epic

Well, I mentioned yesterday that we had an SQL attack from an external source. Well today IT found out about it and issued some 'order' that we shut down the server. Which the guys laughed at and got back to work fixing the problem (which they have well in hand). But I didn't laugh. I launched myself at the IT people over their handling of it. I didn't think they should be issuing 'orders' when they didn't know all the facts. I thought their handling of it was non-communicative and at the very least could be improved. Now, they just don't answer my emails anymore. Ah, more non-communication. What an excellent way to run a university. (though from what my dad says, all universities run this way)

James had his first skating class today. His hockey starts in 2 weeks. Hopefully, this class improves his skating quickly enough!

James wore mitts in the morning for the first time this year. He only came home with one. I can't believe we already lost a mitt!

preparing for a 12 hour day

While things are getting *better* with my work, things are by no means quiet.

Today I dropped James off at the bus, got into work around 9am and worked pretty much non-stop until 5:30. I got in at 6 and realized the boys were due home from gymnastics in 5 minutes and I had no time to make dinner. So it was leftover pizza for them. It'll be leftover pizza again tomorrow night. They don't seem to mind though.

Tomorrow, I have to go in early to get all my marking entered before class starts. Then I have a class. Our marks database is under some sort of SQL attack and is down. (I can still enter marks but the students can't access them) Then I have to head over to RMC where there is heaps of work waiting for me.

Al tried to kill me with some sort of Amazing cracker in Kimchi flavour. The boys seemed to enjoy it no end, but I really shouldn't have swallowed. I knew it was wrong. I've been drinking lots of water to try to purge my body from the one bite I took.

Last night was bad. I've been up since 4. Here's hoping for better sleep tonight!

Fuji

James makes his cars become 'buses' by decorating them with VHS tape stickers
On Saturday, James did his swimming on his own (with the teacher). In previous weeks Myron had gone in with him. So, progress there.
I spent most of the day cleaning and doing laundry so nothing exciting there. Except exciting that I didn't have marking home with me for once:)
Today at Rustle was birthday sunday, but I didn't see any party hats or balloons. I guess that's because Jul wasn't there. He's quite the life of the party. Though there was quite a party- quite a few people. Bob N. (not the Bob who reads my blog) made awesome sausages and there was great cake. Bob N. is too busy reading articles on particle physics to read my blog. Go figure. I'm sure my blog is better :)
Tara came over to play after church. They played air hockey (& golf). It was funny to see another person play air hockey against James. He normally plays against himself. (at least he always wins that way!)
In the evening James wanted to watch extreme home makeover. Something I totally wouldn't expect him to watch, but he seemed to like it. The family they were helping had 14 kids in it. That's like a small daycare! There was one point while he has watching when I was trying to make muffins, do laundry, set up a tape (for TAR) and get him ready for bed that I was kind of overwhelmed. And I only have one. I can't imagine 14!
I'm working on booking James and Myron's trip to Moncton for Christmas. I asked James if he would miss me while he was gone. He said no, he'll be playing mini-golf every day while he's away. Nice to know I can easily be replaced by mini-golf.

Romeo and Juliet

In one of Leona Lewis's songs she has a lyric that says something like: "Like Romeo and Juliet, our families can't divide us"
But didn't Romeo and Juliet's families manage to keep them apart?
A literary sort of question for you Saturday morning.

When a simple question doesn't receive a simple answer

I had a long day at work at RMC today. On the way home I ran some errands. I couldn't for the life of me remember what I had planned for dinner. I picked up some buns and we had a few sandwiches. Then I got out my organizer. It was 6:10. My organizer told me that at 6:30 there was a dinner at the Church that James does Pioneers at. The boys seemed good to go for that and we went to dinner #2.

We sat at a table with Paul and Tara and two guys I did not know. Paul and Tara were waiting for Sarah to get back from Thunder Bay. Paul tried to convince me that Thunder Bay was closer to us than North Bay. He was going to look at a map when he got home.

One of the guys are the table was named George. I asked him why he had chosen this Church to attend. I don't quite know what I expected as an answer, or quite why I asked the question. But he breathed in and then everything came out. About his family. About what happened when his mom died. About Montreal. About where he's thinking of moving. About his girlfriend. He didn't answer my question though. And so ages later, I asked it again. And he answered. And I understood why he didn't want to tell me the first time. A sweet, sweet man with so much pain on the surface.

