of time, because stuff that would have been sorted with a ten minute phone call would get sorted with a one hour trip! Now I ring anyone anytime, on the wierdest of pretexts - for example, why am I paying for the internet twice??
Thesis on a total go-slow, better go fix that!
Our bank is very good at keeping us informed of where we are at and how we are going. So we actually know after paying them about $1800 dollars, we have paid about $8 off the mortgage. They tell us every time we log onto the site.
We were so excited to get a mortgage. But when you think about it in the cold light of day rather than the hot glow of excitement of buying, what you really got was a chance to pay the bank a whole lot of money. I can see why ursary was Csidered a sin - it is sure a lot of money to give someone and I don't really see a service. After all, I keep thinking its MY house. So they loan me money, and I get to look after what we have all agreed is THEIR asset. And any capital gains are mine, but they make a lot more than that from the mortgage.
Huh.
Went to quilting tonight, and took everything except the sewing machine...
Cut out some base square thingys that you sew on, and then borrowed a machine from the shop and sewed with that. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one having one of those nights...
To Wellington on Friday - am busy from 2-3 on Friday and on Sat morning. Otherwise, anyone want to do coffee? Its just me and h, not the entire team.
Rocked on up to school feeling on top of stuff, picked up my resource tray from the technician and walked over to my lab... to be told by the teacher there that it is Tuesday, not Monday, and that I had three classes to teach, not one.
Who knew?
If I could be a doctor, I'd be a majic doctor that could not only fix broken legs and arms and insides, I'd also be able to fix the sadness...
If I could be a painter, I'd paint pure joy...
If I could be a missionary, I'd have to believe before I could get the job...
If I could be a ninja, I could glide through the night without even the darkness knowing I had passed...
If I could be an athlete they would have found a cure for asthma!
When we moved here we had the money to buy a house, but didn't have the money to pay for house insurance, or for the solicitor. And we hadn't budgeted for the house valuation which we needed for the bank, or the house inspection which we needed for our peace of mind.
And my parents stepped in and forwarded us some money. Today, thanks to the tax department, I finally had the money to pay them back.
In the weekend, I was thinking of an old friend, whose mother is dying at the moment. I wondered what she has said to her mother, and as my life revolves around me, I wondered what I would want to say to my mother in those circumstances. And I remembered how dumb it would be to wait to say those things, because tomorrow is such an unknown quantity.
Tonight I wrote a card to my parents, saying how much I loved them, and how important their advice and support has been to me. And I put a cheque in the card for what we owed them (money wise, anyway). It always feels good to do this kind of thing, the important stuff that can so easily end up on the 'to-do' list, and never get off the list.
Mind you, Dad would never have let me just forget about the money...