The dinner was partly a goodbye dinner for the pastors. The Wicks are moving to Saskatchewan. The Church a block away needs a new pastor. They are a Church in transition now. And that can be difficult, but they seem very positive about it. I think I may go to a few of their evening services in the next few weeks to help pray for their transition. When they prayed for their pastors at the end. I prayed for George.

Open house

Yesterday we went to an open house at James' school and got to meet his 2 teachers. James seems more attached to one than the other. I suspect that is the teacher that keeps things in order. James likes order.

I looked at his art folder (all of his work was on display on his desk). The first was a picture of him swimming at the Y in the big pool. Because he had a lot of anxiety about this I was sort of glad to see that he had drawn it, so it's not a big scary thing. He seems to like the swimming, really.
ALL the rest of the art was remarkably the same- a bunch of stick figure people in different colours. The only thing that differed was which sport they were playing!
I noted a number of them were titled "OLPC" (Olympic) which must have been on his mind as the Olympics were just on.

The room was pretty busy, so I didn't get much chance to talk to the teachers, but I told one teacher that James never goes the bathroom at school. Yes, she confirmed to me, he never asks to go. That's my boy- he holds it all day! This is exactly what he did at the daycare when he was potty training. It may say something about his confort level at school, though he does seem pretty happy there.

Eija

Eija seems to think I have time to do a meme. Since she is fittingly busy herself and found time to do it, I will use her as inspiration :)

The meme is to list 6 unremarkable things about yourself. How you are no different from the (most of) the rest of the human race. I think 6 remarkable things would be easier. I could say stuff like: I have a friend named Eija.

But unremarkable:
1) I work (most people do this to put food on the table, etc.)
2) I don't have enough time in my life for all the things I want to do.
3) I love chocolate! (doesn't everyone? well, except maybe bob)
4) I love blogging (ditto, even the bob part)
5) I love excercise (ok, now I'm just listing things that make me different from Bob. I guess he's remarkable)
6) I need to get back to work.

Next post will be about James' school open house from last night.

Today

Today I ran a lot on automatic pilot. If I had to tell you what day it was, I had to think. Like hard.
I got into work at 7:30am to prepare for my presentation and classes.
Had a lab from 8:30-11:30, did a presentation from 11:30-12:30, went back in the lab at 12:30. At 2pm I had to go through my email - 57 new messages is one account. I had to do up the times for my new TAs to work. I planned to have that done at 3:15 but my other boss called at 3:05, so I didn't get a chance to finish.
I still have about 43 messages to deal with, that I'm just too tired to handle!
Barbara said she hadn't heard from me in a while- she said she'd check my blog- but there wasn't a lot here! Her birthday is coming up in a few days. Happy Birthday Barbara!

James said yesterday that he had to be good at school. He then explained that the teacher had made 3 groups. Green. Yellow. Red. If you are good, you are in green. If you aren't quiet or are misbehaving, you go into yellow. If you continue to misbehave, you go into red and your parents get a call or a note (can't remember what he said). If you stay in green, you get a prize at the the end. James wants that prize!!

I picked him up from school today and we went to a book fair they were putting on. We picked up a book on "chat et chien". I explained to James that half of the book was on dogs and he was ok with that even though he much prefers cats. We also picked up a french book on the 2008/2009 hockey season.

It is Tuesday.

I lived

I finished all my marking that on Friday looked so unsurmountable. I have a nasty zinger of a cold now.
Last week was quite overwhelming with all the classes, new people to train (which will be a super relief to me in the coming weeks, but right now, a tad overwhelming). One of my students almost died from a brain abcess.
This coming week I have heaps of classes again and a presentation to give on Tuesday.
Myron is going to Belleville for some testing tomorrow but will be home in time to pick up James from the bus and take him to gymnastics.

Level 6 crazy

Yes, both of my works are super busy. I have reached at least level 6 crazy if not higher. Things will get better in about a week. I didn't blog for 3 days and didn't even notice. It's THAT crazy.

Cat

James is pretty obsessed with cats. I have no idea why. He always wants to pretend to be a cat. When I got home from work, he wanted a 'pawing' which means I have to act like a mamma kitty and pat him all over.
He claims that Myron and I and Oma and Grandad and Karen are his 'owners'
As Myron is allergic to cats, James' ultimate plan is to make Myron live in the crawl space so that we can live upstairs with cats. As Myron isn't too agreeable to the idea to live in the crawl space, this saves me from telling James that I would not want to own cats!

Work is rather crisis-filled but not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I am so swamped that I am not even panicking, I'm so far under. We hired 2 new TAs today, I'm hoping this will help. Though I think they were planning on hiring undergrads that were cheaper and they were using the money they were thinking they were going to save to pay me, and this has thrown a wrench in the plans (for my money at least). I'm sure it will sort itself out eventually. My boss wants to give the class a test next week, which would make for an interesting twist on my week. (not a for marks test- a diagnostic test)

Oma emailed that she would be out this evening (James likes to call her and give her numbers). When I told James he dissolved in a pool of tears, but quickly got a hold of himself and asked if Grandad would be available.

Hello Ike

Ike blew in last night and our internet went down.

After church the weather was good enough that we could have gone to the demolition derby, but because they had been calling for rain, I hadn't brought any money. We just walked by it instead. James was more interested in taking Karen home after church with us anyway. James is not at all intimidated by Karen's Bob and waltzed right up to him and asked if he could take Karen home.

They played buses a bit while I made cookies for Tab and Sam. (sorry, I was too busy baking cookies to be a crime lord in your video) James was very upset when Karen had to go home. I sent her with Myron when he drove out to drop off Tab and Sam's dinner.

Today my busyness starts. I have to go and make my notes for my class now!

Body of work

These are the pages that James wrote while on the phone to Oma. Oma should have identical ones as he called them out to her to write down as he was writing them.
James made a football field out of painters tape. You probably can't see it but he wrote in all the yard line numbers as well. Painters tape is sooo useful. Not at all sure why we buy him toys. We need only buy painters tape!
I have a packed day planned tomorrow. I have to head to the A&P early cause I'm making dinner for Tab and Sam (they had a new baby Jonah David Antti - Lorna will probably like the 3rd name!). Then doing the making will probably take me until when we need to leave for Church.
At some point I have to print out my papers for the next week and plan out some meetings. I also have a bit of marking to get started on.
Bob made a good point about anywhere being hard to sleep. I remember visiting my grandmother in England who does live pretty much in the country and the cows got out one night and woke us up. If it's not loud human neighbours it may be loud bovine neighbours.

swimming lesson

James loved his first swimming lesson! He would have liked it better if there was no water, but he said he loved it. His teacher did lots of fun things with them and James is slowly getting used to the water.

My night last night was not so good. Myron woke me at midnight when he finished playing his video game and then at 2am the guy with the truck across the road woke me up by getting into his truck (the nerve!) Then I couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up and did the work that I needed to while my brain was still thinking consciously (as I figured later in the day it might not be!)

James wants to go to the Demolition Derby tomorrow, but I have he feeling it might be raining and then he won't want to go anymore!

Master

Today was a stream of tutorials and endless questions. The tutorials actually went quite well. The students who came out were quite enjoyable. Of course the ones that came out were the more keen ones, so they would be more enjoyable :)

I am now trying to get all the class schedules ready for next week. Some sections are so overloaded, I am having to figure out how to schedule them properly so everyone fits in the lab. If not everyone on my list shows up that would be great, but I wish I knew beforehand!

I got new Mastercards for us in the mail today. I thought I would try activiating online, but it turned out to be more of a hassle then phoning. And at the end it said I had only activated 1 card. Normally when I called to activate, it activated them both. Not wanting to go through the hassle again, I called. I explained to the lady that I had activated mine, but I had wanted to activate them both. I said that if I received one, wouldn't it be obvious that I had received both? Not necessarily, she said. Well, you put them both in the same envelope didn't you? sigh.

Regarding yesterday's post- Bob- I was wearing a t-shirt, shirt and sweater and it was not my body that was cold, but my hands. I'll need gloves! But that's frosty RMC for you!

James has his first swimming lesson tomorrow!

Firemen

My office at RMC had a 'problem' for over a year in the air system, that made my office warm (much warmer than the rest of the place). We were always at about 25 degrees. Now they have 'fixed' the problem, I find it really COLD (even though it's reading about 20 degrees). I asked for a space heater (lol) but they turned me down because the temperature was 'normal' and space heaters must be cleared with the fire department. They told me to wear a sweater. But it's my hands that are cold- so I guess I'll have to find some typing gloves!

At the start of the year, they assign my students into sections. For some bizarre reason they decided to rename some of the sections. They didn't even tell me about it, and I'm working on preparing course materials! 1. It's a bad idea to make changes like this in Week 1 (well anytime after classes have started really) 2. It's a bad idea not to let the instructors know. Who makes these decisions?

James would like you to know that Mikey is really improving.

James read a book called "C'est petit" to me today. The only word he got wrong was 'voiture'. He did pretty super with the reading.

He also started pioneers today- it looks like he's got a good class. The teacher is really nice too :)

Lunch break

For the first time this week, I get a lunch break! I think that's a good sign. Well, it's probably not. More ominous. The calm before the storm. I had an egg salad sandwich, reasonably priced at $2.50. I haven't managed to find stuff that cheap at Queen's.
Both of my jobs have reached assorted levels of crazy and the last 3 days have been level 4 crazy. (still not peak, but quite high)

At RMC, all our papers for the workshop were due in last week, but only half of them are in and we have to send the manuscript to the printer at the end of next week.
But next week is my level 5 crazy week at Queen's, not quite sure how to explain THAT to my boss at RMC. Because we still have a lot to do to get stuff ready for publication and not that much time. And we haven't even got all the papers!
So I'm not quite sure how we'll handle it- I suspect I'll be working in the evenings at RMC. I'm not quite sure how to fit all of my work life in.

To make things worse, yesterday, one lady who is trying to figure out how to pay me send me an email that I couldn't really make heads or tails of, but she wanted me to come in for a meeting. Well, yesterday I gave her the times I was available. But this morning, I changed my mind- I told her that this is the amount you need to pay me and I don't care HOW you do it, just do it and no,no,no I'm not coming to your meeting. She was actually happy with this email. Funny how people are.

One James story and then I'll get back to work:
On the bus there is a kid named mikey. Mikey misbehaves on the bus. All the time. He's probably the most disruptive on the bus. James is probably the least. (but I may be biased:) So they make Mikey sit next to James. James is very scared of mikey. But he takes very seriously his responsibility to 'watch mikey'. When James got dropped off the other day, the mother of another boy who also gets off at the same stop was told her son had been trouble. As we walked home, I asked James what the other boy had done. James said he didn't know because he was too busy watching mikey! Probably watching partly out of responsibility, partly out of fear for his life!

James brings home a book every day to read from school and even though he didn't do any french reading over the summer, his reading has improved a lot from SK.

Busy

If you thought my blog was tiring before- just think about how tiring my life is when I'm too busy to blog about it!

Yesterday I worked from 6am-midnight, only taking a break to take James to gymnastics.

Today I left the house at 6:30, worked until I had to pick James up from the bus at 4:30 (signed him up for skating on Tuesdays as well), made dinner, then James and I were nomads in the neighbourhood as he wanted to bike ride. We got home in time to watch Big Brother. (Go Dan!) Then I started work again. I have to get to bed soon.

Happy being tired out by my blog!

'I am blanket man'

My neighbour got home at 3:15 last night, so I'm pretty tired now, so I'll make this as brief as I can, which probably isn't all that brief, but I'll try! Also, to be brief so as not to tire Al out too much.

Day synopsis: Raspberry braids- topping didn't quite work out right
Al talked about my blog and reality shows- the sermon was on conflict resolution. People on reality shows have to resolve a lot of conflicts, and it's fun to watch them do it!
James made a football field in our hall.
James wrapped himself up in blankets and said "I am blanket man"
James told me "tout fini" when he finished brushing his teeth and told be there was also 'presque fini'. The french immersion is working after only 1 week!

Tomorrow:7am Myron goes for bloodwork
9:40am James has a dentist appt.
10:30 Myron goes to pick up another shed with Zully
During the day I have a TA meeting and heaps of things to get ready for our night meeting
3:30 pick up James
3:45 pick up subs for dinner. will they be serving pepperoni yet?
5pm James' gym class
7pm intro session to course

Hope I sleep tonight!

Raspberry braids

James playing 'buses' with Karen. James makes the bus routes himself.
Lorna (and my mom) asked about Myron. He's got bursitis in his hip or something- an inflamed tendon maybe. Painful anyway. It's hard for him to find a comfortable position to be in. Means that he can't get about much.

When my mom called she thought she couldn't talk long because I was on level 1 crazy. But I should add that level 1 crazy is not really crazy, it is more preparatory crazy, so it's not bad yet, it's just once you are on level 1, it can escalate really quickly!

James found out there is a demolition derby on next Sunday (week away) afternoon and he wants to go and see it. He wondered how loud it would be. I told him not as loud as the monster trucks because it would be outside.

Next week, I'm going to sign James us for a learn to skate program on Tuesday evenings. So his sports will be Sat: swimming and hockey Mon.:gymnastics Tues:skating. The lessons aren't very long- 1/2 hour to an hour so not as much as it looks.

Tomorrow, if I wake up by 7am, I'm going to make Raspberry braids for Rustle. (though if my body decides it needs to sleep late, I'm going to let it, as I've missed so much sleep recently and then no raspberry braids :()

Why does posting timetables on Friday afternoon seem like a bad idea?

Yes, the timetables are up. Yes, they have mistakes and yes, there is noone around to fix them!

It's September 5th and crazy has taken off. We're at level one craziness. Expect craziness to peak in about a week.

So my day was at RMC and today was the deadline for papers for the Workshop. Of course everyone misses the deadline, so it wasn't as crazy as it could be, but it was level one crazy.

Karen picked up James from school, so they were home playing when I got home from work.
I brought sausages home- they were a really good English variety. Normally I buy the turkey sausages, but they were out. Karen had made rice and we had fresh veggies with it.

After dinner, I realized that Meredith had emailed me and the email meant that the timetables had been posted as she wondered if they were correct of not? I did manage to email her back before she went home. Meredith is on level 4 crazy. She was still at work at 6.

Myron and James took Karen home in the car.
Then James built a wipeout course out of magnetics.
I got to time little people going through the course while I did dishes.

Kim called and said her new job (10 hours a week with an autistic child) wasn't working out so well. She decided she's not good with kids. But she's applied for a new contract at CH so hopefully it will all work out for her. We worked out for Myron and Zully to go pick up another shed from Costco on Monday. Myron, who can barely walk. That should be interesting.

Now that James is in bed, and I've blogged. I can get to sorting through stuff for my course now that I've got some semblance of a timetable.

I don't have socks in my ears, but I still don't understand what you are saying

Yesterday was very busy. I did some TA training in the morning, which went very, very well.

I had an interview in the afternoon. I walked into the interview building with new students who for some reason had socks in their ears.(don't ask) I did not have socks in my ears, but I had a hard time with the interview questions. They just didn't seem to be making sense in my head. I also found it very difficult to talk about myself! So about 3/4 of the way through, I figured I had tanked the interview and where I had tried to be serious up to that point, I gave up and just tried to make the panel laugh. They may not be happy with my answers, but they know I have a sense of humour!

I picked up James from school and we went by subway (which does not have pepperoni this week- hello listeria- though I though pepperoni was safe, but whatever) and picked up dinner. Then James and I went to my board meeting, though I had to leave early to put him to bed. (James WANTED to go to the board meeting for whatever reason. I was happy to take him as Myron was sleeping)

When we were walking home from Rustle, we saw one of the ladies from the interview panel. I just about fell over!

The day was pretty draining!

First day of school, first call from the principal

When I picked James up from school, I got to see his afternoon teacher. She is just out of teachers college, so pretty young.
We went to look for his bus, to tell Thomas(the bus driver) that I was taking him home, but the bus still hadn't shown up. I figured it was running a bit behind and probably lots of kids weren't riding the bus on the first day.
We walked home and the first thing I did was try to get a hold of Lisa to tell her that Jessie might be late. But she was probably at the bus stop already and didn't get my call.
Then around 5pm I got a call from the principal, checking to see if James got home ok. Apparently, the bus had broken down and while the kids that were waiting were accounted for, they had to check with the ones who were not, to make sure they hadn't wandered off or anything.
The principal is new this year. Probably got a good workout today!

Frist day of school + my dad's birthday!

Drangonfly on a dead stick of a flower yesterday. There were heaps of them, each on their own dead stick, resting and sunning
My dad must be so excited to share his birthday with it being the first day of school. I'm sure!

Last night was bad, with the birds (see below post), my neighbour and James all getting up in the night.

James was bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning. When I got out of the shower, I found him in the front room with all his breakfast supplies. He wanted to leave for school early, so we got there just as the K/1 playground was opening. Rebecca arrived at the same time, so they got to play for a while before the bell rang and they organized everyone with which door they would enter the building.
There were 3 grade 1's so you needed to find the teachers and see if your child was on their list. We ended up in line behind a James with a similar last name! The first teacher we went to, the other James was denied, so I said- you have no James' at all? And she said no, so off we went to the next, but I could see the names on the wall beside the first teacher and saw that Rebecca and Quinn were probably in her class. I was a bit disappointed because I had hoped that James would be with them.
The second teacher denied the James we were following behind and they were discussing about it (because the name was so close) and I asked if it was my boy. And the teacher looked relieved that they had sorted it out and we hung James' backpack on the James hook by that teacher.
Then we went in the class. We found James' desk at the back. He was seated beside Jamir, who is his good buddy, and most of his K class from last year (except Quinn) were with him, so he was pretty pleased with all that.
His teacher in the morning is Mme. Janice. She's just back from mat. leave so she only wanted to come back part-time, so there is another teacher in the afternoon, who I did not meet.
As the parents were dismissed, James started tearing up. I blew him a kiss and skittered out the door as quickly as I could.
I headed out to the Y to sign James up for swim lessons. He will be on 'otter' and swim on Sat. mornings. (instead of basketball) He'll be doing hockey on Sat. afts and gymnastics on Monday evenings. He wants to do skating on Tuesday evenings, but I'm not sure if that is too much?
Then I headed over to Queen's as I was under some stress to get things printed, but was getting NO cooperation from the people I needed the info from. I went ahead and printed without their input, because I was pretty much down to the wire on getting things done for the day I needed them!
Then I headed back over to James' school for lunch. We had a nice lunch, then the bell rung for the kids to go in the playground. I signed him back into the school. While I was doing that, a teacher he had for art last year came up and started talking to him in French. I think he only nodded in response (did not speak) but HE UNDERSTOOD WHAT SHE SAID- I was pretty impressed with this. We saw Rebecca as we exited the school and he went off to play with her. I asked him if I could go and he said sure (last year, I had to stay!) So he's growing up!
Then I came home and did a bit more work and will leave in about an hour to go and pick him up. It was nice to be able to take a quiet day and be able to spend a lot of the day supporting him.
Tomorrow, I have a TA training session in the morning, which I will prepare for until I need to run off and pick up James.
Happy birthday dad!

a last revelation for the night...

Apparently, my body has 'forgotten' how to get back to sleep when woken in the night. Thus my bad night last night and now to continue- my bad night tonight.
Apparently, the birds were not put to bed last night and had a night fright oh about an hour after I had fallen asleep. I've been up for an hour and a half now- longer than I actually slept!
Not a happy camper!

Revelation

Just before bed, James had a revelation about his state of graduation from the daycare and understood that he would not be going back. This was not a happy revelation! He wanted to stay at the daycare forever. But grow up we all must...

I also glimpsed his 'adult' teeth in the gummy gap where his baby teeth used to be.

And I leave you with this video of moose having a revelation of what a sprinkler is.

Driving

This is John, sinking the boat. Look in the water: he is in the yellow boat, sunk! (He did get it to float just after this)
Everything in life, I have come to conclude, is about 15 minutes too long. Except for summer- summer never begins early enough and always ends too soon. Peter Gzowski.
I took the car out for a drive this morning as the streets were quiet. It took me a while to get a feel for where the far side of the car was. The first time I went round and parked- I was about a foot away from the curb. And I was driving like that too- really far away from the right side. But the second time around I had some better bearings. I saw a lot of Bob and Carolyn's and Sarah and Paul's houses. They were probably all asleep and didn't see me! (Lucky for them!) So I am ok with driving as long as there is noone else on the road :) The car drives really nice though!

I was up for quite a while in the night. Apparently Karen was too. I'm pretty tired now.